I am now an expert in clinical diagnoses! Just kidding, I talk out of my rear end, just like everyone else.
At work we were talking about addiction. I was thinking about this because it occurred to me that processed food is like opium or heroin - you take something whole and innocent and natural, refine and extract and condense it to (one of) its essence(s), and you're left with something extremely potent and usually bad for you. The experience of ingesting such highly concentrated materials is an exaggeration of our normal sensory spectrum. Whether in the form of getting super high or tasting something super sweet, our sense are manipulated by processed goods, and we are more likely to feel addicted to them since our concept of the range of our sensory spectrum has been artificially distorted, requiring repeated input from hyper-ized products to return to the falsely elevated feeling of "good." Personally, this makes a lot of sense to me when I think about spaghetti and potato chips, which I love and have emotional cravings for.
Okay so that's what we were talking about at work. So then I suggested that people become "addicted" to processed foods the same way they become addicted to opium or anything else. This isn't a new concept at all, but it finally seemed really clear to me. And we were talking about the overuse of the concept of addiction, and victimhood culture, and people's relinquishing of their own autonomous decision making power to something they can claim to be addicted to. So this got pretty heady pretty fast, so to back it up we decided to define addiction.
My offering: anything that has a negative impact on one's life that one feels powerless to combat. Seem broad? I think it fits. Habits and routines and practices that do not serve us, and yet we continue to do, I think can be swept under the definition of addiction.
And I think this is useful, because then everything can be given the AA treatment - by which I mean: abstention, community support, and giving oneself over to a higher power. My pal at work said that everyone getting to be addicted to whatever they want makes a culture of helplessness and excuse making. I sort of like the view of addiction, however, that connects us to a sense of our own smallness - we are not all powerful, autonomous beings who just need to try harder, think harder, and do better. Instead, we are tiny particles of a larger, more mysterious set of forces, and sometimes the self-obsessed feeling of addiction/helplessness is an inroad to this more selfless feeling of humble connectedness. Why not, right?
Sometimes I feel like I'm combating my "addictions" one by one, and that my view of myself and my progress toward inner peace is the process of shedding the negative habits that I seem to do without thinking. And I have to ask for a little cosmic help to do it because I'm pretty weak, generally speaking - I'm giving myself 30 days for t.v. right now, which would be from October 9th to November 9th I suppose, and I already fell off the wagon once for 1.5 hours of House on the 19th, but it's still a worthy undertaking - and I need a little Sky God Earth Power or whatever to help me exercise my will. The whole thing forces me to redirect my attention more positively, and I really appreciate the after effects.
So I think that giving attention to your challenges as though they are addictions can be a handy way of thinking about yourself in order to take your obstacles seriously and to be connected to the magical powers of the universe. The end.
Showing posts with label habit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label habit. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Headaches.
I get a lot of headaches. This feels particularly unfair when I get to thinking about how comparatively well-behaved I am with my vices. I'm a whole-grainer with a solid yoga habit who BARELY drinks anymore, and I try to get plenty of sleep, usually 9 hours. I should feel awesome every single freaking day. But I do not. I get a lot of headaches, like, at least one a week, and not infrequently two.
I guess I don't mind it that much, it's not so bad, but I could do without it. I throw 1,000 mg of ibuprofen at pretty much everything in my life, and it helps a little, but not always. Yesterday I had a particularly bad one, and 1,600 mg didn't help. So that's interesting. I get migraines, too, and that's a whole different ball of wax, and I have the most supremely excellent migraine medication that is sort of delightful to take - take one, get into bed, try to sleep, and in an hour wake up feeling all soft and light and comfy all over, and then try not to look forward to the next migraine. Well, it's not that good, but it's not bad, either.
Headaches just shut everything down. My mood, my energy, my strength; and there's usually some nausea and blurriness as a bonus prize. So lame.
Here's something else sort of annoying - you know what helped my headache a little bit yesterday? A donut. Someone brought them into work and I had one and I got a little chemical rush from the sugar dose and I really think it sped along the process. It sort of makes me nervous - what's that about? Sugar addiction? Something else chemical? Do I need to "detox" or have someone touch my vibrations and tell me to realign my planetary noodles or something?
Whatever. So I'm going to Germany today!! My parents got a cottage and invited us (me and the Huzband) to come stay with them, and we are going to do that. Maybe I'll have some feelings to blog out from abroad. That'll be fun. I am looking forward to turning 14 again as I sit in the back seat of the rental car while my parents navigate us around a foreign place, and then give up and pull over at the first luncheonette we see for lunch and beer. Thus ended many a school-shopping trip in my youth: "Forget it, this sucks, let's get lunch and go home." Ahh youth.
I guess I don't mind it that much, it's not so bad, but I could do without it. I throw 1,000 mg of ibuprofen at pretty much everything in my life, and it helps a little, but not always. Yesterday I had a particularly bad one, and 1,600 mg didn't help. So that's interesting. I get migraines, too, and that's a whole different ball of wax, and I have the most supremely excellent migraine medication that is sort of delightful to take - take one, get into bed, try to sleep, and in an hour wake up feeling all soft and light and comfy all over, and then try not to look forward to the next migraine. Well, it's not that good, but it's not bad, either.
Headaches just shut everything down. My mood, my energy, my strength; and there's usually some nausea and blurriness as a bonus prize. So lame.
Here's something else sort of annoying - you know what helped my headache a little bit yesterday? A donut. Someone brought them into work and I had one and I got a little chemical rush from the sugar dose and I really think it sped along the process. It sort of makes me nervous - what's that about? Sugar addiction? Something else chemical? Do I need to "detox" or have someone touch my vibrations and tell me to realign my planetary noodles or something?
Whatever. So I'm going to Germany today!! My parents got a cottage and invited us (me and the Huzband) to come stay with them, and we are going to do that. Maybe I'll have some feelings to blog out from abroad. That'll be fun. I am looking forward to turning 14 again as I sit in the back seat of the rental car while my parents navigate us around a foreign place, and then give up and pull over at the first luncheonette we see for lunch and beer. Thus ended many a school-shopping trip in my youth: "Forget it, this sucks, let's get lunch and go home." Ahh youth.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Personality Problems
So one of my personality problems (flaws) is that I talk a little loud and bulldozer-ish and kind of know-it-all-ish in a class clown kind of way that is hilarious to me but not always hilarious to the listener. I like to start sentences with the phrase “here’s what you should do” and follow it up with something preposterous. I also like to roll my eyes about things and identify the problems in arguments or points of view. Nobody likes this. I also enjoy cutting off your sentences to say something funny to me. Nobody likes this either. But anyway.
I noticed a couple of incidents at my job this week that reminded me of how annoying I can be to people and it got me thinking about what aspects of myself I should want to change, and what aspects I should accept as being part of “myself.” Sometimes I don’t care if people don’t think I’m funny, in what my dear pal calls the “joke ‘em if they can’t take a f***” approach to things. Under this perspective, I am in charge of my half of the interaction, which is My Personal Intention, and everybody else can worry about themselves and it’s not my problem. MPI is not (usually) to be hurtful or mean or dismissive, but rather, to be funny and interested and interesting and bat around ideas and critiques of things for fun and banter (and to get laughs, which is a vanity/insecurity thing). The listener’s experience my boisterousness might be different from MPI, of course. The listener could be offended or feel misunderstood or get the impression that I think s/he is foolish or whatever, so it’s not always effective.
The examples at work were as follows: two gals in the workplace were discussing Eat, Pray, Love, and one had seen the movie but not read the book, and the other had the book and brought it in to share. I saw the book on the table and immediately launched into some version of “oh lordy who’s reading THIS,” fully believing that I was effectively opening up the channels of communication for fun discussion of the book and its problematic and successful qualities. This belief of mine that saying how much I hate stuff is actually a great ice breaker is funny in itself, and of course, "channel-opening" is not what happened. Instead I prompted the gal who brought it in to say “yeah I guess only people with terrible taste, like me, like this book.” It took me a minute to catch on that this was the hurt-feelings kind of sarcasm and not funny self-deprecating humor, so I said “yeah only dumb-dumbs like this crap.” And then I realized that I had provoked hurt feelings, and I had to let the crankiness settle for a minute and then explain that I didn’t want to be mean or superior about it, I was trying to be funny and that I was sorry.
So that’s one incident. Another one was a different set of gals chit chatting about stuff, and one of them starts saying how she got an iris reading the other day – yes, someone looks into your eyeball and tells you all about yourself. I guess the premise is that there is information in the iris of the eye that says stuff about you and your choices and your life – and the first two things that the iris reader told this gal were that her deodorant was clogging her breast tissue lymph drainage and that she eats too much dairy. Yawn! These are totally generic and I said so, again, thinking that I am funny. Instead the gal’s face fell a bit and I have probably effectively inhibited her from ever wanting to share anything about her life with me ever again for the rest of time. Here’s how that conversation could have gone in my ideal world with a friend who “gets” me:
“Hey Marth I got my iris read last week, and it was so rad! This chick looked into my eyes and told me my lymph stuff wasn’t draining because of my deodorant and that I eat too much dairy!”
“Dude, she also tell you that you had a hard time high school, and detect stress and confusion in your life? That stuff is way generic!”
“Ha ha whatever lame-o, no way, you had to be there, it was different than that – it was really right on, for reals!”
“Whoa, that’s nutty! Are you going to go back? Tell me what else she said!”
