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Those evil debt collectors and their evil ways

Have you ever wondered who’s at the other end of that debt collection telephone call?

No? It’s all good then.

Yes? There’s no need to wonder then because I’ll tell you. It’s a person like you or me, or maybe an evil version of us.

I work in the industry and i’m telling you right now: some companies are evil. The people that work for them are evil. Or were they made evil by the way these evil companies operate? Where they squeeze the worst out of you to make you get that commission? Some of these people get on the phone and illegally threaten debtors with all kinds of calamities if they don’t pay. They have no scruples. They are the worst of the worst in an industry where many companies  instill and encourage such behavior. 

There are other companies, many of them, who don’t harass, belittle, threaten or abuse the debtors in any way. They comply with the FDCPA. They want to get your money but they want to do it right. 

Are they evil? You may think so because it’s your money they want. 

It seems so unfair. You got some credit that you used up, then someone comes to collect. How dare they call you about it? Oh, this is not you? Oh, you had some cash flow problems? You had a medical issue you had to take care of? How come they don’t know about it? How come they don’t understand?

My tone may seem offensive to you. It may seem cruel. The truth always shifts in the industry. There’s a human aspect and there’s a financial aspect. Then there’s the legal obligation someone undertook when they applied for a loan or a credit card. They signed an agreement or a contract. Then they reneged on it. It’s like renting a car from Hertz for the weekend and then never returning it. That’s how many debt collectors view debtors.

I have heard many stories. Many of them true, many of them heartbreaking. Many of them so false you see the crocodile tears flooding the line and dripping out of your phone. The reality is that many people experience hardship. They apply for credit and then forget to pay their bills. Can’t pay their bills. Or won’t pay their bills. 

I’m not trying to defend the evil debt collectors, those that do break the law by harassing, belittling and threatening debtors. I’m trying to give you a different perspective because many debt collectors are decent people. They operate in an environment that many of them consider necessary and reasonably honest. They may also think that banks, on some level, are evil and take advantage of gullible applicants for credit who just want the money but are not secure enough financially to repay the loans or savvy enough to understand what can happen if they don’t. They understand that identity theft happens and many disputes are genuine. They also have to comply with the policies and procedures of their employer and state and federal regulations. Some of them may be more restrictive than others and may work against what your immediate needs.

The general view is that the debtors who did apply for and obtained credit take on a responsibility to repay, and the dishonesty of those who take advantage of someone else’s money (in this case, the banks’) bothers many debt collectors. They see it as theft. Especially when they personally learn that many of these debtors have no regret and no intention to pay it, and to top it off, are abusive towards the debt collectors. Some debtors yell obscenities and threats. They feel offended when you call them to get the money they already spent. Even when you’re polite, you explain the situation, and you offer alternatives to pay, some debtors feel entitled to treat you like trash. And let me tell you, if somebody treats me like trash, I’m not going to give in an inch. I’ll do the right, legal thing for my employer and the consumer, but there’s no duty or obligation as a human being to commiserate and help out. Even if your sob story is true, your abusive attitude will get no respect from me. And i think I’m a pretty decent person. I empathize easily. I recognize the gray areas. 

So next time you call in, be respectful. By all means, say what you have to say and defends your rights as a consumer.  Adapt to the conversation. Try and make it go your own way. Don’t antagonize the person, just be respectful. It may make a huge difference. You may have a nice conversation with your debt collector. You may exchange a few jokes. You may stumble upon new information that may help you. You may even get a decent settlement.

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Funny stuff :)

The Booger Book Song

theboogerbook.com

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Why I don’t care about losing weight

 As I looked at the calendar showing less than 2 months until Christmas, I started to wonder about my struggle with weight loss. The vision of a full Christmas dinner began floating in front of my eyes. The second vision was of torturous days at the gym afterwards or months of carbs and sugar deprivation so I could lose all the weight. I have no ambitions to be a size 0 but a size 4-6 would be perfect. Now I weigh about 155 lbs and I’m 5’5”, which is pretty decent, if you ask me.  I used to be 10-15 lbs heavier which made me feel heavy, but I still considered myself fairly lucky. I was only full-figured, not fat, not even overweight.

