intellectual properties

sweat it out

i got on my bike monday for the first time since valentine’s day, as it had rained the whole week after that (and by rain i mean MONSOON) and then i went to michigan.

it felt so amazing. my body rejoiced. have i mentioned recently about how much i love riding my bicycle?

some mornings i float.  effortlessly. the sun is shining.  the air is still. it feels glorious. i sail.

other times i have to fight  it’s raining. there’s a headwind.  it feels like work. i push.

but no matter – i am into it.

i don’t know if bicycling is saving me much money (with only a 9 mile RT commute i wasn’t driving much before) but it sure does make life more fun. and my sanity: if i didn’t have that half hour of fresh air+exercise before and after work i would most certainly be losing my mind right now.

.::.

an optimistic update on the ongoing shoulder/neck pain management:

after a year and half, the other physical therapies and whatnot recommended by my chiros, MDs, et.al. (alignment exercises, deep massage, heat/cold, etc) weren’t doing much but temporarily alleviating the tension/pain only to have it return. then i read somewhere not too long ago in some online article by some personal trainer who i don’t think was a physician that a large majority of neck/shoulder/back pain is the result of uneven muscles pulling your body out of alignment and that only weight training would resolve that problem, not muscle relaxers or the kind of light PT often prescribed. a study released in 2008 confirms:

“The higher percentage of pain reduction was due to the special effort made by the Danish researchers to follow exercise guidelines as set forth by the American College of Sports Medicine. This meant not babying the painful area, but instead, treating it the same as any other muscle group during a strength training session.

The people who just rode the stationary bike also reduced pain, but only slightly. The researchers felt theirs was not enough pain reduction to indicate the stationary bike would make for good therapy for neck problems.

The upshot of the study is that for people with trapezius myalgia, a good treatment would be doing high intensity strength training 3 times per week for 20 minutes under the supervision of a professional.”

so even though i was scared to do more advanced weights, especially free weights, because i had hurt myself doing those in the past, i said wtf and started going to the body sculpting class at the Y again for the first time since 2009. body sculpting is more or less basic calisthenics (push ups, situps, squats, lunges, etc), but with free weights/kettlebells or resistance tools (bosu ball, resistance bands). i do this 1-2x a week for an hour and it’s TOUGH. i am often sore for a couple of days afterward, sometimes in muscles i didn’t remember having. and i have to say (crosses fingers) — i think it’s working. i haven’t had a significant bout of pain since NYE and i stopped downing handfulls of pain relievers a couple of weeks ago. SO: YAY!

fingers crossed though because it’s not 100% resolved. i can still feel it there, that muscle knot below my shoulder blade, that tightness behind my right ear, there, lurking. and i am still on tenterhooks sometimes when i attempt something that i’m afraid will result in a pain snap. like yoga, with all it’s downward-dogging. but i have even started going back to yoga! which i was really missing from my life.

because of this i’ve become a bit (more?) evangelical about how much i believe physical exercise is important to sanity and well-being. i know this seems DUH, but it’s amazing how often people forget this (or willfully ignore it in favor of sedentary activities), and how RARELY doctors enforce physical exercise as a wellness tool. but watch The Biggest Loser! lives are changed by treadmills. if you have body aches, pains, moods, demons: sitting on the couch is most likely not only hindering recovery but part of the problem. get up and move.

NYE 2011

fresh platinum: check. awesome black Miranda Caroligne dress: check. 3 pairs of shoes: check. false eyelashes, with spare glue: check. xtra contact lenses: check. red bull: check. champagne: check. protein bars: check. warm furry fleece Tamo Design coat: check. 3+ fantastic parties to attend in the next 12 hrs: check. ♥ Jay Oberhelman to kiss at midnight and beyond: check. BRING IT ON, 2011.

