Eviction Plus Three Hundred Sixty-Five

One year.

One year since I took my first-ever sincere pregnancy test to be sure the uterus about to be removed contained no life but my own.

One year since a one-hour surgery stretched to three while my family and friends waited, trying not to think something had gone wrong.

One year since one of the most difficult hysterectomies my gynecologist says she's performed.

One year since the last time a stranger's blood kept me alive.

One year since I woke up, confused and disoriented, unable to feel anything between bellybutton and upper thighs, to the news that the difficult surgery had been a success but I'd lost so very much blood that I needed oxygen for a little while more, and to rest while the local they'd used on top of the general wore off.

One year since I tried to explain to the nurse that losing so very much blood was a thing I just did on a regular basis, but probably just hurled garbled syllables at her.

It was a mess in there, I'm told.  Endometrioma, asymptomatic endometriosis, massive fibroids, something called 'spongy uterus' and an ovary so deeply grafted into it that there was no hope of saving it.  My fallopian tubes were nowhere to be found; there's no way to tell if the uterus ate them or they were simply never there.  My reproductive organs, at their end, were a collection of womanhood gone rogue.  One lone half-ovary lingers, spiking my life with cravings and mood swings that no longer act as harbingers of, well, anything.

They couldn't stop the bleeding for a long time during the surgery, the doctor told me frankly when she came to see me.  I told her not to worry, I'd never been able to stop it either.

But it's stopped now, and the change is extraordinary.

A little over three years ago I staggered, crying, towards the top of the Panoramic Trail in Muir Woods, where my then-boyfriend was hoping to propose.  I was defeated long before we reached the top, moving a hundred, two hundred feet at a time before I had to hold a tree to stand.  He chose a more accessible location for his proposal, and I accepted, because (among many other reasons) what better metaphor for married life can there be than kindly and patiently holding your beloved's hand while she tries to overcome her own malfunctions and fight her way to the top of the trail?

Three months later I was in the emergency room, with doctors explaining that my iron level was life-threatening and probably had been for months.  I'd known I was anemic, but not how deep that particular crisis had become.  I fought my way through supplements, infusions, transfusions, hormones, exercises, and every other suggestion made to me, until finally the only thing left was "Stop losing blood, for good."

So what's life like now?

I still wake up tired a lot of days, because my sleep habits have never been great, but it's "Man I stayed up too late again," not "I'm not sure I can move my legs today."  I can actually, if I don't set an alarm, sleep long enough in a single night to wake up refreshed.  I come home from work and sometimes I just...do housework or work on a project because I feel like it, not because I'm racing a deadline and out of time.

I started back to the gym eleven months ago with gentle treadmill walks, and added in light weight training a few weeks later.  I miss sometimes because I'm busy, but I don't skip workouts any more because I'm too exhausted to do them, and I've steadily put on muscle.  I can walk on the treadmill at a three-mile pace, or run on the elliptical, for thirty solid minutes without stopping.

My husband and I just got back from a trip to Ireland, where we walked over fifty miles in two weeks, including a grueling trek through the London Underground with all our luggage, hefting our fully loaded suitcases up and down the steps with one hand at times.  One of the highlights of that trip was the day I took off solo hiking, only to end up slightly lost in a Galway sheep pasture, falling and badly injuring my knee.  I could still walk, but a year before an injury of any severity would have been perfect reason to head back to the B&B and declare myself done for the day, or maybe the week.  Instead, I hiked another three miles that day and more the two days following.

But it's the little things, the small changes most people don't understand, that really stick with me.  Today I'm wearing a pale lacy peach dress and a white sweater.  I never would have dared before; my pre-hysterectomy wardrobe is a cavalcade of long, full, dark skirts chosen because they wouldn't show blood as badly, and dark or patterned tops that I wouldn't stain with bloody hands by accident.  I pack extra tie-dye in the space in my camping gear that used to be reserved for a massive supply of cloth and disposable backup pads.  We planned our recent vacation around when we wanted to travel, not when I hoped to have the best chance not to be navigating airplane bathrooms on a half-hourly basis and trying to explain to flight attendants that their choices were let me up out of my seat or clean up the blood themselves.  An entire complicating factor has simply just been...taken out of my calculations.

My body no longer sets the conditions on me that it once did; gone is the constant awareness of the possibility that a miscalculation or delay will ruin both outfit and afternoon.  Getting distracted while working on a project just means I'm stiff from sitting too long, not a dismayed realisation that I've missed one too many warnings from my body that catastrophic bleeding is imminent.  I no longer have to plan to carve out six to eight days off work each year to receive iron infusions and see doctors, or an extra three to five sick days for pure exhaustion.  I've found new confidence at work, to talk about projects I want to take on and challenges I want to seek out.

What strikes me the most is how the haze has lifted, and continued to lift.  I have no idea how far down I was into chronic exhaustion after years of constant anemia, but about three weeks ago I found a new level of energy:  having done all the things I *needed* to do, and all the things on my dedicated to-do list, I created a new long-term project for myself, and sat down to give several hours of time and intellectual labor to it.

As to that Panorama Trail that kicked my ass three years ago, we revisited Muir Woods last fall, and I'll simply say that a picture speaks a thousand words.

Here I Am, Walking on the Moon

Some days I feel like KUTX does particularly well at mining my nostalgia musically, hitting songs that resonate with specific times for me but might not connect for other people.  Today they've managed to call up the last half of 1989 for me, when I was navigating high school and struggling with my whole concept of identity, while trying to resolve feelings about my parents' divorce.

I was already thinking about it because of Mity Myhr's presentation about 1989 at last night's Dionysium, but then a couple of songs I listened to a lot that year popped up in the musical rotation:  Lyle Lovett's "Here I Am," for which I memorised the spoken part because I loved how the words fit together, and "Walking on the Moon," which was included in my mild obsession with the Police (I have no idea how my long-suffering mother endured the constant repetition of the Synchronicity album I'd appropriated from my older sister, especially when the first track started to skip and you kind of couldn't tell it was repeating...).

So here I am thinking about what it was like to BE a Smart Girl in the late 80s, especially an extroverted one.  The desire to dim your shine so you can get along and be liked is a powerful counter to the drive to excel.  That was the year I really discovered how few men in this world actually like women who are smarter or stronger than they are (and how many others are lying about it), and it started a 20-year-long fight with myself to accept "it's better to be alone than to cut off pieces of yourself to be loved."  That's when I started to have enough awareness to see the boys getting praised and called on for knowing the answers I was 'showing off' by having.  That was the year I decided a weight I'll never see again was 'obese' and really dove into that cycle of food-shaming and body-hatred that governed my 20s and early 30s.  That's the first time I can really remember being aware of all the different directions in which the world demanded I become less.

One thing I really remember about that year was how rarely I talked about the things that I loved.  In fact, several of the high school friends with whom I've reconnected are probably thinking to themselves, "I never knew she was low-key obsessed with the Police..."  None of my friends really did, because by then they'd broken up but it hadn't been long enough for them to be retro so no one else I knew was into them; I was afraid if I said, "Oh hey this thing that no one else is doing is really cool to me!" everyone would think I was weird and liked stupid things.  Enjoying them was just a thing I did on my own.

How does this tie into being an Extroverted Smart Girl?  I built my arguments like brick houses because speaking an unpopular idea opened me up to criticism and unless I could support that idea, the criticism quickly became personal.  Every point defensible, every position at least touching on if not anchored in objective fact.  I got  used to having to defend my positions in science classes with ridiculous amounts of backup because my hypotheses themselves held no value.  Even now, if you ask me what I think, you'll likely get an answer on the tip of an evidentiary iceberg.  I also got used to gauging, in a room, whether anyone wanted or needed to hear the opinion I held, and if I decided that answer was no I just opted out of voicing one.

Years later, when I started learning about different forms of intimacy, I realised that the one that's hardest for me is a specific kind of intellectual intimacy: the ability to express completely subjective opinion.  The idea of sharing my online playlists, or my reading list, or making my Netflix queue public, horrifies me.  What if I tell people what I'm reading and they think it's stupid and pedestrian?  What if I tell you the band I like, that no one else likes, and everyone else thinks they objectively suck?  How can I defend "I just like this song because it makes me feel happy," to my musically adept friends who will recognise that the beats are lame and the lyrics are trite?  What if I'm the last person I know to find out this artist who creates beautiful things is also a terrible anti-Semite?

There's an irony in this, because I'm a huge advocate for letting people enjoy the shit they like without judging them for it, and for the ability to appreciate the artistic merits of problematic stuff.  If you like a band I think is complete shit, I'll tell you they're not my cup of tea but I'm glad you enjoy them.  I'll advocate against enjoying *actively harmful media* but not shitty media.  I've got ten thousand words on why "Fifty Shades of Grey" is dangerous and promotes abuse, but if it was just badly written I'd shrug and say "Everyone enjoys different things.  Some people juggle geese."

Also, I legitimately don't *have* a lot of strong subjective opinions.  A surprising amount of how I feel about various media is "Well, it seems nice enough."  Maybe 10% of what's out there falls into either "I love that" or "I think that's terrible" territory.  The rest is reasonably pleasant and generally unremarkable.

