Handy Polymath

Some days you're in Close Encounters; other days you're in Jaws.

Wish You Were Here

This place started as a gardening journal of sorts, as I approached my life the way an urban farmer looks at an abandoned lot. Then two things happened; I got into a mental snarl regarding the depth of my pseudonymity which torpedoed many half-written posts, and life exploded in a manner thoroughly encompassing the good, bad and ugly.

I filled out a life stress scale for shits and giggles, and anything over 300 indicates a major crisis with great risk for subsequent health effects. I scored 734, and would have gone higher if you could check items multiple times. I racked up 581 of those points in the last two months.

Though I must say, I hope the current scale has been updated not to speak solely to married het men–there’s no way in hell pregnancy is less stressful than a personal injury or illness. A comfy pregnancy is far better than chronic pain or a debilitating condition, but in my experience an average pregnancy is more to handle than, say, the average bone break.

A New Machine (Part 1)

Three months ago:

worked full time in cubeville
lived in the burbs with my spouse, kid and ancient cat
no school schedule
spouse in unstable job

Today:

dad’s had surgery for a minor bout of cancer
grandma passed on and I spoke at her memorial
started 9 credit hours of physiology and chemistry
quit job in cubeville and worked full two weeks notice
spouse took job four states away
culled, sorted and packed a small house full of stuff
kid started preschool
had a going-away party
moved a U-haul full of appliances to parent’s house
set up camp for kid and I in parent’s stuffed unfinished attic
said goodbye to spouse and cat for 70 days
spent my 13th wedding anniversary on a leaky air mattress with a four-year-old lodged in my armpit

A New Machine (Part 2)

Meanwhile I’ve been trying to salvage this term after spending half of it checked out academically, focusing instead on dismantling my life and cobbling together a series of temporary solutions. For the first time in my various careers as a student, I went to a prof’s office hours and threw myself on her mercy. I felt like a jackass, but I did it, and it seemed to have helped–I know where I stand and what I need to do, instead of flailing in a pit of loathing and self-recrimination.

I got the feeling very few students who come to her like this also sobbingly proclaim, “but I really like chemistry!” It’s this disconnect between interest and achievement that makes struggling harder, even though I know I’m only struggling because I’m making up all that study time I didn’t have earlier in the term. And my life exploded. Objectively I should give myself major credit for actually asking for help–this is a huge uncomfortable step for me even if I need to repeat these classes later. Old habits don’t simply die hard, they die messily with ruptured buboes.

Outside the Wall

This weekend features chemistry, laundry, a trip to the Ohio woodlands to scatter ashes, and–with the accompanying hotel stay–the chance to sleep on a real mattress.

In a little over a month I’ve got a 12 hour road trip to my spouse, my ancient cat, my new home and this new life we’re making out on the east coast.

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Laying the ground rules is vital, even if a bit messy.

While exploring the psychic badlands between a mentat-level focus on algebra and drifting into a cube farm coma, I check out blogs. In some respects this is like prospecting for gold, in that occasionally you find a shiny nugget of wisdom, but mainly it’s hanging around in the hills shooting the shit with a bunch of cranks.

Here’s a shiny thing I’ve been pondering for a little bit now:

Finally, men get cut a lot of unwarranted slack. By us. I don’t know if it’s a generational thing, (I suspect not), but women don’t demand enough. We eschew our power, actively divesting it and handing it over, mostly, I think, because power is full of primacy and risk.

This line in particular has resonated with me since Mrs.set.element first posted it in April. Because she’s right, agency is not simply about freedom for oneself, it’s also coming to terms with one’s own authority to impose on the outside world (including people). In my experience, many women my age (Gen X) weren’t taught to expect to mold the world to our desires, but to hammer ourselves into arbitrary parameters that came from outside. If we could only shift our shape into the right key, the lock would open.

It takes a brass pair to turn that expectation around, to get the bolt cutters and kick the door open.

