Yay, Late Presents!

 As an adult, I’ve never been disappointed when someone says I have a late present coming. Of course, the sad truth of my life is that I’ve often been told to expect presents that never ended up coming so the first surprise is always that it actually came at all. But childhood disappointments are adulthood’s practicality and skepticism; some of us will learn how to adapt and not develop expectations while some of us will just keep trusting and being disappointed. I’m not gonna lie; I was late to learning not to take people at their word and to instead wait and weigh their actions. 

Honestly, I didn’t remember my sister saying I had a bigger present coming later. I was really good with the slippers she got me on Christmas. They’re my favorite kind, with the shallow backs, fur lining and the rubber soles so they could handle short trips outside. So when she told me shipping was wonky and my ‘other present’ was late, I was surprised. She must’ve told me that already but I don’t retain information sometimes, especially if it’s dropped casually in a phone message and I’m in the middle of talking about something else.

So it came today and I was stunned. I’d talked about getting one but honestly didn’t know where I’d put it: a Cricut Explore Air 2. All of a sudden, I was super motivated to make it fit. I spent about an hour rearranging my desk and dolls and it actually fit perfectly on the far left side of my desk. I ended up buying a desktop hutch so I can organize it better once that comes, but I’ve never been upset when it comes to organizing. Anything that can give a bit of floating clutter a better home is more peace of mind for me.

In any case, it was a bit of a challenge setting it up too. I have an early 2009 iMac that is still running like a champ but the minimal requirements are for OS 15 and up. My iMac stopped upgrading at 11 (El Capitan) and even my MacBook quit before Mojave (not too much younger; it’s a late 2009). I was still determined to make my computer work so I dug around on Reddit and found that the quick fix was downloading a root certificate to the keychain access (even if you’re technologically inclined, that’s probably toeing the line of head-spin gibberish territory), basically manually downloading a permission file that is automatically upgraded when you upgrade your OS but those of us in the OS graveyard no longer get neatly handed to us. Although the Cricut Design Space warned me I might not have ‘optimal usage’ I gave zero fucks; apart from speed issues, there’s no actual hardware integration that is missing from older computers that they can’t handle a communication between a design program and a cutting machine. But thankfully, I’m both a professional designer and a nerd so I didn’t even blink at the warning. That’s right; I’ll Frankenstein this computer just shy of its Thelma and Louise style departure. We’re in it for all it’ll give me.

So I got past that little hurdle and managed to excitedly churn out a test cutout. Then I actually decided to read the instructions and learned there’s a button clearly marked OPEN so I also don’t have to pry it open with my fingernail every time too. Good to know. Leave it to me to solve a technical issue before I find the damn Open button. I researched cutting blades, mats, media types and I’m super psyched that it can cut fabric for my doll clothes patterns too. It’s been a while since I’ve been psyched to try out some new tech but this one just makes so many arduous tasks I used to do completely by hand that much easier. I’m glad it was gifted instead of something I eventually bought much later and didn’t realize what a timesaver it would be. I really look forward to flexing my design chops by loading up some original designs too.

It’s definitely a cherry on the top of a crazy year. Something to look forward to into a new one. Here’s hoping my muse comes crashing through 2022 and I can blow some minds (including my own—it’s a little known secret that I’m usually even more surprised that other people by what I’ve managed to accomplish. They call it impostor syndrome, but in truth, I just can’t retain or quantify what I do. I never feel the immensity of it and have to constantly remind myself to remember I’m worthy of setting a high value on it. I don’t even have the ego to bolster it either). 

One thing I always attempt to reinforce is that ADHD is not a superpower nor a disability. It’s a challenge and one I struggle to control. It can be a trial to my creativity and make me unreliable. This is often why I do client projects very quickly and well. I do not retain or finish anything I do half-assed. I would love to be able to pace myself and slow down or stop and start at will for continuing projects but  there’s always an anxiety that once I stop, I’ll fizzle out. It has happened enough times that it’s not an unfounded fear. I’m a firecracker or I’m a dud. Although ADHD awareness is starting to help me integrate me into social and work situations better, it can still be difficult when working with older generations and agencies/clients that aren’t quite caught up with the times. It’s not surprising to me that people with ADHD are often attracted to creativity; outside of odd professional expectations, art is still a refuge for a chaotic mind and can be our way to contribute to the inventions, entertainment and mental respites that humanity needs. We can heal our own frustrations while contributing to the betterment of the world.

I’ve done some pretty neat jobs along the way. I did a body sketch to be used in identifying injuries in police reports. I designed a website banner for an organization that improved the quality of education for grade school students in India. I did a logo for a theatre group forum looking to connect actors better to auditions whether they had an agent or not. Every time I’ve done a logo or a brand or a flyer, I do manage to retain a small story behind it. Visuals are powerful containers for my memory, almost as much as smells. Although each of these jobs makes for a much more interesting résumé, the formats still cling to the old chunk of time with x company and referential proof. Despite my social challenges, I feel like my power isn’t even touched in a résumé, that the real appeal is in the portfolio, the collection of images of both clients and passion projects and even curiosities that led to designs with no set purpose but solve a unique problem or fulfill a purpose.

That’s why, even when I’m stuck in a burnout or trickle, I know I’m still a powerful artist, a formidable creator. I get back on my programs or projects and it’s like I never stopped. I don’t lose what I didn’t use and sometimes I’ve managed to improve without practice. Sometimes those breaks lead to breakthroughs in thought or intuition and simply wanting something to happen sends me on a search for how I will make it happen.

So here’s another tribute to the unconventional. We don’t fit in boxes and we have our challenges, but we sure as hell belong. The world doesn’t need to accommodate us, just give us room to do what we do best; make the world a kick ass place.

Once we get out of our own way. Let’s be honest, we blame ourselves plenty for that too.

Another Warp Speed Yet Oddly Suspended Year

 I’m sure if I ever bothered to do New Year’s resolutions, I could churn out some painfully misguided goals to burn out on before January is over, but regardless of how pointless I find those resolutions, I still like to give the year’s end some time for reflection.

It still blows my mind that only four years ago, I published my first book… and followed it with ten more. (I actually finished all nine books before I ever published the first, though.) Somewhere between there, my grandma and mom died and I published the tenth book on my mom’s birthday. I managed to finish UnSung but the final two books of that series are still in limbo. Before I was officially burnt out, the pandemic crept up and completely shattered my sense of time. 

At first, I used FaceBook to navigate but it was destroying my moods and making me avoid both the people I live with and the things I usually enjoy doing. I’ve spent much of the past almost-two years in a sort of haze, sometimes feeling like depression or anxiety but making me confused, restless and unfocused above all. I’ve been able to chip at some projects at a snail's pace but mostly just kept… acquiring things. Which temporarily alleviated anxiety but also caused it too. I’m surrounded by so many wonderful things to do and… still don’t really want to do anything. Oddly enough, it’s not the eyes of my many dolls passing judgement but the many I started projects without eyes that feel like they stare with the weight of judgement.

I bought a PS5 and rarely play it, even though I got a PS Plus subscription as well. I mostly poke at stupid phone games I’m not really paying attention to, with my TV playing shows I’m also not paying attention to, just trying to shut up a brain that is either racing in multiple directions or drooling with useless absurdities. 

I hate when I dream. Most of the time I just wake up remembering something weird but entirely too stupid to make into something interesting. Unless hiding in my grandma’s basement and smoking cigars made out of brown sugar is your idea of inspiration for a story. For me, that’s a hard pass. It’s only weird in that sort of way that Mad Libs are random. Mostly stupid but you try to be a good sport and laugh when you replay it.

I still edit for a friend, one of the bright spots in the year. I love his stories and I love remembering I’m really good at things, even when I’m neither confident nor motivated. I really never had hope that I’d ever get lucky creatively and become a name but just having the passion to be creative is too powerful to mourn that. This isn’t a world that rewards virtues I find necessary to live with myself and I have no desire for the misery of ‘compromise’. People seem to define ‘compromise’ as me giving up everything important and them tolerating my involvement. And the less work they actually do, the more credit they want. 

I’m proud of the changes I’ve made this year though. I’m taking better care of myself, which came in handy when I was put to the test, nearly losing my dad to COVID-19 and having to take care of everyone as if all was normal. Fasting has turned out to be a very helpful discipline, mentally and physically, and I will keep it up as long as it continues to be beneficial. Once I can break through the haze, this room I’ve been stocking and cleaning will be a powerhouse base for amazing projects again. One thing I’ve learned that can always float me through depression is maintaining a clean and tidy space so that when I hit the ground running, I’m not impeded by chaos and likely to fall right back into depression again. Depression can both cause paralysis and encourage inertia. It took a lot of time to discipline myself to the mind-over-matter state of telling myself to just move. Even if it just meant breathing and focusing on tightening muscle groups until I could even lift an arm. (You never ‘get over’ depression; in my case, there was a lot of building up to the will to want to bail out.)

There was always that scene in The Neverending Story that stuck with everyone who saw it. The horse just giving up in the Swamp of Despair and how much we didn’t get it like Atreyu yelling at it to just get moving. Until we did get it, the ones that became depressed when we got older. I think that scene is even more painful to think about now because I understood that loss of will. I remember the horse really looking afraid, confused, crying out towards the end but ultimately succumbing. But I also remember that life went on for Atreyu. It had to. Life is for the living and ultimately, once I’d hurt those I loved by giving up, they’d have to carry on letting my loss burden them in a way that they might have never really understood why I couldn’t just TRY.

