Mental well-being

May the Fourth stretching session. (Fitness updates!)

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Hello, friends. I was going to tell you the story of what’s been going on with me this last week – since last week Wednesday night – but I stopped mid-draft and set it aside for the time-being. I don’t have all of the clinical information yet, and I’d rather tell you a complete story than a Part 1. A Part I leads to a Part 2, and I don’t wish to write about this (latest awful and weird – insert eye-roll) incident more than once.

So instead, I come to you tonight with a post I drafted a couple of weeks ago. I’ve got some (dubious) pics of a stretching session I did here at home on Thursday, May 4, and I thought I’d share them with you fitness enthusiasts. There’s honestly not much to say about the stretching workout, itself, except that I went into it with the intention of doing actual yoga. Beyond that? It just felt damn good to get down onto the yoga mat and stretch out my limbs, back, shoulders, chest, pretty much everything.

I said they were “dubious” because getting the pics turned out to be somewhat of an adventure. My new living room configuration has me working out between the back of the couch and a wall, leaving very little in the way of photo ops at decent angles, distances, and lightning. Working out behind the couch is fine, but grabbing footage/pics back there is another story. I’ll figure it out!

As for my plan to do more stretching, I’ve got an eye on Les Mill’s BodyFlow program. I figured I’d just try it out, see how it goes, how I feel about it. I find that I benefit the most from guided workout sessions, and Les Mills On Demand is the absolute business in that arena.

My main interest in incorporating dedicated stretching sessions into my workout routine is stress-reduction. Inordinate stress can wreck the body. It’s been doing a number on mine, let me tell you. 2023 has been challenging. There’s been a lot in the way of stress and distress, and my body’s shown textbook signs of it. I’ll spare you the rundown of the medical shenanigans that’ve gone down over the last few months. Suffice it to say that I’m now taking action at the root of the problem.

Bottom line: It’s in my power and it’s on me to do something to manage my stress levels. I need to sleep adequately, stretch my body regularly, and engage in a meditation practice in order to invite equilibrium and balance back into my being. A moving meditation practice such as yoga can strengthen the mind/body connection, and that’s what I need.

So here we are at the pics, friends. As I’d said, I just got down and did a few basic stretches, and I’m sorry that it escaped me that doing stuff on the floor in a cramped space would present a problem with photojournaling. The pics are pathetic in terms of, well, you can’t really see what the hell I’m doing. Again, I’ll experiment with the camera situation so I can put up decent fitness posts again.

There are just a few, and they’re from last week Thursday, May 4.

Here’s Yours Truly behind the couch:

Stabilizing in a side plank.

Working on my forward stretch/arm flexibility.

I’m not flexible at all, friends. That is literally as far up as I can raise my arms with my hands clasped behind my back.

Stretching hips and triceps.

I have to figure out a better way to place my phone to capture shots for my living room workouts. You can’t see what I’m doing with my lower body in the above pic. It’s a hip stretch.

Attempting an upper back stretch, again the best I can do with limited flexibility. I know I can achieve improvement. Give me a few weeks of self-discipline in a guided yoga program, and I’ll come back with a progress report!

(This is my attempt at a cobra pose, by the way. It’s okay if you’re laughing. I am.)

Performing a hamstring stretch.

I have one leg bent at the knee in front of me, and the other leg stretched out behind – though that back leg is supposed to be bent at the knee, too – and I’m holding that pose while leaning down toward the floor.

Holding a triceps stretch, both arms overhead, left handing grabbing my right elbow and pulling it toward my head.

(I remember that I wore those pants to work that day; I just changed my t-shirt when I got home.)

There you have it, my friends. If anything, I hope you got from this that if I can do any kind of exercise in a cramped space, then so can you!

Dealing with my current ridiculous (soon to be explained) situation, I need to recover adequately before hitting the floor for more working out. My 2023 fitness journey has been a start-and-stop endeavor, but you know what? Listen to me, 2023: I get knocked down, but I get up again, you’re never gonna keep me down.

That’s my theme song of the year. I’ll leave you fine folks with the video.

I hope you’re all doing well out there, wherever you are in the world. I love and appreciate that you’ve stuck with me despite my inconsistency here. Thank you.

Pumped-up thoughts. (Fitness updates!)

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It’s very early morning here, and I come to you from my kitchen with a huge mug of hot Pike coffee sweetened with monk fruit extract and lightened with soymilk, and isn’t it true that if you drink coffee, there are few moments in a day as satisfying as this one?

Hello there, old friends, and welcome, new friends! You latter bunch seem to mostly hail from fitness communities, so I thought I’d speak to you… and you, and you, and you, meaning those of you who aren’t from fitness communities, as well. Many of you folks have been here for years. Thank you for hanging around all this time!

Well, I’d set several goals for the new year, and I’ve yet to reach the one where I get back into a consistent blog-posting schedule… or the one where I regularly check my email… or the one where I check messages on social media, or the voice mails on my phone, for that matter… (I’m really the worst at staying connected, and not proud of it, let me assure you)… or the one where I get more sleep!… but I have managed to dial back into my committment to fitness. I can now report that I have arrived. I have reached my destination. It was the last turn on the left, three months down on the right, and I’m here to stay for as long as circumstances allow. Life does happen. There may be more hiatuses in the future, but it’s humbling to know that I can get back into the groove when I set my mind to it. I never feel right when I take extended breaks from fitness. Returning to it feels like returning to myself.

So, having finally integrated a training regimen back into the rhythm of my mundane day-to-day and week-to-week, and feeling that it was such a momentous feat, I thought I’d share a little aspect of it. I mean, it’s a great feeling to get back into the fitness game after months of sitting it out. Along the way I’ve been reminded that muscle memory isn’t a myth. In a short period of time, I’ve regained what I’d lost, and I can see a clear fitness path to a place beyond where I was before.

(I still have a Planet Fitness membership, but it’s been all Les Mills On Demand these last six weeks. BodyPump and BodyCombat are my main fitness jams. The love is real.)

Getting back to my point: The aspect of fitness I want to share is thoughts... because working out is mind over matter, and so on and so forth, and while such adages seem stale, they’re quite apt.

Now, physical training has always served as a form of moving mediation for me, a meditation that includes the mental challenge involved in making it through a tough workout. Just as in traditional meditation, my mind tends to wander. When I want to direct my brainwaves and focus inwardly, then, where do my thoughts land? Here are some of the things that pass through my mind while working out, things that seem random, but actually apply directly to my efforts as I struggle to maintain my form and keep up the pace while strength-training in, say, BodyPump:

Thor.
I think of this formidable deity, and I imagine that he’s got my back. He lends me fortitude.

Archangel Michael.
The divine warrior, flaming sword in hand. I don’t have to request his presence to help me through a tough workout. He’s always there. When my thoughts turn to him, I feel his strength.

Music.
Rhythm in percussion and bass is always a driving force.

The elements:

Earth.
Being rooted, grounded.

Air.
Swiftness and weightlessness, imagery that actually helps me to lift heavy weights.

Fire.
Blazing energy.

Water.
Fluidity in movement.

A part of the joy of working out is the elation I feel when I persevere through physical challenge to make it to the goals that I set for myself during that workout. The euphoria is both physical and emotional, coming through in brain chemistry and the feeling of accomplishment. It’s more than a rush. It’s being high on achievement, and I’ve found that my thought processes during my workouts amp it all up. They help me to work harder and go the distance. I feel stronger in my body, more energetic the next day, and I sleep better. The benefits of exercise can’t be overhyped, and every time I return to the fitness life after being away for a while, I can’t imagine how I’d managed in the interrim.

With that, I’m drinking the last of the coffee before getting ready for work. I wish you all the wondrousness you find in your efforts, whatever they may be!

What is my “Wellness Routine”?

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Tonight, the moon is three days old. There’s something about this particular moon – waxing crescent – that makes me want to pull weeds under her light. It’s the strangest little hum of an urge and I don’t think I’ll ever do it, but I enjoy thinking about it.

(The moon that set approximately six minutes ago.)

It came to my attention that a famous actress has been mocked and lambasted for her “wellness routine,” which she divulged to the public recently. The ruckus led me to reflect. How would I sum up my own wellness routine?

My wellness routine includes body lotion after a lavender aromatherapy shower every night; working out and focusing on my mind/body connection while performing the exercises; eating nutrient-dense, high-vibration, delicious food; bonding with my animal babies; listening to music; engaging in my spiritual practices; writing; tending to my twice-daily skin care rituals; making space for my creativity; and being in nature. It’s all divine, all devotional. I’m grateful.

Bonuses to throw in: work, where I (still!) love to go to do the job that I (still!) enjoy. Movies and streaming T.V. shows, which intrigue, delight, horrify, and amuse. Cooking and baking, especially baking. These days it’s healthy quick breads, muffins, and scones.

Family and friends… I would call those blessings.

I still aspire to getting more sleep, as it’s critically important, but my return to working out 4-5 days per week has been the greatest. At home, I’ve dialed it in with Les Mills On Demand Pump and Combat. At the gym, it’s traditional weight-training and the treadmill. Re-establishing my fitness routine, dedicating time and care to my physical fitness has been – I mean, it’s been absolute sorcery, what it’s done for my spirits. A recent double loss plus a harrowing time for another loved one has amounted to too much tragedy in too short a span of time, and my fitness discipline has helped immensely.

But sleep, now. Sleep is the final piece of the wellness puzzle. It’s the most challenging for me, and I should finish this post on that note. It’s time to focus on sleep and really make an effort, and I should start this very second! I wish you all a good-night (or day… or whatever it is for you).

Until next time, my friends. Take care and stay safe out there!

Confessions of a (former) Gym Snob: I joined Planet Fitness, and I love it. (Fitness updates!)

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I went to the gym today. And yesterday, and the day before, and four days last week. I’m hanging on to my Les Mills On Demand subscription for home workouts, but recently I’ve added an actual gym component back into my fitness routine. I’ve returned to my old habits, my friends, and I feel so much better! I’m eating 98% high-vibration foods and lifting weights and doing cardio and feeling strong and energetic and good in my body again.

In my car in the gym parking lot before heading in to my workout.

I can feel my renewed commitment to my physical well-being benefiting my mental health, as well. I experienced two losses last month that both cut deeply, pretty much back-to-back. My cat has been sick. A close family member has been struggling in ongoing crisis. It’s been stressful, and I very much needed to return to gym therapy. When I finally did, I joined… Planet Fitness.

Now, fellow gym rats, I know what you’re thinking. I know because I used to be right there with you, mocking and ridiculing Planet Fitness. It’s the gym notorious for kicking people out for wearing spaghetti straps, for sounding a “Lunk Alarm” when someone commits the crime of grunting while lifting heavy weights, and for lacking an Olympic barbell.

Lies. Lies, my friends.

