Vigilance

Last weekend I went to Oregon for a rare DaveO appearance at a derby tournament. It was a new tourney and they really did need the help. Turned out there were three of us for the weekend. It was a good weekend, all told, with reconnection with an old friend and with a city I have always rather liked. In fact, if Hulu had an office down there, I would even consider moving. The dream of the 90s indeed.
Friday update!


While I was there, I ate. Kind of inevitable,  I know, but it brought something into focus for me. I need to maintain my vigilance.

The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. In order to change that future behavipr, one needs to be completely aware of what happened, why it happend, and have an idea of what would be necessary to change it. Lucky for me, where I am concerned I have an only slightly unreliable account.  I know myself well, and I must be vigilant against those things which would cause me to fail.

In this case, it's knowledge of my own, staggering ability to justify my own behaviors. Call it what you will, but at the end of the day it's fitting the facts to the needs to make a bad behavior ok. I know that, as soon as I do it, I am trying to convince myself to do something I know I shouldn't. Last weekend, it was food.

I can eat all those fries, and make them curly. Oh, and that deep fried chicken sandwich on a brioche style bun and that soft serve ice cream are perfectly ok. You're on vacation. If you can't relax... well, you get the picture. I was using everything I could think of to make it ok to eat the things I know lead to backsliding.

It only makes sense, really. I have lost a ton of weight, the health scares are gone and even my cpap is auto setting to lower levels. If I am having all these wins, I can relax and just maintain, right?

Not so much. What it really means is that the habits are being seen by my inner self as prohibitions. If that is the case, I must be incentivist and use the potential negatives of getting *back* to being in danger of losing my life to whatever myriad problem was looming in the shadows of my body. I must would that weapon and keep myself in line. Only through self discipline am I able to get there.

I must be vigilant. I must hold those standards until they are all habits which simply happen. Until I can legitimately have that sugar and carb overdose without fear of backsliding. OH, and trust me, my body reacted poorly to the overdose. Somewhat explosively.

Through vigilance I got to my successes. Through vigilance I will keep on improving. Maybe next year I will be able to leap over the hood of the car trying to hit me instead of leaping around it.

Patience 2

I kept my patience the other day. It was one of the hardest things for me to do, seeing as it was wrapped up in a long standing fear.  It had everything to do with how I deal with emotions, how I have evolved over time when interacting with others and their emotions where I am concerned, and with where I am looking to go.

A good friend and I went on a trip together. I should probably say that this person and I dated about 14 years ago or so. It was for only a year, and it ended poorly. It was the last real relationship I've had since. A string of failed relationships over a period of four years (including the daughter' s mother and this one) led me to a very dark place; a place I had no idea what to do. It was a puzzle my 33 year old self could not unravel until I came to the conclusion I was the problem and acted to change those things that were causing the failures on my end.

I tried to date at first. There were A few people over the years I was pretty interested in, and I even went on a few dates which inevitably ended with with me freezing up, screwing up a first date, or just plain being paralyzed in fear. As a result, I chose to stop dating.

A conscious decision to eschew romantic entanglements with no religious proscription is an odd thing to most people. It leads to some very interesting assumptions, and ones I did not dissuade people from having since they conveniently fit the lifestyle I was choosing.

The labels weren't entirely accurate. The entire time I was not aromantic or asexual, although i woukd use those labels at time for convenience in explaining to others where I was in my romantic life.  I was not avoidant or any other myriad things people thought. I consciously chose not to date until I could do so without the paralyzing fear.

That time has come. Although the fear is there and the terror is real, I am making a choice. I am choosing to face that fear in the desire to feel and explore those feelings.

A couple months ago, the aforementioned friend and I went to a movie together. During the movie we cuddled. This was not out of character. It was something we had done before as friends,  and not entirely unexpected, but this time it sparked old feelings more strongly than I had felt in years.

See, this person and I? Other than about 2 years immediately after the relationship have been good friends. We have dined together, gone camping together, lamented life together... hell, I held her hand at the hospital before she went in for surgery.  Point is we've never lost that friendship.

Over those same years we would sometimes try to figure out our feelings, always concluding the past was best left there. It was the logical decision. It was the safe decision,  it was  the patient decision.

But it is no longer the time for that patience. Now the patience comes in letting myself feel and in not overanalyzing things or pushing for explanations or digging into the why of a purely emotional response in someone else.  Let's see where this goes.

I lost my patience last night.

Things had gotten out of control on the household front. Despite weeks of admonishment of my co-habitants to do their portion of the homework and to do the chores and errands they needed to complete in order for the house to be stable and clean, they did not make apparent progress at a good rate.

I finally made my displeasure known.

That's not always a bad thing, in fact unless you make your displeasure known, the person can't know they are causing any amount of discomfort. From family to partners to coworkers to presidents and kings, unless they know what they are doing is in any way incorrect, they will just keep doing it.

In this case, I made an error in keeping my patience as long as I did. It led to raised voices and anger. I kept my patience too long and did not make

Funny thing, patience.

Patience

Friday update!

I didn't write much this week. It was mostly a week of reflection on that front, trying to compose the next pieces in my head before air commit them here. I began to get nervous, I was sweating that I wasn't keeping up with my goals. That I was slipping and that I would begin to just give it up and head back over to Facebook.

I might have even made two posts over there this week. It wasn't anywhere near my 2--3 or more a day I used to make, and I certainly wasn't  doing the deep dives through friends of friends to find the Rando who posted the insensitive comment on a friend of a friend's wall. The habits have changed with enough attention. It required time, effort and diversion to a different behavior. It took work. It took me looking at myself with stern kindness. It took patience.

I know this lesson well, although how to really apply it to self improvement has only come in the last few years (and I am sure I'll find another aspect another time in my life). It's something I have always done, although it has usually been a function of control rather than a true attempt to assist. I would use my will as a hammer, smashing though objections and scattering people and ideas like kindling. I was kind of an asshole about it, especially to myself.