And yet still, when I start to talk or post about something I love, I'll stop to think of the people whose opinions I particularly respect on the matter, and worry that loving a thing they think is low quality will make them think I am low quality.  For a long time, this was reinforced by the kinds of geeks I hung out with, the sort who trash one another's appreciations and play hateful one-upmanship games about who's got more cred because they like the more authentic or more complex or more...whatever...thing.  For years I avoided admitting I'm really not interested in anime because every single discussion of anime devolved into one person railing against why some series or other is complete and utter garbage before I could voice any thoughts at all.  I'm sure there's several dozen people out there under the mistaken impression that I agree with their vehement anime-related opinions because I did not have the expected opposition reaction of screaming at them and attempting to strangle them during the discussion of those opinions.

I've changed to a different sort of geek, the kind that offers reasoned and intelligent criticism and supports people finding things that they love, and it's made a real difference.  "That's not really for me," is no longer met with a wall of self-righteous advocacy, so much as "Yeah, it's not everyone's cup of tea but I really enjoy it and it's been meaningful to me."

Maybe I'll still never be comfortable voicing subjective opinions, and maybe that's OK.  For what it's worth, though, I still totally love The Police and will turn them up very very loud if they are on the radio, and probably sing.

You've been warned.

Embracing the Breakdown

Several weeks ago, I woke up one morning and I couldn't get out of bed.  It wasn't that I didn't want to, that I was tired or comfortable, it was that I could not physically summon the ability to move.  When I thought about how hard it was going to be to walk to the shower ten feet away, I wanted to cry.

This isn't the first time it's happened.  I'm a busy person.  Much of my life revolves around service to others; I pretty consistently take on responsibilities and projects that push me to that point of exhaustion where I've been running at a sleep and energy deficit for several weeks, until I take a long weekend and just hermit/crash when it's convenient.  Generally, when I wake up too exhausted to move, my response is, "I have to get up, because people are depending on me."  So I do.  I summon the will and I *force* myself through it.  I drop things physically and intellectually, I'm short-tempered, I'm barely effective at all the things I need to do, but dammit I got up and did the thing.  I've spent years moving from crisis to crisis like that, always reacting, rarely acting, never planning.  I'm Good In A Crisis; it's a fundamental part of my identity.

Over the last couple of years, though, I've been doing a lot of work on self-care and healthy life patterns, trying to build sustainable habits.  My ability to 'power through' is a good trait, but it's not a lifestyle.  I'm also Good When There Is No Crisis and I'm not using that skill set enough.  So this time, I said, "I can't get up.  People are depending on me.  They're depending on me to be whole and healthy.  They're depending on me to be here in 10 years to help with their kids.  They're depending on me to do things *later* that I can't do if I don't rest *now*."  So I called in sick and stayed home, even though it screwed up some plans.  I slept another 6 hours.  I ate some good food.  And then I took serious stock of where my energy was going; that was pretty hard to look at.

On a sort of autopilot, I'd set up my weekdays as: wake up at 7:30 already late and tired, struggle out of bed, get to work late, stay at work long after hours sometimes working but sometimes just fucking around online, maybe work out and maybe don't, eat dinner around 10pm, get to bed around 2 or maybe 3, repeat.  My weekends were either exhausted collapsing, frenetic social activity, or projects to help friends.  I'd been putting off "get some real relaxation and have some real fun," so far into the future that I couldn't actually see when it would happen.  I'd barely gotten to spend significant time with the friends who feed my soul, and only managed to do so by 'stealing' time and energy from other commitments.

I was still, in some ways, recovering from major surgery.  I'd gotten past the actual physical recovery, but in trying to catch back up on organising the house and doing my workouts and finishing my projects, I'd been running about double.  I also put, for a variety of reasons, a tremendous amount of emotional labor in over the winter, without really honoring the degree to which it had taxed me.  I had started to have severe muscle weakness and facial tics, and had gotten dizzy a couple of times, all from a combination of stress and depleted resources.

Understand, no part of this was unfamiliar territory.  I've been running through various iterations of "Power through until it's convenient to collapse, no matter what you have to burn," for probably the last 20 years, doubly so since the anemia added in a new variable.  I just finally hit a point where that practice became incompatible with my changing attitudes on self-care and sustainable habits.

This also shouldn't sound like unfamiliar territory to most of my friends, who also power through more than not, who overbook and overcommit and make it all come together through the power of coffee and sarcasm, and who run the razor's edge of holding it all together.  Birds of a feather and all that, you know?

At first, I started to look at how I needed to change in the nebulous 'soon' and not at immediate change.  Part of my assessment, though, was an understanding that I had to stop pushing through the now to get to when it would be convenient because I wasn't making lasting change.  So, I set myself solid goals:  minimum calorie and protein consumption, minimum nightly and average sleep requirements, hard limits on when I leave work, a defined bedtime, a specific limit on new projects and physical activities.  None of these is a particularly revolutionary goal: they're the things healthy people do.  And I set one other:  if this isn't better in a couple of weeks of rest and self-care, it's doctor time.

Overall, I did pretty well.  I still missed a couple of bedtimes and had a couple of unnecessary late nights at work, and I have a seriously hard time cramming as much protein as the fitness tracker says I need into my diet, but the limits I'd established set a much more reasonable pace where I didn't feel like I always had to catch up.  I'm feeling much steadier and more balanced.  My planning ahead has stopped entirely revolving around what I HAVE to do, and started including what I WANT to do.  I'm comfortable making a note of it to mention to the doc when I see him next time, instead of actively scheduling a visit.

More importantly, though, by allowing the breakdown even when it wasn't convenient, I hope to break the pattern of 'push past exhaustion, crash, run to catch everything I dropped when I crashed, start the push toward exhaustion again'.  I'm not changing who I am:  I'm going to take on responsibilities.  I'm going to take on projects.  I have a loving tribe of friends who rely on me, and I rely on them.  I will continue to be Good In A Crisis because I don't really know how else to be.  All of this is important to me, and none of it is anything I actually want to give up.

What I *am* changing is the habit of letting non-emergencies pull from my reserves.  There have been too many times in my life when the only thing keeping me from crashing was the sheer number of people I'd let down if I did, and far too many times when the refusal to let anyone down in the short term meant letting everyone down in the long term.  I've had just enough situations in the last few years where having just a little reserve made the difference, and it's finally sinking through my head that I either need to give up the part of my psyche that serves and supports others, or put in actual work to build the reserves that will let me do it without cannibalizing my own health.

Complicated Thoughts on a Day Without a Woman

Yesterday was International Women's Day, and like most things involving women, it was complicated and experienced differently by a lot of different people.

Over the last several weeks, plans for a 'day without women' were floated around the internet, with a lot of women talking about how we should opt out for a day.  Don't work, don't do unpaid labor at home, don't buy things, just remove our contributions from the common pool.  A strike, essentially, from being women in the world.

Oh, if only we could.

Most of the criticisms of the 'day without women' idea were valid and based entirely in why we need one and may never get one.  It was a thing that only women lucky enough to be able to afford a day off could participate in.  Women for whom a day without work means an irreplaceable budget shortfall can't afford to strike.  Women who are sole caregivers for their children, or for their parents, cannot take a day away.  Women in "women's professions", especially teaching and nursing, have to face the fact that the people who suffer from their strike day are vulnerable children and patients, not corporations or the public at large.  I saw a number of women explaining that if they took a day off, their already-outnumbered voices would be silent for a day, leaving the decisions and opinions in the hands of their male co-workers.  Women said, "I provide care for others' children, mostly women.  If I don't work, they can't work."  Too many women who could afford to take a day off said, "Well, no one does my work if I'm not here so if I take the day off, I'll just have twice as much work tomorrow."

I took yesterday off.  I slept late and did exactly as I wanted, which included a couple of house projects I've been trying to get to but haven't because I'm often exhausted from work and other obligations.  It was excellent.

I also spent a lot of time thinking about what I was doing and why I should or should not do it.  The day actually hit a minor guilt-bubble around the time I was drinking my coffee in bed, because how can self-indulgence be a radical act?

It is, you know.  Though it's not just women, women (especially women of color) represent the greatest portion of the demographic for whom the words 'day off' are a faraway vision of unimaginable ease and luxury.  Too many of us are working paycheck to paycheck and balancing a lioness's share of unpaid household labor.

Everyone deserves a living wage for a full day's work, and that includes women.  If you're working 40 hours a week and you cannot afford to feed, house, and clothe yourself without taking on roommates or extra work, then you're being exploited.  If you're working 40 hours a week and can't even afford rent on a space large enough for your family, you're being exploited.  If you're working 40 hours a week and can't afford to save for emergencies *or* retirement, you're being exploited.  If you're working two 25-hour-a-week jobs because neither employer wants to give you full-time benefits, you're being doubly exploited.  Mark my words, every company that treats its employees this way receives government subsidies twice over, first as tax cuts and corporate welfare, and second by having tax dollars supplement their employees' abysmal wages with public assistance to meet a basic standard of living.