It also means coming to terms with the fact that the door in question isn’t on the set of The Price Is Right, there is no fabulous prize for you to drive home to happily ever after. The door leads to where the wild things are, and you will need to tame them somehow to survive, to live, to thrive. Primacy, risk. You need to wear your wolf suit, kiddo.

Choose and enforce standards.

This means learning how to set and defend boundaries as sacrosanct, not as opening bids for negotiation. This means dealing with the initial discomfort of enforcing consequences for trespassing. This means embracing a certain sense of entitlement as a person. Just contemplating this can send some women into itchy fits of imposter syndrome, but it’s the foundation of the wolf suit and, itchy or no, it’s worth the struggle to get into it.

Choosing a standard means that you value your own judgment above those who would challenge that standard. Defending a standard means pissing people off. To tell a secret, it’s like salting slugs: the foam tells you it’s working.

This is how you offer protection as well, as your leadership evolves to include other people, but it’s a safe zone that must expand out from yourself first. Primacy. No one can meet your needs or develop your dreams as well as you can. When you’re the one setting the standards for a group, enforcement protects the members and goals of the group by keeping those standards from being just so many farts in the wind.

Of course, leadership means you’re now in a position to hurt someone, to fuck up, to have only yourself to blame if things go to shit. Risk. But you know what, it’s not like you’re rocking the full pater familias suite of privileges from the get-go—start small, learn from mistakes, practice self-reflexivity, refrain from executing willy-nilly and you’ll be okay.

Interact with social peers who feel free to say ‘no’, and be free to say ‘no’ oneself.

This means that both parties are able to keep themselves from being taken advantage of, will be open about their needs, and will communicate when things aren’t going well. In short, it assumes everyone onboard has a wolf suit.

This is huge. Socialization for most women runs completely opposite to this standard, and women all know this, and act accordingly with each other. The social dance of extending an invitation several times –> polite demurral –> insistence –> offering all kinds of explanation on how it’s no trouble at all –> the other party could almost feel guilty for not accepting, but must decline with a rationale of how they wish they could accept but are prevented from it…this dance not solely the province of BBC costume dramas. It crops up wherever the people involved have no way to directly defend their boundaries or know if they are encroaching on others’.

It works when everyone does this and all players are socially equal, if you don’t mind wasting time and constantly reading subtext. It’s a recipe for being taken advantage of when there is a social power imbalance and/or only half the parties play by these rules.

I’ve found in all of my real friendships with women there’s a point when we have the conversation about how we’ll stop bullshitting each other and be frank about our actual feelings and needs–at the point you can easily say no, the yeses become real. It’s the female-friendship equivalent to dating seriously. This happens rarely, in my experience, but it’s a vital form of reality testing in learning how to identify and become serious about boundaries.

Refrain from taking unfair advantage of those who cannot say ‘no’.

I think this is where a lot of women flail, where imposter syndrome catches like a grease fire. Women my age were often taught to compromise their needs, to make everyone happy at their own expense, to carry every responsibility personally, and to handle all of this from the perspective of never imposing themselves on anyone else, even to the point of denying that any of this emotional scutwork is actual labor. Super-vigilant about not imposing on anyone else, they default to chronically imposing on themselves.

There’s martyrdom in that, a sense of resigned superiority in being the rock all these delicate souls rely on, but it accomplishes nothing and denies the humanity of oneself and others. This is a social-emotional pyramid scheme masquerading as a “from each according to ability, to each according to need”.

But that’s crap. We’re all humans, and we each of us have hard fucking lessons to learn about how to get along, what our work here is, and how to accomplish it. This involves being true to ourselves and calling each other on our shit. This involves growing the fuck up and learning how to wield our own power– compassionately, boldly.

The magic trick is that the wolf suit helps keeps you from blinking.

Bitching & moaning your way to happiness

About 16 months ago I had A Moment.

