I've been thinking about politics a lot lately. Okay, always. I like politics, but it (they?) drive me crazy and make my life miserable. I'd be a much happier person if I didn't care about Big Things, but I honestly haven't the faintest idea how anyone can NOT care about Big Things.
Specifically, my recent focus has been on a) the Republican Presidential candidates and b) the OWS Movement.
(First, let me preface anything that follows by admitting that I have actually read and/or watched very little of the "news" available out there. For instance, I can't handle watching videos of police/protestors conflicts. It would give me a more informed perspective, but I suspect it would also make me exceptionally angry and depressed and increase my feelings of futility and hopelessness. I also tend not to read every "article" I see links for that are on liberal-leaning websites. I would probably agree with them, but I'm not looking for polemical material. Which is why I don't read stuff from notably right-wing sources, either. I try to save my reading time for select items that I hope will provide intelligent insight and/or actual information. I want data, facts, numbers, and/or well-reasoned arguments that consider all aspects of the issue. And that makes up a fairly small percentage of "news" I come across.)
I don't remember what prompted this train of thought while I was at work the other day, but it occurred to me that too many people are failing to understand the gravity of the American Presidency.
The President of the United States needs to be smart: both intellectually and practically. This person needs to be confident. This person needs to have ideas for the future, but a good grasp of reality. This person needs to be able to communicate well with our own citizens as well as people in other countries. This person needs to know what the hell is going on in the world, to be able to weigh pros and cons of issues, and to be able to make sacrifices and compromises when necessary. This person needs to be capable of making short-term and long-term policy decisions based on good judgment and also needs to be able to make sound decisions quickly in the face of crises.
Quite frankly, I don't think there is a single Republican candidate capable of fulfilling all those requirements. The U.S. President should not just be the most prominent talking head spewing the rhetoric of one political party's machine. S/He should definitely not have gained office by being the biggest windbag who complains the loudest and slings the most mud. Having adamant ideological opinions doesn't make you qualified. Having the strongest opinions on policy issues is not all it takes to make you World Leader material. In fact, I think having excessively strong opinions with no ability or desire to listen to the other side makes a candidate for any political office dangerous in addition to being useless.
...........
While the Republican candidates just annoy me with their almost complete lack of any redeeming qualities, the Occupy Wall Street movement is more fraught with difficulties for me because it calls into question my own redeeming qualities. It highlights the rifts I already struggle with between what I have and what I want, between how I live and what I believe. In my mind I cheer the struggles of those who are rallying together and risking their safety to make a statement that America needs another revolution. But I still get up every day, feeling like tired crap, then churn through gasoline and fight with traffic to go to a corporate job at a company I don't respect so I can spend more money than I earn on things that make my life either easier or more pleasant. I am eating up the Earth in an attempt to enjoy life, and it isn't working.
But how realistic are my other choices at this point? I'm already hopelessly entwined in the consumer system, with $60k of student loan debt, lots of credit card debt, and an upside-down mortgage thanks to the revaluation of our house last year that dropped it's value by something like 30% in just 2 years. If I were to quit work to have the time and energy to use my life for a better purpose, the effect on our finances and credit ratings would be catastrophic, and I would be miserable. (I have a whole separate post in the works regarding poverty, money, etc.)
I am where I am for a lot of reasons, and there are a lot of people who envy where I am. I've had a lot of advantages and luck in my life that enabled me to make the decisions I made. I know this. I also realize there are decisions I could make that would bring me into better alignment with what I believe without destroying my life. I can take small steps, make gradual changes. But I'm 1000 times better at planning than doing, and I never seem to simultaneously have both the time and the energy to work on figuring out what to do, let alone setting any plans in motion.
So, the Occupy Movement has a) increased my ability to see and appreciate my blessings and my privileges, and b) made me realize that getting other people closer to where I am is more important than me getting closer to the 1%. Just because any reforms, changes, and improvements might not directly benefit me personally doesn't mean they aren't worthwhile. What makes them worthwhile is their effectiveness in improving the lives of people who have less than me. Which is a lot of people. A lot.
At its simplest, the Occupy Movement makes me feel guilty that I'm not living my own principles while at the same time giving me hope that maybe enough people have finally been pushed too far and aren't going to back down until our country makes some serious changes in it's attitude and resulting government policies. Hopefully in the near future both me and my country will be on a road to a better way of living.
Monday, November 14, 2011
Friday, September 9, 2011
Thanks, But No Thanks
I was just reading a blog about women focusing on their strengths and good points rather than being down on themselves. I won't refer to it by name because I'm just using it as an example of the myriad books, blogs, etc. which are written for the purpose of reassuring women that they are not failures and their lives don't have to suck. Why women in particular are so down on themselves I'm not sure, but apparently we are and so this sort of self-helpy thing sounds positive on the surface. But then you read the bio for the authoress of said book, blog, etc.:
Super Successful Sexy Lady is a bilingual attorney who has survived cancer, traveled to Africa to do charity work, and now somehow makes $250,000 a year while providing free legal services to the poor, running marathons, maintaining an organic farm, raising three genius children, and enjoying her perfect marriage to her husband of 20 years who also makes a quarter of a million dollars a year. Oh, and she also has time to write this book, blog, etc. while traveling between her three homes in New York City, Connecticut, and the Bahamas.
But none of these things are necessary in order to be a happy, healthy and good person, she claims. All women can find the satisfaction/success/happiness/self-confidence/inner peace/strength she has.
Which is, of course, why you also see so many books, blogs, etc. on happiness and/or self-confidence and/or blending a successful career with perfect motherhood which are written by single moms with no college education who are living below the poverty line. Right?
I call Bullshit.
The very women who represent the pinnacle of overachieving womanhood are the ones writing the books, blogs, etc. which tell us to stop expecting ourselves to become overachieving women. These women reassure you that no matter what you do, as long as you are trying to be a good mom, you are one, which is potentially bullshit to begin with, but on top of that, they assume that every adult woman is a mother as well. What about those of us still struggling with our decisions not to have children or inabilities to have them? They also often assume that you are working on, have achieved, or gave up a professional career, but what about those of us who got fired? Were laid off because of the economy? Have only worked minimum wage or "unskilled" jobs? Are on disability or otherwise can't work?
Similarly, the kind of people who push you to think positive 24/7 are the kind of people who haven't struggled with chronic and serious depression or other mental illnesses and/or are not prone to philosophical crises and bouts of existential angst. They usually come by their upbeat and cheerful personalities naturally. And if you're reading advice from someone who was once in their own mental abyss and managed to find their way out, they now assume that their method or experience will serve as a guide for everyone else. I really do hate it when someone says: If I could do it, so can you.
This too is Bullshit.
No two people on this entire planet are exactly the same. That doesn't stop us from comparing ourselves to one another and wanting what other people have. It does, however, make it very hard for any given person to give any other person useful advice. The best people to turn to are those you already have something in common with. My friends and family know me, and I know them. We come from the same backgrounds or have shared the same experiences or have some common interests or have compatible personalities already. So when we turn to one another for guidance, support, reassurance, and advice there are already certain connections between us that make what we say and do at least more palatable and probably more appropriate to our personal situations.
I'm not saying that all self-help books or positive thinking blogs are worthless. I'm just saying that when someone who represents everything I always thought I should be tells me to be happy with who I am or when someone who has the life I want tells me to be happy what I have, my gut reaction is to want to punch them in the face.
Super Successful Sexy Lady is a bilingual attorney who has survived cancer, traveled to Africa to do charity work, and now somehow makes $250,000 a year while providing free legal services to the poor, running marathons, maintaining an organic farm, raising three genius children, and enjoying her perfect marriage to her husband of 20 years who also makes a quarter of a million dollars a year. Oh, and she also has time to write this book, blog, etc. while traveling between her three homes in New York City, Connecticut, and the Bahamas.
But none of these things are necessary in order to be a happy, healthy and good person, she claims. All women can find the satisfaction/success/happiness/self-confidence/inner peace/strength she has.
Which is, of course, why you also see so many books, blogs, etc. on happiness and/or self-confidence and/or blending a successful career with perfect motherhood which are written by single moms with no college education who are living below the poverty line. Right?
I call Bullshit.
The very women who represent the pinnacle of overachieving womanhood are the ones writing the books, blogs, etc. which tell us to stop expecting ourselves to become overachieving women. These women reassure you that no matter what you do, as long as you are trying to be a good mom, you are one, which is potentially bullshit to begin with, but on top of that, they assume that every adult woman is a mother as well. What about those of us still struggling with our decisions not to have children or inabilities to have them? They also often assume that you are working on, have achieved, or gave up a professional career, but what about those of us who got fired? Were laid off because of the economy? Have only worked minimum wage or "unskilled" jobs? Are on disability or otherwise can't work?
Similarly, the kind of people who push you to think positive 24/7 are the kind of people who haven't struggled with chronic and serious depression or other mental illnesses and/or are not prone to philosophical crises and bouts of existential angst. They usually come by their upbeat and cheerful personalities naturally. And if you're reading advice from someone who was once in their own mental abyss and managed to find their way out, they now assume that their method or experience will serve as a guide for everyone else. I really do hate it when someone says: If I could do it, so can you.
This too is Bullshit.
No two people on this entire planet are exactly the same. That doesn't stop us from comparing ourselves to one another and wanting what other people have. It does, however, make it very hard for any given person to give any other person useful advice. The best people to turn to are those you already have something in common with. My friends and family know me, and I know them. We come from the same backgrounds or have shared the same experiences or have some common interests or have compatible personalities already. So when we turn to one another for guidance, support, reassurance, and advice there are already certain connections between us that make what we say and do at least more palatable and probably more appropriate to our personal situations.
I'm not saying that all self-help books or positive thinking blogs are worthless. I'm just saying that when someone who represents everything I always thought I should be tells me to be happy with who I am or when someone who has the life I want tells me to be happy what I have, my gut reaction is to want to punch them in the face.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Of chickens and libraries and life
For the past couple of years I've been struggling with the idea that I'd like to be a farmer. Don't laugh. Okay, go ahead. It is sort of funny. But, I am serious. I've read numerous articles in Organic Gardening, Martha Stewart Living, and even the local newspaper about raising chickens or heritage animal breeds, or about people who have given up the 9-to-5-grind for the honest, wholesome work of raising organic crops, and they grab me by the insides and pull hard. I believe that small-scale local farming, especially organic farming, is environmentally necessary, economically beneficial, nutritionally superior, and even morally imperative. The idea calls to me in part because of my love of gardening. I want an excuse to stay home and work outside, and to have enough work to keep me busy if I were to stay home all day. I want it to be meaningful and productive work. I want to spend my time with plants and animals. I want to get up and look out at vast fields at sunrise, to smell hay, to make my own composted manure, to eat fresh eggs from my chickens, to have a barn with animals of some kind in it. My heart wants to be a farmer, while my mind and my body scream, "Are you freaking kidding, Girlfriend?!" because there are certain realities which my farm fantasies ignore, like animal pests and diseases, and the intense labor and long hours required.
Because you see, I am an intensely lazy person --physically, at least. I always have been. I liked bike riding as a child, but not too fast or too far or uphill. I didn't really like playing games that required running, like kickball or tag. I was sort of jealous of people who could do gymnastics, so I was proud when I could muster enough courage to be able to pull myself up on a bar and hang upside down. But I don't know if I ever did manage to cross those sets of parallel monkey bars on fancy swing sets. If I could do one or two I was usually pretty happy with myself.
