It's just too much.
The shooting at Virginia Tech. Harry Reid's declaration that we've lost the war in Iraq. Anti-war groups protesting at the Coast Guard Academy's graduation ceremony. My own alma mater fighting a lengthy court battle against their Board of Trustees. All of which apparently require my attention and active support, lest my apathy doom a school or a nation.
My mother's diagnosis of lung cancer. The endless rounds of doctors' appointments and medications and social workers and trips to the free clinic. My own struggles to get my health and my finances in order while I'm still young enough to do something about it. All of which also require my attention and active support.
Three rejection letters from grad schools. A near-deadly six month holding pattern while I try not to lose focus in the face of all this other stuff. The realization that even if I salvage that lost first year, it will be another four years after that until I can put my skills to work for the country the way I want to do. The realization that there are quicker avenues available, but that taking them would blow my current life into tiny, glittering pieces. The constant, dragging knowledge that the point where I am professionally, academically, romantically, and politically is the point where I should have been ten years ago. All of which eats up what little attention I have left.
I spend hours and hours with my best friend interactively making up stories which never get written down. I spend hours and hours writing letters which never change officials' or newspapers' opinions. I send off e-mails to friends and relatives who have better things to do than answer me. I hear over and over again that I'm a great writer and that failing to use my talent is a crime against the universe. I remind myself over and over again that complying with the universe's laws does not guarantee success. I blog just to take the pressure off.
It's a bit like body-surfing. I'm carried along by momentum one minute, then the next minute I'm underwater and being tumbled like gravel. It's kind of like that, only without the beach.
It's just too much.
Friday, April 20, 2007
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Overweight and Unhealthy
I have an announcement to make: I am overweight and unhealthy.
It did take something of an official declaration to confirm this, as a height of 5'4" and a dress size in the 12-ish range puts me in the decided average for most American women. On the infrequent occasions when I used to complain about my weight, I got no credibility. Other women would look at my relatively slender extremities and snort. My doctor would tell me not to get so hung up on the numbers. I was about 145 lbs then-- a weight that most people outside of the nutrition industry would agree was a little on the high side for a short woman with small bones-- and was looking to trim off maybe 10 pounds of that; 15 pounds, tops. I happen to love fresh food and veggies--preferably in large quantities, see nothing wrong with an occasional sundae, and actually think that one-piece bathing suits are much classier than bikinis. In other words, I was hardly obsessive. But I still couldn't get anyone to take my concerns seriously.
Fast forward a year or two. I have now gained my very first desk job at the age of 35, replacing the job that kept me on my feet all day and that I walked a mile uphill both ways to get to and from. (Have you ever lived in Tallahassee?) Add a new baby in the house, which means that every available surface in the kitchen is covered with baby stuff and my food-prep area has shrunk to the size of a dinner plate. Not to mention that I'm afraid to actually cook anything from scratch, lest I somehow let fall an errant drop of chicken juice and have to burn down the kitchen in the interests of sanitation. (Have you ever lived with the mother of a preemie?) All the exhaustion from sitting on my butt all day means I'm too tired to cook, too tired to exercise, and too tired to get out of bed until 40 minutes after my alarm goes off. It's breakfast at Starbucks, lunch on the run, and dinner that's more like three shifts of snacking-- usually on real food, but not in the way that generates leftovers for the next day's lunch. Repeat ad nauseam. Some days literally.
Something had to give. And that something was my mother's health.
To make a long story short, my mom caught that nasty respiratory virus that was dropping people left and right, put off going to the doctor, and put such a strain on her lungs that she ended up in the hospital with heart failure. She was sent home ten days later with a bag of medications, a list of doctors' appointments, home oxygen therapy, and a final diagnosis of lung cancer. You might say it was a wakeup call. It didn't matter that my own immune system shoots down threats with the dedication of Strategic Air Command, that I have first-rate health insurance and no fear of doctors, or that I've never smoked a single cigarette. The warm glow thus generated had a lot less to do with ruddy good health than with leaking plutonium (see http://kangarooregina.blogspot.com/2007_03_01_archive.html). I could mosey on into the Hellevator while I airily justified the reasons why my exhaustion and incredible shrinking wardrobe were really not problems, or I could get my butt in gear and do something about it while there was still time. Considering the example currently before me, I chose to haul booty.
The gym I joined, not surprisingly, does not have Geiger counters. But I wouldn't have been too surprised to hear the scale and the blood-pressure machine start chattering away while a klaxon sounded somewhere in the background and red lights spun warningly in the hallway. I clocked in at 159 lbs, with a blood pressure of 158/108 (please, dear God, let my doctor not see this just yet). I'd have to lose 15 pounds just to get back to my "zero" point. And you know, I still don't look heavy. But I do have a trainer who takes me seriously. Like my doctor, she does tell me not to dwell so much on the numbers. But that's because she knows it could take me a year to lose those 25 pounds, and she doesn't want me to get discouraged before I start.
