Be the change you want to see.

I've been doing short workouts twice a week, during this whole pandemic, but that's basically all. I've kept a decent amount of the muscle 💪 strength I developed pre pandemic, most of the flexibility.

But.

My shit still hurts, regularly. Still have regular aches at the dislocation and bone breaks (right ankle, knee, wrist) plus where those limbs join the torso (shoulder and hip/lower back).

Yesterday I took a walk with my niece, from her house into downtown mountain view. It's like five or six short city blocks, not like long New York or SF blocks. That and back again, and stopping at two shops.

Holy CATS y'all. My endurance isn't great. My wind isn't great. Even my balance isn't great, because the muscles in the right side of me haven't been getting enough challenge to stay strong, soft and healthy.

I wasn't embarrassingly wobbly, but I could feel it, and was reminded of how difficult it used to be to walk straight before I had the ACL replacement surgery. Which I never enjoy that reminder.

Uncomfortable, not fully painful.

Bit of a blister on the sole of my foot, achy body especially around hips and knees. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But I DID THE THING and now I have a baseline.

Etty has been telling me I need to be walking more, maybe bicycling more.

And I was like, yeah, yeahhhhhhh ONLY NOW that I'm sore (not sore AF, but SORE) from a walk that probably wasn't even quite a full mile round trip?

I'm feeling more motivation to a) take daily short walks and b) get my bicycle fixed up so I can ride her again. (She's pretty and purple and PLAYAFIED hahahah )'( and has flat tires I think, and a rusty chain.

I'm going to see if the bike shop has time to take her on Friday. I came to slow wakefulness remembering/dreaming how nice it can be to bicycle out and back, especially earlier in the day or later in the evening.

I have a Plan. *\o/*

Thanks to a prompt by ysabetwordsmith, I have a start on goals for 2021!

I ... Hadn't actually thought about my goals for the year. 2020 was such MESS.

* Gardening regularly, my body likes it.
* Seek out opportunities to dance, try for once a week.
* Continue twice weekly workouts.
* Practice simple baking: biscuits, cookies, quickbreads.
* Finish and distribute fabric masks
* Finish three long WIPS (one agent carter, two check please)
* Find a workable antidepressant (previous to this, research the three my doctor has offered)
* Dig into Quilt repair project I've been putting off
* Explore brocade quilt design and creation (stash busting)
* Finish making tshirt yarn
* Design and make tshirt yarn project (diagonal crochet? Research how-to)
* Woodworking projects: small boxes,
* Do more reaching out to family and friends. (Okay I'm going to call mom now, and call this list done for now)

Welcome to the new year, y'all!

Do YOU have any goals for 2021? I'd love to hear them!

In a lot of ways today is no different than any other day of the last couple of years. I'm puttering around the house, doing household chores. I'm reading, I'm writing a little bit, I'm being sat upon by the cat...

But I have a unique perspective on today, perhaps partly because of the recent two weeks in Australia where everything was springtime uncertain instead of autumn uncertain. There were flowers instead of falling leaves, there were purples and pinks instead of yellows and oranges.

Today's been a beautiful day. Sunny and warm at first, clouding over and getting dimmer as the afternoon progressed.

I find myself welling up with tears, for no reason I can actively identify, it's just a little tangle of feelings in the middle of my chest and down into my belly I don't even really want to identify it. I'm just going to let myself feel whatever it is and, it looks like, cry a little bit.

I think one of the hardest things I've had to learn in the last decade is that there really is, and never can be, just that one path that we're "supposed to" take with our lives. You may think there is, and you can spend years beating yourself up for failing to meet those imagined goals, or benchmarks, or, I don't know, life crisis points. But the best thing I did in the last 10 years was to realize that it's my life and nobody else's. That my meandering path is just as valid as something that looks straight as a ruler's edge. That nobody but me gets to set my goals for me, regardless of scripts that I have in my head from movies and television and other stories. It's like that one XKCD comic where the first character fills his apartment with ball pit balls. They're all bright colored against the black and white drawing and he says from inside the apartment, "we're grown-ups now, and we get to decide what that looks like."