i wrote that facebook status update at 6:15pm on friday, December 31 2010 and then got up off of the couch to get in the shower and get ready to head out to dinner and then the long night of NYE. i was a bit giddy and did a little jump/skip/woohoo! move as i crossed the room. as soon as my feet hit the ground, i felt something in my neck snap/crackle/pop. i knew it was bad because it didn’t really hurt but instead i was instantly nauseous. and shocked. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? my back/neck pain had subsided to a quietly annoying ache over the past couple of weeks, i was back to my of my regular routines at the gym (except yoga), and NOW, on NEW YEAR’S EVE, i do a little bunny hop and everything goes out of whack?? i was stunned. and pissed. is this really how my year would end? i really thought i was almost recovered.

i didn’t want to believe that my night my possibly be ruined before i left the house, but i couldn’t really turn my head. so instead of getting ready on time i swallowed a handful of ibuprofen and went back upstairs to bed and lay there with a heading pad wrapped around my neck. after a while i got up and slowly got ready, but was a bit deflated. would i be able to enjoy even some of the party like this, let alone make it an epic adventure? GAH.

the show must go on, i said, and so there was a substantial amount of MIND OVER MATTER and self medication. a little too much self-medication. eventually we got to the party where jay was to DJ a 12:30am set. it was a massive underground event that, unfortunately, suffered the fate of so many massive undergrounds before it: cops at the door before midnight even happened. but our team was prepared and the after-party, which was thankfully within walking distance, became the now-party and while it was sad that so many people were scurried out into the cold, wet, raining streets of san francisco before they could even toast the new year, we rebounded pretty quickly. and then it was dance dance dance all night long.

we left that party at around 7:30AM and cruised by Breakfast of Champions, the epic all-day New Year’s Day event, but the line was around the block, it was raining, and we just weren’t Champions enough to stand in line in the rain for an unknown amount of time to get in. also, by then my neck was starting to really hurt and jay was totally exhausted, so it was over the bridge and off to bed….

New Year’s Day was rough for me as after being up all night i couldn’t really fall asleep with the neck pain. Jay was less incapacitated than i was and got up and went to Tahoe to go skiing. he’s still there. i made it out of bed in time to go have dinner with some friends, and then, mostly because i had been in bed all day, went out that night to see Modeselektor and danced until 2:30am sunday morning.

then yesterday i went to jason’s and hung out with him and Neva and the hot tub.

and now it’s the first Monday of 2011 and i’m not really sure how i feel about it all.

for 2011: austerity, focus, and grace

i am finding this “end of year” post difficult to write, and it’s coming out in pieces.  i am trying to wrap up 2010 in my mind and in writing and it’s not going well.

part one: recognition: grace

in my solstice blog post i talked about why this year hasn’t been fun for me. the thing that bothers me most about it is not that i feel like life has been cruel or unfair to me in particular – i am highly aware of my 1st world privilege and all the good things surrounding me – but that the overall affect on my mood and attitude has made ME not fun.  a couple of nice friends told me after that post that despite how i have been feeling on the inside, i’ve been a friendly, positive force for them, and i appreciated that, because i think most of all this year i have been afraid that i’ve maybe rubbed some people the wrong way with my grumpiness, even though it was rarely ever personal, and possibly even damaged some friendships/relationships.  my boss in particular – wow.  the combination of 1. work stress 2. body pain 3. not sleeping 4. task boredom have sometimes compounded me into a srsly ….bitchy person at work. some days even i can’t believe how grumpy i am at work. and that my boss puts up with it. i feel guilty about this. which goes back to my last post about my main resolution for 2011 is simply to try to be a more positive person, even if in just the little ways.  i want to have more grace.

part two: shedding skin, removing the unnecessary: austerity

like everyone else, i have (ongoing) goals of removing the unnecessary from my life, physically and mentally.  clean out the shelves, get rid of useless stuff, release attachment to objects, cleanse the environment and body.  the drastic Austerity Measures in europe this year piqued my interest in learning more about that idea, philosophically and economically, and while this 2010 Word of the Year has a bad reputation economically and politically, philosophically i am not opposed.

the crux (for me) here is whether austerity is, by definition, on the opposite end of the spectrum from hedonism. can you not be an Austere Naturalist (see: Hume), living life to the fullest, completely enamoured with creation, but without all the excess? isn’t that a better way to be, happier in simplicity? is this idea truly audacious in a modern consumer world?

