NOOMin' It

I signed up for Noom for a year to try to give myself space to figure out how to make better food choices with all the weird food limitations I have due to my body being in a constant state of hyperalertness and reactivity.  (At least I know now why I'm so reactive - see illicit cats post here.)  Some thoughts during my second real-ish week doing the thing.

What I eat and what the scale says seem to be mostly unrelated.  Or at least not directly and obviously and immediately related.  I mean, I'm sure they are in some way, but, for instance, if I eat the number of calories on the lower end of the range they specify, there is no immediate corresponding change in my weight the next day.  If I eat over the number of calories in range they specify, sometimes I weigh less the next day.  They ask you how you are feeling with each weigh in, and I just default choose the thoughtful emoji because it's a mystery.

Sometimes I stay at the same weight for days at a time whether I am making good choices or not.  It's a thing.

Overall, the trend is down slowly and staggeringly.  Again, only on week 2, so small sample size.  But hopeful.  I know that changing how you think about and organize and eat food to healthier patterns is a long game, so hopefully the small wins will continue to add up (or subtract : ) and the end result will be something much healthier and maintainable with all my new, mindful, better for me habits.

They tell you that progress will not be linear and the scale is not the only place for celebrating wins.  There are other changes to look for in fit of clothing and body composition.  I am . . . always living with some (or all) brain fog, so, I don't notice these things, if they are happening.  Again, hopefully will become more obvious over time as my body adjusts.

Interestingly, I think the most clear signs that DON'T rely on me to notice them come through my buddy the Oura ring.  

CAVEAT: Right now I don't know if this is correlation or causation.  Time will tell.

I DID just launch a big, very stressful thing at work, and it wasn't a disaster due to extensive work and preparation.  But I've finished up big projects before while using the Oura ring without this kind of dramatic result set.  And work overall is still in a bad place, and I'm still feeling borderline burned out, and my manager is still quietly and kindly incompetent and hindering me from getting the promotion I earned several times over, so it's not like suddenly work stress is gone.  So time might tell if any of these things are real changes and not just blips from the project launch. 

Despite that, my Oura ring has been shocked and surprised at how much less time I spend in the stressed zone and how much more time I spend in the restored zone.  Y'all, this is statistically significant.  Sometimes I will randomly get this message once a week or month.  I don't know that I've ever gotten it for days in a row.  Like, all of them this week.  Including days I worked.  Including days I DROVE.  It's anomalous.  I love it and hope it continues and is tied to better nutrition and patterns I'm setting up through Noom.

My HRV average has been inching up.  You have no idea how bad it generally  is, and it is (not mysteriously now that I know about the cats) way worse when I live here at home than when I live in Canada or California.  HRV is about how much time you spend with your sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) active vs your parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest).  When you're stressed and, you know, your brain is a little broken by chronic illness and doesn't really know how to engage the parasympathetic nervous system (something that is supposed to happen smoothly and automatically), your HRV is lower.  It's a sign your body is under stress.  You know, like maybe because along with the chronic pain and disturbed sleep and such, your immune system is constantly fighting off an allergic reaction to cats.  And the world.  And eggs and sesame and pineapple (among other odd things).  HRV is kind of new as a vital sign, so there's not a "normal range," but in healthy people it starts high and generally declines with age.  Older adults (60+) average 25-45 ms.  I . . . don't think I have ever averaged anything that high.  I'm not sure I've ever gotten up to 45 at all, let alone averaged it.  I DREAM of being in older adult territory for my average.  But in the last week, that average has been a little higher.  More than once.  