Well, the 45lb Olympic barbell part is true. There isn’t one at Planet Fitness. But that doesn’t seem to discourage seasoned strength athletes and career gym rats from working out there.

I mean, even two weeks in, I go to the gym and look around in bewilderment, because I still don’t recognize the place. I know that I’m in a Planet Fitness, but… am I?

I don’t recognize the women in the short, tight gym shorts and sexy sports bras and nothing else, because those women in those outfits aren’t supposed to be there… yet they are, and no one says anything.

I don’t recognize the guys in bodybuilding muscle shirts and the kind of tanks that have wispy straps of fabric looped over their shoulders and armholes so long, the guys might as well be unclothed completely. Those guys aren’t supposed to be there, either, according to Planet Fitness lore. But they are there, and no one cares.

Neither do I recognize the super built, ripped folk walking around in skin-tight microfiber t-shirts and weighted vests, because Planet Fitness is a “beginner’s gym” – so advanced athletes aren’t supposed to be there, either.

Or any of the serious strength athletes – of all ages and genders – focusing intently on their training.

Oh, there is indeed a “Lunk Alarm” warning banner up on the wall in the free weight area, but it seems to be there for entertainment purposes, because the Lunk Alarm isn’t sounded when people audibly exert physical effort. My trainer said that they only time the Lunk Alarm is used is at the end of days that have closing times, as a way to alert people that the gym is going to be closing soon. (The gym is open 24/5 and has closing hours on the other two days.) Even in that case, he’s only seen it done once or twice.

What else? Little pleasant surprises, like the electronica music they’ve got playing overhead. I guess I was expecting standard pop music fare. Silly me!

I wasn’t expecting the gym to feature a spa with cutting-edge equipment. Apparently, some people join Planet Fitness just for the Black Card spa. They don’t go to work out. They go for the Total Body Enhancement red light therapy capsule booth, the HydroMassage lounge seats and beds, the various tanning technologies, and the massage chairs.

I certainly wasn’t expecting unlimited free personal training with my $10.00/month no-commitment membership! That’s right… personal trainers are included in your classic membership, which sets you back TEN DOLLARS each month.

It’s solid good training, too. My trainer sat me down to discuss my goals, and the next time I went in, I found he’d created a custom workout for me based on a four days/week schedule… and he trains me during the workouts. I still can’t believe that a custom workout plan and unlimited personal training is included in the Planet Fitness Classic membership. Ten dollars a month, friends.

(I called EOS, my former gym, to compare. At EOS, one 30-minute personal training session costs $36.00 on top of your membership fees.)

You do have to pay more if you want access to that Black Card spa, though. In order to use that spa, you have to spring for the pricey Black Card membership, which is… $25.00/month.

Looks like the whole time I was laughing at Planet Fitness, the joke was on me.

On that note, have a wonderful day, friends!

(Mental health post.) So I drove along the road

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…lined with light-rail tracks this one day, which led me directly to the roundabout I was trying to avoid in the first place. Does that kind of thing ever happen to you? You go out of your way to avoid a situation, then encounter detours that lead you right back to it? But usually, I end up feeling grateful for the opportunity to undertake a navigation situation I wanted to dodge. I always come out fine.

This is going to sound silly, but there was a fire extinguisher that used to present me with a challenge every time I’d encounter it in a certain way. I felt that it was my nemesis. (Even though I believe that comparing a fire extinguisher to the Goddess Nemesis was actual sacrilege.) But those encounters would simply remind me to move cautiously through the world, and that would be lesson enough.

For those of you who don’t know, I have PTSD, OCD, and depression. It’s been a while since I’ve posted about it – I used to do it quite frequently – because I’ve been doing really well. I still am. I just thought I’d pop my head into this space today.

This is an idea of my mental health tableau as it fades in and out on a bad mental health day:

When the air in a room is strange, disquieting in a ghostly kind of way (when the ghost is a stranger).

When a conversation can be more treacherous than a heavy iron bar free-falling in rapid descent toward your head.

When I’m impacted by things that are nothings, like the time I heard an R&B remake of Nena’s “99 Luftballons” and felt that all hope for humanity had been lost.

When I feel that two words that should be added to the English language are “ungood” and “unignorable.”

It can be a dicey time, but those are also the days on which I can turn a particular dark, tight corner and feel like I’m protected from the world. I learn things about myself that surprise me in positive ways.

Sometimes I pay attention to the sound of my own typing. I tap the keys lightly and rapidly and imagine that I’m listening to rain, or to a drum from another country.

I’m doing well, friends. Monday morning I had an OCD episode that almost made me late for work. (Then I got to work and learned that a co-worker’s car battery died on Friday evening at the same time as mine did, and he purchased his new battery on Saturday morning and had it installed at the same time as I did, as well. What are the odds? But that’s neither here nor there.) …I’m doing well overall.

I know that some of you appreciate reading these posts as much as I feel grateful to write them. This is for us. I know that I can relate when I read other bloggers’ mental health posts, so I’m glad to give back.

Equilibrium. (Mental health check-in! Comfort in the dark: Where I go when wounded.)

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Three or four days ago marked the low point of the dramatic ups and downs of last week. That was when I wrote the draft of this post. It served as a kind of therapeutic exercise, and I was going to post it in the mid-week moment, but circumstances had changed in the 24 hours that’d passed, so the post wasn’t applicable any longer. You got Leon the lobster instead. (I’d had it in mind to share him with you at some point, anyway, so I was happy to do it then.) And now I’m reflecting back on the week, as I often do in the quiet moments of the weekend where I sit and ponder this space, and I’m thinking that I want to share this with you even though the moment in question is over. Consider this to be one for the mental health files. You don’t have to have depression or PTSD or any other sort of mental illness to be able to relate to content pertaining to The Downs of life. I could have written this exact same post as a person without depression.

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Tonight, I write to you from a private dark place of mine, the place to which I retreat when wounded in any way. It’s not The Abyss. It’s my comfort zone for situational down times, and it’s soothing. Once I’m here, I’m at ease, despite the dull pain of sadness. (If you’re thinking this is sounding emo, let me assure you that I’m not emo. I found the path to this place back in the sixth grade as the groovy 70’s gave way to the neon 80’s.)

Being here isn’t without its hazards. I’m enticed to find the edge, to get as close to it as possible so I can look down in safety. I push back gently against the desire to visit places I deem to be dangerous, and it’s a resistance that feels good regardless of my degree of success. I get dressed into the self I rarely express to the fullest anymore (mostly due to life – I’m looking at you, COVID). The self-destructive streak that I find to be alluring comes into focus while everything else softens and blurs; I enjoy it, but these days, I’m smarter about it. (Here, I have to check myself and admit that I’m either lying or being pretentious or both. The truth is that I’m smarter about it now because I’ve made the same dumb mistakes countless times, and I’ve finally learned. Or have I…? I don’t know, actually. Maybe that’s too much to hope. Maybe I’m just scared.)

My music here is the biggest comfort. I’m currently obsessed with Angelspit, and at the same time, I’ve revisited my passion for country artist Steve Earle. To complete the trinity, I’ve spent just as much time engrossed in the cozy dark sleeve of classical – specifically the temperamental range of Chopin’s waltzes and all three movements of Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata, which I play on repeat. Dark electronica (I think of Angelspit as the lovechild of Lords of Acid and KMFDM) and country and classical, my friends. Loving it.

In this dark place I have a vantage point from which I can see irony absolutely everywhere and anywhere. I can cry and laugh (at myself) at the same time and marvel at the brilliant and idiotic fractals that comprise my life. Last night I sustained emotional wounds and went to bed hoping for a diminishing of the pain in my sleep – I don’t know about you, but I would rather wake up from a nightmare than wake up to one. I’d gone to sleep in a strange two-places-at-once, a flashback and a wry look at my life thereafter. This could be translated as self-pity, and I’m not proud of it. I woke up as stunned as I was when I went to bed, cried a little more, and went to work determined to keep the sadness at bay, kicking ass to the fullest extent of my ability – as much as an uncomfortably stitched hand at a hands-on physical job could allow – and I only cried a little bit.

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As mentioned at the beginning, all is well. Within 24 hours of writing the above, I emerged, gathered the pieces on the ground, and put them back together in a new arrangement; equilibrium had been restored. I brought the music out with me, though. That part hasn’t changed.

Thank you for hanging around to read these words, my friends. I hope – I know – that many of you can relate; I appreciate the virtual camaraderie in which we can luxuriate here. Many blessings to you for the new week ahead!

My cat died over six months ago, and I’m not “over it.” (What not to say to someone grieving the loss of a pet.)

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Hello, my friends. This is a little on the heavy side, but I said that I would post it, so…

I wanted to come back from Salem’s death six months later with an update on how things have shaken out over time, for anyone who’s wondering or who might be on the same path. The update was going to look something like this: I’ve moved through the stages of grief, and now I’m on the other side. Unfortunately, that is not what this update looks like.

My cat died over six months ago, and I’m not “over it.” I shouldn’t have to feel that this is a confession, as if it’s something that demands justification, but I kind of do. In our society, there seems to be a suggested expiration date for grieving the loss of a pet.

Some remarks made to me within two weeks of Salem’s death (not that they would’ve been okay at any other time):

“She was killed by an owl? That’s just nature.” ~My former lunch-break acquaintance across the street from my workplace.

“Just, you know, get over it.” ~A dear friend I’ve had since the ’90’s.

“She was just a cat.” ~The same former lunch-break acquaintance.

Friend from the 90’s: You should just get another cat.
Me: I have Nenette, my indoor ca –
Friend (cutting me off): Well clearly that one isn’t enough for you if you’re still upset about the other one.
Me (stunned):

To be fair, both of the individuals who counseled me with these remarks are over 25 years my senior. They’re of another generation, and they both had rural upbringings. These factors do inform their thinking, I’m aware. I also know that they were well-intentioned; neither of them meant to be hurtful.

But I don’t understand them, these comments. Timing aside, they got me thinking. Here’s what I concluded:

If you wouldn’t say it to a human parent, don’t say it to a pet parent.

Can you imagine saying to a mother that her daughter’s death was “just nature” if her daughter had been fatally attacked by a bear?

If her infant daughter had been snatched and killed by the same enormous and powerfully taloned raptor that took and killed my Salem,* I wouldn’t tell the grieving mother to “just get over it” because it was “just nature.”

And I certainly wouldn’t tell her to “just have another baby” because “clearly your other daughter isn’t enough for you if you’re still upset about this one.”

By the same token, Salem was my daughter. It’s always been this way with my animal babies. My cat and my tortoise know me and love me as their mother, and I couldn’t be more their mom if they were human. Salem wasn’t “just a cat,” I can’t “just get over” her killing, and I’m not comforted when someone reassures me that her death was “just nature.” Neither would anyone else.

