Category Archives: Ponderings

The ways we mourn

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Boston skyline

Boston, summer 2004

Some of us lay our souls completely bare to everyone around us.

Some of us find comfort in helping–sharing information, searching for resources, offering a shoulder, donating.

Some of us stare mutely and refresh, refresh, refresh.

Some of us look for a reason, any sort of logic behind it all.

Some of us seek someone or something to blame.

Some of us lose hope.

Some of us find strength.

Some of us cry, alone, and push forward because it’s all we can do.

There are so many ways. But in the end, we all mourn.

Self-disenfranchisement

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I found this unposted musing in my Drafts. It was written on June 15, 2012.

Sometimes it feels like my entire generation subscribes to a feeling of self-loathing. We didn’t have to go through the hardships our parents did, the “logic” goes, so we feel that we grew up soft and incapable. We cripple ourselves by believing we can’t achieve, and we apply our disgust at ourselves to everyone else in our generation too. Oh, we don’t know how to work hard. Oh, soldiers today aren’t as heroic as the ones in Vietnam or World War II.  Oh, everybody wants a handout. We can be so hard on ourselves and others that we begin to hate ourselves and each other. We don’t respect each other because what do we know? We grew up having everything given to us by our parents.

When you look at the world this way, you’re being ageist and classist and rendering an entire generation inhuman. You stop thinking people have basic human rights because you don’t think they’ve earned them. This is a dangerous opinion, because human rights aren’t something that can be earned in the first place. They are the things every human being on the planet should have, regardless of when they were born or how they grew up. Our generation is willing to disenfranchise ourselves out of self-loathing. We’re not thinking about what this means for future generations.

Juggling social media sites

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I’ve mentioned before the problems I’ve had with various social media sites. In an attempt to see if I could improve my experience, I started using Google Plus and ADN, but neither of those could replace Twitter or Facebook…so for the past few weeks I have been using four social media sites instead of two.

This is a huge time suck, and I’m not sure I’m really adding much value to my life.

I’ve mainly found Google Plus to be a decent place for news links, but I’m flummoxed by the lack of a “send to Instapaper” button. I despise having to open the link in Safari, copy it there, and then paste it into Instapaper. There are also occasionally some interesting discussions on Google Plus, but I don’t have enough people in my Circles for this to be a frequent occurrence.

ADN is a different animal. There are plenty of interesting people there, but a lot of the ones I’ve interacted with seem to have a lot more time to dedicate to ADN than I do. I tend to dip in and out; they’re there for longer blocks of time, holding up numerous conversation threads with sometimes dozens of people at once. ADN sort of feels like a microcosm of a party, where the extraverts are flitting around happily and I, the introvert, am observing, trying to interact, feeling overwhelmed, and ducking out early. I often feel like I’m missing everything, that I am not “cool” enough for ADN. Sometimes I attempt to broach what I consider to be important topics there, only to be either ignored entirely, or briefly engaged and then ignored. I guess I wouldn’t say that I have made any real friends on ADN. There are a few people I enjoy chatting with, to be sure, but for the most part it just feels really hard to interact on ADN.

I do try to keep in mind that it took me many years to get Twitter and Facebook curated such that I was comfortable with them. At first I would just follow anyone on Twitter who seemed interesting, but after awhile I would feel left out because these interesting people weren’t following me or talking to me. Eventually I learned to follow people who would actually interact with me, which made the experience much better. I also learned to temper my expectations, so I could follow bigger accounts and know that they have so much interaction to deal with, there’s no way they could respond to everything people said to them. I kept my following list as small as possible, so I wouldn’t feel like I was missing the party. I have a sort of balance on Twitter that gives me information and interaction. I have to remember how long it took me to get there.

Facebook is a different animal. I use it to keep track of actual friends: people from school, people from IRC, people from the AMRN, people from work, and family members. These are people I actually want to keep up with, not just random acquaintances. I use Facebook as the contact list for my personal life, essentially, which is why it is always distressing when someone decides to close their account, and why I have so much trouble with the idea of closing mine. The archivist in me loves that I can collect information about myself and my friends all in one place, and this built-in need usually wins out over my privacy concerns. I realize this is probably bad, but I don’t know what else to do. There is literally nothing else out there that can replicate what Facebook does for me.