more than anything though, i feel that simplifying my desires, my belongings, and my inputs and outputs will help me gain some focus. i need focus.  there is too much extraneous going on here.

part three: reincarnation: focus

recently some friends started an email thread wherein they reported all the things they’ve done/accomplished/significant events for them this year.  while i’m inspired by my amazing community, it also it made me sad, because i feel like i have notable nothing to say, and i didn’t participate in that thread.  going on vacation to south america and watching a lot of really good movies and being lucky enough to have worn some fabulous outfits this year don’t qualify as accomplishments to me.

in retrospect, the two biggest things that happened in my life this year have been 1) again, the ongoing body work/struggle to find pain resolution and 2) becoming a full time bike commuter.  at the beginning of the year i was certainly not expecting #1 to still be ongoing here at the end, and was unprepared for the mental toll it would take on my energy and commitment-to-do-things level.  as for #2, i knew that biking to work and back would be somewhat of a shift, but didn’t realize that it would feel like such an accomplishment. according to my exercise log i have biked over 1500 miles this year. every day that i get out of bed and get on my bike and make it to work is sort of a little miracle.

but if these are the two biggest parts of my year, i’m not sure how to feel about 2010.  in past years i’ve always found myself little side projects, moonlight jobs, or new hobbies that resulted in feeling like i accomplished something new and definitive.  i feel like i just let this year the last couple of years roll over me. maybe this is what i needed and a natural downcycle but it feels very unproductive and i feel that now i am overly-anxious to DO SOMETHING in 2011.

“Someone told me not long after I moved here that people with talent and no ambition move to San Francisco, people with ambition and no talent move to Los Angeles, and people with talent and ambition move to New York.” (–PH)

OH HOW THAT RESONATES.

but WHAT? the thing is i still do not have any definitive goals.  i can’t tell you what i want to do in 2011.  or who i want to be.  so in addition to more Personal Austerity and Grace, i need Focus.

so here’s to 2010: the year i went to South America, the year i bicycled nearly every day, the year the whole world felt volatile and entropic on both a personal and global scale.

may 2011 be full of austerity, focus, and grace.

not fun

one of my new years resolutions is going to be that i will try to be more positive, at least vocally and publicly if not successfully internally.  less ranting, less expression of exasperation/jadedness/hatertude, less wallowing, more focus on gratitude and affecting change for the better in my little world instead of worrying about the big one so much.

so while it’s still 2010 let me gripe/whine for a minute.  a longer post reflecting on 2010 and moving into 2011 is (maybe) pending, but these current bullet points from this morning sort of sum how this whole year has felt for me:

–waking up to a negative bank account balance is not fun

–not feeling confident to go places/buy things you want to for the holidays because of empty bank account is not fun

–having your first email of the day be from a disgruntled tenant with a soaked computer because the roof leaked all over his office because you can’t afford to fix it is not fun

–a full year of ongoing chronic neck/shoulder/back pain that appears nonresponsive to hundreds of dollars in treatment is not fun

–i’ll keep this brief right now but i’ve been going back and forth too much in my head about how much of this is self-inflicted misery (what more should/could i be doing to help these situations for myself), and that is also not fun.

i had some awesomeness this year (Priceless, Chile/Peru, Burning Man, fun weekend excursions and things with friends/family), and i am super grateful for those times and people and i don’t mean to belittle them, but overall, the other 45ish weeks of this year have felt like personal purgatory (see: notes from February, not to mention the mental impact of global socio-political-economic situations) and NOT FUN.

it feels pretty terrible to write that. not fun.

yeah, maybe i’m just an actual grownup now with grownup responsibilities and problems, but i refuse to believe in “acceptance” of things you can change (aka settling) and don’t think that wanting the majority of your life to be/feel FUN is too much to ask. and this is where most of my not fun comes from: i know i can change some of these things, that life is what you make it, but the fact is that i haven’t.  acknowledging this (and the possible reasons why) is NOT FUN.

i digress, but hopefully that will be the last big of negativity you read from me (at least for a little while…).