I preferred indoor activities. I liked playing pretend and drawing and coloring and painting and jigsaw puzzles and writing and more than anything else in the world: reading. What I remember most was playing house, playing librarian, playing teacher, and reading, reading, reading, reading. I LOVED going to any library. Even as a child I loved the hushed solemnity and the smell of all those books. I wanted to quietly browse for hours and pick out dozens of books to take home and read or reread. I loved searching in the card catalog and writing down call numbers. My favorite was the towering Morris Library on the SIUC campus, filled with not just rooms but FLOORS full of books. When I was somewhere between 5 and 7 and my dad was in grad school, he would take me with him. In awe, I would follow him up the wide, echoing stairwell, and then settle myself on a high stool at the tall tables near the card catalog to use the little tiny pencils and scrap cards for notes as I pretended I was doing some sort of important library work. I would sometimes look through the card catalogs there at the incomprehensible titles, or browse through the shelves of academic tomes and wonder if someday any of those books would be interesting.
And now I profile those books for a living. My 7-to-5-daily-grind involves working for a corporate business that sells those books to the very same library that enchanted me as a child. I hate working for a corporate business. This is not what I ever wanted to do. I wanted to be a writer or a teacher or a librarian, and instead I became a teacher, got fired, had already indebted myself for the rest of my life getting a master's degree to be a teacher so I couldn't afford to go back to grad school to become a librarian, and managed to land my current job out of luck and desperation. In some ways, it is the best job I've ever had. In other ways, not so much.
One major drawback is that I don't feel like I'm making a difference in the world. As a babysitter and then a nanny and then an early childhood teacher I was helping to raise interesting, loving, fascinating children. At the law library, well, the law library was a fun job because I was working at a library and socializing and/or flirting like a mad fiend. But I was helping people in a variety of ways, and learning about library work at the same time. It was that experience which impressed my current employers when I applied for my job. But now? Now I commute 2 heart-shriveling hours a day to essentially churn out sales for a company that doesn't pay me what I think I ought to be making for the amount of intelligence I bring to the job. It doesn't even make good use of my intelligence, and it doesn't allow for much variation in my duties, so I get bored and frustrated frequently. And there's no moral compensation that at least the world is a better place because I do what I do. This is not the adult life I had planned.
It wouldn't be accurate to claim that I was a really happy child. I was a precocious, opinionated, backtalking, quick-to-anger little girl who was always right and was obsessed with fairness, but who also had bouts of debilitating shyness and often thought she was unlovable and unloved. I did know that many people loved me and many people liked me. I did know that despite the fact that I could be a horrid brat, there were still many people who thought I was funny and admired my intelligence and talents. And I wasn't a morose child. I just lived in my head more than many people probably do, and I never felt quite normal. But that was okay, because someday I was going to grow up and life was going to be everything I wanted. Not that I would necessarily be rich and/or famous, just very well off in every way doing something fulfilling and sort of impressive.
I've come so far away from those visions of childhood, and it makes me sad. I still have most of the character flaws and the same frustrations with the world, but I've lost so much of the ability to enjoy myself which balanced things out. I've been out of school for 8 years, and I feel like my brain is rotting away. I don't have time to read for hours on end. I don't go to libraries anymore. I don't paint or draw or color. I don't write except for these entries. I don't even have a bicycle anymore. I don't play. Everything is about responsibilities and worrying and doing the unpleasant things that have to get done, or avoiding doing them by doing something else that is really sort of a waste of time, like sitting on the couch in front of a movie. Okay, I spend a lot of time on garden fantasizing and planning, but I could get away with spending a lot less time on that so that I would have time for other things.
But this goes back to me being an essentially lazy person who lives predominantly inside her own head. Some people work full time, maintain the small farm where they live, write books on the side, and still find time to raise a family, go to church, and do volunteer work. And some of those people even do it with less money than we make. I have NO CLUE AT ALL how these people do half of that, let alone all of it. And quite frankly, I'm not sure I want to know how they do it. Or at least, I'm not sure I could ever truly understand how they do it. I still have big ideas and big hopes, only now they tend to be about throwing in the consumer towel and forging a simpler life with honest, back-breaking work and sacrifice. But I don't honestly think that would make me happy, either. Just where is the soul-fulfillment that I seek? Does it require a massive change or can I find it within the conditions which already circumscribe my life? Can I even break the habits causing the problems in my current life? How? And when?
Will I ever own chickens? Will I find time to go to libraries once again and revel in the experience of just being there? Will I stop spending all my time and money on plants? Will I ever use my watercolor paints I've ambitiously kept around for at least 10 years now? Will I ever write a book or even a post more than 3 other people read? Will I ever again look to the future with more excitement than aversion? Will I ever stop writing this post and go to bed??
Because you see, I am an intensely lazy person --physically, at least. I always have been. I liked bike riding as a child, but not too fast or too far or uphill. I didn't really like playing games that required running, like kickball or tag. I was sort of jealous of people who could do gymnastics, so I was proud when I could muster enough courage to be able to pull myself up on a bar and hang upside down. But I don't know if I ever did manage to cross those sets of parallel monkey bars on fancy swing sets. If I could do one or two I was usually pretty happy with myself.
I preferred indoor activities. I liked playing pretend and drawing and coloring and painting and jigsaw puzzles and writing and more than anything else in the world: reading. What I remember most was playing house, playing librarian, playing teacher, and reading, reading, reading, reading. I LOVED going to any library. Even as a child I loved the hushed solemnity and the smell of all those books. I wanted to quietly browse for hours and pick out dozens of books to take home and read or reread. I loved searching in the card catalog and writing down call numbers. My favorite was the towering Morris Library on the SIUC campus, filled with not just rooms but FLOORS full of books. When I was somewhere between 5 and 7 and my dad was in grad school, he would take me with him. In awe, I would follow him up the wide, echoing stairwell, and then settle myself on a high stool at the tall tables near the card catalog to use the little tiny pencils and scrap cards for notes as I pretended I was doing some sort of important library work. I would sometimes look through the card catalogs there at the incomprehensible titles, or browse through the shelves of academic tomes and wonder if someday any of those books would be interesting.
And now I profile those books for a living. My 7-to-5-daily-grind involves working for a corporate business that sells those books to the very same library that enchanted me as a child. I hate working for a corporate business. This is not what I ever wanted to do. I wanted to be a writer or a teacher or a librarian, and instead I became a teacher, got fired, had already indebted myself for the rest of my life getting a master's degree to be a teacher so I couldn't afford to go back to grad school to become a librarian, and managed to land my current job out of luck and desperation. In some ways, it is the best job I've ever had. In other ways, not so much.
One major drawback is that I don't feel like I'm making a difference in the world. As a babysitter and then a nanny and then an early childhood teacher I was helping to raise interesting, loving, fascinating children. At the law library, well, the law library was a fun job because I was working at a library and socializing and/or flirting like a mad fiend. But I was helping people in a variety of ways, and learning about library work at the same time. It was that experience which impressed my current employers when I applied for my job. But now? Now I commute 2 heart-shriveling hours a day to essentially churn out sales for a company that doesn't pay me what I think I ought to be making for the amount of intelligence I bring to the job. It doesn't even make good use of my intelligence, and it doesn't allow for much variation in my duties, so I get bored and frustrated frequently. And there's no moral compensation that at least the world is a better place because I do what I do. This is not the adult life I had planned.
It wouldn't be accurate to claim that I was a really happy child. I was a precocious, opinionated, backtalking, quick-to-anger little girl who was always right and was obsessed with fairness, but who also had bouts of debilitating shyness and often thought she was unlovable and unloved. I did know that many people loved me and many people liked me. I did know that despite the fact that I could be a horrid brat, there were still many people who thought I was funny and admired my intelligence and talents. And I wasn't a morose child. I just lived in my head more than many people probably do, and I never felt quite normal. But that was okay, because someday I was going to grow up and life was going to be everything I wanted. Not that I would necessarily be rich and/or famous, just very well off in every way doing something fulfilling and sort of impressive.
I've come so far away from those visions of childhood, and it makes me sad. I still have most of the character flaws and the same frustrations with the world, but I've lost so much of the ability to enjoy myself which balanced things out. I've been out of school for 8 years, and I feel like my brain is rotting away. I don't have time to read for hours on end. I don't go to libraries anymore. I don't paint or draw or color. I don't write except for these entries. I don't even have a bicycle anymore. I don't play. Everything is about responsibilities and worrying and doing the unpleasant things that have to get done, or avoiding doing them by doing something else that is really sort of a waste of time, like sitting on the couch in front of a movie. Okay, I spend a lot of time on garden fantasizing and planning, but I could get away with spending a lot less time on that so that I would have time for other things.
But this goes back to me being an essentially lazy person who lives predominantly inside her own head. Some people work full time, maintain the small farm where they live, write books on the side, and still find time to raise a family, go to church, and do volunteer work. And some of those people even do it with less money than we make. I have NO CLUE AT ALL how these people do half of that, let alone all of it. And quite frankly, I'm not sure I want to know how they do it. Or at least, I'm not sure I could ever truly understand how they do it. I still have big ideas and big hopes, only now they tend to be about throwing in the consumer towel and forging a simpler life with honest, back-breaking work and sacrifice. But I don't honestly think that would make me happy, either. Just where is the soul-fulfillment that I seek? Does it require a massive change or can I find it within the conditions which already circumscribe my life? Can I even break the habits causing the problems in my current life? How? And when?
Will I ever own chickens? Will I find time to go to libraries once again and revel in the experience of just being there? Will I stop spending all my time and money on plants? Will I ever use my watercolor paints I've ambitiously kept around for at least 10 years now? Will I ever write a book or even a post more than 3 other people read? Will I ever again look to the future with more excitement than aversion? Will I ever stop writing this post and go to bed??
Friday, August 12, 2011
Why I Love Facebook
People who think Facebook is some sort of apocalypse for actual relationships couldn't be more wrong. Facebook is directly responsible for maintaining many of my most important relationships.
Thanks to Facebook, I can interact with my brothers and sisters-in-law all the time. I get to hear stories about my nephews and nieces and see pictures of them. We argue with one another, tease each other, and share music, videos, and other things we know the others will appreciate. We can offer support when we're having a bad day and remind each other that we're loved.
The same things are true for my aunts, uncles, and cousins. I am friends with 19 of my 27 cousins and 15 of my 21 aunts & uncles! With a family that large and spread almost all the way across the country, could there be a better way to keep in touch with everyone so easily? Now I often know things before Mom can tell me in our weekly phone calls, and once in awhile I actually know something about someone in the family before she does!
Facebook would already be worth my time for keeping my family so close, but it is also an invaluable link to friends of every kind. All of our friends "here" live at least an hour away and finding time to get together is difficult. Facebook keeps us connected when we are apart. (Heck, it keeps us connected when we're just sitting a few feet away from each other at work!) The same is true for "old" friends. Friends from high school, from college, from previous jobs. Kids I used to babysit. Parents I used to babysit for. Past friends. Best friends. Lifelong friends. Not everyone you ever knew has to stay in your life forever. There are plenty of people from high school I'm not friends with on Facebook. But I've had to say goodbye to too many people in my life that I didn't want to leave. And thanks to Facebook some of them are part of my life again.
Maybe it isn't who you know on Facebook that the naysayers object to, but how you interact with others online. Anyone who thinks the kinds of interaction that occur through Facebook are shallow is also wrong. Maybe they think that sharing funny pictures, favorite videos, and interesting links is too trivial, but quite frankly the same could be said of sitting around drinking together and talking about sports. What matters is that people are connecting with one another in ways that mean something to them. Because of what my friends and family post on Facebook, I see articles that keep me informed about what is going on in my hometown and the world, and I get to read firsthand accounts of newsworthy events all over the country. They make me laugh and they encourage me when I'm having a hard time. In return, I try to do the same for them. We commiserate, we advise, we reassure, we debate, we entertain, we enlighten. Isn't that what relationships are all about?
