Be the change you want to see.

Q: What prevents me from getting started?
Q: What are the obstacles and impediments?
Q: What are my goals?

I'm keeping myself accountable for this writing by way of a facebook post where I asked friends to say: write the thing! and give me a number between 1 and 9, labeling each writing prompt with a number in my ADHD journal.

Actually the goals part is the most difficult, so it's appropriate to use it for last.
shall I write about writing? or about this therapeutic process to address the impact of adhd in my life, now that I know something about that being a THING for me?

I think I'd prefer to write about the therapy process and unpack some ideas or thoughts or just basically ... well, hopefully do better than just word-vomit but I shan't make any promises tonight. I have 10 prompts I've culled from the group on monday and therapy with Lara yesterday.

Q1) What prevents me from getting started?
--- Interest. Now that nobody's making me do shit, now I'm not accountable to a boss, a schedule, a clientele (well not precisely) I mainly spend my days doing what I want with a few commitments per week, mostly self inflicted. There's stuff that I know I COULD be doing, even SHOULD be doing,
...and I don't. I don't do them.

I used to judge myself on that, but I don't. I used to tear myself up about that, but I don't. Thank god, I used to literally be my own worst enemy that way.

---Accountability. For reasons that I hope to be able to dig into later, accountability is huge in my motivational force. If I promise to someone I will do something, I will do it solely BECAUSE I SAID I WOULD and that seems to be sufficient. If someone asks me to do something, and it's pretty direct, like Jeff asks will I pull out that part of the garden full of aphids, and I say I will, that seems to be sufficient.

However. If I don't have some kind of outside accountability, I don't do things on any kind of coherent timeline. Which is maybe not always important, but like, it feels like it would be good to shower three times a week, but I can't always hit that. And sometimes that's the depression, but also that I don't get enough human f2f feedback to notice and then to feel embarrassed when I stink.

I've actually planned to chain the showering habit to the working out habit... but haven't been successful. I don't at the moment know how to force that.

Maybe I could find a depression/neurodivergent partner, who also has a not-daily habit they want to build, and we could encourage each other.

It seems that I am better about keeping other people on track than I am at keeping myself on track.
also I am better about staying on track if I have someone else helping me stay accountable.

The last writing prompt out of ten, is, why is it more effective to have Lara or anyone else, tell me what to do, than it is for ME to tell me what to do, in this accomplishing tasks.

1) The oldest part of my brain says because what I want doesn't matter. Because you're always supposed to put other people first, because you can't figure stuff out on your own. (interesting that I chose to use second-person there...hmmm) There's a LOT of old messages there, traceries of a former self. What my friend Chelsea recently called... something like spent seed pods, or carapaces, or used envelopes.

what I want DOES MATTER. I don't ALWAYS have to put other people first, I am ALLOWED to be first on my own priority list godsdammit! and I definitely CAN FIGURE STUFF OUT ON MY OWN but I do have old learned helplessness and my constant fight against distraction to get the stuff figured out, and then the steps sorted out, and then get the shit DONE.

2) when I was teaching about study skills (bear with me a moment, it will become relevant) I had the kids take a test which would help them figure out what their learning style was like. Howard Gardner had a theory of Multiple Intelligences, for which there are Varied tests, now available on the internet. (gosh that would have been much more easy and fun to do on the internet! but it was nearly fifteen years ago that I started that unit, & in an inner city school with limited computer resources.)

I suspect that I have a deep need for interpersonal learning. I'm only sometimes good at teaching myself new skills; I hunger for someone to see me and teach me. I love dance class and working with my trainer for that... but having a teacher teach me and walk me through the material, help me build skills? so much more satisfying than YouTubing my way through something new. (I bet Jeff has a strong intrapersonal learning drive. It would make so much sense.)

What are my goals?

• I want to feel productive, truly productive, every day.
  
• I want to help other people every day. (I can be the person helped, it's allowed. *smile*)
  
• I want to feel like my mind and my time are under my guidance and control.
  

That last item is going to require a new skills base, or a return to old skills (Flylady or Franklin-Covey 7 Habits territory), probably some new skills base. My needs are different now than when I first learned those, ages and ages ago. My mind is different.

Okay. that's enough for the first two prompts.

Thanks for listening, hopefully this isn't too much of a plate of scrambled spaghetti noodles for anyone but me to find benefit in.

Yesterday I was due to meet my seester at the gym, we were going to work out together. She had car trouble and had to cancel; I was kind of proud of myself for not finding an excuse not to go, but I already had woken up, gotten dressed, had something to eat (a couple handfuls of Cheerios, but still) and had found my shoes. So when she texted me I decided to just go anyway. I'm at the point where, after having neglected to work out for over 8 weeks, shit HURTS. my lower back has been sore like it used to be, my surgery knee has been tender and a bit wibbly, my shoulder is cranky and crunchy, and my middle back makes cracking noises when I touch my toes.

bad news man.

