Brain fog

Feeling moderately uninspired today.It may have been the way it started.

I did a cardio fast which means I ran on an empty stomach, then choked down a protein shake with a huge scoop of ground flax seed. Then I held off on eating til a little after noon. Though it was sprints, I didn’t go that intense or long (only 30 minutes) and then walked at a moderate speed (another 30 minutes). I read during the walk and then for a bit after, and my concentration seemed fine — even generative. But no, there was no writing today. Sometimes, I’m pulled to the screen, sometimes I pull myself to the screen. I like to think I have the discipline to overcome these diffuse feelings when the thought never rises above a murmur and the image doesn’t sharpen, but I couldn’t today. It was easier, so much easier, to be distracted.

I wonder if it was my fasted state or my fed state that was clouding my motivation. Tomorrow, I’m going to fast again. If I go to the gym, it’ll just be for weights. Perhaps just coffee til noon. Maybe I think clearer that way.

One fine day

I haven’t posted in a bit so I thought I’d jot a couple things…

Feeling out-of-the-normal fabulous today! If I weren’t so fabulous I’d be nervous. The things that would normally perturb me seem very trivial today.

It must be hormonal.

I started taking Vitamin D this month. I’ve just switched over to cod liver gels every other day. I don’t know that I can attribute one good day (even if it is gratifyingly sunny and hale and full of patient ministrations to any weary doubt that slips by) to a couple supplements? More likely, it’s the bounce-back from whatever it was that flattened me last week. Eight days I didn’t run. Then POW. Six miles (yesterday). Yes, sir. One continuous run. Not fast at 52 minutes, but respectable for six miles.

What truly amazing is the feeling of calm assuredness. It isn’t so much doubt as facets of behavior to turn in the light. Study and observe, reflect and refract. We can talk without condemning, seek without finding fault. It’s truly amazing. Almost miraculous.

i

OMGosh, I’m having PTSD over girl drama. Just the sheer frequency of it. If I have any resolution this year, it’s not to engage in it. At all. I don’t know how well that’s going to happen, since it’s always my policy to stay out of it, though, somehow, I always manage to get eye-balled, but I keep trying. I’m sure getting older and out of everyone’s crosshairs is the key to staying out of these dramas. Boy, I can’t wait.

For now, I’ll keep to my books, my writing, my workouts.

My plan for 2012 is to work on me. Maybe I need a all-out business plan. An outline. Pages and details. Timelines and deadlines. Performance markers. Incentives.

And, much as I hate to do it, maybe I need a mission statement. Just the idea… it’s so galling.

Ah well. At least it’ll get my brain jumping and maybe it’ll roll together my tri-partite needs which are 1) to get down to 12% body fat; 2) understand narrative and write productively on a daily basis; and 3) elucidate a career-life path that actually expands my values. I’m not trying to change the world. I’m trying to kick it off its axis.

Pangs of longing

It’s been a nearly a week since I fell ill. I don’t know why I’m blogging about it. I guess I need to mark my recovery.

I felt incredibly bad on Saturday. Sunday, by comparison, was a relief, but the coughing and sniffling and other symptoms were worse. Since then, I’ve slept alot, rested alot. However, getting that extra hour in bed every morning is a godsend I feel bad about. I do so little these days (writing, looking for work, and now working out) that all the time I’ve spent staring vacantly at the TV has made me double-down on existential worries to the point where they plague me more than ever — which I didn’t think possible.

I worry about my life, what I’m doing with it, where it’s going. Why I’m so lazy, why I can’t focus, why I can’t force myself to concentrate. I’m just a bag of Why-Didn’t-I’s.

By Wed, I probably could have taken myself back to the gym, but I didn’t. Today, the same. I thought about it, but worried I might erase all the gains I’d made in immunity these few days. Ahh, thinking and feeling. There is the thinking I-Should, but then the feeling But-What-If? Thinking and feeling are two different things, rarely do they ever meet up. There’ve been times when my body, mood and mind have given me the unequivocal sign to go full force: to thrash it in the gym, pulls ideas from the air or even become that once-in-a-blue-moon social animal. Every cell in my body rings with the truth. But not today, not yesterday and probably not tomorrow. It’s painful to be so uncertain all the time.

I guess that’s where risk comes in. One should grow a cool head over gambling and gamble often. And then a thick skin for the consequences. I’ve seen far too many instances where cool-headed and promising forays resulted in weird environments and tight corners. People are sometimes too insular to see that their actions and habits are dysfunctional and that they just don’t make a good “home” in their work abodes. Most every place I’ve left, I’m glad for it. I say it with certainty. With the exception of a few, they didn’t foster any sense of joy, belonging or worth. The “feel” of a place and it’s people have got to be good. The rest of it will follow.