Stuck in a meeting in the cube farm, listening to a painful power-point based on the theme of “you should be grateful I’m condescending to teach you lazy slackers how to suck eggs“, I caught a wave of dissociation that differed from the usual brand triggered by too much coffee, Sudafed, and cubicle-based sensory deprivation.

At the time, as I flipped to a fresh page and began listing the things I’d rather be doing, it seemed like yet another stab at distracting myself. Anytime a person occupies a role that doesn’t occupy their mind, that extra capacity has to be channeled elsewhere.

A scrawled list of “things I should be doing instead” hardly merits daydream status, much less distraction or hobby.

Deciding not to be a cog

In retrospect, the panicky burning in my gut should have been a big clue that this wasn’t another hit of anesthesia. Just writing down the things I’d rather be doing and creating felt dangerous. Transgressive. It felt like a last futile gesture against failure.

For some of us, fitting into a box for a paycheck is signing on for Stockholm syndrome; we will absorb the role given to us because that’s the only way to function in it. Having been relegated to being an Office Wife, I found it hard to remember that I had far more to offer. The ambition and drive that had propelled me from early adolescence felt insolent and reckless in this context.

I’d chosen a job based on what I could get, not what I wanted to do or what I needed from work. Desperate to stay in the wrong box, I’d become a whipped cur. Yeah, that stung.

‘Put up or shut up’ means if you take action, you can keep bitching as you work

Most of the time, though, you find you don’t need to carp and moan because it’s a waste of fuel.

The material accomplishments are simply one front of the struggle that I began that day. On the mental front the re-wiring has been deep and ugly, and I’ve pushed through several bad habits of thought and action, some of them with dandelion taproots down into childhood.

My spur to action was being told I was worthless, and listening to the voice inside that shot back, “Oh hell, no.” Against that backdrop, it’s been hard to take most of my standard excuses seriously anymore.

Self-sabotage is so GenX, Heather. Knock it off.

Leaders don’t piss in your cereal. This includes the leadership involved in getting your monkey brain and your lizard brain on-board with the brilliant schemes your fevered human brain cooks up.

I’m learning to be kinder to myself even as I hone and apply my ambition. I’m learning how to accomplish things with help, and in support of others. Both the sovereignty and the openness I’m learning how to inhabit would have scared the bejeebus out of me two years ago.

At the base of my problems with my job and getting a new one is this: hiring is a networker’s game, and I’m about a social as an Abbess–I do very well in small cloistered groups and cheerfully negotiating in the market, but do. not. take me to the royal court.

This does not square with the need to “put myself out there” in order to market myself and what I can do, which is how people have always landed good jobs, but now is the only way to get *any* job whatsoever in this state.

This is not an introvert’s world, and I have to say, that inconvenient fact will probably always piss me off. Just like “business hours” shoe-horning me into a schedule 2-3 hours ahead of my internal clock will always piss me off.

And so, I’m faced with the threat of some very awkward and odious work, in order to secure a new position that I won’t stay in very long, in a business environment I find stressful simply because I just. don’t. care. This is a bad idea, which is why I haven’t pursued it yet despite the terrible fit with my current position.

Then again, if I want to run a business down the road (and I can see in ten years tops I may need to for the same reason I started writing fiction–no one was doing what I wanted done as well as I could envision it being done), this is a skill set I really need to start building.

And so, I’m wondering how I could begin working on this in a way that doesn’t totally repulse me. I simply cannot fake interest, the result is even more offensive to others than my naked boredom. So I wonder what a geek can do with a writing portfolio, a desire to work in health care, a bit of artistic talent and the strict parameters of “I need to be passionate enough about this that I can be outgoingly social in its pursuit.”

In short, I need to create a project that will rev my engine, and pull together a group of people who share my interests.

“We shall awaken from our dullness and rise vigorously toward justice. If we fall in love with creation deeper and deeper we will respond to its endangerment with passion.”
Hildegard von Bingen

I need to embrace my Abbess nature.