So I do. Some days I just go through the motions but I know that ‘just’ doing anything is sometimes the best thing we can do for ourselves. To let ourselves cry in bed too, but to get up and prepare for the world we want to be in once the funk passes. To be the only ones to know how brave we have to be to fight those misunderstood battles and overcome.

So I go into the new year without expectations or goals or ultimatums on my healing paths. There is no shortcut to that breakthrough but it will come, sooner or later, and I must celebrate my victories and learn from the defeat. There are great things ahead, good and bad, and I only hope that my journey has more great adventures ahead.

Is It Accountability?

 I realize I overthink things and often to the detriment of the original curiosity, but throughout my attempts to find a lifestyle that is healthiest for me, I’ve had to stop and ask many times: is this really healthy?

I’ve questioned ideas of ‘body positivity’ that are now weaponized as ‘non-diets’ or ‘lifestyle changes’; anything to avoid the ‘negative’ connotations of weight loss. Except programs like Noom are wielding this vocabulary of a ‘psychological’ approach to behavioral change to mask that their measures of success are exactly the same. You still track food and water, you still step on a scale, you still restrict your calories. Pardon my French, but that’s… a fucking diet.

I’m not going to say that all of the programs are insidious and heinous as I’m sure they can be helpful to some, but… they absolutely reek of the possibility of danger for those desperate and prone to eating disorders, body dysmorphia and classic depression. They still ask you how fast you want to lose weight and give you far too few calorie limits if you actually calculate what your body should be getting. After losing 5-10 pounds, you should always recalculate because your unique caloric needs involve more factors than these programs bother to consider.

I tried Noom. Although I skipped out on the group and coach options because I don’t want cheerleaders or clichés spit at me. I was always fucking hungry but good job! In the first three months, I lost 5 pounds then I couldn’t budge. I was exercising daily, well beyond a minimum but I was still always tired and sore and hungry.

I remembered that for past attempts, more working out and more stress on your body means you need to feed your damn body. I noticed that my FitBit did a better job of accounting for how many calories I needed and used so all this red/yellow/green food bullshit that Noom tried to pass as innovative was moot.

With FitBit, another 10 lbs were lost but again, plateau. By that point, I was certain I was facing the hormones of a 40 year old woman so I didn’t stay frustrated, just kept doing what felt healthy and didn’t make me miserable.

I’d tried intermittent fasting years before and hated it— the 16:8 method that always seems to be so popular. I liked the reprieve from counting calories while fasting but it always seemed to create this misery that made it hard to sleep and made me ravenous when it was time to eat. However, I’d done 24 hour and even 3 day fasting in the past with more success and wanted to try again.

At first… well, it was misery. It came with hunger, diarrhea, headaches, dizziness. I didn’t lose weight after either. However, I noticed with these longer fasts that I really loved going a day or three without calorie counting and even if I ate all I wanted, by the end of the week, my calorie intake was consistently in a safe but generous weight loss margin. I started consistently losing one pound or two every week and I was feeling stronger, sleeping better, getting nicer skin and hair, managing my moods better. I was scared at first, because most programs tend to punish you for fasting as if it’s an eating disorder, but it’s actually improving my mental state far more than medications or other methods I’ve tried. It was more powerful than meditation in cleansing myself of racing negative thoughts.

Calorie restrictions made me paranoid, more accepting of the daily misery of choosing foods that never quite fulfilled me but gave me those weight loss numbers: good job! But a good job doesn’t make you feel like a failure. It doesn’t make you obsess on choice and numbers and balance your self-acceptance on it. The problem with this ‘mindfulness’ and ‘lifestyle change’ dialogue is that you dread that this is your life now when it’s not getting easier and you’re not really feeling better.

One of the most valuable concepts I ran across was something that was only briefly touched upon by Tony Horton in the P90X series. Although he also learned the hard way that there is definitely such a thing as working out too much, I wondered why he never found a way to push this valuable concept more, but then, when you’re BeachBody’s bitch, it’s all about selling workouts, subscriptions and that Shakeology garbage, so I’m sure he might’ve ramped it up more if they could’ve packaged and sold it…

Intuitive eating. It’s introduced as the eventual goal beyond the lists of healthy foods you should be aiming to fuel your body with. Horton tells us that the lists are never meant to bind or restrict but to guide us into comfort with healthy foods and then trust what you’ve learned. That once you’ve tracked and weighed and found some favorite recipes… you know better so cut the cord and trust your knowledge.

Because it’s so damned scarce and influencers can’t package it to sell something with it, it only ever blips in the waters of health and fitness circles. But aiming for intuitive eating, where healthy eating and indulgences aren’t boring punishments or ‘cheats’, is truly a huge factor in a truly healthy lifestyle. It’s not really a change but an adjustment that won’t punish you or drive you crying towards craving binges.

I know how to be accountable but these programs need you to depend on them to ‘do it right’. I’m going to keep tracking my fasts and water intake but until the end of the year, I’m cutting the cord on all diet and exercise tracking and just doing what I already know works. If only because I feel like the dependence on these ‘helpful’ programs is only meant to be temporary and can easily become disordered. Too often, people quit out of frustration or quit when they reach their goal and bam, before they know it, right back to everything unhealthy because these ‘lifestyle changes’ that motivated them to reach their goals were never established as maintainable in the long term at all. 

If you’re saying that you only need to be this strict until you reach this goal, re-evaluate why you need it at all. Instead, start looking for the baseline of diet and exercise that is actually improving all aspects of your life. Get at least your minimum requirements but absolutely push when you’re feeling terrific. Have a healthy relationship with food, with your appetite, with your tastes and preferences. Don’t do someone else’s diets and exercises. Find what works for you. 

Another problem with these programs is their calculators that promise to perfectly tailor your needs when you plug in these only vaguely personal statistics. Statistics that do not consider your genetics or personal health factors like mental illness or deficiencies or hormones. Use sites like SmartBMI or really accurate BMR calculations to determine how many calories are really safe for healthy weight loss. And remember that rapid weight loss can cause issues like painful and loose skin and deficiencies and bad chemical imbalances.

I keep talking about this because in my search to find the best way to do things, no one ever told you how to stop relying on those helpful things and trust yourself and enjoy life along the way. While ‘fake it until you make it’ is also a good short term goal, a healthy life is about adapting to a series of short term husks not chaining yourself to a long term goal that makes you inflexible and miserable.

Quitting social media for a while taught me this. Start small. Dependency can often excuse itself as freedom, even when you’re completely miserable. Tell yourself you’ll try this for a week. If it feels better, try another. Don’t quite quit if it’s not the best option. Adjust and try again. I still dip onto social media when I have a distinct use for it but I don’t depend on it for a sense of well-being. Diet and exercise need to be adjusted in bits too. You can’t hate them but tell yourself it’s worth it. You can’t achieve or maintain a sense of well-being built on lying to yourself.

If you want accountability, make sure questioning if it’s really working is part of your weekly evaluation. You may find a niche that you actually enjoy and not want to change, but evaluate it weekly anyway. Because misery can hide in complacency, give yourself a chance to change your mind and make small adjustments.

Accountability is a system of checking in with yourself. There isn’t an app for that. Intuition is your tool to grow and nurture. Don’t discount it on any journey to realize your potential.

What Do Atheists Have to Celebrate?

 Those who believe in a god or gods have an uninformed tendency to see atheists as missing the fundamental parts of simply being human. Yet it’s not just religion that can pick apart and dehumanize our fellow human beings; we find ways to separate each other based on skin or political ideals or how many fingers and toes we have. You name it, someone has found a way to label themselves as righteous or superior. Sorry, friends; that’s 100% ego and no higher powers involved.

What holidays have always required are imagination and necessity. I don’t ‘celebrate’ Christmas on the myth of Jesus anymore than I subscribe to the myth of Santa Claus. But it’s a magical season because of the mix of iconography, the glitter, the characters, the pageantry, the aspirations of artists. You don’t have to believe there’s a ‘reality’ to the magic to admire it. Christmas marks an exciting time of year where I get to pick and choose gifts for people I care about, wrap them with themed paper (or have Amazon stick it in a pretty bag) and anticipate the magic of gifting. It’s a slew of traditional songs, some I’m eager to hear and some I could do without, it’s tension and contemplation, it’s decorating and joining in on the magic.

For the atheists, it’s just a choice to go with the flow of a cornucopia of magical times to choose from or one to bah-humbug and bypass. The most interesting thing about the holidays are not all the religious connotations theists try to enforce but all the layers of pagan celebration they were superimposed over. It’s not our beliefs in particular that make us so interesting but the need to imagine and create and share and reflect on who we are that makes these days stay on my calendar.

There have been low points in life where I’ve wanted nothing to do with holidays. You bargain with the universe to simply keep someone you love on this mortal coil or your heart is just too broken and vulnerable to file in and celebrate anything. And when I’ve loved, and lost, I’ve even wished I could simply believe that something out there could be bargained with, but even the insanity of grief doesn’t conjure a sudden belief or hope that what I want is a wish that can be granted by any benevolent being.

I almost lost my dad to COVID recently and I spent weeks living in a limbo of pain and preparing myself for the worst. Good news doesn’t magically heal that wound either. Brushes with mortality are always hard lessons and the fear always lingers. I was prepared to keep caring for my nephews and trying to give them a good Christmas regardless. I dove into daily tasks robotically and I still haven’t revived my creative muse. I was prepared to give so much up just to hold so much together for those I love.

So I’m drained. I’m tired. I’m skittish. I’m trying. To heal, to find my creative self, to daydream, to find my voice again. 