I’m starting to wonder, though, if there isn’t a way I could try and quantify the benefits of the various social media platforms vs. the drawbacks. As I said, checking these four services takes time. What might I be doing with that time otherwise? Couldn’t I use my blog to chronicle my life, rather than depending on Facebook? Couldn’t I create an address book of the people I care about and contact them in other ways? Couldn’t I use RSS feeds to read news? Would these things save time? Would they free my mind for creative endeavors?

I have a few options for evaluating my social media use. I could stop completely for a given amount of time and see what happens. I could limit my use to a certain amount of time per day and see what happens. I could continue as normal, but track my time on social media the same way someone evaluating their diet would track food. That last would be the hardest to implement, but it might provide the best data.

Ultimately, I think social media has become habitual for me, a way of having something to do when I’m not sure what to do next. (Chores are also like this for me.) It may be distracting me from achieving goals, because working towards something is harder than taking a routine action. To achieve a goal you have to come up with a plan, and you have to break it up into steps, and you have to constantly figure out what the next step is. With habits, you just do it. No wonder habits are so hard to break. You feel like you’ve accomplished something, even if you haven’t.

Maybe instead of focusing on social media, I should focus on my goals. As I invest more time into achieving goals, the unimportant stuff will start to fall away naturally.

Regardless of how I change my social media habits, I do know this: things can’t stay the way they are now.

Social media quandary

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Some time ago, I reached a point of crisis with Facebook. I was (and am) terribly unhappy with the company’s lack of respect for its users. Facebook users are not the customer; they’re the product. Mark Zuckerberg has little respect for privacy and seems only interested in pleasing advertisers. While I realize Facebook needs to make money, I don’t think that should happen at the cost of people’s feeling of personal security.

However, despite that huge issue, I continue to use Facebook, because that’s where everyone is. Or, more specifically, that’s where a majority of my far-flung real life friends are. Facebook makes it simple for me to keep up with people I otherwise wouldn’t hear from for months, years, or at all. I have always been terrible with keeping up with people myself, so this has been a godsend. And through Facebook I have developed deeper friendships with people who were once simple acquaintances. I’ve planned travel. I’ve shared and received affirmations and support. Facebook is where I go for community. It’s not a paradigm that can be replicated.

Twitter, I’ve come to discover over the past few days of trying very hard not to use it, is also an non-replicable paradigm.

I never thought I would have to try and find an experience to replace what I have on Twitter. Unlike Facebook, where I reveal information only behind tiered walls of (questionable) privacy, my tweets have always been public. Anyone is welcome to them. I have very few real followers, but I have over the years since I joined in February of 2007 curated a following list of interesting, funny people and accounts, one that enriches my life with daily musings, links to important news articles, beautiful photos, and more. I’ve also enjoyed sharing my own thoughts and occasionally receiving feedback.

As Twitter works toward profitability, things keep changing. I had always believed Twitter was more interested in its users than Facebook was, that Twitter would ultimately have its users’ backs. But one thing always bothered me: Why, if Twitter still has all my tweets as it claims, won’t it let me have them?

Unhappy that my tweets were seemingly going into a void from which they could never be recovered, I recently set up a rule with If This Then That that saves any tweet I post into a text file on Dropbox. Doing that, I was confident that at least going forward I would have access to my own content.

But then Twitter changed its API terms for developers, directly affecting my solution. IFTTT sent me an email about it, directing me to the Developer Rules of the Road and specifically this paragraph under “Twitter Content”:

You may export or extract non-programmatic, GUI-driven Twitter Content as a PDF or spreadsheet by using “save as” or similar functionality. Exporting Twitter Content to a datastore as a service or other cloud based service, however, is not permitted.

This rather creepily makes it sound like my content, the stuff I write, belongs to Twitter, not me. And as the content belongs to Twitter, I apparently have no right to use a process to save it. I would have to manually copy and paste from the GUI, if I’m reading this correctly. They know no one’s going to actually do that.