Nov out, Dec in

there it was, November as National Blog Posting Month, of which i only missed one day and had 34 posts total. pretty good, and i did enjoy it, although i definitely posted some things i would otherwise maybe have just tweeted about or shared on google reader, which felt inauthentic, so we’ll see if there’s any momentum here.

onward: last year, i declared December Focus On My Body Month. i can’t believe it’s been a whole year….and at the end of that 2009 declaration i said “but if i spend all this time and energy focusing on this and nothing changes i don’t know what the hell i’m going to do in 2010.” well, here it is the end of 2010, and my constant, chronic neck/shoulder pain problem is now a year and 2 months old (give or take, depending on when you start counting). i have kept up my health/fitness regime this past 12 months more than any other recent year (no going entire months without going to the gym), and the rest of my body is in great shape.  but the neck/shoulder thing is still bothersome and unresponsive to any treatment i’ve done.  i spent literally hundreds of dollars and hours this year trying to alleviate it, and nothing has changed other than now i’m used to it. (many thanks to all of you who have offered advice/recommendations/referrals etc, but i really don’t need any more.)

what i do know is that if i don’t take the time to focus on my body, cleanse from toxins, destress, etc, the problem gets worse. it might not make me feel better, but at least i don’t feel worse.  and since it’s dark out at 5:00….most days i don’t have anything better to do after work than go to the gym. so, once again, December will be Focus On My Body Month, which means more consistent exercise (mostly: not skipping the gym to do social things), more concentrated relaxation, and less crappy food (like that huge goat cheese and portabello boca burger and fries i had last night) and less alcohol.

we’ll see. if nothing else, at least this intention will keep me from binging like crazy at all the holiday parties. cuz lord knows i love me some cheese, wine and sugar cookies.

out of whack/mid-30′s weekend

i must’ve jinxed myself with that last post, because the rest of the day afterward was rough.

i took the day off work because 1. it was my birthday and 2. we were going away for the weekend up the coast to a rented vacation house at Sea Ranch with some friends. first, on the car ride up, a wave of spiraling depression (the kind where you know your thoughts–>feelings are totally illogical and then amplified by feeling stupid for being so affected by uncontrollable illogical feelings only makes it worse) hit me like a brick and rendered me mostly speechless and crying for most of the car ride. generally i only have these episodes during PMS, which made it even more frustrating as i had nothing to blame it on (i need to investigate whether mood swings are possibly related to having started recently taking melatonin supplements to try to get better/less restless sleep at night).  i can’t objectively get any perspective on whether the things i was thinking/feeling sad/angry about are in any way justified or not, and i felt that talking about it with anyone would probably just make things worse (because those conversations get so so complicated, so so quickly), and honestly i didn’t even have the mental energy to talk about it, especially not on a vacation getaway weekend, so i just stayed silent and waited for it to pass.  woooo. happy neurotic birthday!

secondly, having not had any major bout of pain for several weeks, i guess i must’ve over extended myself working out and doing yoga last week. when i woke up friday morning my neck/shoulder were stiff/sore, and by the time i woke up saturday i could barely move my head back and forth and i was whimpering around again. obviously it physically hurts, but more than that it is so mentally depressing. so there i was on my 34th birthday weekend Sea Ranch getaway feeling a little depressed and with a painful body, and holy crap did all that make me suddenly feel like i’d aged 10 years in the last 1.

so i spent the weekend smoking and drinking trying to ignore the nagging voices in my head and the nagging pain in my body.   I WAS ON VACATION AND IT WAS MY BIRTHDAY, i excused.  but honestly both of those things just make me feel older and terrible and after a friend chided me a bit for all the smoking i was doing i had to agree that i was only hurting myself and now i’m back on the Healthy Wagon.

i am going to be ok. i just have really dramatic moments.

NOW: my friends are smart and funny and beautiful humans who are very supportive and understand when you might be having a little breakdown/crisis and offer you either the space or hugs you need.