If you can't trust your male co-workers or managers to speak for women or consider their input as valuable if you're not physically there to hold them accountable, you're doing additional and likely unpaid labor to have a workplace that treats people fairly.

Systems, like modern nursing, that are arranged with such spare staffing coverage that every minute of every worker's day is essential to keeping the machine from failing increase burnout, which decreases employee longevity and destroys institutional knowledge.  It shortens the lives of those who work under those conditions, and damages their physical and emotional health in the long term.  If a shift that 'begins' at 3 and 'ends' at midnight requires you to be there at 2 and leave at 1230 in order to exchange critical information, AND work through your 'lunch' to finish required documentation, you're working an extra 10+ hours each week, unacknowledged.

Teachers, who are predominantly women, work hundreds of hours of invisible labor a year, from spending time over the summer designing and creating room decorations to supervising extracurricular activities to hours upon hours of grading.  "It must be nice to only work till 4," they say to the woman struggling out to the parking lot at the end of a ten-hour day, with twenty-six term papers to read and grade over the weekend.

Some of this is why I stayed home.  I am, as the articles point out, privileged in that I can do that.  My job isn't endangered by a day off; my boss was slightly inconvenienced that a thing he wanted to know didn't materialize immediately upon asking it and he had to wait until today.  Rather than dismissing things because "Only privileged women can do them" I think we need to say "Hey, this thing that's only accessible to privileged women, I think they all need to do it because they can, and to acknowledge that being able to do that should be available to all."  When a protest is only available to those of privilege, one of the best uses of privilege is to do it while pointing out its universal inaccessibility.

That's not the only reason I stayed home, though.  One of the most defining characteristics of modern womanhood is the idea that any time taken for oneself and one's own priorities is time 'stolen' from what we owe the rest of the world.  Mothers make memes about hiding in the pantry to eat a candy bar and get a few minutes' quiet.  We glamorize the idea of being 'so busy' that a cup of tea or a glass of wine in one's own living room is an unspeakable decadence.  There's an entire culture based around the conflict between feeling obligated to social engagements but being so exhausted you have to cancel them and beg forgiveness from friends for 'letting them down' by staying in for a night.

We're supposed to 'have it all' by which 'having it all' means putting the job, and the family, and the partner, and the social expectations of activism or volunteering all ahead of the simple act of enjoying time doing the things that feed us emotionally.  Women who put themselves and their own priorities ahead of any of those things are seen as somehow indulgent and rebellious.

There's a backlash against the self-care movement to tell women, "Stop claiming your pedicure or leaving a dish in the sink is 'self-care' because it's not, it's just being selfish and lazy and pretending that doing what you want is emotionally necessary."

Pretending that doing what you want is emotionally necessary.

So many of the arguments regarding women's rights boil down to whether or not women should have the same freedom to do as we want that men have.  The same opportunities to attend colleges or be hired for jobs or paid fairly.  The same ability to set our own boundaries.  The right to do as we want with our bodies and our health care.

When you trivialize the idea that doing what you want is emotionally necessary, you undermine the entire idea of women's autonomy.  You undermine our identity as complete, independent, self-actualized beings.  So what if you think my pedicure is trivial?  It's an hour of time doing what I want, at the end of which I feel physically and emotionally refreshed.  So what if you think I should go home and do the dishes instead of staying at work to finish a project I'm really interested in?  I will spend my time to my own best advantage.

Ultimately, it becomes a revolutionary act to do as we wish without validation or justification.  It is pure rebellion to spend my time entirely on my terms regardless of what the world thinks I should do with it.  Whether it's a full day I can take as a 'Floating Holiday' thanks to my employer's inclusive policies, or just a half-hour lunch break on which I refuse to work 'off the clock' and instead read a book or take a walk, unashamedly claiming the autonomy of spent time is a basic human right.

And if there's a better day for me to embrace that rebellion than International Women's Day, I don't know what it is.

Compersion is Not Just About Romance

If you hang around polyamorous circles long enough, you run into the concept of 'compersion'.  It refers to the state, when you and a partner are involved in multiple relationships, where a partner's happiness with another person brings you happiness because you're genuinely invested in their own well-being and you don't view that relationship as a threat to your own.

Whether it's a natural outgrowth of healthy polyamory or a general goal some people struggle towards is a matter of hotly debated opinion, and I'm not going to weigh in on it here.  I'm here today to talk about a different type of compersion: the manner in which it relates to the people your partner loves but is specifically not involved romantically with.  I'm talking about seeking compersion with your partner's friend group.

I am part of a large, caring, close-knit tribe.  We're loud, loving, honest and heavily invested in our success as individuals and as a group.  Many of us struggle with some form of chronic physical or mental illness, so we support one another on the bad days and celebrate the good ones.  We've got a diverse skillset that includes domestic, medical, technical, literary, financial, and social skills, and each of us is happy to put those skills to use to help one another, so that we all benefit from what we each have.  Without this group, my depression would have claimed me years ago; other friends would have failed in things they wanted or needed.

Over the years, some of the people I've dated have been intimidated by my tribe.  They see this group of unfailing advocates as somehow arrayed *against* them, in competition for my time, energy, or affection.  One poor fellow once told me, "Well, I just feel like if they don't like me, you won't like me."

He had it backwards.  If I love you and they see that you love me, my tribe will look at you through that filter, and if they don't understand what I see in you, they'll try to find it, try to build a relationship with you, try to meet you on some common ground, because they want my highest good.  They are invested in me being well and happy, and they consider anyone who is invested in me being well and happy as their ally.  It takes a lot for them to say, "No, I'm sorry, I know that this person is important to you, but I can't accept them."  And in most cases, that starts with a partner rejecting the friends, not the other way around.

The effects of having a tribe like mine have been twofold.  The first was that I chose not to pursue a relationship with anyone who treated my tribe as adversaries, and I feel that I'm much better for it.  If someone couldn't respect the people who love and support me as an important part of my life and necessary to my emotional health, then that person wasn't committed to my happiness.  My partner, on the other hand, has been delighted to find that I had such a wonderful support system, and he has really enjoyed building relationships with them.  Our wedding was a celebration of shared happiness surrounded by people committed to supporting it.

The other effect is that I view my partner's friends as MY allies in his happiness.  He has a group of good friends, and I have made it a point to know and have relationships with his friends, because if they are the people he enjoys and loves, who share in his triumphs and support him in his troubles, then they're on my side because they're on his.  When he goes out with them, and has a good time, I get the benefit of seeing him happy.  When we hang out together, we all have the shared baseline of valuing my partner upon which to build our own friendships.

That's where, for me, non-romantic compersion comes into play.  I have some interests my partner does not share.  He likes to do some things I either don't have time and energy for or an interest in doing.  If we tried to be everything to one another, tried to be the sole support, then we'd both be less happy.  But I can see him come home from an afternoon of games with his buddies, or plan to go out with a friend to see a show, and celebrate the joy he has in doing things he enjoys.  When we have separate experiences, we have things to talk about together.  Even in our monogamous relationship, we can embrace the things and people outside our relationship that make one another happy, and take our own pleasure from it.

Too often, I see the partners of friends or loved ones look at established friendships with suspicion, as obstacles to be navigated or power struggles to be won.  I've seen partners who treated friends as competition for a finite resource, and that hurts everyone.

Love is never a finite resource; time is.  And you have the choice, in your relationships, to compete for that finite resource and ensure that someone doesn't get enough of it, or to share it with the people who, when your beloved's demons come calling, will stand beside you as you help to fight them.

A Note to the Resolutioneers

New Year's Day is upon us, and everywhere we look people are gearing up for Massive Life Change.  This year, it's gonna be different.  Really a new leaf.  Gonna save money, gonna quit smoking, gonna get fit, gonna eat right, gonna bike to work three times a week.

I don't make New Year's resolutions, but I get that for some people that particular modality works.  Fresh starts are very appealing.  I'm here to talk to you today about one of those things you're all excited about: your gym membership.

My partner and I belong to a gym, and every year the regulars grit their teeth at the arrival of The Resolutioneers.  They're on all the machines, struggling and sweating, they're filling up the pool and the locker room, they're clogging your favorite yoga class and harshing your namaste.  They swell the ranks of gym-goers for about a month, and then it tapers back to normal by the end of February.  Many of the regulars, at that point, breathe a sigh of relief.  Now, they say, it will be fine until 'swimwear season' and then again until the holidays next year.

The resolutioneers make me profoundly sad.  Not because they're inconveniencing me or crowding a space I use.  I don't mind that part so much, because they're enjoying a thing I enjoy.  I'm sad because I see them hit the gym like it owes them money, fast and fierce and intent, but never find the grip on a lasting habit.  Over the last almost-ten years of gym memberships, I've been watching the resolutioneers to try and figure out why they fail.  If you're looking for a shiny new gym, I've got a few tips for you.  I'm not a trainer, so they're not tips for working out.  I'm someone who loves the gym, so they're tips for how to become one of those.

