Old Goals

I spent a lot of my teenage years wishing I could just be happy. All the time, I felt sadness and frustration and despair. I didn't have friends who lived near me. I didn't have many close friends at all. That has remained a constant in my life, but I have learned how to be happy at least. 

Not all the time, of course. That would be silly. Happiness would lose its meaning if it were a constant state. But I can choose to look at the world through a positive lens now. I can choose to find something to be happy about. I can reject the sadness that used to overwhelm me at times. 

My husband mentioned the other day that he hasn't met anyone else who self analyzes quite as much as I do. I like to look at myself and my actions and try to figure out why I did what I did. Sometimes that's a negative thing to do; it can lead to a spiral of guilt and self-recrimination. But I've learned over the years how to calm that critical inner voice. 

The voice isn't gone, but it's a lot quieter than it used to be. It used to be a much larger monster, one that spoke whether I wanted it to or not. Over the years, I've worked on slaying that monster, taking away its energy source, not feeding it. Many repetitions of the mantra, "I do not like the way this makes me feel," helped me to reduce the monster's food source. And the thought that if I were to hear someone talk to a friend of mine the way I was speaking to myself, I would be angry as hell at that person. Why should I treat myself in a way I wouldn't let anyone treat my friends? 

In my niece, I see similarities to myself at that age. We are, outwardly, very different. She is tall, while I am short. I love to read, while she is dyslexic. She's more outgoing than I am, in some ways more confident, especially in the city and with technology. But I think there are aspects of her inner life that remind me of myself at that age. 

I wish I could give her a shortcut. A faster way to get from the wreckage of the teen years to the happiness that I've found. But I know it's hard to see through that fog. And if you want to get out, you need to see that there's an out to get. To see that there are possibilities waiting for you in the future. Possible futures that include things you could never imagine. 

Like being happy. 

Perchance to Sleep

I didn't get any writing done last weekend. I meant to. I even brought my computer out into the woods. But the hike up to Grouse Butte took a lot more out of me than I expected. By the time I got back to the trailhead, I was ready for a nap. 

I didn't take a nap, though maybe I should have. I'm not very good at napping. Especially when I have only a small amount of time in which to sleep. I find that I can't relax enough to fall asleep, because I'm too worried about waking back up on time. That's why I can never nap during my lunch hour at work. 

Sometimes, I'll lie down quietly and try to nap during the lunch hour, on days when I'm particularly tired, but even if I set an alarm, I get paranoid. I just can't relax into sleep. Very unlike my husband, who can drop off at a moment's notice and feel refreshed after a nap as short as a minute. But he was in the military, so I suppose that's something he learned there - get sleep when you can. 

I've gone through different phases in my life when it comes to sleeping. Times when I needed to have some light on, and times when I needed absolute darkness. Sometimes, music that is barely audible, others, a movie (also barely audible), other times silence. Though even wearing ear plugs isn't getting me anywhere near silence lately. And not because of my husband's snoring! No, these days, I sleep to the sound of fans, air conditioning and the dishwasher running. 

Actually, the dishwasher is pretty good at putting me to sleep. I don't know what I'll do if I ever get one of those new, efficient, quiet models. Maybe I can play a recording on YouTube of a noisy dishwasher. 

My brain likes to come up with new tricks to keep me awake despite my best efforts. Spinning on thoughts that I can always think about the next day. Focusing on aches and pains. Considering whether my bladder should be emptied again for so long that it actually does need to be emptied again... 

I don't always have a good way to get around those tricks and fall asleep. There's a book that I like, Quarantine by Greg Egan, that has an interesting bit about sleep. The book takes place in a future where neural implants are commonplace, and owned by the main character. There is a neural implant called Boss, and it allows one to literally choose to sleep with the "press" of a "button" in your head. But that doesn't cure insomnia. You still have to choose it. 

I wonder, if I had the ability to choose to sleep like flipping a switch, would I use it? Or would I wallow in my spinning thoughts, putting off the choice? I'd like to think I'd choose it. Nights when all I want is to fall asleep, but my mind won't quiet, I'd definitely use it. 

At least, I think I would.

The Monster Expects Perfection

My brain likes to chew on things. I often find myself going over and over something that I said or did. Something that I'm not sure, on reflection, was done correctly or well or with the proper emotion. I can shut the chewing down for a while, but there's a tendency for my mind to sink back into those thought patterns, rehashing the past over and over again until I've convinced myself that I took the worst of all possible paths in my interaction. 

That's a monster. 

A voice popping up and criticizing my actions of the past. Nagging me to be better, to be more, to be perfect. An expectant weight of emotion. Inflicting suffering on myself mentally, but to what purpose? Is it like picking at a scab, only in my mind instead of on my skin? 

I don't think I'm the only person to do this, but it's not something that gets talked about a lot. 

My monster is an isolationist. It doesn't occur to the monster to push any of these feelings out and inflict punishment onto other people. Maybe that's a function of it being my monster. A function of who I am as a person. I'm not one to lash out, not very often. I more often lash in, punishing myself for perceived faults. 

I punish myself when I'm angry. I've read the phrase that anger turned inwards is depression, but I'm not sure if I quite agree with it anymore. I'm not depressed, and I doubt that I ever medically have been. I've just had lots of emotions, BIG emotions to deal with. And, over the years, I've dealt with these big feelings in various ways, some better than others. 

