Crabby Girl...but it's okay

I'm sitting here in my office, oppressed by a feeling of crankiness. I know why I'm cranky, which is kind of a relief -- at least this isn't that especially annoying kind of random crankiness which sometimes afflicts me.

I'm cranky because I made a mistake, and I'm not sure how to fix it, and it needs to be fixed. I was freaking out because there's a time constraint involved, but the deadline was going to be blown even without my mistake, so I've let that go. That eased my mind considerably, since I now don't have to scramble to arrive at a solution.

The other good thing is that I'm not beating myself up about it, and I'm not shoving away my unhappiness at having made the mistake. (Without getting into the details, it's one of those obnoxious mistakes that looks absolutely avoidable in hindsight, to the point you wonder what you were thinking when you made it.) I'm living in the space between those extremes, unhappy and knowing there's going to be difficulty and pain as I (and everyone else affected) lurch toward resolution. But I'm also kind of relieved, because I don't know that I've ever been able to spend time in this emotional space before.

Basically, it sucks, but it'll pass. And that's a good thing to know.

But I'm still a little cranky and annoyed with myself.

Updates, Here and Elsewhere

Yes, I've been neglecting this blog, but I've been blogging on my writing progress here, and I've been blogging about what I'm reading here. I hope you'll go check those two blogs out.

Other than that, I've been struggling with exercise, food intake and frugality. I'm pretty sure I can't focus on making sure I write, work out, eat appropriately and not spend money foolishly all at the same time. Something always flaps loose; lately it's been two things (working out and eating appropriately). All of those things take mental energy and I only have so much to go around. By focusing on writing so intensely, I've drawn energy away from other areas.

I'm six days away from meeting a writing goal that I've been working towards since January 2, and there's a reason I need to hit the goal next Friday. So adjusting my writing focus isn't going to happen for a few days yet. I need to get my eating and my working out under a little more control, so I've decided to let myself out of "can't spend money" mode. This doesn't mean I'll go hog-wild; it just means that I'm going to stop telling myself I can't go shopping. In particular, I need some shoes, so I've decided that I'm going to hunt for them and, when I find them, I'm going to bag them then and there.

(I don't need the shoes the way I need food, water and oxygen; I need them the way you need something that will make your life easier and your feet more comfortable. If I don't find what I'm looking for, I have less attractive or less comfortable alternatives; I'd just rather not use the alternatives if I don't really have to.)

And that's where I am/where I've been.

Happiness

Happiness is a good workout.

I didn't want to go to the gym today, I really didn't want to go, but I went anyway, and I hadn't been there more than half an hour when I realized I was happy to be there.

It's a little challenging because they've changed over all the equipment, so setting it up is completely different. The resistance is different, so the weight I need to use is different. For example, there's an exercise I do for my abductors. On the old machine, I used to set the weight at around 45 lbs. On the new machine, I was at 80 lbs. before I started working. On the other hand, I was doing a pulldown for my lats, and I had to drop the weight from my former 45 lbs. to 25 lbs.

But that's just the details. The important thing is that I went, even though I didn't want to; the important thing is that I was happy when I was done.

We'll see how I feel on Tuesday, when I have to go again...

Another year gone by

Well, here it is, December 31 once again. I looked at last year's December 31 post and re-read all the things I intended to get done this year...and none of them got done.

I started to say "that's the bad news" but I balked--I don't think of it as bad news. The story that was going to be done by the end of January because it was no more than a novella, a story 30-40 pages long, wouldn't stop growing, until now I think it might run 250-300 pages. How did that happen? Basically, I kept digging into it, trying to understand the world of its setting. I've worked on it all year long, when life didn't kidnap me, and it's really come together.

Some things I planned on doing didn't happen--I didn't actually do anything concrete on the school front, though I did find a nearby school that offers an undergraduate degree in religious studies. That's the option I want to explore (though it baffles the beloved).

Other things that I didn't plan on did occur--my two other blogs. Somewhere along the line, I decided it made sense to divvy up my thought processes, that I shouldn't have a mishmash of stuff going on. So I have the writing blog for my writing life, a reading blog for what I'm reading, and this place for everything else.

So where do I want to be this time next year? I really want a finished book under my belt. I really want to come to the end of a story I wrote, and know it's done. (Yeah, it'll have to be revised, but that's small potatoes, relatively speaking.)