See, was that so hard? Fun! Shows my attention and critical thinking and delight in life, no? I mean, I recognize how snarky and combative and potentially offensive it is, so yeah, maybe not.
So now here’s the real problem: I don’t want to alienate people, but I also want to be myself. I don’t want to maintain relationships with people who willfully misunderstand me or who are too sensitive or serious about themselves, but I want to be relate to lots of different kind of people in my life and not use my personality as some kind of filter or friend deterrent. I want to do my half of whatever it is that happens between people to make sure everyone knows that everyone is cool with everyone else being exactly how they are. And I want to be around people who can do their half of not taking things the wrong way, or being too attached to their decisions or preferences or anything else such that disagreement on books or iris readings is really offensive to them.
But I also don’t want to become so settled in my personality or defensive about my characteristics such that I deny the possibility or necessity of improving myself when it comes to my personality problems. I mean, it’s maddening to be around people who are really protective of their bad personality traits (lots of old people do this, and I think it can be pretty lazy sometimes). But how do I know which things to work on changing and which things are okay to keep? My friend suggested that I can get comfortable with this idea by thinking about being myself, but just adjusting my behaviors to what is "appropriate" for the situation. This is a nicer way of thinking about it than just saying I need to change myself or censor my nature. Even if it’s just semantic that’s fine with me, I can work with it. So that’s what I’ll be trying to think about for a while.
I noticed a couple of incidents at my job this week that reminded me of how annoying I can be to people and it got me thinking about what aspects of myself I should want to change, and what aspects I should accept as being part of “myself.” Sometimes I don’t care if people don’t think I’m funny, in what my dear pal calls the “joke ‘em if they can’t take a f***” approach to things. Under this perspective, I am in charge of my half of the interaction, which is My Personal Intention, and everybody else can worry about themselves and it’s not my problem. MPI is not (usually) to be hurtful or mean or dismissive, but rather, to be funny and interested and interesting and bat around ideas and critiques of things for fun and banter (and to get laughs, which is a vanity/insecurity thing). The listener’s experience my boisterousness might be different from MPI, of course. The listener could be offended or feel misunderstood or get the impression that I think s/he is foolish or whatever, so it’s not always effective.
The examples at work were as follows: two gals in the workplace were discussing Eat, Pray, Love, and one had seen the movie but not read the book, and the other had the book and brought it in to share. I saw the book on the table and immediately launched into some version of “oh lordy who’s reading THIS,” fully believing that I was effectively opening up the channels of communication for fun discussion of the book and its problematic and successful qualities. This belief of mine that saying how much I hate stuff is actually a great ice breaker is funny in itself, and of course, "channel-opening" is not what happened. Instead I prompted the gal who brought it in to say “yeah I guess only people with terrible taste, like me, like this book.” It took me a minute to catch on that this was the hurt-feelings kind of sarcasm and not funny self-deprecating humor, so I said “yeah only dumb-dumbs like this crap.” And then I realized that I had provoked hurt feelings, and I had to let the crankiness settle for a minute and then explain that I didn’t want to be mean or superior about it, I was trying to be funny and that I was sorry.
So that’s one incident. Another one was a different set of gals chit chatting about stuff, and one of them starts saying how she got an iris reading the other day – yes, someone looks into your eyeball and tells you all about yourself. I guess the premise is that there is information in the iris of the eye that says stuff about you and your choices and your life – and the first two things that the iris reader told this gal were that her deodorant was clogging her breast tissue lymph drainage and that she eats too much dairy. Yawn! These are totally generic and I said so, again, thinking that I am funny. Instead the gal’s face fell a bit and I have probably effectively inhibited her from ever wanting to share anything about her life with me ever again for the rest of time. Here’s how that conversation could have gone in my ideal world with a friend who “gets” me:
“Hey Marth I got my iris read last week, and it was so rad! This chick looked into my eyes and told me my lymph stuff wasn’t draining because of my deodorant and that I eat too much dairy!”
“Dude, she also tell you that you had a hard time high school, and detect stress and confusion in your life? That stuff is way generic!”
“Ha ha whatever lame-o, no way, you had to be there, it was different than that – it was really right on, for reals!”
“Whoa, that’s nutty! Are you going to go back? Tell me what else she said!”
See, was that so hard? Fun! Shows my attention and critical thinking and delight in life, no? I mean, I recognize how snarky and combative and potentially offensive it is, so yeah, maybe not.
So now here’s the real problem: I don’t want to alienate people, but I also want to be myself. I don’t want to maintain relationships with people who willfully misunderstand me or who are too sensitive or serious about themselves, but I want to be relate to lots of different kind of people in my life and not use my personality as some kind of filter or friend deterrent. I want to do my half of whatever it is that happens between people to make sure everyone knows that everyone is cool with everyone else being exactly how they are. And I want to be around people who can do their half of not taking things the wrong way, or being too attached to their decisions or preferences or anything else such that disagreement on books or iris readings is really offensive to them.
But I also don’t want to become so settled in my personality or defensive about my characteristics such that I deny the possibility or necessity of improving myself when it comes to my personality problems. I mean, it’s maddening to be around people who are really protective of their bad personality traits (lots of old people do this, and I think it can be pretty lazy sometimes). But how do I know which things to work on changing and which things are okay to keep? My friend suggested that I can get comfortable with this idea by thinking about being myself, but just adjusting my behaviors to what is "appropriate" for the situation. This is a nicer way of thinking about it than just saying I need to change myself or censor my nature. Even if it’s just semantic that’s fine with me, I can work with it. So that’s what I’ll be trying to think about for a while.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Apartment. Job. T.V.
My mind has been spinning a lot lately. A lot to learn at my job, an apartment to find (found! it's pretty great, we'll see how the 'hood and neighbors work out), stuff to prioritize in general. Haven't played guitar in a few weeks, which I feel a little bummed about since I was really on a roll and having some nice insights. It's okay, it's still there. Yoga practice has been going pretty well - my new job is pretty physical, which I looooove, and oh lordy do I need to stretch and zero out my body regularly. Yoga feels awesome right now.
So then let's talk about t.v. First, my friend started a sweet blog tearing up some t.v. shows and it's hilarious: http://onlyfifteenminutes.wordpress.com/. Enjoy. This prompts me to confess some t.v. watching. I have definitely been watching some t.v. and feel like I'm on the edge of another round of creating a Firm Policy for my own good. Here is the stuff I am liking:
1. House. Scruffy, sexy, emotionally addled Dr. Gregory House, genius diagnostician at Princeton teaching hospital, banters indecorously with his colleagues about their personal motivations and brilliantly makes what is basic, like, totally meta, with philosophical loyalty to his one unwavering truth: everyone lies. Underplot of the show: someone is sick, they figure it out, they were wrong, the patient almost dies, they figure it out FOR REAL this time, the patient gets worse, they reassess, more almost fatal emergencies happen, the patient is usually saved and House usually realizes something important or falls deeper into his Lonely Man hole. Ha ha, lonely man hole, nice.
2. The Biggest Loser (just the highlights). I like to skip huge chunks of the "substance" of this show and get straight to the obese people crying into the camera. I love this show. I love the people trying to reclaim their lives from the deep, plush couches of their sloth huts where they consume their bagged food and receive their daily programming from the great shining cyclops screen in their living rooms. While my love of this show is part marvel/disgust, it is mostly rapturous uplift in the triumph of the human spirit and excitement about people rejecting the crappy version of life that they didn't really think they could lead differently. It's pretty amazing.
3. The Office. Yes, I got hooked on this in law school, and watched two and half seasons in about three sittings while in stress recovery on winter vacation. Now I like to see what happens. This show has become mostly the story of how total weirdos find love, not just the attractive and normal people that it's obvious to root for, but the real social lame-os. It's a great premise, full of hilarity. I really appreciated this show as ground-breaking for its cringe-humor approach - with an idiot boss in the office serving as the all-purpose deus ex machina for any number of unbearably awkward situations. I'm sort of over it, though, it may have jumped the shark, but I'm not sure. But I must say that the latest episode with Michael proposing to Holly made me choke up a little. It's on hulu for the next few weeks. Enjoy this, also.
4. Sometimes 30 Rock. Maybe Being Erica. Maybe The Simpsons. Maybe the Saturday Night Live clips on hulu. Anything comedy instant streaming on Netflix, even really bad stuff. Basically anything not-too-stressful or upsetting to take me away for a little bit.
So what is t.v. for? It's fascinating - there's so much happening to get all sociological about, especially reality shows (my friend's blog does a very amusing job of cutting the crap on the happenings of the show to articulate the maggot growth beneath the belly of the programs). Ever see that show "My Super Sweet 16" on MTV? Well, young ladies get really excited to have their super rich and entitled lives put on t.v. while they freak out about a party they want to have complete with BMWs for gifts, celebrity entertainment, and magnificent temper tantrums. They think they are important and cool, while really the point of the show is that their selfish, oblivious greed is a circus, and we are laughing at, not with them. So interesting on several levels.
SIGH. But it's all crap, right? Should a contemporary person participate in t.v. watching? Or something that we are forced into having a "moderate" relationship with? For me, t.v. is still basically cocaine - well, maybe more like booze - if I have a little bit, it takes over my head and my life gets scheduled around t.v. watching. I actually sort of love having time all alone to let all my self-improvement crap go to hell so I can watch terrible t.v. without anyone around to judge me. Lordy lordy, okay, I'll come up with some kind of plan for this. Still working on this particular habit of mine. I get so conflicted about it, in a so bad it's good kind of way. Buh.