Sometimes I wonder what might have happened if I had been better as a child at suppressing my emotions. Would I have been better off? I would have been yelled at less, because I would have cried less... But I wouldn't have learned how to process those big feelings by avoiding them. I mean, I'm no expert at processing them now, but I have strategies. 

Like, I know that I get irritable when I'm hungry. I fully embrace the term hangry, because I've felt it in my bones when backpacking. Knowing that, I can acknowledge that the emotion is coming from a physical need, and isn't a response to the situation that I'm currently in, or the person I'm currently with. Same thing if I'm frustrated or upset; I try to recognize what the cause is instead of either punishing myself or, on occasion, lashing out. 

It takes time to develop that sense of recognition. Time and self awareness. I've been trying to more fully develop my self awareness as I've dealt with the IBS diagnosis. After all, if a physical need can turn into an emotional state (hunger leading to hangriness), then surely an emotional need can turn into a physical state. Our bodies and minds are intertwined. So by being more aware of my emotions and what I'm doing with them, I might be able to reduce the impact of my emotions on my body. 

Body Work

I credit transitioning to barefoot shoes with calming down my iliotibial bands. I used to get intense pain from running and even backpacking if I didn't keep those IT bands stretched out with regular running. Rolling the IT bands on a foam roller was always incredibly painful. Now, I can miss a few days of running and now have the IT band pain come back. When I foam roll, it isn't excruciating. 

But in the last couple weeks, I was noticing a new pain cropping up on my right side. It was a weird combination of heel and ankle pain, and it only made itself felt when I was running. 

After one recent run, I did some self massage and figured out that the muscle running along the outside of my right calf was extremely tight. I massaged in some CBD balm and tried to decrease the tension on the muscle, but it didn't help very much. Enough that I could keep running, but the pain wasn't going away. 

I began to think about it even when it wasn't hurting, and I noticed that when I stood still, I had a tendency to roll my weight to the outside of my right foot. I noticed it once, and then again and again. It was definitely a habit. And it was a habit that clearly led to muscles tightening up on the outside of my right leg - exactly where I'd traced the heel pain to. 

I've been working on paying attention to where my weight is when I'm standing still, and I can feel how it's making a difference to the tight muscles in my right leg. My last few runs haven't been as painful in that area, though I still have a ways to go. 

And it occurred to me that this was a long formed habit in response to who knows what in my past. If I didn't pay attention and work on fixing it, it would probably lead to injury eventually. Or it would cause me to stop running. 

And if that can happen to my physical body without my noticing, then doesn't it also make sense that such habits could happen in my mind? What kinds of little habits have I picked up mentally that I don't notice until I try something "strenuous"? Something that stretches me beyond my comfortable routines. . .  

I'm going to be paying more attention to my habits, both physical and mental, going forward, that's for sure. 

The Fool

For much of my life I have tried to avoid humiliation. And not just humiliation but even the potential and possibility of embarrassment and humiliation. For whatever reason, I flinched from being myself out of the fear of being ridiculed for it. 

I have a vivid memory of being in fourth grade and trying to get my teacher's attention. There was some sort of classroom party going on, and the teacher was speaking with two other teachers. I spoke softly at first, "Mrs. Hornyak? Mrs. Hornyak?" I didn't mean to interrupt them, but I needed something, probably permission to leave class and use the restroom. "Mrs. Hornyak? MOM?" 

That last one got through to her, and she and the other two teachers burst out laughing. I flushed with embarrassment. I castigated myself, dumb dumb dumb, how could you do something so dumb?

And for years after the incident, just recalling it would cause my cheeks to flush and my hands to freeze. The memory of embarrassment was that strong in me. It was a monster, reminding me just how horrible it was to be embarrassed. Making me look for ways to avoid that pain. 

And the thing about that particular memory is that no one else noticed or cared. My classmates were busy doing something else, and the teachers had a little laugh and moved on. The embarrassment, the humiliation, the red cheeks and icy hands - all of it was internal. Caused by me, remembered only by me. 

And that embarrassment did not serve me. Remembering it so viscerally did not serve me. These things only served the monster that does not want me to be myself. The fear of ridicule has kept me from trying so many times in my life.

I eventually figured out how to let go of the bodily feeling bringing up that memory used to cause. I detached the emotions from the memory. But I still feared ridicule. I hesitated to be a fool. 

Over the weekend, I went backpacking. It was rainy and cold, and that meant that my husband and I spent a lot of time in the tent. The inactivity gives me time to think and roll ideas around and I thought about how I fear to put myself out there, to put my opinions and thoughts and experiences in a form that can be seen. Yes, I publish my books, but they are deeply personal and I have convinced myself that I am allowed to publish those because no one else has the authority to contradict my personal experiences. 

And so I must ask myself, what is so wrong with being a fool?

What is so wrong with being thought a fool? 

What are the consequences exactly?

What am I so afraid of?

Millennial Reconciliation

My rent is going up by a ridiculous amount this year. I thought I lived in Boise, but the rent is feeling more like San Francisco. And not only did the rent increase, but they are also starting to charge for water, sewer, and trash above and beyond rent, divided between tenants. A perfectly legal practice that was intended to be used in lieu of rent increases, but lucky me, I get both at once. 

