What I'm Doing Today: Lunch and Line Edits

Regenerative Medicine

Not as far off as you might think (also, unsurprisingly, using the battlefield as its testing ground).

Things That Need Doing

Stepped on the scale today for the first time in, what, six months? When I was living at my old apt, I was very good at weighing myself once a month and making adjustments accordingly. It kept my weight steady and my clothes fitting and all was well. Now that my house is so damn cold, I'm less inclined to strip and step on a scale. So I've avoided it since at least October when the house started getting chilly.

I knew I'd put on 10lbs or so since J. and I moved in together. I actually managed to get that back down to +5 before the holidays. Then came the holidays, and winter, and tax season, and this really great website with low carb coffee cake recipes...

Despite getting up at 5:30 in the morning to do 30 minutes of exercise and another 20-25 minutes 3 times a week when I get home, it just hasn't been enough to make up for the coffee cake and cold house. They've also cut the workout program at work, which means no more twice-weekly strength training sessions and no more gym membership.

What happened is just what I suspected would happen when I ceased being vigilant - I've gained a retarded amount of weight since J. and I first met a year and a half ago - most of which I've put on in the last 4 months of coffee cakes and cold houses. Nobody believes me when I say this is what happens when I stop paying attention.

What actually moved me to get back on the scale was my crazy sugar numbers. My blood sugar has been a lot harder to control, and far more frustrating. I wanted to know if the weight gain was indeed substantial enough that it may be causing insulin resistance. And oh yes, dear reader - it is.

There are some quick and easy changes I'm making right away: no more low carb cookies and coffee cakes, for one (do you have any idea how many calories are in almond flour?), and sticking to the lunch I bring into work instead of adding snacks from the free salad bar at work. I did manage to eliminate my peanut butter/low carb English muffin fix way back, which is how I curbed the initial weight gain and got things back under control. But now there's that coffee cake thing...

My 20 minutes pilates/15 min free weights workout each morning is pretty solid. What I need to work on now is getting at least 30 minutes 5x a week of cardio instead of the current 20-25 3x a week. A lot of the problem with getting this in is wonky sugar numbers. Some days I turn my insulin off at 3:45 and I can workout for 50 minutes. Other days, I turn it off at the same time and I can only workout for 20 and then my sugar crashes and I start to tremble and all the energy goes out of me and I have that intense hunger spike and desire to burn the world to the ground. I need to get this timing right if I'm going to workout properly every day after work.

I'm also working toward doing at least 40 more minutes on Sat or Sun to get me to 6 days. 6 days a week of 30-50 min a day is pretty much the only thing that moves me. It's just a really tough routine to put into place during the best of times, and right now the house is cold and I've got a crazy day job and personal deadlines.

But. The alternative is very bad. This is a good reminder of what happens to me when I don't stay on top of maintaining my weight with monthly weigh-ins. I know some folks thought this was odd - if you're happy with your weight, why be so vigilant?

Here's why: because aside from that whole immune disorder thing, I have great genes. I'm very good at packing weight away, and when you have aforementioned immune disorder, this is a very bad habit to get into. I have been displeased with my numbers, and not feeling well to boot. Now I have a better idea of why. I'm still quite pleased with how I look (I spent a long time learning how to like myself, and reorienting how my self worth was measured in a society with weird ways of measuring worth, particularly in women), but my numbers are bad, so I don't feel as well, and I'm not throwing out my wardrobe because I'd rather eat coffee cake.

So, here's what we're going to do to get back to maintenance:

Monday/Weds/Friday

Workout: 20 min pilates. 15 min free weights
Breakfast: 2 eggs w/spinach
Workout: Bike to work (if not snowing, more than 20 degrees out)
Lunch: Leftovers. No more salad bar additionals.
Workout: Bike home (if not snowing, more than 20 degrees out)
Workout: 25-30 minutes elliptical
Dinner: Entree and side. No more tortillas/low carb bread
Dessert: Yogurt and berries

Tuesday/Thursday

Workout: 20 min pilates. 15 min free weights
Breakfast: 2 eggs w/spinach
Workout: Bike to work (if not snowing, more than 20 degrees out)
Lunch: Leftovers. No more salad bar additionals.
Workout: Bike home (if not snowing, more than 20 degrees out)
Workout: 25-30 minutes elliptical. 25 minutes circuit training.
Dinner: Entree and side. No more tortillas/low carb bread
Dessert: Yogurt and berries