And I, at least, also get a certain benefit that is extremely important for me: it keeps me connected to the human race. I've always struggled with being both very social and very antisocial, sometimes alternating between the two and sometimes feeling both at the same time. I've always been misanthropic, but I'm at my happiest when I'm surrounded by people whose company I enjoy. Moving to New Hampshire was a triple-whammy of "bad" in this sense. I packed up my life and moved 1000 miles away from the Midwestern university town (1) where virtually all of my social support network remained (2) to a part of the country where the population density makes it virtually impossible to get away from other people (3) and where the vast majority of those people are nothing like the people I was used to dealing with (see #1). In the 8 years since I moved here my misanthropic tendencies have almost completely taken over and my faith in humanity is at a critical low. I truly understand what the term alienation can mean now. I sometimes feel like the worst of deceivers when I try to argue what is best for Society and the Human Race when I don't feel like I belong to either one. But Facebook helps. It reminds me that there are good and interesting people in the world, and that they still allow me to interact with them. It puts a familiar face on opinions and perspectives which are different from my own and, because they come in the voices of people I care about, I have a reason to listen and to try to focus on the common ground between us. Facebook is a reminder of what I have in common with other people and why I have a reason to care about other people.
No, Facebook is not the harbinger of the downfall of Society. Face-to-face relationships are not the only way the Human Race has ever maintained real relationships. Historically, friends and family members used to relocate across oceans and never see each other again, but they stayed in touch for the rest of their lives through letters. And as for quality of communication, while some letter writers may have been quite talented with words, I'm sure there were just as many people who were nearly illiterate but wrote anyway. Or actually were illiterate and paid someone else to transcribe their letters. Verbal communication has always been even less formal. I doubt anyone could find evidence that the inane banter among idiotic Facebook users is any less erudite than the inane face-to-face banter among their idiotic counterparts of past generations.
I admit, I would rather hold my friends' babies than just see pictures. I'd prefer to see my nieces' and nephews' antics in person. I would rather share a meal with my friends and talk for hours. I'm a little jealous of my extended family members who can finagle the time and money to travel and see one another. But life is full of limitations, and when they keep us from doing what we'd like most, Facebook offers us the next best thing. With the added bonus of allowing us to interact with people to whatever degree we are comfortable, at whatever time works best for us, even when we're sick.
Yeah, I know, there are vast avenues of consideration I haven't touched. I've profiled at least a dozen books in the past year or two about the sociological issues and ramifications of technologically-mediated social interaction, yadda yadda yadda. But I'm standing by what I've said here. I spend a lot of time on Facebook and I've considered letting some of it go unread. That's part of the reason I only friend people I have actually met in real life. I'm not dissing online-only friends, but if I'm going to make new friends they need to be flesh-and-blood friends. Otherwise, I don't have enough time now as it is. But that part of me that craves social interaction doesn't want to miss any of the party that is Facebook. It makes me sad that a number of the people I know who have accounts rarely or never use them. I'm sure we'd both say to one another, "But you're missing so much." We'd both be right, and we'd both be wrong. I need Facebook. How much of it I need may change someday. Doing other things instead might be good for me, too. But for now, I'm proud to be a FB junkie.
Thanks to Facebook, I can interact with my brothers and sisters-in-law all the time. I get to hear stories about my nephews and nieces and see pictures of them. We argue with one another, tease each other, and share music, videos, and other things we know the others will appreciate. We can offer support when we're having a bad day and remind each other that we're loved.
The same things are true for my aunts, uncles, and cousins. I am friends with 19 of my 27 cousins and 15 of my 21 aunts & uncles! With a family that large and spread almost all the way across the country, could there be a better way to keep in touch with everyone so easily? Now I often know things before Mom can tell me in our weekly phone calls, and once in awhile I actually know something about someone in the family before she does!
Facebook would already be worth my time for keeping my family so close, but it is also an invaluable link to friends of every kind. All of our friends "here" live at least an hour away and finding time to get together is difficult. Facebook keeps us connected when we are apart. (Heck, it keeps us connected when we're just sitting a few feet away from each other at work!) The same is true for "old" friends. Friends from high school, from college, from previous jobs. Kids I used to babysit. Parents I used to babysit for. Past friends. Best friends. Lifelong friends. Not everyone you ever knew has to stay in your life forever. There are plenty of people from high school I'm not friends with on Facebook. But I've had to say goodbye to too many people in my life that I didn't want to leave. And thanks to Facebook some of them are part of my life again.
Maybe it isn't who you know on Facebook that the naysayers object to, but how you interact with others online. Anyone who thinks the kinds of interaction that occur through Facebook are shallow is also wrong. Maybe they think that sharing funny pictures, favorite videos, and interesting links is too trivial, but quite frankly the same could be said of sitting around drinking together and talking about sports. What matters is that people are connecting with one another in ways that mean something to them. Because of what my friends and family post on Facebook, I see articles that keep me informed about what is going on in my hometown and the world, and I get to read firsthand accounts of newsworthy events all over the country. They make me laugh and they encourage me when I'm having a hard time. In return, I try to do the same for them. We commiserate, we advise, we reassure, we debate, we entertain, we enlighten. Isn't that what relationships are all about?
And I, at least, also get a certain benefit that is extremely important for me: it keeps me connected to the human race. I've always struggled with being both very social and very antisocial, sometimes alternating between the two and sometimes feeling both at the same time. I've always been misanthropic, but I'm at my happiest when I'm surrounded by people whose company I enjoy. Moving to New Hampshire was a triple-whammy of "bad" in this sense. I packed up my life and moved 1000 miles away from the Midwestern university town (1) where virtually all of my social support network remained (2) to a part of the country where the population density makes it virtually impossible to get away from other people (3) and where the vast majority of those people are nothing like the people I was used to dealing with (see #1). In the 8 years since I moved here my misanthropic tendencies have almost completely taken over and my faith in humanity is at a critical low. I truly understand what the term alienation can mean now. I sometimes feel like the worst of deceivers when I try to argue what is best for Society and the Human Race when I don't feel like I belong to either one. But Facebook helps. It reminds me that there are good and interesting people in the world, and that they still allow me to interact with them. It puts a familiar face on opinions and perspectives which are different from my own and, because they come in the voices of people I care about, I have a reason to listen and to try to focus on the common ground between us. Facebook is a reminder of what I have in common with other people and why I have a reason to care about other people.
No, Facebook is not the harbinger of the downfall of Society. Face-to-face relationships are not the only way the Human Race has ever maintained real relationships. Historically, friends and family members used to relocate across oceans and never see each other again, but they stayed in touch for the rest of their lives through letters. And as for quality of communication, while some letter writers may have been quite talented with words, I'm sure there were just as many people who were nearly illiterate but wrote anyway. Or actually were illiterate and paid someone else to transcribe their letters. Verbal communication has always been even less formal. I doubt anyone could find evidence that the inane banter among idiotic Facebook users is any less erudite than the inane face-to-face banter among their idiotic counterparts of past generations.
I admit, I would rather hold my friends' babies than just see pictures. I'd prefer to see my nieces' and nephews' antics in person. I would rather share a meal with my friends and talk for hours. I'm a little jealous of my extended family members who can finagle the time and money to travel and see one another. But life is full of limitations, and when they keep us from doing what we'd like most, Facebook offers us the next best thing. With the added bonus of allowing us to interact with people to whatever degree we are comfortable, at whatever time works best for us, even when we're sick.
Yeah, I know, there are vast avenues of consideration I haven't touched. I've profiled at least a dozen books in the past year or two about the sociological issues and ramifications of technologically-mediated social interaction, yadda yadda yadda. But I'm standing by what I've said here. I spend a lot of time on Facebook and I've considered letting some of it go unread. That's part of the reason I only friend people I have actually met in real life. I'm not dissing online-only friends, but if I'm going to make new friends they need to be flesh-and-blood friends. Otherwise, I don't have enough time now as it is. But that part of me that craves social interaction doesn't want to miss any of the party that is Facebook. It makes me sad that a number of the people I know who have accounts rarely or never use them. I'm sure we'd both say to one another, "But you're missing so much." We'd both be right, and we'd both be wrong. I need Facebook. How much of it I need may change someday. Doing other things instead might be good for me, too. But for now, I'm proud to be a FB junkie.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Heat-Induced Panic Attack
It's 3 o'clock in the morning, and I've probably had a little less than 2 hours of sleep. Why? Because it's bloody hot and I've made a series of unfortunate decisions this summer.
You see, so far this summer, even though we've had a number of days where the temperature went over 90 degrees, the humidity was low and at night it cooled off into the 50s or low 60s. Between open windows and fans, the house would cool off overnight, sleeping ended up not being too difficult, and in the morning I closed up curtains to keep the sun out and the cool air in. It was all working fine and the house never got overwhelmingly hot.
Because of this, it has not been absolutely necessary to use an air conditioner so far this year. And, because installing the air conditioner in the bedroom window (and putting it away in the fall) is an ordeal I'd rather avoid if possible, and because putting it in would mean not being able to use regular fans on the nights when we didn't need the a/c, AND because those nights where we didn't need a/c FAR outweighed the nights it would have been nice AND because I was attempting to encourage my body to adapt itself to the weather instead of resorting to a/c AND because this had been working so far, both air conditioners are still stored away.
You also have to keep in mind that we're approaching 2 dozen nighttime break-in robberies over the past 2-3 weeks, which led us to start pulling the curtains closed at night, which means the cooler night air wasn't getting in very well downstairs even when there WAS cooler night air.
So when it got hot Wednesday, didn't cool down enough Wednesday night, got even hotter yesterday, and was either 84 with a heat index of 89 (National Weather Service) or 82 with a heat index of 88 (Weather Channel) at 1 o'clock int the morning, our house got too damn hot. According to the thermostat for the heater, it is 84 degrees where I am downstairs, which means it is warmer than that on the second floor where our bedroom is.
As you might rightly assume, when I went to bed a few hours ago, it was uncomfortably warm in the bedroom. But since I sleep au naturel, and since I ended up getting up to get the second window fan to help pull cooler air in from both bedroom windows, and since that meant we had a total of 3 fans blowing on us in the bedroom, I assumed that once I had stilled myself and allowed my body to readjust itself, I would do okay. I was sweating a bit and I hate sweating, but I focused on the fact that this was giving the fans something to evaporate and helping to cool me off and eventually I managed to fall asleep.
I know that concerns about being too hot were factoring into my dreams, but right in the middle of dreaming something completely unrelated, I became conscious of feeling extremely overheated. I instantly woke up in a panic --I felt physically stifled and my skin felt hotter than it did when I came home after work when it was about 100 degrees outside. I was sitting up before I was even fully conscious, and my heart was racing and pounding even more than it usually does these days. I was trying to stop hyperventilating. I seemed to have stopped sweating and started wishing I would. In my panic I decided that I had to get the futon mattress from one of the extra bedrooms and drag it downstairs where it would be cooler. It wasn't until I got to the bottom of the stairs that I realized it wasn't noticeably cooler down here anymore.
I opened the front door to the enclosed porch, but that and the partially opened curtains meant that I had to keep my nightgown on now. I was also becoming excessively worried that someone was going to break in anyway, except that instead of me being blissfully unaware and asleep upstairs, I was going to be right there, all by myself, possibly without clothes on because I wasn't sure how much longer I could tolerate having any cloth touching my skin. So I sat there on the edge of the futon on the floor of the library, about to cry, starting to hyperventilate again, and posting my panic on Facebook.