Life is built from sedimentary rock

Effectively, there is no moment of truth. In retrospect there are brief interactions, minute details, and subtle decisions that have an exponential effect on everything that follows–but we move through our days oblivious to these forks and by-ways.

A person can be maudlin about it, and dwell on the fact that any little conversation could also be a goodbye. While true, there’s nothing a person can really do with that knowledge except be present and embrace gratitude as often as possible.

The flip side, though, is that profound changes can begin with a subtle alteration to the daily grind. A difference in perspective, reaction, daily routine or even struggling against an entrenched habit can shake things up enough that the whole system opens wide. What had been worn smooth now has a catch, and it snags something else and the next thing you know dogs and cats aren’t just living together, they’re gentrifying your neighborhood.

Oh, the center holds. You’ve just moved your center is all.

A year ago I loved my family, loathed my job, was fat, in middle-class debt slavery, struggling with post-weaning adjustment and despaired of ever getting back to school. My novel was stuck, I spent 40 hours a week in a fluorescent-lit cube, and 8 hours a week driving back and forth.

As I don’t have an ebook or six-week email course to sell you on, I openly admit that most of this is the same. This is an open lab journal, and I am, have been, and always will be a work in progress. I’m simply pleasantly surprised at how much progress I have to report.

My pants are bigger than is healthy, and the financial situation is similar. The novel is in better shape, though neglected for now. The job takes up the same time but the lighting and the emotional atmosphere are better.

The positive differences are few, but profound. I no longer look at my kid and have to hide desperation and frustration. I’m no longer pent up like veal trying to shut off my brain 24/7. Each day I’m materially closer to what I want, I’m on the right track, and I can relax and enjoy things despite not having time to breathe some days.

I’m anxious about the future, worried about scheduling next term in with work, concerned about being the sole paycheck right now and whether we’ll have a house next year, and I really need to catch up with this term’s math.

The thing is, I am happy.

“When Alexis Arguello gave Boom Boom a beating
Seven weeks later he was back in the ring
Some have the speed and the right combinations
If you can’t take the punches, it don’t mean a thing”
–Warren Zevon, “Boom Boom Mancini”

There’s a short list of traits I can point to that have served me extremely well. Some of them are native to my personality, like stubborn perseverance and a logical bent. Others are the result of conscious study, like not taking failure as a final answer. Fragile new skills like applying the power of aggregate futzing, are far from instinctual traits, and therefore they take a moment to kick in. Considering the work and aggravation involved in changing a habit, a trait, or an ingrained response, only a conscious appreciation of what’s at stake will keep a person on track.

It’s easier to scramble back onto the wagon when you know that your rest in the mud will soon be interrupted by the next wagon bearing down on you. Going fetal with your arms around your head is not an option. What do you do then? Roll onto your feet and try another tack.

So it’s been a while since the last update but I’ve been busy. Unlike your average apologetic blogger I won’t wax hysteric about how crazy it’s been and how I’ve had no time to write. I won’t ever waste your time with that, or with filler posts when I’m low on content.

I’m back to catch you up on the results since my last post.

Learning to Fight Hamster-style

I’ve gone from swimming 100 meters with clicking shoulders and feeling like I’m dying, to swimming a full kilometer without clicks and feeling spent but good afterward. My new driver’s license documents the vast improvement I’ve achieved in my shoulders in the last three years, which no longer slope up and forward to my chin, but spread out lateral and level and even with each other. I’ve started shedding some of the padding I’d acquired since breaking my foot last November. And for the first time since I sprouted this stupendous rack at age thirteen, my midback is no longer the bane of my posture.

Trudging up the Mountains to the Temple

I’ve applied as a post-bachelor to Wayne State, much earlier than I had planned in the Science Upgrade It turns out I may qualify for loan aid, and if I can eliminate the headache of transfer equivalencies then hell yeah. This doesn’t change the fall semester of math and chem at two other community colleges, paid for and starting in two weeks–but those are cheap, mainly online, and simply ramp me up to college level anyway. Partner is also considering school of some stripe, a mental retooling for the new economy we’re all expecting to come off backorder one day.