It starts before you even begin.  A lot of people are choosing a gym the wrong way.  The absolute first consideration for a gym is "how convenient is this for me to get to?"  All other factors take second place to whether a gym is on your way to or from work, near home or the kids' daycare, convenient for a lunch break session on the elliptical.  Even the best gym is worthless if *just getting there* is a chore.  After that, you look into classes and facilities, does it have childcare, is the facility clean and well-maintained?  But first, convenience.

Then, too many of you skip the personal training sessions.  Yeah, I get it, it saves a few bucks, but most gyms offer a low-cost introductory training session, in which you're taught how to gym.  You're asked to clarify your goals, and figure out what you need to do to meet them.  You're given a tour of all the things in your gym.  You learn how to set up the weights and use them safely and responsibly.  And if your trainer is worth anything, you learn about the importance of gym etiquette.

Not understanding the basic manners of the gym is one of the greatest sources of conflict between regulars and resolutioneers, and it's one of the biggest hurdles on the path to being an active member of your gym.  If you're breaking the rules in ways that interfere with other peoples' ability to work out, they won't help you.  They won't be open and welcoming.  They'll just work around you until you go away.

Listen, we know you're new.  We know you don't know what you're doing, because we all remember what WE looked like when we were new and had no idea what we were doing.  Some of us have been doing this for a while, and we've learned helpful things we could share with you.  We won't share them if you're sitting on a machine for ten minutes checking your phone, or if you're blocking the only available treadmill while you have a conversation with a friend.  We won't share them with the person who just walked away leaving the weight bench coated in sweat.  We won't share them if you've draped your gym bag over the machine next to you, or if you leave your equipment all over the weight room floor.  Pissy and elitist?  Maybe, but maybe not.  A gym only works if everyone uses the resources cooperatively; most of us are there to work, with a limited amount of time allocated out of the day.  We don't have time to explain to five people a day why you need to wipe down the equipment after you sweat on it, or argue with you about not slamming the weights.

If someone asks you, "You need a hand with that?" or "Everything OK?" it likely is a polite way of saying "I see that you are doing this in a way that may hurt you or break the equipment and I'd like to help you not do that," or "I see that you are struggling with something I know how to do."  Most of the time the advice they have will make what you're doing feel better, smoother, and less awkward.  If it doesn't, ask one of the trainers; they're usually good about one-off questions, especially questions about not breaking things or getting hurt.

Building friendly rapport with your fellow gym-goers goes a long way to making the experience supportive.  You don't have to make small talk or have long chatty conversations at the juice bar, but you'll notice people smiling at you, exchanging friendly nods, offering advice or encouragement, and that changes the experience.  You become part of a community.

OK, so you've got a convenient gym, you've got an exercise plan, you're making friends, now what?  You've got to set and keep sustainable goals and be realistic about your capacity for gym attendance.  Every year I talk to someone who says to me, "I've come to the gym EVERY DAY for the last two weeks!!!!!" and I never see them again because they're exhausted and then they miss a day, it turns into two days, and they get demoralized by the 'failure' and give up.

The most important exercise you do at the gym is walking through the door.  Just get there.  Whether you went yesterday should have no bearing on your attendance tomorrow.  Missed a week in a row?  I guarantee you no one will judge you if you *walk back through that door*.  Missed two weeks?  Man, they don't care as long as you *walk back through that door*.  Just gonna show up and sit in the hot tub?  No one tracks you once you *walk back through that door*.

Decide how many days a week is a reasonable goal, and how many is a 'stretch' goal.  On a good week, I work out three times (plus whatever activity I do outside the gym).  Most weeks, it's two.  So I don't beat myself up if I only go twice, but I applaud myself if I make that third day.  Your reasonable schedule should be one that you can keep.  If you need to pay for classes, or work with a buddy, or designate scheduled nights to make yourself get into the habit then do it, but GO.  A hectic schedule will flex around what you make time for, I promise you.

Make sure you build a varied workout.  Use weights or weight machines to build strength, and treadmills, ellipticals, or bikes for cardio and endurance.  Balancing the work you do gives better results, and it keeps the gym from being boring.  It also helps you set goals that are unrelated to weight loss, and this is essential.  I can't tell you how much weight I've lost at the gym, but I can tell you how much my lift numbers and my cardio time have increased.

Learn to use the gym to deal with life stressors.  Bad day at work?  Move weight till you're not pissed off any more.  Family driving you nuts?  Plug in the headphones and run away for a little while.  Hyper kids?  Drop them at the activity center, then hit a yoga or a dance class while they burn off their energy.  Pack a gym bag and leave it in your car so you're always ready to stop off and work out.

Set functional rewards for practical goals.  It's best if they somehow improve your workout.  One full month of three-times-a-week attendance got me my Fitbit so I can track my workouts, and the next attendance goal will get me some new gym clothes.  A lot of people do food-based rewards, but that sets up the idea that food and exercise are enemies.  Food and exercise are friends because if you don't have calories you can't work out, and if you don't have protein you can't build muscle.

There will come a day when you really don't want to go to the gym.  You're tired from your day, you've got a headache, you're down to the crappy sports bra, whatever.  Whatever it is, it's not really a reason, just an excuse.  There's really nothing keeping you from going except that the sofa is comfy and warm and the Netflix is all queued up.  That day, you HAVE to go.  That day is your routine-brain trying to get back to what it finds comfortable, and it'll keep coming up with excuses for you.  You have to be able to tell routine-brain no.

Then there will come a day when you really want to work out and you can't.  You've twisted an ankle, or you're getting over a nasty flu, or a legit workplace crisis eats your workout time.  First, congratulations on building your workouts so deeply into your life that you *miss* them when you can't have them.  Second, set a return date and stick to it, or that two-day hiatus can turn into weeks.  The feeling of accomplishment at that 'first workout back', knowing that you took care of yourself and then came back to the goal, is wonderful.

Lastly, take advantage of your gym's amenities.  I wandered into the sauna once, and now it's how I finish every workout because it gives me a quiet, contemplative space to set that good endorphin feeling and carry it with me when I leave.  Whirlpools for sore muscles, steam rooms, dry saunas, cooldown pools, try it all and figure out what helps you walk out of the gym feeling energised and clear-headed.

I wish everyone luck and happiness on their 2017 journey, and I hope you find habits that you enjoy and benefit from!

Un-Scheduled to Within an Inch of My Life

A lot of articles and conversations have been wafting through my life lately like this one, Exhaustion is Not a Status Symbol, and each time I tell myself I'm going to talk about my experience with this destructive mentality, and then I don't.  So now I am.

One year ago, if you asked me how I had been, the answer was a sort of helpless, "Oh, you know, SO BUSY.  I am made of busy.  I am doing All The Things."  It took a lot of things, multiple articles highlighting that the glorification of busy is part of a system that was eating so many people alive, before I really started to ask myself important questions.

Important questions like, "What, exactly, are my own goals?" or "What is it that I would do if I ever stopped taking on others' priorities as my own?" or "So, what am I afraid I'll have to deal with if I ever sit still?"

My life is very full.  I work, I volunteer, I have a few creative gigs and hobbies, I am in a relationship, I'm part of a closely-knit community, I serve as a priestess, and I'm working on my own personal development, plus managing episodic depression and occasional bouts of anemia.  I also moved last year and my company underwent a transition of ownership.

I used to take a great deal of pride in that list, because the eyes of anyone who heard it got very round, and they said, "Wow, you ARE busy."  There was a sort of self-satisfaction in knowing that I lived under a schedule that others considered crushing and impressive.  I joked about being 'scheduled to within an inch of my life,' but the truth is that I wasn't really joking.  I was at the very edge of what I could reasonably live.

The primary problem, of course, lies in that episodic depression and occasional anemia.  Because there were occasionally days where I looked at the catalogue of obligations I'd built myself, and I...couldn't (I should probably also mention the migraines here, most common in January and February when dry air and pressure changes are particularly vicious).  I had to stop, to hide, to take a full day to recover from the basics of my life.  Of course, everyone tells you, when you need to take three to five 'mental health' days a year, that you're perfectly entitled to them, that you have 'every right' to the time.

But what if I didn't need it?  What if I started structuring a life I never needed to take time from, because it was ordered in a way that included time off, relaxation, and recovery time as normal facets of human existence?

I had this moment where a friend asked if I wanted to have coffee or dinner or something, and my calendar was literally full, something scheduled every single day, for weeks.  That was a trigger; the night I found myself weeping into the laundry at 2am because I couldn't sleep until I had washed the sheets and made the bed but I hadn't gotten home until almost midnight was another.  I started working towards balance, towards the notion that relaxation didn't have to represent 'hiding from' my life, that it could be an integral part.  I started to consider that maybe it might be reasonable to be able to do interesting things at the last minute.  I started offloading small tasks and obligations to people I could trust with them.

If you had told me that stepping back from a life of obligation would increase the time I had to spend managing it, I'd never have believed it.  But it's true.  Anything I dropped without a clear transition plan, without figuring out who would take it on, came back upon me with a vengeance, unpredictably and in crisis.  So I exhausted myself, carving out bits and pieces of time in hopes that it would create space for that transition.