I was also really worried about the cats. Gytha had tried laying near me in bed before I went to sleep, and her sides were heaving so fast I became very concerned about their safety. You would think that if they were overheated they would have sprawled on one of the windowsills downstairs. But they tend to follow me and they were trying to find cool places upstairs to do their sprawling. I was hoping that if I came downstairs where it was cooler it would also be better for them since they would follow me. Of course, we've already covered the lack of cooler-ness downstairs, and they don't actually seem to be showing any signs that they are suffering. Which I'm trying to focus on, because it's going to get even hotter today (Friday) and the house is going to get that much hotter.
So anyway, I drank the rest of the Gatorade I'd started earlier in the evening and had a good cry. In a renewal of panic, I went around throwing open all the windows and curtains down here, and suddenly realized I no longer cared about the stupid burglars. And I started to relax. I was finally able to lay down on the futon and rest for a bit. Except then I started getting this tight, uncomfortable tension that I get in the middle of my shoulders right below my neck. If I keep trying, I can sometimes pop and stretch my shoulders enough to get it to go away. But it made lying there on the futon uncomfortable, so I gave up.
I debated what to do for the remaining hours. If the futon wasn't on top of my puzzle, I'd have done that. Instead I decided to write this out, and I've been at it for about 2 hours. (Which is one of the reasons I don't write more often. I do about 1000 edits during and after writing, and it takes forever!) But in those hours it has cooled off a little bit and I'm feeling relaxed, although I'm starting to get tired again as well. At this point, I'm almost afraid to try to go to sleep again. If I do, waking up in an hour will be painful.
At least I know that this won't happen again. What I really wanted was one of those upright, rolling air conditioners for the bedroom. Then we could use it when we needed it and the windows would still be free for us to open and close as needed. One of my friends at work has one he doesn't need anymore, so I was going to buy it from him. Every time they predicted temps in the 90s I wondered if I should try to arrange to get it from him, but I kept putting it off. Today I realized it was urgent and asked him about it, but for a couple of reasons what we decided was that I would stop by his house and pick it up after work tomorrow/Friday/today. So once I make it through the rest of this night, I won't have to worry about the whole air conditioning ordeal and not being able to sleep anymore. And we might get one or two nights of use before the temps drop back down again, since the predicted high for Sunday is only 78/81 at this point, and the night temps are supposed to get back down into the low 60s by Saturday night.
For as stubborn as I am, for as much of a fighter as I've always been, for as tenacious as I can be, and as resilient as I used to be, it's times like this that make me feel like I've become a total puss. When you consider the hardships our ancestors faced and survived and what people all over the world endure every day, I keep wondering how I would fare if I ever had to face something truly hard. Neither Tim or I have had to fight any life-threatening diseases. My parents don't have dementia or require care at this point. I've never been a victim of any sort of crime. I've never actually suffered due to discrimination. I've never suffered any sort of real personal tragedy. And yet I usually feel like the world is pressing me down and suffocating me, that all the joy has been squeezed out of my life except for tiny bits that leak in. And most of the time when I am happy it is because I'm managing to avoid thinking about or dealing with things that will make me unhappy.
I can't appreciate the fact that I have it really good because all I can see is what isn't good, and I can't figure out how to reverse it. It's like walking around with your eyes closed and constantly complaining about being blind. You have this idea that if you just opened your eyes you wouldn't be blind anymore, but you can't remember how to open your eyes, and so it just makes you complain even more about not being able to remember how to do what you ought to be able to do and what most other people seem to be able to do. You feel guilty because there are other people out there who are truly blind and don't have the choice to just open their eyes, but that still doesn't help you figure out how to fix your own problem.
And in the meantime, I become more anxious about it every day. More guilty. Even when I was unhappy in my younger years, I didn't have panic attacks. Now it's not uncommon for me to have to struggle to just function like a normal person, and panic attacks are an increasingly common part of the picture. Did you know you can hide them, and have them on the inside without anyone knowing, even when you are at work? It's true! Maybe I'm talented after all. HAHAHAHAHA. Yeah, I've circled back out of the depressiony bit and the lack of sleep is apparently kicking in and making me punchy. I'm gonna go try to do something constructive for the remaining hour or so before I have to start getting ready for work. Boy, I hope I don't crash part way through work today. I wonder how many coffees I can carry in to work at one time without dropping them?
You see, so far this summer, even though we've had a number of days where the temperature went over 90 degrees, the humidity was low and at night it cooled off into the 50s or low 60s. Between open windows and fans, the house would cool off overnight, sleeping ended up not being too difficult, and in the morning I closed up curtains to keep the sun out and the cool air in. It was all working fine and the house never got overwhelmingly hot.
Because of this, it has not been absolutely necessary to use an air conditioner so far this year. And, because installing the air conditioner in the bedroom window (and putting it away in the fall) is an ordeal I'd rather avoid if possible, and because putting it in would mean not being able to use regular fans on the nights when we didn't need the a/c, AND because those nights where we didn't need a/c FAR outweighed the nights it would have been nice AND because I was attempting to encourage my body to adapt itself to the weather instead of resorting to a/c AND because this had been working so far, both air conditioners are still stored away.
You also have to keep in mind that we're approaching 2 dozen nighttime break-in robberies over the past 2-3 weeks, which led us to start pulling the curtains closed at night, which means the cooler night air wasn't getting in very well downstairs even when there WAS cooler night air.
So when it got hot Wednesday, didn't cool down enough Wednesday night, got even hotter yesterday, and was either 84 with a heat index of 89 (National Weather Service) or 82 with a heat index of 88 (Weather Channel) at 1 o'clock int the morning, our house got too damn hot. According to the thermostat for the heater, it is 84 degrees where I am downstairs, which means it is warmer than that on the second floor where our bedroom is.
As you might rightly assume, when I went to bed a few hours ago, it was uncomfortably warm in the bedroom. But since I sleep au naturel, and since I ended up getting up to get the second window fan to help pull cooler air in from both bedroom windows, and since that meant we had a total of 3 fans blowing on us in the bedroom, I assumed that once I had stilled myself and allowed my body to readjust itself, I would do okay. I was sweating a bit and I hate sweating, but I focused on the fact that this was giving the fans something to evaporate and helping to cool me off and eventually I managed to fall asleep.
I know that concerns about being too hot were factoring into my dreams, but right in the middle of dreaming something completely unrelated, I became conscious of feeling extremely overheated. I instantly woke up in a panic --I felt physically stifled and my skin felt hotter than it did when I came home after work when it was about 100 degrees outside. I was sitting up before I was even fully conscious, and my heart was racing and pounding even more than it usually does these days. I was trying to stop hyperventilating. I seemed to have stopped sweating and started wishing I would. In my panic I decided that I had to get the futon mattress from one of the extra bedrooms and drag it downstairs where it would be cooler. It wasn't until I got to the bottom of the stairs that I realized it wasn't noticeably cooler down here anymore.
I opened the front door to the enclosed porch, but that and the partially opened curtains meant that I had to keep my nightgown on now. I was also becoming excessively worried that someone was going to break in anyway, except that instead of me being blissfully unaware and asleep upstairs, I was going to be right there, all by myself, possibly without clothes on because I wasn't sure how much longer I could tolerate having any cloth touching my skin. So I sat there on the edge of the futon on the floor of the library, about to cry, starting to hyperventilate again, and posting my panic on Facebook.
I was also really worried about the cats. Gytha had tried laying near me in bed before I went to sleep, and her sides were heaving so fast I became very concerned about their safety. You would think that if they were overheated they would have sprawled on one of the windowsills downstairs. But they tend to follow me and they were trying to find cool places upstairs to do their sprawling. I was hoping that if I came downstairs where it was cooler it would also be better for them since they would follow me. Of course, we've already covered the lack of cooler-ness downstairs, and they don't actually seem to be showing any signs that they are suffering. Which I'm trying to focus on, because it's going to get even hotter today (Friday) and the house is going to get that much hotter.
So anyway, I drank the rest of the Gatorade I'd started earlier in the evening and had a good cry. In a renewal of panic, I went around throwing open all the windows and curtains down here, and suddenly realized I no longer cared about the stupid burglars. And I started to relax. I was finally able to lay down on the futon and rest for a bit. Except then I started getting this tight, uncomfortable tension that I get in the middle of my shoulders right below my neck. If I keep trying, I can sometimes pop and stretch my shoulders enough to get it to go away. But it made lying there on the futon uncomfortable, so I gave up.
I debated what to do for the remaining hours. If the futon wasn't on top of my puzzle, I'd have done that. Instead I decided to write this out, and I've been at it for about 2 hours. (Which is one of the reasons I don't write more often. I do about 1000 edits during and after writing, and it takes forever!) But in those hours it has cooled off a little bit and I'm feeling relaxed, although I'm starting to get tired again as well. At this point, I'm almost afraid to try to go to sleep again. If I do, waking up in an hour will be painful.
At least I know that this won't happen again. What I really wanted was one of those upright, rolling air conditioners for the bedroom. Then we could use it when we needed it and the windows would still be free for us to open and close as needed. One of my friends at work has one he doesn't need anymore, so I was going to buy it from him. Every time they predicted temps in the 90s I wondered if I should try to arrange to get it from him, but I kept putting it off. Today I realized it was urgent and asked him about it, but for a couple of reasons what we decided was that I would stop by his house and pick it up after work tomorrow/Friday/today. So once I make it through the rest of this night, I won't have to worry about the whole air conditioning ordeal and not being able to sleep anymore. And we might get one or two nights of use before the temps drop back down again, since the predicted high for Sunday is only 78/81 at this point, and the night temps are supposed to get back down into the low 60s by Saturday night.
For as stubborn as I am, for as much of a fighter as I've always been, for as tenacious as I can be, and as resilient as I used to be, it's times like this that make me feel like I've become a total puss. When you consider the hardships our ancestors faced and survived and what people all over the world endure every day, I keep wondering how I would fare if I ever had to face something truly hard. Neither Tim or I have had to fight any life-threatening diseases. My parents don't have dementia or require care at this point. I've never been a victim of any sort of crime. I've never actually suffered due to discrimination. I've never suffered any sort of real personal tragedy. And yet I usually feel like the world is pressing me down and suffocating me, that all the joy has been squeezed out of my life except for tiny bits that leak in. And most of the time when I am happy it is because I'm managing to avoid thinking about or dealing with things that will make me unhappy.
I can't appreciate the fact that I have it really good because all I can see is what isn't good, and I can't figure out how to reverse it. It's like walking around with your eyes closed and constantly complaining about being blind. You have this idea that if you just opened your eyes you wouldn't be blind anymore, but you can't remember how to open your eyes, and so it just makes you complain even more about not being able to remember how to do what you ought to be able to do and what most other people seem to be able to do. You feel guilty because there are other people out there who are truly blind and don't have the choice to just open their eyes, but that still doesn't help you figure out how to fix your own problem.
And in the meantime, I become more anxious about it every day. More guilty. Even when I was unhappy in my younger years, I didn't have panic attacks. Now it's not uncommon for me to have to struggle to just function like a normal person, and panic attacks are an increasingly common part of the picture. Did you know you can hide them, and have them on the inside without anyone knowing, even when you are at work? It's true! Maybe I'm talented after all. HAHAHAHAHA. Yeah, I've circled back out of the depressiony bit and the lack of sleep is apparently kicking in and making me punchy. I'm gonna go try to do something constructive for the remaining hour or so before I have to start getting ready for work. Boy, I hope I don't crash part way through work today. I wonder how many coffees I can carry in to work at one time without dropping them?
Thursday, July 14, 2011
One Evening of Peace in my Heart
It is so absolutely, perfectly, blissfully beautiful outside that I had no choice but to come out. I am indeed writing this as I sit in the yard, watching all the birds who don't mind my presence as they come to the feeders and feeling the cool early evening air as the sun plays peekaboo behind the clouds.