But people are still making light of an illness that nearly killed my dad, made my sister very ill, could very well still take someone else I love or even get worse. I’m very, very sick of people confusing the fantasy of belief with the reality of fact. I’m very, very tired of enduring preventable battles.

Holidays are often attacked for being about greed or entitlement but right now, it’s an anchor for my sanity, a place to warm my frozen heart with kindness and caring and gratitude, that right now, I’m not mourning someone I love as a sad statistic. It’s only been a week since I heard the good news that he’ll be okay for now. I’m wounded and weak and human.

Whether someone chooses to believe it or not, I’m factually human. With my own flaws and dreams and magic to spare. And right now, just trying to keep away from plunging edges, treating myself more gently, trying to comfort a hyperactive brain away from the tumble of violent emotion. With stoic face and silent nighttime sobs. Imagining who I want to be until I am strong enough to be her.

Reflections

 I forgot to mention a few things but my health concerns were consuming for a while there and I’m just now finding the time to reflect on some things.

First off, it’s been a year since I’ve moved to the new house. There were some challenges. The windows and baseboards are not all properly sealed so we got ants and ladybugs over the first winter. For the meantime, we’ve been treating the yard and spraying preventatively and haven’t seen them around. We’ll still need to seal and I may do that in the next month or so but it’s not a huge issue. The cracks don’t leak hot or cold air so they’re superficial gaps.

Another challenge is that the new house is on a main road so the traffic is much noisier. However, I invested in some really comfy earplugs (Happy Ears; definitely recommend!) and I sleep like a baby, no matter how much traffic is outside.

I was also upset that the nearby Hog Rock Cafe burned down around Thanksgiving and the owners bought the space next door, supposedly to rebuild. It was a noisy venue that attracted a lot of traffic and I do NOT want to live next door to that. Fortunately, there are stricter noise ordinances so close to these residences and there are churches close by that are not quick to approve liquor licenses. As much as I hope they can rebuild, I don’t want it next door and hope they simply lease the space to quieter shops and look for a business area more suited to a bar/restaurant venue. It would be awesome even if they decided to go the food truck route. I’m sure they could even lease picnic areas to draw a crowd to better spots for events. They aren’t allowed to rebuild where they were (I think being a historical building, they got to break a lot of rules but the same doesn’t apply to new structures), but I think this is a good opportunity to be enterprising and rethink the format. They do still cook at the VFW up the street so the passion really seems to be with the food and I’m positive they can make it work another way.

I don’t think the fasting alone is responsible for my increased energy and better moods. I started taking L-Tyrosine and Dopa Mucuna after seeing claims to benefitting ADHD and neuro health. Although I’ve also read that one actually reduces the potency of the other (oops) after one day of trying them together, I had no bad side effects and really felt better. Could be a fluke, a placebo effect, but I’ve continued to take them together and they seem to give me energy and better moods without damaging sleep.

I also decided to do some ketone urine testing while fasting and learned that by the end of a 36 hour fast, my ketones are higher than they need to be for weight loss (by quite a bit). Even if the strips are inaccurate and always read high, this reading would still be over the .5-3 reading that is beneficial for weight loss. While I may still do rare three day fasts for autophagy, (like every 3-4 months rare) I’m actually going to do two 24 hour fasts this week and see if the ketone zone stays where it’s most effective. The fasting app I use did do some rough calculations early on and indicate I  might reach ketosis sooner than most.

So I do have some genetic benefits after all, I just happened to have bad instincts for a long time. It took genetic testing and blood tests to be able to pinpoint things (like digestive sensitivities, high fat tolerance but low carb tolerance, sodium resistance and high caffeine tolerance). However, it’s very encouraging to be able to better pinpoint what habits actually work so I don’t stay in a frustrated loop, unable to figure out what to try next.

I think I mentioned finishing one of my dolls. I don’t have the prettiest picture of her but I’ll throw some pics at the end. It’s still a giant pain in the ass posting pictures on the mobile version of this blog site. I’d love to eventually post some staged shoots but I still need to finish her bodyguard and would love to be able to photo them together.

I’ve only been picking at projects this week but my dad has been sick so I’ve stepped up to keep house and keep my nephews consistent with school. Very busy and tiring but rewarding, but my own good health has made a huge difference.

Oh, going back to the fasting for a second, I wanted to point out that I am reducing my fasting days rather than extending. It’s usually our knee jerk reaction that when a plan isn’t working, we need to do more, but I find it very important to note that sometimes you need to do less. Eating disorders and other serious health problems can come from the instinct that our efforts aren’t ‘enough’. I don’t always know the right questions to ask when I hit a roadblock but, by chance, I stumbled on ketone testing while fasting and got some valuable insight. While the longer fasts can lead to better autophagy, the better health pursuit is still weight loss right now. Aiming for 165 is an overall health priority. I don’t need to lose more weight than that for purely health reasons so I can return to extended fasts more often when I get there. I’d like to see a consistent 1-2 pound loss a week, no more and no less, so shorter fasts may be in order. However, having tried daily 16:8 or 20:4 fasts that were awful experiences for me, I would still like the sort of eat-stop-eat experience rather than constant time or calorie restrictions.

I know I should probably do separate blogs since I’ve strayed from the writer/author theme on this for at least two years but I’ve tried separate blogs and I neither stuck with them nor was able to keep them more organized. I’ve given a huge wealth of writing information I’ve learned and tried, advice always framed to help you find what works for you and not assume my way works for everyone. Instead, I decided the creative chaos can live in one spot. Because my interests come in these big block phases, separate blogs would often get neglected for the months or years I pursued something else and more often than not, my very few readers just want to easily follow my cohesive journey. I may rebrand this from Unconventional Author to Unconventional Creations, something more cohesive to the many journeys I’ve taken, but I’m not sorely in need of new projects for now. I would like to finish my smaller projects before taking on more ambitious ones.

Graphic design… I haven’t lost any of that knowledge. I haven’t been clogged up with clients and mostly do small free projects but I am always quick picking up the reins and churning out sleek and sharp projects. I still use all of the programs focused on in college and haven’t gotten rusty. On occasion, I have very specific unique needs and learn new things quickly and retain them very well. Sometimes I program Actions so a task I might want to use again is a click away. 

Really, I love how my brain works when I can harness it. It’s not conventionally organized but there’s a method to the madness that gets me where I need to be and never feels like failure. Or at least failure isn’t the end and I press on to success.

Now any and all pictures I’ve promised…

Flexible Fasting

 One thing that I’ve learned in incorporating fasting into my lifestyle changes is that the weekly goal of two 36 hour fasts is not a hard rule nor does it need to be. Sometimes my body is just over it at 24 hours and that’s okay. Trying to push it can cause it to become too obsessive in my thoughts, cause pain or discomfort, and intensify cravings or probability of bingeing. After fasting, there is a high probability I’ll eat two days worth of calories in one day, but I’ve also learned that that doesn’t negate the benefits of fasting. I’m experiencing better health, better moods, and more satisfaction than sticking to a calorie restrictive diet. My sleep is improving. My muscles feel stronger and I just feel lighter on my feet, more apt to break into dance or have bursts of energy or inspiration.

Today, I even worked on one of my dolls a bit more. I’ve chiseled out some clearer plans for assembling her outfit. I detailed her shoes a bit and started work on one of her arm bands. Pretty much glue tests that I hope hold but if they do, I can start to decorate the metals with gems. Jewelry can be fiddly and frustrating though so I really have to be in the right mood for that too.

As for fasting, it does have some downsides. The worst, for me, are the liquid bowel movements. On the upside, they do look like they’re keeping me cleaned out, but it also means I can neither trust a fart nor ignore the need to go for just a few minutes. There is no safely holding it in until I’m done with something. I can either gracefully go when the urge hits or risk shutting myself. There’s really no way to sugar coat this. I simply have to accept that my digestive system gets either lazy or over-efficient. Once I break the fast, there is usually at least one more liquid or semi-solid BM but after that, it’s back to being regular. It’s very likely that the sodium I drink to keep electrolytes up in the culprit, but it’s very necessary and I’ll take the down side. I’m not working in a job where this is an issue, so now is the opportunity to deal with it. Also, this is an exchange for the migraines, stomach upset, lethargy and crankiness that comes from not keeping electrolytes up. When a whole handful of side effects is eliminated in exchange for one, there’s just no contest. I am able to do more on fasting days with electrolytes maintained so I’m not completely useless those two days either. It could become an issue for my social life if I have to hide from people those two days all the time.

The only other downside I’ve found is that I have zero alcohol tolerance. It makes me feel like garbage, I don’t recover fast and it’s not worth it. I’ll be avoiding drinking alcohol as long as I’m fasting regularly like this. If I reach a point where I’m only fasting once every week or two, maybe I’ll take a drink here and there but there will be no more than that. I can’t say I’ll miss it though. I’m just not a fan of being drunk anymore; it inhibits any hope to work on anything and makes me lazy. Maybe other people can enhance their creativity or drive with it but it does nothing for me there. Mostly just makes me moody and frustrated with myself.

So I’ll be chilling through this day until I can break fast in the morning. Almost at the 24 hour mark and it’s been a decent one. I usually like to start around 7:00 but this one started last night around 8:30. Not a big deal since I’ve been sleeping in until noon most days this week since my nephews are on fall break. Still, don’t want to fall asleep before 1 AM tonight or I risk waking up early and counting down until I can eat. Much better feeling if I can wake up having cleared the full time.