So then let's talk about t.v. First, my friend started a sweet blog tearing up some t.v. shows and it's hilarious: http://onlyfifteenminutes.wordpress.com/. Enjoy. This prompts me to confess some t.v. watching. I have definitely been watching some t.v. and feel like I'm on the edge of another round of creating a Firm Policy for my own good. Here is the stuff I am liking:
1. House. Scruffy, sexy, emotionally addled Dr. Gregory House, genius diagnostician at Princeton teaching hospital, banters indecorously with his colleagues about their personal motivations and brilliantly makes what is basic, like, totally meta, with philosophical loyalty to his one unwavering truth: everyone lies. Underplot of the show: someone is sick, they figure it out, they were wrong, the patient almost dies, they figure it out FOR REAL this time, the patient gets worse, they reassess, more almost fatal emergencies happen, the patient is usually saved and House usually realizes something important or falls deeper into his Lonely Man hole. Ha ha, lonely man hole, nice.
2. The Biggest Loser (just the highlights). I like to skip huge chunks of the "substance" of this show and get straight to the obese people crying into the camera. I love this show. I love the people trying to reclaim their lives from the deep, plush couches of their sloth huts where they consume their bagged food and receive their daily programming from the great shining cyclops screen in their living rooms. While my love of this show is part marvel/disgust, it is mostly rapturous uplift in the triumph of the human spirit and excitement about people rejecting the crappy version of life that they didn't really think they could lead differently. It's pretty amazing.
3. The Office. Yes, I got hooked on this in law school, and watched two and half seasons in about three sittings while in stress recovery on winter vacation. Now I like to see what happens. This show has become mostly the story of how total weirdos find love, not just the attractive and normal people that it's obvious to root for, but the real social lame-os. It's a great premise, full of hilarity. I really appreciated this show as ground-breaking for its cringe-humor approach - with an idiot boss in the office serving as the all-purpose deus ex machina for any number of unbearably awkward situations. I'm sort of over it, though, it may have jumped the shark, but I'm not sure. But I must say that the latest episode with Michael proposing to Holly made me choke up a little. It's on hulu for the next few weeks. Enjoy this, also.
4. Sometimes 30 Rock. Maybe Being Erica. Maybe The Simpsons. Maybe the Saturday Night Live clips on hulu. Anything comedy instant streaming on Netflix, even really bad stuff. Basically anything not-too-stressful or upsetting to take me away for a little bit.
So what is t.v. for? It's fascinating - there's so much happening to get all sociological about, especially reality shows (my friend's blog does a very amusing job of cutting the crap on the happenings of the show to articulate the maggot growth beneath the belly of the programs). Ever see that show "My Super Sweet 16" on MTV? Well, young ladies get really excited to have their super rich and entitled lives put on t.v. while they freak out about a party they want to have complete with BMWs for gifts, celebrity entertainment, and magnificent temper tantrums. They think they are important and cool, while really the point of the show is that their selfish, oblivious greed is a circus, and we are laughing at, not with them. So interesting on several levels.
SIGH. But it's all crap, right? Should a contemporary person participate in t.v. watching? Or something that we are forced into having a "moderate" relationship with? For me, t.v. is still basically cocaine - well, maybe more like booze - if I have a little bit, it takes over my head and my life gets scheduled around t.v. watching. I actually sort of love having time all alone to let all my self-improvement crap go to hell so I can watch terrible t.v. without anyone around to judge me. Lordy lordy, okay, I'll come up with some kind of plan for this. Still working on this particular habit of mine. I get so conflicted about it, in a so bad it's good kind of way. Buh.
Friday, January 7, 2011
I Never Do My Hip (the body part) Exercises
So my low back pain is the result of two main, big things in my life.
One: doing yoga with my ego instead of my bodily intelligence. I just want to do some of that stuff so bad even though it kind of hurts!! Or what I’ll do it convince myself that my discomfort is a “roll with it and you’ll make it better” kind of discomfort instead of a “back the hell off or you’ll make it worse” kind of discomfort. In this way I treat yoga as my personal forum for vanity and denial. Nice! Totally working on that, though. I went to yoga today and tried to back way off of the stuff that makes my back cranky but I didn’t hold back enough, and my back hurts now. Key-riced-all-my-tea.
Two: my low back pain is pretty much caused by my hip problems. I have a hip thing, and it’s been there for a while, and basically I ignore it until I can’t, and then I get some attention or make some life changes, and hopefully I get a little relief, and then I go back to ignoring it. Every time I talk to anyone about my hips – generally either the orthopedist, the physical therapist, or the chiropractor, I get the same exact advice in the form of exercises to do. These exercises are basically Pilates – lots of abdominal work and leg lifts. I have heard this exact advice probably seven times from seven professionals in the last ten years; I have even literally been told to “do Pilates.” These exercises are good for my hip because stuff is both too loose and too tight up in there and strengthening it is good for the rotation of my pelvic bowl which then helps align my sacrum blah blah blah blah blah blah. For some reason which is not clear to me, I basically never ever do these exercises. I figure that between lots of walking and lots of yoga I am in pretty good shape and these dinky lame-o exercises aren’t doing anything extra for me, and besides, those doctors just regurgitate whatever they had to memorize for a test once and they don’t know ME, they don’t understand MY experience (so why do I go? I foolishly want to hear something totally miraculous someday, that’s why). But at long last, I think I am finally capable of saying that I am wrong about this. Hopefully this means I will do the freakin’ exercises. (If you are a friend of mine who has heard me say that I should really do my hip exercises, I want you to know that I think I might mean it now, and I won’t say it again, because I’m pretty sure it’s utterly exasperating to hear me complain about it. Sorry about that.)
This forces me to confront something that I do not like to acknowledge: yoga is not my ally in all things. That’s what the latest professional told me recently, that certain parts of yoga are not necessarily my ally in my hip/back issues. I hate this information. I want so badly for yoga to be a complete system that I just need to stick to, with enough variety in my poses to hit all major parts of the body, and I’ll be perfectly comfortable and have zero pain. I feel like I could just figure out the right prescription of yoga poses and I’d be fine! Yoga yoga yoga! With that other stuff, it’s like there’s something that just feels so freakin’ pedestrian about doing my hip exercises, not holistic or magical at all. And it feels like I’m not doing “real” yoga when I just throw the hip exercises into my routine. Isn’t that ridiculous? How do I feel about Yogilates (I think this is a real thing with a trademark and everything)? I used to think it is the corruption and dilution of yoga, all this combining and brand-naming and multidisciplinary made-up nonsense. But I am also probably wrong about this too (all knowledge is broadening, not narrowing, I recall me saying that sometime - also I was recently publicly wondering about how strictly one needs to adhere to a discipline to consider oneself a follower, and deciding that I can take whatever I want from anything - why do I view yoga asana differently - mystery! at least I haven't claimed to be a really consistent person). It’s just that there’s already so much to know about yoga all by itself. But I have to do something else, too? Feels unfair.
Here’s some more embarrassing information. I did some hip exercises last night and they were hard. Clearly whatever I’m doing in yoga isn’t making me so rock solidly strong that I am too diesel for these hip exercises. And here’s something else: I like Pilates. I actually have a DVD that I don’t really look at, but anyway I took Pilates a couple days a week for about a year (this was a few years ago) and I really got a lot out of it physical-comfort-wise. Ugh, so, I know what to do for my hip and back, I know I can even enjoy it, and I know it actually does help me. So what’s my problem? I don’t know. I just feel like I have enough to think about without the stupid hip pain making my back hurt. I asked the chiropractor about going to get acupuncture, to see what she thought about it, and she said sure why not – but then she said that she’d also like to see me being a little more active in caring for my hips. So embarassing that I want a quick fix for a problem I’ve had for over ten years, I mean how stupid am I!? So it’s tough nuts time for me, time to do a little Pilates for my hip every day, bleh.
One: doing yoga with my ego instead of my bodily intelligence. I just want to do some of that stuff so bad even though it kind of hurts!! Or what I’ll do it convince myself that my discomfort is a “roll with it and you’ll make it better” kind of discomfort instead of a “back the hell off or you’ll make it worse” kind of discomfort. In this way I treat yoga as my personal forum for vanity and denial. Nice! Totally working on that, though. I went to yoga today and tried to back way off of the stuff that makes my back cranky but I didn’t hold back enough, and my back hurts now. Key-riced-all-my-tea.
Two: my low back pain is pretty much caused by my hip problems. I have a hip thing, and it’s been there for a while, and basically I ignore it until I can’t, and then I get some attention or make some life changes, and hopefully I get a little relief, and then I go back to ignoring it. Every time I talk to anyone about my hips – generally either the orthopedist, the physical therapist, or the chiropractor, I get the same exact advice in the form of exercises to do. These exercises are basically Pilates – lots of abdominal work and leg lifts. I have heard this exact advice probably seven times from seven professionals in the last ten years; I have even literally been told to “do Pilates.” These exercises are good for my hip because stuff is both too loose and too tight up in there and strengthening it is good for the rotation of my pelvic bowl which then helps align my sacrum blah blah blah blah blah blah. For some reason which is not clear to me, I basically never ever do these exercises. I figure that between lots of walking and lots of yoga I am in pretty good shape and these dinky lame-o exercises aren’t doing anything extra for me, and besides, those doctors just regurgitate whatever they had to memorize for a test once and they don’t know ME, they don’t understand MY experience (so why do I go? I foolishly want to hear something totally miraculous someday, that’s why). But at long last, I think I am finally capable of saying that I am wrong about this. Hopefully this means I will do the freakin’ exercises. (If you are a friend of mine who has heard me say that I should really do my hip exercises, I want you to know that I think I might mean it now, and I won’t say it again, because I’m pretty sure it’s utterly exasperating to hear me complain about it. Sorry about that.)