I realize this section exists to stop people from cross-posting their tweets to other services (which also seems draconian, no matter how annoying I find cross-posted content), but it effectively locks me out of my own writing, again. Let’s say I instead decide to post on some other service that allows me full access to my content, and then cross-post to Twitter. I could save the original posts I write that way, but not replies. I also wouldn’t be able to save retweets, which, while secondary, provide context to what I’m writing and insight into what I was thinking about while writing.

When I read the email from IFTTT on Thursday, I tweeted a little about it with shock and dismay, and then stopped tweeting altogether. It’s been about three days…but it feels more like a month.

In the meantime, I did what I could to get the content I enjoy on Twitter elsewhere. I went over to Google+ and added everyone I could find. I even pulled in news organizations I’m interested in and removed them from Facebook–but it looks like most of them post more to Facebook than Google+. Similarly, most of the people I followed on Google+ don’t post there much. The bulk of content is back on Twitter.

I’ve also been using App.net Alpha and the iOS app Spoonbill to participate in the new App.net-powered community that I’ll just refer to as ADN for simplicity’s sake. (App.net has the capability to support multiple communities, though I’m not sure that’s been done yet.) While that community is interesting, it’s sort of weird. (One conversation I witnessed, Person A: “Don’t you have a personal lawyer?” Person B: “Of course; I have several.”) There are a few people who, like me, talk about their lives, but for the most part I see people talking about tech trends, social media theory, marketing, and occasionally politics. It’s good content, but it’s not everything I want. Not by a long shot. There’s no @Lileks there. Little to nothing about journalism, photography, design, language, culture, or travel. @Horse_ebooks is there, but I hate @Horse_ebooks. The people I actually know who have signed up haven’t posted much of anything. It feels like a large number of the active people on ADN live in the Bay Area, adding to the sort of tech elitist ambiance. I have had very few conversations there.

So no, ADN can’t replace Twitter for me, at least not now. There isn’t enough adoption, I suppose. I even sort of feel weird posting there, like I’m spamming up a special place with my worthless thoughts. Rather the opposite of how I assumed I would feel about using a paid service that puts the users first.

ADN can’t do it, Google+ can’t do it, and I refuse to change the way I use Facebook (especially since that would give Facebook more data about me). So it would appear that I have no choice but to use Twitter, at least in terms of reading.

I’ve heard rumors that Twitter will start allowing users to download their tweets by the end of the year. But rumors like that have existed for awhile. I’ll believe it when I see it.

For now, I’ll probably keep reading Twitter. But I’m not sure I’ll be actually posting much there.

Respect

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Spectators at Atlanta Braves gameSeveral years ago, before the real estate bubble burst, Sean and I (or at least I) felt a lot of pressure to buy a home. Everyone said it was the thing to do, that it was the best investment you could make. Sean’s take was always that home prices were too high and that we didn’t have enough money for a proper down payment at those prices. To placate various individuals we went to a bank to see how much credit we could get, and Sean was astonished to discover that with our income, credit, and what we had in savings as a down payment, they would loan us enough for a $230,000 home. He told me privately that this was predatory, that the bank had to know we were not in a position to make payments on that kind of mortgage comfortably.

I see his wisdom now, but at the time I thought he was being unreasonable, and some people even said as much to me. So I looked into other financing options myself…one of which was a home loan through NACA. Sean wasn’t interested in the slightest, but to his credit, he went right along with me to a meeting to learn more about the program.

We ultimately decided that a long-term loan with a super-low down payment wasn’t best for us either. It would financially trap us in a way far worse than a traditional 30-year mortgage, without really providing anything in the way of profit. The end result is that we have never owned real estate. But that day, flush with nervous excitement and a feeling that we should be doing something and maybe this was the answer, I told Sean that the meeting was at the Augusta downtown library and we headed out.

Unfortunately, the meeting wasn’t at the library. After a few confused minutes, I asked someone on staff and was told that that day’s meeting was being held elsewhere. We got the address and hurried over, already late. I thought about just giving up for the day and going home, but we had preregistered and I thought it would look bad if we didn’t show. Besides, I reasoned, everyone is late in Augusta. At worst we’d get a disapproving stare.

We found the correct location and signed in, then tried to slip into the meeting. The door was at the front of the room, so everyone saw us as we muttered “Sorry” and attempted to shuffle down to seats in the back. And then–

“Oh, no,” said the woman at the front of the room, as if she was admonishing children. “You come in late, you sit up front.”