Right now we’re like Roadrunner, walking across air because we’re too focused to look down.

It Takes Years to Become Batman, yo

In other news, we got the beater car back. It now starts with a bottle opener (partner’s key) and the Leatherman large screwdriver tool (my key). Grandmother is having more lucid intervals, which totally rocks. Mom is dyspeptic and will likely have her gallbladder yanked soon, but our muddling through is infamous and so we keep on truckin’.

So there’s the update. Currently on the docket:

* finishing my review of beginning algebra, before intermediate algebra begins
* getting the second chapter chemistry under my belt before class begins
* revising the Science Upgrade plan: no longer a personal document, but a vital part of my financial aid application
* sharing birthday cake with the kiddo, who is three today

I hope to finish her present by this weekend, which is technically late. But after 43 weeks of pregnancy and 48 hours of labor, I think taking a few extra days to make something for her is simply par for the course.

In the words of Gilda Radner’s Roseanna Roseannadanna, It’s always something. The thing I’m working on is to choose a different response to obstacles as they appear. Do not stop, do not bang your head against them, just get on with the business of going around them.

Oh it is on.

In the recent past this type of response struck me as foolish and contrary. The proper response to a setback is frustration and anger and an impending sense of doom–it’s a setback, eh? Thing is, for all the whinging anxiety I’ve slogged through in dealing with this or that crappy setback, none of it has done a damned bit of good in getting me out of those holes.

Most of the time I worked hard to dig myself out, and feeling bad about it only made the work harder. Fear and self-loathing also make it much less likely you’ll see the ropes people try to throw your way to help you up. At some point, I can no longer deny that it’s much better to stop worrying about the crap I can’t fix and get cracking on the crap I can fix.

To treat a setback like I would a car veering into my lane on the freeway: steer around it. Flip it off on the way past, if need be.

I went to the store
to get more
fire
to start the war
–Electric Six

Improvisation requires that you keep playing.

I’ve mapped out my tasks and deadlines for going back to school–first pre-requisites, then grad school. I’m registered for math and chemistry come fall, and am halfway through a review of my pre-algebra book. I’ve reached a place of calm security where I now have all the tools and plans to build this bridge to where I want to be, and now I can get down to the work of placing stones.

Having solved the Big Conundrum, I’ve had the brainpower to get some writing done, nearly finishing a full chapter and some major plotting in two novels. After years, I can go a full day without feeling blocked and scratching frantically at the walls of my cage. Frankly, I’m giddy.

Setback: I am now currently the sole paycheck in the household.

On the plus side, my partner is one of those rare charismatic individuals who knows someone nearly everywhere he goes (including other countries), and who gets job offers from mis-dialed phone calls. This certainly helps in my budding practice of steering around setbacks without freaking out. To balance that ‘pro’ is the very weighty ‘con’ of growing up working poor and having a steamer trunk full of skewed beliefs and concerns about money, jobs and bills.

So yes. I’m approaching this as a chance to build new muscles. Like being evicted is a chance to build muscles by moving a lot of furniture very quickly.

Wasn’t it Aristotle who said, “Fake it ’til you make it?”

Okay, so eviction is a long-term unlikely prospect. Based on previous data on our setbacks as a couple, it’s far more likely this will result in a net gain once the problem is squared away. Yes, even the setbacks that put me on the market, a knowledge worker clerk amongst clerks in a locale with shocking unemployment.

Here I am: breathing, doing math, writing. Steering around the debris in my lane and keeping the car heading where I want to be.

Storyboarding as Project Management

I’m untrained in the bureaucratic voodoo of Project Management, the business practice of herding cats through red tape. But I know these are the folks who have a spooky handle on both petty details and grand workflows. I’ve got goals up the ying-yang and am in danger of losing my balance of yin and yang as a consequence. I don’t have to corral a staff, but I need a handle on petty details and grand workflows. In lieu of traditional Project Management, I’ve been using PM tools to craft a narrative.