My main problem was with my lack of muscle tonus, not with my weight. While I mourned the loss of my beautiful waist, I secretly enjoyed a DD-sized bra. I didn’t bother with losing weight although I did try to stay fit as much as possible even when the main enjoyable activity in my head was tasting food, not breaking a sweat at the gym.

Generally, I care about a lot of things. World hunger, the environment, big and small issues, are all on my plate of chosen worries. I care about other people’s weight losses or weight gains as it relates to their health because I believe that everyone should be healthy and happy, first and foremost. If you ask me, if a person is fat but healthy, their weight doesn’t matter. Many fat people are beautiful and lead very happy lives. Many skinny people look like skeletons and constantly worry about their looks, their health and what they eat. Plus, there’s more pressure to hang out with skinny people because they seem prettier or don’t break the skinny ‘harmony’ ((not the type of pressure fat people feel). A fat person among skinny people would definitely mar the scrawny beauty of the rest.

Then there are the skinny people who are actually happy. Ugly or beautiful, they’re skinny, they don’t have to worry about what they eat and they stay healthy without even seeming to break a sweat when carrying grocery bags. I secretly resented them. I wondered: ‘Why do you get to have so much? Skinny AND happy? And healthy? Like, what is your metabolism powered by, vibranium? Why can’t you worry about your image a bit or succumb to the aesthetic pressures of modern society?’

Then I realized the difference between the happy skinny people and the miserable skinny people. It’s the same difference between happy fat people and miserable fat people. Health is of the utmost importance. Skinny or fat, the state of your body, how you maintain and adjust to its needs contributes to your sense of wellness. Add to that acceptance of who you are and of your particular type of beauty, and you find yourself so confident that you can’t deny yourself the happiness and freedom of being in your own skin and loving yourself for it.

I’ve seen it in successful people who are also overweight. There’s a sense of ownership of their individuality, a love for themselves and acceptance of a particular kind of beauty and personal significance. Every once in a while, they may forget who they are, just like all of us do. Perhaps they might bend a little and compromise by following one trend or another. Some days they might feel vulnerable and self-conscious and maybe put in a bit of extra work at the gym. Most days, though, they feel good. Just like the rest of us should. We can be successful by accepting who we are, and being present. By seeing our qualities and what we truly love about ourselves. We are here and we matter. We make our mark not with our weight, but with our ability to tell right from wrong, to voice our true opinions without fear, to guide and respect others, to enjoy being as we make our laughter break out freely and strong.

So yeah, I don’t care about losing weight. Because if I don’t take care of my health now, I won’t take care of my health when I’m skinny. If I’m not happy in my fat skin, I won’t be happy in my skinny skin. If I don’t know how to find good friends now, who like me for who I am and feel proud and lucky to know me, I won’t know how to find them when I’m skinny either. The need to belong or be accepted starts here, with me. I belong to myself and accept who I am. My body mass index measures every pound of full enjoyment of everything good that I have in my life divided by the square of my self-confidence, starting at my toes and going all the way up to the top of my head.

What’s your BMI?

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Are you wasting time or losing time?

 I don’t know about you, but I constantly check my smart phone for the time. I’m so dependent on it that even if I have my watch on, I’ll still go looking for my phone around the house. I just don’t really trust my watch. Any of my watches. I have a mechanical watch and a quartz watch, and I mostly use them for vanity pieces. I don’t wear bracelets , so I make my watches my accessories.

 Where did the mistrust start? Well, where it always starts: with doubt. With a little inconsistency here and there that never got resolved. A few years ago I got this idea in my head that I’m always running late not because of my own bad habits but because my watch was inaccurate. I started thinking about how I always have to adjust it and about how it actually measures time. Normally, I would adjust my watch by looking at a TV monitor or online: ‘Current time in Chicago is 11:43 AM UTC’. I’d move the hands on my watch and have the correct time for a while, then a few weeks later I’d have to do the same thing. Again and again. Of course, it’s a mechanical watch so the spring mechanism inside is bound to have a delay, ever so slightly, even with the smallest interference. When I go running, the watch shakes. No matter how fine the craftsmanship is, one small movement may delay or speed up the release of the wheel inside. How about when it rains and a little water gets inside? When the wind blows through the minuscule gears? All in all, mechanical watches are pretty impressive but much less accurate than quartz watches.