So I haul ass over there. Took the new car. Weird to feel like "I" fit in with the shiny Audi, Porsche, Prius, etcetera in the parking lot, but I did. I blended. (WAT)

And I go and get on the not the treadmill, but the elliptical trainer, because I wanted to have the option to work my arms, back, and get a bit of a twisting stretch in. I needed it. It felt good.

I got tired and bored pretty quickly. The last few times I have been to the gym I was either meeting my trainer, who definitely keeps me engaged and interested (I am a bit sad she isn't working there anymore), or I've been meeting tshuma, wrenb, or I run into angelkatharine and at least have a bit of a chat. But twenty minutes on the elliptical is considerably less fun when you have nothing to do but be in your brain (now granted, I mentally wrote some more for NaNoWriMo) and nobody to interact with. And I got fatigued after only about six minutes. I blame my not maintaining the habit of regular movement. Expect that there's lactic acid or stress chemicals buildup in my muscles and bloodstream.

(Side note: I know the body excretes waste chemicals in something like six ways: through sweat, tears, piss, shit, and from the genitals via ejaculatory fluid or weeping. that's only five, I wonder if I will remember what the sixth is or if I am misremembering. Point being, I wake up nowadays, sometimes, with my eyes just LEAKING. It's weird and a little disconcerting. But I'm guessing it's because I haven't been working out to a sweat very often recently, so my body has to find another means.)

Anyway, I do make myself do the twenty minutes, and then I go to the foyer where there's exercise balls and foam core rollers and mats, and I start doing some flexibility work for my hips, rolling big slow circles while seated on one of the exercise balls. Felt pretty good, and I was waking up my core muscles too.

And then I see Etty. She's the trainer that my former trainer Tal had told me I might enjoy working with. And we get to talking, and I was *sure* I had sent her an email or a text telling her I had an interest in training together, but she said she never received any such text or email. And I shrug, I don't know if I forgot or not... But it turns out she had an appointment be cancelled for the space that starts in ten minutes, and would I like to work out, gently, as a getting to know you kind of assessment and do we work well together. I'd been debating if I wanted to go in and explore the weights again like I had the last time; and I figure, sure! And she's willing to comp me the hour as we get acquainted. It was like the serendipity fairy came by and sprinkled serendipity dust all over us(me) to get me back into working out regularly!

We have a good getting to know you chat where I fill out the goals for working out worksheet and I find out that Etty also used to teach (and she says Israeli kids don't respect teachers the way kids here do, and I didn't disabuse her of her notion, which was maybe kind, maybe not) but she really likes teaching one on one, so physical training is a good gig for her. I tell her I have joined NaNoWriMo and a little about what it does, and she says, "maybe you should be a writer!"

and I think, maybe I SHOULD be a writer.

And then we go work out a bit, she has me do lunges and squats and moving stretches and checks my form (which is almost like I forgot the million little corrections Tal used to give me, in just over two months) and we talk about how important it is to have correct form, which I couldn't agree more on. I make sure she understands about my surgery leg and the tension from all that adaptation my body had to do while it was injured and uncorrected. And I just realized yesterday that I passed the third anniversary of surgery on Nov. 1, and how good my body feels in retrospect, now. So many little things that really add up. Fuck that first surgeon who tried to tell me that I didn't need surgery, that lots of people do just fine without an ACL, because now I can move and dance and work out and I. DON'T. FUCKING. HURT. ALL THE TIME. Not anymore. Seriously, fuck that guy. I'm so glad I got bk2wto recommend his surgeon, that guy was PHENOMENAL.

(end digression)

so we try me on plank position and i can't hold it long, and I keep shifting around trying to hold it and she asks me to hold still, and I make it about another three seconds before I just FOLD. dammit. welp this is where I am now, just need to know where I am now so I can set goals appropriately and then work to meet them.

and then we try my pushups ability in a couple different form factors, and she puts me in this frame to have me hold myself up and lift my knees up for core work and wow that was hard, so we try it on a weight bench lying down instead, like swimming instead of like bicycling I realized after I was doing it wrong. More core work for me! More EVERYTHING for me. *sigh* Okay. Need a little work to get back where I was. And to meet my goals of being able to do inversions and maybe start doing some circus arts work. Fun, playful goals. I need fun playful goals. And having a smart trainer who understands about teaching, is a damn good thing.

So I signed up for a new package with Etty. We start next Friday morning at ten, and I'm looking forward to it.

I forgot/ran out of time to blog Wednesday's workout, and yesterday's workout, well, I got slammed by busyness afterwards.