I was mortified. My first instinct was to flee. But everyone had already seen us; we were committed. We walked back to the front of the room and sat at the first table.

I spent the rest of the meeting feeling like I shouldn’t be there, like something was dreadfully wrong, but I couldn’t quite figure out what it was. I had the vague sense that the other people in the room were not my peers, with the possible exception of the woman in charge, only she’d not recognized me as such.

Years later, I can finally admit that I was being prejudiced, as was the lady running the meeting.

NACA is a program for people with low incomes. The purpose is to help stabilize communities by keeping families in homes. It’s not about helping people profit on a financial investment; it’s about making sure they have a lasting place to live. From everything I’ve seen, it’s a great program that helps neighborhoods and advocates for homeowners.

My sense of not belonging came from recognizing that the other meeting attendees were not at our economic level. Meanwhile, the woman–whose actions should not reflect on all of NACA–had assumed Sean and I were low-income and treated us that way.

As if there is a way you are supposed to treat low-income people, as opposed to other people.

I was flummoxed that day because in my adult life I had never been treated like I was irresponsible. I’d run into sexism, but classism hadn’t touched me. I’d always been powerful enough economically to fall under the “customer is always right” umbrella, and so I hadn’t realized just how much disrespect you can face when you don’t have that power. How people can stop seeing you as an adult and start seeing you as a child.

It’s not hard to imagine how your pride, work ethic, self-respect, and respect for others would suffer if you were constantly being reminded by people’s words and deeds that you were a good-for-nothing drain on society. What motivation do you have to prove them wrong…especially when there doesn’t seem to be a way out of your situation? (Upward mobility has pretty much ceased to exist in this country.) I was shocked and confused by one small interaction, and it took years for me to see it for what it was. Imagine a lifetime of that. Imagine being indoctrinated into a culture of utter disrespect.

It’s easy to say that you can avoid this sort of treatment by doing everything right. But, first of all, it is impossible to do everything right. Everyone has different expectations and everyone has different circumstances. You can’t meet everyone’s expectations at all times, and no one can meet all of your expectations. Further, that statement isn’t even true. Even if you somehow manage to do everything perfectly by the book, in such a way that no one can complain about your behavior, there will still be people who will judge you based on other factors. People who will dismiss you outright without even getting to know you.

I see it every day, with every “Drug tests for welfare!” and “Food stamps teach people to be dependent on the system!” email forward and Facebook post.

These blanket statements imply that without regard to individual circumstances, all lower income people are unreliable and can’t be trusted and should be cut off. Well, I suppose the issue of poverty would go away if everyone who was poor simply died, but that’s not really a solution I can get behind.

The real issue here, the problem that is causing the cycle of poverty, is a lack of people willing to respect and take chances on other people. The government does what it can, but government can’t fix this. Only community has the power to right this wrong. Currently, the community seems to be split between people who pretend not to see and people who actively spew hate. As long as this continues, we’re not going to see any improvement.

As long as we look at other people and classify them based on how much money we think they make, we are not an equal opportunity society.

Rape

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As a woman, I think about rape a lot.

I’m not constantly in fear of it. But I’m aware of it in a way that makes me wary. Intellectually, I find myself analyzing conditions that lead to rape. And of course emotionally I would like all rape to stop immediately.

There are those who say the onus of stopping rape falls on the victims, that they have somehow justified their rapist’s actions through some behavior of their own. And there are those who say the onus of stopping rape falls on the perpetrators, that they should exercise self-control and that victims are not responsible for what happens to them.

I find both of these opinions to be too idealized to be practical in real world scenarios.

The blame for the act of rape falls squarely on the rapist. There is nothing that justifies what they do. No action on the part of their victims makes it okay for them to attack and violate. And so yes, we need to be looking at how to marginalize this sort of behavior until it is broadly unacceptable.

But in the meantime, rapists are still going to rape. Unless people–women and men–want to be victims, they should prepare themselves and their children.