In the next year I want to practice radical kindness. Radical generosity. I want to practice speaking up, and calling out b******* oh come on now say it bull crap (voice to text). I want to be there for my friends and family. I want to be there for my husband and my home. And I want to be there for myself. Maybe, that's still the most important thing I'm still learning, how to be kind to myself and when I think of all the bologna I had to shovel in order to just get down to me... To get past childhood and adolescence and young adulthood's indoctrination of this is what you're supposed to be.

You know when I was teaching I always had a hard decision to make as far as where do you spend the majority of your your attention, your time, and your planning? Do you spend it with the stars? The kids who are already smart and have it together and are on it? Do you spend it with the kids at the tail end of the class where if it was a physical education class they'd be lagging behind the rest of the class by a lap or half lap? Do you spend your time and energy in the middle and hope that the ones behind will catch up and the ones that are far ahead won't resent you for it? Wow I haven't thought about that in a while...
One of the best things about leaving teaching If I can say there are good things about leaving teaching, which, honestly my mental and physical health appreciate that I'm not doing that anymore. I don't have to make that decision anymore. The world is full of places I can help, and all of the work that I do does something somewhere. And I can forgive myself for not helping absolutely everyone I come into contact with, which was not a headspace I knew at all while I was still teaching. I blamed myself for every child had an f, or who moved away or every perceived failure piled up.

My failures now are softer, they don't have edges of self-hatred. I don't have to have shields up every day cuz I'm not getting attacked every day.

Somehow I am both softer and stronger than I was then. Some of that is just having lived longer, and having been in therapy as long as I was. But I don't hate myself anymore. And I'm not constantly angry with myself, or disappointed with myself. I do feel guilty for having the leisure to do the healing work for myself when 95% of the people who I know don't have that opportunity. which is why I try to use the healing work I've done to benefit other people I offer literal, physical help or emotional support or sometimes I have wherewithal...

Anyway, tonight is a tipping point. And there's no holding it back. There's no rushing it forward either for that matter!

Happy birthday to me. I still have hope in the future, I have hope for the world, I have hope for myself and my loved ones, and I acknowledge that the world is complicated and it's broken in a lot of ways and I promise I will lend a shoulder when I can.

To begin with, my big tabby Otter has now manifested with Diabetes. we're having to control his food portions, no more free feeding, and on top of doing sub-q fluids to support his potassium levels we started four days ago giving him twice daily insulin injections.

I'm okay with needles, I've had enough of them in my life even aside from the tattoos.
Jeff is surprisingly okay with them considering he hasn't had to do needle stuff to himself ever.

But Tribble, my calico. She's peeing and pooping outside of the box. Tonight was the second time in a week that ONE of them peed the guest bed.

Jeff's convinced that it's her who's doing all the peeing. but I think that now we know Otter has Diabetes that he might have had occasions of muscle weakness and maybe some of the puddles have been his. The only reason that's important is that he, Jeff, has said now on three occasions that if we (or I) can't solve the cats peeing and pooping outside the box and in various places around the house that she'll have to go, or be sequestered, or something.

That would be intolerable to me, and if I wasn't trying to write this and get it out of my head to where I can problemsolve, I feel like I would be frozen from some combination of all the feelings that thinking about that wants me to feel.

If I'm writing, I can hold on to the feelings and keep myself cerebral instead of what? exploding? imploding? borrowing trouble anyway.

Problemsolving can do some damn thing to help.

my current theory that something makes her feel unsafe in the litterbox which is why she poops in corners of the room. the peeing i do not know.

* one thing I'm going to do to collect information is get with my Facebook cat owners/peeps and ask to have conversation with any who have experience with cats doing this.