So, anyway, it’s Thursday and I’m fretting. I haven’t resumed my usual routine, what little there is of it, I want to get back to it. I want to run. I want to work. I want to participate again.

Working title

Goal 1:   There are people I call friends, but I am no friend to them. I don’t call. I don’t make dates. I am friendly, but I am no friend. I am a fraud. My goal is to quietly and unobtrusively  contemplate laying these relationships aside. I realize that sounds like planning to think about doing something at some indeterminate time, but I haven’t figured out if I am antisocial  with intermittent social needs or a social person with antisocial interests? And if your friend needs you more than you need them, what are the ethics of responsible friending?

Goal 2:   I need to think about my vocation. What can I do to make a living on a day-by-day basis? What kind of work can I do that would add a measure of quality to my life? What would yield a reasonable living?

Goal 3:   What is a meaningful interaction? How can I foster having these and, once I do, how do I maintain them?

Goal 4:   Is it healthy to focus on the future? Is it better to be present and live in the now?

Goal 5:   How can I figure out what I really want out of life and then just do it? 

Goal 6:   (My one hard goal) — To apply intermittent fasting at least three days a week (maybe five) and then carb refeed on weekends. Eat plenty of protein (with shakes on workout days) and weigh myself no more than twice monthly.

 

Do women lack integrity?

You know what? The font and spacing on my blog is weird. I draft it in Times Roman and it comes up Helvetica (or whatever this crappy smushed up font is). I can’t tell you how many times I’ve crafted something to the point where I feel it’s clear and then post it only to find the altered version changes how it flows in subtle ways that make a difference in reading. Weird.

I’ve just been reading about the interactions between women in groups. Social hives appear to wield the most dangers. The weapon of choice? Exclusion. What prompts it? I would have said insecurity, but others have identified competition. I’m inclined to say they’re right. I never thought about it, but it makes sense. I have a distinct feeling that jockeying for attention and significance within the social order makes one more likely to cozy up to others who reflect your values and validate your sense of self-worth. Creepy. If I wanted a mirror for a friend, I’d just stay home and gaze in it.

So women are apt to use exclusion as a way to carve out their dominance while men are much more likely to be individual, inclusive or just solitary. None of this is surprising. I think we’ve known it for ages. It was just easier not airing the dirty laundry.

So while I pity women for being so petty, here I am trying to figure out how to defriend a friend. Desperately. I wonder when I should have known this wasn’t going to work out and how quickly I should have acted upon it. This is the same woman I blogged about a year ago who kept raving about her experiences with this shady cranial therapy and wouldn’t let it die. I never expressed interest in anything other than her back health yet she kept coming back to this topic. Oh my god. You would have thought she was getting a cut. She probably thought she was doing me a favor, but I don’t think quack therapy does anyone any favors.

I don’t get the sense she’s competitive with me — my main criteria for any potential friend — but her penchant for last-minute changes makes me think she’s flighty. The degree to which she wields the baton in conversation makes me wonder if the claim about narcissism isn’t true. And the ways she discusses her other girlfriends, I have to say, makes me wonder if she isn’t blind to her own foibles. It makes me wary. I feel the need for a little more space between her and I.

I thought I wanted a girlfriend. Now I’m sure I don’t. There aren’t enough women out there whose character, intelligence or judgment I trust. Friendships with women are a dance with masks. If you deign to be yourself, you can expect to be excluded for being so bold. If you hold the status quo, you will be frustrated by the shallow pool of belonging. If you can’t really be yourself, you don’t really belong. Simplistic, reductive– and true.

I don’t want to spend time on things I don’t care about. I’m going to start a Dream list and also an Excluding list i.e. Things that take up my time but never feel worthwhile after the first five minutes. Maybe we’ll see how that sorts my life.

A final note… I wrote in Troll today. A good page or two, good in that I felt it was good and came away with that feeling. Not the usual surrender to mediocrity and bad dialogue. Tomorrow we shall try again.

Just saying

I love anna sites.

I could spend hours if I knew more. Hours.

Anna. A girl’s best friend.

How to break up with a friend

See, there’s this friend I’m not fond of. Oh, I’ve tried to get to know her better, bend to her whims, go along with her fancies. I’m just not sure this is leading anywhere. I like her. I just don’t want to accommodate her anymore. She makes plans, then alters them. And alters them again. Sometimes again.

