Wow

A somewhat recent acquaintance of mine is a chiropractor. I asked him last night, as he had told me to ask whenever I wanted his help, if he could look into a sharp pain I was getting in my left elbow (not for the first time, but the first time in months). The casual deftness and gentleness with which he evaluated, pressed, prodded, rotated, shifted, squeezed, and popped the various parts and muscles of my arm, wrist, elbow, and shoulder had me blown away. And, after he fiddled around so gently and calmly, doing what all he was doing with my arm as he made a running commentary about how tight this or that was, my arm felt a hundred times better. When I went and tested the exact movement that had been causing the sharp pain each time, the pains were gone. Only a slight dullness remained at one single point in the movement, the point with the highest level of stress on my elbow. But it wasn’t painful; just tired-feeling. All-in-all, it was an amazing experience with an utterly relieving (physically and mentally) outcome.

Though this acquaintance himself has little to do with this next statement, what he did last night has everything to do with it.

I think I might want to marry a chiropractor.

😛

Post-a-day 2021

Alas

It seems my brother has finally made the official move back to the USA. I picked him up at the airport tonight, and dropped him off at his dad’s house (after a stop at Whataburger, that is), before heading back home myself. It was a lot of driving, to be sure, but who else would do it in the middle of the night (quite literally: midnight 03 was the scheduled flight arrival time)?

In a way, his expat days are over, yet, have re-begun.

I wonder how hard it will be for him. I spent a year in Japan, after having lived in various European countries for various amounts of time (though each less than my time in Japan), and it was tough for quite a while for me at first. He’s never lived in another country and come back home before this, and he was gone for eight years, almost exactly. (August would have been eight years precisely.)

Fingers crossed!

And I’m here for him.

Hopefully my sister-in-law will take advantage of my being here once she arrives. She has a whole ‘nother world coming to her, for sure.

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The force was with me

This morning, while putting together my supplements for the month, I had a desire to watch a Star Wars film. So, I turned it on and enjoyed it while doing the supplements.

Then, I went to work out with a friend at midday. It was awesome, of course.

Afterward, I immediately rushed to meet my dad at an open house we both were excited to see. It’s a house I’ve seen for most of my life, always wondering how it looks on the inside. The outside, of course, does not look like a house. It looks like a space ship out of a Star Wars film. Oh, wait…, because it actually was designed after one! So, it’s a Star Wars-themed house. Truly.

Get ready.

This evening, I sit down to my coding training work for the day. What is the while theme for the first topic of the day? Star Wars villains! So, I got to do some coding regarding the Star Wars films and their respective villains!

How crazy and silly and fun is that??? Three appearances of Star Wars in a single day…, and I almost never watch films these days, so even that one was a surprise on its own!

Oh, and by the way, the house was ridiculous and awesome. It felt like a high end, lounge-y space ship from Star Wars would have been. Totally.

Post-a-day 2021

Drama, drama

I feel like the world was testing me today. Or, perhaps, it was just reminding me of why I am where I am in life, encouraging and empowering me to continue pursuing this path of mine that is, in so many ways, completely unlike that of most of the world around me.

It gave me a taste of all the drama that seems to go with everyday life for what we can call “normal people“. And I don’t like it. I am extremely glad and grateful that I don’t have that in my daily life. I can’t imagine the stress involved in living a life with such drama going on every single day… no wonder people are so stressed out. You know what I mean?

I am grateful for the reminder I received today on this fact. Yes, I do get lonely at times – often, sometimes -, but I wouldn’t trade it for the drama of having regular people around me. I want the best of the best, the white light sounds shining through people, the love embodied people, the ones who will be my true friends, who will help me be the best person I can be, as I do the same for them, both consciously and unconsciously. I want those people. And I am willing to be alone often, if it means I get to be with those people at the right times. Because I do not want the drama of being normal. No, thank you.

And thank you for the reminder of that today, Universe. I am extremely grateful. ❤

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Friday night

Girl, I just threw up.
I then showered and am rushing to cozy up in warm stuff, because it seems to be making me feel better right now.
Vomiting is one of the worst things I have ever experienced in life. It is always nearly traumatic for me.
Omg r u okay ??
I think so. It just seemed to be the little bit of food I had after work…
And a boatload of air…
Weirdest version ever, but I’m glad it seems to be done.
I was crying so much…
It always crushes me on so many levels.
Like the world is coming to an end, and nobody loves me, and a drunk person just spilled some sticky, unidentifiable red cocktail all over me and my favorite vintage ivory dress, and didn’t even notice, and it doesn’t even matter, because the world is ending, but I can’t stop crying about it the most, somehow…
That’s my average experience whenever I throw up. 😂
And now, I simultaneously never want to eat again, and want some chicken soup…
What a night…
Post-a-day 2021

Okay, then, brain…

I have a problem. It is a ridiculous problem, but it is a problem nonetheless.