I've had a couple days to be really angry and upset about the whole thing, getting into a big mood. Back when I just knew about the rent increase, I looked around for other places to live, but nothing in my area is any cheaper than what I was being offered. I expanded my search to Nampa and Caldwell, and I still couldn't find anything reasonable. Especially considering I'd then need to commute a long way to work each day. 

I know that I need to find another place to live, and that's likely to mean that I need to leave Boise, probably whole the Treasure Valley. The idea makes me sad. I like where I live, work and workout. But I'm going to be priced out of the privilege of living here. There's not a whole lot that I can do about that. I'm actually hoping that the housing bubble bursts and I can either afford to stay here or afford to get a better place at a better price, but I've been hoping that for a while now, and the bubble just keeps expanding. 

I know that I have a choice, and I chose to stay here despite the egregious terms. Because I believe I can get through one more year before I have to give up on Boise. One more year to say goodbye to the city I've lived in most of my adult life. To get used to the idea of picking everything up and trying somewhere new, which does make me nervous. That's not something I've done very often. 

It's not a waste of time to experience and process these emotions and be moody and a bit broody. It's natural and normal. But I don't want to hold onto that resentment that I feel at the property management company and the owner of the building. It won't serve me to keep being angry, to stress myself out over and over again about something that I can't change. I'm choosing to let go of the emotions that will only poison me and do nothing to hurt the targets of my ire. 

I have a roof over my head, food on my table, a steady job, and enough laid in supplies and savings for a good backpacking season this summer. I have my needs and many of my wants. There are plenty of things that I can focus on instead of bitter anger, and that is what I intend to do. Even if (when) the utility bills are high enough to upset me all over again, I'll let the emotions happen and then move forward, and look forward to opportunities that I might not see if I were focusing in on that anger and frustration. 

Float On

I think it's important to consider one's body an ally. There's a lot of body positivity going around, but I don't want to just praise my body no matter its state. I want to work with my body to try and reach the goals that I want to achieve. I know that my body won't succeed if I punish it, and I know that what I need to do is stay the course with calorie counting. 

It is natural for the body to resist weight change, to resist reduction. I know that there are factors beyond my ability to measure that influence the number on the scale. And I've been sick for pretty much the entire month of February, so my exercise routine is completely thrown off. 

I weigh more at the beginning of March than I did at the end of February. But I still weigh less than I did at the beginning of the year. Even though I did bump up slightly over 150 pounds in February, I still believe that staying the course is the right thing to do. 

Change isn't fast. 

Change isn't automatic. 

Losing weight is not a simple thing. If it were simple, then EVERYONE would be doing it. There would be no diet industry, no millions of yo-yo dieters gaining and losing the same pounds, no women starving themselves into anorexia and puking themselves into bulimia. It is just NOT a simple thing. 

It's a difficult thing. It requires extreme long term planning. It requires discipline that I didn't use to have. It requires making the right choices even when they don't feel like they're making a difference. It absolutely requires separating one's emotional state from one's decision making process. Especially because a reduced calorie diet can make one more emotionally unstable. It's hard to be stable when you aren't eating enough; I've been on enough backpacking trips when I've been hangry to know that lack of food can affect my processing and my emotions. 

Trust the process is my mantra. Trust the process and work together. My body cannot function without food, and I cannot function without my body. 

I wish calorie counting were a magic bullet. I wish that I could absolutely predict tomorrow's weight based on what I eat today. But I know from experience that isn't true. The scale never follows a logical trajectory. That's part of what makes it hard. 

But I'm not in this to lose weight for a weekend or a day. I'm in this to change my body. To reshape it completely. Of course there's resistance. Of course it's difficult. I'm changing the foundations of my body, and that's no simple task. 

It may at times feel like two steps forward one step back, or even two steps forward four steps back, but the important part is keeping facing in the right direction and eating enough to sustain weight loss, and not eating enough to gain. A tricky balance, but I'm going to have plenty of time to figure it out. 

Because I'm going to stay the course, like the man in the river in the Taoist fable, relaxing into the currents to avoid being dashed upon the rocks. I'm going to finally get over this illness and get back onto my exercise routine. And I'm going to keep up my calorie counting. And I will change my body. 

Counting Calories

For most of my adult life, I've been within 5 pounds of weighing 150 pounds. At 5 foot 3, that's in the overweight section of a BMI chart. I've weighed more, especially during my first marriage, and when I bulked up to do a Spartan Race. I've weighed less very rarely; one time when I was running nearly every day I dropped weight, but I didn't own a scale at that time, so I'm not sure how much. Another time I managed to dip down a bit with a 30 day diet challenge, but those results didn't last. 

And now, I'm trying something that the old me would have called impossible. I'm doing calorie counting, and I'm not miserable. I'm not hungry all the time. I am, at times, struggling to eat enough to support running and CrossFit. I had no idea calorie counting could be like this. 

Not that it isn't a pain in the butt to record every damn thing that I eat. Oh and don't get me started on the annoyances of weighing out food to make sure my portions are correct. But I've been doing this for nearly two months now, and it's been doable and I'm losing weight. 

