Tag: dreams

Admit the problem

Well, it is semi-official: My arms are fat. Meaning a noticeable chunk of them is fat, not that they are entirely made of fat or anything.

I couldn’t quite figure it out at first, and I wondered if it was that I was getting bulky from the workouts lately, my arm muscles growing too large or disproportionately in some way (though I doubted that I was that strong, it seemed more likely than the alternative). But, after flexing everything I could in my arms, I have found that a whole layer up top will not flex but will wrinkle like cellulite when prompted (read “squeezed”).

I can’t tell if I’m utterly distraught or just disappointed or annoyed, or if I haven’t even begun to react to it yet, because it is so terrible to me.

I’m leaning towards the lattermost, actually.

It’s kind of funny to me how my arms would make me automatically happy, whenever I saw them or saw their reflection in a mirror or something… but now, one of my greatest tiny delights in my everyday has disappeared…

I suppose that the socially acceptable lesson here is to learn to love myself no matter what, to appreciate and love my body at any stage or state of life. And I value such a view. However, it is exactly the fact that I have not valued and loved my body lately that I am in this current situation. If I had respected my body for the beautiful thing that it is, I would not have been so terrible to it, filling it with minimally nutritious (if at all) foods, and hardly doing enough exercise as it deserves to be well kept. So, while I do love my body, I have zero intentions of keeping the arms as they currently are. The fat has got to go – it will be on the fast breath train out of here, beginning tonight, when I sleep. (In case you didn’t know, that’s technically how we release fat from our bodies, is through breathing, once all the breakdowns happen inside our cells.) Tomorrow begins my return to fully taking care of my body both in terms of food and in terms of physical activity.

I know myself. I have been doubting this whole food regime I first took on last summer for the past seven months. I wanted to get back on it, but I just couldn’t get myself to do so. I needed a solid reason, not just one in my head, one with no genuine foundation. Now I have a foundation: eat as I have been eating, and, despite the exercise, I will not have the body and arms I want to have. Theory tested and proven now. Goodbye, not super-healthy foods!

And phew! Thank goodness for that.

🙂

Post-a-day 2020

So much to say

I sometimes feel that I have so much to say that it would take more time and effort to share it than I am willing to put forth. Which then brings up the question of whether it is eve worth saying in the first place… at times, my answer is a yes, and, at others, a no. Even still, though, the yes content is a lot.

So, perhaps that is why I want to write books and books and books – it is the best way to share a lot.

Huh…

I’m going to think on all of that for a while now, and see what I can determine regarding my writing and sharing and what I feel I am here to do in this world…, I’m beginning to feel a stronger than ever connection between the three, and it somehow seems to be the answer to my everyday question of what to do with myself right now…

Post-a-day 2020

Gratitude

I shared the song specifically with a sixth person today. She is the one who helped me when I was ready to be helped out of the abuse situation, when my eyes finally could see just enough clear light to be able to take a much- and long-desired step forward, out of the gray cast of clouds that had taken over my space for so many months. And she loved me freely the whole way through the end, which made all the difference in the world. I still remember how, when I opened the front door to her, close to midnight that night, I had been terrified…, but, when I saw her face, that she was smiling with true love, I felt everything melt away – it was going to be okay. I was going to be okay.

And it all was. And I was and am.

She and I laughed so much that night. I also cried a whole bunch, both from sorrow and annoyance and from laughter. I remember how she took a photo of me at one point, my eyes swollen and red and puffy, yet so full of light, you could see how free and full of life I felt myself being again. I think she took the photo to document that light having returned to me. I suppose, in many ways, that is an extremely beautiful photo.

🙂

So, she helped me through such a hard time of moving away from, essentially, evil. And then, years down the road, we don’t even communicate with one another anymore. I guess her having gotten a boyfriend turned fiancé turned husband played a rather large role in that. I’ve been okay without her in my daily life these past several years. However, I have always valued her love and her role in my life during that time of true need – I think I always will be grateful to her for that.

And so, when I wrote this song yesterday, she was someone who didn’t even have to come to mind – she was already there. I contemplated whether I actually wanted to share the song with her or not, and, after sleeping on it, I knew it was okay to do. (I had sent her a message yesterday to see if I still had her correct number. When she replied today, I took it as a sign to send her the song.)