Saturday

Breakfast: Low carb pancakes (no almond flour makes a big difference)
Workout: 40 min circuit training
Lunch: Soup/sandwich/leftovers. No more "it's a special occasion" carbs
Dinner: Entree and side. No more tortillas/low carb bread
Dessert: Yogurt and berries

Sunday

Breakfast: Low carb pancakes
Workout: 15-20 minutes elliptical
Lunch: Soup/sandwich/leftovers. Ditto above carb curb.
Dinner: Entree and side. No more tortillas/low carb bread
Dessert: Yogurt and berries

This eliminates the low carb bread/tortillas I've been snacking on and low carb/high calorie coffee cakes and cookies I've been making. I think this alone will make a big difference. I'm telling you, I could live on low carb coffee cake forever.

I'm not terribly happy with this, but I'm less happy with my sugar numbers right now. If I'm going to do some of the things I'd like to do this year, it's also very important that I get into some semblance of fighting shape. And all this happy-happy-joy-joy stuff has aided me in becoming a bit doughier than I'd like.

Thing is, you want to be a certain kind of person, you have to start living like that kind of person, no matter how frustrating it may be. And there's a certain type of person I'd like to be. And she works out a lot more than I've been able to the last few months. It's too bad she doesn't eat as much coffee cake as I'd like, either, but them's the breaks.

Imagination

Oh, Syfy, tell me this is not the real ad for Caprica

Barf. Seriously?

SERIOUSLY??

Former NASA Engineer's Comments on a Very Old Story

Old, but relevant, to me and many others my age. I remember watching this happen, and it turned me off becoming an astronaut forever:

"Well, the question was, did the cold weather (because it was a very, unusually cold day) affect the performance of the O-rings? Everyone was saying, “No, no, no!” because they were covering their rear ends. Richard Feynman, who was the Nobel Prize winner in physics, was on this commission. He took an O-ring and he stuck it in a glass of ice water, took it out, and snapped it. Then nobody could deny it. But all up the line, the management had just ignored the evidence. The reason is because Ronald Reagan was supposed to be doing his State of the Union speech that night. He wanted to be able to say, “We have civilians in space!” There was a lot of pressure to launch it. So they said, “We’re going to go ahead and launch it even though the weather’s too cold.” So, they went ahead and launched it, and it blew up. I felt like we had blown those people up—like we at NASA had failed those people. That completely took the wind out of my sails."

I get so angry when politics trumps coming fucking sense.

Tonight's Song, Stuck on Repeat

This is War
30 Seconds to Mars
(from here, naturally. Tho it's on repeat for writing-related reasons!)

A warning to the people
The good and the evil
This is war
To the soldier, the civillian
The martyr, the victim
This is war

It's the moment of truth and the moment to lie
The moment to live and the moment to die
The moment to fight, the moment to fight, to fight, to fight, to fight

To the right, to the left
We will fight to the death
To the Edge of the Earth
It's a brave new world from the last to the first

To the right, to the left
We will fight to the death
To the Edge of the Earth
It's a brave new world
It's a brave new world

A warning to the prophet, the liar, the honest
This is war
To the leader, the pariah, the victim, the messiah
This is war

It's the moment of truth and the moment to lie
The moment to live and the moment to die
The moment to fight, the moment to fight, to fight, to fight, to fight

To the right
To the left
We will fight to the death
To the edge of the earth
It's a brave new world
From the last to the first

To the right
To the left
We will fight to the death
To the edge of the earth
It's a brave new world
It's a brave new world
It's a brave new world

I do believe in the light
Raise your hands up to the sky
The fight is done
The war is won
Lift your hands
Towards the sun
Towards the sun
Towards the sun
Towards the sun
The war is won

It's the moment of truth and the moment to lie
The moment to live and the moment to die
The moment to fight, the moment to fight, to fight, to fight, to fight

To the right
To the left
We will fight to the death
To the edge of the earth
It's a brave new world
From the last to the first

To the right
To the left
We will fight to the death
To the edge of the earth
It's a brave new world
It's a brave new world
It's a brave new world

A brave new world
The war is won
The war is won
A brave new world

I believe in nothing
Not the end and not the start
I believe in nothing
Not the earth and not the stars
I believe in nothing
Not the day and not the dark
I believe in nothing
But the beating of our hearts
I believe in nothing
One hundred suns until we part
I believe in nothing
Not in satan, not in god
I believe in nothing
Not in peace and not in war
I believe in nothing
But the truth of who we are

Too much day job

Not enough freelancing.