I really really wanted to write tonight, especially after the last couple of days. I have had so much on my mind during the day, so many things bothering me, so much unhappiness while I am at work, so many times I've just wanted to cry. But now that I am home, I can't bear to waste the calm and contentment I have for this evening by dredging all that back up and dwelling on it. I'd rather work on my garden plans for next year, watch the chickadees flitting about, listen to the woodpeckers and nuthatches, watch the bees sampling the cucumber flowers, even just admire my lovely lettuces which have gone to seed and are quite lovely garden plants in their own right. This is the balm I needed, and I'm not going to ignore this gift.
I really really wanted to write tonight, especially after the last couple of days. I have had so much on my mind during the day, so many things bothering me, so much unhappiness while I am at work, so many times I've just wanted to cry. But now that I am home, I can't bear to waste the calm and contentment I have for this evening by dredging all that back up and dwelling on it. I'd rather work on my garden plans for next year, watch the chickadees flitting about, listen to the woodpeckers and nuthatches, watch the bees sampling the cucumber flowers, even just admire my lovely lettuces which have gone to seed and are quite lovely garden plants in their own right. This is the balm I needed, and I'm not going to ignore this gift.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Self Respect
One of my friends wrote a post regarding health, weight, eating, etc. In trying to figure out how to respond, it seemed easier for me to put some of my perspective here in my own space.
I've been fat since I was about 5. I'm not sure why or how it started, especially since I grew up in a house where whole wheat bread was the only bread and sweets were rare. I could write pages upon pages about my relationship with food, about how and why it got out of control as my life progressed, about how it has changed again in my recent history. But the most important point is that I've had a natural desire for the visceral pleasures of eating my entire life. Scientifically, there are individual differences in our biologies/genetics that affect our appetites, metabolisms, energy levels, ability to process food, tendency to store fat, etc. So not everyone has to fight against themselves to be thin. Some people just don't care about food. Some people eat a few bites of food and are perfectly satisfied, or get full on small portions. Some people's bodies tell them they've had enough before they eat too much. Some people can't stand the idea of sitting still for hours at a time. Some people would rather run around in circles than sit in one spot reading, writing, thinking. I am none of those people.
Am I supposed to spend my entire life fighting against myself?
Then there is the fact that, having grown up carrying this extra weight, my body has adapted to it more so than someone who gained a significant amount of weight as an adult and/or within a short period of time. And, despite my preference for sedentary activities my entire life, I did engage in a certain level of physical activity much of my life that kept my muscles strong and my stamina fairly high. I rode bikes, played tag, physically chased boys, walked to school, carried heavy objects, moved furniture, played outdoor games, did yard work, pounded nails, ran up and down stairs, carried babies and children. I usually didn't mind physical activity as long as it had a practical use or provided entertainment. So I grew up to have large, strong calf muscles and relatively strong arm muscles for a girl; to be able to throw bags of soil or rocks on my shoulder and tote them all over the yard; to dig my own garden plots; to move heavy furniture by myself; to work outside for hours without a break.
I used to be able to do even more, but switching to a desk job took a toll I didn't foresee. I had never had a job where I sat all day, every day and had to spend 2 hours in the car commuting every day on top of the 8+ hours of sitting. Even now with all my garden work and winter shoveling my stamina isn't what it used to be. I used to be able to hike for hours, up and down hills like a mountain goat. The last time I tried to hike the easy trail at a mountain nearby, I had to completely give up after about 10 minutes. It was the first time in a long time I had been ashamed of my body.
See, when I was about 19 I had my obesity epiphany. Until then, I had believed what everyone else told me: that as a fatty, I wasn't good enough. Top Ten in school? Straight A's? Nice, but you're too fat to be pretty or popular. A natural with children? Responsible enough to babysit alone at age 12? Wonderful, but you're still too fat. Funny? A talented writer? An avid recycler? A good driver? Not enough. Because you're hugely fat and until you stop being fat you'll never be good enough.
I can see now that many people did actually respect and appreciate my good points, mostly adults but also some peers. I can also see now that social anxiety & self confidence problems were probably the greater cause of my continually plummeting self-esteem. I mean, I had college guys flirting with me when I was 12, and I didn't realize it. Which is probably a good thing, actually. There was this one guy who worked at my school and this one time he got mad at me when I insulted him and he told me that sometimes I acted like I was 30, but sometimes I acted like I was 3. I was elated and then crushed, and I was so angry at him and hurt: but looking back it's almost like we were having a lover's quarrel which is kind of funny and oogy at the same time and... well, uh, anyway... The point is, I had already had it so deeply embedded in my psyche that fat = bad and ugly and unlovable that I couldn't see evidence to the contrary. So when I was about 19 it finally REALLY clicked in my brain that I didn't need to wait until I was thinner to have a life, to be happy, to do the things I wanted, to be who I wanted to be. And then I began to actually believe that I deserved to be admired, wanted, and loved exactly as I was. I wasn't going to get thin in order to get a man. I was going to believe in myself, because what a good man really wants is a woman who is comfortable just being who she is. A good man wants a woman who respects herself, and I finally felt like I had some real respect for myself. So I was going to finally find a good man. Right?
Not exactly. Either the men I wanted weren't good enough for me or they were okay with my body and my self respect but turned off by the rest of my personality. I might have been able to get the attention of college guys when I was 12, but I couldn't get them to look twice at me for the ENTIRE 10 YEARS I WAS IN COLLEGE. Eventually I learned about flirting, and I had the time of my life working at the law library for 9 years. Every year I built a playful, friendly rapport with a variety of new male students, and then every year I lost a few as they graduated. But I had learned I could have fun bantering over the desk and there was no pressure. I was in heaven.
Almost. Because I still wanted love, and there were a select few from whom I desired more than bantering. Just a chance would have sufficed. I found out years later that my suspicions were correct and that one of them had been interested in me. It never would have worked, but it sure as hell would have been nice if he'd admitted it to me. Then there was the perverse, obsessive one I had to report for being too interested. That's not what I was looking for! Then there was my socially unacceptable bad boy who was my first kiss, and then turned a cold shoulder on me. Definitely for the best. But the majority of "special ones" would have made decent, acceptable boyfriends if only they had given a rat's ass about me as a woman.
So was it the body or the brain or both which caused my complete and utter lack of boyfriends all through high school, 2 undergrad colleges, and grad school? I presume I will never know. This may seem far removed from the health issues I started out with way up there at the beginning, but it's all connected. It is all connected --brain, body, heart, mind, health. What size we are now is a residual effect of everything that has ever happened to us. And self respect has a lot to do with overall health.
So remember that hike that left me ashamed? I really hated that feeling. I had finally met The Right Man, who was so absolutely perfect for me that I can almost forgive all the other men in my life for not having been good enough to be him. He was with me on that hike, and I'm pretty sure he didn't love me any less or feel ashamed of me because I couldn't climb a mountain. And while on one level that meant the world to me, I still had to contend with myself. Eventually, my increasingly tight pants and weariness after only light physical exertion prompted me to eat a bit better and start going for walks on my breaks. I wasn't trying to lose weight, I was trying to regain some physical fitness. And I was trying to regain some self respect. Because even during my low-confidence childhood and teen years, I wasn't completely filled with self loathing. The feelings of insecurity and doubt were usually going head to head with an incredible amount of pride. I loved myself for being able to do the things I did extremely well. And I think that was what made it so devastating when other people made fun of me or told me I needed to change or told me (through words or their actions) I wasn't good enough. Part of me knew they were wrong, but the other part of me thought that my one voice against so many others must be mistaken.
So where does that leave me now? Well, now the demons I fight with are psychological and philosophical. Sometimes I would still like to be thinner and I worry about my health. But I'm convinced of several things:
1) I will never be thin due to a combination of genetic factors, personal biochemistry, and the accumulated adaptations of my body over time to my lifelong obesity.
2) My psychological issues are currently doing the most damage to my health via continual stress, anxiety, and almost complete loss of any inner peace I ever had achieved previously.
3) While my blood sugar and cholesterol are annually monitored and are on the verge of being "bad," while I'm pretty sure my blood pressure during work hours is too high, while I choose to take medication to regulate certain biochemical/hormonal functions, and while I have chronic sinus problems, I am still essentially healthy. On my first visit to the dentist after 11 YEARS, my new dentist was floored. She said she would have guessed that it had only been 6 months since my last check-up and cleaning and that I must have an absolutely amazing immune system. Almost all of my multiple blood tests for the past 3 years have failed to reveal anything of major concern. I may eat too much, too much of the wrong things, and not quite enough of the right things, but at least I'm ingesting enough of the right things to keep the nutritional baselines decently covered.
Will this change as I age? Possibly. Do I wish I could figure out how to find a form of exercise that was fun and interesting and didn't bore me to tears? Yes. Do I wish the circumstances of my life made it easier to work time in for any exercise? Hell yes. Do I think I should eat "better" for environmental reasons because my eco-soul feels guilty? Yes. Do I believe that giving up food I like and forcing myself to do exercise I don't like will make me happier and healthier? Absolutely not. Because I've done it, and if you think you've seen me bitchy, you ain't seen nothing until you've seen me during one of those "I'm going to get healthy" phases.
Now, having said all that, I realize I only see things this way because I can. I don't have serious medical conditions that require me to give up foods I love or risk death. Some may argue that if I continue living the way I do, I will someday have those conditions. I'm not convinced. There's actually no medical proof that such an end is assured for me. Which makes me a really shitty source of support for friends who do have serious medical conditions. I don't know that I have any help to offer. I can't tell someone else how to get motivated to exercise, because I haven't the faintest clue. Exercise doesn't make me happy. (Unless, of course, it does. I've been wanting to get a bicycle. But for 6 months out of the year I can't ride it here, I don't know where the heck I'd store it, and I don't even know where I would ride it. Streets aren't safe and traffic would turn what is supposed to be a relaxing activity into a frigging nightmare. I have a treadmill that doesn't fit anywhere except facing a wall. I don't have time after work to go for walks, which are again, not really feasible half the year when the sidewalks are icy deathtraps. Anyway, I'm not being helpful at all here. Again.)
Truly, the hardest part about changing the way you think about food, exercise, health, etc., is finding the right source of inspiration and help. I have profiled hundreds of health-related guidebooks and memoirs over the past 4+ years, and I've made a note of the titles of probably less than 1% of them because they were the only ones in which the attitude, voice, and ideas clicked with me. I'm sure the others have inspired and helped lots of other people, but they wouldn't have done me one iota of good because there was no connection.
And now that I've rambled all over my life and everywhere else, done no one any good except a little for myself, and have stayed up past my bedtime, I'm declaring this a failed attempt to help a friend but a somewhat successful post for my own blogging purposes. Oy.
I've been fat since I was about 5. I'm not sure why or how it started, especially since I grew up in a house where whole wheat bread was the only bread and sweets were rare. I could write pages upon pages about my relationship with food, about how and why it got out of control as my life progressed, about how it has changed again in my recent history. But the most important point is that I've had a natural desire for the visceral pleasures of eating my entire life. Scientifically, there are individual differences in our biologies/genetics that affect our appetites, metabolisms, energy levels, ability to process food, tendency to store fat, etc. So not everyone has to fight against themselves to be thin. Some people just don't care about food. Some people eat a few bites of food and are perfectly satisfied, or get full on small portions. Some people's bodies tell them they've had enough before they eat too much. Some people can't stand the idea of sitting still for hours at a time. Some people would rather run around in circles than sit in one spot reading, writing, thinking. I am none of those people.
Am I supposed to spend my entire life fighting against myself?
