Marina is just that – it’s an open marina that you row in a counter-clockwise loop, and depending on your course it can be about 6000m, not counting inlets. You’re out there with everyone else – rowers from other boathouses, recreational motorboats, sailboats, a couple of commercial tourist fishing expedition boats, and the occasional Catalina-bound ferry. As you might guess, sometimes that makes for an adventure wrapped in chaos punctuated by many an utterance of “What the fuck?”

Creek is different. It’s an outlet of the LA river which has about 2400m of protected water between two bridges that’s two, maybe three boat lanes wide. Thanks to our location, Bear!Boathouse has a dock that lowers down directly to the water. Everyone else has to actually row out of the marina, go out around the breakwater & surf about five or six hundred meters of ocean waves to get access. As such, the course doesn’t get much play beyond some of the local Masters who know how to manage that sort of hazard and college crews who have a coach launch as safety escort.

I like rowing in the creek. Not just because the water is flat – after six years in our marina, shit water is just part of the game. No, I like creek because it helps me let go.

Truth told, I really needed that this week.

Laziest. 2k. Ever.

I did a 2k piece last weekend. I went to SD & did their Indoor Classic, and while everybody else in my heat was busting their ass racing, I just went ahead and… did a piece.

One of the Juniors described it later as “the most casual 2k ever”, and it’s true – I pretty much did the anti-2k.

I sat down, I did a nice steady state piece. I adjusted the volume on my ipod twice, I deliberately didn’t go faster than the girl who was winning the lightweight division (open & open ltwt went together) & and I really only put pressure on for the last 400m when I looked the screen & saw that Hoff (who came in 2nd in the lightweight division) was +10m up on me, which the junior rowers described as, “it literally looked like you said, ‘ehhh, screw it, I’m gonna go ahead & beat Hoff‘.”
That was actually a very accurate assessment, except that longtime readers will not be surprised to know that in my mental version of that statement, I dropped the f-bomb.

After I was done, I put my handle in place, reached back for my phone, took a picture of my screen, then cheered on the girl next to me for her last 500m & waited for everyone else to finish.

Rowers reading this story are either laughing or horrified right now. Or, as JRo said to me at work on Tuesday when she heard, “Wow. You seriously did that & still won your race? You’re kind of an asshole.”

Salter:	hahaha…what a good example you lead for the high school kids
Claris:	what? i cheered the girl next to me on – that’s totally sportsmanship!

Why did I do a piece instead of a race?

Because the problem isn’t my body, it’s my head.

For me, last weekend wasn’t about winning or busting my shit out, it was about composure. It was about rowing a piece without freaking out. Last Saturday, I pulled a 1.53.7 average split – pretty much the same time I pulled last year. The difference is that this year, it wasn’t a fight. I wasn’t hyperventilating. There were no panic attacks. Honestly, if I was anything last week, I would describe that piece as oddly detached.

I wasn’t rowing for time. I was rowing for flow.

One of the things that I’ve come to realize over the last few months is how much I’ve lost my flow.

High School Locker People: where you the shover or the shovee?

On the water, athletically, I love rowing.

Off the water… well let’s be honest, folks – the rowing community has a lot of crap.

Rowing is a small group of people to begin with, and each individual boathouse is a bit isolated from others, so oftentimes you end up in what I can only describe as high school, only nobody is ever forced to graduate, so they just sit at that maturity level. Forever.

The result? You see a lot of dumbass crap.

For people like me, who didn’t participate in high school when I was in high school, being different can make you a target. Add in that I’ve never been one to duck a punch, and you learn real fast what it means to stand alone.

But having to deal with that sort of thing, to keep taking care of yourself over & over… after a time, expending that energy takes its toll. And in the course of that, I’d lost much of what made me love my sport.

So I retreated. I purposely backed away from people & just concentrated on the rowing. Z changed the metrics of my training plan so that I couldn’t measure things the way I usually would. And while the detailed entirety of the tale will no doubt be a different blog entry at another time, for the last four months, I have simply dialed things back & worked the problem.

All of which is why, last weekend, I rowed a piece for flow. I rowed it like I was in the creek.

While the water conditions are mostly flat, unless you have very specific conditions, the split you pull in the creek isn’t really an indicator of your actual speed – since we tend to row early in the morning & later in the evening, the tide is almost always either coming in or out, so one direction your split will be really great, and the other… not so much.

If I really wanted to, I could I find those perfect conditions – as Z loves happily pulled out his phone on Sunday to demonstrate, there’s totally an app for that.

Do I bother? Nah.

Right now I just need to row to row. After Saturday’s 2k, I came home, went to sleep, headed over to Bear!Boathouse on Sunday and hit the creek for a 4×20′ under 155 HR where I literally spent and hour & twenty minutes just playing around with the technicality of my stroke.

The truth is that right now, I am a selfish rower.

Christmas Day, I rowed a 2x with Stesha Carle.
@Steeesh & I had known each other for a bit, but really only started talking over the last year or so, & have never actually rowed together, so when there was nobody around & neither of us had a training plan for Christmas, we decided to meander out & see what there is to see.

…and I was reminded that damn. I row selfish.

Overall, it was decent for never having rowed together. Balance was good, & as someone who normally rows a single, I was perfectly happy to let the little control freak bow so I didn’t have to steer.

There was some slight mismatch – due to yoga having allowed me to develop the ability to scrunch my body into as tiny a ball as one could be when 5’10″, I have a fair compression at the catch so my front angle is deeper, but Stesha comes off the footplates & turns around into the drive much quicker & harder than I do — which is probably why she’s got the silver medal for team USA from this year’s Worlds in Bled and I’m just mucking about in a creek on my own.

…but the thing that struck me the most about that row was the difference in how we balance.

As we would go up the slide, I could feel Stesha behind me – there were wiggles and twitches and movement from her calves and toes as she counterbalanced me.

For me, balance comes from relaxing – I tend to deliberately loosen my upper body as I go up the slide, push my shoulders away from my ears, finesse the oar handles, and allow the boat to roll around me.

Now, to be clear, neither approach is wrong. It just illustrated to me a difference in mindset.

Competitively, Stesha rows a quad, so she’s used to counterbalancing and working with other people in the boat. As much as she concentrates on her own performance, there’s always a part of her brain that also constantly adjusts what she’s doing to better mesh with her teammates.

For the most part, I row a single – because I don’t have to worry about what anyone else might do to offset my motion, my instinct is to just keep my body in line, allow the shell to go where it’s gotta go, & re-engage as I approach the front in order to allow for as little disturbance as possible.

While neither of us knew it at the time, looking back, I know now that really needed that row. For me, that row, and the lesson that I learned from it – athletically, it was a kind of blessing.

When you learn to row, you’re taught to row with others – the most common boat is the 8+. You work as a team, you compete against others for your seat. So much of what & how you do things involves other people.

Now, don’t get me wrong – I love an 8+. Rowing-wise, I was born & raised to be an engine room, and after the practice row for last year’s Crew Classic, I was the one going, “Sweeeeeeep – wait, why are we stopping? Let’s go again!”

But, much like the fact that my parents raised me in a Catholic Republican environment only to have their daughter send them a copy of Farenheit 9/11 right before the 2004 presidential election, how I was raised is not who I turned out to be.

What that row with Stesha taught me is that right now, I’m a single rower. And there’s nothing wrong with that other than that I hadn’t accepted that because what I row has changed, how I approach how I row has to change. I have to be selfish. More importantly, I have to be okay with being selfish, and doing what I need to do for me, no matter how that stacks up to what other people think or expect.