I thanked her for her love and help in my time of need, and said how it was invaluable to have someone care for me and be with me after my having been alone in abuse for so long. And I sent the song. I’m not even sure I said that I wrote it, actually… but she understood that I had written it, I think.

Okay, I just checked. I did tell her that I wrote it and that I wanted to share it with her.

Anyway, after I’d sent it all to her, it occurred to me how unreal such messages must be to the average person – I mean, who sends messages like that and so totally out of the blue and short and direct like I did? I don’t know many people who do anything of the sort. I know honest people, open people, but that directness and the unexpectedness of the message, with no real lead-in… no, I don’t know those people.

Haha

Just myself. 😀

Anyway, I’m glad I sent it to her and expressed gratitude to her. And I think she appreciated it, too. 🙂

Post-a-day 2020

Música

I started watching the recordings for another five-day songwriting workshop that a family friend is doing this week. I watched the first video at 11:00 this morning, and glanced st the homework front he next two days before joining the noon live video for today. I’ve done one of these workshops before – that’s what got me those first several songs earlier this summer – so I wasn’t too worried about participating today without having finished the other videos yet. I just followed the guidelines from Monday’s video, and from the snippets I’d watched of Tuesday and Wednesday for the homework for each, and I was ready for today.

While the basic process is rather the same, the approach and specifics were different this time around, so I embraced the opportunity for something new. We were told to find a specific song for inspiration, after doing some topic-finding and lyric-writing work; a song that held a comparable space to the one we wanted our own song to hold.

My song? “When There Was Me And You”, as sung by Vanessa Hudgens in High School Musical. And the topic I had chosen and the lyrics I was writing that had this song somehow be appropriate for portraying the write musical feeling? Overcoming emotional and sexual abuse. Kind of an odd combination, don’tchya say?

Nonetheless, it all turned out beautifully. Hours later, after many, many breaks to go do other things and to allow stuff to sit or to mull, I had a completed song, recorded and shared with the world of my social media friends. And, what’s more, I went back to the piano just about ten minutes ago, and I played through the song again – and I remembered how it all went, and I loved the sang (two very good and rather important signs of song completion).

I sent off the audio recording to my small list of private listeners – you could call them the in club of my music-writing – got a bit of feedback (positive – woohoo!), and then shared the video recording of my playing and singing online. We only were supposed to select five people to hear our songs so far as part of our homework tonight… I had forgotten about that until just now… guess I did much more than five… haha… that’s silly.

Anyway, I shared it with four people privately, and I am planning to play it live for a student of mine tomorrow morning, so I guess that handles the five intentional shares, as well as an open share with my somewhat large but private world on social media.

Well… this has felt really, really good today. I even screamed just before showering a bit ago, I was so filled with excitement and energy that I needed to release in order to begin to relax for the night. It was a very, very good and satisfying scream. Man… these songs just feel right. I’ve been wanting to write novels, yet, when I set myself to work for only a few hours on a song, one just kind of evolves like the chia seeds in the chia pet commercials (“Ch-ch-ch-chia!”). Perhaps today was an opportunity for me to see how ideas that get in the way of a different story I want to use for writing my novel, those ideas can go into a song – they can be heard that way. Then, I can go back to writing my novel’s story, no longer with the former distraction of a different story asking to be told. Today’s song topic was definitely one of those ideas…

Hmm… interesting.

Anyway, I’m off to read some young adult fun and then pass out hardcore (Please…).

P.S. My song doesn’t sound almost anything like Vanessa Hudgens’ song, by the way – it started with the same foundation of chords, but quickly developed into a very different song. If I hadn’t told you they were connected, you likely never would have noticed. 😉

Post-a-day 2020

The music in me

Na-nah-naah-na….

Na-nah-naah-na…. yeah…

Well, I have been watching the glorious High School Musical stuff over the past several days, and I am in love all over again. But it feels a bit different this time… this time, it keeps making me want to perform – to sing and dance, to play piano and share music with the world… and it has been making me want to write more songs again. I had a bout of that back in April and May, I believe it was, and then I stopped. I expressed everything that was needing to be expressed at the time through music. And it now feels like music wants to be expressed, instead of specific experiences and thoughts. Perhaps, I am filled with sentiments now that are ready to begin producing solid form through music… an artistic 3-D, let’s say.