I will be weighing myself in the morning too. I usually only step on the scale every two weeks. This seems to make the weight that much more satisfying or gives me an allowance if I needed to be less strict. This has to be a flexible process so I don’t like to get too laser-focused on any of the details. If I want this to be successful as a lifestyle change, maintenance will mean it can’t become something I dread. Any point of dread means it needs serious evaluation before it becomes burnout and neglect. I’ve been there and when I reach square one after long term neglect, it’s a very bitter pill to swallow. And as I’ve learned each time, what worked before may not work again. As we age and change, our bodies will demand different processes sometimes. Much easier to make small adjustments while healthy than have to slog through all the pain and frustration of starting over.

More on Fasting

 I’m closing on a fifth week since I’ve started attempting two 36-hour fasts a week and I feel it’s time to be a bit more thorough. For one, this was not my first choice and if you have any sort of metabolic or chronic conditions, history with or risk of eating disorders or are not fully grown (for young adults, this can mean into your early 20s), methods of fasting may be difficult or completely dangerous for you. I began my curiosity with fasting because the standard methods absolutely did not work after six months of experimentation and strict diets were causing disordered eating and bad habits. Always ease into dieting and exercise plans or you risk frustrating fails or injury. Remember that fad diets can be very risky; keto can drastically elevate blood pressure and cholesterol and it is only doctor approved for the treatment of epilepsy in children. Any success for weight loss in adults is not guaranteed and is never recommended beyond six months. If you want a restrictive diet, the Mediterranean diet is the most recommended by doctors. If you’re searching for some starter points, that’ll save you hours of searching right there.

So, disclaimers and research aside, fasting is genuinely helping me. I am not tempted to fast beyond two 36-hour fasts; I am not miserable doing them but the guilt that comes from cheating on a diet doesn’t exist because the only rule I have is not to intake more than maintenance calories (which at my current weight is about 2400-2600 calories). That is usually only an issue the day I break a fast when my body can really crave carbs, which are almost always calorie busters whether they are healthy carbs or not. I experience less chronic pain, get better sleep, have less anxiety and depression and my digestion really improved. These effects were almost immediate from the first week I began to try fasting. While ADHD is neither positively nor negatively affected, I am less stressed out by either the lack of focus or hyperfocus. I am more laidback overall.

Not gonna lie; I am super sensitive to smells when fasting and I think about food constantly, but it isn’t frantic. I start to create mindful menus, contemplate how I want to break the fast, make grocery lists or just let my focus wander or obsess on the mundane. I don’t try to force myself to prioritize. I become more aware that healing my body means offering more trust to my mind and honoring its needs. I can lose my grip and be more emotional than rational and trust myself to calm down again. It’s surreal since I’ve always resisted feeling for fear I would go too far. I’m discovering that I’m more capable of relief from their release and have more control of their duration and don’t let them wander down darker pathways.

I do trust in medicine and science and research so I never found a reason to pursue ‘clean’ methods of dieting or fasting. In considering fasting as an option, I looked in to pros and cons and specifically how it had been studied in women, of different ages and genetic backgrounds. Most diets are only studied in targeted groups (mice or men, in most cases) and not in women who menstruate or are in stages of menopause. This is why I advise you to stick to simpler plans of balanced dieting, slow elimination and gradual exercise. You have to learn which disciplines work and fail to attempt alternatives. If you’ve never fasted before or have done more than missed a meal or two, it can be stressful. Stress can intensify side effects. It is recommended to start with small intermittent fasts; 12, 16, 20 and 24 hours then possibly 36 or 48. Anything longer than 72 and regardless of how healthy you are, you will need to involve a doctor, if only so they can schedule regular tests for blood, urine and stress, give you a baseline for what you need to supplement for extended fasts.

Keep in mind that some ‘fasting diets’ actually allow up to 500 calories consumption on fast days. So not fully fasting but still being able to experience some benefits of fasting for weight loss at the least. I actually avoid calories to get bursts of ketosis and autophagy benefits. You really have to research what you want out of fasting and what’s at risk to achieve those goals, weigh them accordingly.

I’ll add more of my journey later. For now, it’s promising. I am very careful to adjust to any possible negative issues. I don’t want to sugar coat anything with the potential for risks. All diet and exercise changes can be high risk for some, so while anyone can recommend what works for them a little too eagerly, always be skeptical and careful.

Fasting for Health

 Fasting is a word that used to cause me unease. I grew up with a family obsessed with being thin and a whole host of eating disorders and bad relationships with food because of it. I was always subjected to those underhanded compliments or outright insults because I ate what I liked and was a little heavier and thicker than they were. However, until my late 20s, I always had a healthy BMI. I’ve gone into this before, but in summary, taking mood stabilizers numbed me and all I did was sleep and eat for nearly a year and put on a shocking 80 lbs in doing so. Needless to say, I was pretty skeptical of doctors and medication for a long time after that as well.

I’ve also said this before, but don’t be afraid of anyone in a position to help you; just be prepared to advocate for your own problems and solutions. Don’t do their job for them, just make sure to suggest things if they don’t arrive there first. Respect their years of expertise but also remember you’re the foremost expert of your symptoms and concerns. You’re not going to make them your best ally if you’re overriding their training. 

That was a little aside but the main idea is this; what made fasting a viable option for me. I’ve spent the past seven months rigorously attempting to lose weight and be healthier in general, which I’ve also gone into the failures and frustrations in previous posts. I exercised to the point of pain and exhaustion, ate strictly in terms of calories and macros and types of food, but I was constantly fluctuating between 208-212 lbs no matter what I did. For a woman of my age and height, this amounts to being stuck with, in no uncertain terms, obesity. I teeter on the edge of overweight at 185 so this isn’t even close to ‘a little’ obese.

To say I haven’t made any strides wouldn’t be true. I’ve clearly built muscle and flexibility and areas like my face, shoulders, lower arms and stomach have shrunk a bit. However, my upper legs and upper arms, where I tend to hold most of my weight, haven’t budged at all. I do have better energy and moods but I still have pretty low days that are much rarer when I’m at my healthiest.

So I researched fasting. You’ll get a lot of mixed info, from both regular fasters and even medical doctors. However, I really dug into possible side effects, positive and negative, and came away with a renewed attitude towards the fasting process. First and foremost, I looked into accelerated autophagy, a process through which, once your body has depleted glucose and is burning more fat, your growth cells begin to speed up and streamline your immune system, getting rid of old, dead or inefficient cells and replacing them with new ones. This can also attribute to anti-aging. It sounds too good to be true, but it’s actually quite difficult to reach this stage; you can get there between 24-48 hours of fasting but studies seem to lean towards its peak being between the 48-72 hour mark. The second day of fasting is always a real test in discipline, even when you’re being safe and keeping your electrolytes up…

So reaching these burn stages between 24 and 72 are ideal. There are no real advantages I’ve seen to doing more than a 3 day fast and beyond that, it is highly suggested it be medically supervised. There are some pretty bad side effects and they are akin to what is termed ‘keto flu’ if you want to look at them. It’s a rather varied list like cramps, aches, decreased energy, diarrhea, etc. Long term or excessive fasting can lead to the opposite of good health; increased risk of diabetes, lowered immunity, kidney diseases, cardiovascular diseases and starvation complications. This is why long term frequent fasting is advised against when you’re not supervised or at the very least, testing your blood and vitals.

What really got me curious, more so than autophagy (which they’re really looking into as a possible treatment for chemo patients), are the improvements to gut health, hormonal levels and digestive issues, all of which really seem to be my setbacks in losing weight. I also like the idea of relaxing on tracking food intake for two days every week and feeling less guilty when I want to eat more.

You do need to go easy when breaking fasts of 36 hours or longer though. Refeeding  syndrome is a possibly deadly issue where you shock your system by eating too much too fast after your digestive system has slowed down or shut down once it’s used to not getting solid foods. I haven’t found this to be an issue personally. I’ve had issues like diarrhea and constipation while I’ve been adjusting but these have been expected and very temporary.

At this point, I’ve done a 3 day fast, a couple 20-24 hr fasts, and a couple full 36 hour fasts. It gets easier but you will constantly think about food if you don’t stay distracted. You will notice just how many food commercials are on TV (if you don’t pay for ad-free services). However, I’m happy to say that my weight currently sits between 204 and 206 now so it is currently dropping again. I was not expecting huge losses and I never wanted that to happen. There are a lot of bad side effects that come with dropping weight too fast and I definitely don’t want them. It’s not a huge health concern to do so so I won’t. I’m not at risk for diabetes at this time and my weight isn’t disabling. 

I will continue to fast for 36 hours twice a week for the next month at least. If the results and side effects are not worrisome, I may continue to do this for six months to a year. Every three months I’d like to do a full three days and will not be fasting at all the remainder of that week. I have also seen advice not to fast during menstrual periods, as it can cause shedding and toxicity issues as well as intensified cramps.

I have been very careful in my research since fasting is starving yourself, no matter how you word it. However, I am going to be very careful with duration, my weight loss and any symptoms I don’t like along the way. This can only be for the sake of health and I must be aware of any dysphoria or unhealthy body image perceptions. Anorexia and bulemia are NOT options here. There may be some maintenance fasting, for autophagy or weight maintenance, beyond this regimen but I am not taking this lightly. I am aware that, having tried everything, this is simply the last and safest resort towards sustainable results.

So I’m optimistic. I will be supplementing electrolyte nutrients (also discussed before) as well. I have no desire for a ‘pure’ water fast. Those just aren’t medically sound, especially with my health and hormonal issues. I feel like I’ve certainly researched enough to handle this with confidence and care and look forward to seeing where this goes.