I’m just now getting to the point where I can start to put my head back in the game. Last weekend was the first time in three years where I rowed 2000 meters on something other than the paddle and didn’t feel like my heart was going to explode from neurosis.

Was I at full pressure? Hell no.
Athletically can I do better than that? Yah, I totally can.

But mentally, that was the best 2k I’ve rowed in four years.
There was no psychologically abusive coach telling me I’m not “a real athlete” because I hadn’t hit a certain split, no lung-stealing panic, no feeling that the walls were gonna close in on me. I stopped thinking about anything other than what I needed to do for me, & I did a piece. I did okay. I didn’t freak out. I was okay.
I am okay.

This weekend? Round 2.

There’s another erg sprint at Beach!Boathouse, so I’m going to build on what I did last Saturday & try it again. Based on the heat sheets, I know there’s at least one other girl who’ll probably beat me in the event, and honestly… I don’t care. All I want to do this week is to be able to go a little faster than last week & still have the same composure. To push out of my comfort zone a bit more & still be okay.

This isn’t my endgame. This is a step. This is part of my process. To get to there, I have to get through here. So if I lose on Saturday, that’s fine. Right now, I’m finding my flow.

I’m not racing to win. I’m not there yet. Today, I’m just rowing for me.

Music: Falling – Staind (Chapter V)

previous adventures

• letting go & learning to breathe.
• Just like freakin’ Ghandi.
• rowing & puppies – because really, what else is there?

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it’s okay, we can all be kinda crazy in the head together.

While my confession of small mental breakdown wasn’t intended to be so, it would seem that several of you found great solidarity & comfort in knowing it’s not just you.

Guess what, people? It’s not just you.

:insert chorus of small children crying out with delight:

…plus it would seem we could all use some freakin’ cake.

source

Claris:	ooh – momentary freedom?
k-walla	oh yea, i am leaving at 5:15 then – I”M OUT BITCHES!!!!!!!!! i really know how to push the envelope lol
Claris:	:snerk: me too – tomorrow, I don’t come in here to work, so I’m going to be at home working!
k-walla	woo woo – we crazay i very much liked your blog post today, always good to know other people spiral out of control with the weird and downer head thoughts as well!
Claris:	HOLD ME BACK omg, it’s like freakin’ rampant lately we’re all taking turns, just not on purpose.
k-walla	there was that great cartoon on hyperbole and a half too
Claris:	omg, I love her. but yah, it’s especially hard for single girls I think because if there’s a guy at home he’s like, “Okay, you know you’re being crazy, right? Do you want to have sex? Would that help?” and then you might be crazy, but at least you’re crazy & getting laid.
k-walla	haha, totally and that would help!
Claris:	I know, right? Instead I’m sitting here emailing eHarmony to see why they rejected my affiliate program application for Project!Site — so that at least if people other than me are gonna get some, I’ll get paid for helping them get there, dammit.

–> For the record, eHarmony’s reply was that they only look to place with affiliates who will be able to offer meaningful content for dating & relationships, & how would my site fit into that?

Taking my life into consideration, I sat down to write a reply explaining what kind of meaningful content I could bring to the subject of finding compatibility with others and…

…yeah. I’ll get back to that one later.

Seriously, people – I just want to put up a damn banner sometimes & probably poke fun of your company during early February – why does that have to be so freakin’ hard??

Tru fax, peoples

When I went to put an ad up there, I originally thought I’d put up something for like, Chemistry.com or Match.com just to be a smartass to eHarmony. However, when I clicked on the “Dating” category on LinkShare, I found — and I swear to $deity this is true — that under Dating is Chocolate.com.

You have to appreciate the sheer awesome of whoever it was in their office that decided to be totes McGotes real about the way life is… or possibly they were going through a breakup when assigned the task of setting up their company’s affiliate network. Either way, I’m in favor.

Normally I don’t go for this sort of blatant, slightly schmaltzy advertising on a blog, but in this case I’m going to go ahead & make a one-time exception to let you know that from now until the end of the year, you get 10% Off at Chocolate.com With Code MYCHOC10.

Because let’s be honest – in this day & age, a company that employs someone willing to run with that brand of truthiness deserves to stay in business.

Speaking of advertising – I passed the Wil Wheaton test, y’all. :fist of triumph:

I’ve been looking at ad rates on other blogs lately for an ActualFaxRealLife project of mine, & I decided to see how much it might cost to help support the Bloggess’ Wine-Shushee Habit.

However, such an inquiry is not without risk — as Bloggess readers know, should you strike the wrong note, emailing on such a subject can earn you Wil Wheaton collating paper. For a moment, I totally considered trying to sound professional, but we all know that would be a short-lived effort, so instead I sent an email regarding the use of the word “Dickensian” and the fact that I’d put on my Big Girl Pants for the occasion.

What’d I get back?

This? Is an awesome email. I’m giving you the slow clap. But softly because my daughter is sleeping.
~ @TheBloggess

This email may have caused me to swing by Polgara’s desk yesterday & say, “So… I got a slow clap from the Bloggess.”
Polgara: What? How?
Claris: I emailed her about ad rates. I’m just really proud I didn’t get Wil Wheaton.
Polgara: She only does that to people that email her stupid stuff. What did you say?
Claris: Well I wrote her like… ya know, the way I normally talk.
Polgara: oh.
Claris: Yeah, so I’m not gonna lie — slow clap? Kinda proud of that.

…and then Polgara had a huge coughing fit. This was more due to her salad dressing than our conversation, but as SarahNicole will tell people, “Claris is a choking hazard. I can’t sit near her at meal times.”

It’s animals, people. TALKING IN CAPS. How do you not know about this already??

SOMETIMES I FEEL FEELINGS, YOU PERT, JUDGMENTAL EATING DISORDER BILLBOARD! LEAVE ME ALONE!
Much in the same spirit as the guy who Facebook msg’d me after my post regarding the word faggot to say that he would now be looking for an opportunity to shout at someone that they are, indeed, a bundle of sticks, I kind of want to call someone a “pert judgmental eating disorder billboard”. I think this could probably be contextually achieved if I walk down Sunset Blvd on a Friday night, most likely somewhere between the Viper Room & the Hustler Store. Oh yes, it can be done.

also?
THIS IS AN ENCYCLOPEDIA. IT’S LIKE WIKIPEDIA EXCEPT YOU CAN TRUST IT.
–> for the young’ins in the audience, I shall put this in a context you can understand.

They don’t talk in caps, so it’s a good thing they’re cute.

Sachiel arrives on Friday to begin what we’re calling #OccupyCouch for a bit. As part of #OccupyCouch, we’re going to have to re-stuff the back cushions of said couches due to the fact that as of late, the canine children have taken to burrowing into their favorite place in the whole wide apartment to make sleeping forts.

Case in point:


…right? I KNOW.

You argue with that.

Go on. Try.

Music: I Can Get Drunk & I Can Sing Songs – Two Man Gentleman Band (Live in NYC)

previous adventures

• d-u-n done, geekery bits & bobs.
• stop signs, trams, & spotify: I am LOSING my friggin’ MIND.
• skeevy clients, UK slang, homemade weapons, & fake Jonah Hill.

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Looking back, I suspect he gave it to me so that I left him alone before he threw it at my head — just because I insisted I could feel that the oars weren’t set evenly & it turns out they were off by .3 does not mean I’m crazy. It means I’m precise, so there’s no reason to ask if I’m the Princess & the Pea like it might be a bad thing, it means that I now know how to change out handles & set even lengths on oars, and I think that’s a good thing.

…right? Right. Totally!

Note: For the record, I gave Z his book back, because I’d gone to Amazon & ordered my own in case I wanted to be able to take notes.

