serinde

In which I had a Moment of "I simply cannot wear any of these old things again"; which is ridiculous, really, but I know enough to get out of my own way if there's something actually motivating me, however illogical it may be.

So, there is an SCA event hight Mudthaw, and it's pretty big locally, and more so this year because our dear Baron Dave was stepping down and various & sundry of our peeps were getting significant awards. Therefore, of course, one wants to look one's best and hold up our side and all that good stuff. Combining this with the ever-present elephant in my mental room of "OMG do I not have enough clothes for two weeks of Pennsic", I determined at the beginning of this month that I should make a new dress.

( Planning. )

( Process. )

( Presults. )

I feel a little discombobulated this morning, because I have been so monomaniacal about this project, and now I have a certain amount of "...now what?" I feel some urge to start working on another dress, being on a roll and striking while the iron is hot and other such figurative language, but I also don't know if I should do something else like, I dunno, laundry or vacuuming or sensibly planning out other obligations coming upon me. I seem to have two possible methods of working: "all in" and "avoidance". I'd like to even that out a little bit. Still, it feels really positive to have completed a project in a question of weeks rather than months or years, which are the usual units of measure.

Today marks the end of two (work) weeks of the New Regime; I get out of bed at 6am, do half an hour of yoga to Dengue Fever's "Cannibal Corpse", make a cup of tea or coffee (depending on the day), and drink that while I write morning pages for half an hour. Then I get ready for work and all that. Weekends are slack-permissible. I have fought the lizard brain down and not missed a day, in spite of tiredness, malaise, and purring cats.

Therefore the lizard brain has developed a new tactic. "It's been two weeks," it whispers. "What's changed? It's not doing any good. You might as well sleep in, or lounge in bed petting a kitty."

This is, of course, arrant nonsense. No, doing yoga hasn't made me lose weight--but I knew it wouldn't; not even when I was doing an hour of it three days a week. That's what the bike is for. And yes, my left leg is still very weak and not able to keep up--but it will take more than two stupid weeks to make that happen and I know this because I have been in physical therapy enough to be clear on how long it takes to see progress, particularly with a chronically, multiply screwed-up limb like this. The yoga's purpose is to keep me loose and flexible and to kick-start my metabolism in the morning, and it is doing those things. Secondarily I'm wanting it to help me get into that meditative, Zen-ish state, but this is harder when I have to tell myself what pose to do next rather than just follow a teacher.

Similarly, no, writing morning pages hasn't cured me of mental wharrgarbl and emotional roller-coasters & confusion--but that's not what it does. It drags all of that out into the open to be looked at, understood, and hopefully addressed. Eventually, yes, one expects a milder internal climate, but this is an ongoing and extended process and not to be sorted in a couple of weeks.

Finally, it has not cracked me loose on more public writing; one notes that my last Foojournal post was the one describing what new regime I was enacting, and there's been nothing since, here or elsewhere. OTOH, I have been focused on sewing, and secondarily research. So mental things are moving, and I will take that as a reason for cautious optimism. Wait and see, I think.

The milestones I'm looking for sound something like this:
* Getting up and doing being a reflexive habit, not a mental dialogue every. single. morning.
* Signs of my left leg getting stronger. Right now, rising into high and then crescent lunge is very difficult and shaky. My end-goal is for it to be as stable as my right side, but I'll take any visible improvement to start with. (Hilariously, I'm perfectly fine in Tree pose on that side, which is generally considered much harder. i do not even.)
* When I have any kind of mental agitas, correctly identifying and using the right tools to deal with it; which, I think, exhibits as "not losing several hours/an evening to wallowing, moping, internet uselessness, or other unhelpful and unproductive behaviors". This doesn't mean I can't slack if I feel that's the right pill for my ill, but it should be an active and mindful choice. (I can actually point to a level-up here; on Tuesday, I suddenly felt un-obsessed with the dress I'd been working monomaniacally on, and was sliding down the rabbit hole of totally wasting the evening. I stopped myself, sat down, and wrote down a list of everything I didn't feel like doing. After that, I realized I kinda felt like finally organizing my contact synchronization and upgrading my laptop to Mountain Lion, both of which needed doin'. Profit!)

I'm hoping that when the weather breaks and I can ride my bike more, this will help reinforce the benefits I'm getting, too. It usually puts me in a better state for the day (and also reduces my appetite, yay).

serinde: This is another element of the thought I had this morning, about how I think part of the reason I am so emotionally out of whack these last couple weeks is due to lack of time for reflection and writing and things.
nedlnthred: *nods*
nedlnthred: Kinda hafta schedule down time in when the calendar gets like this.
nedlnthred: I'd hoped to have some last night, but alas.
serinde: The other element is that I do not have the oomph to do any of these things after work. And there is only so much morning to go around, unless I want to be like cobrawoman and get up at 4:30.
serinde: Maybe it is the right answer, but I mean, ulaeulauelauelauelae.
nedlnthred: Yeah, I learned a while back that I can only do one thing before work.
serinde: I have the bandwidth if I had the time.
nedlnthred: But scheduling an hour of down time for tea after work, before meeting whomever is one option.
serinde: In fact it would be really glorious to do half an hour of yoga, then make a cup of tea, then write and drink tea for half an hour, and then get ready for work.
serinde: OH HEY IF IT IS GLORIOUS I SHOULD DO IT

