Once Upon a Time…

Once upon a time I was dangerous.  Once upon a time I trained myself to fight everything and anything that came up against me.  Once upon a time I thought up ways to hurt others.  Once upon a time.

I am searching for a new motivation.  For years I lived off of anger.  I was so angry with the world around me and at the things that had happened to me.  And I was angry with myself.  Then one day I woke up and the anger was gone.  I floundered a bit and began to punish myself for the floundering.  I punished myself for not being as strong as I wished I was, for not being as self-disciplined as I thought appropriate, for not being as pretty or as smart or as charming as I thought I could be.  And I fed on that punishment.  It was my motivation.  I’m tired of punishment.  I will not do it anymore.  I have no anger.  I have nothing to punish.

I am unmotivated.

I have attached my motivation to negative emotions for so long that now that I have decided that it will no longer be that way I don’t know how to motivate myself.  I don’t know how to make myself do the things I need to do.  I’m so tempted to go back to the punishment – but I hated it so much.  It made me so unhappy.

I don’t know how to be ok with myself.  I don’t know how to be happy.  I look back on my life and there were only a few years in my childhood that were not difficult or painful.  Not that having a difficult childhood is a bad thing.  I am not complaining.  The path that has taken me to where I am has been an incredible one, and I have few regrets.  Ok maybe that one night in New Orleans.  But only that.  But I have never learned how to be happy.  Every moment of happiness came with strings – kind of like laying in the guillotine.  Sure it may be comfortable, but that blade is going to drop any moment.

I am gradually trying to work my way back into the martial arts.  Something tells me that it is the answer to the question I am trying to ask.  It is blatantly apparent how much my body has changed, and I resent aging.  I resent surgery.  I resent all the injuries that have compromised my strength.  And I wonder how I overcome it.  I don’t doubt that it can be overcome.  Martial artists do not live much past 40 if they do not figure out how to overcome the repercussions of their choices.  Not as active martial artists they don’t.

Which brings me to the question – what am I?

I used to be dangerous.  Today I was in a meeting and I surprised myself by how much I knew about the topic.  Last Sunday I tried to remember my kata and found that I could only reliably perform half of them.  It was as though I could not connect my body to my brain.  My body knew what to do, but my brain… it wasn’t sure what time zone it was it.  There is no reconciliation.

For a long time I tied my identity to my ability to defend myself – and anyone I cared about.  I would still probably be a pain in the ass in a fight – though I am not the fighter I was.  But it is not my identity.  Nor am I a scholar.  Nor a public servant.  Nor a wife or mother or lover.

I am lonely, but not in the bad way.  I find that I crave solitude.  And I am a little unnerved by the strength of that craving.  My friend tells me that this is a sign of change.  I can taste the change.  It is in everything I do, everything I try and every time I fail.  And I fail a lot.

But what I wish I knew is what comes after?  Change… and then what?  Because I want to know how much energy to invest.  How much time to allocate.

Or maybe I should just give in and rejoin a dojo.  It would be beautiful to work at a single identifiable goal again.

Self-Help Thru Whuppins

In an attempt to maintain some sort of sanity (and to prevent every conversation from devolving into a rant about my thesis) I’ve been trying to read books about things other than land use policy.  Do not fear, I still read a great deal of land use policy. Piles of it. And it still gets me riled up. But, as a medium for personal growth, land use policy is generally lacking.

I read a lot this summer. I’m still reading a lot – generally reading has superseded my other “relaxation” activities (knitting and re-watching movies) and I have found that much in the same way that I stand in front of the open pantry wishing I had a bit of cookie or licorice after dinner, I will stand in front of my bookshelves and search for something to satisfy my literary craving. I have a lot of books, so this would seem like a desire that could be met in-house. Not so, as evidenced by the piles of new books stacked on every flat surface of my living room (and some not so flat, as Dog has discovered).

These new books fit one of three genres. They are crime/assassination thrillers with complex good/bad guys and a realistic approach to fighting, evasion, and investigation. I care not for long descriptions of physical appeal (how rippling were those abs?) and prefer detailed depictions of the procedure necessary to determine that one is not being followed. Or they are books about how we are messing up our planet by eating unsustainable foods and living in unsustainable neighborhoods and using unsustainable transportation and how all of that is connected and how it has been subsidized and fundamentalized and become such a part of our existence that we can’t imagine not living that way, even though our lives could arguably be healthier, happier, and more meaningful. Or, because the first kind of book gets me excited, and the second kind of book gets me angry, I read books about how to be a better person.

I’ll be straight with you. I’ve started one book on how to be a better person, which almost immediately triggered my gag reflex, and I just finished one book that was technically about how to survive violence that felt like the author knew me – didn’t just know my personality and my experiences, but my thought process and the words that I needed to hear. To be honest, it caught me by surprise. And now I’m reeling a bit. I expected the book about learning to let go (which is what I will get tattooed on my wrist as soon as I am done having surgery on it – an odd tattoo for a climber to be sure, but there you have it) to tell me the things I needed to hear. Apparently either I’ve already moved farther along in the letting go process than I thought, or I am not in the right place for that book because it just made me aggravated. When books start throwing out the “self-love” terminology I find my skepticism kicks into overdrive. When books talk about acceptance AND self-love I start to get that bile in the throat taste. I have never been an acceptor. I do not want to accept – or at least, I do not want acceptance to be my default state. Not for myself, not for the world around me, not for my life.