The first tool in a person’s arsenal is the “gut feeling”. This should be cultivated at an early age and honed throughout life. I highly recommend owning and regularly reading Gavin de Becker’s The Gift of Fear; this book demonstrates through examples how you can turn that crawly feeling you get in skeevy situations into actionable information. It also offers excellent advice on defusing escalating scenarios, such as household fights that might be heading towards domestic abuse, disgruntled workers, and stalkers. The main takeaway is this: If someone gives you a bad feeling, don’t stay around them. If a situation gives you a bad feeling, get out of it.

The second tool is what some people might call “common sense”, but which I will call situational awareness and preparation. You’ll learn about this in The Gift of Fear too. Basically, when you are planning to go anywhere or do anything, you should be aware of where you will be, what type of place it is, who you can expect to meet, where the exits are, how long it would take you to get out of there, how public or private it is, whether or not there are places where a person might be lured out of sight or abducted, and more. When you park your car, you should pay attention to the cars around you. When returning to your car, you should do the same, and have your keys out and ready before you get there so there’s no delay. Always lock your car, and if you can see underneath it or underneath the cars next to you before you get there, definitely check. Even if you left it locked, look in the backseat before you get into your car.

When you go into an establishment like a restaurant, sit so that you can see the entrances and so there is a wall behind you if possible. Pay attention to the people who come in and think about how you would get out of the room or building quickly if you needed to. It is possible with training to sense when someone is staring at you. Start looking out for this sort of behavior.

Public restrooms are a place to watch out for. Restaurant restrooms are probably safe, unless the restaurant doesn’t feel right to begin with, in which case don’t even eat there. But gas station restrooms and rest stop restrooms can give you a bad feeling. Depending on the time of day, they can be empty, perfectly private for an assault. When possible, don’t travel alone, and don’t visit these restrooms alone. (I normally use fast food restaurants for my “rest areas” when traveling; they’re safe, family-friendly and have clean restrooms.)

In terms of preparation, there is no point in trying to change the way you look to dissuade rapists. There are a million different fetishes under the sun. What you find conservative, he may find provocative. Don’t let fear of being raped change who you are; don’t give rapists power over your personal style. Adorn yourself in whatever ways you want. About the only advice I would give in terms of clothes, shoes, and jewelry is to watch out for items that might make it difficult to run, or might make it easier for someone to hurt you. On the flip side, you might look for accessories you can use as weapons.

The third tool in your arsenal against rape is self defense techniques. Once you are mature enough to know when to use martial arts–for knowledge and defense, never for attack, as Master Splinter said in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles–then there are some devastating techniques you can be taught for protection. Bear in mind, the ideal is to escape or avoid dangerous scenarios entirely. But that’s not always possible, and if you find yourself under attack, and your gut is telling you you are in real danger, you should know the fastest and most effective ways to bring your opponent down. This includes offensive maneuvers and even striking first if you must. It also means fighting “dirty”. You’re not trying to win “points”, you’re trying to survive. It doesn’t matter how large your opponent is, if you can get a good strike in to the right area. After you’ve done that, just keep hitting them until they can’t get back up.

Once you have learned some techniques, you should spend time mentally training, imagining various situations and what you might do to disable your opponent and escape. A good self defense class should also run you through some scenarios, but it’s impossible to practice some of the best techniques. Yes, they are that dangerous. Padding wouldn’t help because it would make the practice unrealistic. With the sort of self defense techniques I’m thinking of, your attacker could wind up maimed or possibly dead. This is why you should not learn these techniques until you are mature enough not to use them.

But once you do know them, you will be that much more prepared for the worst.

With these three tools–trusting your gut, situational awareness, and self defense techniques–you can feel more empowered to live in the world of today. Making smart choices doesn’t mean you have to hide yourself at home. In fact, the whole point is for you to be able to get out there and speak your mind.

Many people, women and men, who speak out become the targets of hate speech and abuse. Sometimes the fear of these threats becomes so great that people withdraw, their voices silenced. When this happens, public discourse loses something vitally important: the public. These fringe harassers are not the majority; their voices are just the loudest. People who are interested in things like decency and real solutions need to be able to talk about hot-button issues without fear. Taking steps to protect ourselves will help.

And then there’s the long view. The steps outlined above are nothing but bandages covering the third-degree burn that is oppressor entitlement on world societies. Protecting ourselves is important, but we need to start applying skin grafts.