Keying out these well-intentioned statements, it strikes me that the word “just” is in all of them, and I realize that “just” is the four-letter word to avoid when talking to someone grieving the loss of their pet. “Just” belittles and diminishes. It implies that your loss is insignificant, and that therefore your lost loved one was insignificant.

I know that Salem is forever a part of the cosmos, a star in the constellation of Leo, and that I’m there with her. When I registered our twin stars, I hoped that knowing this would make for a quicker and easier grieving process, and it has helped. It’s just taking a while. For one thing, I have to be able to move past the fact that she’d fallen asleep out in the open because of me.

So that’s the update, friends. Grief is a personal journey, different from person to person and from case to case. I have a unique grief journey with every loss. It could be a walk down the street, or it could be a walk to the other side of the country. I’m still navigating this one. I’ll get there eventually.**

~~~~~

*Salem was a feral cat who took up residence in my yard and outdoor laundry room. She loved me and interacted with me and behaved as a trusting housecat, attached to her yard and to me, but she remained just feral enough that she wouldn’t allow me to touch her. That was her one remaining boundary, and because of it, I wasn’t able to bring her into the house.

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**I’m not over here moping through life. I laugh and have fun and feel energized taking on challenges, and I look forward to things! I may not feel deep joy, but I do feel contentment that comes from a place of gratitude. Gratitude that accompanies heartbreak is a balm. It keeps me grounded in perspective. Poet Henry David Longfellow wrote that “it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,” and I find this to be such a beautifully stated truth.

May this find you all safe and well, my friends. Until next time!

Sociopaths: Stigmatized into the shadows. (On Antisocial Personality Disorder.)

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Greetings. It’s been a while since I’ve written a mental health-related post, mostly because I’ve been blessed to be in a good place for such a sustained period of time.

Tonight, however, I’ve got a specific mental health topic on my mind. I want to talk about sociopaths; that is, people who are diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder. I’d actually planned to post along these lines last Wednesday/Thursday night, but I found myself blocked and floundering in my attempt to shape my thoughts around my feelings. I didn’t know how, exactly, to say what I want to say.

I guess I’ll start with the basic idea that society has determined that it’s okay to openly abhor and malign sociopaths. We perceive them to be less than human because they lack empathy and can’t feel guilt or remorse. They’re seen as a danger against the general public, and against us as individuals. Thus dehumanized and diagnostically relieved of any benefits of the doubt, sociopaths are open for castigation from all angles. (Okay, that might sound a little dramatic. What I mean is that at the least, there’s a general consensus that sociopaths don’t deserve kindness.)

We don’t consider what we’re doing to be a vilification. We consider sociopaths to be villains by definition, so we can’t be vilifying them, right? Neither do our societal rules against hate speech apply to them, because hate speech is only hate speech if it’s directed at humans, not at monsters. And so we will say that sociopaths are demonic. We will suggest that sociopaths should be rounded up and deposited on an island, just as lepers were shipped off to the Hawaiian island of Molokai in the 19th century… but you can bet that there wouldn’t be a Father Damien for the sociopaths on the island.

Reaching further beyond hate speech, there are books written matter-of-factly about how to detect “the sociopath next door,” and how to arm yourselves against them. Such literary material encourages us to become armchair psychologists while seeding fear and perpetuating the stereotype of sociopaths being monsters walking around in human suits, one-dimensional and beyond hope, help, or understanding.

So here’s what I’ve been thinking (and I know that this may be an unpopular opinion): Empathy, while important, is overrated.

People with empathy can and do engage in gaslighting, manipulation, and verbal/mental/psychological abuse. People with empathy can and do commit murder, premeditated and otherwise. In fact, only people who have empathy can commit “crimes of passion,” some of the most violent and gruesome murders, because these crimes are emotionally driven. Sociopaths don’t act out of emotion. Where is the book warning us about the person next door who might have empathy?

The fact of the matter is that high-functioning sociopaths can be morally good people. They can be morally good because there’s nothing stopping them from having a moral compass based on ethics.

I’ve been pondering this for a while, too, the relationship between empathy and ethics. No matter how I look at it, I see that ethics is intellectual reasoning and empathy is emotion and the two things are unrelated. Sociopaths don’t have empathy; we act as if it’s impossible to be morally good if you lack empathy. I just don’t think that this is the case. Ethics is what’s behind our ideas of right and wrong, not empathy.

I find it sad that in all the talk I hear swirling around the importance of destigmatizing mental illnesses, sociopaths are left out of the conversation. Antisocial Personality Disorder simply isn’t up for discussion, because we see sociopaths as unfixable and unworthy of medical attention. All we’re taught about sociopaths is that they’re ruthless fiends who should be avoided at all costs. We (the ones who have empathy!) treat sociopaths as “other” so we can’t be accused of hypocrisy when we speak of accepting all segments of the population – including those with all varieties of disabilities – while maligning them, the sociopaths.

It’s not just sociopaths, either. Antisocial Personality Disorder is one of the four cluster-B personality disorders, the other three being Borderline, Histrionic, and Narcissistic, and all are highly stigmatized and well-maligned (though none more than the antisocials/sociopaths).

I could go on and on, but I’m going to stop here to present this YouTube video. This is Kanika Batra, a diagnosed sociopath and narcissist making videos on YouTube to humanize, support, and advocate for others suffering with the same (and all cluster-B) personality disorders.

For me, a layperson with no formal background in psychology, Kanika’s video is an eye-opener to the notion that sociopaths can feel empty, lonely, depressed, and suicidal because of their inability to relate to others. Making things even more difficult is the fact that many mental health professionals refuse to work with them. Many sociopaths know that they’re broken, and they want to get better, but they have nowhere to go for help. They are shut out, stigmatized and stereotyped “into the shadows,” as Kanika words it.

Elsewhere on her channel, Kanika points out that you don’t need to have empathy in order to have compassion, to value human life, to know right from wrong, and to have a need for community. Her videos are fascinating and important, I think. Go check out Kanika’s channel! There’s a whole lot in the way of informative material in the relatively few videos there. (Kanika started her channel not even a year ago.)

With that, I’ll bid you a merry week ahead, my friends. Thank you for reading this far!

Because I can’t help myself. (+ job satisfaction and mental well-being.)

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You guys, I’m going to talk about my new job again. It’s what’s happening, and it’s such a substantial change all around: It’s a 40-hour change in my weekly schedule, and it’s a change from anything I’ve ever done in my life, and it was kind of unexpected, and I’m surprised by how much I love it. Maybe I’m still in the honeymoon phase, but maybe I’ll always feel this way.

I overheard a co-worker talking to another co-worker last week. The conversation materialized into my consciousness just in time to hear her say the words: “That’s the only reason I work here.” I’d been there for less than a week. I had to know. I did something I normally wouldn’t do (because it’s rude, I think) and I broke into her conversation to ask, “what’s the only reason you work here?” And she said, simply, “because I enjoy it.”

And that, my friends, comes from a person who’s been there for three years.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard anyone say, “because I enjoy it” after saying “that’s the only reason I work here.” If there’s only one reason why you work somewhere, it’s usually something so critical that working there is like a sacrifice, something you wouldn’t do if you didn’t have to. Money. Benefits. Location. The schedule, maybe. You can’t get a job anywhere else, maybe.

And yesterday, another co-worker shared that “this is the only job I’ve had where I don’t hate my boss.”

It’s not just me. People enjoy working there. My co-worker’s conclusion came as a profound realization: she enjoys her job, so it’s good for her mental well-being. And I know that it’s more than just the job, itself; “the job” includes the people, the place, the environment, all the elements… not just the thing that she does.

So far, the job is good for my mental well-being, too. There’s some great energy there.

I tell you what’s happening in my life because you wish to know (that’s why you’re here, at least in part), but I always think that sharing might help or inspire in some way. Every personal experience comes with revelation, and knowing about one another’s experiences can be inspirational, or at least eye-opening. I’m grateful when people share about their lives for that reason. Everyone inspires me in one way or another.

So I have a couple of things to offer after only two weeks into my job.

Maybe try this:

Something you’ve never thought of doing before.

And know this:

All jobs do not suck.

With this job, I prove myself wrong on a daily basis. I’d been resigned to the notion that some degree of job dissatisfaction is inevitable, that every job comes with occasional b.s. and people trying to ruin your day, whether literally or figuratively. I used to believe this because that had been my lifelong experience, and also because it makes sense. It’s life, and you roll with it. Humans have moods and attitudes and bad days and competitive streaks (not in a healthy way when it’s in the workplace) and personality clashes. It would be weird if it was otherwise, I used to think.

And so now, it’s bizarre having a full-time job with zero annoyances of any significance. It’s like life inside the facility exists on a different plane of reality. You walk in and everyone and everything is cool. Every day. There’s literally music blasting all over the place, constantly, different music for different people (headphones and earbuds aren’t allowed, so you have the option of borrowing a bluetooth speaker you can carry around with you), and somehow, none of it clashes. You’re working with a team of awesome people and listening to music. That’s it. I’ve never enjoyed a job more, and I’ve never left work every day with such a sense of job satisfaction.

The one thing I have yet to successfully adjust in this picture of my new life is my sleep schedule. I’m managing to get to bed earlier than I was before, but when “earlier” is midnight, you know you still have a little way to go. My goal is to be in bed and asleep by 11pm (e.g. theoretically). In practice, it means that I should be in bed no later than 10:45pm.

I’m working on it. I’ll get there.

I hope you’re all staying safe and having a great week. Happy Friday Eve!

 

 

 

Coronapocalypse quarantine week 7. (Lost in Space, but in a good way.)

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There’s always a t-shirt hanging on the outside of the closet in my office, and it changes along with my general mood. I changed it today:

 

(current mood)

 

It went from a gold-with-flowers “Stay wild” to this gray-with-UFO “Take me with you,” but it isn’t to say that I’m doing poorly. Somehow, I’m maintaining the general good, steady mood I’ve been in since last July/August. It’s been almost a year of no sightless abyss! Of course I have some days that are better than others, but they follow the normal fluctuations of mood that everyone experiences in response to the vagaries of life. It’s not about being rock-solid 100% of the time. It’s about equilibrium. I’m thankful for it.

As for the t-shirt hanging here in my office, I’m just looking at the situation in the world right now and thinking longingly of other places in our galaxy. My mind has been in space a lot recently. (No, not in the way of being spacey or spaced-out… not more than usual, anyway, haha.) I’ve been spending time on NASA’s “Space-Place” site, and I’m not ashamed to say that I’m enjoying it despite being two generations older than its intended audience.

I’m continuously struck by the vastness of our universe, and I want to be out there in it, floating around and visiting other places. Earth is a microscopic speck of dust in the universe; there’s no way that we’re the only life-forms in all of existence. The universe is real. I find the idea of Earth’s creatures being the only living things in it to be arrogant and absurd.

Thank you for hanging out here with me, as always. You guys are certifiably awesome.

Happy Friday Eve!

 

 

Coronapocalypse quarantine week 4. (On pandemics and mental health.)

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Callaghan and I sat down in the kitchen the other day to take stock of some of the items we’d kept in our bug-out bag. As we sorted through them, I tried to remember whether, in the Before Time, I imagined that the bag’s contents would ever be put to use in an actual situation. I don’t think that I did. At least, I don’t think I imagined the bug-out bag being used in this sort of apocalyptic situation. I always thought of it in terms of its intended use, which is the get the f*ck out of dodge STAT sort of situation.

The disposable gloves are out of the bag. The future is now, the hypothetical has become reality, and it’s all still so new.

It’s so new, we’re still mentally wrangling with the challenge of changing our behaviors, and we’re finding that this is incredibly hard work. A part of changing behavior is changing our thinking, and most of the behavior we’re talking about is subconscious. Not only is it mentally hard work, but it’s work that we have to do in order to survive and to save others. How can we not be at least a little anxious with this thought in mind? There’s a lot of pressure here, and there’s very little room for error.

Broadly speaking, this is how the pandemic impacts our mental health: We have to do this strenuous mental work in order to save ourselves and others while also trying to maintain our calm.

A zombie apocalypse would be easier to manage than this, in my opinion. You could see a zombie approaching. You cannot see this beast of a virus floating in the air and attaching itself to surfaces. This thing is encased in fat that makes it buoyant, and it’s festooned with little suction cups that make it sticky.

New behaviors to learn, and the mnemonic aids I’m using to ingrain them into my consciousness:

If you must go to the store, don’t do it without bringing a mask, gloves, and hand sanitizer or wipes, because all air outside of the house is poison.

If you have to bring something into the house (that hasn’t been disinfected outside), handle it with caution and then treat the entire area like it’s a crime scene and you’re the murderer and you need to remove your fingerprints from every surface you touched.