The point being that rigging a boat & doing wiring — normally these things & I are, if not Great Friends, then at the very least, Fairly Amicable Acquaintances.

Sadly for me, the following story is not normal.

Saturday. The day I thought I had it figured out.

So for those of you that actually read my blog entries that have #rowing in the header:
first off – thanks for putting up with me
second, you probably know that with my new boat, there’s been a slight… struggle with setting up my wiring.
(“struggle” : trans. MTV called from the 90’s, they’d like to know if I would participate in Claris vs Boat wiring as a Celebrity Death Match.)

Thus far this process has involved discovering that my wiring set didn’t have a magnet on the seat (my fault for not checking & assuming it’d be there), switching out the original wiring that came with the boat for a new set, trying three different magnets before I found one strong enough (really NK? What’s up with a weak magnet in my NEW wiring set? A couple of rowers at Beach!boathouse say they had that problem too, you might wanna check your supplier.)

The point being, two wiring sets & three seat magnets later, I finally had a rate.

Unfortunately, it appeared to be the horribly wrong rate, unless I’ve suddenly developed the heretofore unknown to me superpower of thinking I was paddling and in fact rowing a 46. (for non-rowers, you paddle at like, a 16. Slight difference, that.) G-mo borrowed my 1x for his heat at SW Regionals* & it told him he raced his 1k at a 108 stroke rating, a skill of which we were all appropriately in awe.
*because of my vertical proportions, I discovered my best hardware fit was a mens’ F-15 with a 165 weight cap. As such, my boat is the envy of every lightweight male on our team.

Since everything appeared to be installed correctly, we declared that I’d gotten a crap wiring set, & I ordered another from NK. Got it, put it in… same. damn. problem. Stroke rate: approx a bajillion.

Em. of. effffffff.

Attempt at Silver Lining:
Well, I have been working on improving my ability to hold a higher rate.

At this point, I gave up, admitted that I’d hit the edge of my troubleshooting capability, & asked DaddyMcG to take a look. So after team practice on Sat morning, we took my boat down, & by the time I’d gotten my speedcoach & came back, he said, “I can see the problem right here.”

The magnet was too far back.

JTG, whom I’d bought the boat from, already had wiring in there, so when I put the new sets in, I used his old spots thinking, “Okay, he’s already proven this is the right place. As they say in Beauty & the Beast, if it’s ain’t Baroque, don’t fix it.”
@Steeesh: B&B reference is totally your fault. I’ve had that song in my head on & off ever since you said “Hey gurl!”

Realize you’ve put the seat on backwards.

Sit 100m away from the dock & go, “Son of a b*tch!”

Paddle back to the dock. Get out of boat. Pull oars in. Take seat off tracks.
Turn seat around.
Put seat back on tracks.
Grumble.
Run oars out. Get back in boat. Push off dock.

Five strokes… no stroke rate again.

I just… I don’t, I can’t… it’s not fair.

Okay. Stop. Breathe. Engage yoga breath. Apply brain. You had a stroke rate last time, then you put the seat on correctly.

…if the magnet was at the front when the seat was on backwards, putting the seat on properly moved it to the back again.

When I stopped to talk to the other rower & explain that I didn’t come back in because Something Dire Had Occurred, I must’ve not been paying attention & put the magnet right back where I’d just taken it off from.

Go. Team. Me.

Paddle-back-to-the- dock. Get-out-of-boat. Pull-oars-in. Take-seat-off-tracks.
Put the damn magnet in the right damn spot.
Make sure seat is facing right freakin’ way.
Put seat back on tracks.
Grumble.
Run-oars-out. Get-back-in-boat. Push-off-dock.

Obligatory five strokes.
Achieve stroke rate.
:fist of triumph!:

Start to paddle away… realize that there’s a click & slight bump when approaching the catch.

What. What now? What the freakin’ bloody hell now???

With the added weight of… well let’s just be honest – my ass, the seat now bends in just enough that the two magnets don’t pass by one another, they hit each other.

Really? Really? It’s not enough that I’m having this morning of mornings, but now you gotta make a sister feel fat, too?

WHY DOES THE UNIVERSE LIKE TO TORTURE ME?

Seriously, people – I’d put up with a lot from the Cosmic Muffin that day, but the fat joke — oh, that put me right over the edge. I just started mumbling stuff like, “You wanna go, b*tch? Really? You wanna go? Fine. Effin’ bring it, and we will em’ effin’ go. And you will lose, because right now I’m in the mood. I am from New York. My mom works at Wal-Mart. My parents live in a trailer. I was the first to get a freakin’ degree. You know what that means? Underneath all this nice, civilized, well-spoken, meditation-practicing, educated-up guise, I am a Long Island girl with a bad temper whose parents are technically trailer trash and if need requires, do not doubt for a moment that b*tch, I will cut you. ”

Backtodock. Outofboat. Pulloarsin. Seatofftracks.

Let’s look at what we’ve got here.

Okay. Seat – magnet cannot get any higher, it’s on the frame for the seat wheels. No give there.
Boat. We’ve got the deck, the tracks, the porthole cover.

Dude, wtf, I lost ten pounds & shifted BMI this summer because I’m freakin’ allergic to mother-lovin’ wheat. What is wrong with the world when I have to give up bread and my own damn boat is still telling me my ass is too big? Why you gotta be like that, Baby? Didn’t I get you new wiring? I’m gonna order the new shoes soon! Momma loves to row you, why you gotta be so mean?

Okay. No. Stop that. Focus, brain. Focus. Let go of the leftover childhood insecurity borne of being taught an unrealistic body image and focus on the now.

Porthole cover. That’s inset, so it’s lower than the deck. Unless I flip the boat :pause to knock on internet wood: I’ll pretty much never take that cover off, so it really won’t move.
I can try putting the magnet on that, and it should be low enough so that the magnets will clear each other under the apparent weight of my ginormous ass.

Hey hey! Focus, remember? Focus. Before we descended into allowing Bridget Jones’ neurosis to control thought process, there was an actual good applicable solution there. Let’s focus on that.

As you might guess by… most of the entries in this blog, my life often falls into the category of… special, and as such I’ve learned to contingency plan, which is why, when I’d first come down to the dock, I’d brought a roll of electrical tape & a small pair of scissors which I keep in my toolbag just in case.

This, it turned out, was just such a case.

I gently pried the hull-magnet (attached by double-sided tape) off the deck, scooted enough slack in the wiring to stretch to the porthole over, and pressed the hull magnet onto the cover, using my handy-dandy electrical tape to tack things down for testing purposes.

Run the oars out. deep calming breath.
Get back in boat. it’s gonna work. it’s totally, totally all going to work.
Push off dock. Things will be fiiiiiine…

Obligatory five strokes.
Achieve stroke rate. yay!
Five more strokes, listening carefully….
No clicking noise.

No way.

I’m almost afraid to say this, but I think it works.

YES!
It’s possible I almost started to do a victory dance before I remembered I was in a slightly tippy conveyance out in the middle of a body of water and thus needed to hold on to the oars in order to stay upright.

Finally.

I paddled out clear of the dock & the stadium which was no longer open to rowers & thus meant I couldn’t calibrate that morning, & started up the channel towards the yacht club. Held water, took a minute to check things before I started my workout an hour & fifteen minutes after I first put my boat in the water (Not that I’m bitter. Not at all.) Looked up as I was putting my sunglasses on, & saw…

… the rest of my team rowing by from the bridge to the dock as they finished their practice.