I showed up to the gym this past Monday for my first official session. I changed into the workout pants that had seemed so appealing in the store, and discovered a decidedly unattractive pear shape to my midsection. The addition of a cheery yellow t-shirt left me wondering if I should just stencil "Yukon Gold" on my back. I exited the locker room in the general direction of the workout area, and couldn't find my trainer anywhere. I climbed onto the elliptical machine, set my workout, and had to drop the intensity twelve minutes later. I had to stop after twenty, and I never did get around to any weight training. But I spent more time, covered more equivalent distance, and used more resistance than when I used to be a regular at my last gym. I may be overweight, unhealthy, and out of shape, but it seems that I really do have the tools to fix this problem. And I can't say it's discouraging.
It did take something of an official declaration to confirm this, as a height of 5'4" and a dress size in the 12-ish range puts me in the decided average for most American women. On the infrequent occasions when I used to complain about my weight, I got no credibility. Other women would look at my relatively slender extremities and snort. My doctor would tell me not to get so hung up on the numbers. I was about 145 lbs then-- a weight that most people outside of the nutrition industry would agree was a little on the high side for a short woman with small bones-- and was looking to trim off maybe 10 pounds of that; 15 pounds, tops. I happen to love fresh food and veggies--preferably in large quantities, see nothing wrong with an occasional sundae, and actually think that one-piece bathing suits are much classier than bikinis. In other words, I was hardly obsessive. But I still couldn't get anyone to take my concerns seriously.
Fast forward a year or two. I have now gained my very first desk job at the age of 35, replacing the job that kept me on my feet all day and that I walked a mile uphill both ways to get to and from. (Have you ever lived in Tallahassee?) Add a new baby in the house, which means that every available surface in the kitchen is covered with baby stuff and my food-prep area has shrunk to the size of a dinner plate. Not to mention that I'm afraid to actually cook anything from scratch, lest I somehow let fall an errant drop of chicken juice and have to burn down the kitchen in the interests of sanitation. (Have you ever lived with the mother of a preemie?) All the exhaustion from sitting on my butt all day means I'm too tired to cook, too tired to exercise, and too tired to get out of bed until 40 minutes after my alarm goes off. It's breakfast at Starbucks, lunch on the run, and dinner that's more like three shifts of snacking-- usually on real food, but not in the way that generates leftovers for the next day's lunch. Repeat ad nauseam. Some days literally.
Something had to give. And that something was my mother's health.
To make a long story short, my mom caught that nasty respiratory virus that was dropping people left and right, put off going to the doctor, and put such a strain on her lungs that she ended up in the hospital with heart failure. She was sent home ten days later with a bag of medications, a list of doctors' appointments, home oxygen therapy, and a final diagnosis of lung cancer. You might say it was a wakeup call. It didn't matter that my own immune system shoots down threats with the dedication of Strategic Air Command, that I have first-rate health insurance and no fear of doctors, or that I've never smoked a single cigarette. The warm glow thus generated had a lot less to do with ruddy good health than with leaking plutonium (see http://kangarooregina.blogspot.com/2007_03_01_archive.html). I could mosey on into the Hellevator while I airily justified the reasons why my exhaustion and incredible shrinking wardrobe were really not problems, or I could get my butt in gear and do something about it while there was still time. Considering the example currently before me, I chose to haul booty.
The gym I joined, not surprisingly, does not have Geiger counters. But I wouldn't have been too surprised to hear the scale and the blood-pressure machine start chattering away while a klaxon sounded somewhere in the background and red lights spun warningly in the hallway. I clocked in at 159 lbs, with a blood pressure of 158/108 (please, dear God, let my doctor not see this just yet). I'd have to lose 15 pounds just to get back to my "zero" point. And you know, I still don't look heavy. But I do have a trainer who takes me seriously. Like my doctor, she does tell me not to dwell so much on the numbers. But that's because she knows it could take me a year to lose those 25 pounds, and she doesn't want me to get discouraged before I start.