Except There Is No Second Draft–Ha!

The Happy Ending (keeping in mind that beginnings and endings are always arbitrary points in time, only meaningful because of what they bookend), the Happy Ending of this narrative is a parting shot of me, in the fall of 2010, with everything in hand for a great application to my favored PT program. However, like a novel, I cannot keep all of this straight in my head for any length of time. Frankly, at any given point in time the vast majority of it is fore- and backlog I can (should! must!) forget while completing the task at hand.

Yet too much focus and deadlines can (and will!) go whizzing by without even leaving a manly bullet graze on my temple to make me look heroic.

You know those dreams where you have to take a test and you forgot you even had the class? In my version, I have to go back to elementary school in order to get credit for my high school diploma, in order to get credit for my bachelors. I’m wedged in a tiny desk with fifth-graders trying to do ten chapters of social science homework before the bell rings. I’m getting a flop sweat just typing this.

This creates the need for a solution: How can I move through this period of time and this mountain of work so that I have prompt delivery of the necessary ingredients–and tasks–to begin tackling each piece as I need to?

Another Tool for the Utility Belt

In the past, this would be a job for Office Supplies! and her trusty ambidextrous sidekick Hours N. Hours. Alas, they’ve been downsized and replaced with a virtual assistant in the form of “what free software can I load on a USB and stick in my pocket?”. Not a good superhero name. Which is why I named the USB “Bat Cave”. That way I get to be the superhero. That is, if Bruce Wayne is a wage slave in the white collar ghetto, married to a devious combination of Alfred Pennyworth and Lucius Fox.

Back to the Bat Cave. For someone who grew up with a Smith Corona and graph paper, open source software is almost like having a keycard to the sublevel labs of Wayne Enterprises.

I’m using a copy of Open Project, a free open-source project management program that’s been friendly so far–after I figured out how to set up the calendar to calculate constant time, instead of 8 hour days, 40 hour weeks, and 20 day months. If nothing else, I like the ability to link tasks sequentially and see them marching across the screen in a Gantt chart like a choreography of relay racers.

Deadlines are Useless if You Don’t Know When to Go Live

I will never be able to properly estimate time, which leads to the following given: I will never be punctual. The choices are to be either tardy or wildly early–wildly early being the result of accounting for every possibility that could make me late, and having only one or two of them happen. This plan for a happy application ending is an exercise in choosing wildly early, and so it’s not focused on a single deadline for anything. Instead, each item or deliverable has an organic ripening described in a series of dates:

when’s the earliest I can start this?
when’s the latest I can start this?
when should I have the bulk of this done?
when’s the earliest this can be done?
when’s the latest I can finish this?
when is this actually due?

At any given point I can clearly see what I need to get done, what I can work on if I have extra time and mental capacity, and what I can put out of mind until the time comes. I also have dynamic timelines that give scope, can motivate me if I’m lethargic–or can be ignored if I’m anxious without shooting myself in the foot.

Even if it doesn’t output a pretty graph, it’s helped me organize my thinking ‘on paper’ so I can indulge my natural ability to focus without risking a Rip Van Winkle incident of, “Holy crap, I forgot to take physics!”

Among other communications, such as coining the word “cosmopolitan”, masturbating in the marketplace, and telling Alexander the Great to step off, philosopher and civilization critic Diogenes is quoted with the following:

“Solvitur ambulando.”

“It is Solved by Walking”

Which is another way of saying the road is paved with experiments. Plan and theorize all you want, but you only find out how the world really works when you get off your ass and interact with it. In the same vein, no plan will never encompass all of the minutia and set-backs that inevitably pop up and derail you. They must be wrestled in real time at the height of their inconvenience, the sharper your focus and the more flexible your approach, the better.