This forces me to confront something that I do not like to acknowledge: yoga is not my ally in all things. That’s what the latest professional told me recently, that certain parts of yoga are not necessarily my ally in my hip/back issues. I hate this information. I want so badly for yoga to be a complete system that I just need to stick to, with enough variety in my poses to hit all major parts of the body, and I’ll be perfectly comfortable and have zero pain. I feel like I could just figure out the right prescription of yoga poses and I’d be fine! Yoga yoga yoga! With that other stuff, it’s like there’s something that just feels so freakin’ pedestrian about doing my hip exercises, not holistic or magical at all. And it feels like I’m not doing “real” yoga when I just throw the hip exercises into my routine. Isn’t that ridiculous? How do I feel about Yogilates (I think this is a real thing with a trademark and everything)? I used to think it is the corruption and dilution of yoga, all this combining and brand-naming and multidisciplinary made-up nonsense. But I am also probably wrong about this too (all knowledge is broadening, not narrowing, I recall me saying that sometime - also I was recently publicly wondering about how strictly one needs to adhere to a discipline to consider oneself a follower, and deciding that I can take whatever I want from anything - why do I view yoga asana differently - mystery! at least I haven't claimed to be a really consistent person). It’s just that there’s already so much to know about yoga all by itself. But I have to do something else, too? Feels unfair.
Here’s some more embarrassing information. I did some hip exercises last night and they were hard. Clearly whatever I’m doing in yoga isn’t making me so rock solidly strong that I am too diesel for these hip exercises. And here’s something else: I like Pilates. I actually have a DVD that I don’t really look at, but anyway I took Pilates a couple days a week for about a year (this was a few years ago) and I really got a lot out of it physical-comfort-wise. Ugh, so, I know what to do for my hip and back, I know I can even enjoy it, and I know it actually does help me. So what’s my problem? I don’t know. I just feel like I have enough to think about without the stupid hip pain making my back hurt. I asked the chiropractor about going to get acupuncture, to see what she thought about it, and she said sure why not – but then she said that she’d also like to see me being a little more active in caring for my hips. So embarassing that I want a quick fix for a problem I’ve had for over ten years, I mean how stupid am I!? So it’s tough nuts time for me, time to do a little Pilates for my hip every day, bleh.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Dude, Meditating is Hard, But Still Awesome
Meditation practice is so hard. What I mean by meditating (or what I should say) is meditation preparation, since really what I’m still trying to do is develop my concentration. Hopefully after a lot of practice concentrating I will approach actual meditation. I did some meditating the other morning and my mind was like frantic horses, all stomping and galloping and running all the hell around the place. And trying to bring my focus back singularly to my breath really is like pushing against the gate while the horses are trying to get out. Horses! Me vs. Horses! And being released from meditation, letting the gate burst open, is their flight – and as I stop pushing the gate against their tramping and stomping, it is both an immense relief and a return to chaos. I thought about this while I was trying to concentrate. I should have only been thinking about my breath. So that’s how that’s going.
Sometimes people say they “can’t” meditate or they tried it and they aren’t “good” at it because they just can’t stand to sit still or they have to keep moving and thinking etc. And just to get a little mean here for a minute, saying you are too scatter-brained to meditate is like saying you are too out-of-shape to exercise, or too thirsty to drink a glass of water. One is the very reason to pursue the other, and the other, its cure. We will find water and drink it even if it’s a pain because it’s so vital to our comfort and existence. Calming my mind sometimes feels this important or urgent. It can feel like my very life is in the balance . . . and yet, it’s so much easier to just watch a movie with my free time instead of training my mind. It’s like dying of dehydration because that’s easier than finding water. Ridiculous. One way that meditating is hard for me is that it feels like I am confronting everything ever that has been or will be, and trying to shoo it out of the room so I can just play and be happy, but that takes so much work I’d rather just go find another space and do something else. But there isn’t “another space,” only the outskirts of existence. But still I will get too tired or weak to herd the noise, and I let all the chaos hog up the nice space, exiling me to sit in the sewers of distraction with my cowardice and sloth. Yoinks. Holy metaphors!
And the temptation to use meditation time as grocery-list time is hard, too. I’m just sitting there with nothing to do but nothing, and the rest of the day or the next day starts to come into my head asking for shape: “when should you go to the post office? Also don’t forget to go to the post office in the first place. How about calling your cousin back finally, huh? Maybe you can do that today.” On and on. Always the future coming in and wanting to beckon me out of the present, or the past wanting to settle accounts or put me on trial yet again for my errors. It’s so hard but I feel pretty dedicated, at least today I do. I haven’t been the most consistent student but that’s coming along, too.
Sometimes people say they “can’t” meditate or they tried it and they aren’t “good” at it because they just can’t stand to sit still or they have to keep moving and thinking etc. And just to get a little mean here for a minute, saying you are too scatter-brained to meditate is like saying you are too out-of-shape to exercise, or too thirsty to drink a glass of water. One is the very reason to pursue the other, and the other, its cure. We will find water and drink it even if it’s a pain because it’s so vital to our comfort and existence. Calming my mind sometimes feels this important or urgent. It can feel like my very life is in the balance . . . and yet, it’s so much easier to just watch a movie with my free time instead of training my mind. It’s like dying of dehydration because that’s easier than finding water. Ridiculous. One way that meditating is hard for me is that it feels like I am confronting everything ever that has been or will be, and trying to shoo it out of the room so I can just play and be happy, but that takes so much work I’d rather just go find another space and do something else. But there isn’t “another space,” only the outskirts of existence. But still I will get too tired or weak to herd the noise, and I let all the chaos hog up the nice space, exiling me to sit in the sewers of distraction with my cowardice and sloth. Yoinks. Holy metaphors!
And the temptation to use meditation time as grocery-list time is hard, too. I’m just sitting there with nothing to do but nothing, and the rest of the day or the next day starts to come into my head asking for shape: “when should you go to the post office? Also don’t forget to go to the post office in the first place. How about calling your cousin back finally, huh? Maybe you can do that today.” On and on. Always the future coming in and wanting to beckon me out of the present, or the past wanting to settle accounts or put me on trial yet again for my errors. It’s so hard but I feel pretty dedicated, at least today I do. I haven’t been the most consistent student but that’s coming along, too.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Obligations Give us a Sense of Purpose/Meaning
In college I had a pretty snarky (and kind of dreamy!) teacher in the Classics department who taught Religion in the Pagan World. Once, we were discussing ritual and its significance etc. He said that ritual is powerful because having obligations provides the necessary illusion that our lives matter. I think the gist was that religious ritual makes us matter by connecting our behavior to the harvest or the rain or something. Consequence for my actions, any consequence at all, means that I am significant, that I have impact. It’s nice. Maybe our modern expression of ritual is our habits or obligations. As a very minor example, I shower once in a while because the consequence of my stinkiness is to offend others’ sensibilities. My smelly armpits have impact on the world. Creating the obligation of showering reflects my belief that my participation in society, and the manner of my participation, matters.
Everything we do is like this. Tidying up. Calling our parents. Feeding the cat. We need obligations to feel as though we matter. Which, as you may have guessed, I am pretty sure we don’t. We don’t “matter” to anything. But this is also nice. It means that I can go ahead and behave in ways that make me feel as though I matter, knowing that it is merely a balm against the chafing of my own insignificance, because my insignificance is comforting, too – it means that “consequence” for my actions can remain somewhat abstract. It doesn’t really matter if I am the stinky person in the world on any particular day. I don’t matter. Anyone taking offense at my stinkiness would be trying to create their own sense of significance in the world in opposition to me through our handy tool of disapproval – which is just another expression of obligation (this would go something like this: “I oblige myself to be un-stinky, and to give meaning to this obligation, I must therefore disapprove of the opposite expression – stinkiness – and therefore reaffirm the credibility of my showering ritual”). So anyway I can do my stuff to make me feel significant and let the rest roll off my back.
I’ve just been rolling this idea around my head a little bit and wanted to see where it went. We’ll see.
Everything we do is like this. Tidying up. Calling our parents. Feeding the cat. We need obligations to feel as though we matter. Which, as you may have guessed, I am pretty sure we don’t. We don’t “matter” to anything. But this is also nice. It means that I can go ahead and behave in ways that make me feel as though I matter, knowing that it is merely a balm against the chafing of my own insignificance, because my insignificance is comforting, too – it means that “consequence” for my actions can remain somewhat abstract. It doesn’t really matter if I am the stinky person in the world on any particular day. I don’t matter. Anyone taking offense at my stinkiness would be trying to create their own sense of significance in the world in opposition to me through our handy tool of disapproval – which is just another expression of obligation (this would go something like this: “I oblige myself to be un-stinky, and to give meaning to this obligation, I must therefore disapprove of the opposite expression – stinkiness – and therefore reaffirm the credibility of my showering ritual”). So anyway I can do my stuff to make me feel significant and let the rest roll off my back.