If you’re out walking, imagine that this is the zombie apocalypse, and every person you see is a zombie. Six feet between. (A fast-moving zombie could cut through the six feet distance in a heartbeat, so imagine that they’re the slow-moving kind.)

Wash your hands constantly, as if the whole day is spent chopping onions and garlic and you’re desperate to rid yourself of the overpowering aromas.

Train yourself to think before you touch your face, and I mean think as in all of my fingers are sponges soaked in hydrochloric acid that will burn holes into my face if they get anywhere near it.

And to keep my anxiety in check, I’m prioritizing working out. In the best of times, working out is the paramount fix where my mental health is concerned, so now, it’s even more critical that I get into “the gym.” I had time-consuming technical difficulties accessing Body Pump this morning, so I actually canceled my phone appointment with my shrink, as it was the next item on my agenda. I couldn’t imagine forgoing my workout, and I couldn’t do it any later in the day. I’ll have to explain this to him next week and hope that he understands. I’m sure that he will, but you know. I just felt terrible canceling at the very last minute.

Callaghan and I take evening walks every other day. Here’s a bad picture of the moon last night, on the eve of its super-ness:

 

The moon the night before it was pink and super. [06 April 2020]

 

 

Take care and stay safe, everyone.

 

 

 

Thanksgiving Weekend: Being thankful for things I don’t like.

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Hello! Welcome to today’s post that’s actually yesterday’s real post. (You may have seen my non-post post from nearly midnight last night.)

Maybe it was because yesterday was Thanksgiving Day that I woke up in a weird, meditative state this morning and started thinking about the concept of gratitude. Counterintuitively, I wondered, could I be thankful for things in my life that generally cause angst or distress?

I realized that:

1). I’m thankful for my depression, because it reminds me that I can’t guess a person’s struggles. Every stranger is a mystery, and it doesn’t make sense to judge a mystery. It doesn’t make sense to react to a mystery, either, no matter the rudeness or awfulness of it.

2). I’m thankful for my phobia, because it means that I can feel something. I can think of nothing positive about my paralyzing fear of roaches, but I can appreciate that it evokes a pureness of any emotion.

3). I’m thankful for stressful situations, because they force me to practice patience, self-control, and nonchalance.

4). I’m thankful for awkward situations, because they force me into a place of self-scrutiny.

5). I’m thankful for pain, because it heightens the bliss of not being in pain.

6). I’m thankful for cold, because it heightens the bliss of warmth.

7). I’m thankful for bad days, because they make me eager for the next day. Every day is a new day.

8). I’m thankful for the intensely trying or traumatic experiences in my life, because remembering them gives me perspective.

9). I’m thankful for hard times, because I come through them – I hope – as a more understanding person.

I realize that I can choose to see my struggles as positives; they can help me to become a better human out in the world.

 

“Without darkness, you can’t see the stars”

 

 

 

Relaxing my grip on goals.

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“Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans”

…is a true statement, and also antithetical to pursuing goals, when you think about it from a certain angle.

I haven’t achieved all of my goals yet, but I will one day… and then what? What happens when you’ve achieved everything you’ve set out to achieve? What do you do then?

I’ve flippantly said that I’d die without goals, and in my darkest moments, I’ve believed it. Something’s shifted in my thinking this summer, though, and now, with the season changing and the year just about 3/4 over, I’m approaching my 51st birthday thinking that goals don’t matter as much anymore. How can they matter when I’ve been busy discovering how crazy exhilarating it is to conquer the present moment?

Let me tell you, it’s been so damn satisfying and fun making changes rather than running after goals. I guess what I’m saying, really, is that once I get my shit together, then I can laser-focus on future goals. That’s where I’ve been. I’ve been in the moment, but I haven’t been floating along in it all serene and zen. I’ve been shaking it up.

I still have goals for the future, of course, but I like what I’m doing right now. I don’t want “life to happen while I’m making other plans.”

Onward!

I’ve got the following slew of pics because I heard you when you said that you wanted to see: selfies of me in tees not included in my t-shirt post, pics of me with Geronimo, and more than one selfie at a time. I tried, anyway. I took all of these pics late this afternoon! The lighting is different in the interior pics because change of location means a change of natural lighting, and I don’t care to spend time messing with my selfies to make them look differently. I take it, I post it, that’s it. I’m wearing a Nine Inch Nails shirt today.

This one’s in my office – I’m sitting at my desk (with my back to it), and there’s a glow on the left side of my face from the pink salt lamp just below:

 

In my office

 

This next one is in my dining room, which is brighter and warmer in tone than my office. Yeah, I’m as awkward as ever holding a selfie stick. Eh.

 

In the dining room

 

Here’s my first attempt at getting a selfie with Geronimo! I had to point the phone down in order to get him in the picture.

 

With my scale-baby!

 

Callaghan took this one. You can’t really see Geronimo’s face, because the whole pic is hazy with the late-afternoon sun behind us. In fact, now that I look at it, can you even tell that he’s a tortoise?! I’ll work on these pics with Geronimo, for sure.

 

Courtesy of Callaghan

 

Until next week!

 

 

These are exciting times. (Mental health updates post!)

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Since the weekend, I’ve been so stoked about rearranging the desk part of my office that I’ve forgotten to write. Then over the last two days I’ve been engaged in catch-up work on personal bookkeeping and accounting, and I’ve been so excited to be doing that that I kept forgetting to write even more. As I may have mentioned, I’ve been wrangling with depression to a slightly higher degree than usual these last few weeks, so being productive in creating new spaces and organizing numbers and files felt like a party.

One interesting thing I discovered about myself during this last little slump (which I’m sure was triggered by not having worked out in a while due to wound-healing) is that I get super sensitive to color when I’m in that mental state. I realized this the morning I put on one of my favorite t-shirts and immediately took it off because I wasn’t feeling it, or, rather, the wrongness of the color for that moment felt like a physical aggravation. It was definitely the color. I felt that if I had a super soft, thin, plain black t-shirt for every day of the week, I’d always be comfortable. (I have just one.) The other shirt I have that always feels right is this equally soft, thin shirt that I’m wearing at the moment:

 

Perfect.

 

The picture on the back is Donald Duck’s back, in case you were wondering.

Speaking of t-shirts, one of you requested to see my top 10 favorites. I would’ve taken those pics for today’s post, but I was too busy whooping it up rearranging furniture and organizing invoices and looking at my budget and accounts and shifting things around and whatnot. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll take pics of my favorite shirts so I can post them on Thursday!

Anyway, I’m feeling better now that I’ve been back at the gym consistently since two weeks ago Saturday, re-filling my empty feel-good fuel tank. Working out is straight-up medicine, guys. If you think you’re already in a good place, you’ll be surprised to find that there’s an even better place to be when you get your body moving. I’m always surprised by it, anyway, even though I know it.

 

 

Intuition: a partnership of gut and brain.

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On a bloggy note, about half of what I plan to write doesn’t get written or completed. Today’s post is such a deviation, because today, I’m thinking about disciplines and organizations that taught me simple tenets I’ve never forgotten:

(From piano lessons) Hold back

(From Girl Scouts) Be prepared

(From the Army) Stay alert to stay alive

(From boxing) Keep your hands up and your chin down

Years ago, this young boxing-gym guy (18? 19?) I didn’t know very well refreshed me on all of these lessons together in one second. Our coaches had us sparring, so our mission was to try to hit each other while avoiding getting hit. One of his punches landed through a weakness in my defense. It was a solid right hand. The hardest hit I ever took was from him, and it was my fault, not his.

No one who’s seriously training in combat sports faces their sparring partner thinking, “This person isn’t really going to hit me.” Regardless of who your opponent is to you – friend, gym comrade, etc. – you expect them to try to hit you, and they expect you to try to hit them, and you both think about this as you mentally prepare your respective defense games… and that’s the whole point of the sport. The rules in a combat sports ring (ring, cage, dohyo, whatever) are clear-cut.

Unfortunately, the most treacherous ring of all is the world, itself. When you enter a combat sports ring, you know you’re going to get hit if you drop your guard or make poor strategic decisions. You know that the other person is there to destroy you, and that the only one you can trust to come to your defense is yourself.

In the ring of the world, we don’t know who’s going to do what, or if, or when. The hits we take in real life come in all forms. Every day brings news reports about crimes committed by people known and often loved by the victims, but still, you don’t go around thinking in defense mode around friends and loved ones. You trust that they won’t hurt you, because you have a relationship with an undercurrent of that trust serving as the foundation of your bond.

Trust is scary because it’s easily betrayed. Fortunately, we’re inherently armed. Whether I remember to use it or not, I know that I have one weapon to hold my trust in check: my intuition.

My intuition is a weapon of self-defense that I got for free because I was born with it. Humans are equipped with inner alarms critical to survival, yet it’s so easy to disregard them. Deception or bodily harm. Strangers or people you know. A “bad feeling” that changes your mind about going somewhere you’d planned to go, and then a fatal multi-car crash happens at the time you would’ve been there. Intuition is a partnership of gut and brain, and we all have it built inside of us.

It’s hard to always hear and heed intuition when there’s this other part of the brain that wants to override it for one reason or another.

 

Muntjac deer – my spirit animal (photo credit: L. Bruce Kekule)

 

It’s easy and even natural to drop guard, to read about a murder and say, that can’t happen to me.

Thinking about intuition always brings me back to those tenets I was taught in piano lessons, Girl Scouts, the Army, and combat sports training: Hold back. Be prepared. Stay alert to stay alive. Keep your hands up and your chin down.  

And listen. That’s the most important lesson of all. Our parents usually teach us that one.

 

 

Why I scroll past mental illness denial memes. (Thoughts on happiness as a state of being.)

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Self-help has good intentions, but I think it’s gotten a little out of hand. I mean, I shouldn’t be, but I’m still kind of astonished when I scroll through social media and see that suddenly, everyone has become a life coach.

Wisdom wrapped up in little square boxes. I post memes, too, sometimes. The last one I posted said, “Reading can seriously damage your ignorance.” Most of the few I’ve posted have been fitness-related.

My pet peeve of the self-help meme universe is the genre I think of as “mental illness denial.” At the tired center of this genre, you get phrases like, “Happiness is a choice.” “Happiness is a choice, not a result.” “Today I choose to be happy.” “Happiness is not a feeling, but a choice.” And so on. I know that these are meant to serve as motivational, but I have a hard time with this category.

Happiness isn’t always a choice when you’re clinically or acutely depressed. The opposite of happiness is depression, and depression isn’t a choice, either. Happiness and depression are states of being, states unalterable by neat and tidy little happiness instructions. Glib quotes like “happiness is a choice” or “today I choose to be happy” can’t loosen bleakness embedded in your consciousness.

Dear Everyone Living with Mental Illness:

It’s not your fault if you can’t attain happiness by simply waking up and stating an intention to choose it that day. You’re not a failure. We know that “Today I choose to be happy” can’t account for a day that hasn’t happened yet. We know that a conscious navigation of our thoughts toward a mindset of happiness just isn’t possible all of the time.

Scroll on by those pebbles of wisdom online, because the last thing you need in front of your face when you’re struggling with depression is a meme suggesting that it’s your own fault if you’re not happy.

I get you.

What we might be able to attain is a state of being okay in specific instances; it’s worth floundering between anger and sadness in the process of talking ourselves into okayness with the situation. We have to get brave and get real with ourselves, and this can be difficult. It comes down to mental strength, an especially relatable concept for the mentally ill, as “okay” is more of a mindset into which we can will ourselves. For us, “okay” is “well.” Wellness is a solid aspiration.

Happiness is a state of being. It’s my humble opinion that the declaration “Happiness is a choice” cheapens the experience of being happy. I think it makes happiness superficial. (I may be interpreting the word differently than you do. Do you feel that happiness is the same as joyfulness? As contentment?)

We all have our definitions, interpretations, and strategies to get us through. A few of mine:

1). I work on reaching a state of okayness, and then I seize on that and do what I can with it. Okayness is a good foundation for me. It’s something I can top off with music, for instance… and then I can derive joy from those moments. It’s always the little things.

2). It sometimes helps to throw together a list of joyful little things, just quickly, without thinking about it. Reading over such a list can be soothing. I free-wrote a list for this post. It came out looking like this (in no particular order):

music.
poetry.
stories: fiction and creative non-fiction, whether depicted on the page or on a screen.
plants.
animals and their rights.
fitness and combat sports training.
paranormal, horror, thriller, action.
lipstick, band shirts, skin care.
sumo and mma.
desert and the sea.
black, gunmetal gray, periwinkle and other blue-violets.
tortoises.
cats.
volcanos.
albatross!
the zombie emoji.
food writing.
zodiac.
blueberry scented anything.
anticipation.
buddha.

3). I take a cliché of vague resignation like “Life is full of mysteries” and I tag “mysteries make life interesting” at the end. Then I have something of intrigue to ponder, rather than the hopeless quality of the mystery, itself.

4). I take optimism carefully. I’m all for optimism, but I’m even more for cautious optimism.

“Happiness is a choice” – not that easy. Such declarations in these self-help memes don’t account for we who battle depression. Don’t let them make you feel worse. We know we can experience moments of happiness… days of happiness, even. As for those other days, well, we shouldn’t be hard on ourselves. We know that we’re trying.

Love,
Kristi