Gradually, slowly, it worked.  I found that in spaces where I have taken leadership roles, I could comfortably delegate to trusted team members.  I found that in spaces where leadership was lacking, I could advise and suggest rather than doing the work and owning the process.  Some of it has to do with the change in work, from 'ten vacation days and five sick days a year' to 'twenty undifferentiated PTO days, plus three floating holidays to use as desired.'

I've had to let a lot go.  I've had to trust.  I've had to set boundaries.  It's been hard, because my natural tendency, when someone says, "We need this done," is to say "Of course, I can help with that.  I'll just take on that responsibility."  Rather than simply refuse all requests, which is its own trap, I've been forcing myself to stop and consider which things are good uses of my time, which things will feed me.  I am looking at trips as real plans, and not as someday hopes for 'years when the anemia and the festivals leave me enough time.'

About six months ago, I turned the corner that was "The process of transitioning things out of my life no longer occupies more space than the things I have transitioned out of my life," which is to say I started to develop occasional free time.  It's been amazing.

The hardest thing is that there are SO MANY OPTIONS for filling that time, for busying back up, for a show and a party and a movie and a dinner and a coffee every single week.  There are more hobbies I'd love to take up, and more events I'd love to see, but for now, at least, I'm stopping to take a breath and center myself at home, and establish what a healthy boundary set of my own time really looks like in the long term, rather than create another cycle of busy-and-purge down the road.

I do not delude myself that this is anything other than a landing on my life's staircase.  At each turning, I cull obligation and replace it with passion, in hopes that someday my life will be full only of things that feed and nourish me, of things that all actively contribute to me being my best self.

I love you all.

Now I Am Prime Again

A year ago today, I was returning from riding roller coasters with my best friend, musing on what it really means to be an adult.  The entire notion that because of the hard work and effort I'd put into building a career and a community and structures and relationships, my fortieth birthday literally meant turning a profit riding roller coasters because it cost me less than a day's wages to do so, has colored my year.

The last ten years, more than anything, have been spent building.  Building communities, building trust, building relationships.  Growing into my own identity as a priestess, as a counselor, as a friend, as a woman.

The hardest lesson in these ten years is that though my choices have far-reaching effects, my power stops at the ends of my arms.  If it's not within my control, then it's a variable beyond my influence.

It's hard to watch someone you love struggle through unhappiness, unable to help him figure out the key, that it has to start in your heart and move outwards, because no amount of pressure will drive it in to your core.  I see people I love moving towards what look like painful life lessons, and I can only point and call out, "Mind that first step, there."  Sometimes I can't even do that, because they're so well-shielded against anything that will crack the facade of bitterly determined vengeful happiness they're forging.

It's hard to watch communities tear at themselves, and be unable to stop them because patterns of hate lie like railroad tracks, driving people inexorably towards conflict.  To hope desperately that common sense will prevail, as reason shatters upon the rocks.

It's hard to see people grinding themselves to nothing in the name of justice, compassion, and mercy, because there is so much work and it will never be done in our lifetimes but we cannot stop trying.  To watch hearts break as hope fails, and to work to gather the pieces and begin to build with what can be salvaged.

That little voice that tells me to take up arms and rise against the windmills that plague others has been a guiding force of my life, and it's only really been this year that I see:  It drives me to their battles to avoid acknowledging my own.

I can't say what's triggered this self-knowledge, this realisation that I must, in the next ten years, begin to get a real handle on the lessons I can use with my own two hands to keep my own life at the center of my priorities, but it's been a strong and powerful month.

A while ago, I began the process of reclaiming my life, of pulling back into control and learning to focus my energies on what feeds me in some way.  And this process of building a life outside of meeting the needs of others has been ongoing for about three years now.  But I see now that the realisations I thought were answers were only the beginning of a thousand more questions.

The first question I am asking, the one it is hardest to face, is "What can I build that serves me alone, that does not benefit me as a side effect of serving someone else?"

On the Longest Night

Tonight is the Longest Night.

As they do every year, the days have become shorter and darker, the nights longer.  And as it does every year, a tiny but visceral fear has taken root in my mind:

What if it never gets better?

What if the days just keep getting shorter and darker, until the light is gone forever?

What if this is the last winter, the forever winter, that will never ever go away?

That's a bit like what living with episodic depression is like.  Every day a little darker, every day a little harder to get out of bed, and you keep telling yourself, because your rational scientific brain KNOWS IT, that this will have to get better, that the world is a circle and life will spin back to long days and lazy afternoons someday.  But that Traitor Brain in the back of your head says, "What if?  What if it never gets better?  What if the happiness becomes more and more fleeting, less and less powerful, until the long darkness just...stays?  What if this episode is the one that kills you?"

It's no coincidence that most of my serious depressive episodes happen in the winter.  Though it's not quite SAD, there's something about watching the sun go that speaks to an inexorable creeping darkness.

Yule has special meaning for me, because it is a defiant night, when you stand in that darkness, and you watch the sun go down, and you throw faith out into the world and tell yourself that this, this is the darkest of it.  And you put all your faith, everything you are, into the certainty of the coming sun.  You burn so brightly into that darkness, because you know you're halfway there, and you throw a little extra into the fire because you know that somewhere out there is someone whose faith may not be strong enough to see them through to sunrise, but they can get there by the light of your burning.

This has been a good year.  Traitor Brain has been driven back to her cave, and holds little power in my daily life.  Last winter was much harder, much colder.

I know that the worst of winter lies before me, the bone-deep cold and the hard frozen earth and the creeping frost death that strikes even in the heart of Texas.  But I am armed against that whispering chill, with a sword to batter the walls of ice and a shield before me that shines like mercy and wonder.

I believe in the sun, and I will it back with the joy of my heart.

Blessed be, my loves.

Solutions, Tools, Sympathy, and Experience

Imagine for a moment that you are a mechanic, with an old, lovingly-maintained but still quirky car.  Periodically, some part on this car fails on you, and replacement parts are harder to get, but to you it's still worth it.  One day, this car won't start.

You investigate, and because you're pretty familiar with this car you quickly determine that the problem is a bad part in your ignition system.  You call around with no luck, but finally find one at a junkyard in another state; they tell you they're pretty sure they can have it to you early next week.  You're a little bummed out about this, because you'd planned a road trip for the weekend to see a friend and show him your car, but there's really no help for it.

One of your buddies, who is not a mechanic, drops by, and you invite him in for a beer because you've had a frustrating day and you could use some company.  You're telling him about having to reschedule your trip, and he interrupts you.

Him:  Why don't you just rent a car and go anyway?  I'll even lend you my car.
You:  That's really nice of you to offer.  But I wanted to show my other friend my car.  He's thinking of buying one, and wanted to get a feel for how working on it would be if he did.
Him:  Well, can't he come here then?
You:  No, that's not an option for him.  Next weekend will work.  I'm just bummed because we were gonna get awesome barbecue.
Him:  Are you sure the battery's not dead?  Did you try jump-starting it?
You:  Yeah, it's just a part in the ignition.  I've got another one coming, it's just inconveniently scheduled and frustrating.
Him:  Did you put gas in it?  Maybe it's out of gas.
You:  Uh, no, I'm pretty sure I learned to read a gas gauge at a pretty early age.
Him:  Well, you don't have to get defensive.  Hey, it is blue.  I read somewhere that blue cars break down more often.  I've got some time this afternoon.  Let's paint it green.  I'll help you!
You: ...
Him:  Oh!  Maybe it's out of oil.  You have to put oil in cars, you know, between oil changes.  I used to have this old Chevy, burned a quart of oil a week...let's go put some oil in your car and see if that fixes it.
You:  No, it's fine on oil, and by the way, if you've got a car losing a quart of oil a week, that's really bad...how long did you drive it like that?  Your current car isn't leaking like that, is it?
Him:  Well, it was running fine.  Anyway, why don't you just go to the part store and get the part?  I'm sure they've got whatever you need at the AutoZone.  I got headlight lamps there last week!
You:  This is a forty-year-old car.  It hasn't been made since the mid-70s.  There wasn't one at the local junkyard, but I found a guy who specializes in this model and he's getting me the part.
Him:  Well, but let's just go to the AutoZone and check.
You:  No, the AutoZone won't have it...who are you calling?
Him:  The AutoZone.  I'll just check for you, because you never know.  Hello, AutoZone, I need a...what's the part called?
You:  (specify part, plus make and model and year of the car)
Him:  (gives info)  You don't?  Since when?  Well, there's no need to be RUDE!  (*hangs up*)  The clerk laughed at me.
You:  No real surprise there.
Him:  Why don't you just let me take a look at it?  I might be able to rewire it for you.
You:  You know I do this for a living, right?  I know what I'm doing, and it's just a part I'll get replaced, OK?
Him:  Well, I'm just trying to help.  I do have a knack for mechanical things.
You:  Last year you set your workshop on fire 'fixing the toaster'.  Can't you just sit here and enjoy a beer and hang out with me?
Him:  That's your problem.  You always want to TALK about your problems, you never want to actually hear how to FIX them.

This conversation is how I feel when the men in my life talk about how "women just want sympathy instead of solutions because they're not invested in fixing their problems.  Men are solution-driven, so we have to just learn to listen tolerantly and not try to give any real help."