Yes, Girls Play Video Games

Oh, the Alistair love!

BioWare writers do know how to woo the geek girls (me included. I did, uh, in fact, do a google search on this topic which led me here for, uh, personal reasons?). We're always around playing your games, you know, you just don't hear about it until we finally get something that's, you know, actually made for us.

Donutman767: i never realized so many girls played this game until i read the comments
kingkarlone: You can thank Allistair for that.

Alistair Dragon Age love here.

Everybody's a Critic

"A lot of the people who read a bestselling novel, for example, do not read much other fiction. By contrast, the audience for an obscure novel is largely composed of people who read a lot. That means the least popular books are judged by people who have the highest standards, while the most popular are judged by people who literally do not know any better. An American who read just one book this year was disproportionately likely to have read ‘The Lost Symbol’, by Dan Brown. He almost certainly liked it."

— The Economist

Tonight's Agenda

I'd rather it snowed another 6 inches so I could work from home tomorrow, instead of just another 2, which will make it annoying and slow to get into work, but not annoying and slow enough to work from home.

Etc. It's a rough life.

Anyway, new project in the works tonight, already outlined and chapter one'd. Will post excerpt soon.

That's Why You Suffer!

Nice.

Don't Fail: On Turning 30

Failing in obscurity is easy. Failing in public is hard.

There was a lot I wanted done by the time I turned 30. Like, you know, publishing a book (or three). I expected to “be a writer” by the time I was 24. When 25 came and went with no book sale, I quietly hunkered down and got back to work. When I signed a 3 book deal at 28, I figured I was golden. I’d have my first book published before I was 30! Then the contract got canceled, and I haven’t been sure at all what to do next.

I traveled all around the world in my 20s. England, France, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, South Africa, New Zealand. I’ve lived in Alaska and South Africa and Chicago. I learned how to throw a passable right hook. I started building a career as a copywriter and communications manager. I got an Associate’s Degree, a Bachelor’s Degree, a Master’s Degree, and started a Marketing Management degree. I went to Clarion. I accidently got married, which is supposed to be a Great Life Event, but which was never really on my “to do” list, so I don’t consider it an accomplishment, just a fortuitous partnership. My 20s was a screaming good time, sure, but also a time of terrible fear and uncertainty. I got diagnosed with a chronic illness, one that has left me permanently dependent on insulin (insulin or DEATH, yay!). I went crazy, dated crazy folks, spent far too much time flying in and out of New York City and Indianapolis, became all but homeless, acquired massive amounts of student loan and credit card debt, got said debt under control, and wrote three or four books.

That’s all fine and good, but it’s not enough for me. It’s never enough for me. And, to me, I see more of the failure there than the success. It’s just how I’m wired. The failures just sit there and gape at me. The last few years have been full of failure, of pulling myself up out of failure, of building some kind of life from the ashes of crazy misery.

I wanted to have traveled the whole world by 30. I wanted Egypt, China, Peru, Japan, India, Puerto Rico, Easter Island, Ireland, Scotland, Germany, Australia, and far more time in New Zealand. I wanted to have 3-4 books in circulation. I wanted to be a passable boxer. I wanted to be regularly running three miles. I certainly didn’t want to be living in Ohio.

I will go to all those places, in time. I’ll get the books out there. I’ll be a passable boxer. I’ll run regularly. And I will get out of Ohio.

But not today.

Not today.

And that, to me, feels like some kind of failure on my part. Lots of folks are struggling with the publishing industry right now. It’s remaking itself, and what I thought of as success when I was 12 may not be the kind of success I end up creating. Being a writer is going to look different in the future (after all, despite the cognitive dissonance that such a date causes for me, it IS the year 2010). Traveling looks a lot different too: both in costs and sheer ease of travel.
Getting on a plane just isn’t as fun as it used to be, and that won’t change for awhile. Traveling is rougher when you’re lugging around insulin, too. Not impossible, not impractical, but… different. And I’m still trying to figure out who I am now that I feel so totally disconnected from the crazy screaming terrified person I used to be.