Hey guys… :sad little wave:

At that point, it was about 8:30am, the sun was up & in the sky at full shiny brightness, the rest of my team was headed home, & I’d accomplished jack-all for a workout that morning.

There was really only one thing to do.

…and so, 3×30 minutes of steady state later, I was done.

What? Of course I did the workout after all that — even my boat is saying my ass needs to train!

Music: Henry Nearly Killed Me [It’s a Shame] – Ray LaMontagne

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I had been unemployed for over a year, I was making due on freelance & working as a valet, & I was kind of economically screwed.

I worked for three different valet companies, and while this did yield many an interesting anecdote, it also meant that from Friday morning to Sunday night, I often left Zoey in the care of Mia next door and spent the weekend alternating between morning practice at the boathouse(s), two to three valet shifts a day, and sleeping for a little bit between the hours of 2 & 5am in my car, naps that were interrupted a couple times by various members of the Los Angeles & Long Beach Sherriff’s Deptartments who were checking to make sure I was neither vagrant or dead.

^ Seriously, I just can not even tell you how many times I broke this law.

This continued through August into early September when I got my present contract at Museum!Co, a position which thankfully looks to continue for a good while longer.

I say this because the thing that seems to be coming to the forefront lately is how, in the short space of nine months, things have changed. How I have changed.

I think my biggest accomplishment for the year has been paying off Zoom!Zoom!
In a childhood that involved mortgage foreclosures & car repossessions, I will admit to no small amount of personal pride in having bought & fully paid for a brand new car. There’s no trick to make it work, no worrying about the power steering system, no need to carry a can of wire-dry because there’s a hitch in the design that causes it to stall out when I go through a car wash or it rains too hard. I get in my car, & it works. Period. After four years of owning it, I’m still a little chuffed by that.

My bills are paid. I’m not awash in money baths, but for me – my bills are paid, and at the moment, they’re actually paid a month ahead.

I can turn down work if I want to. I could have a weekend to myself if I wanted to. I buy my software legitimately, and I’m rather happy to do so.

And all of this is fine well & good, but on top of that, as of late, I’ve been more & more feeling less of the things coming in & an acquisition of stuff, & a greater sense of letting things go.

I am no longer on the email list for the Dolls. G emailed me & was like, “Hey, it’s been a while & I’m culling the distribution — is it okay if I take you off, & you can just give a yell if you ever need to come back on?”
…and so for the first time in six years, I’m not on the rolls as a Doll. And oddly enough, I was like, “Okay. I’m done with that.”

Polgara & I were discussing budgeting one day in my office, & I had my financial spreadsheet up in another screen. (I’m not gonna lie, it’s pretty detailed. Possibly bordering on scary.) As of July 1st, valet hours are no longer on the setup for possible income — even though I haven’t parked a car I didn’t own since last September, the neurotic contingency planner in me had left the possibility on there. Just in case.

But it’s time to let that go.

There’s a meditation exercise that you can do to purge things/people etc from your life, & one of the lines in it is “I ask you to take this from me for I do not need it anymore & it does not serve my life.”

More & more as of late, that seems to be my theme, and it would seem I am not alone. People are just hitting their wall of tolerance for bullsh*t & having that moment of, “f*ck it, I don’t care, let the sh*t fall ’cause I am done.” Whether it’s a job, a relationship, a living situation, whatever. Spring cleaning seems to have bled over into early summer.

I was talking to Sachiel a few days ago, & we were discussing this recent phenomenon amongst our friends, & a little bit of how it applied to her life & mine, and in the course of that I said, “Well, metaphysically speaking, you figure your life is like your apartment. You have to clean things out & throw stuff away every so often before new things can come in, otherwise you end up like an episode of Hoarders.”

I like space. As anyone that’s been to my place can attest, I like having lots of open space where I live. I hate being cramped in. Hell, I don’t even like having carpets – hard floors of some nature are a requirement for when I got apartment hunting.

I don’t tend to keep a lot of stuff in my life to begin with — one of the side effects of multiple economically-driven migrations during childhood. However, what I do have I usually keep for quite some time, so cleaning things out can often be difficult for me, and I openly admit that my emotional attachments are on par with the physical. I don’t often care about people, so when I do & things go badly, I often have a hard time letting go. Contrary to what people might think, I actually am a creature of habit, whether those habits be good or bad, so change isn’t always easy for me.

But lately, I just feel myself cutting ties. Being okay with letting go, and just not… caring about things that would normally have driven me beserk before. I find myself looking at people & thinking, “yeah… I don’t need to be here.”

Most of all, I’m finding that the universe is draining the chaos out of my life. Whether it be crappy clients, fiscal obstacles, or people whose level of being f*cked up is such that their chaos was affecting me… so much of that is gone. And honestly, I’ve come to realize that I’m okay with that.

Most of all I just have this overwhelming sense lately that things are going to be okay. That it’s going to be all right. That I don’t have to worry as much.

For what is possibly the first time in my life, I feel like I can breathe.

What about you? Taken a deep breath lately?

Music: Life is Wonderful – Jason Mraz (Mr. A-Z)

previous adventures

• my friends are better than yours, a plan, and higher learning.

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For instance, this comment from Rolypolypony:
Note to self: no matter how much you like the word, saying “badger” out loud when you come across it in the book you’re reading at lunch in the crowded staff room is not a good idea. You will get funny looks.

Because hey, much like hitting a man in the face with your fist upon occasion, this was kinda hi-larious.

And yet, I could not Like! it.

Very sad. Damn you Zuckerberg & your Pavlovian user interface! :shakey fist!:

Why hullo, Green Tree House!
on Sunday, for the first time in… what is probably almost a year, I went to group meditation at Christian & Teresa’s house. I’d been about two month back, but they were away & it was a guest leading the meditiation, so it wasn’t like, a real visit. Honestly, it’s been so long since I’ve seen them that Teresa has given birth to the daughter she was pregnant with the last time I was there & lost all the baby weight already — much to the envy of my metabolism.

Because it had been a while, I just very quietly went in, thinking I’d, ya know, fly low or whatever. I hadn’t even closed the door before I heard Teresa say, “Oh, my god, no way!” and suddenly there was hugging.

Group meditation is just… it’s really nice. Christian & Teresa have this great little home in Venice which, as you might guess from the residence of a meditation teacher, is just very calm & totally zen, even with the inclusion of a baby & all that babies bring.

Plus just the people were relaxing. While there are often new people, the majority of the Sunday morning regulars are people who’ve been meditating for a year or more, and many are personal friends of Christian & Teresa, so the whole place is just very chill.

During the discussion portion, it’s a bit of a… loosely controlled free-form, so while Christian does lead the subject, everyone contributes as well. In the course of that, at one point Christian was talking about how the logic portion of the brain will try to plan for contingencies, etc & so forth, and thus we often spend more time planning for things that never even happen than simply living our lives with what does, and I summed it up with the comment, “It’s all just one big if-then-else”, which Christian as a former Wall Street programmer that still does technical consulting, laughed at.
Later, he was using the example of Arthur Dent’s epic for the perfect cup of tea in space as an example of focusing on a tiny thing instead of dealing with the whole of the situation that you’re in at the moment (if you know the scene of the battle in Hitchikers that he referred to, it actually is totally applicable which just makes it more awesome) and Christian was searching for a word & said, “It’s that thing, that they used on Star Trek that just… made whatever they asked for…”
And I supplied, “A replicator. It’s called a replicator.”
Christian laughed and said, “You knew what it was before I even asked, didn’t you?”
to which I had to admit, “Yes. Earl Gray. Hot. For those of you that haven’t figured it out yet, I’m a big nerd.”