And while the pounds are taking their time to leave, I can see differences in my body composition, in addition to the small actual weight loss so far. I'm planning on trying to get my weight down to 140 and then re-evaluating. I might try to go lower at that point, or I might try and stay there. I mean, I've gotten there before and couldn't maintain it, so if I can get there, staying there might be challenge enough. 

I'm hoping that the weight loss will help me do better on body weight movements in CrossFit, specifically pull ups. I've got the strength for pull ups, but I figure if I can manage to lose some of my extra padding without losing that muscle, then I should "magically" be able to do more and better pull ups. And so far, I'm even seeing some improvement with those, but it's nothing to write home about, yet. 

I think one of the big reasons that I couldn't have done this before is that I used to eat crap. Not literally, but I now consider most fast food to be food that I don't want in my body. Along with junk food. I wouldn't have been able to just cut those out for the sake of weight loss, but I had already cut those foods mostly out of my diet for my digestive issues. So calorie counting at this point wasn't about restricting foods, because I'd already done that. It was just about counting what I was consuming. 

And it doesn't hurt that my husband and I are in this together. It's super hard to make a dietary change when you live with someone who is not making those changes. It has been hard, even with us calorie counting together, because there are some foods that are great for weight loss that I just can't eat. Like popcorn. Oh, do I get jealous when that air popper starts perfuming the air with that delightful scent. 

But the drawbacks are outweighed by the support that we're able to give each other. We're both learning more about the caloric content of various foods, and we also talk about how we react to various foods. It's not just about calories for us, but also watching sodium intake (minimizing) and protein intake (maximizing).

I don't know where this particular journey is going to lead me, but I'm glad that I'm on this path. And grateful that I'm not walking it alone.  

Health Update

I've reached a point where I feel like I have a handle on the IBS, or whatever. I have been able to poop fairly consistently, and it has been many weeks since I last had constipation. I credit this to several factors. 

One, I've been consciously trying to tell my body how I want it to function. I've been trying to be an ally with my body, rather than ignoring it or punishing it. I want my body to function well, and so I've asked my body to help with that project. 

Two, I've been on a diet. My husband had hit a plateau with weight loss, and my incessant suggestions of calorie counting as a solution finally got through - with one condition! I had to join him in the experiment and do calorie counting too. While I had already tried to simplify my diet, I now have to keep a consistent food diary in order to count my calories. We have also both eliminated a lot of junk food from our diets. No more fast food at all, and a big reduction in processed foods. I also try to avoid any food product that includes "natural flavors" or "artificial flavors" on the ingredients list, because how can I know what I'm reacting to if I don't even know the actual ingredients? 

Three, I've been drinking tea with mucilaginous ingredients daily. I really think that it's helping to keep my bowels flowing smoothly. The intestines are, after all, mucous membranes. And my constipation seemed to have a big component of dry-out down there, so instead of drinking a throat tea when my throat hurts, I drink them daily. 

Four, I've been practicing Chi-Running. Chi-Running recruits a lot more of my abdominal muscles than regular running does, at least for me. A twisting motion is encouraged, which seems to provide a bit of encouragement to my digestion. And as I've been working on Chi-Running, I can feel that I'm working stored tension out of my shoulders. Tension and stress are supposed to exacerbate IBS, so anything that reduces those things in my life should be helpful. 

I had a thought the other day during my long run that I have stored tension in my body. It's as if some stress or tension was too much for my mind to deal with, and so I shoved that stress, that tension, directly into my body, specifically my left shoulder. It got to be a habit, and led to incredibly painful headaches whenever those muscles got challenged in other ways, like an intense shoulder workout at CrossFit. With that awareness, I'm trying to both stop storing that tension and to release what I had stored before. 

I'm trying to be more analytical about the sensations my body gives me, rather than emotionally reacting to pain as if it were danger. I've been told over and over that the signal I'm getting doesn't mean danger so I'm going to treat it more like data. Analyze what may have caused it, record the what/when and possible whys and look back to see whether it repeats. Maybe I should have tried this approach long ago, but it's hard to get out of your head when you're in pain. 

The Role of the Squire

When it comes to slaying the monsters within, no one can fight for you. It would be great if you could get someone else to fight your monsters for you - so much easier! But the moment someone else tries to be your Champion and slay one of your monsters, you will become defensive and actively fight against their efforts.

Why?

Because they're your monsters. Part of their function is to convince you that they are you, an integral part of you without which you cannot function. The only person who can discern them and slay them is you.

That doesn't mean that you can't get help when you set off to slay those oh-so-personal monsters. In fact, I highly recommend having support when you intend to monster slay. But the support is external. Like, someone to carry your gear, and help you put on your armor for battle. A squire, if you will.

The role of the squire can be pivotal. While not everyone needs or has a squire, when you have one, you can take more leaps, because you have that support to rely on. You just need to remember that the squire is not there to fight the monsters, let alone slay them. The squire is there for you, yes, to support you in your slaying journey, but you are the slayer.

A squire should be able to provide support, care and love. An example of support is discussing tactics and reminding the slayer when they’re starting to stray into a downward spiral. Care and love are pretty self explanatory; when we know that someone cares about what we are doing, and that someone loves us no matter what, then we can be more confident about slaying those monsters. Because your squire won’t let you stop being who you are. 

