intellectual properties

holding down the power button

have you tried turning it off and on again?

i need a reset button.  i realized a while ago, that for 2004-2008, i had a weeklong rebooting procedure that took place in the middle of the desert where i drank a gallon of water every day and ate very little and rode my bike for miles and danced for hours every day.  some people go to burning man and toxify themselves;  i was always detoxing.  some people go to yoga retreats in bali to do this kind of thing, to eat sparingly and meditate and flush and cleanse.  for 5 years i did it at burning man. and this year, i did not have that.  my mind was ok with it, the not going, because i had europe instead! but i don’t think my body was.  and traveling around europe for a month instead was the opposite, physically, drinking wine at all hours and smoking cigarettes and hookahs and eating all kinds of rich creamy fattening foods because there was nothing else and yes walking but not in the hot sun and not for all night and sleeping 10-12 hours a day is not exercise.  and i think that this is true, and if there’s anything i now regret about not going to burning man this year it is that i did not get this physical reboot.

and yes now, not to keep going on about it, but my body hurts. and i need TIME to find some other way to reboot.  and my boss, he is so kind, he today agreed that i should be at work less, sitting in my chair less, and that i can cut the number of hours my butt is in this chair and it will be fine.  and also that i can have someone build me a standing desk configuration, so that the hours i am here will be better.  and while it didn’t take the pain away, at least i think i’ll have more time to Focus On My Body now, more time for therapy appointments and yoga and walking and things, and less time sitting. this is good news.

on to other topics, for the rest of 2009 it looks like a lot of low-key hibernatory activities, although we are going to Tahoe for Christmas (yay!) and so i will actually see some snow this year. the chain of christmas holiday parties starts this friday night and lasts until around 1/1 (i don’t have any plans for NYE yet and i don’t plan on making any either). i haven’t had a drink in 9 days (i sound like an alcoholic but this is for cleansing/healing reasons, not addiction reasons, i swear) and i intend to stay sober until around sunset on 12/31. this makes holiday parties slightly less fun, but not a big deal. lack of hangovers makes up for it.

and while i’ve been bitching and moaning (literally) a lot these past few weeks (and to those of you who have had to put up with it IRL, please be kind enough to forgive any snappy retorts, evil eyes, or frustrated outbursts you may have been the recipient of or been witness to; i swear i am not really like this), today i feel optimistic, and am once again counting my blessings instead of curses. most of those blessings are people, and i am most thankful for the lot of wonderful humans in my life who make this whole l-i-v-i-n thing bearable.

carry on.

(aside: for the full first episode of The IT Crowd, quoted and linked in the first line, click here. awesome sauce.)

december readjustment

if you don’t follow my twitter feed or aren’t my friend on facebook, it might seem like not a lot has been happening in my online world, but i am here.  it seems i’m less inclined to write here than in those two places, and so this blog is left for the things that don’t go there.

i’ll not repeat too much, but the most dominant recent personal item is that i declared December “Focus on My Body Month”, as it is now going on 4 straight weeks that i’ve been experiencing non-stop back, neck and shoulder pain, and i’m doing everything i can to a) soothe (saunas, hottubs, massages), b) correct (chiro) and c) prevent (cleaner living, more exercise, etc).  and it’s not so much that these are huge adjustments for me in my life, i’m already a pretty healthy person who eats well and exercises and all that, but the mental space it has been taking up to ACTIVELY observe and correct my physical posture and habits has been incredibly unexpected.  it’s also been hard to gather and weigh all the advice, online and offline, from friends and doctors, as on paper it SEEMS to me that i am already doing all of the things anyone might suggest to correct such a problem, yet it is not going away.  chiro. massage. exercise. ergonomic adjustments. supplements. therapies. doing them. ALL.  and so then there’s the mental space taken up by depressed thoughts that this might be a condition i suffer for the rest of my life, although everyone assures me it is reversible/curable, but as i said, i have been DOING ALL THE RIGHT THINGS and not a lot is changing, so this is hard to accept and sometimes i will admit i am despondent. and then this leads to more chain linked thoughts about aging, etc. and the mood just spirals from there.

so for the past 10 days or more i’ve upped all my physical regimens and i’ve been getting deep massages and seeing the chiro and making doctor appointments and going to the gym daily and eating an almost perfectly vegan whole food diet and abstaining from alcohol etc., and all of these things, combined with the aforementioned mental energy just THINKING about all of these things, has left very little room to think or do much else, not to mention that i have been irritable, grumpy, and not in the best of moods because of the constant chronic pain, lack of sleep due to pain/discomfort, and oh also THE DARKNESS outside.  and i am tired of it.  tired of thinking about it, talking about it, doing things about it. so i am focusing as best as i can at resolving this for 1 month. i can take this for one month.  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.

tweet jump

i’m totally guilty of twittering more than blogging these days, for a few reasons, these the most prominent:

1. i can tweet from my phone. i don’t have a PDA. i don’t want a PDA. i don’t really need to be able to read my email and blog everywhere i go. but it’s nice to be able to send out a short tweet now and then from the hills and valleys and streets and trails of my life.

2. my tweets, combined with things i share on google reader and sometimes my flickr uploads, have now become sort of crib notes for things i will probably blog about in longer detail later, which is helpful when i go to reconstruct my past thoughts and experiences for longer entries. and, if i don’t, at least there was some sort of communication about whatever it was. i guess what has happened recently is that twitter+google reader have sort of replaced blogging about external things like politics/news and small events for the time being, but i don’t see it as a total replacement for the longer, more autobiographical parts of my blog. that is just on hiatus for now because….

3. if you’re reading this via RSS feed and aren’t following me on twitter or my facebook friend, you probably don’t know that i’ve once again been suffering from problems with my right trapezius muscle, which makes the entire right side of my upper body hurt. i’ve cut back on typing, at work and not at work, so sitting down to blog hasn’t happened in a while. tweeting 140 characters is a lot less painful than blogging currently.

blogging will resume shortly. hopefully in a few days i can catch up. until then, pls refer to the shorter, hyperlinked windows into my life.

trapezius

my trapezius muscle is killing me again - it doesn’t flare up often, but when it does it’s super acute and i could barely sleep last night and even when i’m NOT moving my right arm the whole side of my body hurts. jason’s healing hands have agreed to massage me after work, but i have the sinking feeling this is more of a long-term problem.

my body is really not happy with me right now. i’ve had a series of head colds since thanksgiving, my muscles are in knots, my digestive system is totally whacked, and i’m bloated and weak.

people might think i’m hard on myself re: diet & excercise, but when i slack off it catches up to me so fast. i need, not want, NEED to get back on track with my highfiber/low fat vegan diet and back to yoga/hooping/dancing/walking. it’s not about vanity. it’s about feeling good and i feel like shit. once this muscle pain goes away i swear i’m going back to yoga.

draft…

…post about how my back pain was incapacitating yesterday and when i got to work i just stood there staring at my chair not wanting to sit down and type all day because it hurt and so i read my email and then went to yoga and then sat in the sauna at the gym and then called jason and i went over to his house around 2:00 (see? my job is awesome - i can take 3/4 of the day off when i really need to) and he gave me a massage during which he found a huge knot in my lower trapezius muscle that was shooting pain all the way up my back and neck and shoulders and he did a great job and worked it out and i feel tons better today and how this reminds me that i should get off my lazy ass and go to yoga in the mornings to prevent all this from reoccuring but damn 6:00a.m. is hella early.