Change does not happen through acceptance. Change happens through action (and sometimes there is a good bit of resistance too – which is generally a waste) by choice and by recognition that the status quo is Not Good Enough. I remember the first time my therapist told me that I was good enough – he was trying to help me establish some sense of self-worth. He asked if I understood and then if I agreed. I told him I understood but that I didn’t agree, not then, but I’d keep working on it. He took that to mean I’d keep working on acceptance. I meant that I’d keep working to make myself better, stronger, calmer, smarter, more confident, more social, more empathetic, a person who is good enough.

I have a very good friend who is deep into acceptance and finding inner peace. She gets frustrated by me because my reaction to perceived setbacks is often self-denigrating, and she can become infuriated at my emotional flailing at what she identifies as problems inherent in the human experience. This is because I will not simply accept conditions as they are. First I will try to outsmart them, then I will try to get around them, then I will try to overpower them, then I flail. I will not accept until it is obvious that there is no alternative. And even then I will pout.

Yet, for the first time I actually understand why I do what I do and why I cannot ease into acceptance – and I can say with some confidence that it is very unlikely that I ever will.

I just finished Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts by Rory Miller. The book is full of pointers and concepts created to not only explain what happens during a violent encounter, but how to prepare, avoid, engage, and survive one if need be. It is not a macho book. It does not glorify or romanticize violence. Nor does it feed the paranoia. What it does do, though, is explain how violence really happens, and what really needs to be considered before a person finds themselves in a violent situation. How unfortunate it is that the only way to learn what needs to be discovered before being thrust into a violent situation is having experienced a violent situation without that preparation.

At the close of my marriage – when the abuse was still too fresh in my memory to have become part of my story, I joined a martial arts school and began training. I never told my instructors about the abuse. I never even hinted. But one thing was obvious, I was aggressively hunting for change. Not only did I not want to be a victim in my story, but I did not want to be a victim in reality – not ever, and change – a fundamental adjustment to my personality – was the only way to make sure that didn’t happen.

But change is not easy. It hurts. Physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. It is like going through a box of mementos of your life and tossing the stuffed animals and the spelling tests with gold stars and the greeting cards and school photos. They become things that belong to someone else, and while it is often heart-wrenching, it is also liberating. The key is to stick with it – to keep pushing the change – to not give up. Because giving up is anathema to change. Because acceptance may be less painful, but it doesn’t actually alter the situation.

I realize now that I am someone who would rather hurt and work (fight even) toward altering a situation rather than someone who can find peace in acceptance. I’m not looking for peace – at least not as a permanent fixture. I don’t want drama or war or violence, but I do want the conflict and challenge inherent in change. I want to grow and push myself against my boundaries because I realize that the boundaries I find so limiting are almost always of my own creation. Because that is how I overcome them, through conflict – and that is where I get as close as I ever will to peace.

I’ve been frustrated for a while now because I could not figure out how to get “past” my need to constantly push myself. Frustration leads to punishment (seriously – Meditations had some of the best treatment of “punishment” and its worthlessness as anything other than an expression of sadism (or in my case masochism) that will give me a lot to think about for a while) which ultimately leads to injury or damage or exhaustion or any other of a dozen blocks that stop my progress. The problem isn’t the pushing, the problem is the frustration – the expectation that I should be working out my issues some other way, that what I’m doing isn’t right or best or even beneficial. The reality is that maybe, just maybe I should accept that acceptance isn’t for me. And maybe I should quit thinking of change as a unilateral motion – that can only be accomplished one way.

Like the book said, it isn’t the technique that means the difference between survival and failure, it is the preparation, committment, and intent that are going to be the determining factors. I think I just got a glimpse of the forest through the trees.

My History of Violence

I’ve spent a lot of time considering how to tell this story.  At first I figured it would be chronological – a simple line forward from that to that to this.  Yet I haven’t written that story – I don’t know that I can write that story.  There are parts in the tale where the telling is difficult, where the mind takes over and the heart hides and the voice slips into the monotone of survival.  And that is not the truth.  That is not how it happened.  I was responsible for my choices – even when I chose to do nothing.  Especially when I chose to do nothing.

I grin when I spar.  A well placed defense or a well-timed strike will make me smile like an insane person.  And if my opponent lands a perfect hit – the kind of hit that I know would have taken me out of the match were we fighting for real – I giggle like a psychopath.  I cannot help it.  I take delight in the art of combat.  Besides, it disorients my opponents.  And that is never a bad thing.

I was not always like this.  Fighting – physical violence – used to terrify me.  I didn’t like getting hit, and I really didn’t like hitting.  My first forays into the ring, back when I began studying the martial arts, were humiliating disasters.  I would try to defend myself, but I could not bring myself to attack.  My end goal was simply to survive without serious injury until the bell rang and I could escape.  As often as not I got injured.

I learned that as unpleasant as pain is, it is not fear-worthy.  Only recently have I realized what a valuable lesson that is.