Other than that, things are good. I think I've finally found balance on the weight front--I gained a little weight over the holidays but I haven't wigged out about it: at long last, I know I'll take it off again. Exercise has been spotty and a struggle, but I'll get that back on track. I have a haircut I dislike, but I'll get that fixed; at least I love the color.

Do I feel like I've come far this past year? Not really, but I suppose I must have if I can gain a little weight and get iffy on going to the gym without freaking out and beating myself up. That's actually pretty huge...but I also think I've been moving toward this moment in tiny little steps, so it doesn't feel like a huge change.

So something that I struggled with for a long time is less of a struggle, maybe no struggle at all. I wish that for everyone: that the struggles stop being such struggles.

Happy New Year.

Sometimes A Great Notion

When your car is piled high with snow, it's hard to make yourself get up in the dark to go to the gym. Well, it's hard to make yourself get up in the dark to go to the gym in general; the snow is just a bit of additional de-motivation.

That was my situation this morning. My bedroom was cool, but my bed was toasty; outside it was really cold, and my bed was really toasty. So I couldn't get my little self to the gym first thing this morning. Then, when I got out of bed, I still didn't want to trundle off to the gym.
Fortunately, over the last five or six months, I've built up a tiny collection of free weights, enough to give myself a reasonable small-muscle (biceps, triceps, shoulders) workout.

My trainer groups things, working pairs of areas. The pairs change, so sometimes it's front of body (biceps and chest) one workout, then back of body (back and triceps) the next. Sometimes it's pushing (chest and triceps), then pulling (back and biceps). Right now, we're on a big muscle (chest and back)/small muscle (bicep and tricep) cycle, and today was a small muscle day.

So what did I do? Worked out in the comfort of my own home.

If I hadn't bought my few free weights I wouldn't have been able to do it. But sometimes you get a good idea, you execute it...and it continues to pay off for a long time.

A Little Whine

I want to whine, and I don't want to whine to myself.

I hate my hair and I think I've definitely gained weight--my face looks fatter in pictures.

And as soon as I write that, as soon as I attempt to launch myself into "waaahhhh" mode, a sane, sensible voice says, "Oh, stop. You're fine," and a sense that this is where I am, in a place where what I weigh isn't something I need to be happy or unhappy about, grounds me. My eating is mostly under control. I have bad days, but I eat to allow for them, because I know I'll have them. That takes a lot of the pressure off, all around. My exercise schedule is settling down, after some fairly maddening struggles. Even when I have bad weeks, it's okay. I'm back in the place where I recognize that this is my whole life, the whole journey, not some crazy race where if I don't achieve X by Y date, I've failed.

As for my hair, I love the color, but I'm not loving the cut. That's not dissing my hairdresser--I picked the cut. It's a fairly blunt cut semi-bob, and I suspect my hair's too thick for it. So I'm thinking about cutting it again, into a kind of wedge-ish thing, something I had a couple of years ago and really loved. This, in fact:

It's easy and fun, and I kind of miss it.

We'll see.

At least I love the color (which is different than when I had the above picture taken).

Surfing

I started watching the Red Sox...but Colorado's coming back, and I don't need the stress. So I've flipped to A&E and my lone TV addiction, The First 48. It's not that I'm a big fan of blood and guts; it's that I love stories about figuring out puzzles. One of my favorite movies is The Hunt for the Red October, which is partly about Jack Ryan's efforts to figure out what's going on.

The show follows homicide detectives in various cities--Miami, Memphis, Dallas, Detroit and Cincinnati--as they attempt to solve murders. (The title refers to the fact that if the detectives fail to get a solid lead in the first 48 hours after the crime, their chance of solving the crime is cut in half.) The fact that a good 1/3 of the episodes I've watched take place in Miami--and which show the real Miami CSI make it impossible for me to watch CSI: Miami. The irony is that reruns of CSI: Miami air on A&E right before the (relatively) real deal.

In a lot of ways, The First 48 is the anti-CSI; as far as I can tell, it gives some sense of the reality of police work. Among other things is it gives some sense of the grind of police work, as you chase down often dead-end leads, and it shows that, more often than not, DNA is irrelevant. And even when it is relevant, it takes a long, long time for comparison. There is no database that will give you a fingerprint match--the database will give potential matches, but the technician needs to examine the potential matches to make a firm determination.

I'll be checking back to see how the score of the game goes...but I'm not staying up. I'll find out what happens when I wake up in the morning.