From behind me, I heard one of the guys go, “I don’t know who you are, but I think I’m in love.”

*snerk*

Oh, pages & pages & pages, and accepting the inevitable rewrite.
Afterwards, when I was talking with Teresa & playing with her daughter Uma, the two of us were laughing in a “Can you believe we ended up here” kind of discussion — I’d met Teresa about four years ago when we both took a writers workshop for about six months with a woman named Claire Elfman, who, incidentally, it totally the sh*t. After the workshops had ended, Teresa, myself & two of the other women in the group had met up for dinner at Jerry’s and in the course of it Teresa had mentioned that she’d started dating this guy who had started to teach meditation, to which I’d said, “Really? Because I’ve been trying a couple different kinds, and none of them have really been the right fit for me.”

Couple years later, I’m still meditating, and she’s got a husband, a baby, and a whole community of meditators.

…and yet neither of us ever managed to finish editing our books.

Which was what we finally got around to discussing, & discovered that we were both having the same problem — namely, who & what we were four years ago when we finished our original drafts is different than who we are now, & so it’s hard to continue to approach the story in the same way we did back then.

I finally just said, “Ya know, I’ve accepted that because I’m different, the way that the story is told is going to have to be different, and even though it’s going to be a lot of work, it would involve a crapload of editing, and I just need to… do that work, because I think that what I have to bring to it now would actually make it a much better book, as long as I accept that there are large portions of it which I’m going to have to let go & throw away. It’s just sucking it up & actually getting it done.”

To which we made tentative plans to start to use one another for that reason. So, once I get past Crew Classic this coming weekend, I have an item in my Google Task list to contact Teresa & set up our first time to turn in pages to one another for review. We’re actually good people to look at each other’s work — where I’m all dialogue-driven banter, she’s primarily the princess of prose & will spend a page beautifully describing the detailed history of a red bowl, so we’d actually probably push one another in each of our weaknesses.

So yes. Next Monday, I have to sit down & pull out pages of other people’s edits that I need to go through, find the most current draft of the manuscript, and say hello again to Kate & Daclyn’s world.

Hopefully this time, Anya won’t get hit by a yellow car.
Seriously dude, sorry about that — I didn’t know that I could actually make that happen.

which, if you’re one of the few that knows the storyline, brings us to today’s music:

Davy Spillane – Caoineadh Cu Chulainn

A world outside of oars & programming code? Say it ain’t so!
Thanks to Heather Parlato, I signed up for the email notices of The LA Food Swap. Because really, if there’s ever a group of people I would probably enjoy hanging out with, it’s people who are into exchanging homemade food. Indeed.

Music: Somewhere Else to Be – VAST

previous adventures

• Facebook was inevitable: a.k.a., Gene Roddenberry really did know the future.

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So by Friday, when I was slated to go down to SD to do a practice for the Crew Classic boat I’m supposed to be in, I was totally just running on auto-pilot. Now, if I’d been running on all cylinders, it probably would have occurred to me that hey, it’s the morning of & we’re still short two rowers & a cox, so I should probably just call it & not drive down, but no no, I wasn’t aware enough for that & just kept on keepin’ on, and was half an hour outside of San Diego when the email came through on my phone that yes indeed, practice was not gonna happen — of course by this time it was 1pm & I’d already dropped the dogs in Long Beach, so I was pretty much screwed.

I did my erg, and I wasted some time & I rode launch with the Juniors practice, but basically it was like, well this is pretty fuckin’ useless. I started to go to Hoff’s house & was stopping to get myself dinner when I just… I cannot even tell you what set it off, but I just sat in a parking lot & reverted to being five years old – I was tired, I wanted to be home in my bed, and because those two things were not instantaneously available, I just started crying.

It was at this point that I decided that hey, I’m just gonna go the hell home. I went back to the boathouse, managed to get there just in time to get my oars back before they closed the place up, and made my way back up the 405 — between finally stopping to get something to eat (a venture far more successful when one does not start crying in the parking lot) and finding a parking spot in my neighborhood, put me back at my apartment around 10pm. (I’d decided to leave the dogs in Long Beach so that I wasn’t showing up at Mia’s Menagerie at 9pm at night.)

Upshot, I got everything in, had something to eat, marveled at the fact that in the time it took me to get home Callaghan got his ass a new car, (“Wait, is that facebook that you got a new car for real? I just left you like, three hours ago!”)… and then I slept for 11 hours.

I am willing to admit that in terms of commentary about my life, this turn of events probably falls into the category of “indicator”.

This making your own way bullsh*t? Yeah, sometimes it sucks.
There have been two prevailing thematics in my life — things that have just always been said to me since my childhood. The first was that I’d be lovely if I just lost a few more pounds, dear – but that’s a blog entry for another day.

The other being that I’m supposed to do things on my own. Large portions of my existence are self-taught, & I cannot tell you how often I heard before I became a full time freelancer that I needed to go into business for myself, that I had the ability to create my own world, etc & so forth.

You know what the problem with that is? You spend a lot of time alone, you’re the one that has to do all the work, and it is really fuckin’ tiring.

I have approximately… a bajillion things that need to be done right now. And yet, all I managed this weekend was to finish moving my urls over to my one GoDaddy server so that everything is centralized. Do you know when I’d originally planned on doing that? December. What is it now? The end of March. That right there should tell you how things are going.

My dog has cancer. It’s treatable, we’re going to the doggie oncologist tomorrow & hopefully one surgery & two weeks of woe-is-me recovery time later, Zoey should be fine. And I do not, for one second, begrudge getting her taken care of, because it’s Zoey, & those of you who know how things are for me & my dog know that she’s worth every penny.

Unfortunately, the only reason I have the pennies to get her taken care of is because I’d saved up money to go to Europe this summer on the first vacation of my entire life, and now that is not going to happen.

Instead, I will work. Because that is what I do. And there is no break on the horizon, just… more work. And there’s no way around it, or anything to be done for it other than to simply apply myself & get the work done, because I really need to move out of my apartment, and once Zoey’s taken care of I’ll start saving up to go on vacation all over again, and if there’s anything this has taught me it’s the value of pet insurance so I should get some for Ernie too, not to mention that the 2011-2012 tax cycle should probably also include getting health insurance for myself as well.

Now, I certainly don’t begrudge the work — after all, it wasn’t that long ago that I was valeting for three different companies & sleeping in my car in parking lots on the weekends so that I could eliminate the time it took to drive home & get a full three hours of sleep before practice. I just… it would be nice to not always feel like I have to do everything alone. Sometimes it would be really nice to crawl into bed & have someone else there to snuggle with. I mean, I love my dogs and I know they love me, but at the end of the day they are dogs and I am alone. And while for the most part I learned to accept being alone pretty much since early childhood & have had enough crappy forays into attempting a life that I know work is the best focus for me to have, every so often there’s that day where you just want to sit the universe down & ask why it is that everyone else gets to have a life & I just seem to get more work.

But for now, it’s four hours before I have to drive to LB to do my workout for the day then take Zoey to her new vet for 11:15am, and I still have to sit & get caught up on the emails & work that I didn’t get done this weekend because my body decided it would be great to shut down two weekends in a row. Tuesday, we’ll talk about things like group meditation, making tomato soup, & my incredibly geeky iPhone keyboard case, so tune in next time kids – same bat-time, same bat channel.

previous adventures

• parking cars, building walls, and creating structure: oh yeah, I’m livin’ the dream.
• my friends are better than yours, a plan, and higher learning.