Phases and Setbacks

 I’ve gone into details before about my struggles with becoming healthier. Over the past six months, I binged on exercise and dieted on healthy foods, carefully tracked. I lost 12 pounds in the first two months, then nothing. I bounced between 208 and 212 for four or five months. There was no way that more exercise or less food was healthier and it wasn’t a sustainable lifestyle change to do either so I was stuck. I never had luck with intermittent fasting or macros specific dieting either so I’ve looked into… scarier alternatives.

Fasting, which is essentially controlled starvation, is one of those alternatives. It’s always sounded like a one way trip to an eating disorder and it’s territory full of unhealthy assumptions and ‘clean’ elitists/purists. I’d tried an extended water fast in the past and it was torture. Headaches, hunger, no energy, it was like voluntarily giving myself a bad cold. However, I’ve looked into what sort of fasting is medically supervised and the key difference is that they push for the balance of electrolytes.

To my understanding, this involves four key elements; sodium, magnesium, potassium and calcium. Having hard tap water (filtered with carbon but still hard), calcium deficiency is never a problem and also why I never supplement it, fasting or not. Sodium was a trickier exploration. If you overdo it, take too much too fast… there will be diarrhea. Drinking salt water is torture for me, no matter how little you add, it’s never diluted enough. I’m this case, I opted for the suggestion of bouillon. Purists might balk at it since ANY calories ‘break a fast’ but then again so does anything but water. They argue about discipline but for a great deal of people interesting in positive fasting benefits, bro-ing it out over raw-dogging the water is pointless. Only spiritual fasting seems to impose the self-torture of starvation. You can achieve accelerated autophagy approaching it more reasonably. Bouillon will not spike you out of a fast and will contribute to maintaining energy and well-being throughout. I’ve read countless medical articles on this (and not the ones trying to sell their fasting formulas; you can never trust a site trying to sell anything, as they will embellish on the truth).

Which leaves magnesium and potassium, which boost each other and regulate sodium intake better. Again, you have to look at the kinds of sodium and magnesium that might work best for you since the ways they are bound seem to alter their benefits and absorption. I opted for magnesium malate and potassium citrate.

Insofar, I did a three day fast, and two 24 hour ones. I set out to do 36 hours but I’ve been more wary about looking for symptoms that they aren’t beneficial to continue. I did the 3 day fast to know what I was getting into and it made me certain those will be rarer. I’m going to aim for two 24 or 36 hour fasts a week. It’s lumped with intermittent fasting as an option but I feel like it takes the guesswork out of calorie counting for that period of time, which is a relief. At first, I was ravenous coming off of a fast, but over the past two weeks, it’s become more manageable. I am welcoming healthier foods into my diet naturally rather than trashing the pantry and inserting nothing but rabbit food. The fasts give me more wiggle room to indulge, not right away but the day after at least.

I wasn’t sure it would work, but it’s motivated me to keep up with daily workouts and has helped with my physical progress and pain levels. I’m not getting huge results with weight loss but I was 209 pounds at my doctor's visit a week ago and 205 this morning. I haven’t seen 205 yet so this is a promising low.

I was miserable all the time on a restrictive diet and I think that stress was only gripping onto my weight. This sort of fasting is giving me both careful discipline and a break from the tracking and restricting. I have more freedom to eat and it becomes easier to make better choices with that freedom. I can essentially fast to reset my digestive system and cell regeneration.

It may or may not help with losing weight. I’m not going to go to more drastic or miserable measures to do it. I just want to be healthier, to have better control of my mind and body. It is always a balance though. It is too easy for these desires to become obsessions, to become controlled by the need for discipline and lose sight of the goals for health. I carefully track my fasts. I’m not going to keep extending them to see how far I can push when it becomes easier. I will not exceed 2 36 hour fasts a week, with maybe a 3 day fast every few months (and not doing the shorter fasts at all that week). 

It’s the benefits of fat burning states and autophagy I am most interested in. I’m not interested in super low-carb diets to upkeep ketosis. I’ve seen too many studies where ketosis heightens the chance of diabetes and other chronic conditions. If you’re not getting your blood tested frequently with these things, you’re pulling some big risks. Which is why I opted for short fasts that I give myself room to bail on. In six months, I’ll be getting a check up with my doctor to have bloodwork so I don’t want to see any startling negative changes from overdoing it unsupervised.

I just wanted to make a change that might reduce stress and achieve better results. What worked before doesn’t work now. I exercised intensely daily and ate very little. I dropped weight fast and gained muscle but it was too miserable to maintain and I completely abandoned it altogether. Trying to do it that way again because it ‘worked’ hit me with the cold reality that I’m older, my hormones are different and it won’t work like that anymore. 

So I’m going to give this reset concept a go for a few months. I do yoga stretches daily as well as some cardio boxing or weight exercises. I still exercise but more intuitively than habitually. I see and feel improvements that don’t push me to injury and setbacks. I’m regaining energy, mobility and better moods. As long as these positives remain, I know I’m on the right track.

I know this isn’t the most interesting news, but I’m very certain that my creativity will stay blocked until I learn to balance it with good health practices. I won’t be able to focus on that aspect of myself when I’m physically miserable. Mentally, I check out too. I keep hoping there will be a triumphant return to my creative productivity but that will require looking after my physical health. You need energy, stamina and motivation to be creative and I’ve been sorely depleted by these two challenging years. It will take some time to get that back and I can’t force that. Stress hormones don’t reward you when you get too pushy. They’ll just shut you down.

So here’s to finding that balance again. Small doses of all the right things. We’ll see.

Ice Cream and Crying

 I don’t really want to get into what’s happening right now. The storm hasn’t passed and the blubbering that happens when I’m ravaged by emotion makes for something too incomprehensible to clarify for others. Just know that I always thought ice cream and crying was some bullshit that TV and movies invented that doesn’t work (like that weird thing where someone dies and they push the eyelids closed; I tried that with my dog after he died and they don’t close like that, at least not right away. I didn’t try for hours to see if that changed) but, ahem… it works. Even when it’s some shitty keto diet coffee chip ice cream because the nearby store doesn’t carry my Haagen Dazs brand coffee. I didn’t cry until I couldn’t breathe, if only because it’s really hard to eat when you can’t see the spoon.

My cats are worried about me too. They’re following more closely than usual. They can probably feel my higher than usual anxiety. They’re not cuddling or anything but they’ve been keeping me in view all day. When I went to the store, they were right at the door when I came back so I know they waited there the whole time. She-Ra always does it but Seven was there today too.

I’m going to try to explain the facts, sans emotional blubbering. I suspected my sister started using again. Midweek, she came home, talking more rapid than usual. Dad says alcohol but I know better. I can always smell alcohol on her and she’s been avoiding it because she’s on a diet for her liver, which is possibly cirrhotic. Anxiety has been high around here for months, between Dad’s constant restless bitching and my sister going back to work and the boys going back to school, things are changing a lot, maybe too much, and I’ve been trying too hard to be the glue that can’t possibly hold it all together. So I’ve been gravitating back to just trying to hold it together for me and the boys, just hoping I can keep them out of all the bullshit. I want so badly for them to rise above it and be so much better than this.

And that’s where I have to stop because I always get choked up worrying about them. Look, I really don’t know if they know how bad things are. They can probably feel it more than they’re letting on but I really don’t want it to touch them. I hope I can even give them what they need to get out and never look back. Not even for me. Which means I’ve never been expecting an award for doing this, or any repayment for good deeds either. It’s okay to just slip back into the muck as long as I can get them the hell out of it.

I know that sounds bleak but I haven’t given up on me either. I still hope and tread water too, trying to pull my own life together against the odds. But if that means holding my breath and going under to make sure my nephews don’t sink too, that’s where I have to be right now. I just can’t soar high and think they’ll be okay until I can come back for them. There isn’t any leeway for them if I look away for a moment. I can’t trust anyone to put them first. I can’t let them ever think for one moment that they’re in this alone. I’ve been there and even as an adult, it still traumatizes me.

But that’s ultimately why I’m a bleeding-heart liberal. I know how bitter and terrified and bleak it is to be left alone in hell. We can do better for other people. Other people don’t have to suffer just because we did or ‘that’s just the way it is’. That’s not a world I want future generations will ever think of as normal. It’s not normal. I know there are people who put their kids first, families who didn’t abandon them. We can’t sit around and fucking normalize abuse and trauma and pretend like being crippled is just the way we should all be. It’s ‘life is unfair’ when things are bad for someone else and ‘it’s only fair’ when we’re the ones disadvantaged. I care because someone has to. Being a selfish asshole is never okay. 

So… eat ice cream and cry sometimes. I thought I was on the verge of a panic attack or maybe a heart attack but that weight has lifted. Somewhat. I’m at the crux of situations that could get much worse. But all the more reason to start self-care now. When I absolutely have to step in, I know I’m the last resort so I can’t fail. If I make that weight too heavy, I’ll fail too. This isn’t about a prize at the end. My burdens won’t just fall away as I ride a rainbow into utopia. I could suddenly make a million in book sales and it doesn’t change that I’ve got a dysfunctional family and nephews I’m trying to keep well above it. Money just doesn’t change all the pain and challenges. It will never be enough glue to keep the ship afloat. I want to be successful but I’m also very damaged. Being rich and famous won’t make people nicer. People will still be selfish. But damned if I don’t keep looking for those niches, those little pockets of air, to take one long cleansing breath before diving into murky waters again.