The squire provides grounding. A link between the self that you are and the self that you wish to be. 

A squire is a cheerleader, and always on your side. 

But they cannot do the work. 

Squiring someone through monster slaying is like helping a friend study for a test. You can drill them, study with them, recommend various tips, tricks and techniques. But when it comes time to actually take the test, you cannot help. You can’t even watch.

The reward is in the results.

In the slaying of monsters that will allow slayer and squire to have a deeper relationship, without monsters getting in the way. 

Declining Invitations

Maybe your day is going well. Maybe it's going poorly. Maybe you're hungry. Maybe you're tired. Maybe you just have a mood. 

Whatever the circumstances, every now and then, someone hands you an invitation to be annoyed. An express ticket to Grumpy Town. 

You can take it. Snap it up. Really lean into the whole I'm annoyed so EVERYONE should be annoyed mentality.

And that is what we often do without thinking. We just see the invitation, and we don't stop and consider. We just say, oh, sure why not be a grump today? I mean, you're being invited. Wouldn't it be rude to decline? 

But declining invitations to be annoyed is something that I've been thinking about lately. I thought about it while I hiked, letting the slow and quiet of the wilderness seep into my thought process. I thought about the future, and that I could simply not take those invitations and therefore avoid becoming grumpy at trivial things. 

It was a nice thought. 

See, the other day I was hungry. Hungry and trying to get stuff done so I could eat. And my husband offered me an invitation. An express ticket to Grumpy Town. 

And in the moment, I couldn't refuse it. 

It was a silly thing to get worked up over, but I got worked up anyway. I did get to eating, and worked on a project, and then finished eating. I was hoping, by that point, to leave Grumpy Town. But sometimes, you've got a double ticket, and you can only leave with your partner. 

Which is a great lesson for me. It's easy to think that I should decline these invitations in the abstract. The practice of actually declining such invitations is going to take both time and effort. But I think I'll be better off if I try. 

I think I will feel better in my life if I graciously decline, it not all, then most of the invitations I receive throughout the day to be annoyed. Just missed the green light? Let it go. Someone cuts me off in traffic? No need to raise my blood pressure because they're an idiot. Something turns out in a way I wasn't expecting or wanting? Adapt. 

Easier written then done. But is it really "easy" to get annoyed? If it is so easy, then why is it so easy?  Because it's a habit? Then why have I built a habit of being easily annoyed? What purpose does it serve for me? 

I think the next step is to try and slow down my reactions a bit. To be thoughtful and consider before reacting. Because I do not like being annoyed or grumpy, and I want to reduce the amount of my life that I spend in Grumpy Town. 

The Self

What is it that makes you "you"? 

Not, what defines you? Not, what experiences made you who you are? 

But what is it that you use to define what it means to be you? 

I don't like mint. I've never liked it. I can stand it. I tolerate it at the dentist. I tolerate using mint toothpaste and dental floss. But I do not like it. That's a part of who I am. 

If I woke up one morning and I enjoyed the taste of mint, would I still be me? 

As a child, I didn't like spicy foods. As an adult, I enjoy them quite a bit. Am I a different person now than I was when I was young? 

I would say that I am different. I believe that I have changed over the years that I've been alive on this earth. I am not the same person that I was 15 years ago. 

But I am still me. 

I am not my opinions. I am not my experiences. I am not even a sum or multiple of these things. 

What is it that I am at my core? Is it my brain? Is it a soul? An extension of the universe using my body as a meat puppet to experience and understand itself? 

In the novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, there is a section where one of the narrators, Teresa, stares at herself in the mirror, and wonders how long she would still recognize herself as herself if her nose grew a millimeter every day. I don't believe the body is integral to the self, though it has influence. A person is no less themselves should they lose a limb. But they do have to adapt to such a radical change in their body. That adaptation - will it change who they are? 

I think it can, but it won't necessarily. 

Whatever it is that makes you, you, it is not immutable. It is subject to influence and change. Purposeful adaptations and incidental ones. Habits and fancies. 

Because if change is not possible, then there's no point in trying. If change is not possible, then how have I changed? How have I adapted to public speaking when it used to terrify me to the point of illness? How have I figured out how to calm my overthinking brain? 

Whatever makes you, you, it isn't your bad habits. You can let them go, and still be yourself. In fact, by letting them go, you might find that you have more room to be yourself. 

On Monsters: Emotional-Physical Connection

When we experience emotions, we react physically. It could be argued that the physical state of the emotion is the emotion, but I won’t get into that here. Here, I want to look at what can happen when an emotional state that we don’t like gets tied to physical feelings that we do like. This is one of the ways that our monsters feed, by creating a feedback loop that pushes us to seek out (or simply not suppress), emotional states that don’t benefit us. It could be that those emotional states hurt ourselves or others, physically or emotionally. It could just be that they don’t create anything positive in our lives, perhaps contributing to the kind of inertia that can prevent us from doing what we really want to do. 

So, let’s look at a state of rage. 

Rage can feel powerful. The adrenaline flows, and our perceptions of the world change with that chemical influence. We feel clarity in the height of the rage. Rage allows us to lash out physically and verbally. There is a power in letting go of civilized restraint. 