And there just so happens to be another songwriting workshop happening this week…, so, I think I know what is on my schedule for the rest of this week, now. 🙂

Post-a-day 2020

ASK

Tonight, I came across the American Society of Karate on Facebook, the organization through which I used to take karate lessons and attend and participate in competitions. I found it through an awesome video from 1985, which was of a special bout between Bill “Superfoot” Wallace and Joe Corley. It was ten years after their original world title fight, which had been won by Bill (he was never defeated, apparently). Joe has to get himself back into better shape for the bout, but Bill was apparently a nonstop trainer, despite his competition retirement in 1980.

It was really almost magical to watch. The way Bill’s legs moved, it was almost a shadow – it’s like the brain has to do a mental pause-replay-slo-mo process in order to comprehend fully that Bill just threw a double roundhouse kick, because it happened so quickly, so flawlessly, and so nonchalantly, with no sign on the rest of his body that he had just kicked at all, let alone kicked as high as someone’s head.

And the best part, perhaps, is the fact that these guys were 38 (Joe) and 40 (Bill) years old, moving like super fit men half their ages. It was really cool. Super respect for the both of them, and absurd awe for Bill’s legs… I guess I can see the nickname still at work.

Hopefully, this link will work for accessing the video! 😀

Post-a-day 2020

Ouch

Well, my bum hurts… a lot… (Okay, now I am laughing, because that just sounds so totally charged with sexual innuendo, and get it is absolutely not one bit sexual.) So, the showerhead broke, because it’s actually made of plastic at the part where it screws onto the pipe, and it just kind of split. That means that, despite the double and triple efforts of duct taping the pipe and connection piece, a bunch of water comes out of the duct tape instead of the showerhead itself, making the water flow significantly decreased from usual. To stand under the full water flow – from the showerhead and the leaking part combined – one must stand directly beneath the pipe and showerhead, as opposed to out in front, as would be the place to stand under normal circumstances.

Now, imagine showering in this setting, and dropping a bar of soap. You squat down carefully to pick up the bar, and stand back up at a rather normal standing up speed… only to have your bum suddenly be on fire after hearing a loud clanking and feeling a big bash on your backside – you have just perfectly slammed and scraped your backside upward against and across the large bathtub faucet… the faucet that typically is a couple feet behind you when you’re showering, thereby rendering you shocked and confused at first… but then you recall the leaky water situation, and realize that you had not at all factored that into the squatting and standing back up scenario…

That was, essentially, the portrait of me last night. I now have an inch-long cut, a two point five inch-long red line on either side of it, a few deep red spots around it, and a bruised and lighter red area of about two point five inches by one inch to hold it all together. And it still burns, 24 hours after the incident even happened, let alone the dull pain of the hit’s bruise.

So, yeah, my butt hurts.

I actually couldn’t even put on my underwear all the way for quite a while last night, the skin burned so much from the cut (which had bled a surprising amount, considering so much of the butt is fat and all). And I couldn’t sit normal or lie down either for a long while. Instead of going to bed as I had planned, I stayed up and watched a film on the sofa, sitting on my side, allowing the cut to close up enough safely with the medicine, as well as stop hurting so much that I couldn’t let anything touch it.

Now, it is mostly just a matter of not letting anything rub across the skin there, nor pushing too hard against the area. Otherwise, it is doing rather well, and really just keeps reminding of my other butt injury this year, in which, while fixing a wedgie, my fingernail caught the skin at the base of my spine and top of my butt, right in the middle, and scraped off a whole inch-ish-long chunk. Yes, a chunk. It bled a lot, and all over my underwear – such a weird situation that one was(!).

Basically, I’m just wondering how many more of these absolutely ridiculous butt injuries I am going to be causing myself the rest of this year… or even my life. The last was in January in Japan, and this one is August in Southeast Texas. What will happen in another six-ish months, pray?

😛

…………….