I’ve just been rolling this idea around my head a little bit and wanted to see where it went. We’ll see.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Exposure, Repetition, Acclimation, Acceptance, Enjoyment
Habit habit habit. One thing about having my days pretty free is that the exact arc of the day is still sort of difficult to nail down, and my exact habits of life are still being written every day. Meditation practice in the morning? Well, I usually want some tea and water to replenish me from the night, so sitting still right away isn’t very comfortable. Thirsty, hungry. Plus when I practice meditation in the morning it sort makes me sleepy for the day, and a touch of lethargy comes over me. And I can’t have tea first because that’s a lingering, leisurely experience for me, so I’d start meditating like an hour later and it feels too wasteful. And plus I have trouble with caffeinated meditating, too agitated. Man, even as I type this though I’m thinking of all the pro-reasons and pro-practicalities of doing meditation in the morning and how simple the logistics are. So maybe it’s fine. But when to do yoga? Right after meditation practice? Then I’m sort of getting hungry, and trying to focus on yoga in a hungry state isn’t the most productive thing. A little yoghurt and warm water before meditation, and then right into yoga? But I like to read in the mornings, too – my attention is crisp and reading is very productive for me in the morning, and reading for an hour with a pot of tea with honey and milk is soooo pleasant. But reading is a really practical companion in the evening when my energy for other things is almost completely gone, or in the afternoon when a little tea is a good pick me up. Bleh. So that’s the idea. Long story short I would like to have a ritual of existence nailed down so I could liberate that portion of my mind dedicated to the anxiety of shaping my daily sense of productivity, and just get the hell on with it. Habit would be nice.
And good habit-making is difficult - but I think that there is a sort of systemization available for integrating things into your life, which I have handily identified in 5 steps, taking you from initial Exposure all the way to your eventual Enjoyment. These are: Enjoyment, Repetition, Acclimation, Acceptance, and Enjoyment.
I’m getting this from pop music, which I looooove. I love terrible pop music. And I was wondering to myself why it is that I love crappy music so much. When I first hear a crappy pop song, usually I think that it is just another crappy pop song, and I don’t really like it. But then eventually I really like it. When does that happen? Well, that is the story of habituation. (I am sort of drawn to crappy pop music with my sociology/anthropology hat on, but let’s get real, I sort of enjoy it because I am an all-around low brow and that’s how it is, so I am willing to put the radio station on crappy pop song stations in general.)
But anyway, so yeah, first I hear the crappy song and I think that it’s crappy. I associate the crappiness of the music with my very identity, and I am in some way affirming part of myself when I dislike this song. I retain a sense of my fine, fine, discriminating taste, and judgment, and self. Song bad, me good. And then I hear the song again, in the car usually, and if I’m spacing out or drinking coffee or in traffic then I hear most or part of the song again. This Repetition happens several times until I become familiar enough with the tune to have achieved Acclimation. I’m used to it now. It’s crap, but it’s familiar crap, and the offense of its crappiness as an affront to my sense of integrity (I won’t listen to this crap!) diminishes. And then, without even realizing it, Acclimation gives way to Acceptance. This stage of habituation is really important, because it is in this period after repeated exposure that the initial judgment of bad and good truly fades, and is replaced with a kind of familiar semi-neutrality. The song becomes part of the auditory landscape of my very life experience, woven integrally into the fabric of my days. It is the car, it is the billboards, it is the mall, it is the corner coffee shop, it is toast. I can hear it on the radio and still change the channel, but it’s not really to make a point about what I do or don’t like, it’s more like I just don’t feel like hearing that song right then. After acceptance it is a short trip into Enjoyment. Eventually, I will sing along with the song in the car. I will not change the channel. I will be comforted by its familiarity, I will make joke lyrics to its tune, I will see the hidden humanity in its banal, limp, vacuous lyrics. I enjoy it. Just like I order coffee and toast, take my car to the mall, and unconsciously read billboards. It is what is there, and I participate in what is, as though I enjoy it. And I do, I do enjoy it. Song good, me good. There is nothing else to do, nothing else to think anymore.
Well that sounded pretty dark but the point here is that I can follow the pop music formula for enjoyment with respect to specific habits I would like to cultivate for myself. Hmmm there could be a sixth stage, called “Preference,” but I guess that’s for another time. So anyway I have the initial Exposure to most things, and right now I am stuck in the stage of Repetition. I will facilitate my Repetition with deliberate scheduling. Hooray scheduling!
And good habit-making is difficult - but I think that there is a sort of systemization available for integrating things into your life, which I have handily identified in 5 steps, taking you from initial Exposure all the way to your eventual Enjoyment. These are: Enjoyment, Repetition, Acclimation, Acceptance, and Enjoyment.
I’m getting this from pop music, which I looooove. I love terrible pop music. And I was wondering to myself why it is that I love crappy music so much. When I first hear a crappy pop song, usually I think that it is just another crappy pop song, and I don’t really like it. But then eventually I really like it. When does that happen? Well, that is the story of habituation. (I am sort of drawn to crappy pop music with my sociology/anthropology hat on, but let’s get real, I sort of enjoy it because I am an all-around low brow and that’s how it is, so I am willing to put the radio station on crappy pop song stations in general.)
But anyway, so yeah, first I hear the crappy song and I think that it’s crappy. I associate the crappiness of the music with my very identity, and I am in some way affirming part of myself when I dislike this song. I retain a sense of my fine, fine, discriminating taste, and judgment, and self. Song bad, me good. And then I hear the song again, in the car usually, and if I’m spacing out or drinking coffee or in traffic then I hear most or part of the song again. This Repetition happens several times until I become familiar enough with the tune to have achieved Acclimation. I’m used to it now. It’s crap, but it’s familiar crap, and the offense of its crappiness as an affront to my sense of integrity (I won’t listen to this crap!) diminishes. And then, without even realizing it, Acclimation gives way to Acceptance. This stage of habituation is really important, because it is in this period after repeated exposure that the initial judgment of bad and good truly fades, and is replaced with a kind of familiar semi-neutrality. The song becomes part of the auditory landscape of my very life experience, woven integrally into the fabric of my days. It is the car, it is the billboards, it is the mall, it is the corner coffee shop, it is toast. I can hear it on the radio and still change the channel, but it’s not really to make a point about what I do or don’t like, it’s more like I just don’t feel like hearing that song right then. After acceptance it is a short trip into Enjoyment. Eventually, I will sing along with the song in the car. I will not change the channel. I will be comforted by its familiarity, I will make joke lyrics to its tune, I will see the hidden humanity in its banal, limp, vacuous lyrics. I enjoy it. Just like I order coffee and toast, take my car to the mall, and unconsciously read billboards. It is what is there, and I participate in what is, as though I enjoy it. And I do, I do enjoy it. Song good, me good. There is nothing else to do, nothing else to think anymore.
Well that sounded pretty dark but the point here is that I can follow the pop music formula for enjoyment with respect to specific habits I would like to cultivate for myself. Hmmm there could be a sixth stage, called “Preference,” but I guess that’s for another time. So anyway I have the initial Exposure to most things, and right now I am stuck in the stage of Repetition. I will facilitate my Repetition with deliberate scheduling. Hooray scheduling!
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Heaven/Life Conundrum
I had dinner with some friends last night and one friend got to talking about "trans-humanism," which, I'll tell you upfront, I am not currently interested in wiki-ing up for my own edification at this moment. The way my friend explained the short version was that it's a way of viewing the future that is concerned with/interested in the implications of the manipulation of the genetic map of human beings and our relationship with machines and how to make peace happen in the future with all of our knowledge about how to monkey with ourselves, and imagines a "post-human" sort of state of society. Neat-o. At one point he said that we are basically the last generation of "regular humans," and it just sounded so freaking true when he said it that I was alarmed. I think we might be. I am in favor of being a regular human as much as possible.
Anyway, as Friend #1 explained, one of the happy potential implications of post-human or trans-humanist society is a state of being or consciousness that is only peaceful and transcends conflict and angst etc. Friend #2 at dinner said this sounded horrible, and that passion and struggle and pain and love and elation are the human experience and he wouldn't want a perfectly happy experience, bleh, no way. And then the question was this: so what do you imagine heaven to be like, Friend #2? Answer? Well, it's basically a peaceful state of consciousness transcending conflict and angst etc. So why wouldn't he want to experience in his earthly body the feeling of his imagined heaven? Why? Because we are so attached to our identities in this turmoil? Wrongly attached? I think Buddha would say so. Buddha says, as I understand it, that we have access to heaven right now and we choose suffering out of ignorance, confusing our delusions and distractions with our "self" - but do we prefer our ignorance (out of ignorance?)? Is the habit of longing for things and clinging to our pain so ingrained that we don't think we even want happiness? Do we think we have to experience earthly turmoil in order to enjoy heaven in a relative way? What is happening here? I'm not sure. It's pretty interesting.
Anyway, as Friend #1 explained, one of the happy potential implications of post-human or trans-humanist society is a state of being or consciousness that is only peaceful and transcends conflict and angst etc. Friend #2 at dinner said this sounded horrible, and that passion and struggle and pain and love and elation are the human experience and he wouldn't want a perfectly happy experience, bleh, no way. And then the question was this: so what do you imagine heaven to be like, Friend #2? Answer? Well, it's basically a peaceful state of consciousness transcending conflict and angst etc. So why wouldn't he want to experience in his earthly body the feeling of his imagined heaven? Why? Because we are so attached to our identities in this turmoil? Wrongly attached? I think Buddha would say so. Buddha says, as I understand it, that we have access to heaven right now and we choose suffering out of ignorance, confusing our delusions and distractions with our "self" - but do we prefer our ignorance (out of ignorance?)? Is the habit of longing for things and clinging to our pain so ingrained that we don't think we even want happiness? Do we think we have to experience earthly turmoil in order to enjoy heaven in a relative way? What is happening here? I'm not sure. It's pretty interesting.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Hounded
I went to Chile by myself for about 4 weeks in February of 2005. I have always had a vague sort of Latin-America-is-neat type of thing, and my college Spanish was pretty okay, and I had some money saved up and I wasn't getting any older etc etc.