This can easily become a sentence to hard labor at whack-a-mole, flailing at every distraction, constantly refocusing, and constantly being torn away from the prize. There is no plan that will save you from the unrelenting erosion of real life upon your dreams, no binder can protect you no matter how stuffed with details.

So when beginning the journey of a thousands steps, the first thing is to shuffle your dupa off the couch and pick a destination. Then get to walking.

Ditch plans. Think strategies. Think tactically.

Be Dogged in Pursuit of the PT Plan

Diogenes was a Cynic, which comes from the Greek word for ‘dog’ and was a likely descriptor for a guy bent on simple living and brutal honesty. Civilization corrupts our nature, and returning to basics increases both morality and happiness. Dogs scratch where they itch, and they know who their pack is (and isn’t). Dogs have a short list of things they care about.

Where are you headed? Work back from that to find the marks you need to hit when. Enable quick re-aiming by picking one target at a time.

Task: break down the time line for the Science Upgrade and the application tidbits. Know the drop-dead dates, build in a cushion for all hell breaking loose, make it simple to consult, and retire the binder of madness.

What is vital? How do you recognize a distraction vs. a priority? Priorities are only as strong as they are few. Pare down to a bare minimum the number of claims to your attention. Be ruthless. Get used to a different lifestyle.

Priorities alongside the PT Plan: Be engaged with your family, and provide for them. Pay it forward when possible.

Everything else is a distraction.

Luctor et Emergo: I struggle, but I’ll survive

The solution is elegant, a simple frame that offers a very different perspective. There are drawbacks to be dealt with. Adjusting to lower standards in non-priority areas. Losing the option of camouflaging a lack of progress in high-priority areas with busyness. Getting used to the diligent practice of re-aiming to the target, instead of scurrying back to the drawing board.

This is the year when Everything Changes.

In the words of the spouse, “We’ll muddle through. Famous muddlers.”

My titles blow today, fair warning. Imagine the marvelous Sandwina above breaking them into letters and assembling them anew.

Exorcising Pain, Exercising Again=A Scapegrace Genii Nixing Iron Six

About eight months ago I busted one of my trotters, beginning a saga of healing I’m still trudging along. Heal the bone, the inflamed joint, get rid of the limp, go back to therapy to heal the whacked out body mechanics, finally get to the point of sleeping without pain.

Unfortunately the time limit for “not exercising but not getting bigger” is about six months, so since the start of May I’ve outgrown my pants. Not cool. I can’t afford new pants. Also, I don’t like having to negotiate around my belly to do things.

This morning I decided to face the fact that I’ve developed a barrel physique, and do something different.

Not just the difference of “changing those things that have made you bigger” but also the difference of “changing how you handle this fact”.

I’m Getting Better by Getting Meta=Abetting Getting Better Gym Time

This is not my first rodeo. I’ve wrestled before with the disconnect of a body not meant for the post-industrial economy. Like a bad shopping cart, I’ve had to lean hard into the steering a few times before.

Coming from peasant stock, I’m built to translate potatoes and sausage into plowing output. This is another reason I’m escaping the cube farm: I don’t wear sedentary well. I need a certain amount of movement and physical work to keep both body and mind running well, and recuperating from this injury has made me terribly lethargic even when my butt isn’t socketed into an office chair.

This time my transitional moment took different turn.

I did not berate or punish myself. That only hurts and exacerbates the problem.
I did not research the issue. I know what is healthy and how to become fit, and further reading would be a substitute for action.
I did not create a plan. I have no mental room for plans right now.
I did not exchange one extreme for the other. This change happened over time, and any course correction must also be paced for the long haul.

I measured myself, to state the baseline I’ll be working away from. I strapped on the sport bra of an Amazonian Queen. I jumped a little rope and did some inclined push-ups. I showered and took time for pampering. I’m eating well. I’ve got my clothes laid out for the next little bit of exercise.

In short, I made a place for movement in my life again, and rewarded myself accordingly.