My life works better when I’m fighting regularly.  I function better when I’m fighting regularly.  There is something about the immediacy of combat, the paring away of everything but that exact moment, the total focus on what is happening right then that I find cleansing.  Perhaps it is that fighting quiets all the other voices in my head.  I step into the ring, my gaze narrows on my opponent, and everything else slips out of focus.  My thoughts still and recede and my mind and body become a singular entity.  I can feel the ligaments in my hips and the tendons in my knees.  I can feel the bands of muscle across my shoulders and back.  I can feel my stomach and my liver and my kidneys and my intestines, wrapped in muscle and bone and flesh, as they adjust their function and quietly enter survival mode.  I can taste the adrenaline pumping in my blood,  metallic on my tongue and electric in my throat – as though I’d swallowed a 9 volt battery.  And my mind goes quiet.

I cannot explain how wonderful that silence is.  Most of the time I have what meditation experts call a monkey mind.  Except it often feels like a troop of monkeys – all screaming and swinging and throwing their shit and trying to escape out my ears and eyes and nose and mouth, and the only thing keeping them in is my skull and my skin – my flimsy eyelids and my chapped lips.

I’ve understood the advantages that the martial arts bring to my life for quite some time.  Yet for some reason I resist acting on this knowledge.  Perhaps it is because I view fighting as a recreation – much like other people view exercise in general.  I make excuses about not being able to afford it (I can’t) and about not having the time (I don’t) and not wanting to start over from scratch someplace new.  The truth is that I can’t afford not to.

I remember the first time I was struck as an adult.  It’s not something I’ll ever forget, even though I experience the memory as an observer instead of a participant.  I see my eyes go big with shock at what is happening.  I see myself stumble off-balance and fall through – not into, but through – the closed laundry room door.  The latch holds while the wood breaks and splinters.  I see myself on the floor, as stunned as I am hurt, trying to reconcile what just happened with my previous understanding of the world.  Even now I can hear the monkeys screaming.  Silly monkeys.

I didn’t walk into the dojo that cold sunny afternoon in December with the intent of learning self-defense, though I’ve allowed the inference in other tellings of this story.  I walked in there because I wanted to be a different person.  I thought I wanted to be Jackie Chan or Jet Li or Michelle Yeoh.  I thought I wanted to look like a fighter – a harmless mimic of violence.  I thought I wanted it to be flashy and impressive and essentially useless – like a hollywood fight scene.

I did want to be a different person, but it wasn’t Jackie Chan that I wanted to be.  It was a better, stronger, faster, braver me.  I thought I wanted to learn how to intimidate others.  Instead I learned how to take care of myself.  I lucked out.

This afternoon I was sparring with a friend who is still new to kickboxing – the martial art I’ve been teaching him.  I was, at one point, a good enough kickboxer to compete in the amateur leagues.  I’m a long way from that kind of condition, those reflexes, that skill.  But I remember enough to teach the basics.  Tonight he made the perfect block.  It put a bruise like a quarter on the top of my foot.  The impact was so right, the pain so familiar, the execution so flawless that I couldn’t help myself.  I was so proud of him, and so pleased with the moment that I almost broke into dance.  I threw the horns and laughed and cheered.  While he was concerned that he had possibly hurt me (he didn’t) I was ecstatic about his progress, that now I can move just a little bit faster and we can spar a just a little bit harder and the periphery can get a little fuzzier and the instant a little sharper.

I only plan about two sessions ahead these days.  He’s a quick learner and in a couple of months there will be little left for me to teach.  And while teaching is good, so is learning.  It’s been a while since I’ve been on the receiving end of a lesson in violence.

I’m overdue.

Rules and Regulations: in which I ramble on about etc.

I have, as a rule, avoided writing about my workplace.  I have no problem with mentioning that I have a job, or the status of my job, or even venting about my frustrations, but details, specific activities, and other identifiers are off limits.  This is not a standard set according to my own personal code.  I don’t think that what a person says about their workplace online or anywhere else should even be an issue, unless they are divulging “trade secrets” or some such.  But if somebody wants to write about the inane office politics or the wacky co-worker behavior or the corporate soullessness that consumes such a huge proportion of our lives, then they should have the freedom to do so without worrying about what might happen should their employer or coworker or whatnot find their writings.  I’m not talking about libel or slander, but about freedom of expression – the right to record and share what happens to us, our personal experiences. 

I know better, of course.  I know of many people who have lost jobs and then found it very difficult to find new employment because of stuff that they have written, even semi-anonymously, in their blogs or public journals or whatnot.  I’m not looking to join their ranks.  At least, not until I am independently wealthy. 

Sometimes, though, it is so difficult to hold back, particularly when something happens that triggers one of my pet peeves.  I don’t really have very many – the advantage of being pretty much apathetic to the life choices and behaviors of others.  I only care if something directly impacts me, and then only if it is sufficiently negative that I either feel like I need to make a defense against radically unfair treatment or I feel like I’m in some sort of danger.  In fact, in recent years I’ve taken a few things off the pet peeve list.  I don’t mind repeating myself so much anymore.  I can go into broken record mode and disengage my mind and wait for whoever it is I’m supposed to be communicating with to catch up without getting my knickers twisted. 

And the whole entitlement thing only bugs me now when it is a direct inconvenience to me personally.  I used to get riled at the concept.  Now I don’t care until the pimped out Hummer runs over my foot.  I also used to get angry when I saw people breaking the law and getting away with it.  My long term experience with karma, however, has renewed my faith that what goes around comes around and that while I am not in a position to perceive the balance of the universe – my judgement of what is and is not “fair” is stilted by my own point of view. 