1) had to go over to the framer's to sign my collage-paintings for the county fair because I had forgotten to do that
2) had to grab some kind of quick lunch that turned out to be just fruit and tea, because I...
3) had promised to come volunteer with Anastasia, the Waldorf school gardening teacher, and help the third grade plant All The Grains.
(oh that was fun... and I got to plant and water in a row of amaranth, which are just gorgeous tiny purple seeds, squee!)

So.

Results of workouts are:
1) the hamstring I pulled/strained on Monday during dance class is a bit more flexible/capable now, and hurts less
2) my ANKLE muscles are hella sore. Like all the way around my ankle is sore. I keep waking up and rotating my foot/feet and they're still sore.
3) I'm starting to see muscle definition in my forearms again, even underneath the fat I still have. I have pleasing curves going from wrist to elbow, and the hollow place at the inside of my wrist is longer and more defined than it was.
4) I'm learning that when a muscle is sore from the workout, I need to do more with it later that same day, intentionally, to keep it from going all stiff and inflexible. Stretch AND work it. Oy, my pectoral muscles. I had to stretch and work them last night before I was able to sleep
5) I can do more than I think I can. Speed and bounciness of legs/ankles/calves varies by day and by how much those muscles have already been worked.
6) Tal does a good job of helping me feel like we are doing choreography drills at least some of the time. She also does a good job of finely judging how far to push me, and we have been finishing JUST before I fail, i.e. muscles haven't yet given out in the middle of a set.
7) I have discovered I like free weights MUCH better than machines. And Tal confirms my belief that free weights are better for more all-round muscle strength, since you have to use more of the little muscles surrounding the major muscles to control free weights properly. Dynamic stability!
8) the sides of the long leg muscles (calf and thigh) need some more concentrated work. I think hiking in uneven terrain would be a good job for them. Again, Dynamic stability... and working the overall system rather than the specific large muscles.
9) Tal helped me specifically stretch shoulders and pecs in a way which I can't do. She groks partnered stretching. I may yet be able to consistently have open shoulders and reach my arms directly vertical over my shoulders, and I may yet be able to open my hips enough to have my knees flat on the floor when I sit pretzel-style (and maybe even someday in half-lotus or proper lotus position for yoga class!)
10) I told Tal that I have a personal goal I expected her to say was ridiculous, which is to do unsupported headstands and maybe someday handstands, and a) she was impressed when I told her I'd sorted out how to do yoga style shoulderstands, and she said your body can do anything you set your mind to do.

Tal gives me hope.
I shared with her that I used to have "a relative" who was so sarcastic in how he spoke to me that I had internalized his voice and used to speak very unkindly to myself. And I also said how I had to learn how to stop that voice from being how I spoke to myself, and had to learn to speak kindly and encouraging to myself.
I was to embarrassed to say that the relative was my dad. =(

But she's been great about listening to the little snippets of personal stuff that come out when we are working out together. She's great at correcting my form so I do the work correctly, and at encouraging me gently.

I have hope of gently reshaping this body and coming into pride in self that I haven't had in nearly 20 years.
For the right reasons, this time, not for fitting into a wedding dress.

I'm doing it for ME this time.

Got to the gym today. First time in over a week. I decreased all my weights for comfort and safety.
Pretty decent workout. I did something wrong though, my ribs hurt. Like for hours they hurt.

10 minutes on stationary bicycle (I /almost/ arrived in time for the yoga class!)
15 minutes doing yoga stretchy things (should have done weights then yoga stretchy things)
N minutes (unknown) on weights. Various for arms and shoulders, and then the traditional four machines for legs.

then some time cooling down on a yoga mat with a foam core roller. That's probably where I wonked my rib... I think I went diagonally on the roller (cos it felt good at my hip), the pressure may have been too much on the rib socket. How does one deal with a sprained(?) rib?

Went home, made salty spaghetti and sauteed shrimp in butter, garlic and onion, because the ramen place was closed. =/

Rib hurts 6 hours later. Taking one of the Good Drugs and hoping to sleep it off. Early morning tomorrow for a consult with the knee surgeon, this is ten months post-op. So I definitely want a good night's sleep.

wish me luck with the rib, and with braving *shudder* Bay Area rush hour traffic for a doctor's appointment on the other side of the Bay. Oy vey!

good night!

One of my homework assignments for the Waldorf teacher training program I am taking, is to do daily meditation exercises to strengthen my brain's/mind's ability to focus, to perceive, to learn, to problem-solve, to know what I am actually seeing/feeling/experiencing... Steiner's term for this translates to something like "training the Organs of Cognition." Your emotions can be used to analyze and to help you think.