So the leadership program of great renown had its last session the first week of this month; and once that heat was off, as well as the start-of-semester wharrgarbl dying down, I determined to make another go at the various lifestyle changes I had worked out back in June. If you don't feel like making the clicky, it boiled down to these:

1) stop what I'm doing by 10:30, be in bed by 11
2) do some yoga or other calisthenics in the morning, rather than coffee-and-stare-at-internets; carry coffee into work
3) ride bike more
4) spend less money; take lunch more, cook more
5) be diligent about tracking what I eat

Concurrent with this, right after the program ended I was feeling unusually down. There are, of course, any number of possible contributing factors--kitty, major project stress, seasonal change?--but it made a useful benchmark.

For each of the last three weeks, I have done yoga 4 of 5 work mornings; rode my bike to & from work either two or three times; been increasingly good about food tracking (it's not 100% but we're getting there); and been cooking and taking my lunch more often than not*. I've also been going out less. I have not been entirely diligent about bedtime, but I'm in bed by 11:15 more often than not.

Results thus far:
+ I am in much, much better state of mind, on the whole.
+ Weight is at last starting to creep downwards.
+ I have spent a lot more time working on my stuff, whether it be knitting, sewing, cooking, or domestic improvements.
+ My complexion has gotten clearer (!). This makes little sense to me, considering I haven't eaten less sugar or chocolate, neither of which is usually my downfall anyways, but there it is.
+ The apartment is getting closer to where I want it to be.
+ Biking is becoming easier! I am in my top gear (of 7. don't judge me.) for much of the ride, and I can get up the first half of the OMG DOOM DOOM hill under the GWB.
- So far the yoga has not yet seemed to improve the weakness in my left leg.
- I keep waking up half an hour before my alarm, at what seems to be the end of a REM cycle? Then drifting back to sleep, then snapping awake when the alarm hits.

This looks like pretty unqualified success, and although it's really hard, in that first five minutes, to drag myself from the warm snuggly bed and go to something exercise-y, I always feel better when I do; and one morning the lizard brain had convinced me to lame out, and within ten minutes I found myself on the mat anyways. So it is full speed ahead, and maintain these changes as best I can through the exigencies of the holiday season.

* of course then I spent money I shouldn't have on fripperies, but I mean, one problem at a time

I have been sleeping ill for the past month or two. First I chalked it up to not exercising, so I made an effort to exercise more. Then I figured it was the idiots on the freakishly loud motorcycles, but do I not live in the city and should not I be able to cope? Then it was too hot, so I blamed that. The last few nights have been lovely sleeping weather, though, so I'm having to face up that the reality is somewhere else (particularly since I've been sleeping like a log at sweh's). I'd had a few suspicions already starting to niggle, and I think I have it confirmed: I'm not perfectly at ease in my new digs yet.

That is, it feels like "home", and I don't feel alienation or MY GOD WHAT IS THIS PLACE when I'm about my daily wossnames. But when I lay me down to sleep, any random noise that I hear snaps me awake and alert. Not the jerkweeds cruisin' up and down, I mean, but anything else: a creak as the floorboards cool, the *thump* of Ranger jumping heavily down from the couch in the other room, a strange jingling noise down on the street which I think might've been someone dropping their dog's leash; but any small noise, I go to full-on alert and find my hand reaching for the knife hanging on my bedpost.

I don't think I'm a particularly paranoid human, even as much as a single female in NYC maybe ought to be. I don't have any degree of apprehension when I'm out and about, nor when I'm awake and puttering (even if it's equally late at night), so it's not as if the new neighborhood (which, yes, does have a crime rate higher than the UES, and has had a spate of recent muggings and sexual assaults) is itself what's triggering it. Home invasion isn't really the favorite flavor up here, and even if it were, I'm on the fifth floor for heaven's sake; there are a lot of targets further down. No. I think it just has to be that there's more random noises, I'm not used to them, and since this place isn't one room I can't just open my eyes, see that all's well/identify the sound, and settle back down immediately (and then the noise is checked off as "you can ignore this").

I am sure this will come with time, but until then, I'm feeling seriously and increasingly dragged-out, which is messing me up in other ways.

I had put off thinking about most lifestyle arrangements until after moving, because how do you know what things will look like til after you're settled; and then until after all the California trips were done with, because ualeaualeualeualeaue; but all that's done and the apartment is mostly settled (although there was enough of putting that off to warrant a separate post), and although yes the stress is ramping up at work and I Don't Wanna Think About Being Virtuous, the fact is that I know I will feel better if I realign things. So, herewith, the long mental burp.