I came home about a week early. I was supposed to stay a full month but I didn't make it. I was starting to feel insane and lonely and trapped in my head. In some way this was what I wanted - I wanted to be alone and feel like I knew myself and affirm some kind of self-sufficiency or independence of mind. But what I found, confronted with myself, by myself save for the hotel owners and waitresses, was not familiarity or a return to being, liberated from obligation, uninterrupted by context, but instead, a daily, lonely terror of boredom and self-loathing. Somewhere inside, I thought, I could reconnect to some nascent version of my identity that gazes contentedly out windows, feels no more severely than curious and happy wandering through new scenery, and has no worry about the future and no regret about the past. But being alone with my thoughts was too hard. Every single petty horror of my life up to that point chased me all day long, replaying over and over, sometimes with new clever ways I should have behaved thrown in for a bit of memory theater. My mind was swimming and churning so much that after a while, I couldn't even make sense of what I wanted to do with my day besides find breakfast and go to sleep. Did I feel like walking? Did I want to go to the museum in this town? Did I want to read a book, and could I find one in English ('cause screw practicing my Spanish, btw)? How about a movie? Which place for dinner? How do I even "know" how I "feel" or what I "want" to do? What is my compass? Who am I besides every stupid and horrible thing I've ever done? Every single inclination I might have had just felt so stupid, just some attempt to sustain the desperate, infinite distraction from myself. I couldn't wait to get back to my life and all the convenient distractions of it; the kitchen and cooking, my friends, some job to take up the hours of the day, anything but the endless walking in loops in my toxic brain.
So this is habit of mind for which I seek relief. This is what I want yoga or Buddhism to cure me of. And I believe that I can escape the prison of memory, and I can re-train myself to ruminate positive things, and learn to contribute only positive, helpful things to me and my loved ones and the world, AND ALL THAT STUFF. And while I am further along in my sense of confidence and worth and stuff than I was in 2005, what still troubles me most is the sustained effort of training my mind. It's so difficult. There is this pacing that I do that doesn't help me, and I know that working on my concentration, which would eventually result in meditation, is so clearly right in my reach, and I just have to sit down and dedicate a little sincere time and effort to it, and I will build up new habits of mind that will free me from myself, but it's hard. I get fatigued by trying to live purposefully, and sometimes all it feels like is the "righteous" version of traveling in Chile - instead of figuring out whether I want to go to the museum, I'm choosing books to read or yoga classes to attend, like the low-fat edition of everything else I've ever done. When does the distraction end and existence begin? When I've absorbed enough tools of positive action to put them to work? When I am more disciplined? When? How? I hope I am getting closer.
I came home about a week early. I was supposed to stay a full month but I didn't make it. I was starting to feel insane and lonely and trapped in my head. In some way this was what I wanted - I wanted to be alone and feel like I knew myself and affirm some kind of self-sufficiency or independence of mind. But what I found, confronted with myself, by myself save for the hotel owners and waitresses, was not familiarity or a return to being, liberated from obligation, uninterrupted by context, but instead, a daily, lonely terror of boredom and self-loathing. Somewhere inside, I thought, I could reconnect to some nascent version of my identity that gazes contentedly out windows, feels no more severely than curious and happy wandering through new scenery, and has no worry about the future and no regret about the past. But being alone with my thoughts was too hard. Every single petty horror of my life up to that point chased me all day long, replaying over and over, sometimes with new clever ways I should have behaved thrown in for a bit of memory theater. My mind was swimming and churning so much that after a while, I couldn't even make sense of what I wanted to do with my day besides find breakfast and go to sleep. Did I feel like walking? Did I want to go to the museum in this town? Did I want to read a book, and could I find one in English ('cause screw practicing my Spanish, btw)? How about a movie? Which place for dinner? How do I even "know" how I "feel" or what I "want" to do? What is my compass? Who am I besides every stupid and horrible thing I've ever done? Every single inclination I might have had just felt so stupid, just some attempt to sustain the desperate, infinite distraction from myself. I couldn't wait to get back to my life and all the convenient distractions of it; the kitchen and cooking, my friends, some job to take up the hours of the day, anything but the endless walking in loops in my toxic brain.
So this is habit of mind for which I seek relief. This is what I want yoga or Buddhism to cure me of. And I believe that I can escape the prison of memory, and I can re-train myself to ruminate positive things, and learn to contribute only positive, helpful things to me and my loved ones and the world, AND ALL THAT STUFF. And while I am further along in my sense of confidence and worth and stuff than I was in 2005, what still troubles me most is the sustained effort of training my mind. It's so difficult. There is this pacing that I do that doesn't help me, and I know that working on my concentration, which would eventually result in meditation, is so clearly right in my reach, and I just have to sit down and dedicate a little sincere time and effort to it, and I will build up new habits of mind that will free me from myself, but it's hard. I get fatigued by trying to live purposefully, and sometimes all it feels like is the "righteous" version of traveling in Chile - instead of figuring out whether I want to go to the museum, I'm choosing books to read or yoga classes to attend, like the low-fat edition of everything else I've ever done. When does the distraction end and existence begin? When I've absorbed enough tools of positive action to put them to work? When I am more disciplined? When? How? I hope I am getting closer.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Pulled Back, Lame-O
Stupid doin' stuff made me all busted. Pulled my back a little bit. I ran into a yoga teacher this morning and mentioned it, and she is also a masseuse, and in about two seconds she had her thumb on the exact spot and was all "yep I feel it right there" and gave me some yoga suggestions for it. I think that's so rad when people know stuff like that.
Anyway so I'm not doing much asana (physical yoga) for a few days. Boo. But that's okay, Iyengar's Light on Life is into the mental stuff pretty fierce right now, so I can think about that instead.
Iyengar gets into all the things that I was wondering about as far as "who am I if not what I think and feel and do" questions. Well, this sense of identity that I describe is the "mind" and although it masquerades as the Soul, it is not who I am. We will mistake the mind for the Soul unless we discriminate more closely among the functions of our consciousness. Just for starters, we have our mind (manas), our ego or I-shape (ahamkara), and our intelligence (buddhi). I have to read it again, it's dense.
But there's still a little bit of doubt in me about how this works, because Iyengar says that "[f]rom our ignorant identification with our ego and its mortality arises man's creativity and his destructiveness, the glory of culture, the horror of his history." And although I agree with Iyengar that yes, "[it] is a forlorn hope" to "embark on great and wonderful projects to affirm that the egoistic self will not die," and that it is "an ineffective and temporary balm against mortality," I DON'T agree (yet, I guess) that we should all want to abandon our obsession with our identity and mortality if it also means the loss of so many beautiful human gestures. I mean, can we all agree that piano playing and music writing and great books are worthy, beautiful, important expressions of humanity? Even if it is motivated by our fearful, self-obsessive impulses? What happens to the "glory of culture" when we all reach our higher selves? I am imagining a futuristic world of enlightened beings and I'm pretty sure we are totally obsessed with the destructive and impassioned past, and have posters of James Dean and Terry Fox hanging in our rooms.
Anyway, I'm still convinced that higher self and enlightenment is pretty rad and all, but I'm troubled by the loss of what I see as my humanity. Still a long way to go yet, I guess.
Yeah, no worries about achieving enlightenment any time soon. But maybe I'm making some in-roads into myself - in that I actually feel more attuned to how ridiculous I am than I can remember feeling. Lordy I'm ridiculous. I rehearse the past in my mind, re-doing and improving my behavior so that I perform better; I keep memories of regrettable behavior in the forefront of my mind, keeping my fear of making the same mistake always at the surface so that I will never do it again; I have pre-conditioned feelings about people and situations and places that I lean on and revert to which preclude me from actually seeing what is happening in the moment; I repeat to myself my negative feelings about things as though it helps me know who and how I never want to be in some imagined future version of my life - except really it's just poison for me and keeps my life and sense of self perpetually in a state of delay ("I will never be like that, in the future"). But I guess it's good that I am very aware of this lately. I'm excited for the next step when I can have a little bit of self-control over these habits of the mind. I think that might be years away, though.
Anyway so I'm not doing much asana (physical yoga) for a few days. Boo. But that's okay, Iyengar's Light on Life is into the mental stuff pretty fierce right now, so I can think about that instead.
Iyengar gets into all the things that I was wondering about as far as "who am I if not what I think and feel and do" questions. Well, this sense of identity that I describe is the "mind" and although it masquerades as the Soul, it is not who I am. We will mistake the mind for the Soul unless we discriminate more closely among the functions of our consciousness. Just for starters, we have our mind (manas), our ego or I-shape (ahamkara), and our intelligence (buddhi). I have to read it again, it's dense.