My lowest resting heart rate at night has been dropping more consistently and has been happening earlier on average.  Since my health started to fall apart, my sleep has always been . . . nonstandard.  One of the reasons I stuck with Oura is that a lot of the score is based on doing the right behaviors.  Do you go to bed at a roughly consistent time?  Do you get up at a roughly consistent time?  Wearables always have a hard time figuring out if I'm actually asleep.  They generally think I'm in light sleep when I am totally conscious, awake, and doing things, so those scores are less useful.  But the one that shows when your lowest heartrate is and what your heartrate is doing overnight are fascinating.  They're supposed to show a sort of hammock shape where once you go to bed, it goes down until about halfway through your sleep and then come back up.  I have honestly never had that pattern.  My dysautonomia includes a feature where my heart just kind of doesn't know what it's supposed to do with itself.  Sometimes when I sit or lie down, it spikes.  (Spoiler alert: It is not supposed to do that.)  So at night it wanders all over the place and spikes when it shouldn't.  Very rarely, it hits its lowest point around 2-4 AM.  It's been doing that more in the last week than maybe ever.  And once it hits that low, the HRV goes way up corresponding with the second half of sleep when the body is supposed to be doing its best repair and reset work.

This does not mean I feel rested or that getting up is any easier.  Or that I have more energy during the day or less pain.  Alas.  But here's hoping these small changes are reflective of some good being done as I set up these new patterns, and the benefits will gain momentum and become more obvious.

Especially because the State Fair was in this sample set, and I probably ate every single thing I am reactive to (along with way larger quantities of food than I generally do), and the trends are consistent trends.

Dum spiro, spero.*  Dum NOOM, spero?  : D

*Thanks, Jo Walton's Among Others : D

In honor of 80 degree October days

I am in love with Kieli.  It's a series of books translated from Japanese about a teenager isolated because of her past and her abilities and what happens when she meets someone even more lonely and isolated than she is.  It's aimed at a teenage audience (it's called a light novel), so it's not particularly challenging.  The writing isn't necessarily Pulitzer caliber.  It's horror, a genre I normally don't get on well with, and there are some serious gross-out moments.  What is it, then, that makes me love it so much that it's the first thing I read when I get a new batch of books that contain it among them, no matter how large the batch is (as long as it's sunny out, and I can read in the sun because, otherwise, even the "light" horror will drown me).

There's a lot to like about it.  In the past I've wondered what draws me to the series most.  The atmosphere of sweet, awkward melancholy or the dreamy quality of the storytelling (interrupted by brief and disturbingly clear instants of graphic violence and action)?  Is is the reflective mood?  The detached but sad tone?  The brisk pacing that seems languid at the same time?  The spine-tingling weirdness that creeps in sometimes?  The amusing and crotchety relationship between the lead characters?

This round (volume 3), though, I realize that one of the most powerful draws to it for me is the way that it approaches the walls we put up around ourselves and how to co-exist with them.  That sounds dreadfully opaque.  What it comes down to is that I respect this author for not taking the easy way out, like so many other Japanese stories about teen girls do.  We put walls up, and there can be all kinds of very legitimate reasons for that.  In a lot of Japanese stories aimed at teen girls, the author will tease me by bringing up the subject and then inevitably let me down by making the answer a simple, "Bust down the walls, be friendly to everyone, and everything will be fine!  Nice conquers all!"  That is not reality.  It is false, saccharine, and kind of enraging, especially when it's the cliche in a long series that could do so much with the idea.

Don't get me wrong: I can like those series well enough.  I do like a happy ending.  But I love a happy ending that is earned by blood, sweat, and tears. I love a series like Kieli that says, "Here is what it's like for these people who have excellent reasons to have walls, and here is how sometimes they trust, and it's a good thing, and sometimes they trust and it's a bad thing.  Here is how their walls save them and keep them alive, and here is how their walls crush them, sometimes at the same time."  In other words, it's kind of like real life even though the setting is horror/fantasy/sci-fi.  I love how "genre" works can sort of sidle up to these issues and deal with them sideways.

I do want a happy ending for these characters; I really do.  But I want a believable happy ending.  And I don't see yet how that will happen.  The author is too good at those real-life twists and turns to pander to the reader.  They're billing it as a romance, so I believe things will work out, and I look forward to seeing how, but right now, I love reading about these broken people searching for God knows what.

quote: asking hope to dinner

"Please.  We know.  These are hard times.  The world hurts.  We live in fear and forget to walk with hope.  But hope has not forgotten you.  So ask it to dinner.  It's probably hungry and would appreciate the invitation."