I showed up to the gym this past Monday for my first official session. I changed into the workout pants that had seemed so appealing in the store, and discovered a decidedly unattractive pear shape to my midsection. The addition of a cheery yellow t-shirt left me wondering if I should just stencil "Yukon Gold" on my back. I exited the locker room in the general direction of the workout area, and couldn't find my trainer anywhere. I climbed onto the elliptical machine, set my workout, and had to drop the intensity twelve minutes later. I had to stop after twenty, and I never did get around to any weight training. But I spent more time, covered more equivalent distance, and used more resistance than when I used to be a regular at my last gym. I may be overweight, unhealthy, and out of shape, but it seems that I really do have the tools to fix this problem. And I can't say it's discouraging.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Gaining aspect
Aspect, as described in my last entry, is one of those things that we find hard to define, but we know when we see it. It's that quality that turns people like us into people like Einstein and Mother Teresa and Gandhi and Audie Murphy-- not the greatness, but the sovereignty over a particular area which gave them that greatness in the first place. (And if you don't know who Audie Murphy was, go look him up. Seriously.) We fumble our way toward a definition of that quality with approximations like "honor" or "devotion", or we try to force on it some self-help phrase like "living into our purpose", but that doesn't begin to describe it. Take the farthest limit of human ability, and square it. That's mastery. Take the limit of mastery and square it. That's aspect.
As hard as it is to describe, it's even harder to achieve. Whole books have been written about to think like Einstein or pray like Mother Teresa, but following them doesn't even bring us close. The defining process of aspect is intuitive rather than linear, and intuition is notoriously hard to replicate. The directions fail us because all the concrete instructions in the world cannot tell us how to make an intuitive leap, and all the airy descriptions of intuition leave us nowhere concrete to plant our feet for the jump. We feel even worse when we ask those with fully-realized aspects how they got there: those people tend either to cite some sort of divine intervention, or to see their journey as a fairly obvious progression given their own natures. Whereas our prayers don't seem to have provided much in the way of inspiration, our own natures aren't leading us anywhere even close to genius, and we don't want to hear any more platitudes about our "best of self" being just as good and worthy as the best of the great ones' selves.
Fair enough. Let's see if I can make this concrete enough for the rubber to meet the road, and possibly gain some ground.
1) Everyone, and I mean absolutely everyone who is capable of basic reason, has the potential to manifest aspect.
2) Aspect develops from some basic trait that you already possess, and already have some knowledge of using. Even if you couldn't pick the relevant trait out of all the others. Even if you don't feel self-empowered enough to use it properly. Even if you couldn't name a single positive trait about yourself if you tried. You have one. It's in there. Trust me on this one.
3) If you have no idea what your traits are, get a couple of close friends and ask them. And don't discount what they say just because they're your friends and they "have to" say that, or because you think the traits they mention aren't spiffy enough (see #6).
4) If anyone's ever told you that you have a gift for something, consider that a clue. Especially if you really didn't see what all the fuss was about. One caveat-- if it's something that you absolutely, positively, cannot stand, stop doing it and start looking elsewhere.
5) Aspect is not fame, fortune, or glory. You may not get any applause for attaining it. You may not get true love, financial success, or less stress-- or any of those other traits that we've been taught to expect as rewards for "getting it right". If you'd still do whatever-it-is anyway for its own sake, and something in it seems inherently "more" to you-- even if you don't know what or why-- consider that another clue. The irony is that once you do manifest your aspect, you'll probably be doing incredible things on a regular basis, and wondering what all the fuss is about.
6) The process will transform both the trait and you. So if you sometimes want to scream because your trait seems to be something fairly obvious-- like compassion, for instance-- and you were really hoping for something spiffier, don't panic. In the book On a Pale Horse (see previous blog entry), compassion was exactly the trait that got a complete loser like Zane chosen to be the new Death, and he went on to prevail against the Devil himself. And no, he didn't do it by "sympathizing" him into submission. The trait you start with is not necessarily the aspect you're going to end up with, and you will have the opportunity to grow into it (see #8).
7) A lot of the process is circumstance, dumb luck, outside influence, etc. It's your response to those prompts which will change your trait into your aspect. This is the part where the road map breaks down and your moral compass becomes necessary. Use it early. Use it often.
8) Your ATtention and your INtention are both required. If you find yourself letting important things slide or shoving them aside so you don't have to deal with them, that's one of those decision points. If you find yourself wondering "what's the use?", that's another decision point. If you find yourself rationalizing away a particular action or behavior, or find yourself justifying the reasons that it's really not a problem-- decision point. If you feel trapped by circumstances or forced toward a decision that you really don't feel comfortable with-- MAJOR decision point. And please do be honest about the reasons for your actions and decisions. Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons will eventually lead you down, not up.
9) Don't personalize the obstacles. They aren't a secret sign that the universe or the devil is out to stop you, that you're being tested to see if you're really willing to go the distance, or that you're close to beating Level 35 and winning all the dragon's treasure. Stuff happens. See #7 & #8 for a quick guide on what to do when stuff happens.