Why does rape happen? My impression is that rape is emotional. It comes either from a seed of obsession that is nourished over a long period of time, or from a sudden burst of emotion. Either way, the victim is not seen as a person so much as a means to work out or through that emotion. In the case of obsession, the rapist doesn’t want a relationship; he wants control and pleasure. In the case of sudden outbursts, the rapist is overwhelmed with a rush of feeling and uses the most convenient means of getting it out. We see more of the obsession type here in the US; an example of the outburst type is what happened to CBS’s Lara Logan in Tahrir Square.

There are two main problems, then, that need to be dealt with. First, men need to learn to see women (and other potential rape victims) as people, not as things they can use for their convenience and throw away. Second, men need to learn how to deal with their emotions properly.

It starts with our kids. They need to know they can’t always get their way, that the world doesn’t owe them anything, and that preying upon others is unacceptable. They need to know that everyone is different, but everyone deserves to be treated with respect. They also need to know that it is okay to cry, to talk or write or create art or run around or do any other healthy activity in order to work out a difficult emotion.

And it continues into our schools and workplaces. We need to stop holding up domineering personalities as the main role models and start valuing all personality types equally. We need to cultivate a culture of community rather than a culture of arbitrary competition. Deadlines and competition are necessary to a degree, but they need to be more reasonable…at least reasonable enough that coworkers don’t resent one another for taking time off.

We need to pay women and men equally for the same work, and we need to not put up with anything from one group that we would not put up with from the other. No more “boys will be boys” or “well, she’s a girl”.

We need more women elected to public office, more women anchoring serious news shows, at least one late-night comedy/interview show starring a woman, more female lead characters in movies and TV shows and video games.

We need to chip away at this impression of woman as “other”, make women identifiable to men (and women, for that matter) as human beings, such that objectification becomes more and more difficult.

The long view is very long. I doubt I’ll see its goals achieved in my lifetime, especially with the backsliding we’ve been doing lately. But for the sake of the next generation, and the one after that, and the one after that, we have to keep trying.

Weight loss surgery challenges

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I am currently over eight months out from duodenal switch weight loss surgery. In that time I have lost 109 pounds and gone from size XL blouses to size M and size 26W pants to size 10. My shoe size has also gone from around 8W to 7, and I’ve had to have my wedding rings resized.

For the first few months of this process, my biggest challenges were emotional. As my body changed rapidly, I started to lose my sense of identity. I never realized just how much I identified as “the fat one” until I wasn’t anymore.

Now, though, the weight loss has decelerated, and I’m quite pleased with who I see in the mirror despite some lingering trouble spots. My biggest challenges have shifted to complacency and boredom.

You see, while I was focused on the rapid weight loss, while I could tell I still had plenty of weight to lose, I was very motivated to eat right and exercise. I thought at the time that the surgery was some sort of miracle cure for food addiction; I didn’t really crave anything, and though I got tired of eating the same high protein foods over and over, it didn’t really bother me because I had a goal, and because food wasn’t nearly as important to me as it once was. And I also knew that I had to make sure to work out during the rapid weight loss, so I would lose fat rather than muscle mass. While I wasn’t quite as dedicated to exercising–I never have been–I still did a lot of walking and spent more time at my apartment complex workout room than I normally would have.

But here I am, basically happy with my weight, not losing quickly anymore…and suddenly really wanting to enjoy eating again. I’ve slipped. I’ve had cookies. I’ve had sugar-laden sauces. I’ve eaten too much bread. I’ve gone for fried food–and fries. Thanks to my smaller stomach and rerouted intestines, I can’t eat or absorb as much food, but eating too much of the wrong kinds of food is still bad. It’s just so much harder to keep that in perspective when I feel good and look good and just want a snack. When I see TV characters eating these huge, delicious-looking meals, and I wish I could eat them too, and I know I could never finish those portion sizes. When I start to mourn the me who could enjoy a big slice of cake.

I’m in danger of slipping back into my old patterns of emotional eating, eating when I’m not hungry, eating just to eat.