So I switched to a quartz watch. Quartz watches also have gears and wheels but replace the mechanical force of the internal movement of traditional watches with the electrical force of a battery. You don’t have to remember to wind up your watch because the mechanism inside a quartz watch works on an electrical frequency determined by the properties of quartz.

Quartz is an igneous rock that can be found in nature so it can be pretty cheap. The great thing is that a small bar of quartz bends, or oscillates, when stimulated by an electrical charge. When the electrical charge is constant, like from a battery, the quartz oscillates at a constant rate or frequency, directly related to its shape and size. The frequency output, in time measurements, really depends on the initial electrical charge, and on the cut of the quartz bar or sheet. When the quartz starts oscillating, it transmits the vibrations to the gears and wheels inside the mechanism which make the hands of a quartz watch move or translate into the LCD display we see on digital watches.

Being the person that I am, I kept watch on my quartz watch, so to speak. It still needed adjusting every once in a while  and I continued having a sense of losing time. My corrective behavior involved the same monitorization of TV and/or internet time. But if my quartz watch could run behind or ahead, what if all those people from TV and the internet adjusted their watches and clocks by a single master clock which could also run behind or ahead, and no one would know? And we would all have the WRONG time? What, in the name of Einstein, is the real time in the world, or in the Universe, for that matter?

I decided to do more research. How did the internet people measure the smallest time, the Planck measure, then compound that to make nanoseconds, milliseconds, and then finally, the modest, but all-powerful  second, the standard for all time-keeping?

Let’s look at atomic clocks, the devices that now give us the times we see on our smart phones and on our computer screens.

An atomic clock’s accuracy depends on the frequency of the electrons’ changing energy levels inside an atom. What kind of atom? Can any chemical element be used? Well, not really, since chemical elements can be so different. It has been determined that the electrons inside the caesium atom produce the most accurate frequency for the second, as we understand it today.

In order for an electron to change its energy levels and thus produce a frequency, it has to interact with something. The caesium standard refers to the changes that a caesium atom at rest, at a temperature of 0 K, goes through when a gas is released in a cavity present inside the atomic clock. The process is sustained through in a feedback loop which keeps the caesium electrons stimulated by microwaves emitted by the gas . As all of this happens in a cavity which starts vibrating as the electrons jump back and forth between states of lower and higher levels of energy, a fine detector inside the clock counts the cycles of these energy changes until they reach the incredible number of 9,192,631,770 cycles. This number, my good people, translates into the second we know. It’s pretty incredible, isn’t it? Imagine the amount of energy created and lost just to count one precise second. e frequency of the microwaves and the rate at which the caesium electrons change their state must reach a certain number of cycles, 9,192,631,770 cycles to be precise, for the fine detector inside the clock to count one second. This takes place over and over, with electrons changing states, transitioning from upper levels of energy to lower levels and viceversa .

After hearing about these clocks, I thought the crisis in my life would come to an end. I mean, what could be more exact than this? Buying an atomic watch seemed like the way to go. I wouldn’t be late to appointments, I wouldn’t miss anniversaries, I wouldn’t overshoot deadlines. I’d accurately be able to measure time and remember to carve a window for what’s important to me. Because work and life are so rushed, you forget about what’s important. Your breaths are measured in the time it takes you to run from one meeting to another. I thought: if only I could measure time, every second, and keep it, make it mine, I wouldn’t feel like I’m missing out on life.

Then it hit me: the way these atomic clocks work is also determined by the limitations of our physical world and our understanding of it. Just like the mechanical clocks, or like the quartz clocks. They still lose time, but at a slower rate than traditional time-keepers. We may never know what time is or how to really measure it. The panic I felt at that realization is the panic one feels when the solid ground underneath starts shaking. How am I supposed to live my life without this foundation? If I can’t trust time, what CAN I trust?