Then there is the fact that, having grown up carrying this extra weight, my body has adapted to it more so than someone who gained a significant amount of weight as an adult and/or within a short period of time. And, despite my preference for sedentary activities my entire life, I did engage in a certain level of physical activity much of my life that kept my muscles strong and my stamina fairly high. I rode bikes, played tag, physically chased boys, walked to school, carried heavy objects, moved furniture, played outdoor games, did yard work, pounded nails, ran up and down stairs, carried babies and children. I usually didn't mind physical activity as long as it had a practical use or provided entertainment. So I grew up to have large, strong calf muscles and relatively strong arm muscles for a girl; to be able to throw bags of soil or rocks on my shoulder and tote them all over the yard; to dig my own garden plots; to move heavy furniture by myself; to work outside for hours without a break.
I used to be able to do even more, but switching to a desk job took a toll I didn't foresee. I had never had a job where I sat all day, every day and had to spend 2 hours in the car commuting every day on top of the 8+ hours of sitting. Even now with all my garden work and winter shoveling my stamina isn't what it used to be. I used to be able to hike for hours, up and down hills like a mountain goat. The last time I tried to hike the easy trail at a mountain nearby, I had to completely give up after about 10 minutes. It was the first time in a long time I had been ashamed of my body.
See, when I was about 19 I had my obesity epiphany. Until then, I had believed what everyone else told me: that as a fatty, I wasn't good enough. Top Ten in school? Straight A's? Nice, but you're too fat to be pretty or popular. A natural with children? Responsible enough to babysit alone at age 12? Wonderful, but you're still too fat. Funny? A talented writer? An avid recycler? A good driver? Not enough. Because you're hugely fat and until you stop being fat you'll never be good enough.
I can see now that many people did actually respect and appreciate my good points, mostly adults but also some peers. I can also see now that social anxiety & self confidence problems were probably the greater cause of my continually plummeting self-esteem. I mean, I had college guys flirting with me when I was 12, and I didn't realize it. Which is probably a good thing, actually. There was this one guy who worked at my school and this one time he got mad at me when I insulted him and he told me that sometimes I acted like I was 30, but sometimes I acted like I was 3. I was elated and then crushed, and I was so angry at him and hurt: but looking back it's almost like we were having a lover's quarrel which is kind of funny and oogy at the same time and... well, uh, anyway... The point is, I had already had it so deeply embedded in my psyche that fat = bad and ugly and unlovable that I couldn't see evidence to the contrary. So when I was about 19 it finally REALLY clicked in my brain that I didn't need to wait until I was thinner to have a life, to be happy, to do the things I wanted, to be who I wanted to be. And then I began to actually believe that I deserved to be admired, wanted, and loved exactly as I was. I wasn't going to get thin in order to get a man. I was going to believe in myself, because what a good man really wants is a woman who is comfortable just being who she is. A good man wants a woman who respects herself, and I finally felt like I had some real respect for myself. So I was going to finally find a good man. Right?
Not exactly. Either the men I wanted weren't good enough for me or they were okay with my body and my self respect but turned off by the rest of my personality. I might have been able to get the attention of college guys when I was 12, but I couldn't get them to look twice at me for the ENTIRE 10 YEARS I WAS IN COLLEGE. Eventually I learned about flirting, and I had the time of my life working at the law library for 9 years. Every year I built a playful, friendly rapport with a variety of new male students, and then every year I lost a few as they graduated. But I had learned I could have fun bantering over the desk and there was no pressure. I was in heaven.
Almost. Because I still wanted love, and there were a select few from whom I desired more than bantering. Just a chance would have sufficed. I found out years later that my suspicions were correct and that one of them had been interested in me. It never would have worked, but it sure as hell would have been nice if he'd admitted it to me. Then there was the perverse, obsessive one I had to report for being too interested. That's not what I was looking for! Then there was my socially unacceptable bad boy who was my first kiss, and then turned a cold shoulder on me. Definitely for the best. But the majority of "special ones" would have made decent, acceptable boyfriends if only they had given a rat's ass about me as a woman.
So was it the body or the brain or both which caused my complete and utter lack of boyfriends all through high school, 2 undergrad colleges, and grad school? I presume I will never know. This may seem far removed from the health issues I started out with way up there at the beginning, but it's all connected. It is all connected --brain, body, heart, mind, health. What size we are now is a residual effect of everything that has ever happened to us. And self respect has a lot to do with overall health.
So remember that hike that left me ashamed? I really hated that feeling. I had finally met The Right Man, who was so absolutely perfect for me that I can almost forgive all the other men in my life for not having been good enough to be him. He was with me on that hike, and I'm pretty sure he didn't love me any less or feel ashamed of me because I couldn't climb a mountain. And while on one level that meant the world to me, I still had to contend with myself. Eventually, my increasingly tight pants and weariness after only light physical exertion prompted me to eat a bit better and start going for walks on my breaks. I wasn't trying to lose weight, I was trying to regain some physical fitness. And I was trying to regain some self respect. Because even during my low-confidence childhood and teen years, I wasn't completely filled with self loathing. The feelings of insecurity and doubt were usually going head to head with an incredible amount of pride. I loved myself for being able to do the things I did extremely well. And I think that was what made it so devastating when other people made fun of me or told me I needed to change or told me (through words or their actions) I wasn't good enough. Part of me knew they were wrong, but the other part of me thought that my one voice against so many others must be mistaken.
So where does that leave me now? Well, now the demons I fight with are psychological and philosophical. Sometimes I would still like to be thinner and I worry about my health. But I'm convinced of several things:
1) I will never be thin due to a combination of genetic factors, personal biochemistry, and the accumulated adaptations of my body over time to my lifelong obesity.
2) My psychological issues are currently doing the most damage to my health via continual stress, anxiety, and almost complete loss of any inner peace I ever had achieved previously.
3) While my blood sugar and cholesterol are annually monitored and are on the verge of being "bad," while I'm pretty sure my blood pressure during work hours is too high, while I choose to take medication to regulate certain biochemical/hormonal functions, and while I have chronic sinus problems, I am still essentially healthy. On my first visit to the dentist after 11 YEARS, my new dentist was floored. She said she would have guessed that it had only been 6 months since my last check-up and cleaning and that I must have an absolutely amazing immune system. Almost all of my multiple blood tests for the past 3 years have failed to reveal anything of major concern. I may eat too much, too much of the wrong things, and not quite enough of the right things, but at least I'm ingesting enough of the right things to keep the nutritional baselines decently covered.
Will this change as I age? Possibly. Do I wish I could figure out how to find a form of exercise that was fun and interesting and didn't bore me to tears? Yes. Do I wish the circumstances of my life made it easier to work time in for any exercise? Hell yes. Do I think I should eat "better" for environmental reasons because my eco-soul feels guilty? Yes. Do I believe that giving up food I like and forcing myself to do exercise I don't like will make me happier and healthier? Absolutely not. Because I've done it, and if you think you've seen me bitchy, you ain't seen nothing until you've seen me during one of those "I'm going to get healthy" phases.
Now, having said all that, I realize I only see things this way because I can. I don't have serious medical conditions that require me to give up foods I love or risk death. Some may argue that if I continue living the way I do, I will someday have those conditions. I'm not convinced. There's actually no medical proof that such an end is assured for me. Which makes me a really shitty source of support for friends who do have serious medical conditions. I don't know that I have any help to offer. I can't tell someone else how to get motivated to exercise, because I haven't the faintest clue. Exercise doesn't make me happy. (Unless, of course, it does. I've been wanting to get a bicycle. But for 6 months out of the year I can't ride it here, I don't know where the heck I'd store it, and I don't even know where I would ride it. Streets aren't safe and traffic would turn what is supposed to be a relaxing activity into a frigging nightmare. I have a treadmill that doesn't fit anywhere except facing a wall. I don't have time after work to go for walks, which are again, not really feasible half the year when the sidewalks are icy deathtraps. Anyway, I'm not being helpful at all here. Again.)
Truly, the hardest part about changing the way you think about food, exercise, health, etc., is finding the right source of inspiration and help. I have profiled hundreds of health-related guidebooks and memoirs over the past 4+ years, and I've made a note of the titles of probably less than 1% of them because they were the only ones in which the attitude, voice, and ideas clicked with me. I'm sure the others have inspired and helped lots of other people, but they wouldn't have done me one iota of good because there was no connection.
And now that I've rambled all over my life and everywhere else, done no one any good except a little for myself, and have stayed up past my bedtime, I'm declaring this a failed attempt to help a friend but a somewhat successful post for my own blogging purposes. Oy.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Fast Forward Through Monday Please
I had an annoying sinus headache when I woke up, despite having taken 12 hour medicine before going to bed, and it just got worse until late morning when the new drugs finally kicked in, presumably. I was tired all morning, and even nodded off for a second a couple of times while working. I don't know how many times I had to stop working to try to appease my itchy, tired, sore, hurting eyes, and my stomach felt unsettled most of the day. So, when I got home all I wanted to do was maybe cry and definitely crash.
Instead I had to take Gytha to the vet, where I ended up paying $27 for them to put a drop of that yellow/green stain in her eyes so he could check her cornea. It also cost $37 for her eye drops because the price of pet prescriptions is ridiculous. And those were in addition to the regular visit fees. (Don't get me wrong, I absolutely adore our vet clinic, but the cost is sometimes hard to swallow.) Then I found out I'm supposed to administer the drops 4 times a day. I can't do it four times a day because I'm gone 10-11 hours a day! We both are. The only way to get a fourth dose in during the time that we're home is to set an alarm to get up and do it in the middle of the night. So 3 doses per day better work, because there's no frigging way I'm getting up in the middle of the night to fight with the cat, if I can even find her. And then, as we were getting ready to leave she did something she's never done before, ever --not even during the multi-day car trip when I moved from Illinois to New Hampshire. She threw up in her carrier. Twice.
Once we got home and I got the cat carrier cleaned I thought I could finally sit down to eat and "relax" while looking at the Lexis/Nexis insurance credit report I requested so I can contest their data and/or decisions which raised our homeowner's insurance $120 for the year. Except there is no report in the envelope because they can't "authenticate" me based on the information I provided. After waiting for 2 weeks for this stupid report, there's no damn report. I am so, so, so pissed. I had a whole rant planned about the bullshit that IS the entire insurance credit reporting scam, and once I'm done with this ordeal I will still post about it. But I can't think about it anymore today or I'm going to explode.
On the plus side: Yesterday I planted 9 Bright Lights cosmos seedlings, 1 more zinnia seedling, and replaced 5 basil seedlings that had been munched into oblivion. Most of the zinnia seedlings I planted a couple weeks ago suffered the same fate, just as they did last year along with most of last year's cosmos seedlings. So this time I put clear plastic cups over all 15 seedlings in an effort to minimize, and hopefully eliminate the decimation of my babies. One of the cosmos cup covers had somehow ended up by the neighbor's driveway this morning, so I put it back before leaving for work. But this evening I checked and all the seedlings are untouched. The cups are obviously working, because it only took one night last time for the zinnias to be half eaten and for the first nibbles to show on the basil, but today they are still pristine. Hooray for small blessings!
Instead I had to take Gytha to the vet, where I ended up paying $27 for them to put a drop of that yellow/green stain in her eyes so he could check her cornea. It also cost $37 for her eye drops because the price of pet prescriptions is ridiculous. And those were in addition to the regular visit fees. (Don't get me wrong, I absolutely adore our vet clinic, but the cost is sometimes hard to swallow.) Then I found out I'm supposed to administer the drops 4 times a day. I can't do it four times a day because I'm gone 10-11 hours a day! We both are. The only way to get a fourth dose in during the time that we're home is to set an alarm to get up and do it in the middle of the night. So 3 doses per day better work, because there's no frigging way I'm getting up in the middle of the night to fight with the cat, if I can even find her. And then, as we were getting ready to leave she did something she's never done before, ever --not even during the multi-day car trip when I moved from Illinois to New Hampshire. She threw up in her carrier. Twice.