Nothing amiss comes of these changes. I’m just tired of them. They interrupt the flow, break up the rhythm. Conversations between friends, there are no hard and fast rules, but they shouldn’t be monologues, should they? Where questions from the other side are cheerfully stepped on? I try to enter, but it seems the topic is one where only one person can do all the talking and that person does ALL THE TALKING.

I don’t want to hurt feelings, I just want to eat something. But I can eat better and more adventurously on my own. I can think my thoughts better and more clearly on my own. I can express myself better and without constraint on my own. She doesn’t really inspire me. I don’t have intriguing ideas with her. I get bogged down in the force that is her perspective. She resolves to stay upbeat which, after time and endless episodes, becomes a grinding and relentless pounding. It’s not working, I want to tell her. Put down the pastry.

While I find myself becoming friendlier, it’s a gutless surrender to my cowardice. I should have let it die long ago. After so much time, we should be better friends by now. So I act like we are. It’s purely my desire in the absence of it. Pure hypocrisy.

I don’t want to reach out and say point blank, we can be friends, but not good friends. Let’s just cut it off and say hello on the street.

I liked it better when I didn’t know her so well.

The sick weekend

It snowed again last night. A delicious skim of snow covers everything. Crisp, clean, white. Snuggled in the bosom of the sunroom, there is something glorious in being surrounded by snow, seeing the snow, but not feeling the snow. All the beauty, none of the pain. I could stay here forever.

Was sick over the weekend. I want to say it was disastrous, but it wasn’t. It was only potentially exciting. At one point I felt I would faint, but, alas, I did not and the rest of the day went prosaically. The Boy bought me a mountain of carbs and it seemed to do the trick. In the wee hours earlier, there was a splitting earache that woke me and signaled that this day would not be like the others. I, of course, did not believe it. How could I when a normal dose of ibuprofen could quell it into submission and not make it squeak, not once, for the rest of the day? But being sick fled from my ear and went underground into some place deep, deep inside. I just remember being in the Boy’s office and turning a gradual shade of awful. That was when the Boy looked up and declared it was time to go — I was clearly not toughing it out as claimed.

It’s Monday and I’m still sick. If I had to run, I probably could, but the toll — it might end in euphoria or a death-spiral. I’m pretty content to stay glued to the couch, but my head is cloudy from the carbonara I scarfed for breakfast. This is clearly why I limit carbs. They do nothing for clarity.

I am watching a film called The Dust Factory and it’s losing me. It’s about a little boy with a past trauma who falls into a river and goes into this dream world. This dream world is not wondrous at all. It’s quite lame actually. What’s with this circus? Who goes to the circus anymore?  Circuses are more like oddities than fantasies. The scenes are clumsy and plodding and make no visual sense. It irritates me that I’m thinking about what’s wrong with this movie than what’s going right with my script. At least my script has a good concept. I mean there’s a troll who lives in a tower! An abandoned water tower in plain sight! It’s fancy and Italianate and there’s magic and wonder and a vague threat in the air that no one can feel because it doesn’t exist for them anymore. There’s something deeply wrong with this kind of modern sophistication that doesn’t believe in mystery and ghosts and truths beyond facts.

Bushel mentality

Jealousy

Competition

Rivals

Nemesis

Worth

Rightness

Wow. Heavy stuff in my mind. What am I doing? Grappling with old pieces of grudge, detritus of moods past.

As I get older, I feel the edges of my personality going more solid, more blunted, other parts sharper. Rough people, bad experiences, the knocks of earning your way pounded into this dense mass of resignation. I’m resigned to knowing I don’t want to compromise. And this part of my personality is limiting. It limits opportunities, it limits friendships, it limits everything. It’s the resounding bell of negativity but also affirmation. It’s the hinge in the pivot of the gate that keeps me out… as well as being true to myself. The question is what kind of person would I be if I could compromise? What if, after all these years, the compromise didn’t really matter?  That it didn’t really matter? Maybe I’m confusing compromise with my own need to control. Is it the compromise that’s limiting me– or my own stubbornness?

Despite all that, I feel great.

I am a mental tower of health… or a psychological hesitation. I don’t know and, to a certain extent, I don’t care. I’m certain I don’t ask others to compromise themselves or their values. There are times when I’ve asked them to be better. Other times, I’ve asked them to consider the ugly side, true but ugly. But I don’t know about people most of the time. It confounds me how readily they’ll go. To anything. Sometimes it’s their nature, sometimes it’s incentive, but it’s the latter that confounds me the most.

I guess I don’t like people. Those bad apples, they spoil the bunch.

That’s the attitude I really need to work on.