~~~~~

Afternote: this pic is the last you’ll see of me in these glasses. Yeah, I got new ones. New prescription, new frames. It’s the little things.

 

Retired glasses. [23 February 2019)

 

 

 

The question: The fight. (Mental wellness post.)

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I recently got to thinking about the perception that fighting is equated to violence. What follows here is a train of thought coming from this.

On a few occasions in the past, I’d been taken to task for my verbiage. It’s damaging to be flippant with our word choices, I’d been reminded. This is true, absolutely. I know this, and I appreciate the reminder. At the same time, the expressions I’d used on those occasions… “to fight to the death.” “To slay.” … what do these sorts of expressions mean to me? To vanquish.

Fighting isn’t necessarily violent, but it’s always a struggle. The truth is that we’re always fighting.

We fight constantly in some way or sense, for something, or for someone… or maybe just for ourselves. Perhaps our fight involves grasping for meaning in our current state of being, or in our lives, in general. Even as we meditate in mindful serenity, we know that somewhere inside, we’re fighting our way through an existential crisis. In my opinion, this struggle is simply a part of the human condition.

I don’t know what you’re fighting for, but I know that you’re fighting for something, because you’re human, and you’re alive.

Being alive means that we’re in conflict. Poets and writers are keenly aware that there can be no story, no plot without a conflict. We’re writing for a human audience; being in conflict is an intrinsic fact of being human. Thus, we weave conflict into our stories in order to give them meaning.

We fight all sorts of things: boredom, sleep, traffic, fear, temptation. We fight not to laugh. We fight to keep our mouths shut. We fight back tears. We fight to breathe. We fight for our rights, and we fight cancer.

When we discipline ourselves, it’s a fight. For instance, we discipline ourselves to abide by moderation, or to get ourselves to the gym. Disciplining ourselves to go to the gym is sometimes a fight so tedious, we benefit from arranging to meet with a comrade for mutual encouragement and motivation. It’s helpful and advisable to fight in pairs… to have a partner, a back-up.

We fight with ourselves when trying to start something. We fight with ourselves when trying to quit something.

We fight for our freedom. We fight for “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

We fight injustices. We fight for those who don’t have a voice, or for those whose voices have been silenced.

We have so many fights, we can’t engage in them all. We have to pick the ones worthy of our attention, time, and energy. This is our personal judgement to make, which is, in itself, a fight.

It’s easy to forget that it’s not our place to pick others’ battles for them, and it’s a mistake to judge others for the fights they choose.

But it’s hard, isn’t it? When we feel strongly about something, it’s hard to say nothing when we see others expressing their own, strong feelings… feelings that oppose ours. Then we have to fight to remain civil. This fight within ourselves can be brutal. It’s fight on top of fight, and it’s harder when we know that losing is as easy as winning.

This is unavoidable, and it’s a part of the reason why I seriously contemplated leaving Facebook. All the fighting going on before my eyes over there gets exhausting. It’s not like I’m not also engaged in various fights of my own. Not one amongst us goes around free of conflict.

When combat sports athletes get tired during a fight, they get breaks. A bell rings, they disengage, and they retreat to their corners, where their corner-people are waiting to hydrate them, tend to their wounds, and prop up their morale with forceful yet encouraging words and directives. There’s a referee to stop the fight when things get out of hand… when the fighter can still walk away. It would be great if a bell could ring on social media every once in a while so we can go to our corners and compose ourselves.

A little kindness can go a long way in creating our corners of respite.

 

Growing in the dark

 

We can also breathe a little easier at night knowing that we survived another day. This is a victory. A vanquishing.

 

 

Staying.

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Your irrelevant newsflash of the day: I’m keeping my personal Facebook account. Just so you know.

This was a grand decision. I’d about made up my mind to deactivate, as some of you are aware, and then I reconsidered. Like many of you, I had more than one foot out the door; I’d stepped almost all the way out the door, leaving just my shadow in Facebook. In my opinion, Facebook has become absurd on many levels. I was relieved to have decided to part ways with it… but that would have meant parting ways with everyone.

Confession: I loathe FB.

Conundrum: FB is the only way I can stay connected to many friends and most family.

Connections won. I see friends and family too seldom as it is… I’d miss them more were I to abandon my digital hub of connections.

Still, I have mixed feelings about this.

The poet Miss Dickinson comes to mind: in her later years, she reportedly never left her house, rarely left her bedroom, and spoke to visitors only from behind her closed door. Even more than living as a recluse, she seldom saw anyone. This could be me at some point, only my closed door would be a computer screen. It seems that the digital age has encouraged our inclinations toward complacency in solitude, because we don’t feel as alone when we’re linked to each other online.

I’m an introvert. I love to be alone. But I don’t see that I’d enjoy the life of a recluse the way Miss Dickinson did. In “I Had Been Hungry All the Years,” she wrote:

Nor was I hungry; so I found
That hunger was a way
Of persons outside windows,
The entering takes away.

One could say that the reason Emily Dickinson didn’t feel “hungry” was that she stayed inside. She shielded herself from wanting. Physical isolation was her comfort. She did have her liaisons, though. She kept up an active correspondence with many, writing hundreds of letters and poems over the course of years. Miss Dickinson was ahead of her time in more ways than one. She stayed connected through her letters and poems the way we stay connected through the internet.

I’m content to sit at home, alone and writing, most of the day and on most days… but I don’t want to be isolated.

 

(Captured in the wild with Nenette, August 7, 2018)

 

I enjoy the physical company of others – and not just at the gym! So I’ve been making more plans to have lunch or coffee with friends. I have some time, now, after all.

At any rate, I’m not sure how this post deviated from “I’m keeping my personal Facebook account” to a reflection on the habits of reclusive poets. To leave you with an almost as-irrelevant finish: I resisted the urge to fill this post with an exuberance of dashes in further homage to Miss Dickinson. Just so you know.

“That one time I went to the shrink…” (My worst therapist experiences!)

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You’ve likely had at least one negative therapist experience if you’ve been in therapy for any length of time. This is normal; no one meshes with everyone. It’s like psych medication… you have to find what works for you. I’ve been lucky to have had mostly good experiences with my counselors over years of on-and-off therapy.

I do have a couple of bad experiences to share, though, so I thought I’d go ahead and do that since I regularly discuss my mental health adventures in this space. Moreover, I know it can help to hear about others’ bad experiences!