So when it came time to do something about all of this, I had to use that tool the way I always had. I used that on myself. It led me to some dark places during the first bits of this effort. I was impatient with myself when I would fail. I probably hurt myself a few times in that, though the results were there.

Eventually I came to the point where I plateaued hard. I was at just above 400 for weeks. I tried everything I could think of and it just wasn't coming. I was mad at myself for my failure, but no amount of railing against it would change the fact that I was jot able to get lower. I began to despair that I would ever find success. That continued until I remembered that I can only control certain aspects of my self and that I needed to forgive myself and apply my will only to those things I could control.

I looked for the small changes I could make to bring small successes. I stopped bashing myself for the failures and I started encouraging myself to go forward. In short, everything I knew I haf learned about being patient with others I needed to apply to myself.

It worked. I broke through 400 and am on the bring of my first really big goal.l, but I find myself on a plateau yet again. Under 360 is eluding me and I find myself falling into the old habits of bashing myself for the failure. I need to stop that, because it's leading to some poor decisions in my despair, especially now I know sugar is not as immediate a concern anymore.

I drank a sugared soda.  I have been eating more carbs. I even considered candy.

That's the part I need to stop. I need to be stern on the hard line on sugar and carbs while forgiving myself for the slips. It's a journey, and I need to find the trail again.

I need patience.

363

Faster

Friday update!

"Hey, could you walk a little slower?"  I hadn't  heard that in about a decade. I've heard it four times in the last week.

I suppose I could just leave the Friday update there and declare victory, but it's so much more than that. Those words represent some pretty cool things to me.

In my unhealthy state I was obviously not walking much. This meant that when I did walk it was usually going to be with others because,  well,  that's just how people were getting top whatever.  I was slower than everyone.

With my team at work,  I ended up nearly a block behind on a four block wall to a restaurant.  With friends I would beg for breaks and for them to slow down,  and woe unto me if folks wanted be to go hiking.

Now it's full speed ahead at an average of just above three miles an hour regardless of terrain. Up hills, down hills, across mud, whatever,  I walk. My legs pumping out a rhythm to match the music in my ears when I am exercising keep that rhythm when I am just walking now, too, but that rhythm is a little faster than some.

It's a small thing, walking faster, but it's a victory for me. It represents one more embarrassment falling away. One more thing I hated about how my body was and isn't any more.

Between this and people I haven't seen in a couple years commenting on how I "look great" with the weight loss I might even begin to believe I am getting back to being in shape. Let's see about dance and fencing next.

Change

Those points where what was, becomes what is. The edge of destruction and creation. The only constant we have. It is a source of joy and fascination for me. It sweeps away the old and allows me to bring those things within which I have nurtured.

I see it in the world around me right now. The trees wake up, the grass turns a little brighter green and the flowers push their heads above the mud. Spring and fall represent the Flux I look forward to every day.

It is in stagnation that I find personal death. The comfort of the known necessitates a lack of growth. It may be safe, but it doesn't allow me to progress. Progress may be messy, and it may hurt a bit, but it is the only guarantee that I will be resilient when change is forced rather than sought after.

For all my hubris and love of self control, I find it impossible to reliably predict where change will happen in my own life. I am left only with the sense of wonder that change should be surprising in any fashion. It is a thing which requires me to change within to adapt, and those things are awesome.

Adaptation is the single largest driver in the natural world. Those things which are able to change and adapt to a changing world are the most guaranteed to survive into the future.

So I embrace change. I adapt. I embrace the growth it brings in the world and within myself. I will not shrink from progress and from seeing people as they are and as they grow. I reject the simple path of obstruction and I will adapt those obstructions to my own growth.

I look at the trees and flowers for inspiration. Over the difficult times, they hibernate and gather their strength. I reflect and think, gathering my own mental and emotional fortitude. Then, with an incredible alacrity, they explode in growth. I will reflect that as well. After reflection comes action, otherwise it is simply mental masturbation.

Over the past couple of years, that change and growth has been largely personal.  As my daughter heads into her future, I am left with a sense of change within myself. For the past 20 years, I have defined myself as her father. Every ounce of effort was for her benefit. An expensive natural effort born of evolutionary expediency. Now I have to decide for myself what I am next.

Yes, sure, a parent's job is never really complete, but you know what I mean. It requires I change. That I grow. That I reflect and explode. In that process I look to my oust and the growth I put on hold. I look to the future and the things I don't know that I don't know and I am excited for both the daughter and myself. We both get a chance to grow.

And growth is what it's all about.

Windfall

Taxmas is a thing. It came about in my house because being a technical contractor meant not having paid time off, and being a technical contractor meant not making enough to really get ahead to be able to save up for that big gift. It also meant having to tell your kid that the big presents would have to wait a month or two... for Taxmas.

It's not just about the gifts, of course, it's about any larger purchase. Things get outdated, break, or just plain wear out. Clothes get torn and can't be replaced (let's talk about big people and clothes at thrift stores some time), phones stop working, cars stop running and the only thing which can possibly rescue these things comes in the form of a windfall.

We're told we shouldn't spend them. After all, they're for your hard times, or your retirement, or you should change your withholding so you get that small amount more per check instead of all at once. We're told by politicians that we don't deserve assistance because we bought a new couch or phone instead of buying insurance or we bought steak and lobster one day to try to lift the oppressive air and have a small luxury to make us just a little happier.

But that's the thing. When you're poor, every time is a lean time. You get so used to getting by with so little and bending over backwards to stretch your income as far as it can go that when you get that windfall, it's like candy. Eating all the candy at once might be bad for you in the long run, but when you haven't had any for the rest of the year, someone plunking down a snickers bar in front of you brings on feelings of doubt.

Add to that the fact that every store in poor neighborhoods knows you just got your tax return. They rely on it. They advertise for it. They want you to spend it and they have sales designed specifically to take advantage of the fact that you have money you usually don't. You could call it free market economy or a symptom of further economic oppression, but it's real either way. The very thing we shouldn't do, we're encouraged to do... so we do.