AND the northern california coast is undeniably one of the most beautiful and magical places in the world and when i wasn’t consumed with focusing on the above i had a wonderful time. my favorite parts of the weekend:

–the aquamarine surf and baby seal faces and black volcanic rock and starfish and autumn sun and wind in the grass

–night walks in total darkness

–staring at the stars on a moonless night and mutually agreeing that it’s very hard to believe that the starry night sky is REAL

–arguing about whether or not it should be legally ok to ride a whale, specifically if it happens to approach you while you’re out surfing

–having a totally 9th grade conversation about what celebrities we want to sleep with, true slumber party style

–delicious breakfast foods and the amazing 5 course meal our friends cooked from scratch that puts most restaurants to shame

–compassionate and healing hands

–a room full of people, quiet, reading.

34

today is my 34th birthday.

a year ago today, we were in Prague, and that seems so, so long ago. for some weeks now, i have been noting how long this year+ has felt to me, in many ways.

since last august, i have been to 8 countries (not including Canada).  traveling has been something i’ve always dreamed of, always wanted to do when i was young and poor, and only in the last few years have i had both the time and money to be able to really do it.  this has made my life so much richer, feel so much bigger and opened up to the world to me.  other people, other music, other cultures, other foods, other forests, other mountains, other cities – i find everything so interesting, the micro complexities and the macro homogeny. i am completely enamoured with this planet and i want to see everything. traveling took up most of my extra time, money and energy this past year but it’s what has made the last year my life really start become the life i’ve been working toward.

for those following along you also know that since last fall, i’ve been dealing with chronic pain.  it was particularly bad in november-february, and i spent so much time and money seeing all kinds of doctors and healers that it also made that time period feel long and drawn out. i still wake up some mornings with a fair amount of pain in my neck and right shoulder, but it is no longer debilitating and i am off taking pain meds most of the time.   i will admit, though, it is the one thing that is really making me start to “feel my age”, and at times it sort of freaks me out for moment. on the flip side, because of all the bodywork and exercise i’ve done to try to alleviate the pain problem, it’s possible that right now i’m in the best physical shape i have been since high school!

finally, there is also some undefinable shift/change going on inside me.  i don’t quite know how to put it into words, really, but i think going to burning man without jay this year was a big part of it. as i noted at the end there, i felt some definitive growth.  i spent a lot of my youth feeling a victim. of my past, of my economy, of my insecurities, of my sex, of my culture. but i think i’m slowly breaking out of that. it isn’t consistent but i now feel a soft confidence that was definitely not there before.

big <3 to all my friends and family who have encouraged and supported me through both my pain and my wandering endeavors. 33 was an amazing year.  i'm thinking 34 might be even better.

female + fiction

this morning i didn’t go to work because it was super sunny and friday i was in too much pain and so i drank my coffee, took some pain meds and went to sit in the garden and read my book until the pain meds kicked in. and then when i came back inside i was sort of hypercaffeinated/doped up and got into unconscious multi-tasking mode (where you do numbers of things at once even though you’re not in any kind of hurry whatsoever) and almost took a banana into the shower (tweet).

if there’s one plus side to all this pain management it’s that i’m spending lots more time reading in the garden, which is nice because i no longer have public transportation time for reading since they cancelled my AC Transit bus line to work. i also get most of my exercise biking to work now, which is good because i haven’t actually gone to the gym very much at all lately and my bike commute is pretty much the only daily exercise i’m getting. (tweeted side note: yesterday on the way home i got pulled over by the emeryville police for blowing a stop sign on my bike. i have never even been pulled over while driving my CAR in california. i pleaded ignorance and apologized and was let off with a warning.)