For example, every time I heard John McCain say, "My friends, blah blah blah..." (it doesn't matter what it was he was saying, because) once he used that phrase to start off, with that particular tone of voice, I was not hearing anything he had to say because I was feeling /rage/ and /outrage/...

so then I can take a moment now, in the quiet, to think about why I was feeling that, and why it basically blindsided me.

... more in a minute...

Resuming (I either need to get more hydrated, more regularly or to go to the optometrist for new 'eyeballs', probably both)...

I think ozarque would parse this out much more coherently than I can, with her detailed background in linguistics and subtext. But EVERY TIME I heard McCain say "My friends...", I felt
Patronized.
Looked down upon.
Like my head was being patted.
Like I was being manipulated.
Resentful - he is NOT MY friend, how dare he refer to us all that way?

I was thinking about it in moments when I wasn't mad, and realizing I resent W's verbal tic of "Mah fellow 'Mericans" much less, in spite of not liking him, because that much is actually TRUE.

There were other moments that pissed me off - his persistent fear mongering and doomsaying about the future, his apparent lack of concrete plans, his meandering past actually answering the question, spinning his own tale more times than not and then POINTING OUT at the start of a particular rebuttal, the first time Obama tailored an answer that didn't directly answer a question (Pot, Kettle.)

I felt condescended to. I found myself looking for examples of a meta-plan to sabotage an Obama presidency, prior even to full gestation. I heard him use the subjunctive tense when referring to an Obama presidency, which (IIRC) would seem to indicate McCain subconsciously expects Obama to win, but in those statements he (McCain) was also at his most slanderous, poisonous, and fearmongery.

I read an article linked on ontd_political about the meta-plan to move the US closer to a fascist state by driving wedges of no-confidence and resentment between the people and the government, and (my perception was that) I seemed to see indications of that mindset in McCain.

But the end of it all, is my gut reaction.

McCain troubles my second chakra. I don't feel secure or hopeful when listening to him. My throat chokes up, and I feel red energies of anger shooting from the top of my head and the base of my spine. McCain feels to me like a carefully camouflaged, cleaned up and well-dressed, doom sayer from the soap box at the corner of the marketplace. Or he sounds like a preacher from a pulpit, who condemns in fiery terms those who have an angry heart and no mercy on their neighbors. In short, a hypocrite, lacking self-knowledge or self-examination, and insincere.

Obama makes my heart feel clear. I can see his vision of a hopeful future (6th chakra) and it's like standing on a hill, looking down the valley, with a clear path scrolling down the hill, through the valley, to a restful destination that will be a long walk away but is definitely achievable, BY ME, right now.

The moments after the debate were very telling, for me, as were the candidates reactions to one another while speaking. Obama was unfailingly focused on McCain, politely attentive, while he was speaking, except in a couple cases where McCain made some outrageous charge or direct attack on him; then I saw Obama look away briefly, smile, and shake his head. Obama looked relaxed and comfortable. When Obama spoke, McCain was listening and taking notes but only rarely watched the senator from Illinois, and certainly fell short of being polite and attentive.

Then at the end of the debate, the candidates went around the studio, glad-handing the spectators/participants in the town hall meeting... I watched both Barack and Michelle Obama shake hands, lean forward, make eye contact, have short conversations with people, and I saw their lips say "thank you for being here" more than once. McCain also was shaking hands and talking to people, but Cindy McCain? um. She had her hands locked together behind her back. I may be overreacting, but I definitely got a "not MY job" vibe from her... not quite the 'upturned nose, remove these ...persons from my presence' arrogance, but dude, was she COLD. Impeccably dressed, coiffed, and made up, but not THERE at all; not PRESENT. Obligatory.

Dudes, I knew who I wanted before the debate started, and I had to listen to almost half in the car due to traffic on the way out to masterfiddler's, but once I got to see AND hear the debate? It was all about the non-verbals for me. Obama was positive and confident and respectful, McCain was petty, repetitive, and spreading teh fear.

Yeah, I'm going to the Deomocratic HQ tomorrow to volunteer.

I want Obama IN THE WHITE HOUSE.

I wouldn't have thought (or realized) that a Stick of Whapping could be such a satisfying and reliable gardening tool.

heh.

I have an old chair leg (the rest of the chair went bye-bye but since the leg already fell off, I was like, why not?)... and I have had several bushes in the back yard that died (or mostly died) some months ago when the pump for the backyard well failed for several days last summer.

how satisfying to whack the hell out of old dead brush, have it break and splinter and fracture, to aim blows for the joints of the dead plant and see limbs go flying, stir up dust (ok not that so much) and make something that's literally only in the way of progress, get smaller and smaller.

I think when the shrubs are finally gone I'll dig a nice big hole and plant sets of bulbs, or bunches of herbs that grow well in damp soil and indirect light.