We get the new used car and pay cash for the means to get to work. We buy the new phone because not having one means we miss the calls which can lead to better times. We rent to own the new couch because the only thing we have to sit on is folding chairs and pillows (yes, I've been there).  And then we're judged for it.

Now I stand on the middle of the financial scale for the first time in my adult life. A windfall now means an amount of money old me would never be able to conceive of having all at once. Bills vanish, savings can happen and there can still be money left over, so... I don't know what to do. My instinct is to buy new things, but other than the new computers to replace the ones nearing 6 years old nd some new clothes to fit the changing body there's only luxuries to buy. It's a strange place to be for me.

Maybe this year, we won't have to wait until February to celebrate Christmas morning.

Choices

Friday update!

I did it!

I successfully managed to make reasonable choices this week.  Yes, I did give in to some small items, like a piece of a friend's first attempt at making truffles and a spoonful of ice cream, but by and large, it was successful.  I managed to keep to my habits and even improve some of them.

That's the thing I love about this attempt over the others.  By maintaining strict dietary restrictions for long enough, I now can gauge more accurately where I can make those small cheats and not have an overall negative effect.  I can also be reasonably assured that my choices will keep in mind the overall goal.  In short, character matters and discipline is finally a thing. It took me long enough!

If I am honest, I feel like I am on the other side of a very long struggle with myself. All of the self doubt and negativity I have felt for so long is beginning to slough off.  I still have a good amount of anxiety around a lot of things, but honestly?  This journey is showing me things about myself I had forgotten.  It has shown me my strength again, and I am loving it.

In this case, I do actually mean physical strength as well as mental and emotional fortitude.  I can lift and carry a significant amount.  Things others say are heavy are... kind of?  I can jump and duck and even run if I have to.  I can easily step over gaps that even a few scant months ago, I would have doubted my ability to cross.  I am stretching my abilities on the daily by continuing to meet and exceed exercise goals (116% of goals recorded on my phone last week), and I am killing it on the walking.

I had lost track of my walking limits.  You know, the amount of distance I can walk before my legs say "um, dude?  Let's not anymore."  When I first started this journey, it was all about the walking... because I really couldn't.  A simple quarter mile on somewhat flat surface was excruciatingly winding.  My heart would be beating and I could barely catch my breath.  I was worried. That, along with the now removed threat of diabetes were my primary motivations.  Well, that and seeing a picture of myself which showed just how out of shape I really had become.  Either way, those limits were hard.  They were holding me back and they had to be challenged.

So challenge them I did.  This past week, I have found the new one.  about 2.5 miles of walking over an hour period with two small rests of about five minutes each is what my legs can do now.  Sure, it's no 5k and it's not even close to a good hiking trip, but it's awesome to me. It represents progress.  It represents greater freedom.  It inspires me to keep pushing, to keep making these good choices which are increasing my confidence and helping drive back the demons of depression.

Maybe, finally, I can start looking forward.  It's my choice to do so.

362

Prohibition

We've been through all this before. A substance being spurned by those in high office responding to political and financial pressures of their supposed moral high ground. It's been tried. It failed.

It's been linked directly to a massive uptick in organized crime, the deaths of thousands, the criminalizing of people who just want to have some harmless fun, and the rise in popularity of thumbing your nose at the man and putting on your fine clothes to drink bathroom gin and dance to some pretty rocking tunes.

They said it was harmful. They said it was a scourge upon the land and a wounder of her people. They said the stuff was the driver of crime and indolence. It kept people in poverty and it only benefited criminals. That it was only the right thing to do to make it illegal.

They weren't entirely wrong,  the stuff does have real effects which can cause some people to react in ways counter to their own self interest. It can be addictive, and those disposed to the cycles of addiction would do best not to engage in its use. It is that addiction which can cause harm. It is that addiction which should be treated.

But, you know, they don't see it that way.  They want to criminalize things. They want to lock people away because they are afraid. They are afraid the people with addiction will destroy the country because they... use pot.

They want to re-fight the same war that tore families apart and decimated lives. That tore up entire communities in a thirst to provide for a taste people are going to puruse. That destroyed entire communities in a thirst to make money by locking them up.

Yes, we've been here before. With alchohol, in the 80s and 90s with the war on drugs he mentioned, in the 2000s, and it could be argued that we were only beginning to dig back from policies that, frankly, we're targeted towards the poor and the hardest hit were people of color.

But remember: when it comes to the poor, no lives matter to them and it is now clear the overwhelming voice of the people wanting a thing don't matter either.

By the people indeed.

Limits

The edges of what we can accomplish have always fascinated me. Records stand at those edges, tantalizingly out of reach to those striving to be the best at a thing. They keep us from harm and they keep us from success. They are  the most we can do.

When we approach those limits, our body and mind let us know, and we can choose to push. We ignore the warnings of fatigue, mental fog and emotional fragility so we can do more. That's what it's about to me, doing more.

But those limits are that hard edge. It's only through perseverance and dedication that we can actually push through those edges into new territory.  We feel the pain and embrace it in the name of improvement.

Whether it be learning a new language or getting up at a new time, those edges will be highly personal. Each one of us has our own limits imposed on us by our minds and bodies, but there are other limits.

We have our moral and ethical edges, those things we hold to as true. The core of our beliefs  are hard limits. We defend them once established and challenging them is hard. After all, belief is one of the strongest things a human does. It establishes our reality. It also establishes our society.

The limits of a society are different. We go from the personal to the aggregate really fast. Homogeny of belief is at the core of people. When we are talking about societal change, stretching beyond the edges becomes a matter for decades.

When I stretch my personal limits, I get sore legs for a few days. When a society tries to stretch itself beyond its limits, the pain comes out in some terrible ways. People get hurt in the pushing and in the backlash.