But maybe, like the wise men keep reminding us, instead of measuring seconds, we measure moments. Instead of worrying that we’re wasting time, we should worry about wasting opportunities. As cliché as this sounds, there’s nothing more cliché than wasting our lives. Worrying about time is cliché. Time itself is becoming a cliché. And the cliché truth is still staring us in the face: our lives are not just the length of time we live, but the quality of the time we live. How do we measure that quality? A second can last a lifetime or disappear in an instant and leave room for another one. No matter how sophisticated it is, a clock still segments our lives and makes us forget what makes them whole. It’s the feelings and thoughts that our memory holds on to and never at what time they happen unless what happened depended on an exact instant. But generally, the things that really happen, that we want to remember, exist outside of time. They’re eternal. Is it possible that Plato was right? That there is an ideal Form for everything: for love, for sadness, for recovery, for salvation, for happiness, and not even time can take them from us? We cannot measure them with time because then we confine them, diminish them, and thus destroy them for ourselves.

What started as an attempt to control time ended up in a quest to let it go. Because maybe safety and happiness lie not in measuring, but in letting go, in chaos, in taking a leap of faith that sometimes, living any one day by the rising and setting of the sun makes us sufficiently efficient at living. Because that’s the ultimate efficiency, isn’t it: living a good life? At the end of it, when we run that life report and that balance sheet, from our memories and others’, that’s what we will have all wanted. Not to see how many hours we clocked in. 

Nowadays, I still suffer from occasional anxiety when looking at my watch, but then I remember to take a break from time and just live life. If time keepers didn’t exist, my life would still exist and it would still be mine. My memories of love and happiness would still exist, unmeasurable.

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VR as an RV, a Recreational Vehicle

 I recently had a discussion with a friend who extolled the immersive advantages of Virtual Reality in gaming and movie making. We talked about Star Wars, Star Trek, Indiana Jones, The Lord of the Rings, Final Fantasy, World of Warcraft, and even anime. What better way to experience these worlds than with a pair of VR goggles? It sounds fantastical but as that niche industry develops, not unrealistic.

The inevitability of it, as well as the incredible potential of simulation made me think of other applications.

1. It has become well known that tourists nowadays seem to destroy many of the exquisite places this world has to offer, both in nature and urban areas. What if you could visit a protected museum or site, where tourists are no longer allowed to set foot in, by loading a program into your VR database?

2. In science, predicting outcomes in VR can only be as good as the calibration of control groups and the manipulated variable. It might be harder in quantum physics since there are so many variables and so many actual unknowns, but can you imagine being able to simulate the progress of cancer and corresponding cell responses when treated with various drugs?

Maybe it’s already being done, inside a computer, but the perspective of VR can make unknowns known.

3. Education is a challenge of various degrees for all teachers, as well as the new participants in pedagogy: 21st century programmers of educational software. What if we could teach a child math by simply immersing him/her into a VR scenario with real life applications of mathematical concepts? Can you introduce a child to the Fibonacci sequence through the study of flowers and pine cones? Why not? What good is math in a vacuum? Is it possible that so many kids fail it because it’s difficult for them to connect it with their world? Well, because of that and other factors, but this is a topic for another blog.

4. One of my most beloved hobbies is reading. I read a book, and it transports me into a different world. I’m not sure I’d enjoy ‘reading’ a book by having an audio file imposed over VR representations of the book’s plot which I traverse as the plot thickens, so to speak, but I’d definitely want to try it.

Personally, I’d like to try all of these things. Not to escape from or avoid reality. But to enhance it and to help make our lives easier. To go to a Led Zeppelin concert that I’m too young to have attended. To learn about all the different things I’m interested in but don’t have access to, other than through books and 2-D movies on TV (like the world of the dinosaurs and the emergence of a new world after they disappeared, or a chance to travel along with a NASA space drone). How I wish I could study history and be able to see Caesar become imperator or track the Celts as they invade Britain. Learn about irrigation systems along the Nile in Egypt or the evolution of calligraphy in ancient China.

