no boys allowed in the room!!!!

well obvs that's what i was thinking too!!! i didn't explicitly say it but

― cross over the mushroom circle (La Lechera), Wednesday, September 3, 2014 12:23 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah I got you! I just have to overstate everything, you know me.

feeling like they have to meet some kind of estrogen goal where they suddenly will be delighted to fold their kids clothes.

OTM--this is that emotional labor. DOING labor isn't enough, you have to pretend it's your greatest pleasure in life lest anyone think you don't love them enough.

So last night I had my first appointment with a nutritionist which was probably long overdue but it left me so excited and hopeful. Our whole goal is to work on my mentality of good foods v. bad foods and dieting or restriction and food-associated guilt in general. Basically we're trying to reshape the entire way I think about food and body image. We're going to try to do with using intuitive eating and I'm not allowed to track or count anything anymore which is both liberating and terrifying. I was also interested to learn that I was eating way few calories on most days and then overcompensating on weekends and throwing everything off whack. Anyway - this whole thing should be very interested and I'm excited to be doing it. Between this and my 2x a week therapy I'm pretty sick of talking/thinking about myself but I'm hoping it'll all be worth it soon.

Good luck, E. That sounds really interesting, and I hope you find it useful.

Thank you :).

That's a lot of hard work! You should be proud!

E, I'm in an online coaching group doing something similar, and also an almost unbelievably good online forum. Think I still have your email, will send you a forum link.

Oh man - please do! I would LOVE that. :D

And thanks, Carl. :D It often feels like a lot and sometimes it's overwhleming and feels like everything is worse than ever but I feel like it has to get worse before it gets better sometimes and trust that it's all worthwhile.

E that sounds cool. i'm into intuitive eating. now that I'm almost 30 i feel so much less bad about my enormous body and proud of how much i eat. even when my looks-obsessed co-worker is saying insane things and putting water on her salad i shovel still more food into my mouth. like hey this rice is awesome i put butter in it. i learned that it does not make me fat it just makes me into an engine. or it does make me fat and i'm ok with it. i am like a wall of person and no one can knock me over. also i am healthy as a horse. i love eating and being strong.

WTG E! Yeah that sounds like a lot of heavy stuff to deal with all at once, but it's def worth the effort! It'll be worth the trouble when you realize how much of your brain is freed from not thinking about all that stuff all the time. Then you can use it to think about other more interesting things, things of your choosing.

wait does she really put water on her salad?

yes that is absolutely true

she puts vinegar and then i guess feels like it needs something to cut it but doesn't want to put oil because that has fat in it so she sprinkles a little water on it

that is the saddest sentence

anyway yay E! so happy for you!

water on salad
ok now I've heard everything

E that sounds like a really great approach! I'm excited for u

I hope you can report back to us your findings and the things that are blowing your mind/rocking your world as you progress.

I have had to go back into a healthy eating mode that I am trying really hard to not allow to become Awful Diet Brain. I would love to hear more about intuitive eating discoveries if anyone has stuff they want to share to maybe inspire me and others

Veg, I will FB message you the same link I sent E. I've copied and pasted a ton of stuff from the board so that I can reflect on it. Paraphrasing some of that pretty closely to reflect my own experience:

Something that's been a real game-changer is thinking about what MY happiest, best approach to food might look like. It's entirely possible to have goals that are related to sustainable body changes that are geared to making you feel awesome, and other, just-as-important goals about food enjoyment, and Have It All. Food enjoyment might entail stuff like deciding to try every flavour of Ben & Jerry's or have pizza for breakfast regularly or never go a day without a nut butter or whatever floats your boat.

BUT, drop/tweak the things that you don't enjoy and won't miss, and addd in foods and behaviours you do want, rather than just cutting stuff out.

So it becomes like a sort of relaxed, curious, playful game where you win at getting the most enjoyment from your food every day. You remove the feeling of being constantly negative, broken, trying to control everything, 'at war'. No deadlines or pressure, no foods ruled out. The most important thing is long-term consistency with the broad patterns, not short term inflexibility.

I discovered all this stuff last October. I've been through a few phases since then: 1. unbridled joy at eating whatever I damn well want. 2. clinging to that a bit too much and eating more than I actually wanted. Sort of proving to myself I was allowed. 3. Slowly realizing that this was not only 'not worth it' in some theoretical sense, like 'not supposed to be worth it but I secretly love it', but actually, objectively no fun. I had to do it over and over and over again to be sure! 4. eating less. I only got to 'eating less' in about July. I'm finding clothes are looser now, and that's happening very, very slowly, and that's absolutely fine by me.

I'm doing 0 exercise except walking, and not even that much walking. I'd like to do more, but this kind of approach to eating is totally decoupled from any formal exercise at all.

^^^ this is where I want to be

I am so excited to be doing this and have just started to read some of the stuff on the boards. So far I haven't counted a single calorie but have continued to make healthy choices. I'm recording where I am on the hunger scale and how I feel after eating. I'm also eating a lot more slowly and listening to my body as best I can. It's been pretty interesting so far. I have a busy week coming up so don't know how much I'll be able to devote to learning more but I'm going to keep doing this and dig deeper as soon as I can.