But push we must. Whether it be personal, interpersonal, emotional, physical or societal, we must drive ourselves to do better: to *be* better. It is only through the finding and moving of our limits that we can improve.

And we have to be better. Always.

Weakness

Friday update!

I can feel it starting.  That inexorable pull towards bad behaviors.  That siren call towards things I enjoy, but shouldn't.  That tide moving me towards failure. Blah, blah, etc.

Last week I knew why I had to stop eating sugar and had to lose weight.  I had a scare with the BIG D and decided I would rather stick around for some folks. This week, the news of victory over the root causes of that scare has me questioning why I should keep going.

I mean, I *know* why.  If not for these efforts, a 5.2 A1C would not have happened.  I was at least pre-diabetic. Every test, measurement and symptom pointed to it right down to the metallic taste in my mouth.  The only thing I lacked at the time was the money to be able to do anything about it... well, kind of.  I mean, we examined a bit of that in a previous essay.  fear plays a huge role here.  Now I am fearing something else.

Without the immediate threat, keeping myself honest is more difficult.  That's a problem.  It tells me I am at risk of giving up or backsliding.  hell, in some ways I already have.  Sure, I am making my fitness goals (116% of goals last week, on track for similar this week), but there's a thing of blueberry ice cream in the freezer with a couple of spoon marks in it made by me.  There's a cookie I ate, and the fried rice I devoured and... well, you get the point.  I've been cheating because I don't have to worry so much about the sugar.

Except I do. Whether or not the diabetes scare was actual (the doctor seemed skeptical), where my body was and what I was doing had a very adverse effect on my health.  A scary one.  One which had me near paralyzed, unable to move with any quickness, unable to walk up hills and one that hurt my knees and ankles just climbing up or down a single flight of stairs. One which had me tight chested and unable to catch my breath if I over exerted.  There were symptoms galore I could have chosen from, it was the diabetic scare that woke me up, and it is the reaction to that scare which took care not only of those symptoms, but the others as well.

I suppose it all ties to crisis level thinking. I got used to thinking in terms of solutions to immediate problems and spurning the long range in an effort to just keep going.  I needed to years ago, as it kept not only me alive, but my daughter. I had to solve daily problems like getting food and a roof, so thinking about other things was impossible unless they rose to threatening those other things.  The health issues I was facing rose to that level, so I had to change them, but something else began happening in the process, I started to have to thing long range to solve the problem.

The immediate solutions wouldn't work.  I'd simply be left int he position of so many dieters, bouncing back and forth, up and don the scale, peeking ever higher each time.  Hell, it's what I was already doing and I had the weight loss/ workout Facebook groups and posts to prove it. I had to change the method of thinking about the problem, and with this impetus I was able to push the weaknesses aside and concentrate on the solution that would work.

Now it's worked, I need to change the underlying behaviors which lead to justifying a whole bag of candy in one sitting or a 12 pack of soda in a day.  I need to find another reason to care, and I am afraid I won't.  I only hope that fear is enough to drive me away from the weakness for a while until I find the way through.

Depression

The one topic explicitly  requested and the hardest one to write about.

Rather it's one of the easiest to write about, but one of the hardest to say anything new. That's the things about it. It's repetitive. It always has the same message of "you suck" no matter what the actual thoughts are.

It could be anything, really. Feelings of inadequacy are rampant for someone in my industry having the lack of formal education I do, and for someone 47 and single like I am, or someone with a child suffering through that same darkness ... it's constantly repeating its somber soliloquy.

I've dealt with it many ways and at many times. I have embraced the darkness and externalized the feelings in my appearance and demeanor.  I have embraced the darkness and rage and lashed out at everyone and everything. I have fought tooth and nail against the darkness and been left shattered by it. It's tried to kill me more times than I can count and nearly succeeded more than once. It's talking to me even now, telling me that I am fooling myself in thinking this writing has any value. That it's just hubris and I should just give it up. I have more than a couple of times.

Depression lies in the truths it tells. It exaggerates our fears and holds up only the worst of ourselves,  ignoring the good to accentuate the bad, and I let it. It's not the good I need to improve, and it's not the good I need to change, it's the bad. The things that hold me back from improvement are the very things I need to know about the most, and depression tells me all about them.

Because of depression, I know my weakness. Because of depression,  I know my inner arguments.
Because of depression, I am stronger.

Except when I'm not. It's a terrible process, requiring I face that darkness and fight. I have to feel that self loathing and scream in its face. I have to reveal the lies to find the grains of truth it's hiding. That hurts. It's draining. It's fairly constant and it always threatens to drag me down and some day I might lose.

But for now, I choose. Me. I can continue; I will continue. Not today, death. Not today.

Fear

Fear is the little death
It is the mind killer.

Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.

It is not death a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.

Three different quotes, each expressing a different thought on fear, yet I find them all useful in bringing my own fear under the yoke of my will.

Fear is the mindkiller. It will paralyze my thoughts and actions if allowed. It was fear that kept me from going to doctors, or facing difficult truths, or taking the steps I needed to get through some difficult things.

Whether it is fear of failure or fear of retribution, it's really the fear of pain that prompts us to avoid, and in that avoidance we can stifle ourselves. We stop ourselves from taking the risks we need to in that fear. We halt our own progress.

So I will face that fear, I will allow it to pass through me and when it is done only I will remain. The fear is nothing, it is only my self.

Fear is healthy, it saves us from hurt. It is when the imagining of that hurt goes beyond the reasonable possibility that we must take action.

Fear leads to anger, and leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.

It is the personal fears of the other and the unknown which we can then blame for our hurt. We can be angry at them because they are not us. In placing all of the scary possibility on those others,  we begin to believe they wish us harm whether they do or not. We begin to paint all who look like them with the same brush. They are all evil. They deserve to suffer before they do anything to hurt us.

It doesn't matter who the other is, we're very good at finding them. We built entire systems of oppression around this one. Hell, more has been done by this fear than any other.