You see, I wear this awesome fitness clothing. The shorts and leggings show off the shape of my legs and bum quite classily. The bras and tops show off just the right amount of skin. And all the muscles look amazing. And all the right curves are visible in all the right places, when I wear this clothing.

And, to be fully franc, I look amazing in it.

And, whenever I see myself in it all, even I have trouble keeping my cool. Looking down at myself in the fitted (biker style) shorts and leggings is already a bit rough at times. Add onto that seeing myself in the mirror… man…

I don’t mean to be rude or egotistical by any means with this – I am merely sharing what I have noticed and wondered… but how do men handle it, seeing me in this stuff? I can barely handle it, and 1)I’m a heterosexual woman, and 2)it’s my own body.

But those two facts don’t seem to matter much at all to my brain. It’s like, Oh, sh********… and then kind of loses all train of thought. Until I manage to give myself some calming, deep breaths, and can chill myself out, that is. But seriously…

Major ::facepalm here.

I know I work really hard to be my best self, especially physically. But I think I hadn’t really anticipated how doing just that, pursuing my fitness and physique goals, would leave me so, well – though I am a tad embarrassed to say it -, sexy.

Let there be no doubt: I always have wanted to be a sexy woman. And that has been part of my physique goals with my fitness. But I guess I never expected it to have such an effect on me… Please, tell me this is normal. Or, at least, common enough that someone can tell me with confidence from experience that I will grow accustomed to how my body looks, and this unintentional response – if you missed connecting the dots before, it’s arousal – will chill the **** out… Because this is getting stressful, getting so suddenly sexually charged off and on… like all day long…

I guess this is one of those Catch 22s. I want the fitness, but not the arousal for myself, but I can only not have the arousal if I don’t have the fitness.

Ugh… what a bizarre and silly problem to have. Am I right??

Post-a-day 2021

Let’s sleep hard tonight

Today was wonderful. I tidied and ate decently. I had a stretch session for my splits and kick training (which also helped my lower back). I had a lovely workout this afternoon (rare for me to go anywhere so late, let alone to work out!) alongside a newer friend. And then I finished off with some coding fun after dinner and a shower. The family friend, upon seeing some screenshots of what I was doing, declared that, if I live what I am doing now with the training so far, I will love working in coding. He also says that I clearly have a mind for it. (Perhaps I am one of those brainiacs, after all…)

I look forward to lots more similar days in my near-ish future.

Oh, and by the way, I spent almost five hours reading a new book. It’s a top-rated romance novel – giving the genre a real go -, and I am loving it. But the main character has Aspergers. And I can related to about 90% of her thoughts and feelings and ideas and ways of thinking. For real. I don’t have difficulty succeeding in social situations or in reading people, but just about everything else she mentioned was relatable for me. She’s even my same age, and in a very similar relationship situation (at the start, anyway). Very similar. And with a similar attitude towards it all.

After about two hours of the book, I asked my mom her thoughts on it. She thinks that I definitely qualify in certain areas and to varied degrees, and definitely not in other areas. In other words, she and I agreed. No one likely would consider giving a label to any of my traits that align with Aspergers – they always just come across as slightly quirky, if they are even noticed at all (which, they usually aren’t). My OCD is the only thing people ever seem to end up knowing about, and, these days, it’s mostly because I tell them about it and how bad it had gotten before I started sorting things out with the holistic nutritionist. Anyway… haha

So, I’m a lot like this character. Including the things that are part of her Aspergers. And then, further into the book, I find out that the main character also works in coding… talk about timing and coincidence. 😛

Hopefully, the part where she makes oodles and oodles of money in her work will be a commonality we one day share, too. ;D

Post-a-day 2021

Taking strides

I asked, I prayed, and I meditated on my request last night. I slept with the mala last night, and wore the mala all day today, reminding myself of the intention I set with it, each time I noticed it.

And that was great.

I had breakfast with my dad.

That was great, too.

I reached out to someone who, for whatever reason, kept calling out in my mind for me to contact. A male, yes.

And that, though nothing has come of it, including a response from him, also was great.

And I continued my progress on this coding adventure today, making what felt like major strides. I finished the CSS intro course, and then a coding intro course I had forgotten that I had ever begun (because before HTML basics caught my attention as an option!).

Finishing that felt great.

Then, I began working on an app that the family friend sent me for learning and using Swift, so I can learn to do the coding used for Apple products. That part was a blast. And I apparently am great and a natural at it, because I was doing things that just made sense to me (in order to create the shortest code), and then, in the following lesson, it would ‘teach me’ how to do what I totally had just already done… I was almost always one step ahead of the game.