These are guidelines, not hard-and-fast rules. They're not comprehensive-- partly because I'm still exploring the process myself, and partly because it's going to be a little bit different for every person who tries it. They're also not guaranteed to develop aspect if you follow them. But they will help you navigate the road a little more easily, and at the very least, they'll help you to get through your daily grind with your identity, humanity, and integrity intact. And you never know-- one of those ordinary moments may provide you with just enough ground to plant your feet and take that first leap.
As hard as it is to describe, it's even harder to achieve. Whole books have been written about to think like Einstein or pray like Mother Teresa, but following them doesn't even bring us close. The defining process of aspect is intuitive rather than linear, and intuition is notoriously hard to replicate. The directions fail us because all the concrete instructions in the world cannot tell us how to make an intuitive leap, and all the airy descriptions of intuition leave us nowhere concrete to plant our feet for the jump. We feel even worse when we ask those with fully-realized aspects how they got there: those people tend either to cite some sort of divine intervention, or to see their journey as a fairly obvious progression given their own natures. Whereas our prayers don't seem to have provided much in the way of inspiration, our own natures aren't leading us anywhere even close to genius, and we don't want to hear any more platitudes about our "best of self" being just as good and worthy as the best of the great ones' selves.
Fair enough. Let's see if I can make this concrete enough for the rubber to meet the road, and possibly gain some ground.
1) Everyone, and I mean absolutely everyone who is capable of basic reason, has the potential to manifest aspect.
2) Aspect develops from some basic trait that you already possess, and already have some knowledge of using. Even if you couldn't pick the relevant trait out of all the others. Even if you don't feel self-empowered enough to use it properly. Even if you couldn't name a single positive trait about yourself if you tried. You have one. It's in there. Trust me on this one.
3) If you have no idea what your traits are, get a couple of close friends and ask them. And don't discount what they say just because they're your friends and they "have to" say that, or because you think the traits they mention aren't spiffy enough (see #6).
4) If anyone's ever told you that you have a gift for something, consider that a clue. Especially if you really didn't see what all the fuss was about. One caveat-- if it's something that you absolutely, positively, cannot stand, stop doing it and start looking elsewhere.
5) Aspect is not fame, fortune, or glory. You may not get any applause for attaining it. You may not get true love, financial success, or less stress-- or any of those other traits that we've been taught to expect as rewards for "getting it right". If you'd still do whatever-it-is anyway for its own sake, and something in it seems inherently "more" to you-- even if you don't know what or why-- consider that another clue. The irony is that once you do manifest your aspect, you'll probably be doing incredible things on a regular basis, and wondering what all the fuss is about.
6) The process will transform both the trait and you. So if you sometimes want to scream because your trait seems to be something fairly obvious-- like compassion, for instance-- and you were really hoping for something spiffier, don't panic. In the book On a Pale Horse (see previous blog entry), compassion was exactly the trait that got a complete loser like Zane chosen to be the new Death, and he went on to prevail against the Devil himself. And no, he didn't do it by "sympathizing" him into submission. The trait you start with is not necessarily the aspect you're going to end up with, and you will have the opportunity to grow into it (see #8).
7) A lot of the process is circumstance, dumb luck, outside influence, etc. It's your response to those prompts which will change your trait into your aspect. This is the part where the road map breaks down and your moral compass becomes necessary. Use it early. Use it often.
8) Your ATtention and your INtention are both required. If you find yourself letting important things slide or shoving them aside so you don't have to deal with them, that's one of those decision points. If you find yourself wondering "what's the use?", that's another decision point. If you find yourself rationalizing away a particular action or behavior, or find yourself justifying the reasons that it's really not a problem-- decision point. If you feel trapped by circumstances or forced toward a decision that you really don't feel comfortable with-- MAJOR decision point. And please do be honest about the reasons for your actions and decisions. Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons will eventually lead you down, not up.
9) Don't personalize the obstacles. They aren't a secret sign that the universe or the devil is out to stop you, that you're being tested to see if you're really willing to go the distance, or that you're close to beating Level 35 and winning all the dragon's treasure. Stuff happens. See #7 & #8 for a quick guide on what to do when stuff happens.
These are guidelines, not hard-and-fast rules. They're not comprehensive-- partly because I'm still exploring the process myself, and partly because it's going to be a little bit different for every person who tries it. They're also not guaranteed to develop aspect if you follow them. But they will help you navigate the road a little more easily, and at the very least, they'll help you to get through your daily grind with your identity, humanity, and integrity intact. And you never know-- one of those ordinary moments may provide you with just enough ground to plant your feet and take that first leap.
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