We fight it by knowing each other. It is only through exposure and time that a people can begin to accept the other as nothing less than themselves. It is through those of us in power positions within our society recognizing that what we fear in that other is not real that we can begin to dismantle those systems.

I must not hate. I must learn.

A man should not fear death so much as fear not having started to live.

This one hits me hard, especially recently. It was the fear of dying before everything was set for the Korray that had me most motivated to do something about my health. That was a mistake.

Now that fear is non existant. I cannot use it to motivate me and already the small, justifying voice begins to sneak in. A small spoon of ice cream. A cookie, a small sip of sugared soda... each one a small step down the slope.

I must fear not starting to live to motivate here. I must look to what I am able to do as the weight continues to drop, and I must look to where that took me and the reasons my journey has had this victory to motivate me to keep going.

I want to run. I want to skate with my daughter,  I want to fight with a rapier at least once more. Those things cannot happen well with my current body.  I must improve myself to live, not to avoid death.

Each of these fears can kill and motivate. How we see those fears can be all we need to find the way to use them. Changing that view is the hard bit.

Health

Friday update!

361.  Yus.  Completed 75% of my fitness goals in being more active.  Yus.  Able to walk a mile last weekend in about 20 minutes and little to no fatigue walking my semi-hilly route. Double yus. All of that is awesome, absolutely, but on Monday comes the big test.  On Monday I go to the doctor.

I've not had a bad relationship with doctors, I just don't like going to them in general.  The doctor means you're sick.  I learned this through years of no insurance because it was too expensive.  People with "real" jobs got insurance.  I spent most of my young adulthood (by which I mean 18-25) either homeless or working jobs that would not provide insurance in that time.  Largely the same jobs that don't offer insurance now, come to think, only the safety net of the ACA to catch people like I was didn't exist.

Because there was no other option, doctors became a thing which only happened when they absolutely had to.  A doctor meant an emergency room and an emergency room meant debt I could not pay.  I went that route more than once.  I had ulcers as a result of acid reflux caused by sleep apnea.  Those ulcers would sometimes get so bad I couldn't sleep and was vomiting up blood.  If any of it was red, to the emergency room I would go.  Don't want die, right?  And in the process of not dying, I would end up thousands in debt I could never reasonably repay *and* eat *and* pay rent. It was strange to have to decide between items all at the tip of the "needs" pyramid, but that was the world we lived in.

Lived in?  It's the world some want to take us back to. The ACA may not be perfect, but it saves lives and livelihoods.  Had I not been in the situation I was I may not be thinking about doctors as the debt causing, fear causing beings I internally do, despite the fact that every time I go to one, I don't get bad or even unexpected news. "Lose weight, exercise, you should be worried about diabetes despite the fact that your pulse, blood pressure and every other indicator show you're healthy."

My daughter does not fear to go to the doctor the same way I do.  She knows she's covered if something goes horribly wrong, she has far less to worry about.  Having her health needs taken care of allows her to concentrate on other things, like school and art and life, not crippling debt caused by an unexpected trauma. Hell, it wasn't until I got *this* job that I stopped really being worried myself.

But today I *am* worried.  A year and a half ago, I had that scare.  The one that said my health was way off kilter and I was heading into a place I might not survive and those old fears came back.  I was unemployed at the time and the ACA was the only thing between me and disaster.  I signed up. I didn't use it.  I froze.  All of those old fears locked in, and I didn't want to hear bad news. Bad news means hard choices, so I had to learn to make hard choices on another front.

A year and a half gone from that scare and nearing two years from the "ERR" on the scale and I am doing far better.  I can make those hard choices.  I have made hard choices on my health and I have brought it back to the road I need to be on.  On Monday I will go to the doctor.  The doctor may tell me I am in trouble or the doctor may say "keep on keeping on."  My bet?  They'll tel me I should lose some weight, that I should be worried about diabetes and recomend more exercise.  I'll say "361. 95 pounds down, able to walk a mile in 20 minutes and making 75% of my goals moving towards 100%.  Bring on your AC1 tests and your talk of pre-diabetes.  Medicine will only help those goals."

I only hope my daughter, and the millions in positions like hers and far, far worse will be able to say the same.

Approval

Yesterday I posted a picture on Facebook.

Not a truly staggering accomplishment, I know, but it opened the floodgates. I started reading posts and the old feelings started flowing. The anger at injustices and the sheer rage and joy and all of the noise I had been quitting in this experiment on essay writing came flooding in.

If I am honest, I have been on Facebook before this, obviously, but. This time it was "like" hunting. I had posted a picture of my new ink and I wanted to see the people liking it and commenting on it. I was craving the approval of my peers.

I had been missing it. These essays are awesome. I love the long form writing, the adherence to a more formal form even if I do tend to take liberties with tone and they dont always adhere to the strictest of formats. I do read through them and fix my transitions, try to hunt down spelling and grammar errors... I digress.

The essays are awesome, but they aren't filling a need Facebook does. I don't get the likes. It may seem trite, but there's research to back it up. We crave approval, especially when sharing inner turmoil or struggle. We want to know we're doing the right thing.

According to one study,  we spend up to 40% of our time self disclosing in some form or other. We like to talk about ourselves. It's not just the selfie crowd, either, it's everyone. Whether it be privately in journals, in public facing websites or in "water cooler" conversations we tend to want people to know and accept us, especially if we are sharing intimate and slightly scary details. It can lead to some negative brhaviors.

In the seeking of that approval, we can inflate our own sense of worth or even lie about our accomplishments. We have seen it in the news most recently with a politician having misled folks about his education, saying he had graduate management training when he had really just received a certificate from manager school at Sizzlers.

I've done it myself, editing the past in an effort to get people to approve of my actions when the truth either would have or wouldn't have caused them to turn away. I can't really defend those actions, because once I realized the lie was mainly for my benefit, I stopped doing it. The result has been decisively positive. The truth makes me happy with myself.