That all was really great. I had to force myself to stop, using the iPad’s battery depletion as my excuse to have to stop for the day.

I was supposed to go to a yoga class with girls from the gym this evening. But I wasn’t feeling like getting out so late. I was grateful to receive a message declaring a need to reschedule from one of the girls. Woohoo! So, I worked for hours on the Swift program instead.

So, that was awesome.

And I began the reorganization and tidying that I have been very much avoiding for quite some months now (since March). There is still more to do tomorrow, especially, but it feels much mote doable, now that I have actually started it and have a vision for it.

So, that was a great relief, at least.

In other words, my day today was really awesome, and I am extremely grateful for it.

Post-a-day 2021

Comfort

In karate tonight, there was a real adult-only class that followed the mixed (Aka kids) class. We began sparring for the session. As usual, I was extremely nervous. Even as I was, in a way, destroying my opponents in matches, I was dealing with those nerves, with that fear, allowing and releasing that sense of panic that always comes up for me around sparring.

The instructor even commented on how I had been so worried before, and yet see how far I had come… I told her that just because no one else noticed didn’t mean I had no fear or stress around the sparring…, as is the case with most anything in life. Just because we can’t see something on the outside, doesn’t mean it isn’t there on the inside for someone. As we put on our gear to spar, I had noticed the distinct reeling of my heart, panicked at what was potentially to come.

And, tonight, one of those things did come. The assistant instructor hit me hard in the center of the face. Though we wear helmets, his glove and hand hit the face cage so hard, it rattled everything, and it knocked me back a couple paces. No, my head didn’t jolt backward – I keep myself braced enough to avoid that -, but it shook me. And it frightened me. Just the sound from a hard hit on the helmet, from the inside, is jarring. The physical sensation addition of the hit itself just adds to the whole experience. When it happened tonight, I had to wait a few moments before I could return to the ring to continue. I was a tad dizzy, but only from the shock, not from any physical damage. I communicated that it had been too hard (he asked immediately, likely knowing, and I confirmed), and that I needed just a few moments to gather myself before continuing. And they allowed it easily. And everything was okay. I had I remind myself that I was safe and that everything was okay, including that I’d been hit so, and I put myself back in the ring before I fully felt like I wanted to be there. I knew I wouldn’t want to go back ever, if I didn’t just breathe and go back then. So, I went back in. I was nervous, and focusing on calming myself more than on sparring to win. I don’t remember the outcome of that match in particular, but I do remember that achieving the calm I sought was the best thing I could have done for myself. And I am grateful to have reached it, and to have been able not only t continue with other matches, but to do them calmly and stellarly. At the end of the night, I was clear that I had had a wonderful, fun, and free-feeling time… sparring. Which is awesome. 🙂

Post-a-day 2021

Learning

I began last week learning something entirely new to me. Okay, so it isn’t exactly entirely new to me – I first learned some foundations for it back in middle school. Mrs. N**** taught us in computer lab. I think most of the other kids, the girls especially, weren’t huge fans of it and didn’t really get it too well. But I was and I did. It was HTML.

Hypertext Markup Language, that is.

And, you know, though I didn’t ever realize that I could pursue learning HTML, I did pursue learning other languages. Remember, languages and math are all the same thing to me. So, a computer language just feels like a fun cross between the human spoken/written languages and the math ones. No wonder it was easy for me to pick up, and no wonder I loved it back in middle school.

But I never knew that this was the foundation upon which all of this ‘computer programming’ and ‘software engineering’ was based. Don’t ask me how – I don’t know how I didn’t ever make that connection. But, finally, I did last week.

And I’m doing beginner work on it all now, starting off with a course on HTML. Though I’m in this course to learn HTML, I kind of feel like reading the comprehensive list of code for HTML would be easier for me at the point. The blocks of text that attempt to explain things to me are often much more confusing that just looking at the actual code itself. I regularly go back to the text after reading the code, and decipher it that way – the code makes more sense seen than talked about. Does that makes sense, how I said that? I guess it is like just about anything else: you can talk to me for days about it, but, until you show it to me, it is just words and ideas, and doesn’t fully make sense or click.

But this stuff is clicking. And I’m liking it. A lot.

I’ll finish the HTML foundations course tomorrow or the next day, I think, and move into CSS or iOS app development training next. Or both…

It’s funny, though. I can tell this is important to me, because I won’t let myself cover too much direct information in a day, so as not to confuse it all later. And I am excited every night before bed, as I plan out when I will be working on it all tomorrow.

Man… did I mention that I’m a nerd? Well, it just got a bit more obvious. 😛

Post-a-day 2021