Generally, the 'problems' I am talking about are well beyond the three-minute understanding of anyone who's not me, and the last thing I need are simplistic, uninformed and unhelpful solutions from someone who doesn't have any idea of the full scope of what's going on, who then gets angry at me for the fact that his suggestions don't solve my problem, and accuses me of either 'not telling the whole story first' or 'just throwing up roadblocks' when I try to explain the complexities.  I don't 'just want sympathy' because I don't want solutions.  I 'just want sympathy' because you probably don't have the skills, experience, and tools to solve the problem right now, or because your goals and needs and expectations are different than mine and what would work for you in the same situation won't get me where I want to be.  Or because I've already set the solution in motion, but some part of that solution frustrates, upsets, or irritates me and I want to vent to a friend I trust to offer empathy.

If the solutions are that 'glaringly obvious' do you really believe I can't see them myself?  Or is it a more likely explanation that the glaringly obvious solution has a hidden cost, anything from incurring a social debt I don't want, to a hit to self-esteem I can't afford right now, to abandoning a larger goal that doesn't appear connected from your perspective, but is?

I'm not saying, guys, that I don't want your help or your perspectives.  But unless I've started the conversation with "I could use some advice..." or ended it with "...so what do you think I should do?" then accusing me of 'not wanting to fix' a problem I'm having just because what's readily apparent and obvious to you isn't a reasonable solution to me is pretty insulting.  And writing off the entire female gender as 'not really interested in SOLVING problems as much as talking about them' is a pretty good way to keep me from trusting you enough to talk to you about problems you can help solve.

On Holidays Secular and Spiritual

When I was a young Badger, I started to understand that my country celebrates two Christmases.  There's the solemn celebration of the birth of Christ, honoring God's promise of hope and salvation.  And there's the warm, loving celebration of time with family and friends, exchanging gifts and drinking eggnog and singing about sleigh bells.

Even when I was Christian, those two holidays were different for me.  When we went to evening/late services on Christmas Eve, I didn't associate the magical candlelight sermon on hope and love with the next morning's explosion of wrapping paper and Family Dinner.  I found that the differentiation seemed easier for me than for many of my peers, over the years, as they wrestled with cramming spirituality into a Christmas stocking.  And when I left Christianity, I had no trouble keeping Family Christmas alive in my life and discarding Spiritual Christmas, which had ceased to hold a deep meaning for me.

Lately I've been coming to understand that today has a similar dichotomy for me.  There's Hallowe'en, which is the orgy of costumes and candy and spookiness that seems to bring out the kid in every last person.  And there's Samhain, the dark winnowing to end the year, when the veils are thin and our dead stand among us.

I like Hallowe'en just fine.  I like candy, and I like to see other people's costumes, and it's great to watch people get SO INTO creativity and expression because maybe they don't feel like they've got an excuse year-round.  But I find that I celebrate it mostly by observation, by watching others embrace it.  I have no costume ideas.  I don't feel compelled to carve up a pumpkin for the office contest.  While I totally respect the effort that goes into designing witch hats out of donuts, ice cream cones, frosting and sprinkles, I have no desire whatsoever to put forth that effort.

Samhain, though, is incredibly important for me.  It's the time of the year when most are pulling inward to rest through the dark part of the year, when I and those like me, who have chosen the alternate path, begin our winter's burning to stand as guideposts and guardians.  Today, so to speak, I take up my sword and begin my watch.

Today I stand in love and trust with my dead gathered around me, not mourning them but honoring them.  I thank those voices that have spoken to guide me, I am grateful for those who walked into darkness to light my own way, giving me the courage to stand as light for others.

After long years of wrestling with this holiday dichotomy, I'm finally at peace with something: I don't celebrate Hallowe'en.  I love to watch it go by.  I laugh and enjoy other people's celebrations, and it makes me genuinely joyful to see all the fun and happiness.  I am not, by any means, a Hallowe'en Grinch.

But this is one day of the year I have to stand apart, my loves.  As I take up more fully the path of the Warrior, as I step more deeply into the Wood, sometimes I have to choose the path apart from the crowd, because what I am doing needs my full attention.  I don't begrudge you the ability to balance the secular and the spiritual in your celebrations, to stir the cauldron and still use it to bob for apples.  Perhaps in future years I'll manage that balance as well, but right now, at this time in my life, what I am doing in the spiritual consumes my focus.

I have been, as I do, resting this summer.  Today is my last day of rest for a season.  Tonight I gather my final harvest, draw upon the energies I've been storing, and light the fire I'll hold through until spring.

Let me say, because I do not say it often enough: I am more grateful than I can ever say to have been given this space to burn, this torch to bear.  For the trust I am offered, for the chance to serve and ward, I am thankful.  My harvest is not of the physical; it is the trust, respect, and love of those people, living and dead, who are part of my life.

I love you all.

In Which I Am Not Yet Highly Effective, But Getting There

I used to have a genuinely horrible job selling wine over the telephone.  Truth be told, I've had a lot of horrible jobs, but that one really took the cake.

The company wasn't the problem, the manager was.  He was the worst sort of self-improvement hypocrite, spouting Napoleon Hill, Stephen Covey, and Tony Robbins in between racist, sexist, ableist, homophobic jokes.  He insulted and belittled those beneath him, and he berated us because our inability to sell $400 cases of untasted wine to strangers over the phone was obviously due to a lack of personal character and commitment.

The job paid $250 a week, on which I could barely live, and transitioned to straight commission after six weeks.  I sold two cases of wine in the two months I worked there, so I essentially gave them two weeks of labor for free.  My 'shift' ran from 1 to 10 each day, but I was expected to arrive at noon for the daily 'motivational lunch', where we all gathered around the conference table to eat our lunches (and have the morality of our dietary decisions critiqued by a chain smoking alcoholic carrying a good extra 80 pounds) and listen to self-help tapes, especially Napoleon Hill and Tony Robbins, and be lectured on 'fake it till you make it' and 'no is never an acceptable answer to any question'.  I would then sit through a prayer to begin the day, and spend nine hours on the phone, because if I took more than 15 minutes for dinner when I hadn't sold any wine, I was subjected to insults and ostentatious disappointment.

One of Pat's demands, as well, was that I spend five minutes a day reading some 'self-improvement' book.  He provided a list, topped of course by the Bible and various professional motivation texts.  He was livid when my first choice was the Tao te Ching, and my second was the Art of War.  That 'commie foreigner nonsense' couldn't possibly teach me anything worth knowing, and at that point he washed his hands of me, despairing of my ever being a 'decent woman'.  He found out from a co-worker that I read tarot, and from then on he 'jokingly' began asking every day if I'd like to begin the prayer with a ritual goat or baby sacrifice.  Why did I stay?  Because I couldn't find another office job and thought I was 'too good to go backwards to retail', and while I was at least making the $250 a week I wasn't getting evicted.

Near the top of the list he gave me was Stephen Covey's "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People."  Without reading a word of it or knowing anything about it other than "Pat thinks it will make me a better person," I dismissed it entirely out of hand as another example of the self-improvement genre geared towards becoming a pushy sales asshole.  I wanted nothing to do with that Covey fuck, whose planners all carried a bunch of (to me) hollow affirmations about personal growth and goal-setting and time management.

Fast forward fifteen years, during which many people I did respect and appreciate have said to me, "I think you'd really get a lot out of that book." Finally, last year, I saw it in the Amazon Prime Kindle Lending Library and thought, "Is it really fair to let one bigoted asshole influence my reading decisions forever?"  So, I started reading it and have been working through it slowly, reading each chapter twice before moving to the next.

I won't say it's 'changed my life' or anything that dramatic, but today I had an epiphany:  what he was talking about doing was something that, in at least one area of my life, I'd been groping around trying to accomplish without fully understanding the transition or my reasoning.  At one point he talks about changing your focus from crisis response to relationship management, and I thought about the changes that we've been working on with the Guardians.  One of the big things that, after talking to the other Chiefs and our Director, we identified as a problem was that (primarily because of staffing shortages and shifts in paperwork management) many people often only interacted with a Guardian, especially with a Chief Guardian, when something was wrong.  Outside of crisis, they knew nothing about us, didn't have any reason to trust us except the reputation of the team.  The respect and trust accorded to me came from my possession of a green glowie and a laminate badge, not from a relationship and a history of personal integrity.  Other people's integrity and right action had earned me that trust, but we weren't working to strengthen those relationships the way we needed to be.  We can't effectively serve a community that doesn't know us as people.

We've been working to get back to that, getting the Chiefs out on patrol, getting our faces and our names in front of people so that they know *us* and not our titles, making sure that they feel comfortable talking to us on or off duty, about any issue even if it seems trivial.  Instead of spending a precious few off-duty hours hiding or relaxing in my camp, I've been taking more time off duty to peruse the merchants' wares, go to workshops, visit other camps, hang out with non-Safety friends, and generally make myself known when I'm *not* wearing green.  The effect is two-fold.  First, and most important:  I hope I never face a situation where people's lives depend on them trusting and listening to me, but with wildfires and increased animal sightings and weather oddities it's going to remain a possibility, and I'd rather depend on something more than "she has a piece of laminate that says 'trust me, I'm a Guardian' around her neck."  I want it to depend on "She has used her position with integrity, to act in the best interests of the membership, and I trust her as a *person* and as a Guardian, to know what is happening, have a plan, and do her best to help us stay safe."  Second:  I'm having more fun, making more friends, and ending each festival with less stress than I had when I started it, which tells me I'm doing something right.