With so many applications, I’m looking forward to developments in the VR industry as well as encouraging news about pricing for average people like me. Sometimes, the future can’t come soon enough.

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Those evil debt collectors and their evil ways

Have you ever wondered who’s at the other end of that debt collection telephone call?

No? It’s all good then.

Yes? There’s no need to wonder then because I’ll tell you. It’s a person like you or me, or maybe an evil version of us.

I work in the industry and i’m telling you right now: some companies are evil. The people that work for them are evil. Or were they made evil by the way these evil companies operate? Where they squeeze the worst out of you to make you get that commission? Some of these people get on the phone and illegally threaten debtors with all kinds of calamities if they don’t pay. They have no scruples. They are the worst of the worst in an industry where many companies  instill and encourage such behavior. 

There are other companies, many of them, who don’t harass, belittle, threaten or abuse the debtors in any way. They comply with the FDCPA. They want to get your money but they want to do it right. 

Are they evil? You may think so because it’s your money they want. 

It seems so unfair. You got some credit that you used up, then someone comes to collect. How dare they call you about it? Oh, this is not you? Oh, you had some cash flow problems? You had a medical issue you had to take care of? How come they don’t know about it? How come they don’t understand?

My tone may seem offensive to you. It may seem cruel. The truth always shifts in the industry. There’s a human aspect and there’s a financial aspect. Then there’s the legal obligation someone undertook when they applied for a loan or a credit card. They signed an agreement or a contract. Then they reneged on it. It’s like renting a car from Hertz for the weekend and then never returning it. That’s how many debt collectors view debtors.

I have heard many stories. Many of them true, many of them heartbreaking. Many of them so false you see the crocodile tears flooding the line and dripping out of your phone. The reality is that many people experience hardship. They apply for credit and then forget to pay their bills. Can’t pay their bills. Or won’t pay their bills. 

I’m not trying to defend the evil debt collectors, those that do break the law by harassing, belittling and threatening debtors. I’m trying to give you a different perspective because many debt collectors are decent people. They operate in an environment that many of them consider necessary and reasonably honest. They may also think that banks, on some level, are evil and take advantage of gullible applicants for credit who just want the money but are not secure enough financially to repay the loans or savvy enough to understand what can happen if they don’t. They understand that identity theft happens and many disputes are genuine. They also have to comply with the policies and procedures of their employer and state and federal regulations. Some of them may be more restrictive than others and may work against what your immediate needs.

The general view is that the debtors who did apply for and obtained credit take on a responsibility to repay, and the dishonesty of those who take advantage of someone else’s money (in this case, the banks’) bothers many debt collectors. They see it as theft. Especially when they personally learn that many of these debtors have no regret and no intention to pay it, and to top it off, are abusive towards the debt collectors. Some debtors yell obscenities and threats. They feel offended when you call them to get the money they already spent. Even when you’re polite, you explain the situation, and you offer alternatives to pay, some debtors feel entitled to treat you like trash. And let me tell you, if somebody treats me like trash, I’m not going to give in an inch. I’ll do the right, legal thing for my employer and the consumer, but there’s no duty or obligation as a human being to commiserate and help out. Even if your sob story is true, your abusive attitude will get no respect from me. And i think I’m a pretty decent person. I empathize easily. I recognize the gray areas. 

So next time you call in, be respectful. By all means, say what you have to say and defends your rights as a consumer.  Adapt to the conversation. Try and make it go your own way. Don’t antagonize the person, just be respectful. It may make a huge difference. You may have a nice conversation with your debt collector. You may exchange a few jokes. You may stumble upon new information that may help you. You may even get a decent settlement.

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Idealists are such a headache

I’m going to try and make a point here and if i miss my mark, it’s possible that the point is really, really small. However, this is important (to me).

I've been told, again, that I’m an idealist. Quite frankly, it’s offensive, not just because idealism seems to be a romantic idea that people associate with wide-eyed unrealistic artists or dreamers who can’t be an agent for any kind of relevant change, but also because by the very act of labeling someone as an idealist one is punitively removing any practical ideas of the so-called idealist from the discussion. Trying to shut someone down by labeling them an idealist is a sneaky way out of a discussion one doesn’t like.