* another thing I'm doing is getting with a cat behaviorist who I think will have a variety of things of advice to say. I fuckin hope so, it's going to be expensive, but at least she's local and won't charge me to travel.

* a third thing I'm going to do is some yoga. my body is tense and hurts. And get in the hot tub too, because my therapist had to cancel our massages this time.

It would be real easy to spiral about how lucky I am how privileged and stuff. I'm trying to not. Obviously... but yeah. This is overwhelming and I'm not good at this kind of project-management, where I'm emotionally involved.

okay. that;s all i have for right now.

writing is going okay just it's interrupted tonight. which, dammit, I almost had a handle on the current chapter.

hi there brains!

(I've been watching a lot of How to ADHD on YouTube lately.)

funny you should ask, yes I have been learning more about adhd recently. Last week I asked my primary care physician about what kind of referral I would need to explore possible medication for adhd. she checked her email at around 10:30 pm, which I give her a lot of credit for, and told me she had set up a referral with psychiatry for adhd testing for me and an intake with one of the docs over there.

so today was testing in the morning. I had a chance to grab a slice of pumpkin pie and my emergency instant coffee on my way out the door.

i got there on time! v. excite!

had an intake form briefly asking how often I dealt with various symptoms. Losing possessions, failure to calendar things, I can't remember exactly what was on the list BUT I can add a photo of it to this post after I'm done.

*insert photo here*

The test itself was a click-the-mouse test. you were meant to hit the space bar anytime a letter flashed on the screen. except X, you were supposed to ignore X.

holy shit. once I knew what the test was I said "oh dear lord" I almost said, fucking kill me now. (and I never really say that)

I had to do that shit for fifteen minutes straight and it was fucking EVIL.

i'll get my results in a week to 10 days but I'm already working under the premise that I have this thing i have too many symptoms in the DSM-5 to NOT have it. I'm dang curious about the medication now though.

i just wanna take care of myself better, take care of Jeff and my house and the cats better. Wanna finish projects and hopefully focus better to finish my writing and other creative projects (I have some short sexy fic up on Archive of our Own that I'm pretty proud of, and more in the pipeline, it's just tough to finish.)

love and miss all yall, hopefully you are well and taking good care of yourselves.

I'll try to be back soon.

well who could have guessed that emotional disequilibrium (feelings, stress, anxiety) would accelerate executive dysfunction (distraction, deflection, defensiveness, confusion, flustered, brain fog, & the other joys of adhd)!
(Me, I could have guessed. But it's taken a formal diagnosis and a ton of reading and reflection.)

had a long talk with Jeff last night. He was again very frustrated with me and again very patient with me.
but he never attacked me and he never made me feel like I was wrong.

for the first time, I think, I was totally calm and not defensive during one of these talks.
for the first time, I took notes.
I was safe with him.
I could actually hear and accept what he was saying.

Not gonna get into the specifics of his feedback but over the course of the conversation I became certain that working with this specific new therapist on strategies for coping with adhd is probably the best choice I've made in the past year.

you can't fix something you don't know is busted.
when I'm calm and secure, I think and plan really well.
when I'm bottling up Feelings (see above list) it decreases my ability to think, plan, and execute.

It's pretty simple, now that I get it.
But I couldn't have gotten HERE without the years of other kinds of work to deal with understanding family issues, building my health habits, practicing clear communication and learning relationship skills.

I said something elsenet about wishing people came with black and white rules that I could memorize, but they don't. It would be easier with rules, but ultimately I think my meditation practice, religious practice, Flylady practice, and self reflection will help me navigate the world with additional clarity.
Maybe I won't crave rules if my boat is more watertight. It sucks to feel like you're managing one disaster after another.

I want to re-establish my meditation practice.
I want to re-establish my devotional practice.
both of those help me clear my mind and focus on my goals.

I want a regular weekly occupation that gets me out among people in interesting situations.
I want a regular practice of self-care that includes grooming and getting my touch needs met.
these will work towards my social needs and help take some of the stress off Jeff.