I know all of this. I know the world is different. I know I am different. But it doesn’t keep me from thinking I’ve failed at 30, the same way I thought I’d failed at 24 because I wasn’t “a writer.”

Yet, here I am making a living as a copywriter, with full benefits (uncertain as the job market may be for everybody – including me - right now). My personal writing is stutter-start-jerk-jitter-squee, but it does crank along – painful word by painful word. And that’s another huge change: I never expected that my personal writing would ever be so incredibly painful and difficult. I’d heard about this happening to other folks, these 6 months-to-a-decade writing slumps, but I never imagined it would happen to me. I *had* to write. Writing kept me sane.

Thing is, I’m not nearly so crazy anymore. And that means I don’t *need* that outlet with the same crazy desperation I used to. More and more, writing is something I do to pay the bills, not something I do to relax or unwind.

And that’s been a problem.

Cause see, despite my long, un-done to-do list, despite my wretched embarrassment about not doing more before 30, despite all the writing that isn’t getting done, despite the house I can barely afford to heat…. I’m strangely happy.

Sometimes I attribute all of the writing block to the weird saneness, all the happy-happy putter-putter bubbliness that is my personal life.

But this weekend, while cleaning up my room, I found a box my editor had sent me after the God’s War contract was canceled. It contained several copy-edited copies of the manuscript with page inserts and a bit of typesetting for the intro bits. And I opened the box and my heart sank. I got that weird, heavy lump right there in the pit of my stomach that makes my breath feel heavy. I spent a few minutes going through the box. At first, I resolved to work on the copyedits right then. I'd resolved to do this months ago when the box first arrived. But somehow.. somehow... lost the will to do it. But I had the whole day to myself today. Why not check this off this to-do list? Why not --

Then the feeling passed, just as quickly as it had risen. And I re-packed the box and put it back under my desk, willing myself to forget about it for another week, or another month, or another six months.

And maybe that’s the trouble. Everything I associate with my personal writing right now is profoundly negative. I keep picking up the critiques from my first-pass readers for Black Desert, and all the negative stuff just leaps out at me. And there’s this profound depression that comes over me, and I think, “It’s not going to get any better. I’m going to work on it and it will get worse.” And then I pack those letters away again, too.

I’ve rewritten Black Desert once now, and need to print it out and copyedit it to make sure I caught all the big plot changes I made the second time through. But I don’t. I just open up the draft on occasion and rewrite a scene or a paragraph and then pack it away again.

There’s just no joy in it at all for me. And I don’t know what to do about it.
Everything is supposed to be OK when you sell a book. Certain things are supposed to happen. Then they don’t. And though I’ve gotten slightly more productive the last few months, the book depression is still there. I have a feeling I may need to start a new series entirely just to get away from the negative feelings that get dredged up every time I open this one (at least until I resell it).

I’m starting to wonder if that may be the trouble with my life, really. Or, rather, not my life but my *feelings* about my life. I’m still judging myself on what I used to want and who I used to be. And I still don’t know what it is that *I* want *now.*

I know what I love. I love my partner. I love our life together. I love the big old house we’re renting (tho I would like to be able to afford to heat it). I love reading. I love school. I like my career. I like my job. I like traveling, still. I like to get in the car and go. I love just being still.

Stillness. I still revel in absolute stillness.

Some days I wonder if I’m suffering from a mild form of PTSD. Three years seems like a long time to crave stillness, even after the crazy that was chronic illness/Chicago crazy/unemployment/homelessness.

Stillness.

There are a lot of stories I’d enjoy telling, I know. But some days even opening up a Word file causes a deep, sinking feeling of depression. I open it and think, “What’s the point?”

And that may be the trouble, too. Because I don’t have the answer to that question. I don’t know what the point of anything is, really. I just know I want to live. I love life with a sickening, bubbly rush of sweetness. I love it because I know how close I am – all the time – to losing it. Staying alive – while maintaining my quality of life – is really hard work for me.

I only have so many spoons.

And I’m just not spending them on things that don’t make me bubbly-joyful anymore, not unless those things are absolutely vital to survival.

There are things about my old life that I was happy to part with.

There are things about my old life that I want back.

We'll see how much I get back and how much I never needed in the next 30 years. I know something needs to change, soon. I just don't know what it is.