In the end, I think that's what it's really about. We want to be happy. We're nervous that people won't like what we do, so we post our things, we check our sites and we smile at all the little thumbs, hearts and +1s it brings, but in the end I find it a little hollow.

"How strange we love ourselves so much but care more what others think."

Doesn't mean I'm not trying to find ways to get people to read this, though. Maybe if I only put the links in comments, more people will see it in their feeds...

Homeless

Homeless people.

They are the bane of the existence of the susburbanite. Their stench and their needles and their very being seems to fill the average suburbanites with existential dread. They look away or look down and avoid eye contact as they mumble whatever excuse they have for not giving the 50 cents in their pockets.

I get it. I mean, they're scary. They represent everything to fear about failure. They have no job, no money and no place to be. They have no family and no one seems to care enough to give them a space. They are drug addicts and the insane... but that's just the party line.  I know, because I was one of them.

For a little over 4 years I was homeless off and on, and only one of those was by anything that could be considered any kind of choice. I spent time in 5 different cities in 4 different states, traveling about in the late 80s to early 90s. I met the insane and the drug addicts and the dispossessed and I have to tell you something.

They are people. Just like you and me, they are people. They have hopes and dreams and a lot of them wish beyond anything they could find a way out of what is a hard scrabble existence filled with politics, commerce and constant vigilance against The Man (who wants you to be illegal by being in your circumstance) and your fellows.

I have seen cops beat down a man for talking back and moving too slowly in packing his tent in a park. I have seen punks give a skinhead a curby and I have seen those same punks attack random people for looking at them or taking pictures. I have known hunger and thirst to the point I know exactly when you'll consider theft as an option just to eat.

I have known live and joy and laughter as well. I have made some fast friendships that lasted 20+ years and followed us off the streets and into a different existance. I have chosen family and know the tight bonds created by the shared trauma of knowing we will not be protected from the elements this night.

I have known the wisdom of these people. I know what it takes. I know why they stink, and why the needles are there. I know what they mean when they ask for money, and I know who to and not to give it to based solely on how they ask (the scammers have the long stories, most often). I know why you sleep with your boots off and wrap them in your coat as a pillow while you sleep. I know the Krishna Temples will feed you once or twice a week and that shelters are a place of last resort.

These people lives like no others. They see more in a few days than most will in a year, and they want more than anything to be treated with dignity.

So the next time you see that homeless person, think of them apart from what you see initially. Look them in the eye when they ask you a question and tell them the truth. If you don't have the money, try to have the time to let them know. And if you  can, that place right over there has a means of paying for the very food this person needs.

And if you really have the time? Sit and chat. You might just meet some really interesting folks.

Adulting

Adulting.

Even the word itself is juvenile in form and function.  A simple act of rebellion infantalizing the very acts necessary to keep us alive.  A slap in the face of reality and a declaration that "I AM FUN DAMN IT!"  A desperate plea of a wide open heart in the face an uncaring universe. It at once screams "screw you" and "help me" in equal measure and is elegant in its balance.

Or something.  I don't know, hell I don't think half of us know exactly what we're doing half the time.  We wing it, falling back on whatever we have that passes for wisdom and hoping beyond hope that the chips land in our favor more often than not. Some of us have an unfair thumb on the scales, but even we're at the mercy of the ones who own the damned things.

I've had some successes recently.  I've pushed myself really hard to do the things I'm doing.  I read the memories as they appear on Facebook and see myself one or even two years ago and see what I was going through. I see myself 6 and 7 years ago going through these same struggles I am right now with the health and fitness and I failed.  Every time.  But this time.  This time at least feels different, but am I fooling myself?

Every time, it seems like "this time is different."  I would post pictures of the hills I climbed in triumph or the losing of weight and finally being below 400 pounds again and then... I'd slide.  Something would happen and my confidence would be shaken.  usually, it would have to do with money.

I've never bee good with the stuff in my personal life.  I can do money for business or for other people great, just not my own.  I've always had a problem with saving.  I think a lot of it has to do with the times of my early 20s of being on the streets and on the road.  In an environment like that, you have to spend what you have just to live.  Then, once you have the money for nicer things, you buy them while you can... because you can, and tomorrow?  You might not be able to again. So you grab on to your piece of the "American Dream" and buy that PlayStation or that TV or totally fix up your car instead of planning for a tomorrow you're not even sure will be there.

But then it is.

Even if I am not entirely sure how everything is falling into the places it is, I am seizing it with both hands.  We plunged below the poverty line for a good 2 months. It was enough of a reminder of what it's like to need. I've had enough times in my life with Korray that I've had to resort to ramen with broccoli in it for dinner because that's what we had left.  I don't need to go there again. I saw us slipping, so when this job at Hulu came along, I had to make it work.

Not that it's onerous mind you, I love the place.  The people and the work are amazing and supportive.  It's a place I enjoy going to most days, knowing it will be fun and challenging. I just had t... make it work.  Nothing could stop me from going full time.  Tek Systems had touted this as a best path out of contracting and I was determined to make that happen. I even quit something I really was dedicated to in junior derby  because I would. not. fall. again. It was too important.

So I did it. And I am doing it and it's wonderful and I can, for the first time in a very long time see a future.  I have a vision of a tomorrow that doesn't end with me eating cat food in a senior apartment complex praying for my social security check to come. I can see a way out, and it's amazing.  I can schedule bills for auto pay and I now they will not bounce and cause a cascade financial collapse that takes months to dig out of. I can think in terms of "what do I want" instead of "what do we need".

I know not everyone can get as lucky as I did.  Hell, if not for the people I have known and the advantages I have had, I would probably have never gotten as far as I have. But I am here.  and for the first time in my life I can say "OK, so what can you *actually* do about using your advantages to help others." I just have to have the discipline to keep myself from fucking it all up too badly.

I suppose that's what "adulting" is, really.  Fumbling forward and finally being able to make those steps to find your way through the minefield. To act instead of react. To do, even when you really would rather be in bed with a good book and a cup of hot cocoa with little, pink marshmallows.