In a totally separate note, I received official word this morning that my gym is closing at the end of this month, permanently. He had too many people drop memberships and all, so it is the safe and smart thing for him to do financially for himself and his family (the owner, I mean). While it is conceptually heartbreaking, I realize that my intense depression last month was very much regarding the fact that, while most everyone else was back at the gym as usual, and I was staying home because it was what we were told was the safest idea for the time besting in our city, I had a feeling that I wasn’t just missing out for now, but that I was missing out for good – that I wouldn’t ever be going back to the gym. Being upset over this idea as being real seemed irrational of me at the time, which only added to the sense of loss and the depression. However, now that I am on the other side of the depression and intense struggle, I have now dealt with the relevant concerns that were at its root…, including the idea of my never going back to that particular gym again. So, while the news is, well, new, I have already gone through the emotional turmoil of not being able to go to the gym ever again, so I don’t feel any need to go through it again – I’ve already handled that one!

Yes, it is sad that the gym is closing – it was a spectacular space filled with love and support that made huge impacts on many lives, mine included. However, it is both a new opportunity for the owner, as well as for me. As “High School Musical” so happily belted out for me tonight, it’s the start of something new – and I can feel it, and I am ready this time. 🙂

Post-a-day 2020

Total weep fest

I tend to think, as probably do most people, rather unconsciously that, when I am in a not-good mood, a movie of the very happy persuasion is the way to go – laughter and fun, right? However, when I actually pause to think about it, I think the weep fests are the best option.

Oftentimes, what benefits us most when we are struggling is catharsis, a release of all of the emotion and struggle that we have been carrying. A good weep fest film practically yanks the tears out of us, forcing out more emotion than we imagined we even had available to release at the present moment… over and over again. And, by the happy ending of the film, while we are exhausted and our eyes just might be burning more than a bit, life just kind of makes sense again, and we feel so much better…., we finally can breathe fully again. Which is rather ironic, given the constant crying and nose-blowing throughout the film. 😉

But that is what weep fest films can do for us… and just about every time. So, it is extra worth giving them a watch when we are down in life. Laughter may be the best medicine, but catharsis and an inspiring story and happy ending are the perfect way to move forward from struggles and pains, taking that first step back to the laughter.

Post-a-day 2020

Ugh…

What is my story right now? Well, I spend my days hanging around, only doing a workout three times a week, and living vicariously through film and shows, while completely alone in the house.

It’s kind of a weird place to be, really – I feel like so much is close to happening in my life, but it also feels so difficult to do anything these days, with nothing really happening already, and no one even to see on any given day…

Ugh… and Benedict Cumberbatch does a spectacular job of making me want a partner in my life – he plays the adorable, slightly crazy, genius smart-ass quite well, and it really makes me want to have my own. 😀

Anyway… the show actually kind of gives me nightmares, so I can’t watch it after dark, and must pointedly watch something happy before bed, so the Sherlock stories don’t get to me too much at bedtime…. As I said before, I think I might be able five years old, sometimes. 😛

Post-a-day 2020

Late-night calls

For the second night in a row, instead of going to bed when I was feeling like doing so, I ended up on the phone with a good friend of mine in and from Australia.

And, because it was early afternoon for him, he wasn’t in much of any hurry to get off the call…, so we talked for a good while.

However, both times we ended up spending some good, dedicated time to my playing around on the piano, singing songs for him (and for me) to enjoy. It was actually quite funny yesterday, because he was just on his way home from a tough day of work, end of the workweek, and had been thinking about a nap… so, once again, we came very close to his falling asleep while I sang to him. How adorable, right? Haha

Anyway, I love it, and I love this friend. As we discussed tonight, we both really would like for scientists to get their acts together around the world, and figure out this teleportation thing already. 😛 We miss seeing one another (and I don’t just mean because of the current state of affairs, but because of our being all the way around the world from one another$.

By the way, did you know that Australia is approximately 77% the size of the USA? I had absolutely no idea that Australia was that large – not a clue. And I have definitely looked at it on many a map and many a digital map… nonetheless, I was utterly unaware of this fact… approximately 7.6 million km squared to 9.8 million km squared. Crazy, right? But, yet, also not… also, they have a huge dessert in the middle, in which no one lives, so they don’t have as much habitable land, but still… Alaska has a bunch of uninhabitable land, too… hmm… I’ll have to check what the habitable land of each country is, because the population of Australia is ridiculously low for its land size.

Anyway, I’m exhausted… goodnight!

Post-a-day 2020