( Cut text working yet? )

I observe that my last several non-cooking posts were heavy on the stress and upset, so let me take a moment to reassure the Gentle Readers that matters are improving on most fronts. Ranger is in fine fettle and appears to have entirely recovered from his abscess. I have not yet been able to take him back to discuss the potential kidney issues, but he's eating, drinking, relieving, active (for age 17) and engaged; even his coat is looking better. I have been diligent in getting settled into the new place, and although there is still a dauntingly long list of Things To Do, it is definitely in a livable state. Not yet an entertain-able state, perhaps, at least not IMAO, but matters are progressing. And, I am finally reunited with all my STUF, including that which had been stored in sweh's garage for the last four years.

Work is still getting ahead of me. The first session of the leadership program was terrific, though intense (duh), and there's a lot of homework and what-not I have to do; the idea is that you take these principles and apply them in your daily work, and then you need to Show Your Work. So there's that, and then there's also the big software implementation project I am running; and when you add that to the day-to-day, plus me being gone for a week, then various other people being gone for training, and now I'm going to be out three days for training on said software...I feel like it's all getting ahead of me. I'm not as stressed as I was last year about this time, thank fuck; it's not spoiling my sleep and I don't have electric worms running along my nerves; but I have definite moments of EVERYBODY PANIC. Well, I knew it would be a tough spring. Keep on keepin' on.

I am putting out cautious buds on the creative front as well. A Super-Secret Knitting Project, which is using a number of techniques I've never done before, is going well and may even be done on deadline for a change. At the last minute (and I do mean the last minute) I put my blue, unlined GFD into the A&S competition at Mudthaw...which, to be honest, I thought was a display not a competition, or I might not have done it...and got tolerably good feedback, and in the course of discussion of it I somehow committed to teach a class at Pennsic and also at Southern Region War Camp; and I'm excited to get to work on the summer sewing. (Though I need to bung the spare room/sewing room into better shape before that can advance.)

The main stressor, other than direct work stuff, is that there's so much I want to do and there aren't enough hours in the day. I can win some time by managing my time more wisely, but I fear I am still going to have to re-engineer some expectations, and I hate that. And I haven't even started folding in workout choices--extra time/extra hassle if I start commuting by bike, or timing and logistics if I start going to the neighborhood dojo or yoga studio. But I know I'm going to need one or more of those in order to not go mad. I really love the local hang-out/cafe/bar; they have a quiz night, they have a KNITTING CIRCLE, they have good live music, but if I go there much I shall be in the poorhouse, let alone the time sink. And I want to chum around with the peeps who live up here. At the same time, I want to stay in and nest and bloody well finish Skyrim and catch up on TV shows and and and.

This working-for-a-living thing. What bosh.

The general state of the state is...a state of flux, in nearly every corner of existence. I still don't have a peep back from the co-op board where I want to move; I'm following up on that as I can, but at the moment just trusting that it will happen (and trying to silence the shrieking in my skull). I'm packing that which I can right now--starting with the easy stuff, books and DVDs and fabric and so on--in a collection of boxes kindly gifted by cobrawoman and sedai, and others I dumpster-picked from the student caff downstairs. I've also made another leap of faith by commanding U-Haul to deliver some specialized boxes (dish barrel and glass packs) early this week; they ship UPS so it may even make it safely into the building, Deo volente.

I had some emotional pinwheeling that was really screaming in the inside of my head for the last couple of months, making me unable to sleep or concentrate, all that rotten business; but, for the third leap of faith, I've actually talked about it, like I was some kind of grownup or balanced, rational being or something. Nothing is different in a real or practical sense, but getting it out of my head and into the world has at least made me able to sleep again (though, like Macbeth, I may have murdered sleep for others, and I am grieved at that).

Work is good, actually, but I am pre-loading some worry and strain. Next month is going to be a right bastard; I have to prep for this leadership program--oh, I didn't mention? Yes, I've been enrolled in a year-long leadership development program, very eminent, run by the dude who was CIO at MIT for twenty years, no fucking pressure at all why do you ask--the first session of which is in Stanford the last week of March, and there is homework one must complete beforehand. Plus, we are kicking off a major application implementation on March 1, and this is almost entirely my pidgin; it will stand or fall based on what I put into it, and it is costing us a number with a lot of zeros on the end, so I had bloody well better not be at home to the Fuckup Fairy. Plus there's the usual day-to-day stuff that keeps me off the street. And moving in the middle of it, which is always glorious for concentrating the mind on the work at hand.

I know I just have to keep on keepin' on, as the man says, and really that's what I do, and I can do it this time too; I know this even in the dark of the night. I could just really wish that it all didn't have to come down at once, and on top of all the other sorrow and chaos swirling around.

I haven't really posted about work since starting the new job a year ago. (Then again, I haven't posted much about anything, so it's not that I've been deliberately exclusionary.) But it is needful to set up some background before getting to the actual meat of this post.

( Lo: Background. )

( Primal conflict: man vs. self. )

( What do you do when you don't know what to do? )

( Takeaway: )

So, their current Majesties of the East need clo'es; and they put the touch on Tasha for this; and she was unable to do honor to their request at this time, so she and murieldechimay conspired, and thus Kasia and I were offered this mission, should we choose to accept it. Which, of course, we did.

( Words words words )