Let me say that my two unfortunate therapist experiences weren’t bad in the usual ways. That’s how my life works. I can’t just have a normal bad therapist experience. It has to be a really freaking bizarre therapist experience, maybe more bizarre than bad.

First, there was:

  • The shrink who ghosted me.

I’d gone to this counselor for several months. I thought we had a good rapport, so I was surprised when I went to my appointment one day and she stood me up… as in, I knocked on the office’s front door, and she didn’t come to answer it. She was there. I knew she was there. I could see the light on in her office through the glass. She just didn’t come to the door! I even called her as I stood outside. Maybe she can’t hear me knocking. She didn’t answer her phone.

We later re-scheduled. The same thing happened again. I don’t remember if there was a third time, but for all of her apologies and excuses, I never saw her again.

To be ghosted by someone in your personal life is one thing. (I’ve had it happen to me, and I’m guilty of having done it, myself. Not proud of it. Just being real.) But by a counselor? A therapist? I’d never heard of any professional in the field of mental health doing this kind of thing to a client.

You place your trust in your therapist, right? Trust is a fundamental of the therapist/patient relationship. That’s why you keep going back. You’ve established trust, and you’re confident that you’re in a safe place free of judgement. Trusting this particular counselor turned out to be a mistake. After those last experiences, I felt worse than I did before I started going to her.

I might as well have wired $1,000 to a Nigerian prince to get the riches promised, only to discover the scam and find myself $1,000 poorer.

 

Next:

  • The shrink who lectured me for an hour about the evils of gluten.

He was an interim counselor, so it was the one and only time I saw him. But during that one appointment, all he did was try to convert me to a gluten-free lifestyle.

His proselytizing had nothing to do with mental health. What happened was he started out reviewing my list of medications, noticed that I was seeing a rheumatologist for autoimmune issues, and decided that I could easily cure myself of everything. All I had to do was go gluten-free. Miracles happen once you quit consuming gluten. I spent the rest of the session receiving an education for which I never signed up.

And I mean, he went on at length into biochemical detail, even showing me anatomy graphics to illustrate how gluten was wreaking havoc on my immune system and destroying my body from the inside out. His conviction was profound. A true evangelist, he made sure to pull out a pamphlet for me to take home. His passion for the gluten-free lifestyle bordered on fervor that almost edged me out of the room, but I sat frozen in awe. Without a doubt, this was the most bizarre and unhelpful counseling session I’d ever attended.

Seriously, I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried! Rest assured, most of my experiences have been good, if not excellent. The two that I’ve shared above are anomalies… don’t let them deter you if you’re thinking of seeking assistance. Talk therapy does many worlds of good. It does help.

 

 

I see the bad mood arising.

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Two different days over the last week had me considering my inability to lift myself out of a bad mood. I’m not talking about the blankness that sometimes grabs the chronically depressed by the ankles and pulls them under for no discernible reason when least expected. I’m talking “bad mood” within the range that everyone experiences as a part of being human.

Cranky. Hangry. On edge. That kind of bad mood. The “I’m sorry, we should postpone our plans because I’m in a vile mood and I know I’ll be terrible company and I don’t want to ruin your day” bad mood. (Fortunately, this rarely happens. But it’s happened.)

When it comes to mental wellness, I focus so primarily on surviving the occasional plunge that I forget to tend to my garden-variety funks. It’s like I expend so much energy chopping down diseased trees, I forget to pull the weeds.

While I often feel like I can’t change my mood when I please, I realize that I only perceive this ineptitude when I ponder the bad mood while I’m in it, maybe because I’m trying to think my way out of it. I’m trying to breathe through it, as we’re advised to do. I know that there’s yoga and aromatherapy and meditation and music and a plethora of other highly suggested tools and tactics that work for many of us. None of that stuff actually works for me, but I can think of a few things that actually do. A few of these wondrously effective anti-bad-mood actions I take with no thought at all:

Drop and do 20 (push-ups).

Clean my office.

Vent my frustrations to my emotional-support cat and my ten emotional-support plants.

Snuggle said emotional-support cat, because her happiness creates a (purring) balm for my mood.

Go outside to see if I can find our tortoise, because one look at his little face skyrockets my mood and makes me smile like nothing else.

Eat some fresh fruit.

 

Nenette napping this afternoon – happy girl

 

Everyone’s different. Also – side-note – we need our ups and downs, right? If there was a panacea for rotten moods, everyone would be happy all the time, and the world would be a stagnant and less-interesting place. Bad moods and anger go together, anger spurs action, which, if channeled positively, can change the world in much-needed ways, blah blah blah (this would be a blathering I’d save for its own post).

Fortunately, I’m not a moody person, in general; my normal, everyday ups and downs are pretty low-key. Admittedly, psych meds also help, no doubt! They help to keep me out of the abyss. I’m happy to deal with the mere pulling of weeds.

 

Conquering the day. (On chronic depression.)

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My next shrink appointment is in August, and I have a feeling it’s going to be a long two months.

There’s no cure for clinical depression. Coping mechanisms are the currency we need to survive. We look within and gather what we can, learning from ourselves. We learn from others, too… mental health professionals, counselors, clergy, friends, family. We look to individuals we admire, gaining inspiration from them. And, of course, there’s the internet, always ready with advice and “life hacks.”

Certainly, coping mechanisms and strategies and inspiration can be found online. That stuff abounds in books and videos, too. We have popular culture contributors, historians, philosophers, teachers, poets and writers, celebrities of all sorts, and spiritual sages and practitioners and self-help gurus whose words of wisdom are posted as adages meant to uplift or even save us.

I’ve written about a few adages I find to be helpful. I haven’t mentioned those that I find to be detrimental, though. There are a few out there that I think are really just not good. Some adages or tidbits of “wisdom” (often displayed as memes) only serve to show you that you are to blame for your own depression. I saw one on Instagram recently – the one that spawned this post:

“If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.” (attributed to Lao Tzu)

We’re constantly looking for those coping mechanisms, for ways to survive depression. When we see these kinds of adages, we think, well… maybe that person isn’t aware that they’re trivializing the struggle by placing pithy quotes before our eyes, suggesting that if we wanted to, we could change our outlook or perspective and just “get over it.”

We’re happy for those who are well, and we know that many of them mean well, but those who are well aren’t helping when they (inadvertently or otherwise) wellsplain our lives to us. The last thing we need to be told is that we’re doing life wrong.

Unfortunately, there’s no “how to” when it comes to being happy. There’s only a how to cope. How to get by. Clinical depression presents like any other chronic illness: we go through spans of time that feel “normal” and fine. We can feel good and at peace. Then there are the dark spells. The dark spells are tough to work through. I lean on gratitude and love, purpose and intent, anticipation and music, working out, reading and writing, “little things” and those adages that do help. But general happiness is a unicorn in the forest of the depressed.

Each trial through mental illness is individual, because the people living with those illnesses are individuals. There is no panacea for mental illness, and if there is, it’s just not going to arrive in a meme. I know it’s easy to misunderstand depression and think that the depressed can just “get over it.” I wish that it worked that way. It just doesn’t.

Depression can be managed, though. I’m doing a pretty good job at managing it, a fact that I can recognize even though I’m in a dark spell.

 

Conquering the day.

 

Speaking of life hack memes, is there one for how to not eat a whole box of Medjool dates in one sitting?

 

Best break for my brain: working out. (“My Morning Routine” – !)

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Every once in a while, I go to My Morning Routine to peruse the site and gain some life inspiration. I went there today, and it actually inspired this blog post. I know I’ve shared a daily routine (or two) here before, but I don’t think I’ve filled in a morning routine questionnaire from this site. These questions are pretty much the same across the interviewees, but I’ll see different, additional questions thrown in here and there. I included as many of them as I could find in the few interviews that I read today.

 

1). What is your morning routine?

These days, I wake up anywhere from 5:00 to 6:30am, though most often at 5:30am. I take my morning meds/supplements, pour some coffee, open my laptop, and get into my writing.

 

2). How long have you stuck with this routine so far?

I started dedicating my early-morning brain cells to my writing sometime in the last 12 months. The rest of my routine hasn’t varied in years.

 

3). How has your morning routine changed over recent years?

My “dedicating my early-morning brain cells to my writing” discipline means focusing on my project before filling my mind with anything else of substance. Before, I would multi-task my brain between writing, email, social media, news, and so on. I’ll still scroll through instagram and twitter on my phone while drinking my first cup of coffee, though. I don’t click to read articles on twitter… early in the morning, I’m only there to check for major news headlines and traffic/weather alerts.

 

4). What time do you go to sleep?

Between 11:00 and midnight, usually.

 

5). Do you do anything before going to bed to make your morning easier?

No.

 

6). Do you use an alarm to wake you up in the morning, and if so do you ever hit the snooze button?

I do use an alarm, though my internal clock (aka my bladder) will sometimes wake me up before it goes off. I never use a snooze button.

 

7). How soon after waking up do you have breakfast, and what do you typically have?

If I’m working out that morning, I’ll have breakfast between two and three hours after I wake up. If it’s not a gym morning, I’ll eat four to five hours after waking up. I have the same breakfast every day. Since a month or two ago, it’s been a bowl of plain organic oatmeal (made with water) with light agave syrup and cinnamon. I also have a handful of raw mixed nuts.

 

8). Do you have a morning workout routine?

My morning gym routine is Les Mills Body Pump at the gym. I go three mornings a week.

 

9). Do you have a morning meditation routine, and if so what kind of meditation do you practice?

Working out is my meditation. The 50 or so minutes of continuous physical activity provide the best break for my brain. For the duration of the class, there are no thoughts in my head. There’s music and there’s someone telling me what to do, and I listen and I do it and that’s it. There’s no room for anything else. I try to stay in the workout, where there’s no thinking involved! If distractions enter my mind, I force them out. This is key to any sort of meditation practice.

 

10). Do you answer email first thing in the morning or leave it until later in the day?

I’m bad at checking email. Let’s just leave it at that.

 

11). Do you use any apps or products to enhance your sleep or morning routine?

Other than taking my anti-anxiety med and putting on my Fitbit to track the quality and duration of my sleep, no.

 

12). How soon do you check your phone in the morning?

As I’d mentioned above, I usually check instagram and twitter while drinking my first cup of coffee. That’s about 30 minutes after I wake up.

 

13). What are your most important tasks in the morning?

Cleaning Nenette’s litter box and doing my skin-care routine. I water my plants in the morning once a week.

 

14). What and when is your first drink in the morning?

Water, immediately.

 

15). How does your partner fit into your morning routine?

He usually wakes up at the same time as I do, and we have coffee together in the living room. He makes the bed as a part of his getting ready for work routine, and I make his lunch while he’s doing that. We’re a good team.

 

16). Do you also follow this routine on weekends, or do you change some steps?