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The truth is that after the last few years… I’m not exactly the best judge of anything on that front right now. Lil’ nervous, doncha know. In fact, just the other day I talking this newborn colt, and he was all, “Okay, seriously girl, I’m not trying to be harsh here, but you’re like, way skittish. I’m just sayin’.”

So ya know… life, man. Just… freakin’ life. :shrug:

Okay, seriously, Google? Now we scare me.
Title of the email I just now got? Relationships Can Give You a Complex. I sh*t you not.

in case my mouth wasn’t loud enough, now you’ll also be able to see me coming from a mile away
Last week, one of the jnr coxswains at Beach!Boathouse was wearing the yellow one of these. (It looks better on those of us who actually have boobs.) Correctly surmising that such a color would be fantastic for bowing or rowing a single, I asked her where she got them, and upon seeing the price of a mere $5.80 each, decided to get all of the colors — even the pink, which is a huge growth experience for me.

Oh god, I can’t even look at that. Effin’ ay, man, that’s so totally my Kryptonite.
Dao Jones sent me a link for a little guy that’s on the Urgent Rescue LA facebook group and oh god – this is why I don’t look at those sites… because I’m such a freakin’ sucker. Adults are (for the most part) fully sentient beings, I don’t have a lot of pity for their mistakes, but animals & kids are defenseless, man – you try to hurt them & I will (and have) take people out for that sh*t. After all, that’s how I ended up with the Weimermonster, and ten years later, we’ve almost got each other trained.

That said, if Dao can work things out, Zoey may have a foster sibling for a little while. Damn you, Dao! :shaky fist:

Flashback much?
Pandora.com just flipped from Oasis to Richard Marx. I know, right? I know.

Note to self: Do Laundry. Restructure Life. Learn to use plurals when there’s more than one note.
Two weeks ago, I brought the kitchen under control. Last week it was the bathroom (and the dog via bath before cleaning the bathroom) This week’s project will undoubtedly be A Lot of Laundry and The Organizing of the Taxes. The laundry because I’m out and sadly forgot to pack a bra today, which is just never comfortable when you’re someone who gets cold easily, and the organzing because it’s a month into the new year, & I haven’t even set up this year’s invoicing folders yet, which should give you an idea of how my filing system went as I started working at Museum!Co last fall. Oh, this is going to be ugly, people. So very, very very so.

Music: Falling for you – Jem (Finally Woken)

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——————–

Math, science, history, unraveling the mysteries, that all started with the big bang! Bang!
Ya know, sometimes I have these delusions that I’m not nearly the big honkin’ nerd that I often joke I am.

Then there’s the day when I give in & finally watch The Big Bang Theory and check my email to find the notification, “AnimeFans is now following you on Twitter!”
(This is particularly sad since I don’t actually know anything about Anime.)

Big Bang theory quite possibly is my new Science-love. In particular, I’m fond of the fact that they broke relationships down to Shroedinger’s cat. It actually helped me sum up my life a little, because I had the following thought:

“The problem is that he likes Shroedinger’s cat, because he always liked having the possibility that he could open the box & find a live kitty — that made it easier for him to stay where he was, because he always felt like he had this insurance of the alternative cat. Then he was forced to open the box & found out he’s the one that killed his cat. And everybody thought my cat would be upset about that.
What they don’t realize is that while everybody was spending all their time looking at his experiment, my cat got smart, ate its way through the cardboard box, and escaped five months ago. So me & my cat? We are all good.”

Seriously? This whole time?
So, 1049 isn’t exactly what you would call… up to code. In fact, it’s possible that our resident insurance lawyer Closet Buffyholic may have stood in my living room, taken a deep breath to calm herself, & literally said, “This building is so not to code.”

One of its quirks is the fact that the light in the laundry room frequently blows out. (Our wiring? Special!) As such, over the last decade, I’ve gotten in the habit of just leaving a flashlight in my laundry basket.

Then yesterday, I discovered something. If I angle the string for the light about 25 degrees and then pull, the light works.

At this point in time, I am choosing to believe this is a new development brought on by the last time the tenants complained about the light being out & the landlord sending an electrician out, rather than have to accept that every so often I’ve been needlessly loading laundry using a flashlight for the last couple of… ever

Getting healthy with the Anti-Christ.
Okay, so I explained in a previous post about the fact that I’d started going to an auyrvedic healer to work on some stuff.

How’s it going? Okay, actually. If nothing else, the way that I eat has gotten a measurable sight better, and I’m getting my assigned yoga done at least two if not three days a week. (Once I get past Beach Sprints, my goal is to bring that up to 3-4 days a week.) Dinner is still kind of a crapshoot, but breakfast & lunch have fallen into a pattern of fairly healthy food, especially on the days that I go to Museum!Co and bring my own food with me. However, a lot of the stretches and different little things that Damian taught me to relieve stress & redirect my brain over the course of a day have been really great in help myself relax overall — if nothing else, my jaw doesn’t hurt anymore because I’m not unconsciously clenching it all the time, so that right there? Total plus.

We talked about that when I stopped in for my visit on Sunday, along with my effort to lessen my gluten intake. I may have to go hard-core gluten free for a while so that we can see if I actually do have a low-level intolerance for it as Damian suspects — it would seem that my joints’ tendency to sound like their own percussion section is sometimes an indicator of that.

When we were done with my bodywork treatment, we started talking, and Damian told me about the new dietary guides he’s trying to create to make the Ayuvedic guidelines a bit more approachable for Western lives, and in the course of it I mentioned that HelloKittyRowerFriend had turned me on to starting to use protein drinks after our workouts, since CoachIan‘s regimen is pretty grueling when you’re in the thick of it, and a couple of us have been just… tired, which HelloKittyRowerFriend, our resident Nutrition Nazi, had correctly diagnosed as us not taking in enough protein.

Now, there’s this place in Venice which regulars call The Garage, which does just the epitome of raw foods. Expensive, it would seem, but because the quality is really high & the some of the selection are things you just can’t find anywhere else.

So we walk into the kitchen of their house, and Damian starts pulling containers out of the fridge and putting things together while he’s talking to me — about two cups of raw milk (unpasturized, full fat) & a little bit of raw cream which were heated a scoche in a saucepan, then in another, like five raw eggs, some raw yogurt and a couple of other things that were then tossed in a blender & mixed together, including a bit of actual homemade curds & whey.

And there he is, happily putting things together, talking to me about how this is fantastic for one to have early in the day, because it is everything that’s in one of the protein drinks except that they dehydrate & dehydrate until it’s down to a powder but this is so much better for you, and how it can be drunk just plain, but if you want to add fruit to it, that adds a whole other element depending on what you blend in, and how he’ll email me his beta of the dietary writing for me to look over as a guinea pig, and he registers what I’m sure was an utterly horrified look on my face.

I had to explain, “Here’s the thing – intellectually, I understand that everything you’re saying is valid, and I’m game. However, for me as a woman brought up in Western culture… in the United States especially, where everything is about body image and weight, and cutting calories… raw, full-fat milk, pure unpasturized cream, five eggs, and everything else in there — dude. To that part of my brain, you’re basically asking me to drink the Anti-Christ.”

To which he laughed, and poured me a shot glass full, and told me not to worry, it’ll all be okay.

For the record, even without fruit, it didn’t taste bad. Homemade curds & whey… that I’ll attempt another day.

Music: Joshua Radin – Sundrenched World

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Laughter.

Since July, I’ve been slowly extricating myself from a situation that was… less than positive. From a group of people who are just… well, they’re fuckin’ miserable, really. At first, leaving was hard, but over the course of the month of December in particular I’ve come to feel that where I’ve moved my energy to has turned out to be a far more positive place for me with people who are just… happy. It’s really come full force to me of the great thing of being around people who are actually happy, a place where I don’t have to try so hard.

