kiddie lit.

There was some book written for very young children that I remember from early childhood.  Something about a terrible horrible no good very bad day.  It may have also involved a purple crayon.  I should look it up, but I probably won't.  It wasn't a great book, or at least not one of my favorites, but I have loved and carried the descriptor with me like a sword, something to pull out when it was absolutely the right thing at the moment:

Terrible
Horrible
No Good
Very Bad

Except this time, it wasn't a day.  It really was most of a week.

It could be that it's February, the month in which I always wonder if I have Seasonal Affective Disorder, even when I lived way down south.  (Aside: according to the experts I listened to Wednesday night, that very repetitiveness makes it likely that it IS SAD.)

It could be hormones.

It could have been the rain.  But if you blame on the rain, tell me, what's to be gained?  (Apologies, BNL).

It could be the massive quantities of data entry that made up the bulk of my work this week.

But why try to explain it?  It was just a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week.

Which I now declare OVER AND DONE.  I decree it.  I will burn some sage to make it absolutely so.

Tomorrow, I will take my 10th Pilates class of the month, which is an athletic achievement unique in my personal time line.  I can see the difference in certain muscles of my body, and the other day I managed a full side balance (legs and arm) for the first time since I started this mess back in November.  Okay, it was only on one side, but it was amazing.  I wanted to do touchdown-esque dances about it.

So, see?  Just proved to myself that the entire week didn't completely suck.

Bath, bed, clean sheets, nice bath salts, a bit of Jameson's, and the aforementioned sage, and we're setting the clock all over again.

better

You know that line from that movie, where Jack Nicholson's character tells Helen Hunt's character that she makes him want to be a better man?

Yeah, I've never understood that line.  How can someone else make you want to be a better person?  Huh?  Doesn't compute.  Someone good in your life may bring out the best in you.  Or make you want to try harder, strive more, challenge yourself.  Sometimes, I think having a good partner, even a good friend, to anchor you, makes it easier to strike out, to reach further, because you know that if you fall, you've got someone to help you get back up.  Which, come on, everyone needs.  But you make me want to be a better man?  No.  I do believe the aphorism that if someone tells you they aren't good enough for you, believe it.

Anyway.  Sort of not the point.  The point is that tonight I ended up doing something that I needed to do, for me, that was harder than I thought it would be.  And I do feel as though forcing myself to do it made me a little better of a person.

I got an e-mail over the weekend from the guy who dumped me about 4 months ago.  Right after he broke things off, he attempted a bit of chatty e-mailing, and I shut that down.  I got no explanation then of why he unilaterally decided to end the relationship, and I would have done unseemly things for "closure" at the time.  Instead, I had a realization that there was no such thing, and all I really needed to know was that he no longer wanted to be in a relationship.

So this weekend, he finally decided to tell me what had been going on in his head.  It was not the most coherent writing I've ever read, and it was less coherent (although longer) than most of the e-mails we exchanged during our relationship.  But basically, if I boil it down to an essence, he broke up with me because he was insecure about our relationship and how I felt about him, but he couldn't say any of those things to me at the time, and he was now feeling out the possibility of maybe giving things another chance or at least being friends.

I considered ignoring it entirely.  I don't owe him a response.  I decided I owed myself a response.  It was an effort on his part to tell me what was going on his head, which was more than happened most of the time we were together, and in a Golden Rule fashion, I wanted to acknowledge that.  While I didn't need it, and I suspected his motives in e-mailing now, I wanted to honor the best intention I could imagine instead.  And also use my words to say, no, there will be no relationship, I wish you had said any or all of this months ago when we could have ended things kindly, and while it's too little, too late, thanks anyway.

All of which I had to type out three or four times until I could say something like that sincerely, without snark, sarcasm, or condescension.  And when I finally did it and sent it, I did feel as though I'd at least honored my own moral code.

What I learned was that it's harder than you think to actually live by your own code, that trying to assume good intent from someone who hurt you is difficult, but that doing it while honoring yourself and your boundaries is actually more worthwhile than you might think.

Feels like a good way to open the new year.  (Also?  Still going good on the produce front).

Be it resolved,

that it is within my power to make 2012 more awesome than it would be without my active participation.

My basic resolution for the year is to live the life I want to live to the best of my ability.  I resolve to be present, to be kind, to be well, to take care of myself, mind and body.  This will make 2012 awesome, no matter what happens.

To that end, I have resolved to look at the following aspects of my life for improvement:

1. Keep doing the things that already are working to make me healthier and more centered, including but not limited to pilates, yoga, therapy, acupuncture, naturopathy, hypnotherapy, supplements and vitamins, and getting more sleep.
2. Drink water.  Lots.
3. Be kind.  To myself and others, though the first leads to the second.
4. Be social within my abilities to be.  Have dinner with C regularly.
5. Be active.  Just move.  As often as possible.
6. Manage my money more purposefully, within line with my personal priorities.
7. Floss more.
8. Go to at least one cultural outing or event a month.
9. Save for travel.  Then travel.  Not on credit.
10. Make a plan to meet the biological extended family.
11. Set work goals before March review.
12. Write more.
13. Work out a plan for the cookbook, cook things, learn to gluten-free bake, at least cupcakes.
14. Make a knitting project list on Ravelry, so that I'm not hunting around for patterns when I want a new project.
15. Declutter the apartment, get rid of things I don't use, go through boxes that aren't opened regularly.
16.  Be realistic about my needs, about where I am, and what I want.
17. Do monthly focused "challenges" to help create new habits and learn new skills.


Challenge for January: eat at least one serving of fruit and one serving of vegetables every single day.  Work towards at least one serving at each meal.

Mostly, I eat a lot of vegetables, but very little fruit.  I just don't like a lot of it.  Sometimes, I don't eat much produce, and I should eat more.  I feel better when I eat more.  So I should eat more. 