I don’t even mind so much anymore when people assume that I am ignorant and do not know what I am talking about.  If they want to take the time to contact my “superiors” to confirm what I’ve said, go for it.  And if I’m wrong, that is ok too, as long as somebody along the way lets me know why and how and what the correct info is.  But be honest about it.  Don’t fib to my boss about my information to save face.  Because that irritates me.  Pet Peeve.  It makes me uncooperative, and the one thing that every manager should know is that the last people you want to make uncooperative are the grunts – the ones who actually do all the work. 

Which brings me to Fight Club.  I have written about this book and movie and referenced it so many times that I know people get the glazed look in their eye when I mention it.  Either that, or they do the whole snap judgement thing about my choice in “entertainment”.  Yet there is so much to plumb from the depths of that particular piece of work that I find myself relating to it on a regular basis.  For instance, in this case I think of the scene in the men’s restroom with the police commissioner, when Tyler Durden makes a very convincing case for why it is a bad idea to forget just who it is that makes modern civilization possible – that it isn’t the politicians or the celebrities or the power brokers or any of the rest of the top tier of society.  It’s the proletariat, the working class, the everyman, the people who work jobs, not have careers, that keep things moving smoothly. 

It’s the office clerk.  (Note to self, pick up a used copy of “Office Space” for repeated future viewing.)

My relationship with Fight Club had a tumultuous start.  It was indirectly responsible for one of the biggest public fights I ever had with my ex husband.  He didn’t understand the film, and, after asking me to explain it, grew angry when I tried.  While we had many fights, this is one of the few that I can distinctly remember.  In retrospect, I really only caught the most obvious themes that first viewing, and my grasp was tenuous, so it is likely that my explanation was unclear, or, as happens when I am still processing information, was couched in metaphor and philosophic jargon, which was not something he had an appreciation for.  

Then, after we had divorced and I had become immersed in the martial arts, I found myself relating to the actual fighting in the film.  There is one section in particular that I came to realize was true.  Jack is talking about an interaction with his boss after a big fight the night before and he describes life outside the ring as having the volume turned down.  I remember after my first serious sparring sessions having that same experience – how those minutes inside the ring were so incredibly intense, so visceral, so immediate that everything else, the job, the classes, the day to day existence was muted and almost petty by comparison.  I felt that if I could hold my own in the ring – even when I lost – especially when I lost, then I could handle anything that the rest of my life could throw at me.  It was a very empowering experience, and it underscored the difference between the passive rote monotony of living and engaged presentness of mind involved in being alive.

While I’ve had many other intersections with the Fight Club storyline since I first viewed the film, recently I’ve found myself reminded of the start of the story, when Jack is dealing with his insomnia.  I always think that whatever bout of insomnia I’m currently suffering from is the worst bout ever.  But I don’t remember ever having sleep issues quite like I have these last few months.  Even on nights when I go to bed early, nights that come after long physically and mentally exhausting days, nights in which moments before I was drowsing in front of the computer, I lay awake.  For hours.  It is not uncommon for me to still be awake at 3 or even 4 in the morning, having, if I’m lucky, drowsed a bit here an there, but for the most part just laid there chasing my brain.   It is very slippery, my brain.  In the movie, Jack’s experience with insomnia adds a layer of static to everything.  The volume is blaring, with no variation, no dynamics – no way to identify the key priorities, the fundamental goals, the important things in life from the background noise.  That part of the film has frames of Tyler spliced in, so that he appears for just a split second, a blip in the static – foreshadowing for the film, but also a hint that blips in the static should not be ignored. 

I feel overwhelmed by the static, the noise of living right now.  It is so difficult to differentiate between the things that are loud because they mean something, and the things that are loud because they are in heavy rotation.  I keep trying to remind myself of the important things in life, of the necessity of being engaged and present, of the value of actually being alive.  But the din of the mundane, the temporary, the external is chaotic and fierce and I feel like I’m experiencing life though a shoddy hearing aid that blends all the sounds together, so not only do I not hear the daily specials, but I miss all the good jokes and heartwarming stories because all I can hear is the crying baby six booths over and the couple arguing across the room and the kitchen staff bashing pans around behind the flip doors. 

Somehow I need to turn the volume down.  And not to sound too picky or anything, but I’d like to do it without getting arrested.

I keep coming back to the martial arts.  There are other means of getting into the moment – a heart racing climb, a run that threatens to break my lungs – pretty much anything that taps into my lizard brain, be it through fear or survival or instinct acts like a mute on the static.  But nothing I’ve ever done was as consistent and reliably enlightening as facing off on an opponent and getting my clock cleaned.

I need a Fight Club.  Except maybe without the broken teeth and facial scars. 

In the mean time, I’ll chew some Valerian root and try to get more exercise.  And maybe stop by First Methodist on Tuesday nights for an education in pain.

Sidestep

If I’m going to get back on schedule, and I do fully intend to get back on schedule, I’m going to have to be very regimented for the next few weeks.  And once that is done, there will be steam.  And it will probably need to be let go.

There may be booze involved, is all I’m saying.