I've been working on figuring out how to be more independent of him, now I know he actually VALUES that I think it'll be a lot easier digging in and actually working to achieve those things.

One way I've always done well is when someone has clear expectations of me that are within my ability to meet. I may want to go on medication but right now I'm apprehensive. Which is perhaps foolish because I suspect I've been using caffeine and alcohol to self medicate for years. I'll do some more research.

(good gods look at the twenty seven million I-statements!)

okay.

gonna post on facebook, renew a prescription, make some more tea, make a to-do list for tonight's party.

gods help me, I'm signing up for the new mini-season of LJ idol, therealljidol.

*\o/*

go me!

Body has been tightening up and giving me pain. Have only had one even half-serious workout in the last month, today was my second time in the gym since before Burning Man.

I didn't task myself with making up for lost time. I climbed on the elliptical machine for 18 minutes, made a point of keeping it at a rate that raised my temperature and heartrate without making me stressed ... lunch was too close to when I went to workout, but I modified accordingly. And I was sufficiently warmed up before heading to the Gentle Yoga class, which was a LOT of what I needed. Not everything, not quite, but gave me a great workout and let me check in with all the tight places to see what they wanted. (more moving, of course!)

And there was a substitute teacher who was really quite excellent. She was kind enough to give me a good demonstration of bakasana (Crow Pose) which several friends have been practicing and posting photos of on FB and now I have a fairly good idea of what I need to do in order to have the basics down. I need a strong tight core, strong triceps, strong inner thighs... and a willingness to fall on my head while practicing this radical arm-balance.

Okay.
Time to work on looking ridiculous sometimes. And since I also wanna get to the point of doing forearm, head and handstands? this is a good intermediate step, feels like to me.

so I will work on moving enough tonight that today's yoga won't make muscles too stiff, and try starting to practice the things I need tomorrow.

You'd think, with how good my life is now, that it'd be easy to pretend.

Pretend WHAT? says the acidic voice in the back of my head...
Pretend that you were happy? Pretend that you felt loved? Pretend that you ever felt safe?

"Yeah," I shoot back at the Nasty. "Pretend that I had a 'happy childhood.'"

I'm an optimist now. It feels as though I have always been an optimist, and perhaps I have. I'm not SURE, though.

From a very early age, I remember... melancholy, and a sense of disconnect from the world around me. I remember deep suffering, and an almost equally sharp despair. I remember a fierce yearning to BELONG somewhere, or to someone, as I never did at home. Convinced that would never happen, I still determined I would somehow learn to be happy. I knew that people were happy, somewhere (though not my family, except in brief glimpses.)

Wasn't it Tolstoy who said that unhappy families were all different and happy ones were all the same? I disagree. I've met so many people from unhappy families, and we all have so much in common... It feels like Tolstoy had it backwards. The folks I know who had happy childhoods seem to me like visitors from another planet.

My own childhood feels as though someone else experienced it. It feels like a story I was told long ago that no longer apples to me, so I have mostly forgotten it.

It's no longer relevant to my current life, my childhood, but it's still true. And it's still a part of my story.
*thinking*

Joy staining backwards. That's how Lucy Maud Montgomery defined it... In her book The Blue Castle, the main character has a miserable life under the thumb of her family and the small minded society of the small Canadian town she lives in. Valancy has a brush with death, determines to make a change for herself in the short time she believes remains to her, and finds happiness for the first time in her life. Her joy in her new life with her new husband is so vivid and rich that she finds even her memories of the miserable grey childhood of neglect, control, and verbal abuse, seem happier as she looks back on them. Like looking on the past with rose colored glasses, her past did not change, but her present joy gives her a new perspective on the horrible events and the grim family that were all that she knew for most of her life.