anyway, i finished the book – The Anxiety of Everyday Objects. it was sort of eerie, actually, how much i related to this book about a young wannabe artist working a desk job in a small manhattan law firm. and also, i realized part way through, that it’s sort of odd that this was the 3rd book i’ve read in a row about young women struggling with identity/life changes. i posted a bit before about Veronica, a novel about a young model, which i really enjoyed and then handed off to Vera, and then after that i read a book i pulled from my Mom’s bookshelf, What Girls Learn, about a couple of young girls and their mother who gets very ill, which was refreshingly honest about puberty but pretty emotionally dark.  i would highly recommend both Veronica and The Anxiety of Everyday Objects to other women because i think both of them dealt with issues in a very adult and uplifting/bigger-picture kind of way; What Girls Learn was decently written, but somewhat adolescent in it’s view. or maybe the writing just wasn’t as good, i don’t know.

i’m not sure why i read 3 books in a row on such a similar theme.  obviously i am still figuring out “who i am” (always, a neverending inner monologue), and questions about female identity in this modern world are on the forefront of culture right now, what with 2 women taking over the political headlines combined/contrasted with all the plastic surgery/airbrushing/extreme dieting/female imagery and the commentary on that subject in pop culture. it makes sense women (or maybe just me) are discombobulated. in the past i’ve not been regularly drawn to books on this subject, but my fiction choices of late have shown that it’s on my mind a lot more than maybe i was aware of.

because i now needed a new book and to change pace, today i went to “The West’s Oldest Independent Bookseller” and one of the only local bookstores left in Berkeley – Books, Inc. on 4th street- and bought Seeing by Jose Saramago, a tangential follow-up to Blindness, one of my all-time favorite novels (and now a movie but i haven’t seen it yet). this book is about (farcical yet unnervingly realistic) political upheaval. From The New Yorker:

Saramago’s sombre masterpiece “Blindness” had an almost mythic power, whereas his latest novel, a political satire set in the same nameless capital city, opens with more wit and less heart. When Election Day coincides with a terrible rainstorm, the government worries that no one will venture out to vote. This fear is unfounded, but the election results are even more alarming: seventy per cent of the city’s voters have cast a blank ballot. Saramago has enormous fun imagining the official acrobatics precipitated by this apparent vote of no confidence, and, as the political hypocrisies and bureaucratic absurdities multiply, the narrative hums with correspondences to current events. Initially, readers may miss the previous novel’s intensity of feeling, but this one’s lightness proves deceptive: for Saramago’s beleaguered citizens, even thoughts never uttered can be fatal, and everyone is guilty until otherwise notified.

looking forward to it.

sleeping beauty

i’ve been reading and linking to a lot so there’s a lot going on over here @GoogleReader and here@twitter, but no so much here. because, well, not to go on again about exhaustion, but oh man am i so tired, and it takes energy to write.  so many nights without good sleep. lying in bed.  twisting. turning. thinking.

first, last week my (now) chronic shoulder/neck pain spiked again, to the point that on last friday morning i was shriveled and exhausted and crying on the couch and jay made me to to the ER. what for? they won’t tell me anything new. DRUGS, that’s what for. but it turns out, the drugs, they don’t work miracles, and in fact, somehow, vicodin keeps me AWAKE. WHO KNEW.  as it has been for the past 6 months, the pain comes in waves, and now today, is subsiding back down to a point where it’s only slightly aggravating. i’m just more mentally frustrated than anything else.

then, just as i was feeling better, the boy half went and crashed on his mount bike something fierce, and so now HE’s the one taking all the drugs and rolling around in bed all uncomfortable from pain, and i have not had a good night’s sleep in over a week. and yet, somehow, even if i crawl in bed at 9:00pm, i still can’t go to sleep.  sometimes for hours and hours. insomnia sucks.

so while i intended to write something this week about, i don’t know, all the other crap going on in the world, right now all i want to do is go home and crawl in bed with my cat. which, by the way, i recently learned on This American Life, people from other cultures find weird, that americans sleep with their cats. huh.

i am only coming through in waves

the approximate scale is 15 to 30:
a nice-looking spectrum in its duplicity,
but there’s a lot of room in the middle.

my right arm is barely alive.
one of my least attractive personality traits
is that when i’m in pain i whine.
how much does it hurt?
i don’t know if i have a low threshold for pain or for complaining.

sailing through the wet-green and foggy-blue,
today is not the first day i wished my bike commute was longer.