I’m on a no drinking week while I prepare for the half marathon this Sunday.  I keep vacillating between feeling really good about the race and feeling like I’m not quite ready.  I know I’ll complete it.  I am even pretty sure that I’ll complete it in under 2 hours – provided nothing goes wrong.  But I keep thinking back to where I was last time, and it seems like I was in better overall shape.  I’ve lost so much strength from my upper body since the surgery on my wrist.  And it will be a while before I have the time to start building it back up.  At the same time, though, I don’t really get sore after long runs anymore.  I’ll be a little stiff, and I’m not quite at my best on the stairmaster the day after a 13 or 14 mile run, but it isn’t like before, where it took a week for the soreness to go away – where I groaned every time I stood up and walked to the fax machine – where sitting down was a delicious three second adventure of agony.

I’ll be honest right here.  I like feeling sore.  There’ve been a few times when I went too far, when I couldn’t get out of bed the next day, when I had to crawl to the bathroom because it hurt too much to stand.  But for the most part, if it hurts, I’m happy.  Sore abs and legs and shoulders make me the happiest – big muscle groups.  When just one little muscle on the side of my calf is sore, I get curious and start trying to remember what on earth I did that could make just one little muscle so unhappy.  For the most part, though, I’m almost always a little sore.  It has been this way for almost 8 years now, and I feel wrong when I’m not hurting at least a little bit – hell, I notice the absence of soreness more than the presence.

This is why I need to get back to the martial arts.  Nothing every made me hurt quite like that.  Especially the falling and rolling and falling.  I have photos that I took after a day long jiu-jitsu seminar way back when.  I had no experience with jiu-jitsu at the time, and had gone because the seminar was aimed at helping kenpo practitioners fill in some of the blanks that resulted from the commercialization of the art.  I’d spent the whole day either throwing guys much bigger and heavier than me, or getting thrown by guys much bigger and heavier than me.  My arms and legs were heavily spotted with bruises.  I had bruises on my shoulders and my back and my neck.  That was one of those times where the next morning I had to crawl to the bathroom.  It hurt so much to move that even breathing was painful.  I think at the time I wondered if I’d taken total leave of my senses for doing that to myself.  Now I want a second chance.  I think I’d handle it better.

In the meantime I run.  Last Sunday was my last long pre-race run.  13.25 miles.  I accidently laced my running shoes up too tight – not too tight for the first half of the run, but increasingly too tight for the rest of it.  One’s feet swell when one is running for 2 hours outside without sufficient access to water – my bad on that last bit.  I don’t usually carry water, and it isn’t usually a problem, but there were some extenuating circumstances, and I should have suspected that I’d be more easily dehydrated than usual.  At any rate I bruised my feet – deep tissue bruises.  I ran the treadmill at the gym today, and I could feel it with every step.  It doesn’t hurt so bad that I can’t turn it off while I’m running.  But as soon as I stop, I’m clawing at my feet to get the shoes off.

Sadly, this is not the first time I’ve done this.  Apparently I need repetition for emphasis.  I’m still training pretty solidly this week.  One more interval training run on Thursday, then something light for Friday – maybe some weights or climbing.  Saturday will be a carb fest (pizza and cake!) and then Sunday morning, at the literal butt crack of dawn I will be on the track.

Huge down side about this race/training period – last time I did a lot of my training runs in the morning.  It was just too hot in the day, and it got light early enough to make it possible.  This time I have only done a handful of early morning runs.  It is dark and cold and I end up staying up too late at night.  This race, however, is at 7:30.  I should be at the course by 6:30.  Which means getting up no later than 6 – 5:30 if I really want to have my shit together.  BUT the kicker is that Sunday is the first day of the time change.  So 7:30 will feel like 6:30 and 5:30 will feel like somebody kicked me in the head with steel toe shoes.  It is impossible for me to fall asleep before 11.  I try frequently.  I use drugs.  I meditate.  I read math books.  None of it helps.  Falling asleep at 11 is a huge success in going to be early for me.  So this is going to be a challenge.

Fortunately, I like challenges.  Sometimes.  Ok, occasionally, when I get to pick them, and when the reward is worth the risk of failure or the pain and suffering or the overall cost.

And there are always naps later.

Focus.  I’ll be keeping a pretty regimented schedule for the next few weeks.  It will be good for me.  I will not dwell on things that I have no control over.  I will not have fantasies of tripping on the treadmill and breaking my legs.  I will not think about all the things that can go wrong.  It’s a lot of things.  I will think about how good that race is going to feel.  I will think about the rewards I have planned for myself – the ones that are already paid for and therefore guilt free.  I will think about what I want to do next, how I want to do it, and how best to organize myself for success.

And I’ll try to remember not to tie my shoes too tight.  That’s the big one.

Stress Test

I would like to think that I’ve always been a pretty cool customer.  I can actually only remember a handful of times that I was actually agitated to the point of outburst – even as a kid it took a lot to get me riled up.  I’m good at holding whatever I’m feeling in – and only expressing it to people I know I can trust to not take me too seriously, people who know I just need to say the words and then I’ll deal with it, people who can do a little validating, provide a little perspective, and then tell me (kindly or not-so if necessary) to pull my head loose.  It has come to my attention that I may be a little too good at this emotional repression.