What then, would be the responsible use of such power? A righteous rage could be posited. But that is not a monster. Because monsters don’t come when they’re needed or called. They are always there, and always looking to power up and take control. 

Is it our responsibility as adults to master our monsters? I don’t feel like I should use the term adult here, because it is clear that many people do not control or even acknowledge their monsters, regardless of age or supposed status. Awake? Evolved? Both overused. To attain self-mastery? Feels a bit pretentious. 

Let’s take a moment to work over some semantics. If one is unaware of their monsters, then they are Shadowed. An awareness of monsters brings one to the level of Caved. And that would make those who master their monsters Outsiders. This structure plays off of Plato’s cave analogy. 

Then we move to, the responsibility of Outsiders is to master their monsters. 

The responsibility of Cavers is to bring their monsters into awareness. 

The Shadowed aren’t aware of any responsibility. They act without regard to that responsibility, allowing monsters to run rampant as they please, thinking that it is merely an expression of their own personality, rather than a monster. They tend to be entrenched with and possessive of their monsters, no matter how much pain they bring. 

Are there people without monsters? 

There could be. I won’t say no to this, but I think it would be a very uncommon life that would result in no monster formation. No twists in the perception of reality, no painful coping mechanisms caused by pain? 

My husband told me about kicking the dog. Take the prototypical heteronormative family. Dad goes to work. Bossman yells at Dad. Dad can’t respond in kind to the bossman, so he goes home to yell at Mom. Mom can’t respond in kind to Dad, so she yells at Sonnyboy. Sonnyboy knows he can’t yell at Mom (tried that one before!), so he kicks the dog. 

Each one is taking in pain and passing it on. Does that make them feel better? Short term, yes, in the immediacy of the action. After that, not so much, as passing on the pain does nothing to address the cause of the pain. Without awareness, the vicious cycle continues, generation after generation. The monsters hurt us at the same time that they convince us they are helping us. Because that's the emotional pattern that we learned, imprinted from a young age, in this scenario. 

Back to the rage. By itself, it is simply an emotional state. It can exist without being a monster. In such cases, it is an emotion that is entered with control and used. Released. No exaltation of the emotion. No reveling in the high of it. A tool in our box. 

If your emotions are tools in your box that you use, then the monsters aren’t free to use you. Or use your tools. 

Monsters are malformed emotional patterns. Emotional patterns that do not feel good/enjoyable, but that we "can't" seem to avoid falling into. We fall into them because they are habits, and because we are unaware.

Is it the responsibility of Outsiders to help others to become aware of (their) monsters? 

We hold onto monsters, keep them fed and sleek, because we feel that they are a part of us, an integral piece of our personality without which we would cease to be ourselves. So we suffer. We feed ourselves to our monsters and wonder why we’re so tired. We make the same mistakes over and over, because that’s what our monsters have convinced us is the only way. As long as we stay Shadowed, they are unobstructed. They thrive. 

“That’s just the way I am.” 

“That’s just the way they are.” 

We infantilize others when we insist they cannot change. We infantilize ourselves when we insist we cannot change. Growth and change are fundamental parts of being human. We are born, we grow, we change, we acquire monsters and let them ruin our lives. Humanity!

Acting like there’s an expiration date on yourself (or others) for change, is a surefire way to never grow or learn again. 

To cut yourself off from The Experience of being alive. 

Monsters are a part of The Experience, but they limit us, by their nature. Monsters keep pulling us back to what we've done before, while there is so much more to The Experience, beyond the hamster wheels that the monsters want to run over and over again. 

Unpack That

It was in 2006, I believe, that I was last at my childhood home with my own vehicle. My mother was always a bit of a pack rat (and I've taken after her there), and I wanted to take some things back to Idaho with me. Old school papers and such. Photos. I found a big plastic bin, and I shoved a bunch of papers into it, most of which were related to me, and loose photos. 

Over the years, and several moves, I've kept that bin. I rarely looked at the papers. Mostly, I would delve into it when I wanted pictures of my family. 

After my mom died last month, I went through the bin, paper by paper. I got to see things that she had touched, that she had chosen to save, that she had written. I was struck again by how similar my handwriting is to how hers used to be. 

It was as if I knew, somehow, that I wouldn't be able to go back to Illinois when she passed. And that I'd want, even need, something to help me connect and process. 

I'm still processing. Still reeling. Still considering what this all means. I've been thinking about the songs that I wrote after Chris Hill died. Some of the papers in the bin were of more recent vintage, things that I'd saved from college, and that included a list of those songs. But not all the lyrics, which I'm not sure I still have saved anywhere. 

Maybe I'll rewrite them, once I figure out how to play guitar accompaniment to them the melodies that I still recall and the choruses that are mostly still there. I think about recording the songs and posting them somewhere, but then I get this paranoid feeling that everything I've thought or written has already been thought or written before, that if I like the songs, then I must surely have copied them from something I heard. 

The physical bin that I unpacked and sorted is not the only bin being unpacked and sorted in my head right now. 