Keep. It. Together. Ever wondered why I use the name Kita sometimes? Keep It Together, Always. I can unravel a bit but I’ve gotta gather it up and keep pushing on. 

I Quit!

 Two words that seem so high drama, but lemme assure thee, not quite so serious. I’ve stuck to my resolve to stop using social media. For the most part. I think Quora counts as social media but I mostly use it as a sort of random fact finding rabbit hole, just steering clear of the social-media-esque drama that seems to leak everywhere. It just seems like the easiest platform to avoid the worst of it and still enjoy pop culture and random knowledge tidbits. Although, I should probably use that one less too because…

Procrastination and severe mood swings. Could be some subconscious build-up to turning 40, but I suspect it has more to do with the permeation of spam, ads and poor targeting algorithms aimed at fucking over our already pandemic-assaulted psyches. Ads always seemed full of scammers or ‘maybe you’re too fat’ or religious ads. As for that last one, I don’t know if the algorithm pretend atheism is the same as a religion and they’re all the same or if it’s proselytizing to us poor misguided heathens, but it’s constant and predatory. For every three posts that may or may not be a friend I actually want to hear from, there’s a nail in the head to the self-esteem to knock you down. I tried just going into the Watch category or sticking to groups, but the random stream of videos tended to throw in a depressing one here and there (you like funny cat videos? You’ll love this one of a cat near death that gets healthy again!) or the groups just got catty over politics or identity, the exact opposite of what I want when looking for inspiration or amazing hobby work. 

I… really just don’t want to find the handful of people I care about across the social minefield anymore. There’s this thick poisonous cloud of entitlement to opinion and undeserved ego to find any real grain of truth existing in humanity. People have devolved to insisting they’re telling the ‘truth’ fearlessly and unfiltered, but it’s bullying and posturing on a level you’d never take it to with a stranger in real life because you never know who’s carrying a gun ready to pop you in a sudden rage for saying shit that hateful. People have begun confusing strong emotion for absolute truth. But our realities are overlapping less in these confusing power fantasies online.

Honestly… I’d rather be lonely and isolated in my room than engage in a very unhealthy online popularity contest. One of my real life friends, Matt, has been very vocal about ‘quitting social media’ but I keep seeing this slew of notifications prior to leaving myself and then a blog about “friends” that hurt more than a little. He doesn’t read my blog so he won’t see this anyway. I wanted to reply directly but I couldn’t remember my damn Wordpress login and gave up.

On the upside, he simply called me a friend and not a “friend” as he tore down the others listed. He basically said he wishes we talked more (sentiment shared) but is still bitter that I agreed with another “friend” that he was too negative. He was. And is. And I know depression is selfish because I’ve been extremely depressed over the course of the last year. Fucking hell, that means I absolutely cannot fucking let the blind lead me, the also-blind. We would walk each other off of a cliff so he can be mad at me, but I can’t help him; I do not have the strength to handle rejection. I’m old-hat when it comes to depression, which means I know how common it is to either avoid people or push them away like an asshole. I’ve learned to do the former because the latter always makes it worse. You end up on the asking forgiveness step of a 12 step program when you regret what a monstrous ass you’ve been. I just have to hope he figures that out because I cannot reach out. A strong wind could scatter me right now. I cannot mentally handle being told I’m not enough or how to make someone feel better.

I don’t want anyone to worry reading this. I know when I’ve reached critical point and I know it means an emergency room visit and possibly a psych ward stay. It’s been years but I know the signs. When I get too numb or start fantasizing about death or saying goodbye, I go get checked. I know I can’t get better on my own and need medication. This isn’t a fault I can help or blame myself for. It’s a chemical overload and it takes a chemical kick. I politely tell the doctors I do not want talk therapy, which makes it worse because it’s not triggered by rational thought. I would have to invent something that makes sense to them, when I honestly never know what triggered it. I’ve been confused by it since I was a preteen and it’s not more clear to me now. It might have been accelerated by traumas but the triggers don’t make sense. I can be perfectly happy and suddenly slammed with an irrational anxiety.

I didn’t mean to make this a mental health post though. I feel like sometimes I’m more honest because I used to feel like no one felt like I do but know that other people’s honesty helped me realize that’s not true at all. Modern times have screwed up a lot of people. People aren’t coping with the speed of change or how fast we’ve outgrown an outdated history. Technology and especially social media used to be an exciting haven of discovery but became toxic with all the posturing and ‘honesty’. We are being less honest.

So that’s why I quit. I want to say yes to a normal life again. I want a healthy body and a healthy mind. I was getting very, very sick and I’ve had to make some drastic but very gentle changes. I am still fragile but I’m finding strength in my habits and plans.

Be a quitter too, if you’re ready. You might find that you are more yourself, more honest, when you’re not fishing for online approval. Connecting with people or passions more in the present. We need to share reality again, but we can’t do that solely in virtual spaces. There is no courage stronger than looking into each other’s eyes and using our mouths and spoken words, our tones and inflections, to truly speak. 

There’s hope. In balance, in compromise, in progress. Reach for it. Heal yourself and heal each other.

Tough Love; I’m Grounded

 I woke up feeling slammed by anxiety today. I’m sure it has a little to do with not going on a walk outdoors since Sunday; exercise has helped me regulate anxiety better and its absence tends to mount feelings of guilt. I haven’t been lazy since I still do strength and stretching workouts daily, but those outdoor walks tend to ground me when spending a lot of indoors makes me stir-crazy.

I’ve also decided to stop using social media for a while. I told myself for at least a week but I wouldn’t hate if I could walk away altogether. I’ve tried just saying I would use it as a tool for sharing my projects or as a way to stay in touch with friends, but more often than not, I face it with a sense of dread. How will my words be twisted? Will someone belittle my experiences? Will someone not take a joke and ruin my moods? I’ve carefully culled it with deletes and blocks and snoozes and hiding, but still it’s a gamble of depressing targeted ads or videos, group drama, bans due to shitty algorithms, and more often than not, strangers who make colossal leaps in logic and feel justified in taking out their bullshit on strangers so they don’t have to lash out at people they actually give a shit about (even though they probably take out social media induced bad moods on family as well).

There’s no particular catalyst in that decision; since I couldn’t attach a reason to the anxiety, I didn’t uselessly attach something to it. I just asked myself what exists in my life that I may be using as an excuse, that may be feeding my struggles more than lifting me up. I can say the same thing of Quora too. I started looking in hobby groups for people needing help and for months, rather than doing my own projects, I’ve just been ‘sharing my wisdom’. That is something I am consciously aware that I have been using as an excuse to not work on my own projects.

And yeah, I can tell myself to ease up. I wrote a ton of books in a short span of time. But weeks stretched into months and then years and I have become too comfortable with avoiding what used to bring me joy. I once again realize that I never draw or write anything of substance or discipline and rationalize knowledge as some sort of contribution.

Have I mentioned I never liked the word ‘contribution’? It’s always a way we bully each other and ourselves to deliver some meaningful thing to society but we rarely allow ourselves to actually define or control how we assert it. We generally let assholes and rich people (not mutually exclusive) make us feel selfish if our ‘contributions’ aren’t selfless enough, yet they ironically define selfless as benefiting themselves directly. It’s just more psychological fuckery that society tries to push to terrorize you out of finding that balance of mindfulness and happiness and into resigning yourself to some miserable assignment that never utilizes your actual best talents at all.

Like with current events, in fact. How often was I seeing people talking shit about people on unemployment because their favorite shitty fast food joints are closed and we’re not all stumbling at the opportunity to fill garbage jobs we’re overqualified for? Like dignity has a fucking price tag. Fucking hypocrites would never consider dealing with assholes like themselves either…

This is another thing I can contribute to the influence of social media. There’s a bitterness that I discarded years ago that has crept back in. Too many garbage ideas and garbage opinions are worming their way in again and I’m tired of letting any of it camp out in my head. I’m tired of letting these things influence my mood and ideas. I’m sick of them crushing my ability to embrace fantasy and romance and storytelling. 

Most of all, I’m tired of any and all distractions that give me the excuse to prolong my unhappiness. I’ve talked so much about ‘grounding’ myself when anxiety sends me into orbit but maybe I need an old-fashioned grounding. Maybe I need to sit in a corner staring at walls when I repeatedly refuse to cultivate my talents or work on projects. Maybe I need to feel boredom to the point of tears when I’m so blessed to have so many projects waiting to be done and ignore every last one of them. And for the lukewarm unknown territory of what notifications await me on these social media sites that haven’t fulfilled anything for me in a very long time. It’s just easier to blame social media than my own terrible choices.

So I’m going to confine myself to doing nothing at all if I can’t pull my priorities together any other way.

On a good note, I did actually work on Mena today. I did some more gold trim on her top and will add jewels to that next. Waiting for some pliers to come in the mail to refine the shape of her anklets before I decorate those, but there’s plenty of other tasks I can hop over too until then.

I thought about the projects that all drifted away even before the pandemic. The half written stories and books, the digital paintings in limbo, the dismantled dolls and marked crochet. Altogether it’s… intimidating and a lot. I do realize I took on more than was sustainable and I’ve made it formidable to return to. At the time, I thought creating so many choices would ensure I was never bored. After leaving them hanging, it’s only made them more intimidating to return to. I don’t remember where I was with any of them. Luckily, I always set up bread crumbs along the way, though much sturdier stuff than Hansel or Gretel, so I could redirect myself for the inevitability of memory loss if I stepped away too long.