2012 will be a good year.  So I intend, so shall it be.

Goals

I'm not very good at resolutions.  I like clean slates, fresh starts, new notebooks, and I LOVE a clean calendar.  But these days, I need next year's calendar before Thanksgiving, and this year I had to buy an 18-month calendar that started last July for next year.  It was the only thing that suited my needs That Day when I needed it.  So it's clean, but not new for January 1.

This year, I read this blog post about writing yourself a "wellness prescription."  As someone who has minor but relatively debilitating medical issues that can only be improved with the choices I make in my daily life, it really resonated that my life is the prescription I need to solve my issues.  Huh.

So in order to work towards personal goals in all aspects of my life, I thought I'd set goals and challenges rather than make resolutions for 2012.  I am going to put together a list of things I want to do in 2012.  Then I'm going to figure out what I need to do to achieve them, and set those as goals.  I'm thinking one challenge a month, with some over-arching ideas and plans will do quite nicely.

Stay tuned.  I'll be posting some goals, some challenges, some plans, and some inspiration as a lead up to 2012.  I've got a lot to do if the world is going to end next year.

luck (and hiccups. I have them).

I am currently suffering a near-incapacitating inability to move my right arm/shoulder and neck, apparently all a result of being abducted by aliens Saturday night (and/or sleeping very wrong).  It's made me realize how important that dominant arm is to daily living, and wonder about what I'd do if it were completely gone.  How would I adapt?  How would I cope?  But you know, people learn to do it every day, and why should I think I'm special?

It's amazing how the universe conspires to show you how damn lucky you are sometimes.  Good for the universe.

giving thanks.

Since 'tis the season, I've spent my long weekend being thankful.  Thankful for my team of health professionals, from the naturopath to my pilates and yoga instructors.  Thankful that I make enough money to renovate my whole pantry (contents, not layout -- this is a rental).  Thankful that I feel immeasurably stronger and healthier and better than I did even months ago.  Thankful that I spent a holiday that makes people a bit crazy alone making incredible food for myself.  Thankful that I have friends and family who understand that I love them enough to see them at other times of the year when traveling isn't crazy and food concerns won't put anyone out.  Thankful for two cats who have loved me being home.  Thankful for the recently deceased Anne McCaffery and the world of Pern she gave us, as well as for my great local bookstore where I bought her original trilogy -- and for the realization that I've never read these before.*  Thankful to have a career I enjoy.  Thankful for my knitting guild, the friend who dragged me to a knitting class years ago, and for a hobby that has soft and fluffy end products.

Thankful, generally, that my life is what it is.  And that all the work that I've put into it has gotten me here.


*I discovered Anne McCaffery at the beginning of my love of fantasy and sci-fi, before I realized how much better it is to read things from the beginning if you have the time and patience to track them all down.

being janis joplin

I first heard of Janis Joplin when I started college.  A girl on my hall had an acoustic guitar and a giant poster of Janis Joplin on her wall.  I didn't understand the hero worship, but I also didn't know a thing about Janis Joplin or much of anything about music.  I was still a fan of The Jets (not that I shared that fact.  I was ashamed of it in college.  Now I just admit I have questionable taste in music.  I deal.)

Over the years, I heard some of Janis Joplin's music.  I admit, I didn't get it, didn't understand the big deal.  She had an interesting voice, yes, but so do many other people.  She was well-known as an early pioneer in rock music.  Okay. Tonight I am admitting that my opinion is entirely changed.

Janis Joplin was fucking amazing.

I saw Festival Express, a kind of amazing documentary even if you don't care what was going on in rock music in 1970.  But that summer, a Canadian rock promoter got the idea of having a traveling festival.  Originally planned to go from Montreal to Toronto to Winnipeg to Calvary to Vancouver, with the bands traveling by train between sites, the tour was truncated to the middle three cities and plagued by protesters wanting "free music."  Apparently it lost a ton of money for the producers, and the hastily put-together film crew dispersed, many unpaid, without putting together a film.  The film came together between 1994 and 2003 after sitting around in garages and basements and other random, most uncontrolled storage areas, to be made into what one of the cinematographers said was a way better film than could possibly have been produced in 1970.  The advent of digital technologies allowed for adjustments that compensated for the lack of light.

But while the tour may not have been a financial success, the footage shows an amazing behind the scenes experience, of musicians just being together and making music and having an amazing time doing so.  I am not a musician.  I don't know the joy of a good jam session.  But imagine a week of them, of the inspiration of other people who love music the way you do, of playing together and mixing it up?  Even I can see that would be an unforgettable, once in a lifetime, glad-we-caught-it-on-film experience.  And the movie is funny, too.


The movie was about music, about what it is to people who perform and make it for a living.  It was about what music means to an audience, both a peaceful paying audience and a Woodstock-inspired rioting audience.

But back to the amazing Janis Joplin.

Here:



Janis Joplin threw it all out into the world when she performed.  Her talent wasn't in her voice, her songwriting, her music.  It was her, her performance, her ability to give it all, hold back nothing, throw herself wide open to the world.

Yes, that's what I got from two songs in a film not really about Janis Joplin.


Imagine living your life raw.  Open.  Uncovered, unconcealed.  Not balls to the wall because there is no fucking wall (and you don't have balls).  Imagine being able to send it all -- your pain, your rage, your loss, your love, your need and desire, your hope, your peace, your hell -- to send it all out into the world.  What would it feel like?  What would you get back?  What would life be like without the parameters we create for ourselves?

Watching Janis Joplin, I see power, I see command.  I do not see peace.  But I do see joy in the performance, in being able to perform and give away the pain.  I see the possibilities of opening up the parts we might normally seek to keep hidden.