Jots and Tittles

I was already going a bit slower than normal this year in writing my book. My mom dying threw me for a loop, and I'm no longer expecting myself to publish before the end of the year. I want this book to be better than the ones before it, so I'm asking for criticism from my first reader that will help me make the book interesting to read. So far, he's giving that for sure. 

It won't be the first time that I've had to publish a year's book the following calendar year. It probably won't be the last. Life doesn't always give us what we expect. If 2020 has emphasized one life lesson, that would probably be it. We never know what the future might hold, whether in the next year, the next month or the next day. 

I'm finding it difficult to focus, and it's taking a lot of energy to keep up with my day job. I'm also putting a lot of energy into working out. Working out is good for me in many ways, but I also need to be careful about pushing my body too hard, because I am, at least in part, using exercise as a stress reliever. And I've got a lot to work through. 

Once I do finish my solo book, I want to update my trail guides. Then there's a kind of self-help and/or philosophy book that's tumbling about in my head. I don't know if I'm going to write it next or if I'm going to need more before I get to a place where I can. It depends on my confidence level at any particular moment. Do I feel like these ideas are important and that I can state them better than they might have been before? Or do I feel like these ideas are stupid and/or have already been written to death and/or I'm certainly not the best person to do the presenting of these ideas? 

I'm not sure how many of my ideas might have been written about before, because I'm still at the idea stage. I want to actually do some writing before doing any research. Otherwise, I'll be influenced by the reading of others' interpretations instead of presenting my own. But I have been thinking of revisiting some philosophy from college, specifically the book I wrote my senior essay on, Leibniz' Principles of Nature and Grace. If that book has influenced my ideas, then they're already influenced since I read it, thoroughly, before. 

My boss at work keeps reminding everyone looking forward to 2021 that nothing is going to magically change on January 1 (covid will still be here, etc...). It really annoys me when he does that, because when I bring that up, I'm trying to look at moving forward with a different attitude, internally. People want, perhaps need, milestones in their lives. Routine. Organization. Our calendar is designed to give us that. We get new weeks, new months and new years, all excellent inflection points, just waiting for someone to take advantage of them. I know that outside circumstances on January 1 will closely resemble those of December 31. But I can hope that attitudes can change. My own, if no one else's. 

Forgiveness

I am not the kind of worker who commonly makes mistakes. But the last couple weeks, I've been making a quite few at work. I forget things. I start to ramble. I click the clicks that shouldn't be clicked and forget to click the clicks that should!

I've also gained some weight. I've kept up, mostly, with exercise, but my diet has not been the best. Especially all the booze. Yeah, it was probably mostly the liquor. Mostly. 

And, for the first time in a long time, I snapped at my husband for pretty much no reason at all. I mean, there was an action on his part that caused my snapping, but his action was pretty irrelevant to my reaction. He could have said just about anything in that moment and I would have snapped. 

So, my mom died. 

Something that still feels slightly unreal, tinged with the hallmarks of a half-remembered dream. 

It doesn't matter what my relationship was with her at the end. She was still my mom. And I have good memories and bad. 

I am mourning. 

And I'm going to have to forgive myself for the mistakes I've made and will make as I go through this process. 

Berating myself for these mistakes is only going to add to the stress and the sorrow, and I don't like the way that makes me feel. 

The Little Victories - or - Not Today, Satan

The other night, I was lying down to sleep. I was all set. My night time routine had been completed, and I was ready to drift off. My mind slid through the trivia of the day and caught on an email that I'd reviewed just before the end of the work day. Caught and fastened on with a sudden, sharp spike of panic. 

See, I had read that email at the time, and sent a reassuring reply, but something was percolating through my mind. That something was the realization that if I didn't take care of a particular clean up task, I would be setting up our processing team for a WHOLE lot of work they shouldn't need to do. 

I'm not going to go into excruciating detail on what I had to do or why. That's not important. What's important is how I dealt with it. 

In the past, I might have leapt out of bed and headed to the computer to try to do damage control RIGHT NOW. Or I might have stayed in bed, but been unable to fall asleep, haunted by the error and afraid that I wouldn't remember to fix it in time when I woke up. 

Instead, I took a few minutes to embrace the panic. I asked myself how I could fix it. The first plan that came into my head was completely unworkable (editing a few hundred records one by one). The second plan would still leave some clean up to be done, but definitely reduce the immediate impact on the processors. 

So I reached over to my nightstand and pulled out the notebook a friend gave me. I flipped to the back, because I planned to tear the page out, and I wrote out my 4 step plan to fix the issue as best as I could. Then I tore the page out and went to the bathroom, where I folded it so it wrapped my Kindle. No way I'd miss that in the morning! 

Then, like a freaking miracle, I went back to bed and actually slept. 

I derailed the panic train before it could derail the sleeping train. After all, I like the sleeping train a lot better than the panic train - who doesn't? 

I had an opportunity to create a monster that would ruin my night's sleep and negatively affect me the rest of the next day. And I turned it down. Not this time, no thank you, been there, done that, threw away the t-shirt. 

I'm still not as good at falling asleep as my husband. But maybe I can learn. 

The Music

 I bought a guitar. 

This is actually the first guitar I have owned, but not the first time that I've tried to learn to play. My dad plays guitar, and some of my fondest childhood memories are of singing along with his playing. So the first time I tried to learn guitar was in my youth. 