Once we got home and I got the cat carrier cleaned I thought I could finally sit down to eat and "relax" while looking at the Lexis/Nexis insurance credit report I requested so I can contest their data and/or decisions which raised our homeowner's insurance $120 for the year. Except there is no report in the envelope because they can't "authenticate" me based on the information I provided. After waiting for 2 weeks for this stupid report, there's no damn report. I am so, so, so pissed. I had a whole rant planned about the bullshit that IS the entire insurance credit reporting scam, and once I'm done with this ordeal I will still post about it. But I can't think about it anymore today or I'm going to explode.
On the plus side: Yesterday I planted 9 Bright Lights cosmos seedlings, 1 more zinnia seedling, and replaced 5 basil seedlings that had been munched into oblivion. Most of the zinnia seedlings I planted a couple weeks ago suffered the same fate, just as they did last year along with most of last year's cosmos seedlings. So this time I put clear plastic cups over all 15 seedlings in an effort to minimize, and hopefully eliminate the decimation of my babies. One of the cosmos cup covers had somehow ended up by the neighbor's driveway this morning, so I put it back before leaving for work. But this evening I checked and all the seedlings are untouched. The cups are obviously working, because it only took one night last time for the zinnias to be half eaten and for the first nibbles to show on the basil, but today they are still pristine. Hooray for small blessings!
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Why I Love Summer
I know it is summer now because it feels like summer. I feel like going out more and doing all kinds of things. I've gotten past the frantic planting schedule of spring and my weekends are now open for reading, napping, casual yard work chores, and possibly working on more posts.
I have been having vivid flashbacks to summers in Southern Illinois, all the way from childhood through grad school. Not necessarily specific events, but the way life felt going on around me and the way I felt being a part of it. There's a jumble of people, water, sun, laughing, food, games, places. Summer weather conjures up times when I was happier and life seemed promising and full of expectation and energy. I remember the me that I more often was and want to be again. And most importantly, it seems positively possible to find her again. That is the vitality of summer.
Of course, this is early summer. If it turns as hot as it can in the middle of the summer, if days turn humid with temperatures in the 90s, I won't feel like doing anything. I will spend hours sitting miserably in one spot in front of a fan, wearing the skimpiest clothing I own, and trying not to move. I have a few plans to make things a little better during those stifling heat waves. Yesterday I braved pulling a spider colony on top of my head and got the awnings out of the shed. Now I just need to figure out how to install them. I'm also planning to get one of those portable air conditioners so we have something for the downstairs besides a fan. I have a mental picture of sheets tacked up in doorways to corral the cold air, and it reminds me of Grandma & Grandpa Cory's house in Springfield --a place overflowing with fond memories, especially in the summer when I often went and stayed for a week at a time. Grandpa licking his ice cream bowl clean, endless Schwann's ice cream bars and sandwiches, 4th of July fireworks with the neighbors, a perfect view of the city fireworks from Gabatoni's parking lot behind the house, and of course, the sheet at the top of the stairs to keep the air conditioned coolness in the bedrooms upstairs.
But today it is hard to be pessimistic about upcoming heat waves. The sun is out, everything is lush and green, there is a lovely breeze, and the National Weather Service says it is only 61 degrees. Speaking of which, I really ought to get my own outdoor thermometer. This is the time of year when I really feel like doing all those the things I've thought about doing forever. I feel intensely motivated to finally get that outdoor thermometer, to finally invest in a composter, to cut down that tree before it gets too big, to cook again, to make my own iced tea and stop buying the stuff at the store, to figure out problems and challenges I've pushed aside for months.
Of course, I also want to just stop and enjoy the perfect moments that are abundant on weekends like this one. Yesterday afternoon I went out to water everything. While I had the sprinkler in the front yard I ended up just sitting on the front steps, watching the water move and taking a good, long look at the yard. I suddenly realized that "all the work" I thought I had left to do wasn't so much after all. Sure, there's still a lot of room to work with in coming years, but for right now, my yard is exactly the way I want it: full of wild grasses waving in the breeze, young plants who will eventually fill out the space around them, brand new plants and some of last year's slower specimens waiting to put on their first show later this summer (it looks like the lavender is going to bloom this year!!) , and annual seedlings that promise varying degrees of success in making it to flower stage. I know that other people may look at my yard and see a chaotic mess of weeds and whatnots, but that truly is what I want my yard to look like, and I've succeeded beautifully. Then, this morning I hung clothes on the line, which is practically a meditation and something which brings me a great deal of inner peace and happiness. And now I'm sitting here in the back sunroom surveying those clothes on the line, feeling the cool breezes from the open windows and thinking that, while I want to jump up and do half a dozen things all at the same time, I also just want to sit here and feel this good.
I have been having vivid flashbacks to summers in Southern Illinois, all the way from childhood through grad school. Not necessarily specific events, but the way life felt going on around me and the way I felt being a part of it. There's a jumble of people, water, sun, laughing, food, games, places. Summer weather conjures up times when I was happier and life seemed promising and full of expectation and energy. I remember the me that I more often was and want to be again. And most importantly, it seems positively possible to find her again. That is the vitality of summer.
Of course, this is early summer. If it turns as hot as it can in the middle of the summer, if days turn humid with temperatures in the 90s, I won't feel like doing anything. I will spend hours sitting miserably in one spot in front of a fan, wearing the skimpiest clothing I own, and trying not to move. I have a few plans to make things a little better during those stifling heat waves. Yesterday I braved pulling a spider colony on top of my head and got the awnings out of the shed. Now I just need to figure out how to install them. I'm also planning to get one of those portable air conditioners so we have something for the downstairs besides a fan. I have a mental picture of sheets tacked up in doorways to corral the cold air, and it reminds me of Grandma & Grandpa Cory's house in Springfield --a place overflowing with fond memories, especially in the summer when I often went and stayed for a week at a time. Grandpa licking his ice cream bowl clean, endless Schwann's ice cream bars and sandwiches, 4th of July fireworks with the neighbors, a perfect view of the city fireworks from Gabatoni's parking lot behind the house, and of course, the sheet at the top of the stairs to keep the air conditioned coolness in the bedrooms upstairs.
But today it is hard to be pessimistic about upcoming heat waves. The sun is out, everything is lush and green, there is a lovely breeze, and the National Weather Service says it is only 61 degrees. Speaking of which, I really ought to get my own outdoor thermometer. This is the time of year when I really feel like doing all those the things I've thought about doing forever. I feel intensely motivated to finally get that outdoor thermometer, to finally invest in a composter, to cut down that tree before it gets too big, to cook again, to make my own iced tea and stop buying the stuff at the store, to figure out problems and challenges I've pushed aside for months.
Of course, I also want to just stop and enjoy the perfect moments that are abundant on weekends like this one. Yesterday afternoon I went out to water everything. While I had the sprinkler in the front yard I ended up just sitting on the front steps, watching the water move and taking a good, long look at the yard. I suddenly realized that "all the work" I thought I had left to do wasn't so much after all. Sure, there's still a lot of room to work with in coming years, but for right now, my yard is exactly the way I want it: full of wild grasses waving in the breeze, young plants who will eventually fill out the space around them, brand new plants and some of last year's slower specimens waiting to put on their first show later this summer (it looks like the lavender is going to bloom this year!!) , and annual seedlings that promise varying degrees of success in making it to flower stage. I know that other people may look at my yard and see a chaotic mess of weeds and whatnots, but that truly is what I want my yard to look like, and I've succeeded beautifully. Then, this morning I hung clothes on the line, which is practically a meditation and something which brings me a great deal of inner peace and happiness. And now I'm sitting here in the back sunroom surveying those clothes on the line, feeling the cool breezes from the open windows and thinking that, while I want to jump up and do half a dozen things all at the same time, I also just want to sit here and feel this good.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Vegetables Continued
Having said all that last night, I think it is only fair to add that there is another lesson I learned from yesterday's events: If you end up forcing yourself to do something you've come to hate simply because you think you "ought" to be doing it, you at least owe it to yourself to do some reconsidering.
My current vegetable beds total approximately 130 sq feet. I decided after last year that what I really wanted was to switch to raised beds. But, once I started looking at options and calculating costs only to discover it would cost a minimum of $1000 and would create various other difficulties, I gave up on the idea. When the ground was ready this spring, I reluctantly took up my fork and tried to think positive as I began my yearly dirt work. In the past month I've completed prepping about 90 sq ft, which means I still have about 1/3 left to prep, if I'm going to finish it all. With our short growing season, I need to get everything started outside within the next two weeks. I can only do this kind of work on the weekends, and the weather isn't cooperating, nor is my body, which likes to save up colds and other ailments and hit me with them on my precious days off. It's time to give a little thought to alternatives.
By rearranging where I was going to put things (and still maintaining my mini-crop rotation needs) I can get by with only prepping about 10 more sq ft as long as I'm willing to try carrots in containers. Yes, as much as I prefer ground planting to container growing, there are definite benefits to container planting. Both varieties of carrots I want to plant are miniature varieties, so I don't need super-deep containers. Carrots like very loose soil, and with containers I don't have to worry about roots or rocks. I already have two containers that should be deep enough for these carrots, so we're not looking at a major investment in materials. I shouldn't have to worry about weeds interfering with their growth. This also means that part of the garden gets a break this year, although I might try to throw some sort of annual cover crop on to see if I can build the soil up that way while I'm not using it. And most of all, it means I can relax a little and replace my anxiety and dread with excitement over trying something new and less labor-intensive.
Because it's not like I don't have enough left to do without the bed prepping. I still have to transplant most of my indoor seed starts: 32 agastaches, 12 gomphrena, about 20 basils, one lonely pansy, a couple dozen zinnias and cosmos, plus tomatoes, peppers, and cukes. Plus start more cukes directly outside as well as both bush and pole beans. Plus make the pole bean teepee. PLUS plant 18 more groundcover plants I ordered to help fill in the half-dead front slope. Plus the hydrangea coming next month. And all of that planting is on top of the yard and maintenance work that becomes more important as summer moves in. I've got to get as much done as I can before the heat starts to be a problem and my interest in working outside all but disappears.
Yes, all things considered, I think it is all for the best to try carrots in containers this year.
My current vegetable beds total approximately 130 sq feet. I decided after last year that what I really wanted was to switch to raised beds. But, once I started looking at options and calculating costs only to discover it would cost a minimum of $1000 and would create various other difficulties, I gave up on the idea. When the ground was ready this spring, I reluctantly took up my fork and tried to think positive as I began my yearly dirt work. In the past month I've completed prepping about 90 sq ft, which means I still have about 1/3 left to prep, if I'm going to finish it all. With our short growing season, I need to get everything started outside within the next two weeks. I can only do this kind of work on the weekends, and the weather isn't cooperating, nor is my body, which likes to save up colds and other ailments and hit me with them on my precious days off. It's time to give a little thought to alternatives.
By rearranging where I was going to put things (and still maintaining my mini-crop rotation needs) I can get by with only prepping about 10 more sq ft as long as I'm willing to try carrots in containers. Yes, as much as I prefer ground planting to container growing, there are definite benefits to container planting. Both varieties of carrots I want to plant are miniature varieties, so I don't need super-deep containers. Carrots like very loose soil, and with containers I don't have to worry about roots or rocks. I already have two containers that should be deep enough for these carrots, so we're not looking at a major investment in materials. I shouldn't have to worry about weeds interfering with their growth. This also means that part of the garden gets a break this year, although I might try to throw some sort of annual cover crop on to see if I can build the soil up that way while I'm not using it. And most of all, it means I can relax a little and replace my anxiety and dread with excitement over trying something new and less labor-intensive.