And then you keep on doing that.

Gaming

Back in 1979, 10 year old me was fascinated.

I had found this world, a world I had no idea existed.  A world with orcs and hobbits and elves.  A world with dragons and grand quests to rescue treasure and a kingdom.  A world with giant spiders and goblins and secrets hidden in dark places. A world brought to life by Bakshi and Rankin in vibrant color on my television screen.  A world I would never want to leave.

I found other worlds.  Worlds written about in books with covers featuring dragons and the women and men who would fight or ride them.  I found farther off worlds, too. Worlds with machines and sentient computers.  Worlds with corporations run wild, dark dystopian worlds where heroes had to fight against the whims of power in an effort to just survive the best they could, and worlds where the heroes only chance was to simply hold out against the horrors hidden in the corners.

I wanted to live those worlds, so I did.

Don't get me wrong, the worlds were not the end all be all, but they were an escape.  An escape from the horrors I faced in this one.  It gave me the chance, for a half an hour during lunch and maybe an hour after school to be someone else, somewhere else.  A place I could win out against the bad people, or slay the monsters and get the gold and accolades of a grateful people as well as the accolades and cheers of my fellow players.  A place that didn't mean I had to be small, or weak or different.

Somewhere along the line, the games and how I played them began to change.  It wasn't just me, either.  These games were teaching us things.  They let us role play out situations and problems we had and likely never would have to face in our teenaged lives.  Problems of meeting people and speaking to them.  We had to role play them out, figure them out and we found that it wasn't always the dice that led to our success.  It wasn't so random as all that, no if we managed to role play around the conflicts, we had even more success.  Sure, you had to kill the monsters, but even the bad guys could potentially be talked out of things with a good argument and the people cheered even louder with a good speech to back it all up so we did that.

And we started taking those things we learned into other kinds of games.  Games with costumes and people and nothing *but* roleplaying.  Sure, we added foam swords and ways to "cast our magics" in the real world through bird seed or simple descriptions or rock paper scissors, but the games were still just games.  We would practice things with people or use our minds to solve complex storylines, dismantling plots and counterplots from story tellers and players alike, but we always went back to our pencils and papers and dice.

These worlds built us, just as we built them.

Our worlds became ones of real armor and wooden weapons.  Worlds where we faced not monsters or bad people, but real foes on the other side of a stick trying their damndest to ring our helms loud enough to force us to fake our own deaths.  A competition of physic and mind and speed to simply touch the other person with the blunted end of 42 inches of steel or a contest to send a golf ball ended shaft or a tennis ball across a crowded battle field into the opposing force.  We fought wars during the day, dreaming of times past and imagined chivalry.  We became paragons of duty and honor and love at night, or at least what we imagined those paragons should be through the lens of Victorian imaginings of what those knights should have been.

We took and taught classes, resurrecting techniques and clothing and fighting styles long dead, and we imagined ourselves as the people who did these things.  We crafted and cooked and brewed and all of this as entertainment and learning, we bonded together in our imaginings and we created households and friends and family. Our 30 year old selves, banding together to stand against the darkness we feared would surround us alone.

We became the world we wanted to be.

We took those lessons and we learned them.  We took them out into the wider world and became those dauntless warriors in our every day lives.  We fought against the tyranny of our circumstances and parlayed them into worlds where the nerds were the winners.  We worked in computers and in technology, sure, but in other worlds as well.  We brought it into science and finance and our ideas have rocked the world.

We brought our entertainment with us, creating new ways of telling our stories through screens large and small.  We brought our comics to life and the world embraced them because they needed that escape.  They needed to see a hero win.

Now I come to those worlds in thanks.  I teach them to the new generations and I bring them to my friends and family.  Now, more than ever, we need these worlds.  We need these times together to and in the shared victory of slaying the dragons we face every day.  To remind us that friends and family working together can overcome the odds and win out.  We can take 3-4 hours and sit together, spending a good chunk of it just chatting things out, or spend a weekend as someone else in the woods or spend a Saturday night on a campus somewhere dressed in satin, leather and velvet pretending to be the monsters.

I am a gamer.  We live in this world while we visit others from time to time.  The worlds may be imaginary, but the lessons they taught us are real.  We learned through them, and we became through them and those worlds have shaped us as we learned to shape our own.  We are geeks and freaks and we stand together as we change the world.

Just be careful not to become the darkness when you do.

Fitness

Friday update!

OK, so it has become a bit of a tradition on my Facebook to do these Friday updates. Since I am not reading Facebook... No, really.  I only went on there and looked at the alerts because someone sent me a link to a funny video via messenger!  I wasn't reading the timeline or anything!

Anyway!  The Friday update.

As people who have been following might remember, I had a problem in that I was only making 36% of my fitness goals.  People who have been following also may have noticed I don't hold much for allowing myself to backslide on this.  Since then, I have been making 56% of my fitness goals with plans to add more walks over the weekend.

That was really where I was falling off was on the weekends.  I was also taking Lyft to go too many places or renting a Zipcar.  While this is all well and good if I need to, I also need to remember that a HUGE portion of my fitness success has to do with the fact that I am eschewing driving in favor of busing because busing means walking and walking means more exercise and... you get the picture.

On the one hand, it will allow me to walk more, but it will also save money.  and right now?  Every spare dollar goes into paying down debt and eliminating student loans. Over the years, I had fallen woefully behind on some things.  If I am going to make my goals of home ownership in 5 years, I need to get better at that, and that necessarily means the spare stuff now goes to take care of when I had no spare stuff.

All of this, of course, has most to do with my having a job which allows me the comfort to be able to take care of these things.  It's extremely difficult to worry about your fitness or your credit rating if you don't have food security or housing security, and this job means I have both.