:)

Nice! I don't use the hunger scale because it focuses me a bit too much on each bite (what about now? what about NOW?) but I do try to keep a background awareness of how full I'm getting. Mostly I try to 'pre-decide' how much is going to satisfy me and hold me a good few hours, and then just eat that, and I get better at that over time (there's a lot about pre-deciding on the boards)

Today was triggery. I just typed out a big long post about "false" rape accusations and the narrative surrounding them, but I don't have the energy to deal with the fall-out and the flappy-headed little boys today.

Someone can be falsely accused of murder, but it doesn't seem to mean that murder "isn't real" and all murder victims somehow faked it. Someone can be falsely accused of theft, but it doesn't seem to mean that theft "isn't real", and all theft victims made it up. But the existence of one single false rape accusation somehow often just gets twisted to mean that rape is ~not really a thing~, and all women are liars.

And I've just been sent down the awfully triggery memory hole about that time that I really, really was raped, and had the bruising and the vaginal injuries to prove it, but because I'd been drinking, and had a history of mental illness, the police pressured me into dropping the whole thing. And that's not a fun place to be. Especially not for the amusement and self-righteous flapping-headedness of little boys who muuuuuust discuss these pressing issues to maintain some edgy, contrarian stance.

im so sorry, branwell. it's so wrong

yeah
I hear this 'police pressured me into dropping it' a lot, and each time I'm shocked, partly because it seems almost a piteous cliche now that surely we MUST be past but no, it's apparently reality for A LOT of people.

You know, when it happened, I was like, shit, I am a bad feminist, and a bad rape victim and it's my fault for not being stronger, and choosing to focus on trying to get on with my life and crumbling in the face of the realisation that the police were far more interested in researching my life than catching the assailant. But the more women I've talked to, and the more times I've heard the same story, it's like, no, this is a thing. But oh no! It's just anecdata, and men are the real victims here, etc blah blah.

But, y'know, when having certain conversations carries an emotional cost for certain parties in them, that means those voices get marginalised further because you can't have another conversation again.

And of course I'm thinking to myself "this is my fault that I'm walking around with this tempest in my head now." (Oh! I finally worked out what would stop the tempest again. Start drinking. Breaking mine own rules over not drinking because I'm upset.) Because I was not in a great place to start with today, no sleep, sinus headache, rude headhunter ringing at 8am, super stressed over job situation, bummed out over deceased friend's birthday yesterday, 0 stretch room for absorbing any extra give and take, and boom there it is.

Broken record, this shit is so boring. And yet it still has the capability to mess you up when you least expect it.

really otm, esp this
Broken record, this shit is so boring. And yet it still has the capability to mess you up when you least expect it.

this one hit me right in the gut after i realized how many times i had brushed it under the carpet because it was easier than dealing with it head on

http://www.rookiemag.com/2014/09/harassment-at-work/

When one feels bad for not-saying-something, but even worse for saying something. :-/

The exhaustion, vs the fear of making things even worse.

Man, this sounds awful, but if I could go back and not report getting raped to the police, I would never have done so. It was a horrible process, and ended up with 0 effect on the bad guy and a long, drawn-out, ugly pile of bullshit for me. The only thing I can figure is if I didn't do it, I would probably feel guilty about not having done so. People said all kinds of stupid things like, "What if he's doing the same thing to his daughter?" (who was 2 years old). That seems...improbable. Thanks for the consolance, though.

I made a lot of comics about talking to the cops at the time and they are not any good. Very solipsistic. And nothing I'd want to share or look at now. But that got me through it.

Something can have been "the right thing to do" at the time, and still be something you would never in a million years ever do again if you could go back.

I mean, if I got a magic do-over wand on my life, I probably wouldn't have gone to the police. But if I had that magic do-over wand, I wouldn't have gone out that night, or gone to that bar, or ... *insert missing memories here* ... that ended with me coming round from total unconsciousness with a guy on top of me assaulting me. But it's the *missing memories* which were unfortunately a huge part of my life, at that stage of my life, which complicate everything so much. The guilt that I don't know, and will never know the full story. The guilt that it was my fault.

But Crabbits, knowing that you had pretty much the most straightforward story, and STILL got fucked over by the "justice" system. It's like, OK, stop blaming myself, even if I had those memories, chances are, it would not have changed the outcome. I am so sorry that you went through that awful process. I am so sorry that the long, ugly, drawn-out pile of bullshit happened and this is a world where these things exist.

I'd like to not lose another day to having that particular set of memories rattling around my head.

I'm tired of having to be strong about this all the time.

I'd like for once in my life, not to be seen as the problem or seen as ~controversial~ or wicked or terrible or, y'know, the whole "OMG, attention seeking!" trope, but as someone who has been badly damaged, and who is vulnerable.

I'd like to be given the benefit of the doubt which gets handed out regularly to people who have acted a lot worse than I have.