But there's still a little bit of doubt in me about how this works, because Iyengar says that "[f]rom our ignorant identification with our ego and its mortality arises man's creativity and his destructiveness, the glory of culture, the horror of his history." And although I agree with Iyengar that yes, "[it] is a forlorn hope" to "embark on great and wonderful projects to affirm that the egoistic self will not die," and that it is "an ineffective and temporary balm against mortality," I DON'T agree (yet, I guess) that we should all want to abandon our obsession with our identity and mortality if it also means the loss of so many beautiful human gestures. I mean, can we all agree that piano playing and music writing and great books are worthy, beautiful, important expressions of humanity? Even if it is motivated by our fearful, self-obsessive impulses? What happens to the "glory of culture" when we all reach our higher selves? I am imagining a futuristic world of enlightened beings and I'm pretty sure we are totally obsessed with the destructive and impassioned past, and have posters of James Dean and Terry Fox hanging in our rooms.
Anyway, I'm still convinced that higher self and enlightenment is pretty rad and all, but I'm troubled by the loss of what I see as my humanity. Still a long way to go yet, I guess.
Yeah, no worries about achieving enlightenment any time soon. But maybe I'm making some in-roads into myself - in that I actually feel more attuned to how ridiculous I am than I can remember feeling. Lordy I'm ridiculous. I rehearse the past in my mind, re-doing and improving my behavior so that I perform better; I keep memories of regrettable behavior in the forefront of my mind, keeping my fear of making the same mistake always at the surface so that I will never do it again; I have pre-conditioned feelings about people and situations and places that I lean on and revert to which preclude me from actually seeing what is happening in the moment; I repeat to myself my negative feelings about things as though it helps me know who and how I never want to be in some imagined future version of my life - except really it's just poison for me and keeps my life and sense of self perpetually in a state of delay ("I will never be like that, in the future"). But I guess it's good that I am very aware of this lately. I'm excited for the next step when I can have a little bit of self-control over these habits of the mind. I think that might be years away, though.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Revisit: Christian Radio
This is a revised and updated version of a post I made and then deleted.
Sometimes I listen to the Xtian radio stations, and not in a totally ironic way. There is a combined sociological, historical, and educational aspect that I sort of enjoy. Not just the Bible stories and stuff, which is neat to learn about, but also culturally, to know the substance of what so many people are apparently almost wholly influenced and guided by these days. The music blows, like fer shur, but the conversation pieces are sort of interesting. And I like batting around this stuff a lot - I love advice columns. Carolyn Hax and Dan Savage are my favorite since they are really entertaining and well-reasoned. But I also like Dr. Laura and Dave Ramsey. I like the full circumference of points of view; there is something to be gained from all of them. The benefit can be in either in challenging your biases, or finding commonality where you thought there might be none, or reaffirming your own positions in your mind in spite of contrary points of view.
Okay so that faux-intellectual meta-analysis of pop culture talking heads was a disclaimer made entirely for the benefit of my vanity because I know it's totally square to listen to Christian radio, but I do it anyway, so there's that.
Anyway last week I was listening to some Xtian radio in the car, and the pastor (minister? reverend? chaplain?) guy was describing some confessions of sins of teen lust, and how they go something like this: "I dunno pastor, we were down a dark and private lane at 2 in the morning and gosh, it just . . . it just happened." And of course the point of this is that the lapse into sinful behavior took place waaaaaaay before it supposedly "just happened," and, really, lots and lots of decision lead up to a person's giving into temptation.
So the pastor recommended giving your weaknesses wide berth. Avoid situations that give rise to opportunities to make bad choices. At first I thought this was a little silly - it's a bad idea to hide from temptation as your means of dealing with life. Um, hello, virtue untested isn't virtue at all, it's like a totally famous quote. But the observation he made that really appealed to me was this question: why do we rub up so close against our weaknesses and then ask ourselves to resist? Why do we walk the edge, thinking we can have just one bite of a sundae, or one sip of wine, or anything else like that? It's a lie of our own desires. We want to do the thing we are trying not to do. According to the pastor the feeling of want is the devil trying to get us to cave in, and that's where I fall off the train, but I'm still on board with the idea that the state of mind that makes bad decisions unfolds long before the undesired behavior takes place. You know in your heart, way ahead of time, even though you may say the opposite to yourself, that you are going to create permission for yourself to do something you claim not to want to do. Anyway I like this because when I am thinking about my own bad habits, I like the idea that I can exercise my resistance or disciplined state of mind long before the moment of temptation. I can give my weaknesses wide berth in my mind, and without having to literally stay home to avoid temptation, I can stay "home" in my head. And even when temptation is right in front of you, turning away and waiting for ten minutes, or distracting yourself from it can be effective for letting a wave of weakness pass over you. Like deciding not to have candy - if you just keep walking, ten minutes later the impulse is usually gone.
Ah, all this is just to say that yoga was so awesome this morning. I went to class taught by one of the teacher trainers and it was so great. The whole time I just kept thinking to myself, "yes, this is how I feel best, and most myself, I want this feeling, I want to hold this state in my heart all day, every day." And I can have this state of being all I want - but I have to work at it, keeping all my triggers for weakness at a distance, fomenting the state of being I really want to be anchored to. I imagine that in this positive state of self, former temptations will lose their luster anyway, and I will have to deal less with waiting out waves of weakness.
Sometimes I listen to the Xtian radio stations, and not in a totally ironic way. There is a combined sociological, historical, and educational aspect that I sort of enjoy. Not just the Bible stories and stuff, which is neat to learn about, but also culturally, to know the substance of what so many people are apparently almost wholly influenced and guided by these days. The music blows, like fer shur, but the conversation pieces are sort of interesting. And I like batting around this stuff a lot - I love advice columns. Carolyn Hax and Dan Savage are my favorite since they are really entertaining and well-reasoned. But I also like Dr. Laura and Dave Ramsey. I like the full circumference of points of view; there is something to be gained from all of them. The benefit can be in either in challenging your biases, or finding commonality where you thought there might be none, or reaffirming your own positions in your mind in spite of contrary points of view.
Okay so that faux-intellectual meta-analysis of pop culture talking heads was a disclaimer made entirely for the benefit of my vanity because I know it's totally square to listen to Christian radio, but I do it anyway, so there's that.
Anyway last week I was listening to some Xtian radio in the car, and the pastor (minister? reverend? chaplain?) guy was describing some confessions of sins of teen lust, and how they go something like this: "I dunno pastor, we were down a dark and private lane at 2 in the morning and gosh, it just . . . it just happened." And of course the point of this is that the lapse into sinful behavior took place waaaaaaay before it supposedly "just happened," and, really, lots and lots of decision lead up to a person's giving into temptation.
So the pastor recommended giving your weaknesses wide berth. Avoid situations that give rise to opportunities to make bad choices. At first I thought this was a little silly - it's a bad idea to hide from temptation as your means of dealing with life. Um, hello, virtue untested isn't virtue at all, it's like a totally famous quote. But the observation he made that really appealed to me was this question: why do we rub up so close against our weaknesses and then ask ourselves to resist? Why do we walk the edge, thinking we can have just one bite of a sundae, or one sip of wine, or anything else like that? It's a lie of our own desires. We want to do the thing we are trying not to do. According to the pastor the feeling of want is the devil trying to get us to cave in, and that's where I fall off the train, but I'm still on board with the idea that the state of mind that makes bad decisions unfolds long before the undesired behavior takes place. You know in your heart, way ahead of time, even though you may say the opposite to yourself, that you are going to create permission for yourself to do something you claim not to want to do. Anyway I like this because when I am thinking about my own bad habits, I like the idea that I can exercise my resistance or disciplined state of mind long before the moment of temptation. I can give my weaknesses wide berth in my mind, and without having to literally stay home to avoid temptation, I can stay "home" in my head. And even when temptation is right in front of you, turning away and waiting for ten minutes, or distracting yourself from it can be effective for letting a wave of weakness pass over you. Like deciding not to have candy - if you just keep walking, ten minutes later the impulse is usually gone.
Ah, all this is just to say that yoga was so awesome this morning. I went to class taught by one of the teacher trainers and it was so great. The whole time I just kept thinking to myself, "yes, this is how I feel best, and most myself, I want this feeling, I want to hold this state in my heart all day, every day." And I can have this state of being all I want - but I have to work at it, keeping all my triggers for weakness at a distance, fomenting the state of being I really want to be anchored to. I imagine that in this positive state of self, former temptations will lose their luster anyway, and I will have to deal less with waiting out waves of weakness.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Forgetfulness and Anxiety
A lot of the busy-ness of my mind has to do with fear of forgetting something. I use "fear" here pretty broadly, since I don't wish to forget to get milk on the way home, for example. I'm not really "scared" of forgetting the milk, since this is a pretty low-consequence obligation, at most resulting in a little disappointment or chagrin when I make coffee or tea in the morning and it won't be just exactly how I like it - but I still find the worry over whether I will remember to get the milk to be a "fearful" sensation.
But other obligations are of course more consequential. Fulfilling these obligations can implicate the security of one's livelihood, or mean disappointing one's friends, or really hold up the progress of something you have committed to and create more work for other people. The economic, reputational, and practical consequences of forgetfulness can be pretty inconvenient or unpleasant.
For me the anxiety I experience in anticipation of these potential consequences means I try hard not to forget what it is I have obliged myself to do - and this means I have a running checklist in my mind that is compulsively being checked off throughout the day. A little paranoid secretary in my head says "don't forget to get milk" over and over until I get the milk. But sometimes I forget to get the milk anyway, and then all day I've crowded my head with repetitive worry for nothing. Oh chagrin - worse chagrin than the consequence of forgetting the milk, actually.