'Doing something right' is the conversation I've been having with this book.  As I was avoiding it, I told myself that I'm pretty happy with my life (which I am, on the whole, even when annoyances and frustrations occur) and I didn't want to fight with some motivational asshat who'd dismiss my love-centered, joy-focused existence as meaningless and irresponsible.  It turns out that the parts of my life I'm happy with (the parts where I'm consistently aware of and acting in accord with my values) are the parts that already fit into the structure of the book, and the message I'm getting isn't "You're doing it wrong."  It's, "So far, so good.  Now, let's look at the next step."

So, what happened with Pat and the wine job?  Well, one day I'd had enough of the "Jerry's Kids" jokes and I told the Assistant Manager that they made me uncomfortable and I was pretty sure they were illegal.  He assured me that I could talk to Pat, explain how the jokes and the insults and the bigoted comments made me feel, and that Pat, who after all spouted words about positive thinking and affirmations and respect for the dignity of the individual for an hour each day, could be trusted to receive that information, think about it critically, and work with me to create a more positive atmosphere.  So, I did, because I was a naive young woman with very little professional experience.

What resulted was a screaming fight while I angrily packed the contents of my desk.  He insulted my character, I insulted his management style.  He called me an uptight dyke, and I lost my temper and suggested he'd been raised by chimpanzees.  He screamed a lot of things at me, things like 'filthy whore' and 'fat lazy bitch' and 'devil worshipper' and pulled out the termination paperwork he'd made me fill out during a 'personal counseling session' the week before, then said I might as well quit because 'worthless cunt' wasn't one of the options under 'reason for separation'.  I'm still not sure whether I quit that job or was fired from it, but he swung a golf putter at my head as I walked out the door.  Later, I sent a letter off to corporate detailing conditions in the Kansas City office and the circumstances surrounding my last day, and I cc'd it to the Missouri Department of Labor and the EEOC.  I don't know what happened from there, because I never heard from anyone connected to the company again.  I called a temp agency, who told me, "We were just about to call you!  A job opened up that's perfect for your skill set.  Can you start Monday?

The thing that really gets me is that if I'd read "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" when Pat recommended it to me, at the start of the job, I'd have quit right then and there, working at McDonald's or QuikTrip or wherever I had to, to get out of that situation.  Because I would have seen, halfway through chapter one, that there was no way I could work in that environment and keep that person in my life, if I wanted to stay true to my own principles and my own ideals.

In Which I Am Thinking About Being Here

This article in Slate caught my eye today.  Aside from the catchy 'Hey, be like Sherlock!' pop-culture analysis of it, the points in it are very important, and worth reading.  I believe we're losing valuable observational and experiential skills.

Mindfulness is something many people, especially those on spiritual paths, set as a goal.  We want to attain that state of being fully present in the moment, but we're surrounded by influences that fight against it.  The cell phone, tablet, and laptop mean that I can 'stay connected' wherever I go.  Sometimes, this is good.  When I'm getting ready for the Dionysium, when I'm planning the safety arrangements for a festival, if I've got a sick or injured friend who needs my attention, then it can be critical for someone to reach me or for me to check details.  If I worked an 'on-call' job, my employer would need some way to get hold of me.

But...why do we have so many 'on-call' jobs?  Sure, doctors and emergency responders make sense: what if there's a major emergency?  Even IT professionals make a certain amount of sense, though the ever-encroaching business of "You're expected to take one week a month 'on-call' in addition to your scheduled time, to adjust your schedule and limit your activities, for no additional pay unless you're actually needed," seems like companies' way of saying "It matters enough to us to sell 'full-time coverage' to our customers that we'll inconvenience and frustrate our employees, but not enough to have sufficient staff to simply *schedule* someone full-time."

A friend told me a couple of years back that the manager at her part-time retail job told her, "During the Holiday season, refusing to come in and cover a shift on your day off (without a doctor's note) or not returning a call to come in within two hours is grounds for termination."  Really?  To run a cash register at little better than minimum wage, you're supposed to agree to be 'on call' for over a month and willing to rearrange your own schedule to cover management's failure to anticipate business correctly?  That's wholly unreasonable.

But, as Philadelphia Story reminds us, "Miss Imbrie must eat.  And she also prefers a roof over her head to being constantly out in the rain and snow."  If the terms of your employment require it, and you need the job, you'll give up that control until you can find a better option.  I don't like that the world works this way, but it's not a thing I can change.

I see dozens of people every day giving up that control completely voluntarily, though.  They walk along, head down to text or tweet, they stop everything to read an e-mail whenever the phone buzzes, they surreptitiously check a screen five times over the course of a conversation. Sometimes I'm one of them.  It's occasionally a conscious effort for me to get through a movie without pulling out the phone to check IMDB and see who that actress is, or text a friend the funny thing I would have told her if she were sitting next to me, but I get through.

Over the last couple of years I've been working to take that control back.  It started with festival.  I turn my phone off once I reach the land, partly to keep it from draining its battery, but mostly to focus entirely on where I am and what I'm doing.  My festival experience is *important* to me and I don't want to miss it.  I want to be alert and aware of what's happening, to understand the shifting social currents, the changes in weather, the magical energies.  When I go hiking, when I work out, I leave the phone alone (it goes hiking with me, turned off and in the backpack in case of emergencies, but for all intents and purposes I am inaccessible).  When I have an evening out to dinner (with friends or alone), I try to leave the phone in my purse (I admit, when everyone else pulls out theirs to check, I usually give in and do the same).

I still keep Facebook and multiple chat programs open when I'm online, and flip back and forth between tabs and conversations, but more often now on a lazy Sunday afternoon I take my book or Kindle outside, onto the porch, to read and watch the bird politics play out in the loquat tree.  It's amazing how many people have said, "I texted you hours ago.  Why didn't you reply?" and been confused by the answer, "Well, I wasn't near my phone.  I was doing things."

I've definitely noticed a difference in my awareness of the world; it's become more pronounced since I started messing around with photography as well.  Now, I'll walk along, looking around, and think, "Hey, that'd make a really good picture," or "Man, I wish I had my camera so I could catch that sky."  I'm buying a new purse, one that will hold the camera, because it's a good trigger for immersing myself in and noticing my surroundings.  And when I have those moments, whether I have a camera or not, I stop and take some time to fix them in my memory, to store them away in my brain-attic.  I'm feeling an increasing connection to my world, growing depth and color and texture in my daily experience.  Every so often, I stop walking and talking and moving and interacting for ten or fifteen seconds, and try to just be *present*.  It's a lot harder than I expected, but it's getting easier.

Truth be told, I've also been playing the Sherlock game.  I look at a person or a thing and try to take in as much detail as I can, looking at clothes and posture and appearance, looking for signs of disease or parasites in the leaves of a plant, listening to intonations and inflections and which cat's bell jingles at a higher pitch.  I'm getting better at making small deductions with my observations, though I can't imagine having the incredible body of *knowledge* required to differentiate two hundred and forty-six types of tobacco ash.

The only negative effect, if it can be called negative, is the desire to run up to people like the guy I saw on the trail a few weeks ago, grab the cellphone out of his hands and the earbuds out of his ears and shout, "Hey, you!  You're in a beautiful place surrounded by wonderful sights, and for the last five minutes you've been glued to that phone, head-down and oblivious.  STOP IT.  LOOK.  JUST LOOK, RIGHT NOW, AT WHERE YOU ARE."

I refrain, though, because I can't know if this is the only tune-out time he gets in a week of vigilance, if he's listening to a birdwatching tape or looking up whether or not that was poison ivy, or if he just simply doesn't care to be mindful and engaged.  I may be happier this way, but for some reason forcibly applying happiness to others through abuse of their electronics is frowned upon by the legal system in this country.

In Which I Do Not Accept the Enemy I Am Given

I have a friend who has struggled with her health for some time.  She has undetermined health issues, which her doctors can't explain, that essentially make a simple diet and a good night's sleep her personal Holy Grail.  She's recounted her experience in detail, and I've been following it.

Recently, she had a moderate epiphany helped out by a friend, in which she decided to shift her relationship with her body to one of compassion and empathy, to address her difficulties by remembering that her body is doing the best that it can, and it is not her enemy.

This struck me on a deep and personal level, because I have spent much of my adult life struggling with my weight and body image and my perception of my own attractiveness.  I've often felt undervalued, because I undervalued myself.  I treated my life as something I had to ensure didn't interfere with anyone else.  Most of it has been rooted in the idea that my body is my enemy, that my mind is my enemy, that my desires are my enemy, that my own identity is my enemy.  I am too fat, too smart, too extroverted, too chatty, too passionate, too ME to be borne.  I make others uncomfortable when I am strong, and disappoint them when I am weak.