Saturday is the day I’ll wake up at 6:30am, as I usually don’t write before going to the gym that morning. Sundays, I’ll try to sleep in until 7:00-7:30am. I write at different times over the weekend. The routine relaxes.

 

17). On days you’re not settled in your home, are you able to adapt your routine to fit in with a different environment?

No. If I’m not in my home, I don’t write first thing in the morning.

 

18). What do you do if you fail to follow your morning routine, and how does this influence the rest of your day?

If I fail to follow my routine, there’s a good reason for it, so it doesn’t impact the rest of my day. Whatever changes occur, my daily task list is always there to guide me through. The important thing is that by the end of the day, I’ve checked off as much of that list as possible.

 

Post-gym, seventh of June, two thousand eighteen.

 

Sorry this pic is so dark! Bad lighting and brownish walls aren’t the best for selfies, or anything else, for that matter.

 

The End.

 

What do you get when you cross a flamingo and a ukulele? My office.

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I had a hard mental health day on Friday, and all of the late-afternoon popcorn and Perrier couldn’t fix it. Neither did it help that that was the day I decided to watch Childish Gambino’s “This is America” video. Excellent song and video. Bad timing.

But then things got better, because when I woke up the next day, it was a gym morning and it was Mother’s Day weekend. I got cards from Nenette, Geronimo, and Callaghan, and for my main gift, Callaghan took me to Home Depot and said I could go crazy and choose any plant I wanted, emphasis on “any”! I chose this tall guy and named him “Flamingo”:

 

Flamingo! (He’s a Dracaena ‘Massangeana’)

 

My desk now, as seen from the doorway:

 

Four of my nine office companions, from left: Holder, Flamingo, Icarus, Thoreau

 

At some point, I’ll do an updated office tour and take you around to see all of my companions of the chlorophyllous persuasion. Two of them have joined me since my last such update, and some of the older ones have migrated to different spots.

Also, you may be noticing that there’s a ukulele sitting next to my desk. Yes, I’ve brought the ukulele back into the light! I haven’t dusted it off yet, but it’s out. That white binder on the shelf above it is a lesson book. Mom gave these to me, as some of you may recall, and I proceeded to capitalize on the opportunity to share some of my favorite ukulele jokes.

i.e. (from my previous blog post about the ukulele):

What’s the difference between a ukulele and a trampoline? You take off your shoes to jump up and down on a trampoline.

What’s “perfect pitch”? When you throw the ukulele into the garbage can without hitting the rim.

What do you call a beautiful woman on a ukulele player’s arm? A tattoo.

And my personal favorite:

A ukulele player suddenly realizes he left his vintage ukulele out in his car overnight. He rushes outside and his heart drops when he sees that his car window is broken. Fearing the worst, he peeks through the window and finds that there are now five ukuleles in his car.

I still love to laugh at the ukulele, but I do respect it, and I’ve decided to learn to play it. Going through my old rhythm and timing workbooks, composer collections, and sheet music made me realize how much I miss doing music. Self, I said one day recently – yesterday, in fact – why don’t you learn to play that beautiful, new ukulele Mom gave you? Why not.

I’m sure I’ll be back with ukulele-learning updates for any of you who may be interested; I can’t wait to laugh at myself as much as I laugh at the ukulele.

Oh, and my second Mother’s Day gift was a new tool box! Callaghan knew that I wasn’t thrilled with the one I’d been using. My new one (which I chose) is shiny and black and spacious and lovely. I should’ve taken a pic of it, too.

I hope you’re all having a great start to your week!

On minimizing “decision-fatigue.” (Mental wellness post!)

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One day, in the third week of April 2017, I figured out what I’d wear to the gym each workout day of the following week. I wrote it all down. It was life-changing. I’ve since kept up the practice: once a week, I plan and list my gym outfits in a notebook (to keep track), gather the clothing, put them together in neat little bundles, and place them in the drawer in the order of the workouts. This completely eliminates having to think about what to wear to the gym as I’m getting ready to go.

This might make it sound like I have gym-clothing fashion concerns, but I do not. What I have is limited time and a limited mental/creative energy capacity each day.

No matter how little I care about my gym attire, I still have to decide what to put on. It’s a small, inconsequential decision, but it’s still a decision. Toward the end of the day, small and inconsequential decisions have added up, and then I start to make poor decisions, or I struggle to make decisions at all anymore. It could be that when it’s late-afternoon and I find myself stressed and unable to pinpoint a cause, I’m actually looking at decision-fatigue.

Why do couples sometimes bicker (stereotypically) over what to have for dinner? Maybe because they’re both at the end of a long day of making hundreds of little decisions, and they’re decision-exhausted and hangry. Decision-fatigue is a documented phenomenon; I’ve found web pages devoted to it.

As I said, my habit of putting gym clothes together a week in advance has been life-changing. It helps immensely that getting dressed for the gym involves only opening a drawer and pulling out the bundle on top. Zero decisions, minimal time. Even if I know what I’m going to wear, I’d still have to search for the pieces (t-shirts and pants – told you I didn’t care about gym fashion!) if they weren’t already bundled together.

 

Minimizing decision-fatigue: gym outfit prep, week-in-advance

 

This week-in-advance planning and prep – as opposed to multiple night-befores – allows me to devote my mental/creative energy and time to writing. Early mornings are especially precious to me; my primary focus each day starts with my “morning pages,” which consist of whatever part of my project I have in front of me. (Usually, it’s a single chapter.)

Gym-clothing planning is just an example. I’ve made it a point to try to be aware of other little decisions that feed on my energy levels throughout the day, and to get ahead of these decisions by strategizing accordingly. Because of my new awareness, I’ve returned to the habit of making daily lists of things to do. I might know what I have to do, but having the list in front of me saves me time and mental energy.

This leads me to a tangent: I don’t consider decisions to be distractions. There’s always a time and reason for distractions. Callaghan’s the same way! Perhaps we who work in creative realms need distractions because we’re easily over-saturated with our creations. Distractions carry me into a different head-space… they wipe the slate clean, so to speak. When the text is no longer at the forefront of my mind, I can start the next writing session and see what I couldn’t see before.

With that, I’m going to slam the door shut on this topic, because I can sense other tangents rising up!

Happy Friday Eve, everyone.

The silver lining of a bad day is the day after.

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This has been a week. I’m sure you can all relate to this: there is no day as good as the day after a really bad day. The great thing about today is that yesterday was a day of epic fuckery such that today can only be better. For one thing, I was able to get to the gym this morning. I couldn’t go on Tuesday or yesterday, so you can bet that today’s workout made an immense difference.

For me, everything about working out makes everything better, even an aspect as simple as setting up whatever area I use. I took this pic weeks ago when a friend pointed out how I always organize my area, with my backpack and water bottle to the left:

 

Organized crime.

 

I took this picture jokingly, but it’s soothing to see it because I see habit, and habit can be a balm. It’s a way of feeling in control; in this case, it’s a healthy way.

This post comes from a place of gratitude. Yesterday is over. Today is a new day. I have yet another doctor’s appointment this afternoon (my third this week) – one of my medical specialists – but this is a good thing. Today’s doctor will be different, and I’m very optimistic that whatever he does, the experience will be the opposite of the one I had on Tuesday. I’m talking about ophthalmology, the only medical specialty not available at our V.A., by the way.

Yesterday, man. There was just something about it. Callaghan had a Very Bad Day yesterday, too, for reasons different than mine. It was awesome that we didn’t get into it despite our equally bad moods!

I’ll try to remember to repeat this mantra on future bad days: tomorrow is a new day. Some sayings make profound sense, and there’s nothing like experience to appreciate a tired old adage as something more than a tired old adage. Everyone is different. It’s good to hone in on adages that help get us through. For me, “things can always be worse” is a good reminder, but it isn’t as reassuring as “tomorrow is a new day.”

 

The Fitbit and my sleep progress. (New Year’s Resolution check-in!)

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We’re three months into the new year, and usually by now I’ve done some sort of New Year’s resolution check-in post, so I figured why not today.

My resolution to get more sleep has been going okay. I think what’s happening is I’m approaching it in slow steps, starting with setting up the Fitbit that Callaghan gave me over the holidays. (Christmas? Birthday? I can’t remember now, so it’s “the holidays.”) Though I’d resolved to get to bed earlier starting on January 1st, it took me until the end of January to start tracking my sleep. The first time I used the Fitbit to track my sleep (the only reason I wanted it, and the only thing I use it for) was on January 30th.

I haven’t yet made the successful jump from tracking my sleep to actually getting more sleep on a regular basis. It’s been enlightening to see my sleep schedules and patterns in digital display, though, and it gives me an idea of my natural, “before success” sleep schedule.

I set my sleep goal to 7 hrs/night, to start. (Baby steps.) The Fitbit tells you when you’ve hit your goal.

Progress: I’ve been tracking my sleep for 61 days. I hit my sleep goal 8 times out of the 61.

That’s right… I got 7 hours of sleep only 8 nights out of 61, and I know that there’s been a slight improvement. Using the Fitbit has verified that my lack of sleep situation was as bad as I’d thought it was. That’s a start, right? And that, my friends, is the whole point of the Fitbit. It’s going to hold me accountable and make it difficult for me to shrug off the effort.

Looking at the Fitbit’s “benchmark” view, I can compare my sleep to that of other women my age. I almost feel weird about sharing this, but it’s of interest to me in terms of my resolution, so here’s how I compare in terms of the minutes I spend in each of the four sleep stages:

  • Awake:* overwhelmingly less than average
  • R.E.M.: above average almost half the time
  • Light: overwhelmingly within the average range
  • Deep: above average half the time

*About the awake stage, since you may not be aware (I wasn’t, until I got the Fitbit): “It’s normal to see ‘awake’ minutes in your sleep stages; studies have shown a typical adult could wake up briefly between 10-30 times per night. You may not remember waking up since you likely fell right back to sleep, especially if you were awake for less than 2-3 minutes at a time. If you wake up in the morning feeling like you had a restless night, you may notice more ‘awake’ minutes in your sleep stages as compared to other nights.”

My “awake” minutes were much less than average. They only fell within the average range 6 out of 61 nights. Also, half of the time, I got more sleep than average in the R.E.M. and deep sleep stages. The anti-anxiety med I take before going to bed (Klonopin) knocks me out, and I stay out. It’s doing its job. (For reference: I take 0.5mg, and I weigh 115 lbs.)

I haven’t noticed that my more alert mornings correlate logically to the amount of sleep I got, or to the time I’d spent in certain sleep stages. I do notice that it’s harder for me to wake up when I’m in R.E.M. when the alarm goes off. If I’m dreaming when that alarm sounds, I’m groggy for half the day, it seems. I didn’t need the Fitbit to tell me this, though.