Like with most things, I am setting limits for returning to good habits. I am not a dozen of me and setting myself up for creative paralysis is worse than just limiting what I take on to begin with. I’ve decided that those projects itching to be started will have to wait their turn in notebooks. I’ll do what I can in this life. Concerning myself with what is wasteful is useless, only the pang of regret I’ll have to live with is worth changing. I’ll be gone someday and none of it will matter. 

This is why this one and only life is precious, why I would never devalue anyone’s struggles in theirs. This is it. The nonexistence of death is exactly like before I was born. This life is simply precious for what I can make it and it’s foolish to squander it on what others want for me. I have to wear this skin and feel its pain. If I don’t vouch for what I feel and know, I do not do it justice. There is no grand design. There is simply value in this. Without reason, it is just exquisite and beautiful to feel and think and live for the present. To grow in love and kindness and to feel important. 

To fly off in a fancy of fantasy… and to ground myself again. To dream and to rest and to hope with no promise of anything.

I just want to share my discoveries and ideas and truly make informed choices. With as little distractions and excuses as possible. 

Balance is always the tricky part.

Doll Progress and Stuff

 Trying to write headers when you just want to dump your thoughts a bit… ugh. Just ugh. I never seem to have just a single (or two) topic to write about these days, which is why I miss my old writing and drawing marathons. Although I couldn’t really talk about the pieces themselves, they seemed to inspire me into a tutorial phase or some more focused thoughts.

But for today, I can at least say I feel satisfied. I did some normal things like wake up in the morning and eat meals at semi-normal times. Although I did pick the hottest part of the day to go on a walk in the park, I came back, cleaned up and actually worked on one of my dolls.

This time, I carefully glued 8, um… eye-shaped jewels onto the gold trim around her waist. Lol pointed on the opposite ends, curved to meet them. There is likely a fancier word for them but looking it up to use it would likely send other people into doing the same. I’m still going to look it up later because I’m insanely curious.

Once I did the jewels on the trim, I had some appliqués that I wasn’t quite sure where I wanted them but I held them up along the sides of her pants and they look terrific there. So I used a paintbrush to apply some E6000 glue to the backs of the appliqués. Leaving the pants on the doll and her on a stand, I carefully pressed them to the clothing, making sure it wasn’t soaking through and glueing to the leg. The glue is kind of gummy at this point so probably the perfect stage to avoid that. I’m sure there are areas that will need to be touched up, but I was as thorough as I could be on the edges and the thickest parts of the embroidery. I was going to edge the bottom of the pants with trim and jewels too, but I want to wire some tallish, like half-calf height, anklets so it will overlap that area. So next on her will be decorating the anklets, shoes and touching up the appliqués.

As for the male doll, Maxim, the next step is shaping the EVA foam with a heat gun for his armor pieces. Once those are cooled, I can glue and trim the fabric and start thinking about where I want the rivets and grommets to be. I may do a foam sword for him, but I’m thinking that over. I’d have to design that in layers carefully. I’d like to research real and fantasy swords designs to find something that suits him.

But this is a sort of day I’d like to make more habitual. To do self-care on all levels, mental, physical, emotional, and integrate time for creativity (which also hits some of those levels but also fulfills my need for productivity and meeting goals); this has always been my aim. It’s probably not realistic to frame every day in this ideal way, but that is why I say it’s my aim and not being firm about controlling it.

Being healthy is still a struggle. I’ve been sticking to a reasonable diet, exercise and vitamin habit. I still struggle for energy and stamina but there are marked improvements. Sometimes I just notice a muscle is more prominent in movement, or there’s a little less skin to pinch. I can engage my core better which is always impossible when starting out ( and exercise gurus are really frustrating about not knowing that…)

It’s hard to suck in your gut, let alone tighten ab muscles long out of use. You can’t really ‘feel’ those lats and obliques and abs like they say you can until you’ve gained some strength with the exercises. It all feels pretty gross and vulnerable at first, like everything is slopping around and reluctant to accept it. I don’t just mean that to be the realization of any fat I’m pushing around, but more the limitation in mobility and strength and flexibility.  For one, I’ve always had big thighs and I can try all I like, but my ass will not physically touch my ankle… on my left side. Or I notice I have better balance on one side. It’s not always the dominant side that is more flexible or strong either. The only exercise videos I’ve ever done where the instructor addresses this at all is Tony Horton. I love his videos just because he’ll take time in those long sets to actually explain milestones and unique differences. And once you know to look for them and not be so fixated on the scale or tape measure, you start to relax a bit more and appreciate how you move. Even with yoga, you learn proper form of course, but you start to pay attention and learn which muscles link to others, how to stretch, flex or relax to go deeper into that posture.

I’ve always loved how Terry Crewes would show off his muscle knowledge playfully; you could really admire the knowledge that goes into knowing your muscles that well. And from experience, I can say it feels freaking amazing to start moving every little muscle with real command.

I know for this to be different from last time, to be sustainable, I can’t let it become an obsession. Same with creativity. I will need to set limits and bring each facet of myself into every day as possible. It can’t become a crippling chore. Some days I will be okay with vigorous exercise and rest. Some recovery days will be light exercise and creative marathons. Yet the aim will be days where I’m sampling each in moderation. Being a little militant when I’m indulging too much or a lot more forgiving when I’ve been pushing too relentlessly.

Sometimes I’ll just want to share my progress with all the bits. A focused blog would be nice at some point, but being in a precarious and vulnerable place of change means I’m not in a place to really adhere to that.

Right now, I’m blogging to spare some of my friends and social media the long winded diatribes. Nobody needs that. I can save it for all five people who read this somehow.

Whoever you are, muah! Thanks for the silent support! 

For the Love of Lists

If there’s one thing this past year had taught us, it’s the odd phenomenon of losing touch with things that were second-nature pre-pandemic. The sort of gaping emptiness of my creative drive was no surprise, but the truly shocking one for me was that I stopped making lists. 

In my early twenties, my friend Liz joked that me and her husband were the only people she knew that would carefully flip through game magazines and write down every game we wanted, sometimes in order of priority, sometimes in sections according to platform it was on. I probably took a bit further than he did since sometimes I’d even alphabetize it later. Or go through my whole game library and write those down by platform and alphabetical order.

What can I say? I loved to organize and reorganize in written form. It was less about usefulness or reference, more about satisfying anxiety or chaos.

It wasn’t the lack of anxiety that made lists less appealing. I always go through filtering phases and, optimally, creativity is the most productive and satisfying. I have very little control over which one will grip me and keep me interested. Over time, I’ve gotten better at recognizing destructive habits and filtering them better, but I’ll still go into spending spirals or time-sucking but useless repetitive tasks.

Anyone who says the pandemic didn’t untether their habits quite a bit is full of shit.

Either way, I keep gazing at the projects I’ve let pile up and glare at me from across the room. Or don’t exactly because as much as I love dolls, I don’t like their gazes trained on me or all looking in one direction for that matter. It’s not just a ‘creepy doll’ thing; it’s unnerving when my cats stare at me, when I make eye contact period and especially when someone is staring past you but looks like they’re studying you intensely. I’m straying a lot now, but these PROJECTS, aka dolls, stand in various degrees of completion and I have very slowly and inconsistently made progress.

And tonight… I dug out a notebook and made a list. It’s probably been a month since I’ve made one. That one was called ‘Bag of Monday’ and it was the start of knocking out about five procrastinated goals. And three total bullshit ones that just made me laugh (like, scream at the sun). I made two tonight actually, dully titled ‘MAXIM’ and ‘MENA’, who are my so-called ‘grail dolls’ or my absolute most-coveted dolls. But unlike most thing I do, straight to the point.

I wrote down the types of armor I did templates for, followed by what materials I’ll use and options for decorating. I drew some loose drawings but nothing specific since it’s less helpful in the creative process to be restrained to a set design when I’m not 100% certain. Certainty usually comes with confidence while working with and testing the materials by hand.

His is fairly straightforward. The pieces are cut already, the fabrics laid out, just needed to make simple points so I don’t rush and miss steps relying on a certain order.

Hers is a pain in the ass. It’s all elaborate trim, different gauges of wire, tons of shiny jewelry and dangling chains. Things to set with clips then glue with jewels, drape with fabric. Rings to clamp, wire to twist into shape. Her wig will need beads weaved in, braids carefully plaited, headdress completed. Some steps either get done first or become a pain later. She is layers and details and she’s going to look jaw-droppingly gorgeous (even though her character absolutely despises the rigidity of luxury and perfection).

So I labored through the awkward formation of these lists, both remembering the calm of the task but the tension of task-ordering. And… it feels so normal again. It was like tearing the training wheels off and careening down a steep hill, relying more on gravity to propel you than skill, but the results were anything but a broken heap at the bottom.

I think neglect is an important but frustrating necessity for me. I really have to push too hard, want it too badly, cry because I can’t have it, give up too long and try it again with the cynicism that it’s gone forever to ever hope of getting it back. And like actual famine and hunger, maybe there is a point of no return. I haven’t run into it yet but I always fear it. Maybe that fear has to remain to ensure it’s even possible to restore it. If you can truly say good riddance to a dream, a passion, and never look back, I guess you won’t miss it at all.

Kinda wish my brain worked like that. Sometimes I’ll watch a cooking show and cry over a cat I had that’s been dead for decades. It’s all in there, my life, mostly lost to memory on demand but slamming into the shaky gates at any old time. I don’t shed old dreams. Sure, I don’t want to grow up and be a lifeguard, an archaeologist or a marine biologist anymore but sometimes those facets of myself are reborn through characters I draw or write or craft.