I realize that I’ve talked before about how being away from the old situation kind of illuminated this, but in some ways there were still a few connections that I wasn’t quite free of yet. A few dregs still in limbo, so to speak. Yet, with this news of someone else’s decision to move forward with something that we’ve all spent the last two years acknowledging is just not going to go well, I am now completely free to shove off without guilt or blame.
I know how this one’s gonna roll. As KC once put it, I can see the water that’s come before, and I can see what’s to come ahead. It’s a shame that this is the path which was chosen, when the other would have been better for everyone else involved. However, I also know that I’m not part of that chosen course of action, which means I get to move on now.

I get to be more. I get to be happy. I get to be loved.

So I laughed. For the sheer joy of being free.

More than anything, I like the idea that I was able to end the year with happiness. To shed an old skin, in the hopes that the new will shine even brighter. For everyone who feared to tell me the truth didn’t know what I do – that my heart had already moved on.

Granted, at first I wasn’t entirely happy about the choice. When I realized what had happened, I quite literally looked at the Cosmic Muffin and said, “Are you effin’ kidding me? He is the last damn thing I would want at this point. Fuck you, I am not doing that. ”

In reply, the cosmos laughed and said, “No, just trust me – go look again.”

Thus, with the same enthusiasm as a child doubting the promised taste sensation of gluten-free brussels sprouts salad, I took a drive, and took another look.

Okay, fine, I’ll admit it. The brussels sprouts tasted good.

Happy, universe? Are you happy now, you twisted, irony-loving mother fucker? –|-
(What can I say – I’m still working on finding my zen.)

I had more fun in one conversation than I’d had in the last six months. Because it wasn’t… heavy. It wasn’t hard. There was no baggage.
Truth told, I kinda get the feeling that he was as nervous as I was judging by the fact that we’d end up on a tangent and then rescind into Awkward Pause Moment as we were both like, “So, Thing We’re Supposed to be Talking About…right, that.”

My experiences in the rowing community over the last four years has very much caused me to shy away from male attention, to recoil out of fear of what would happen to me if I didn’t reciprocate. Over the last year in particular, circumstances have forced me to withdraw into myself more for my own protection — don’t smile too much, don’t seem too friendly, avoid all physical contact with anyone. Stay separate. Stay guarded. Do not trust. Step back. Keep to myself. It was only by being above reproach that I could survive, that I would have a footing on which to fight.

More than anything, what stood out the most about that conversation in December was that it was lovely to be able to sit with a man and just… be appreciated. With no hidden agenda, nothing… smarmy around the edges. Just an underlying sense from both of us going, “Really? This is… yeah. This works.” As I left, I had to make myself step away because I had the impulse to kiss him on the cheek before I went, and contrary to what one might hear, there are aspects of life in which I actually am quite shy.
(No, really. True story.)

It’s not going to be a now thing. I know that. We each have things to be seen to. Neither of us is quite ready for one another. But each of us knows that the other is out there, which for me is in itself an odd sort of motivation.

So right now, I’ll keep on working on fixing me. I’ll still be alone for a bit, but now I get to move forward in the knowledge that it won’t be forever. Now fixing my life isn’t just something I’m doing to do, but also has the goal of clearing out as much as I can so that when the time comes, I am as unfettered as possible.

2010 was a weight. It was heavy, and it slowed me down. December gave me hope, and the very last day of the year granted me wings.

Thus, I get move into 2011 lighter. Stronger. In the last month, I’ve begun to smile again. To laugh more readily. To feel less alone. To know joy.

From 2010, I gained something very important – a reminder of who I am. Of what I am. I’ve regained my joy.

And in that, I am free.

New year, new philosophies:
As if we didn’t need more reasons to love Jason Mraz, I offer these last two blog posts which just made everything a wee bit better:
1. Prime Number Love
Skidoo 23

2. Possibly my favorite idea for the new year: In 2011, I resolve to be Magical.
Now Here’s Resolutions

Music: You Picked Me – A Fine Frenzy

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As part of the community Christian & Teresa are building, they’re associated with Ayurvedic healers, who practice holistic well-being. (If you’re from outside California and you just snickered, you do a version of this every time you go to yoga, so yah – Namaste, bitches.)

Anyway – I’ve never been much one for standard medicine. I mean, yah, I had health insurance when my employers provided it, and aspire to one day be able to fund that for myself again, and lord knows if I break a leg, I ain’t prayin’ with a poultice to make things better – high ho, it’s off to Cedars Sinai we’ll go. However, since I suck at therapy, and for most of the oddities of my physique I have gotten the reaction of “:shrug: Don’t know what to tell ya” from Western doctors, I’ve always been curious to go see what Eastern philosophy would have to say. I have some experience with bodywork thanks to my mom’s stint as a massage therapist, so I know it’s not all crap.

That in mind, and with the increased bank account provided by Museum!Co, at the end of October I ventured over to see the guys at vedatherapy.com.
I know, all right? I didn’t do that site.

Once I got to what I thought was the right address, I ventured up the front steps, praying I wasn’t walking in on some family of four who might wonder who this complete stranger walking on their property is and found… a zen garden. Rocks, fountains, very calming — the whole deal. Well okay then. I found the right house on the first try. For me, that’s progress.

A knock on the door and a couple minutes later, I met Damian, who would turn out to be the practitioner assigned to me. Damain’s about my height, wiry, and sporting an accent that I honestly haven’t quite placed yet. He welcomed me, & I stepped in to the house where they live.

It’s clean and airy, with an expanse of hardwood floors and scarcity of furniture. The front foyer actually consists only of a large indoor tree that should seem out of place under a roof but instead is oddly comforting.

I sat with Damian & explained I was basically looking to roll things in with my meditation practice and that while I tended to eat decently and as an athlete I work out fairly well for the average person, there had always been those last fifteen pounds that, no matter what, just never came off when I lost the other 70lbs over the past few years, and now had left me with some fat patches in, well, awkward places, and I was looking to see if I could balance my well-being to feel a bit more rested and just kind of complete the task, so to speak. I have no health history to speak of other than strep throat & chicken pox at the appropriate age of childhood, and wasn’t on any prescription medications, so there was really no reason for things like my ridiculously fast heart rate or the fact that unless I’m working out, I’m usually cold.

Damian listened, nodded, and as I was talking would say things like, “Yes, that’s because parts of your system aren’t in balance, we can work on that.” and he actually had an explanation for things like my rollercoaster body temperature.

I was given my own steppy mat — I’m sure there’s a proper name for it, but basically it’s a mat with little bumpies on it, and you put a towel under it to mimic the arch of your foot and walk back and forth on it. Theoretically, the more tense you are, the more this will hurt, and the less stressed you are, the easier it becomes, and then at the same time it’s an all-over acupressure for your feet, since a lot of the body’s pressure points reside in your hands & feet. I was able to walk back and forth on it fairly well in my bare feet, which Damian informed me is better than some people who show up for their first session & can’t stand on it at all. We then went through a series of yoga exercises which I am supposed to be doing every day, as well as a series of breathing sequences to follow. The breathing sequences involve flexing your stomach in & out depending on your breath and making some loud noises with your breath that really just don’t sound…. zen-like, but it turns out the effort of them is kind of exhausting so you’re sort of forced into relaxation by dint of sheer fatigue.