But, like, allowing yourself to be vulnerable in public means opening yourself up to every flapping-head boy who thinks it's a fun game "that person has a weak spot, let's follow them around poking it."

At the moment, I am not coping with this. But I reserve the right to be treated as a human being who is not coping.

i respect u ~*~ <3

I finally have a bicycle-riding fitness buddy who is cool with me being leagues behind others at rate of fitness progress.
She's cool and smart and shy and the huffy-puffy isolation of the bike trail is a great time to socialize.
Also a great time to be silent together.
This is the first time I've had a buddy to get real with where we're not drinking in order to get real.
It's cool.

Also I hope LL doesn't feel like I'm ripping her off when I announce I signed up for a couple lessons at a local drums tudio.
Percussion class was my DREAM in sixth grade but my parents forbade me joining it, saying it "wasn't for girls."
I was so deeply jealous of the one girl in that percussion class.

I might suck ass at drumming but at least I will KNOW EMPIRICALLY.

i wish you the best, as always
i was hoping you would play guitar so we could start a band but this is what you want!

i'm feeling kinda moderately low about it tbh because i am trying really hard to make things happen and it doesn't seem to be enough
i love playing and i am getting better all the time and am trying to be proud of myself without seeming like a braggart and what i want is really quite modest but i feel like there is something cosmically telling me that i haven't earned it yet or i don't deserve it, that i waited too long and have too many hangups and am too old and too whatever to be taken seriously, therefore everything i attempt is going to fail in spite of it being completely achievable for many people i know

that is bumming me out but the act of the drumming, no -- that is still extremely enjoyable and is going really well. i think it was definitely something i could have been doing a long time ago if i had had the opportunity.

so embarrassing clicking post on that but there it is

had the opportunity --> given myself the opportunity

don't listen to that inner rotten morrissey

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bf1g00qbv10

my private solution with 'art' that i am already good at – drawing – is to cut myself down before ever getting the chance to feel like the tall poppy
it's just for my private enjoyment
it's just to express personal things
it's just a cute piffle for someone's birthday card
it's something that if I do feel deeply about to obfusticate it in a million oblique angles so no one can ever get what it was behind it

I feel your shit, LL! Everything is too ___. I wish I could jam out with you but my secret dream play along is the chapman stick! I did look into getting skype lessons but it was just too cost prohibitive.

I was in occupational therapy for motor skills stuff for the first 5 years of school; I am legitimately 'delayed' in that area. I didn't feel good at anything physical until a few years ago. It gives me hope but I have been too self-conscious to do anything but solo pursuits at anything until now. And I still suck and am slow and demand more patience than may have. So I hope this drum teacher is OK. Will have to be OK that I can never be K8 Bush or Tony Chapman.

blurgh Tony Levin obv

part of my problem is that i am not an artist
i am not a person who has "expressed myself" via any artistic medium
it's new for me to express myself at all, at least publicly

it's not something i'm proud of :-/

i don't even know what the tall poppy is (i've heard the phrase but it has never applied to me personally)

anyway the whole process is excruciating but i feel it has been good for me and necessary, if overly fraught
i just don't want this emotional part to interfere with my ability to make my shit happen
and that's what i'm afraid of
the end

also record some of your initial impressions and i could use them (with your permission) in my presentation that i am trying to put together for work about the intersection of language learning and music learning!!

and yeah that song is basically my inner voice from the age of 14

if you can deal with some shitty phone recordings then, yes!
By 'tall poppy' I mean I want to stand out but I am terrified of doing so because the pain of getting cut down is too painful
I think you are a cool person and I could wax on that a lot but sometimes it's not good to put someone on the spot

I love your blond wig collage thing and think of it often

wait wait what did I just say

i know what you mean
that was a big deal for me!

all of the recordings i've one have been shitty phone recordings -- those are no problem, but i mean record your thoughts! your feelings before and after. they're fleeting, so i think it's impt to catch them right at the beginning.
and thanks. i appreciate it. i cherish each and every time someone steps out on a limb and says something nice about something i've made.

do you believe in a silent period in music learning??

Ha, my life from 5-37 was my silent period! Listening, absorbing, learning patterns. Yeah, in a way I think so. Not formally though. I tried to not get caught in the trap of being afraid to produce sounds from the beginning this time.

Oops one --> DONE above

haha makes sense
well I'll keep you posted

"tall poppy syndrome" is a very common expression in new zealand but i've had to explain it to a few americans.

there is a broad (ugh, sorry) range of skill levels for drumming -- even people that regularly get on stage and play, some only play very basic, not-particularly fast, and that is fine, if that is fulfilling, because ultimately, it's primarily about making yourself happy and having fun.

As someone who initially had aspirations towards being "professional," deciding that playing music was something I do to make myself happy/keep from going insane, and that I would be better off just being "an amateur" -- it was a real relief. Not that I don't have "issues" about it, but focusing less on the comparing myself to others in terms of attention, praise, whether people would respond differently if I were male ... has been very helpful

Also Crabbits, as a scooter-rider, you probably have good balance, which will help if you're playing a drum kit