Now to ramp up my efforts to get to bed earlier! This is where I start setting an alarm to tell me to get ready for bed. If you see me on social media after 9:30pm, ask me why.

Wrangling with B.O.B. (Garage Gym workout!)

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A minor stress-related autoimmune flare has kept me out of the gym these last two days, but the garage saved me from inactivity in the meanwhile. The ironic thing is that working out is my therapy to help reduce stress, but if stress gets to me anyway, I’m sometimes unable to do my normal workouts! I know that those of you with autoimmunity issues know exactly what I’m talking about.

In the garage yesterday late afternoon, I wanted to challenge myself in ways that wouldn’t aggravate my right shoulder. I set B.O.B. to a greater height than usual, thinking I’d try to work with the height differential.

A sampling of screen shots from my workout with a 6-foot, 290 lb. dummy:

 

1). I started with a jump-rope cardio blast to get warm, jumping rope in 3-minute rounds to music from Disturbed’s The Sickness album.

 

Cardio: jumping rope

 

As usual, there’s nothing to see here, really. You can’t see the rope when it’s in motion.

 

The rope.

 

Moving on! Here’s the height differential I had before me:

 

Me vs B.O.B. (height differential)

 

I’m 5′, 4″ and 115 lbs. In this case, B.O.B. is 6′ and 290 lbs (fully filled with water)

 

Me vs B.O.B. (height differential)

 

2). I threw some kicks to see where they’d land on someone who’s six feet tall.

 

Side kick (placed and held)

 

I have short legs and I’m not flexible, so this is as high as it’d get. This is not what would happen in reality. If you’re taller than me, I’m much more likely to blow out your knee or your family jewels.

 

3). I tested my left back fist (leaving my right arm out of it). It was indeed a reach to get 6-foot B.O.B. in the face. In actuality, a person of this height would get throat-punched.

 

Back fist

 

4). I tried out some knee strikes on 6-foot B.O.B.

 

Pulling B.O.B. down for a knee strike

 

Knee strike

 

In my current condition with my right side, I can pull all day long, but pushing overhead or straight-arm lifting/extending are a problem. I did a lot of pulling in this work-out.

For these knee strikes, I jumped in to grab B.O.B. by the base of his skull, jumped back in my stance to pull him down toward me, and then came up to land a rear knee. Unfortunately, it only got to his chest. Haha. Again, in actuality in a street situation, my knee would end up lower. That’s fine. A hard knee to your solar plexus will knock the air out of you.

 

5). I found out right away that a standing rear naked choke was not going to happen on 6-foot B.O.B., so I just grappled him as best as I could, really testing my strength more than anything. In real life, I’d have to get him to the ground in order to choke him.

 

Using B.O.B.’s base to step up and get my arm around his throat

 

Even stepping up, I couldn’t twist my arm around to get a proper grip, so I just did this. (My right shoulder was fine with this.)

 

Pulling him back by the throat from the other side (sorry we went out of frame)

 

This kind of wrangling with B.O.B. made for a pretty good strength-training, pulling workout (so back and biceps, I guess).

I did a little more in the way of conditioning exercises…

 

6). Speed punches for muscle endurance:

 

Speed punches

 

Again, you can’t really see anything, but there was some speed happening in these rounds of speed punches. The goal is to stand close and hit fast, not hard. This is like sprinting in place with your upper body.

 

7). Jumping-in planks:

 

Plank

 

I kept a little bend in my elbows to avoid stressing my right shoulder.

 

Jumping in (then back out, repeat)

 

(I suppose all of this counts as knuckle-conditioning, too, since I’m always on my knuckles.)

 

8). For abs, I just did some crunches.

 

Lying on the floor (doing crunches), ha

 

9). I finished up with some stretching.

 

A few stretches at the end

 

I forgot to take a post-workout selfie, so here’s a screen-shot of one of the times I turned to face the phone:

 

(you get the idea)

 

That was it! This was a fun garage gym session. I got to sweat a little, and the whole thing was pretty instructive, too. I’m not done working with B.O.B. set to this height.

Cancel your resolutions! (Staying motivated in the new year.)

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We’re early enough in the new year that we’re still thinking and talking about our resolutions, or about our decision to not make them, as the case may be.

More than once, I’ve been asked how I keep my resolutions, so I thought I’d share my thoughts on that, for whatever they’re worth.

I’m not a life coach or a psychologist. I don’t have it all figured out. There seems to be no end in sight when it comes to my manner of inadvertently f*cking shit up or making a fool of myself or both, and the last thing I am is the walking picture of contentment, regardless of the (considerable) depth of my gratitude.

But I’m strong-willed when I have the passion to fuel my drive, and I do have a lot of that. In my opinion, that’s most of what we need. It’s hard to stick with resolutions in the absence of passion.

My main advice would be to cancel the resolution if you lose your passion for it. Focus your energy elsewhere! If the resolution is of critical importance, you will come back to it – or it will come back to you – once you’ve given yourself a break from the pressure of it. Sometimes that’s all we need to kick-start our second wind (or third, or fourth, or tenth): a break. Put that resolution down and back slowly away. Don’t hang onto it and worry over it and lament your struggle and your apathy and your “failure.” Just put it aside.

Yes, reverse psychology on your own self works.

If the resolution is not of critical importance, then you didn’t really need it, anyway. Sometimes, the mood you’re in when you make non-critical resolutions isn’t the mood you stay in for the next 365 days. That’s okay. That’s not a failure; that’s a realization.

Some other thoughts regarding staying motivated and not sabotaging yourself in sticking with your resolutions as the new year gets underway:

1). Deadlines hold no power. They really don’t. If you’re the kind of person who gets overwhelmed by the notion of a deadline, then try to relax where that’s concerned. Any progress is still progress. If all you can do today is get out of bed and get dressed, then you’ve accomplished something!

2). Don’t say too much – not to be secretive, but to keep something sacred within. There’s something weirdly empowering about hoarding a goal or an aspiration. Maybe it’s just that if no one knows you’re aiming for it, then no one can ruin it… no one can judge your progress or lack thereof. Having a resolution that only you know about turns that effort into something magical, a secret quest, a journey that you take alone. Share a resolution or two with others, but keep one for yourself. It’s amazing how progress toward your secret goal can help to build your confidence.

3). Helplessness is a mere state of mind. If you feel helpless, tell yourself that you’re not, because needing help and being helpless are two different things. Thinking “I am helpless” is self-sabotage. Thinking “I need help” is not. If you’re capable of asking for what you need, then you’re not helpless… if you need help and you have the wherewithal to ask for it, you’re not helpless. You’re more resourceful than you know, and you have more courage than you know.

4). Your journey is directed by you. You can make your own decisions, own them, learn from your mistakes, and move forward accordingly. When it’s all said and done, you have executive power over your own life.

5). Suffering is a fact of life; it’s a motivator, not an impediment.

 

January 2018 – Here’s to a bright and beautiful new year.

 

Another thing to remember: every week has a Friday, whatever day that may actually be! Again, you can decide what day that is. Revel in it.

 

Yawn. (New Year’s resolutions and such.)

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I used to be passionate about making and keeping New Year’s resolutions. Many of you may remember that. I’m kind of blasé about it now, and maybe that’s because I have just ONE resolution for 2018, and that’s only because I’ve already resolved… to get more sleep.

Yawn. (In every sense of a word that can sum up “boring,” ho-hum double entendre intended.)

I’ve been resolving to get more sleep for a long time; 2018 isn’t the first year I’ve re-stated this. There’s only one lifestyle fix I need to make, and this is it. I know that sufficient sleep on a regular basis is essential for optimizing physical health and mental well-being. I know this. 4-6 hours per night just. isn’t. enough.

Waking up later in the morning isn’t an option. I like to be up early. The problem is that I also like to stay up late, and this is what I need to give up. I need to give up late nights. There’s no benefit to me in staying up late.

I’ll keep working on it. Honestly, I don’t know why resolutions are so difficult to keep! New Year’s resolutions, after all, are promises we make to ourselves. Why would I not do everything I can to keep a promise I make to myself? I think we set ourselves up for failure by formally setting resolutions… so I’ll end this here. I’ve said too much!!

 

Sleep is so exciting that only a pic of theatrical lighting and dry ice would do.

 

It’ll be 2018 when I post here again, so Happy New Year to you all… and good luck with your resolutions, whatever they may be!

Birthday post! (On aging.)

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Not to sound like a disgruntled middle-aged person, but somehow, I’ve been dropped from AARP’s mailing list since they began their early-harassment campaign a few years ago. They were all over me when I turned – what was it, 46? – and now I’m on the eve of 49, and nothing from them. It’s FOMO more than wanting to actually sign up, I suppose.

Tomorrow is my birthday; I’ll begin my last year in my 40’s. I’ve felt sort of obligated to come up with a birthday reflection post, so I’ve been, well, reflecting.

I’m fine with aging, in general. Having to look at a downside, though, I came up with this: aging’s not fun in a typical way that aging’s not fun.

Common aging-related laments would include health complaints associated with age, “looking old” and gaining weight, failure to achieve life goals, becoming more forgetful, being broke later in life.

My only aging-related lament so far: loss.

We’re not as prepared for aging-related loss. We’re bombarded with advertisements for anti-aging products, money management firms, weight-loss programs, adult re-education programs, retirement homes. There’s a sizable market of services and shit to sell to oldsters. But there are no advertisements to help with the fact that the older we get, the more people we lose, the more beloved furbabies we bury. Maybe we get crankier and more melancholic with age because of this accumulation of loss, the general sadness that comes with watching our loved ones pass away.

Oldsters’ loneliness comes, in part, from death. It’s good to keep this in mind, to be mindful of treating the elderly with respect and compassion. They’ve seen a lot, and they’ve suffered a lot of loss along the way. Aging-related loneliness is a profound loneliness. Give oldsters a break when they’re in a bad mood or just generally negative. They may act like they don’t want us or need us, but they do, in some way or another. Love and compassion are the most invaluable commodities.

All of that being said, I’ve also found definite upsides to aging, and many of these are typical: learning from mistakes, caring less about what others think, getting closer to age-qualification for senior discounts at various places. (I needed a bit of levity there.)

Most of all, the older I get, the more gratitude I feel. I’m thankful to be alive; every birthday is a victory. I’m thankful for the people I do have in my life. I’m grateful to feel good health-wise, despite chronic illness; grateful that my body works. I feel enormous gratitude that I’m able to do what I love, and gratitude that I live in the sunniest place possible – yes, lots of sunshine matters tremendously to me and my mental well-being.

On that note, I took some selfies outside on Friday (December 22). Here’s one:

 

The Friday before my birthday – wearing red for the troops (2017)

 

I have goosebumps because there was a chill in the air, but that sun!!

Honestly, I feel like I can’t begin to stop counting my blessings. I have that many.