I have hives.  Again.  My heart has been racing at night.  Again.  I have chest pains.  Again.  And I’m drinking.  A lot.  Again.

So, in the interest of getting it out so I can hopefully get a little relief, here’s the current state of my existence.

Despite many varied (craigslist, neighborhood canvassing, TV) efforts to get rid of the rooster that moved in almost two weeks ago, he is still in my yard.  He still crows a good hour or more before sunrise.  I am less nervous around him.  But he is making a huge mess that is going to take a lot of time to clean up.  Anything that takes time causes incredible amounts of stress.

The computer that my parents decided they wanted updated is still sitting in pieces on my dining room table four months after they realized that it needed more than they knew how to do to get it running again.  The first replacement parts were stolen from my mailbox.  The second set arrived last Monday.  It will take four or five hours to get it up and running so that it can go back to them.  More time.

The speech therapy sessions are going well, I think.  However the neuro has put in a recommendation for an extensive learning disabilities test – one that costs $24oo.  Up Front.  And that will require at least 6 hours to conduct.  I do not have the money.  I do not have the reassurance that I will get reimbursed by my insurance.  I do not have the time.  I’ve been put on a waiting list to take the test in another 6 or 8 months with insurance approval.

I do not know if I will have a job, let alone insurance at that point.

My memory is still for total shit.

My insurance is conducting an inquiry into the brain injury visits that I’ve been making.  They do not want to pay for it, and are going to file a suit against “responsible parties” if at all possible.  They want me to provide an in depth explanation of the whole issue.  Again with the time. 

My employer has re-organized and my position eliminated.  Though they have promised that there will be no net loss of jobs, there has been nothing available in my area.  This is not a field that I want to continue to pursue.  It was an interim job while I worked on my degree.  Yet any job is better than no job – no insurance – no income. 

My job is in a constant state of flux.  I went from having way too much work to having almost none, to having way too much to having almost none.  None of it is interesting or challenging.  Nor is it consistent.  I find out that my tasks have been eliminated or deemed unnecessary only after I’ve completed them and sent them out.  I’ve been relieved of all ability to fix and help – not because I didn’t do a good job, but because I am simply too low on the totem, and the supervisor whose authority I was using is now gone.  The whole thing is demoralizing, depressing, frustrating, and exhausting.  I have to get mad to go to work in the morning.  Anger is the only motivator that can trump the depression.  I spend most mornings on the verge of breaking down.  All this time spend doing nothing, and all these things that I simply don’t have time to do – it kills me. 

I have been job hunting.  It is time consuming, energy consuming, and has a very low return rate.  So far I’ve submitted 6 or 7 applications with absolutely no response.  I do not have the time or the energy to do this with the vigor necessary to actually get a position – it causes me much stress.  Yet not applying for jobs significantly increases my anxiety level as well.  It is a catch-22.

I’m falling behind in my classes.  I simply do not have the energy or the mental focus to work effectively.  I spend far too much time sitting stunned in front of my computer trying to do research, but mostly trying not to allow myself to get distracted by every little thing.  Reading is almost impossible.  Focus is a joke.  And I can see the deadlines coming at me like bullets – traveling much faster than I can track.

My house is in total disarray – particularly my office.  The tax/insurance debacle of 2008 never got cleaned up, and the floor is littered with official papers that need to go back into the file cabinet.  I’ve got sacks of mail that I’ve never opened.  Stacks of files that got pulled and not replaced teeter on the spare bed.  Piles of computer parts litter every flat spot on my desk, printer, and end table.  The rest of the room is a tangle of unfinished projects, bits of arts and crafts, clothes, and more paperwork than can even be imagined.  And this is the room where I try to do my research.  I can’t even write on my desk, it is so covered in trash.  I need a day to sort it all out and put it all away.  Again.  Time.  (Caveat.  I have had days that I could do this.  However, it is the kind of task that I really struggle with.  I’ve started half a dozen times, and gotten so overwhelmed that I’ve given up each time.  This may be one of those tasks I need drugs to complete.)

On top of the house disarray are the leaks.  I still have not put my living room back together after the storm that dumped a bunch of water down the wall behind my fireplace and broke a new crack in the ceiling to drip more water on my floor.  I thought that maybe I’d fixed the leaks.  This last storm proved me wrong.  There are water stains everywhere. 

Even the things that keep me calm are causing me stress.  The race coming up seems like it is going to be fine, but I’ve been having issues with my guts – intense stabbing pains – that have put a damper on my last couple of runs.  I also feel like I haven’t had the time to train that I need.  So even though I’ll run the race just fine, it will hurt, I won’t do as well as I’d wanted, and I’m afraid I’ll end up spending the after race alone again, and that was kind of depressing.  (Caveat, I did ask people to go out.  Everyone was busy – the bane and the pride of my friendships – they all have equally intense lives.)

My climbing has suffered greatly from the surgery, the required down time, and my current inability to get enough of my life together to have a reliable schedule.  I wouldn’t even be able to pass the lead test at my current level.  I worked so hard, and now it is all gone.

Same with weights.

Same with martial arts.  I’ve been practicing more, and it is good when I do practice, but at the same time I have forgotten so much, and all I want is to have the time to do the practice, work from the videos, get my skill back.  Time.