I never got very far. I always thought my hands were too small for my dad's guitar. I've since come around the idea that maybe if I practice putting my fingers in those positions, I'll get better at it. 

The second guitar that I put some real practice into belonged to my ex-husband. Well, technically, it belonged to his father. Neither of them, as far as I know, actually plays. I mean, maybe my ex does now, I haven't heard from him in over a decade by now. I tried to buy that guitar off of him. It was a sweet little classical guitar, and I offered to buy it off him, but he refused. 

I suppose I can't blame him for wanting to hold onto something of his dad's, considering the way his dad pretty much abandoned him, his mom and his sister in favor of a new family. But I really wish I had been able to keep that guitar. 

I hadn't played one in years, but after spending some evenings at the Big Creek Lodge this summer, where the innkeepers would have an informal jam session, with playing and singing, I got the urge. I still have a flute, though I haven't played that in quite some time, but it isn't the same. I want to be able to sing along while I play. Plus, the flute is very loud, and I live in an apartment building. 

The guitar is pretty loud, I suppose, but it doesn't feel as loud as the flute. And it's definitely less shrill in tone. I'm inspired by a guy named Chuck, who played along with the innkeepers even though he's still learning and makes mistakes. He reminded me that it's all about practice if you want to get better, and they all reminded me that it's okay to make mistakes while playing. 

So, I'm going to practice. I'm going to play - not just play music, but play. And I'm going to have fun. 

Passing It On

Last weekend, I took someone backpacking. It wasn't their first trip, but the actual first one was not the best experience, and put them off of backpacking a bit. This wasn't the first time that I'd gone backpacking with someone other than my husband, but it was the first time that I was taking someone out for a good "first" experience. 

I took them to the same place that Ambrose took me for my first backpacking trip, Skillern Hot Springs outside of Fairfield, ID. It has a lot of advantages for a first trip. The hike out is short, but includes some challenges, like stream crossings and climbs. The trail is open to motorcycles, so it is very well maintained, especially between the parking lot and the hot springs. Oh yes, did I mention the hot springs? 

The trip was great. I've definitely changed that person's idea of what a backpacking trip can be. I learned that I can lead a trip without Ambrose to back me up or advise me. And I got to enjoy a hot spring that holds a special place in my own backpacking history. 

I was nervous about going on this trip way back when I first suggested doing it back in May or April. I'm fine backpacking with Ambrose, and I adjusted to hiking with other backpackers and even their dogs. I don't have any issues backpacking by myself. But taking someone else, someone who had only backpacked once before and had a negative experience... That was a bit of pressure. 

On the one hand, I felt confident that this trip was the right "first" trip for this person. On the other hand, maybe the exigencies of the first trip weren't the only reason it wasn't a good experience. Backpacking isn't for everyone, after all. 

As luck would have it, I've been extremely busy at work. I'm not only lacking in boredom, I'm actively busy for the majority of the day due to a software implementation. And that means that I had absolutely no spare energy left for worrying about the trip. I didn't worry about whether I could actually lead a newbie out on a trip and make it a good one. I didn't worry about anything. 

When the time came to actually go on the trip, I just experienced it. I didn't compare it to a worried expectation. I was myself, and I experienced. 

While I'm not sure I could take someone out for a first trip if I didn't consider them a friend, I know now that I can take a friend out. And I know just how rewarding it can be to introduce someone to backpacking in a positive way. 

Introspection

It's 94.95 degrees on my porch, but it doesn't feel that hot to me. Of course, I'm in full shade, which helps with keeping cool, but I think it's mostly because I've been so cold lately. It's taking longer for my body to get warm enough to care about it being hot outside. But I can feel it happening; the sweat is getting ready to pop out on my brow, and I'll soon be forced to retreat into the air conditioned comfort of my apartment. 

But not yet. Now, I'm writing, not distracted by the television or any music. I am a bit distracted by passers-by and the squirrels and birds bold enough to dare eating birdseed mere feet away from my feet. Overall, however, I'm much more able to focus out here. 

I've got a good amount of writing to do in the next few days. I'll be going out of town on Tuesday morning, so I need to have a couple of blogs prepped and ready to go for each of my blogs. I know what I'm writing about for the next couple of Gym to the Mountain posts, since I still have a couple of days of my 4th of July trip to put up, and then I have other exercise related things that are easy to write about. 

Here though, I'm just not sure what to write. I hold myself back, here, from writing about some of the things that occupy much of my mind these days. I don't want to write about politics here, at least, not too extensively. And I don't want to let all my focus here go to the pandemic either. But I find that I consume a lot of politics and pandemic related news. And I grind and think on those items, and I might write about them... but not here. 

I guess another thing that's been occupying my thoughts in this space of strangeness engendered by the pandemic. I find myself thinking about who I am, and what I am. Who I want to be, and how that meshes with who I am now. Who I was in the past, and how I got here from there. I'm a bit confounded about how it is that I came from years of Catholic schooling and never really believed in any of it. Looking at myself, I feel like I've chosen paths that I really had no "right" or "reason" or "impetus" to choose. How did I manage to decide that I didn't need to wear makeup, growing up in this society and in my family? 

But that's not necessarily blog material either.