This worry habit of mine really gets in the way of meditation. I fear forgetting. One goal of meditation is supposed to be gaining a sense of existence separate from "I" - and separate from all the things we attach to that "I" including, I assume, its obligations. Along with all the other near-impossibilities of meditation, I find it really hard to submit to the experience without "don't forget the milk" or "remember to call Susie" popping into my head over and over. I'm afraid successful meditation will make me so happy I don't remember to do anything, or who I am, or that I am supposed to call someone later. That's unlikely to happen, and I've never heard of that being one of the "dangers" of meditation, but it makes it impossible for me to live in the moment.
So how can I remember what I'm supposed to do and still give myself over to experiences of concentration that push out the weight and repetition of all my obligations? Write it down? No, then I just think "did I remember to write milk down?" Some kind of email prompting system? Again this kind of reminder is only as good as the data one inputs, which means there is still the worry of whether I've put in the right data. I want to be confident in giving myself permission to forget that I want to get milk, knowing that I will remember to get it once I have "returned" from a forgetting episode like yoga or meditation. It would be nice to just take care of things the second they arise in my head, but that would a weird, inefficient, and equally distracting way to live. Imagine getting up from a movie theater to go pick up milk. It doesn't make sense.
What to do? I don't know.
But other obligations are of course more consequential. Fulfilling these obligations can implicate the security of one's livelihood, or mean disappointing one's friends, or really hold up the progress of something you have committed to and create more work for other people. The economic, reputational, and practical consequences of forgetfulness can be pretty inconvenient or unpleasant.
For me the anxiety I experience in anticipation of these potential consequences means I try hard not to forget what it is I have obliged myself to do - and this means I have a running checklist in my mind that is compulsively being checked off throughout the day. A little paranoid secretary in my head says "don't forget to get milk" over and over until I get the milk. But sometimes I forget to get the milk anyway, and then all day I've crowded my head with repetitive worry for nothing. Oh chagrin - worse chagrin than the consequence of forgetting the milk, actually.
This worry habit of mine really gets in the way of meditation. I fear forgetting. One goal of meditation is supposed to be gaining a sense of existence separate from "I" - and separate from all the things we attach to that "I" including, I assume, its obligations. Along with all the other near-impossibilities of meditation, I find it really hard to submit to the experience without "don't forget the milk" or "remember to call Susie" popping into my head over and over. I'm afraid successful meditation will make me so happy I don't remember to do anything, or who I am, or that I am supposed to call someone later. That's unlikely to happen, and I've never heard of that being one of the "dangers" of meditation, but it makes it impossible for me to live in the moment.
So how can I remember what I'm supposed to do and still give myself over to experiences of concentration that push out the weight and repetition of all my obligations? Write it down? No, then I just think "did I remember to write milk down?" Some kind of email prompting system? Again this kind of reminder is only as good as the data one inputs, which means there is still the worry of whether I've put in the right data. I want to be confident in giving myself permission to forget that I want to get milk, knowing that I will remember to get it once I have "returned" from a forgetting episode like yoga or meditation. It would be nice to just take care of things the second they arise in my head, but that would a weird, inefficient, and equally distracting way to live. Imagine getting up from a movie theater to go pick up milk. It doesn't make sense.
What to do? I don't know.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Wagon and Habit
Dear Bloggy Confessional Public Journal: still struggling with my repulsion/attraction to tv and booze. My no-tv rule has been pretty well busted lately ("oh I can just watch a little, besides, all the fun premieres are happening and I neeeeeed to see what is happening!" - this doesn't work. A little tv always turns into four hours), and I had a little too much to drink yesterday for no reason. There was no AC/DC show to have 35 beers with yesterday, just nothingness.
So back to the hard/fast rule idea - I think I shouldn't let myself watch tv in general of course (not that I am so great at that), but also just not watch tv or have wine when I'm alone. But the two things go together so nicely, and particularly when I'm alone! Boooo. But the reason they go together so nicely is because it's impossible to do anything remotely useful after having had a drink, so tv is pretty much it. Well, or a walk I guess. Some people have a glass of wine and read a book, what?! Not so much for me, no way. Anyway, the role that tv and alcohol play in my life is primarily a balm for my solitude. I actually get kind of psyched when no one is around, because I look forward to sliding into my bubble bath of vacuous sloth with no one there to witness my shame. Gross. I judge and hate myself for it but I just want to do it.
Why? Habit? That reminds me of a useful thing from Buddhism, which is confronting our relationship with the things that we don't want to do but do anyway. I completely forget most of the smart things the Buddha center guy said about it, but I remember some stuff I've heard before about stopping your own upsetting behavior. I'm supposed to think about the feeling that precedes engaging in the behavior that I don't like (just like any binge-er). I'm definitely using tv and wine to stop having to feel a certain way - and I think that it's usually that my mind is tired, or can't think of anything to do, or feels bored or lonely. But I must have other activities that fill in the hole where tv watching tends to sit - I mean, here's something I haven't done in over a week: read one page of one book. What the hell? I have books, a bunch of them, all right near me or near the bed that I completely want to read, why aren't I reading them? I don't know. Clearly I don't "want" to read them or I would be. But that's a little crazy, right, since I do want to read them, don't I? I think it's more like I do want to read them, but my state of mind is too agitated for me to enter into the mental state of Reading a Book. There's a transition to be made into a zone. I think what happens when I disregard enjoyable, positive, activities in favor of crappy ones is that I have pushed myself out of that particular zone and lost touch with how it feels to enjoy it, and then I just forget about it as a positive option for myself. And then the habit of tv and a glass of wine just floats into my head and I give myself "exception" permission for "just today" to indulge my unhappiness-provoking habits. I have gotten so used to using certain negative coping mechanisms that I forget about good ones.
I'm definitely trying to inject positive habits into my life, and for sure, for the most part it's been going great. Sort of a two forward, one back situation. I hate the back sliding though, it's discouraging. Makes me feel weak and pathetic. But I can't let self-loathing operate as my main motivator for change, no no no. That's horrible. It's like creating conditional love for yourself. I think it's better to love oneself unconditionally. Sounds better for the soul. I just have to stay clear-headed in the face of temptation and agitation and make deliberate choices in favor of my happiness. Why oh why is that so hard? Why? A little guidepost rule, like no tv/booze alone, is helpful for me - I'll be alone again in the evening very soon of course, and attending to this tiny rule, as opposed to attending to the huge and unmanageable and highly conceptual goal of My Happiness, helps make it manageable. Bleh, bootstraps be pulled. Resolve be hardened. Engage love of self. Throttle resolve.
So back to the hard/fast rule idea - I think I shouldn't let myself watch tv in general of course (not that I am so great at that), but also just not watch tv or have wine when I'm alone. But the two things go together so nicely, and particularly when I'm alone! Boooo. But the reason they go together so nicely is because it's impossible to do anything remotely useful after having had a drink, so tv is pretty much it. Well, or a walk I guess. Some people have a glass of wine and read a book, what?! Not so much for me, no way. Anyway, the role that tv and alcohol play in my life is primarily a balm for my solitude. I actually get kind of psyched when no one is around, because I look forward to sliding into my bubble bath of vacuous sloth with no one there to witness my shame. Gross. I judge and hate myself for it but I just want to do it.
Why? Habit? That reminds me of a useful thing from Buddhism, which is confronting our relationship with the things that we don't want to do but do anyway. I completely forget most of the smart things the Buddha center guy said about it, but I remember some stuff I've heard before about stopping your own upsetting behavior. I'm supposed to think about the feeling that precedes engaging in the behavior that I don't like (just like any binge-er). I'm definitely using tv and wine to stop having to feel a certain way - and I think that it's usually that my mind is tired, or can't think of anything to do, or feels bored or lonely. But I must have other activities that fill in the hole where tv watching tends to sit - I mean, here's something I haven't done in over a week: read one page of one book. What the hell? I have books, a bunch of them, all right near me or near the bed that I completely want to read, why aren't I reading them? I don't know. Clearly I don't "want" to read them or I would be. But that's a little crazy, right, since I do want to read them, don't I? I think it's more like I do want to read them, but my state of mind is too agitated for me to enter into the mental state of Reading a Book. There's a transition to be made into a zone. I think what happens when I disregard enjoyable, positive, activities in favor of crappy ones is that I have pushed myself out of that particular zone and lost touch with how it feels to enjoy it, and then I just forget about it as a positive option for myself. And then the habit of tv and a glass of wine just floats into my head and I give myself "exception" permission for "just today" to indulge my unhappiness-provoking habits. I have gotten so used to using certain negative coping mechanisms that I forget about good ones.
I'm definitely trying to inject positive habits into my life, and for sure, for the most part it's been going great. Sort of a two forward, one back situation. I hate the back sliding though, it's discouraging. Makes me feel weak and pathetic. But I can't let self-loathing operate as my main motivator for change, no no no. That's horrible. It's like creating conditional love for yourself. I think it's better to love oneself unconditionally. Sounds better for the soul. I just have to stay clear-headed in the face of temptation and agitation and make deliberate choices in favor of my happiness. Why oh why is that so hard? Why? A little guidepost rule, like no tv/booze alone, is helpful for me - I'll be alone again in the evening very soon of course, and attending to this tiny rule, as opposed to attending to the huge and unmanageable and highly conceptual goal of My Happiness, helps make it manageable. Bleh, bootstraps be pulled. Resolve be hardened. Engage love of self. Throttle resolve.
Monday, September 6, 2010
The Regimen: Self-Imposed Requirements
I aspire to do yoga every day for the next six months. September 6th to March 6th. Habit and regimen. Day 1: yoga done? Check.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)