Sometimes, nowadays, it does seem as though my life has only been contented, full of love, happy, and with my needs met. It's because the contrast between then and now, makes THEN seem completely unreal and distant. Now is what's real. This hilltop I live on now, these woods I ramble through with those I love and those who challenge me and make me laugh. I don't delude myself anymore that I was truly happy, back then. I was lonely, miserable, heartsick, and friendless.

But I am none of those things anymore. Even when I am completely solitary, I am none of those things anymore.

I am standing beneath the same moon as my childhood self, and it is a comfort to me... a comfort that I still have a childlike sense of connection to the universe, to the impersonal unending beauty of nature and the cosmos. I have joy, I have courage, I have friends and family and beloved community. I have plans and goals that draw me on to the next chapter, the next goal, the next adventure.

I know that this moment is just a pause to rest and refresh myself. Anticipating the next big adventure, like my heroine in The Blue Castle, doesn't mean I've forgotten my past, or am in denial of what life was like, then.

Now is different. These hiking boots don't come with a rear-view mirror. They do help me carry my permanent sense of wonder, along with all the other tools I now possess. Life is amazing, NOW.

And Now? That's where my focus is.




This has been my entry for therealljidol, week 11. The prompt was "recency bias."

I'm enjoying writing within this community very much. If you enjoyed this post, or got something out of it, please consider voting for me so I can continue to write with these amazing and supportive people. The polls are available HERE , and I'm returning back in Tribe One.

Today's workout with Tal and tshuma was challenging in different ways than these used to be.

There was a balance exercise that was physically challenging: stand on a curb with one foot, keep your hips square, bend the knee of the supporting leg and lower your other toe to the ground. Straighten, repeat 10 times on each leg. Whoa.

But the part that's emotionally challenging is to realize that I have made HUMONGOUS progress in strength, flexibility, and balance since I started writing about this journey nearly two years ago.

Cognitive dissonance, man.

Like, I do know that I'm stronger than I used to be, but parts of my brain are still expecting those gains to vanish as soon as I stop looking at them. I have an old script running "this is what my body looks like and this is what it can do"
AND THE SCRIPT IS WRONG.

Not sure how I change that, because both my head and my heart need recalibration.

Tal says that I don't give myself nearly enough credit; that much, I believe! *laughing*

Okay. Here's what I can do:

I can hang out in Table position and extend alternate arm and leg for many seconds with no discomfort or huge effort.

I can hang out in Down Dog for many seconds without discomfort or huge effort.

I can do a dozen inverted rows hanging from the TBX with no discomfort and little effort. I remember how sore my hands wrists elbows and shoulders were when I first started that exercise, and how I did it all wrong.

I can do plank at my knees for ages, and then I can detach one knee or hand at a time, repeatedly. Not up to full plank all the time, but I'm getting there.

I can hold Bridge pose for a good long time, even on a squashy surface like my bed.

Properly warmed up, I can put my foot up on the railing at shoulder height to stretch, with no pain and very little effort.

Each shoulder moves independently, and the adhesions seem to be totally gone, shoulderblades move fluidly and the shoulders are normally down and back instead of hunched up and forward. This is HUGE.

Lower back pain, foot pain, hip pain, pain in the shoulder, has essentially vanished. Knee feels stable.

My curves have been smoothing out as the muscles get stronger and settle in closer to the bones.

I can reach things atop the fridge or at the back of that one shelf without standing on my toes or stretching diagonally, my shoulder just GOES FURTHER NOW.

Deep breathing is my normal way of breathing. Actually scored 100% when I last saw a doctor and the nurse took a blood O2 test! Yeah!

I stand and sit straighter more often. Today I got my hair cut and it felt more natural to sit up straight than to lean back in the chair.

These are all true things.
How I was is not how I am now.

I want to come to terms with that. Internalize it, incorporate it into my self image.

I have become physically strong.

This gives me a sense of peace.

I still have more to say about this but I need to leave it there for the moment.

I am strong.

Posted via m.livejournal.com.