I don’t even have time to practice my music.  I do try to get a little guitar time in every night, just so I don’t lose my calluses.  But it is difficult.  I’m not actually learning anything new.  My singing is getting better, but I’m not able to do the things I want to do with the music.

And that’s the basic list.  It does not include the tasks that are required for daily life – the food shopping and laundry and toilet cleaning and dishes and sweeping and oil changing and and and.  Nor does it include the things that I really want to be doing – the hiking and snowshoeing and skiing and photography and travel and reading and research on my projects.  I have a half finished electric/acoustic upright bass that I would love to work on.

I spend so much of each day standing in my hallway turning in circles as I try to figure out what I should do next, what is most important, what would be most efficient, what has the closest deadline, what would be easiest.

So I have hives.  I’m depressed.  I’m exhausted.  But I’m trying to stay upbeat and easy to get along with and pleasant to be around.  I’m trying to be reliable and resourceful and calm and consistent.  Really, I want to fly off the handle, get in a fist fight, and then get stinking drunk – for three or four days.  Ok.  Two days. 

I’m taking tomorrow off of work.  It will be good.  I don’t know what I’ll get done, but I’m going to aim high.  Hopefully by Monday I’ll have enough caught up that I can quit itching.  Hopefully!

Misleading

It’s my second shot of whiskey and it triggers the temptation – the urge to just keep drinking until I pass out – until I don’t have to fight for sleep or to turn off my brain or ignore the biology that comes with being a 33 year old female.  To hurl myself into the void.

I don’t give in.  Not just because I am supposed to work tomorrow.  Or because I know I will have a hangover if I even think about another shot.  Or because I only have one shot of the decent stuff left and then it is rot gut all the way.  Nope.  I don’t give in because giving into temptation is weakness.  And while I did just eat all the cookies and the whole bar of chocolate and all of the humus and were you going to finish those fries because if not I have a bottomless pit in my gut that where we could ditch that evidence – while there is that, alcohol is different.  Things happen when I give in.  Odd things.  Sometimes dangerous things.  More often unpleasant things.  Two more shots and I might think it a good idea to go door to door looking for the owner of the chicken that is still hanging out in my back yard.  Note: chicken will not eat lettuce if there is tomato and apple handy.  Ants, on the other hand, are not so picky.

The funny thing about the alcohol is that it is only certain kinds that trigger the “thirst”.  Vodka and I are friends.  We can hang out, have a few, and call it quits before anyone gets fresh – and often without the serious hangover the next day.  Red wine is a little more tricky.  She likes to socialize and is often looking for an opportunity to get frisky – which has a whole different set of next day impacts.  Beer is just the socializing – minus the frisky – but with frequent bathroom breaks.  Brandy is for sitting and contemplating – and the occasional movie watching.  But whiskey?  Whiskey is for drinking.  Serious, single minded, brain-cell killing drinking.

And I do love it so.

Tonight we (and by we I mean myself and a friend/fellow grad student and another fellow grad student) attended a City of Sacramento Planning Commission Meeting.  Technically is was scheduled to end right about… now.   But we left early.  Because a dozen people saying the same thing is 11 times more than I need to hear it.  Well, not if I want to remember it – in which case a dozen times might just do the trick.  But definitely more times than I want to hear it when I’m so hungry that my growling stomach is causing the lady next to me to lean away and hide in her coat.  She really didn’t need to worry – besides the whole vegetarian thing, she was a little on the skinny side.

I think I used to like my meat well marbled.  I think.  It’s been a while.

It was a very informative meeting – all things considered.  It put a lot of what I’ve been doing in class for the last three (good lord, has it been three years already?) years of graduate school.  And it was so very handy to hear the acronyms and lingo used in a non-academic atmosphere.  I came away feeling both better and worse about my education.  Better in that I knew what they were talking about during the whole meeting.  Worse in that all of that should have been first semester stuff – not third year of graduate school stuff.

The whole school thing – I feel like I’m walking a tightrope.  On the one side is the totally tanked and generally ruined real-estate model that we (and by we I mean society) have spent the last 70 year building.  Go suburbs!  Er, or not.  And on the other side is the post-apocalyptic real-estate market that can’t seem to get out from under the credit hoarding banks who are trying not to make eye contact with the suddenly disciplinarian government.  In the middle, this tightrope, is the path to sustainable cities, to regional development that unhinges the growth machine, to the future of mixed-use, zero energy loss, affordable, livable, and thriving urban development.  I, like many of my fellow students, can see it in the mind’s eye.  What we can’t see is how to get there from here.  The problem is like a row of dominoes set on end, and we move from one to the next thinking we’ve found the start that will set the chain of correction in motion, only to look up and see that not only are there more dominoes, but that they branch off and head in wildly different directions and that we’re standing in a forest of dominoes and nobody knows what the start even looks like – let alone where to find it.

Sometimes I lose track of why I’m doing this education gig.  In reality, it makes my life much more difficult.  I’m putting a lot of things that I really care about and really want to pursue on hold while I do this.  Like music.  And art.  And travel.  And spending time with the people that are most important in my life.  When I’m enveloped in the semantics of public policy, or digging through the formulas of econometrics, or even going through the city’s General Plan with a fine toothed comb, I get so focused that I cannot see the forest for the trees.  And then something happens that sends me reeling back until the big picture comes back in focus and I get a little perspective.  Last semester it was my sociology class that kept me in perspective.  I think this semester it will be the opportunity to see how the processes that I’ve been studying actually work that will keep me sane.