Words of war fly at me, from every angle.  The magazine covers tell me how to 'defeat that stubborn fat!' and 'overcome those cravings!'  A gym commercial consoles me that I shouldn't accept my heritage or body type, if they interfere with how I want to look.  Advice abounds on how to sublimate your own needs in relationships with others, to make sure you've tricked them into feeling the way you want.  At every turn I'm offered weapons to use against myself, under the guise of motivating myself to destroy the person I am and become the person I'm told I should be.

I've spent the last few years gradually rising to resist the battle being brought to me, slowly coming to peace with my body and my identity and my loves and desires.  For a long time, I worried that that acceptance would mean I stopped evolving, stopped improving, stopped seeking.  If I ever accepted that my body was beautiful, I thought, I would stop taking care of it.  If I accept that my strength is not a liability, I might stop handling others with gentle compassion.  If I embrace the fact that I am smart and competent, I might stop learning new things.

In my head, I think, I have been viewing my possible relationships with my self as twofold:  antagonism or neutrality.  Deciding that I am not my enemy seemed to mean a sort of apathetic live-and-let-whatever attitude, that if I stopped fighting I ceded the right to care about the outcome.

There is a third option, and I've been slowly coming to understand what it means:  I am not my enemy, because I am my ally.  I want the best for me.  I want my own health and happiness.  I want myself to succeed, and to flourish.  This alliance has begun to transform my entire relationship with myself.

When I eat nutritious food, I do not think that I am staving off obesity or thwarting my love of donuts.  I think, "Here, body, is some stuff I know you need to do your job well.  I have taken the time to prepare it in an appetizing manner so that your sustenance is a pleasant experience."  If I work hard or skip a financial indulgence to save up a little extra, I think, "Hey, Future Self, enjoy that vacation!  Take lots of pictures so Further Future Self can look back and enjoy the trip!"  When I take that vacation, I think, "Man, I'm sure glad Past Self did this nice thing for me!  I think I'll make it a point to say something kind about her!"

That's actually the easy part.  I can look at the choices I'm trained to believe are 'good' and find a reason to consider them self-loving ally acts.  But the other side is hard.  The first time I said, "Hey, self, you know what?  A bowl of ice cream would make you feel happy and cheerful!  Let's have one!" I struggled with the idea that I was 'getting away with' something, that I was validating or justifying a 'bad' choice.

The challenge is to view every single choice I make as active self-support, love, and appreciation.  As my own ally, I have to consider my choices in the light of "Would I want my beloved friend to do it this way?" because I am my beloved friend.  I would want my beloved friend to have a workout that was fun and enjoyable, so that she could become as strong and flexible as she wanted to be.  I would not want my beloved friend to feel shamed and guilty about eating cookies for breakfast.  I would not want my beloved friend to shrink from leadership because she feared assertiveness would cause her to be perceived as less friendly or desirable.  I would want my beloved friend to be proud of her mind and her strength, because she deserves to shine.  I would want my beloved friend to feel she could expose her own vulnerability to people she trusted, because she deserves empathy and support.  I would not want my beloved friend to downplay her own potential because she was afraid of the challenge it presented her.

For many years now, I've ended a lot of my writings with "I love you all," to emphasize my commitment to living a loving life.  I believe it's time for me to change that.

I love us all.

In Which Being Happy and Being Healthy Are Very Similar

Since I wrote this post about being happy, several people have said to me, "Badger, that sounds well and good, but can you put it into practical terms?

I can, and I'm going to talk about one of my favorite things:  food.  I'm going to lay out my philosophy for having a healthy diet, which is remarkably like my philosophy for having a happy life, and I'll even explain why at the end.

1.  Know your limitations.  This may seem like a downer of a way to start, but when you're looking at building a healthy diet, the first thing you have to do is figure out where to say an absolute 'no' to yourself.  Are  you allergic to any foods?  Do you have any sensitivities, or any conditions like Celiac Disease or lactose intolerance?  Cut out the things that damage you, that should be nourishing you but are attacking you instead.  For now, whether you 'should' do certain things is irrelevant, 'dietary guidelines' are irrelevant.  Simply try to identify all the things that actively harm or poison you, and cut them out of your life.  I, for example, cannot have artificial sweeteners; they give me migraines.  Rather than lamenting my inability to have something most people can have without trouble, I accept that I have a non-negotiable hard boundary that limits me in some small way.  I incorporate that boundary (and a few others) at the foundation of every meal I build and every set of decisions I make about food.  It's part of who I am.

2.  Know your history.  Do you have any addictions?  Any relationship with certain types of food you feel you don't control?  A fear of trying new things?  Do you have a condition like diabetes or high blood pressure, that affects the choices you need to make about food?  Did  your family express love through certain types of foods?  Did your family instill certain 'food rules' in you?  Where, simply put, do the attitudes you manifest come from?  My mother instilled in me at an early age that it's not dinner unless there is a green vegetable included.  I've been able to expand this to things like squash, but if I try to eat just meat and potatoes for dinner, I feel unfulfilled because my internal expectations for 'dinner' haven't been fulfilled, no matter how much I eat.  Learning to acknowledge my expectations and determine whether they're reasonable has been one of the most empowering things in my entire life.

3.  Really understand your goals -- and the goals behind them.  If you ask someone, "Why do you want to lose weight?" you could get back a variety of answers:  to be healthier, to be more attractive, to feel better about myself, my doctor says I have to, I have a really kickass dress my butt is just too wide for...the list is endless.  Sometimes, though, the answer really is, "Because I think I'm supposed to want that."  When you set goals, especially goals based around something as necessary as food, drill down through those goals until you really get to the heart of what motivates you, and make sure that what's motivating you is not, in fact, a set of expectations someone else chose for you.

4.  Make sure your choices are feeding your goals.  If you want to gain or lose weight, if you want to completely change your diet, if you want to become a locavore, if you want to raise your own food, you're going to have to make months, maybe years, of small, sustained choices that lead you to the goal in incremental steps.  If you believe that eating a certain way (paleo, organic, vegan) will bring you a set of benefits you want, then regularly check in with your habits *and* how you're feeling.  Every so often, step back and make sure that your choices are pointing at where you want to be.  If they're not, then either the choices need to change or the goal should be revised.

5.  Will is strong, but so is Science.  If you really really want to subsist on nothing but bacon and vodka, you will get scurvy and eventually die, no matter how much you believe that's a sustainable diet.  It is theoretically possible, through skilled and powerful application of tremendous Will, to bring almost anything to pass -- but if you have that sort of skill and power, why use it to change the molecular makeup of bacon to include Vitamin C when you could just drink a glass of OJ instead, and have all that energy for something else?  If you can use science and reason to your advantage, your Will can achieve more than if you try to fight them.  If, for example, I know that eating high-protein cinnamon-chocolate multi-grain oatmeal will keep me feeling full twice as long as the same number of donut calories, or that certain vitamins improve my absorption and use of other nutrients, then I can use the science to boost the power of my choices.

6.  Listen to your cravings.  Once you really start focusing on feeding yourself what you need, and paying attention to what you put into your body and bring into your life, you'll find you have a lot sharper awareness of what you want.  Generally, even the 'bad' cravings (the ones out of line with your goals) tell you something important, and you can train your body to respond to a need for iron and protein by telling you "I could murder a good steak" instead of "I need a Big Mac."  If you're willing to listen, you will generally tell yourself what you need, and how best to nourish yourself.

7.  Don't eat anything that isn't delicious.  This sounds like a stupid rule, but there are so many ways to have good, tasty, healthy, nourishing food that you should never say to yourself, "It tastes like shit, but it's good for me."  There is no 'good' food and no 'bad' food.  There is "Food that will help get me where I want to be" and "Food that will get in my way."  Never choose penance when there are joyful options.

8.  Make sure you know what you're feeding.  Some things feed your body.  Others feed your mind.  Others feed your spirit.  Ice cream may be a good source of calcium and dairy protein, but I eat it because I love it and it makes my soul happy.  You should not eat anything that doesn't nourish you, but different things will nourish you for different reasons, and once you manage to work out your cravings and listening to your needs, you'll be able to understand what to feed, and when.

Now, it should be fairly obvious how I apply these to both diet and life.  If you start from a position of knowing what it's just not reasonable for you to expect of yourself, and build yourself attainable goals that meet *your* needs, then you start to build healthy practices in focusing your energy where it'll bring you the most joy.  If you shift your life so that everything you bring into it feeds you somehow, nourishes or supports you somehow, then your path becomes much clearer.  And if you make it your daily practice to choose the joyful, nourishing, fulfilling options, you may not ever be completely free of unpleasant obligations, but they'll hold a much smaller space in your heart.

You'll notice there are no details here.  No "always eat organic" or "never eat processed sugary snacks."  That's because there's a different path to health and happiness for each of us, and we have to choose how we'll find it ourselves.  What works brilliantly for me might be poison for my friend, and you can't judge the success of your journey by how well you walk the best path for someone else.