Sometimes the only way to sort these chaotic halls of memory is to make lists.

So welcome back, old friend. You were missed.

Weigh In on Korean Skincare Routine

 Back in December, I had one of my random ‘fits of hysterics’ and decided to chemically burn two bumps on my face that I constantly scratched open until they bled. Of course, I didn’t realize I got it on healthy skin and left it on too long and ended up with some gnarly scarring.

I’m not the type to believe my life is ruined over facial scarring, but I was worried that they would end up being puffy… and cause me to just pick at them again. I looked at scar healing creams and silicone bandages, but both have a sort of ‘masking’ feeling that I would not be able to leave alone either. 

So I looked into the 10-step Korean skincare method and it works for me. However, it is a learning process because all 10 steps are not a formula for everyone and you may want to chop some out. Here’s what I’ve learned.

3 steps are your daily minimum. Every time you want to take care of your skin, you should use an oil/foam combo cleanser, non-alcohol toner and moisturizer. The rest of the steps can be really relaxing unless you’re pressed for time or just tired, then it’s tedious. The first two steps are actually oil cleanser then foam cleanser, but you can absolutely use terrific combo cleansers. No matter what kinds you use, both will strip your skin and possibly leave it feeling a little tight and dry. Toners prep your skin to absorb moisture and a whipped moisturizer, something light, is best for day use, but a thicker overnight mask is good for evening. As long as you don’t mind keeping extra clean pillowcases handy. Keep to the fully absorbent moisturizers if you don’t want to leave product behind.

Exfoliation and sheet mask steps are also optional. These are what I consider once a week or even once a month spa day extras. Both of these will fall after the cleansing step. Exfoliating can be too abrasive or stripping for frequent use but if you’re noticing a build up of scaly or dry skin, exfoliation can lift that. A sheet mask often takes 10-20 minutes of use but it will pretty much cover steps like toning, ampoule and serum all in one. Some will need to be rubbed in, some rinsed. You can still follow it with a moisturizer and eye cream if you like. It’s not really a time or money saver since it’s actually quicker to use the small amounts of those steps anyway.

My personal choices? I use a double cleanser in a white lily scent (in my shower I use a floral scented double cleanser with a PMD cleaning wand) at the sink. I follow with a few drops of toner, directly in the hand. Cotton swabs absorb and waste so much product. I follow with an ampoule, the super greasy stuff. I realized over time that this order is set for a reason because it goes from greasy and thick to absorbent and thin. You end up with silly, dewy skin by the end. The serum is still oily but a bit thinner. I usually stick to 5-6 drops of each step but I like to rub it on my neck and upper chest too. Hyaluronic acid water cream is my next favorite after that. I then use a smoother, which is a sort of gel like moisturizer. Eye cream goes next, tiny drops applied directly around the eyes. At this point, I let things absorb for a few minutes, brush my teeth or put on body lotion, before returning to a moisturizer or SPF.

Other things I had to learn along the way; keep a sun friendly and not sun friendly option for the last steps. One of my eye creams has retinol which will make your skin more sensitive to light but also kicks so much ass. The other has ingredients that won’t cause sun sensitivity. Same for the moisturizer/SPF step. Sunscreen products tend to be pricier and are completely pointless if you’re going to bed or staying in on a rainy day. Keep your SPF handy for sunny and outdoor days but stick to your cheaper and even thicker moisturizers for your hermit days.

I’ve been doing this for months now and, because of how insanely healthy my skin is, I truly look forward to doing my routine. Any facial scarring is virtually invisible unless I point it out. I do still break out around my menstrual days, but that’s strictly hormonal. If you do need an acne regimen, my advice is to add a CICA cream after toning your skin. Mine does not smell pleasant so I like to mask it with all the smell good products but I forgive the smell since it absolutely zaps acne. Once your skin is completely dry, maybe an hour or two after your routine, CICA acne patches are amazing little clear patches you can’t see or feel so are definitely a bonus.

I actually acquired most of the products I use cheap through Ipsy and a Korean skincare box called BomiBox. BomiBox is pricier at $40 but you get several full sized products that last a long time and I’ve never gotten anything that isn’t incredible for your skin. Ipsy is cheaper for its lowest range but if you don’t pay for Glam Bag Plus or Ultimate, almost everything is sample or half size. If you want to focus on the skincare part of beauty, BomiBox is the clear winner.

And yes, I know the PMD Clean is expensive but I actually got that in a subscription box called FabFitFun. If you ever want to get a respectable hoard of healthy products, subscription boxes tend to get you there much faster than paying full price for each step.

The best part about healthy skin isn’t the vanity aspect. I do not pick at my face anymore. There is literally nothing left to tempt it. And when you’re highly sensory, it is one less thing to amplify your anxiety. All of the smells and liquids were a wonderful exploratory journey as well. 

I highly recommend the Korean skincare method for your best skin health. It truly worked for me!

Onward!

 So today I decided I’d take an outdoor walk. I think the only reason why I don’t do it more often is because I have to put on socks and shoes and there’s always ‘halfway point’ dread, that point where even if you get tired and want to walk back, it’s the exact distance it would take to just finish it. My sister and I both like to do laps around the pond; it’s one of the few continuous walking paths around here, but it is pretty consistently covered in goose shit and, for some reason, the geese actually get irritated and hiss at her. I have yet to experience any hostile geese myself but she seems to have this oddly hilarious way of irritating animals. Case in point, our cat Seven, who is really bonded to me and the boys (she’s friendly with Dad and my brother Ryan too) is really repelled by her. She’s never been mean to Seven; for some reason, the cat just seems repelled by her.

In any case, I’ve been consistently exercising as well as attempting to throw in some creative time. I have only lost about 12 pounds since February but my mobility is getting so much better and my muscles are a lot more solid and useful again. So its very likely the hormones of pushing 40 are just going to consistently work against me, despite all of my food and exercise trackers swearing I should be dropping at least a pound, if not two, each week. Again, also super possible that inflammation and overworking/under-eating could be triggering some stubbornness. Of course, once my body realizes I’m not trying to kill myself, it may let go of some weight… at least until the routine is too ‘easy’ and it wants to plateau for that reason. I get it, body; cool knowing I’m not going to starve easily in a survival situation but  could we come off of the overprotective streak and let me obtain a healthier BMI before you prove that kind of efficiency?

Ahem, but the creative side? Groovy. I’ve been poking at the doll projects, although I’m still in a kind of paralysis with moving onto the more involved parts. For Maxim’s armor, I will be measuring and creating the pieces on card stock first, a pattern I will use to cut out black foam. I can then use clay or even a polyfill fiber and glue to reinforce parts, but I could also glue together and sculpt the foam sheets directly, but… I always end up deciding this when I get there. In any case, I’ll be using the silver fabric I used on Rienna’s boots as a liner on the pieces but a black faux leather on the outside of the pieces. They will most likely have to be formed and sturdy prior to covering them with fabric though; the fabric will crease and wrinkle and bubble, etc. if I try to shape the pieces later. Once the fabric and pieces are done, I have rivets and other decorative pieces I can decide on. But, like real armor, all the stages of dressing and decorating will be fidgety and there may be plenty I haven't foreseen. A learning process.

I mostly worked on mini Endramena this week. I fell in love with the big sculpt and wanted to get the smaller version, so I thought why not? I’m making the bejeweled princess version from the big sculpt so it makes sense to do a more adventurous version of her with the smaller. Smaller dolls are usually much easier for dynamic poses. So I did her corset, arm guards and a buckle, but she’ll need more buckles and I have enough leather to maybe arm her a bit better. Maybe a shoulder guard or two and a knife sheath for her thigh. I’ll add to it at leisure.

The only other thing I made was a simple crochet hat from a simple pattern. I might make more of these hats since they work up quick enough and don’t use too much yarn so they might be a good $10 hat for craft shows. Most of what I make it just too costly in time and materials to go so low…

So yeah… I’d love to get more outdoor walks in my days but it’s also totally pointless to plan much just yet. I have a mental goal of trying to do one workout and one creative session each day right now. For the past few days, it’s been working but I do have those bad days where I’ll have to both be forgiving of any goals or plans and also insistent about getting back on task once I’ve had a proper rest. Easier said than done. I’m ridiculously critical of myself but I’m also aware that a lifetime of undiagnosed ADHD has left me with some bad habits and masking techniques to cover eccentricities I am slowly trying to embrace.

It’s very sad how I was treated growing up. More so, that I had to learn to hide so much, just for adults to continually find my weaknesses at some point anyway (because I’m really terrible at lying or self-suppression and that shit comes out whether I like it or not). But I’ve always been a firm believer that I am not only a late bloomer but the fabulous sort that blooms far beyond even I expect, that one of the great things about me is that, for every gap in my growth, I shoot up like a rocket and well beyond my peers when I am in motion. 

We might have been taught the virtues of consistency through the tortoise and the hare, but the bunny got a bad wrap. Some of us do work in quick powerful bursts and quite well. We just also have the decency not to make fun of the turtles or nap too long. But one thing I have learned is that the outliers will always be bullied into believing their paths are unworthy. We’ll be made fun of for taking the hard way, the easy way or any path of uncertainty. When we fail, we’ll be ridiculed for the risk; when we succeed, they’ll grumble and invent all the ways we think we’re better than them. Let the world envy your paths. Hard or easy, success or fail, they’re yours. Keep worrying about what others think of them and you’ll miss out on the beauty of each step.