I wish I was working in my field of study.  I also wish I had a doughnut.  Or maybe another cookie.  Definitely more whiskey.

I’ve come up with a gameplan regarding my employment situation.  For a while there I didn’t know if I was going to be able to tolerate the limbo.  But this is not my first experience with limbo.  And while today I did have a brief reminder of how much I actually enjoy work that is challenging (seriously, by brief I mean 20 minutes – which is how long it took me to figure out the problem, figure out the source, and send the email detailing the issue to the appropriate people) I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like if every day was like that.  Honestly, I got excited.

Then I got perspective.  Limbo.  Indefinitely.  Woo.

On that note… Memory Log!

Today I had cereal and tea and half of a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast.  I fed the chicken and left it a dish of water before I went to work.  I forgot to fill up on gas on the way, and almost ran out on the way to the gym after the job.  I spent an hour on the stair master reading about CEQA.  Then I went to the Planning Commission meeting.  Then I stopped by the coffee shop for dinner – only they weren’t serving food – something about trying to figure out the best schedule for their chef.  So I bought a cookie and some tea – because I want them to stay in business and I’m scared that they won’t and I’ll make a few frivolous purchases (as long as they are under $5) if it will help make sure they stay around.  In the interest of full disclosure, that was the only cookie I had today.  The rest of the days eatings included a cup of soup, a handful of carrots, a Cliff bar, some frozen veggies and a serving of Quinoa.  Which smells of peanuts if you brown it before boiling it.  Very strange.  OH, and I had two squares of chocolate with my whiskey.  Because it makes me feel rich!  Or, you know, helps with the sugar cravings.

Anyway, I came home, made dinner, messed around on the internet, practiced guitar, and now I’m calling it a night.  I already know I won’t be able to sleep – I took the sleeping pills last night and still only got 6 hours.  Which was good, but not good enough.  I’m going to make a genuine effort at it though.  Worst thing, I get some rest.  The one thing about the insomnia that I’ve learned to manage is the anger, frustration, and guilt that comes when you can’t make yourself sleep.  Not that I don’t feel those things, but they no longer drive me out of bed to do other things – nor do they simmer until they keep me awake long after whatever it is that was bugging me before has passed.  I guess that is growth, of sorts.

Tomorrow I am going to work on kicking at the gym.  I still need to find a good DVD player for my computers so I can bone up on my martial arts DVDs.  Saturday is going to be a long run day – especially if I remember to go buy a rain slicker tomorrow.  Sunday might be snowshoes.  And Monday will be a sprint day – if everything works out.

I’m not going to hold my breath.  But I am going to fantasize about another shot.

New Doors and Old Lessons

Tonight, for the first time in nearly three years, I sat down and started watching the instructional videos that my sensei made 25 years ago.  He died two years and six months ago.  Last October, when I ran my first half-marathon, I was able finally break through the wall that had blocked my meditation.  That race changed me – he was there with me, and I spent much of the 13 miles talking to him, telling him the things I wished I had said before he died.

Last November I received my black belt.  It was not given to me based on my current practice.  I have not lost what I learned, but I have not increased my learning either.  The instructors – masters really – who gave me my belt do not just hand out rank.  If they believe I earned it, then I earned it.  And I am so grateful.  But I never went into this for rank.  It has been and always will be about the skill.  I think I’m finally ready to pick up where I left off and resume my practice.  More than that, I think I need to resume my practice if I am to have any chance at successfully continuing my education.

The more time I spend tracking down the results of my brain injury, the more I’m learning that it has had and will have a direct impact on my ability to learn and remember.  One of the greatest things that I ever got from studying martial arts is the ability to improve my learning curve.  Even after the accident, the things I learned in the dojo stayed with me in a way that so much else didn’t.  I need that advantage now more than ever.  And while I’ve had access to the resources – to his training videos – for almost two years now, it is now that I finally feel ready to watch them, and use them.

For the first time my throat didn’t close when he appeared on the screen.  For the first time I didn’t feel like I was falling into a dark hole of grief.  For the first time I could watch him move and remember how it felt to translate his motion to my body type – longer legs and arms and torso, longer strides, less direct strength, more range, less snap more whip, less of his sharp almost snake-like strikes, more of my long, deceptively relaxed cat-like strikes.  He was always the better fighter, but one of the best things he taught me was to accept my body for what it was and to learn to use its strengths and weaknesses to my advantage.  We all move differently.  That is not a bad thing.

Tonight, or tomorrow, as tonight is late, I will put some of his videos on my laptop, and next week, before work, I will take it to the gym and use one of the yoga rooms and I will practice.  The muscle memory is there.  I just need to engage the memory memory – a much more difficult task I’ll admit.  And as my wrist heals and I work on my memory I’ll decide where I want to go with this next.  I’m thinking jiu-jitsu.  Or Iaido.  I’ve long wanted to develop some skill with the sword.  Maybe both.  I’ll have to ask my sensei about it this March during my next half-marathon.  Somehow I know he’ll be there with me.  After all, he’s the one that taught me it was possible in the first place.