The thing is, eating these bad-for-me foods doesn’t really give me any joy. They taste better now than they did a few months ago, possibly because I’ve been eating them more and my taste buds have readjusted, but they’re not really satisfying. And then there’s what happens later. Too much sugar gives me severe abdominal pain. Too much fried food gives me diarrhea. Too much white bread or white rice gives me gas. There are compelling physiological reasons not to eat foods that are bad for me. But the delay between the eating and the punishment is just long enough that I can trick myself into thinking it’ll be okay, that the food will be worth it. It usually isn’t, but my emotions don’t remember that. I just want the food because I want it.

I must reiterate that until recently, maybe three or four weeks ago, I didn’t even have this problem. It’s like all of a sudden my food cravings woke up, raring to go…and now every meal choice is a struggle.

Then there’s the exercise. For awhile there I was taking pretty regular walks. Now, they’re intermittent. I spend most of my time sitting or standing at my computer, or lounging on the couch. Errands do take me up a flight of stairs, which is great but not enough. And I’m not doing any strength training. No toning at all.

My forearms look pretty good after all this weight loss. My upper arms do too, if you look at them from the correct angle. But then I raise my arm and you see the huge dangling flap of fat and wrinkly skin. Might this have been avoided if I’d actually committed to working out properly?

I look pretty good in a pair of jeans these days. But take them off and what do you get? Folds of butt skin. Disgusting.

And I still have fat to lose, on my stomach and thighs. Now that my body is smaller, it seems more striking, though I’m able to conceal it pretty well with clothing.

I said before that I’m pretty happy with how I look, and despite what I just described, I am. If this is where my weight loss is going to stop, then that’s probably okay (though I might have cosmetic surgery on my arms and butt).

But as I mentioned in my post about the weight loss deceleration, I still have over a year left to lose weight. It’s possible I could get rid of more fat, and maybe even tone up.

Being complacent about what I’ve already achieved isn’t going to get me there.

So, frankly, I’m a little scared. I’m scared that my boredom over food will continue to impact my meal choices. And I’m scared my complacent opinion that my body looks okay as it is will mean I’ll pass on exercise that not only might help me look better, but would keep me in better health.

I don’t want to give up so soon. I don’t want to say “That’s good enough.” I didn’t expect this hurdle, here in the end game where I really only have about 25 pounds to lose, if that.

So I’m making a different commitment. Before, when the surgery’s effects were new, it was relatively easy to change my lifestyle to adjust to them. Now I’m used to my new gastrointestinal system and will need to put more effort into staying on top of things. This means I will keep my apartment free of things I shouldn’t be eating, and make Sean’s treats off-limits to myself. I will think of the protein first every time, as I should have been doing all along. And I will try to come up with some method of meal planning that isn’t actually meal planning, because I hate meal planning. (I may just go to the store every day for awhile rather than trying to work out a week’s worth of dinners.) As for exercise, I am going to start looking into joining a gym and/or hiring a personal trainer. But while I explore my options in those areas, I’ll get back to doing workout videos that exercise all the muscles, and resume going on regular walks.

These steps should result in a healthier me, and if they also result in further weight loss and toning over the next year, then that’s great too.

When I chose to have weight loss surgery, it was out of medical necessity, but I was also committing to a lifestyle change. I’m not giving up on that change.

Harassment

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I’ve started following the inimitable Soraya Chemaly on Twitter; she’s always writing or posting links to articles that intrigue and inspire me. Today she linked to a piece on Rookie magazine called “It Happens All the Time”.

In a nutshell, the article consists of the women of Rookie discussing the harassment they’ve faced in public, just trying to get stuff done or get from point A to point B. Towards the end it goes into how frustrating it is that men don’t seem to understand that this is not flattering–it is completely unwelcome, gross, disturbing, and frightening.

Some of their examples are pretty extreme. I can’t recall a time where I’ve ever seen a stranger touching himself while looking at me. However, things have happened. I tend not to think about them much.

There was the time in Walmart (back when it was called Wal-Mart) when I was an adolescent, and I was several steps behind my mom in the lingerie department. A man I didn’t know came up to me, began stroking a bra, and said with a smile, “Shall I buy you something?”

There was the time on the school bus when I was wearing a long t-shirt and tight leggings, a style I’d copied from my trendy cousin, and a high school boy came up to me with a leer and put his hand on my thigh. (I never wore that outfit again.)