In terms of my diet, Damian took an approach that I rather like – instead of telling me all the things that I shouldn’t be eating any more, he gave me a couple items to integrate into my diet under the philosophy that if he said, “Don’t eat bread, cheese, candy, etc” the moment those were forbidden that’s all I’d want, which I can tell you from experience of all the crash/fad diets my mom had me on as a kid – so totally true. Instead, for now I’m to integrate more cucumbers, fresh tomatoes (I tend to eat sun-dried) and avocados into my world. Fruit with lots of water content, and try to reduce the bread and dairy, but they’re not verboten.

After that, we moved into his workroom to do bodywork — a series of range of motion, alignment evaluation, and pressure point work.

OMGHURTIES.

Damian did some work basically lining my body up properly, shaking his head at my spine, which feels like it hasn’t been aligned since… ever, and I’m sure he disapproved heartily of the fact that my heels are in no way even. After that came pressure work on my jaw, which he correctly cited as “clench that a bit, don’t you?” and my forehead, where I have a stress-induced furrow starting to carve its way into permanence.

Then he moved on to my hips.

OMGHURTMORE.

I had a thing – not this summer, but the summer before – where my right hip, which has always been a bit squiffy, just… stopped working. Hoff was living with me at the time, and in what is now a kind of comedic moment, I got up to go to row one morning, and just…kept going right onto my hardwood floor because hey! my right hip decided it was done working for the moment. To this day, Hoff & I will joke about her standing over me calmly going, “So, I guess we’ll skip practice today.”

As part of fixing this back then, one of our teammates Molly (a Physical Therapy grad student) laid me out on the boathouse floor and worked on the joint of my hip with her elbow as I alternated between deep breaths and swearing a blue streak. It went, YogaBreath,YogaBreath,BreatheThroughThePai-SONOFABITCH! YogaBreath,YogaBreath…

Somehow, without me even mentioning that little problem, Damian found that spot. Thankfully, since it wasn’t currently flaring up, I managed to curtail things to a couple of guttural grunts instead of displaying the facility for cussin’ that you really only get by working overnight manufacturing for three years and which never, no matter how educated one becomes, ever really leaves you.

Finally, he set up a little sompin’ sompin’ on his computer speakers, & I got to do a corpse pose meditation – i.e., meditation while laying flat on your back, but let’s be honest – “corpse pose meditation” just sounds cooler.

I’d love to be able to tell you what the monlogue is that I listen to, but on that day, and every day since, I have yet to stay awake for the whole thing. I don’t know what it is about this guy’s voice on the CD, but it’s like an auditory Xanax. (Not that I’ve ever taken Xanax, but ya know – this is LA, you hear things.)
I was out, man. Damian woke me up about 20 minutes later and mentioned that he’ll usually set an alarm when he uses that meditation, as he often falls asleep.
Well okay then – thanks for the warning!

After I returned to the land of the living, we had this really fun exercise where I gave Damian my hand and he took this little metal tool and pressed down on different parts of my palm & fingers to see what hurt more. (In case the description didn’t give it away, the “fun” here was less than so.) Some parts where fine, others were right back to OMGwiththeHURTIES.

Once that round of Poke the Pain Button fun & games finished up, we settled back in, and Damian asked, “So. How long have you been depressed?”

To which I answered, “Quite some time now. How did you know?”

It would seem that my spleen is full.
(I know, right? I kinda giggled at it too.)

But yah, for realzies — I guess one of the pressure points that was in the OMGHURTIES range was my spleen, and on a scale of 1-100 of their severity, I got like, a 97. Because when it comes to hardship and pain, I am the proud recipient straight A GPA, baby. \m/

Anyway, so my spleen is full, and because of that I was instructed to stay away from moody, unhappy people who would unconsciously push their negative energy on me & further tire me out. (as an energy worker, this one I already knew, but sometimes you need someone else to say it, ya know?)

Basically, Damian’s recommendation for me (outside of the nutrition & yoga & acupressure) was that I am to worry about my own well-being and ditch people & things that don’t make me happy. Even with the diet, one of the things he emphasized was that while it was important to make myself healthier, if I say, didn’t like heirloom tomatoes, then hey – don’t eat ‘em.

Basically, he gave me what I jokingly call the “Fuck ‘em!” philosophy to live by for a while. My job for the next bit is to just live and take care of me, and concentrate on making myself happy. Fuck everybody else.

As he put it, “If we have to say ‘fuck the diet’ for a while to get you happy, well okay, fuck the diet, we’ll fix that in a bit. The important thing right now is to work all this stress out of your system & get you feeling happier, because your body is crammed so full of pain right now that you literally just can’t process anything else. People are bothering you – fuck ‘em! Walk away. Don’t worry about them – take care of you. That’s your first priority right now.” I suppose that in an odd way, what my mother used to say is true – sometimes charity begins at home.

I was given my own acupressure tool to work on the points on my hand for my pituitary gland and thyroid (he showed me how) and sat down again next to the Tree Room with a glass of warm water with lime, at which point I met Bud. Bud, it seems, is the founder of the practice – or at least, that’s kind of the feel I got from our conversation. He’s a Caucasian guy that was raised in India by a father that’s a chiropractor, so he was literally raised in a holistic lifestyle, which I find interesting — due to the nature of Western society, finding a white guy raised in that way of life is like finding an LA native in LA – they are few & far between, my friend.

So we chatted for a bit, and I was given a review of my shiny new steppy mat, acupressure tool, laminated handouts showing me the yoga & breathing sequences (which is good ’cause I totally wouldn’t remember the whole thing otherwise) and sent off into the world to give it a whirl for two weeks.

Turns out it’s… kinda hard. Not the exercises, per se, but finding the time (and energy) to get it done. I’ve gotten to the point where it happens about three days a week, which is good for those three, but bad for the other four days in the week. Some days I trade off the Veda!Stuff (which is what I shall henceforth officially call it) for my 20 minute meditation of the day. Part of it is just me not giving in to the impulse to collapse on my couch when I get home, and part of it is having to plan things so I can do the work.

For instance? Well, there’s the corpse pose meditation. The whole hoo in the zoo ends with that, and I am finding that it knocks me right the hell out. Sometimes for an hour, sometimes longer. I’ve attempted to set a alarms, and while sometimes I will get up on time, there was also the day I instead woke up six hours later at 3:30am still laid out flat on a yoga mat on my living room floor. Doesn’t exactly foster one’s ability to get work done in the evenings, which kinda kills when you’re a freelance designer.

Overall, it’s been almost two months, and the Selfish Philosophy is actually working out pretty well. It probably sounds odd, but over the last three weeks in particular, the only way I can describe things is as if I am just slowly climbing out of a dark hole. I’m a lot more relaxed, my body is starting to work with me again, and I feel an… impetus to actually do things, instead of just scrambling to get enough done to survive. And I think that didn’t really hit me until Sunday when I walked into somewhere, saw four people I used to deal with every day & thought, “Wow, three out of four of you just look effin’ miserable. Did I used to look like that all the time?”
The 4th person had a puppy in her lap. You can’t be unhappy with a puppy in your lap. I’m pretty sure that’s like, a law.

Next up for me… well I suppose next up is actually creating a proper structure to do things correctly in terms of my practice, and sadly indeed, to take the plunge & make an actual effort to integrate the dietary changes that Damian recommended. This is a particularly awesome indicator of my historically phenomenal timing because I will be attempting to up my consumption of raw veggies & lean protein while diminishing bread, dairy and sugar from my diet starting in late November and December. Should be totally easy, right? Totally…

Also, as soon as I figure out the proper place for it, this decal needs to enter my world.

Music: Today was a fairytale – Taylor Swift

previous adventures

• it’s not often a white girl fits a minority demographic, doncha know.
• You’re just too high to see the point, girl you think your name is ‘pass the joint’…

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