I was worried for a bit there.  As mentioned in my last post, I had my annual review.  I hadn't had the best reviews in the past, and that came as somewhat of a surprise the first time.  I hadn't been getting a lot of negative feedback at Real, but that first review hit hard.  They had a policy of comparing your progress with your peer progress.  If you did not do as good or better than your peers, you received a bad review.  In the first review, it was attendance.  While I was within the bounds of the leave policy, I had missed 2 more days than my peers.  That meant a Personal Improvement Plan which followed me for the next year.

Hulu is different.  The review was about the level of work in comparison to the job and the skills displayed.  I am "consistently working above" my job level, which means a promotion and an 8% raise. Booya.  After years of feeling that I wasn't good enough and fearing that my impostor syndrome was actually me being an impostor, I can now say with confidence that I *am* a good tester.  That boost was just what I needed.

See, the anxiety around the job front along with generalized anxiety and a feeling that I was failing myself in some other areas was effecting my ability to avoid self destructive behaviors.  I was turtling on paying some bills I needed to for fear I would need the money because I was going to lose my job.  A ridiculous assumption, sure, but one which some people with depression can attest is overwhelming when it hits.

But it doesn't need to hit anymore.  I can relax a little and enjoy while I continue to make the improvements I need to.  I mean, hey, if I can get a promotion and an 8% raise this year, what can I do in the future?  Fine, fine, I do need to address a small piece of constructive feedback.  Apparently there is a feeling I can be a bit condescending if someone doesn't know a thing I think they should, or if someone comes across as willfully ignorant or constantly forgets an important piece of process.

Pff.  Whatever.  ;)

And that's what all of this is about.  A quest for constant improvement.  Whether it is my fitness, my job or my emotional well being, I need to take the steps I must to get to where I want to be.  Right now that's more "not that" than "yes, this", but I'll figure that out.  In the mean time, 364 on the scale, higher up on the job ladder, less me to move,  more money in the checks, and goals.  I think I am doing pretty well.

Cigarettes

This evening I reached for a cigarette.

There weren't any, of course, I stopped smoking a few years back, but this evening I reached for one.  It wasn't necessarily that I had a bad evening, although a SERIOUSLY bad run on Overwatch was the order of the day.  I mean, the hero selection on mystery heroes was not in my favor, but I was playing for poop. No, it wasn't that, per se.

It wasn't necessarily that I read the news and I worry.  My friends are at greater risk every day.  Immigrants are in danger (remember, when they say "every crime" they mean every.  It's a misdemeanor to cross the border illegally), refugees are in danger, our country has been declared a "flawed democracy", our president is a laughing stock around the world, he's posturing like mad, wants to build more nuclear weapons (because the Russians have 700 more than we do, you know.  Why not be able to blow all life away a few more times!), relations on our own borders are rocky, they want to enforce federal drug laws on a nation that wants pot... No, it's not necessarily all that.  But what?

Well,  maybe this? About twelve years ago, I had a full time job at Real Networks.  I got it without an interview and I was slightly out of my depth.  I learned a lot, I tried a lot, but in the end I was let go with a tidy severance. The reviews while there consist of the only professional annual reviews I have ever had.  I will have my third soon, but it's not necessarily that, either, it was something else.

It was instinct.  I was relaxed, I had just quit out of Overwatch and I just... absently reached for what looked like a pack of cigarettes out of the corner of my eye.  No thought, just 30 years of habit rearing its head. It's been a while since that's happened.  I mean, I wasn't craving a cigarette and I didn't miss them when I realized what I was doing, but it was there.  That habit. It got me to thinking.

We are creatures of habit.  We know this, yet we allow ourselves to fall into patterns of self harm.  We let them consume us over time, justifying them as just.. something to help me feel better.  Some of the habits are small things.  The ones that don't *really* matter until they really, really do.  You know, like cigarettes or alcohol or pot. Then there are the really self harmful ones.  The ones that we cant help, even though they damage our chances at success.  The self sabotaging behaviors that lead us towards the failure we internally believe we deserve.  The hard to face things.  *Vincent Price voice* The monsters in the darkness.

OK, so that's a little melodramatic, but you get the point.  I need to be vigilant.  I am having great success, but I know me.  I see some of the old habits creeping in as the stress of keeping all this together starts to grow. I see the avoidance of responsibilities or commitments, and the internal struggle to just keep going.  I need to take that look into myself and find the way out.  They are nothing more than habits, and I have already broken one habit from my youth.  If I can beat cigarettes and have nothing more than an absent reaching for them as a reminder?  I'll take my odds that I can beat these, too.

I need to.

Noise

It's loud.

The cacophony  in my head and about the world is a riot of noise and fury. It overwhelms the senses and forces attention be paid. I have no choice but to ride along and allow it to carry me through, but there are small things which allow me to corral the wild things in my mind and bring about a semblance of order. One of those is writing.

Primarily, I have been doing that writing on Facebook, and much of that writing has been political. Not surprising, given the circumstances surrounding a certain Cheeto in Chief, but it only fuels the rage. I don't get to release that rage. I get to either have militant agreement or disagreement in that hyper-polarized forum. It leads to rancor, it leads to hurt feelings and willful ignorance on the part of the reader or myself and it serves to do... not much. "The din in my head, it's too much and it's no good."

So I seek out another forum. One which will allow me to practice this catharsis for myself without the distraction. It will allow me to collect thoughts and share them in a long form, not restricted by the tl;dr lifestyle of social media. One which allows me to write essays and doesn't necessarily demand a persistent checking of alerts and responses adding to the demands of an already busy mind. Fewer beeps and whistles and buzzes letting me know that some friend or other has either agreed or some stranger has disagreed with something I said. It quiets the mind to not have those demands.

I guess I am seeking solitude in some ways. I don't expect many will find this blog, since I don't really plan on sharing it out too widely. It's mainly for me and my musings, after all. A way to think about things for myself and get them out of my head where I can look at them. I mean, sure, I'll probably get some readers, and those readers might even comment, but all in all this will not be the constant ping... ping... ping... like  DNS attack on my brain. I want to be able to think again, and this will help.

Welcome to.