There was the time as a teenager when my bottom was grabbed by someone who was not a stranger and who did not understand that I didn’t want him to do that, even when I told him. He had also told me, when I was younger, that I looked sexy, but at the time I thought that was a good thing.

I haven’t done a lot of walking around, other than on college campuses and hiking/biking trails, and my experience with public transportation is minimal, so I haven’t had many bad experiences that I can recall as an adult. I have been flirted with before, but infrequently and in ways that didn’t bother me. Rereading this one, I can see where it might be gross to some people, but I don’t know. I guess I was in a good mood? And it’s not like it happened every day. I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone yell anything at me on the street, other than panhandlers looking for money.

There is one panhandling incident that freaked me out. I was in downtown Augusta. I’d just parked and was walking to a restaurant. A panhandler came up really quickly and hugged me, pinning my arms to my sides. “Don’t worry,” he said cheerfully, “I’m not gonna rape you!”

Yeah, that’s the way to get me to not worry.

I was thinking about the various ways I could get out of his iron grip (destroy his kneecap, head-butt him, knee him in the groin) when he finally let go and asked for money.

Regardless, despite a few uncomfortable incidents, I feel like I’ve been remarkably sheltered compared to other women. Part of it is self-sheltering…I don’t go out in public in a vulnerable way very much, and I listen to my gut when it says to leave an area. Part of it is probably due to the fact that I’ve never lived in a place where I didn’t need a car to get around. I also tend to pay attention more to patterns of behavior rather than individuals–I’m the one reading the signs and noting where to go, but I couldn’t tell you what anyone was wearing, for example. It’s possible I’m completely oblivious to some really disgusting behavior. If so, ignorance is definitely bliss! (Or maybe men are just classier in the South?)

But this has me a little nervous about travel in the future. I’ve really been wanting to go to France, for example…is it that bad for women there? One of the women mentioned London. I didn’t experience anything during my quick day there, but I was with Brooke and David. How would it have been if I was alone?

Honestly, I’m not sure I would be comfortable traveling alone, even without having read that article. I’m already pretty wary of situations that can turn dangerous fast. It sucks, but it’s reality. I’m a woman, so I’m not free to just do what I want when I want. I have to think about my safety at all times.

Problems with prioritizing

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As planned, I started out my morning without consuming media. I got dressed for my workout without looking at my phone except to check the weather conditions, and I didn’t turn on my computer to look at any websites or social media. I put a load of laundry in the washer, pulled on my RoadID, slipped my phone into my Clean Bottle holster, and headed out the door.

Normally I try to walk five kilometers, but today I did two and a half, thinking that would be more manageable for a daily routine. I was quite tired of walking by the time I was done, even though it was nice and cool out, I think because I was anxious to get to work on my writing. I got back to the apartment, put the first load of laundry in the dryer and started another load in the washer, did my weight lifting and crunches and stretching, then grabbed an Atkins shake for breakfast.

It turned out that the first thing I wanted to write about was the Fringe season four finale, which I watched last night. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do when I have things I want to write about that aren’t going to result in publication or profit or pageviews or whatever. Today, I decided to go ahead and write it. Then, when it was done, I posted it to Twitter and Facebook like usual. I managed to keep from scrolling down on Twitter, but I ended up reading Facebook like a big doofus. Fifty points from Gryffindor :(

Now I seem to have run out of steam. I’m wondering if my approach is wrong. Should I be putting off chores and my workout until after I have done a significant amount of writing? The chores actually don’t take that much time, though, and they can be done concurrently with other activities. The workouts are necessary for health, and I’ve found in the past that if I don’t do them first thing in the morning, I’m far less likely to do them at all.

I also have a few projects unrelated to my new purpose in life that I need to get finished as soon as possible, so my mind is free to concentrate on moving forward. Maybe I should wait to start on my Serious Writing until those are done. But my creative brain seems to work the way it works, and it wants to plan or write when it wants to plan or write, so instead of making a hard and fast rule, I suppose I should just commit myself to working on those projects as much as possible and then taking the time to write when inspiration demands it.

I’m also concerned that writing this post is itself a form of procrastination, so I’m just going to stop now and go see about my laundry and try to clear my head and get back to work.