- The Copenhagen Interpretation in Going Bovine by Libba Bray (page 428 of the hardcover)

Plotting from left field

I'm watching this show right now where the plot keeps twisting and turning.  There's a lot of conflict and fighting and philosophy and moral quandaries and horrible, awful tragedy.  The plotting is pretty brilliant.  Every so often, things start lining up so that you can see a future that doesn't involve characters dying horribly or living miserably.  Then, something screws it all up beyond repair, and things get worse. 

It's kind of brilliant but dangerous.  It has that feeling of thrill, like what you feel when you think it would be fun to run down a hill and realize part of the way down that gravity has taken over.  You want things to end well, but you don't know if they can (or if you can hold on until they do).

One reviewer mentioned that this tactic is dangerous because it can't be kept up indefinitely.  Maybe people will only watch until they think there's no more hope for anyone's happiness?  I guess it's different if you go in knowing it's all tragedy and that the ending will leave a lot of people crying, but many people won't even start a show like that because they don't like that feeling of hopelessness and fate/destiny.



What do you think?  Will you start a show or book if you don't know how things will end up in terms of tragedy? 

Composition arguments and teaching cynicism

I am having a cynical thought.  The shock!  Sorry for surprising you like that.  :)  I watched a training video at work where once again only evidence supporting the management's policy was shown, and the management openly concluded, "See, we were totally right!"  I thought back to some of the arguments swirling around college composition over the last decades and had to smile a bitter little smile.

I think maybe when I teach composition I won't use the reasoning, "We're teaching you how to make proper arguments, addressing both sides and proving your point, because you will surely need to exercise this skill set wherever your job takes you no matter what your job is!"  This is a lie.  A huge, huge lie.

However, I think it helps you to know how to make a good argument, so you can recognize a bad one your employer is making, so you can feel a little bit superior to those suits making tens of thousands more dollars than you from their corporate ivory towers . . .  Yes, a cynical moment.  Ahem. 

I am prepared for the smart aleck reply/question from a student challenging this belief about the benefits of composition classes in college.  It really is in your best interest to know how to spot a bad argument, not just for the feeling of intellectual superiority it gives you but also because bad arguments are everywhere.  People are constantly trying to persuade and convince you, and you need to know you need to know how to stand your ground and push back.  Unless you want to be swayed by the mindless beast of opinion, you need to know how to sift through what's being flung at you and arrive at an intelligent, reasoned decision. 

Your employers do not.  Your employers do not have to convince you.  You have to do what your employers say because they pay you, and unless it's morally objectionable (ASIDE: If I get stalked and killed, please sue my employer because it's their fault for making dumb and dangerous policies they don't have to carry out in the field), you have to bend to their arguments. 

But, no matter what, you have to keep thinking, or you'll be drowning in a sea of bad arguments you can't even see, suffocating for lack of reason both at work and outside of work.  I think it's better to see the world burning up around you than to be someone who blindly sprays gasoline around or throws more wood on the flames.  Maybe if you pay attention, you'll be able to help others around you by reminding them to stop, drop, and roll or stay low to get the better oxygen until you can find your way to fresh air again.


What explanations did your college composition teachers give you about the purpose of college comp?  Did anyone even ask about it in your class?  Have you ever thought about it?  What are your thoughts about composition's place in liberal arts education?

More dead characters

So, continuing yesterday's morbid thoughts on character mortality . . . 

Some authors go out of their way to bring mortality into the story early.  It's part of the world they're building.  They want you to know that in their world bad things can suddenly happen to anybody, that sometimes people die by accident or for stupid reasons, that good things can be smashed and destroyed between eye blinks.  Brent Weeks mentioned that he learned from George R.R. Martin that killing off a main character early on shows you're serious and gets people to pay attention. 

Or, as my sister points out, it makes some people stop reading.  Her philosophy is that the world is dark and sad enough, thank you.  Why spend additional time reading depressing things?  She doesn't like to start watching epic shows unless they're over, so she can know who dies and who lives.  She wants to know who she can safely attach to. 

Don't we all.

However, in real life we have no guarantees.  We can't take anyone for granted because we could all die really at any moment.  To take it down a notch, we don't make friends only with those who we foreknow will stick with us through life.  I frequently strike out in this area.  I befriend people and enjoy their company immensely and think they enjoy mine just as much, but then they drop me and leave. 