Because it's not like I don't have enough left to do without the bed prepping. I still have to transplant most of my indoor seed starts: 32 agastaches, 12 gomphrena, about 20 basils, one lonely pansy, a couple dozen zinnias and cosmos, plus tomatoes, peppers, and cukes. Plus start more cukes directly outside as well as both bush and pole beans. Plus make the pole bean teepee. PLUS plant 18 more groundcover plants I ordered to help fill in the half-dead front slope. Plus the hydrangea coming next month. And all of that planting is on top of the yard and maintenance work that becomes more important as summer moves in. I've got to get as much done as I can before the heat starts to be a problem and my interest in working outside all but disappears.
Yes, all things considered, I think it is all for the best to try carrots in containers this year.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Vegetable Gardening
After today, I need to remind myself why I plant vegetables. I'm about this close to giving up on prepping the beds.
Much of the work I have to do in the spring involves prepping the vegetable beds, and that basically involves hand “tilling” the ground with a gardening fork. It’s hard, dirty, strenuous work, and it takes hours and hours and hours and hours. I usually end up with dirt embedded in my fingernails despite wearing gloves and often manage to get dirt (or worse) in my teeth. Even after doing this for the past two years, I'm still having to remove dozens upon dozens of rocks of all sizes; and worst of all, I have to try to remove never-ending dense networks of roots --with marginal success. Considering that a vegetable garden does not produce meat, brownies, doughnuts, or iced coffee, I’m not 100% sure why I do it at all. But, I think it has something to do with a Better Self struggling inside me to gain dominance. In recent years I have felt like this is too often a losing battle, but she/we/I occasionally win. And growing veggies is one of those times.
Organic gardening, especially vegetable gardening without the use of powered tools, is truly honest work. Prepping those vegetable beds by hand offers the virtues of all practical manual labor. It requires strength, stamina, and persistence. It also builds muscles, burns calories, and doesn't require the use of any petrochemicals. The extra health benefits are especially important for me. I usually find that working outside alleviates bouts of both depression and sinus problems (both of which are chronic problems for me). Today is a perfect example. I had been feeling sluggish and sickly almost all day, and I had reached a point where all I wanted to do was lay down. But my frustration and concern over the increasingly desperate need to work the beds suddenly peaked and I realized I was on my way outside instead of going to bed. I was doing exactly what I didn't want to do because I was angry and resentful that I "had" to do it --which is something about me I don't claim to truly understand (or control). I am angry in some form a great deal of the time, but if I can somehow trick myself into using that energy to do something productive, I can accomplish worthwhile things. In this case, not doing it would mean more or less giving up on my vegetable gardening, and that was admitting defeat. That would be letting my lazy, useless inner Princess take over. It would be a couple of kicks in the stomach to my Better Self. So instead, actually fighting back tears because I dread "tilling" that much, I went out and did it anyway.
And now I feel better than I think I have all weekend. My head is clearer, breathing-wise and cognitively/emotionally. I feel physically tired but in a good way. I hurt one finger enough to make me dizzy for a minute and then nauseous like I get when I have almost passed out. I was so frustrated with the !$$%#$*@ roots I almost screamed and/or broke something more than once. I was still struggling not to cry by the time I got done for the day and came in. But now that I've had a shower, am clean and relaxed, I feel great.
The benefits of hard work in the preparation phase pretty much come to an end once everything is planted, and then I think what sustains my interest in vegetable gardening is the variety of ways that I experience accomplishment. (The fruits of my labors certainly haven't justified what I go through to get them. Most of my harvests over the past two years have been disappointments. The dragon carrots were spicy, and I like sweet. The patty pan squash were adorable, but tasteless. The lemon cucumbers were interesting, but they were bland and burpy. The onions have been uncooperative. And the list goes on. Tomatoes are my one reliable vegetable friend, and I almost cried with joy last year when I had the first taste of my first Brandywine tomato. But even there I found disappointment, because I only got 2 or 3 Brandywines in the end.) By the end of the growing season, it isn't a delicious and/or healthy harvest that keeps me planning to do it again. It's a combination of: the enjoyment of watching the vegetables emerge and develop, the fact that I was able to produce anything at all through my efforts, and a somehow-resilient hope that I can do better next time.
Because ultimately, real gardening --vegetables or permanent ornamentals-- is about hope and faith. When you plant a seed or put a plant in the ground that is supposed to produce food, you have to believe that you and Mama Nature working together can make something good grow. When you plant a small perennial or a shrub or a tree, you have to believe in the future, because you probably aren't going to see it really come into its own for at least 2 or 3 years. When you plan your garden beds or design your landscape in your mind's eye, you have to believe in the future. And for someone like me --who is overwhelmed with doubts and anxiety about the future of everyone and everything, who too often can only see the world as a lost cause and a cesspool of evils great and small-- every act of hope and faith is a triumph for my Better Self. Gardening is one of the few ways I have, at this point in my life, to redeem my less-than-perfect soul.
Much of the work I have to do in the spring involves prepping the vegetable beds, and that basically involves hand “tilling” the ground with a gardening fork. It’s hard, dirty, strenuous work, and it takes hours and hours and hours and hours. I usually end up with dirt embedded in my fingernails despite wearing gloves and often manage to get dirt (or worse) in my teeth. Even after doing this for the past two years, I'm still having to remove dozens upon dozens of rocks of all sizes; and worst of all, I have to try to remove never-ending dense networks of roots --with marginal success. Considering that a vegetable garden does not produce meat, brownies, doughnuts, or iced coffee, I’m not 100% sure why I do it at all. But, I think it has something to do with a Better Self struggling inside me to gain dominance. In recent years I have felt like this is too often a losing battle, but she/we/I occasionally win. And growing veggies is one of those times.
Organic gardening, especially vegetable gardening without the use of powered tools, is truly honest work. Prepping those vegetable beds by hand offers the virtues of all practical manual labor. It requires strength, stamina, and persistence. It also builds muscles, burns calories, and doesn't require the use of any petrochemicals. The extra health benefits are especially important for me. I usually find that working outside alleviates bouts of both depression and sinus problems (both of which are chronic problems for me). Today is a perfect example. I had been feeling sluggish and sickly almost all day, and I had reached a point where all I wanted to do was lay down. But my frustration and concern over the increasingly desperate need to work the beds suddenly peaked and I realized I was on my way outside instead of going to bed. I was doing exactly what I didn't want to do because I was angry and resentful that I "had" to do it --which is something about me I don't claim to truly understand (or control). I am angry in some form a great deal of the time, but if I can somehow trick myself into using that energy to do something productive, I can accomplish worthwhile things. In this case, not doing it would mean more or less giving up on my vegetable gardening, and that was admitting defeat. That would be letting my lazy, useless inner Princess take over. It would be a couple of kicks in the stomach to my Better Self. So instead, actually fighting back tears because I dread "tilling" that much, I went out and did it anyway.
And now I feel better than I think I have all weekend. My head is clearer, breathing-wise and cognitively/emotionally. I feel physically tired but in a good way. I hurt one finger enough to make me dizzy for a minute and then nauseous like I get when I have almost passed out. I was so frustrated with the !$$%#$*@ roots I almost screamed and/or broke something more than once. I was still struggling not to cry by the time I got done for the day and came in. But now that I've had a shower, am clean and relaxed, I feel great.
The benefits of hard work in the preparation phase pretty much come to an end once everything is planted, and then I think what sustains my interest in vegetable gardening is the variety of ways that I experience accomplishment. (The fruits of my labors certainly haven't justified what I go through to get them. Most of my harvests over the past two years have been disappointments. The dragon carrots were spicy, and I like sweet. The patty pan squash were adorable, but tasteless. The lemon cucumbers were interesting, but they were bland and burpy. The onions have been uncooperative. And the list goes on. Tomatoes are my one reliable vegetable friend, and I almost cried with joy last year when I had the first taste of my first Brandywine tomato. But even there I found disappointment, because I only got 2 or 3 Brandywines in the end.) By the end of the growing season, it isn't a delicious and/or healthy harvest that keeps me planning to do it again. It's a combination of: the enjoyment of watching the vegetables emerge and develop, the fact that I was able to produce anything at all through my efforts, and a somehow-resilient hope that I can do better next time.
Because ultimately, real gardening --vegetables or permanent ornamentals-- is about hope and faith. When you plant a seed or put a plant in the ground that is supposed to produce food, you have to believe that you and Mama Nature working together can make something good grow. When you plant a small perennial or a shrub or a tree, you have to believe in the future, because you probably aren't going to see it really come into its own for at least 2 or 3 years. When you plan your garden beds or design your landscape in your mind's eye, you have to believe in the future. And for someone like me --who is overwhelmed with doubts and anxiety about the future of everyone and everything, who too often can only see the world as a lost cause and a cesspool of evils great and small-- every act of hope and faith is a triumph for my Better Self. Gardening is one of the few ways I have, at this point in my life, to redeem my less-than-perfect soul.
Friday, May 20, 2011
The Impossible
I suppose it would be appropriate to start with an explanation of the name of my new blog. (And my old one, actually, since it's the same as my LiveJournal page.)
NH is a land of heavy traffic, plentiful intersections, and an inadequate number of traffic lights. As a transplant from Illinois, one of the first things I noticed was that trying to turn left at a stop sign onto a frequently-traveled road is often next to impossible. Since you need either infinite patience or the willingness to attempt risky, and usually rude, maneuvers, and since I have neither, I've learned to avoid having to turn left. If I'll go miles out of my way to avoid the interstates, why not a few blocks to avoid watching people do things that will piss me off?
The near-impossibility of left turns relates to a theme underlying multiple issues I hope to work through via writing: How can I deal with challenges that seem impossible? For that matter, how can I get back to even seeing things as "challenges" rather than repeated blows from a cruel Universe? What can I do to start embracing more possibilities? I intend to use this venue for exploring psychological, philosophical, and other -ical subjects I need to think through.
That and spouting off about anything else I feel like writing about. Because ultimately, I just love writing. I've had a need to write since I learned how. I started keeping poetry journals, diaries, and lists of every kind by the time I was probably about six. It was never really about being read by other people; it was a relationship between me and words and between me and thoughts. Of course, I do like being heard and/or read; but, ultimately it's about having an overflow of brain activity paired with an addiction to language.
NH is a land of heavy traffic, plentiful intersections, and an inadequate number of traffic lights. As a transplant from Illinois, one of the first things I noticed was that trying to turn left at a stop sign onto a frequently-traveled road is often next to impossible. Since you need either infinite patience or the willingness to attempt risky, and usually rude, maneuvers, and since I have neither, I've learned to avoid having to turn left. If I'll go miles out of my way to avoid the interstates, why not a few blocks to avoid watching people do things that will piss me off?
The near-impossibility of left turns relates to a theme underlying multiple issues I hope to work through via writing: How can I deal with challenges that seem impossible? For that matter, how can I get back to even seeing things as "challenges" rather than repeated blows from a cruel Universe? What can I do to start embracing more possibilities? I intend to use this venue for exploring psychological, philosophical, and other -ical subjects I need to think through.
That and spouting off about anything else I feel like writing about. Because ultimately, I just love writing. I've had a need to write since I learned how. I started keeping poetry journals, diaries, and lists of every kind by the time I was probably about six. It was never really about being read by other people; it was a relationship between me and words and between me and thoughts. Of course, I do like being heard and/or read; but, ultimately it's about having an overflow of brain activity paired with an addiction to language.
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