It's true that I am more cautious about investing in people now, but I seem to have transferred that fearless befriending ability to characters in stories.  Shows where everyone dies in the end?  Bring it on (and bring the tissues).  Books where everyone pretty much dies in the first chapter?  Hit me.  Stories set in dark and horrible worlds full of unexpected mortality, cruelty, and the evils of humanity?  Yup. 

Sometimes experiencing works like this is like being spiritually pummelled.  It's like having your face ground into the broken fallenness of humanity.  Of course no one likes that!  That's not what I like about these works. 

What I like is hope.  I have become a bloodhound of hope.  I sniff out the faintest traces in the story, the smallest whiffs of grace and mercy and God, and when I find them, it's like He's whispering in my ear, "See what I can do?  I love you."

I think maybe most of us in American are too used to being comfortable and having things our way.  We like nice things.  We don't like to think about things that aren't nice.  We are self-deluding and blind, aren't we?  We like to imagine the world is a nicer place than it is, and so we try to only listen to stories that make us feel good and safe and happy.  We only want our children to know about nice, safe, happy things.  But is that what's best for them?  For us?  Is that's what's best for the world we live in?

It's not that I like pain.  I think maybe I love pain transformed.  I want to write stories like that.  I'm sad that I will lose a lot of readers who aren't willing to go through the grit and dirt and sludge to see just how amazing that hope is, shining like a diamond in a swamp. I wish more people would brave the swamp for the chance to see the beauty.

I wonder if this is part of my wishing for the last lines from the story "Aftermaths" from Bujold's Shards of Honor to be true: 

"Yes, he thought, the good face pain.  But the great--they embrace it."

How do you react to character mortality in stories?  Do you try to avoid the sad ones?  Do you try not to read anything too dark and gritty?  Too graphic?  Do you read just about anything?  What will make you stop reading a story, and why?

Something like a hope song

I'm trying to pull together something like an essay for The Other Journal's Economy and Hope Issue.  Usually when I see themed issues, it frustrates me because I have nothing to say on the themes, but I've been doing a lot of thinking about hope and struggling with the economy for the last several years, so if I don't have something to say about it by now, I haven't been paying attention.

It's exhilarating to be working towards a tight deadline like this.  There's a very real fear that I won't be able to pull together something new that's polished enough to submit, but I'm trying anyway, partly because I have a lot of poetry I could send if this new essay doesn't pan out.  (Hope lends itself well to all forms of poetry. :)

I've become preoccupied with what we mean when we say the word hope in our culture, especially during that last election.  Two quotes have stuck with me through much of my writing about hope.

"Hope is only as strong as the object of that hope."

" . . . and hope does not disappoint."

Hope is not a vague thing that rhymes with dream or wish.  It is solid, anchored to something or someone.  That anchor chain sometimes nearly strangles us.  Hope is not tame; it can be dangerous and must be attached to something strong enough to keep storms from dragging us away or battering us to pieces.  Sometimes I think there's a reason it was in Pandora's box with all the evils in the world:  maybe it's a necessary evil? 

Without my Hope, I wouldn't care about beauty or meaning or art or communication.  I want to send in something that conveys at least some of what I want to say about the terribly splendid thing that is hope.

What does hope mean to you?  How do you use it in conversation, and what does that reveal about what it means to you?  Do you say hope when you mean something else?  (I sure do, but I'm working on that . . .)

starving artist

My mom harbored this fear that I would grow up and be a starving artist. I never intended to. In fact, if I had taken the first job I was offered (editing a small community newspaper), I probably wouldn't be in this situation now, broken and unrepairable, mostly unemployable, in debt, desperate.

One of my favorite journals (Image) uses the slogan "Beauty will save the world."

When I refused that first job, my mom said, "I believe God has something better for you."

Then came pain, frustration, disappointment, loss of faith in my government as they dropped me and left me to pick up what shattered bits I can with one mostly working hand.

I know heaven is waiting for me, but I was hoping the something better might happen at least a little bit before then. At least there's still beauty.