The discussion was about politics, psychology, sociology, history, what have you. Basically, a bunch of anthropocentric topics were talked about in detail, where man, if he considers himself entitled to everything this planet has to offer, must also take on a duty to preserve that which sustains him.

I admit that i get a bit obsessed with the idea that we should preserve the planet, that we should be better and do better as species, that the social contract, in its variations, makes sense and it’s the only thing keeping us from killing each other, that any kind of commune can only survive through the strength of its members and that, at a highly developed societal level like ours, this applies even more. That ultimately, we need a government, not because it’s traditional to have one, but because in one form or another, leaders emerge, even in the simplest, most generous of societies. It’s not always a good leader that emerges, and having a government with checks and balances can prevent despotism.

So I talk about these things, and people feel offended because I don’t tell them that they SHOULD feel entitled to step on anyone and anything to get ahead (where?) and that it’s a matter of survival to them. 

Well, the only really gruesome fight for survival I’ve seen so far is in the animal kingdom and among very poor human communities. 

What I see this as, coming from people with houses and cars and who have never really had to want for the basic necessities of life, is an entitlement to more and more. It’s greed, pure and simple, and dehumanization of those they want to get things from. Ok, ok, maybe I’m oversimplifying, and there are people out there who got out of really deep holes, but aren’t our values, in general, kind of twisted? 

Why do we feel pressure to buy a house and a car, to buy a bigger house and a bigger car, just because we can, but we don’t feel pressure to care for our society at large, for our neighbor even? Why is there a scarcity mentality even at a high level, where you already have a lot of comfort, and you feel entitled to it, but you don’t think others should feel entitled to decent chances to the same comfortable life? Not the life itself, but just a chance to have it. Because after all, not all know how to use the chances given to them when acting alone. But there should be chances. For others, who don’t have them, and for these comfortable people who, by a stroke of bad luck, may lose everything and find themselves on the other side.

Maybe this should be saved for another post because my point, small as it may be, comes next.

They call me an idealist not because my ideas are not practical from an economic, political, social, ecological standpoint, but because I’m not endorsing their view on life. Then they call me a millenial as if that alone should disqualify my ideas. What that tells me is that there are no arguments against my point of view. And even if there were, few people can come up with historical proof to support them. I personally can’t come up with arguments against my own ideas, but then my knowledge of human history is not what it used to be.

The point is: people change, societies change, and ideas change with the times. 

I’m not going to validate myself by saying that an idealist is an indispensable member of a society that relies on ideas to evolve. I can do better than that. I’m validating myself as an amateur historian of past human experience and a visionary of what’s possible. Because we wouldn’t be where we are today if past men and women of ideas and ideals didn’t fight for what they believed in. I’m talking about the women’s right to vote. I’m talking about Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite. I’m talking about Magna Carta. I’m talking about the Greek demos.

I’m talking about the moon landing. And Chance the Rapper. And that French immigrant who saved the dangling child. Idealists make it happen. Idealists rock !!!

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Proper grammar anxiety (or PGA)

What’s the word on netspeak/chatspeak? Is it on its way out already?

The reason why I’m asking is because my grammar is getting worse. You see, I write. Not just on here, but actual, real-life writing for my job and as a hobby. And I’ve noticed how my work emails and professional documents have been taking on a tone that I don’t like. They’re starting to look like shortcuts through grammar and syntax and in a big way, like plow tracks through a green field, iykwim (if you know what i mean).

Then I panic. Am I slowly losing all of the knowledge accumulated over years of practice, with so many disappointments and triumphs of brilliant linguistical twists, that I can even write a story about it all? Not that anyone/many would be interested in reading it. But it’s been a hard journey.

I am attached to it. I recognize the practicality of netspeak, but i secretly resent it as the lazy person’s tool. Are we becoming as lazy with our communication as with our social relationships? Why can’t we text normally? Or write normally? The distance between us all is the same anyway. What do the shortcuts achieve? Are we really saving that much time? And if we are, do we spend it wisely?

idk. Maybe it’s the way of the future and I’m holding on to a soon-to-be lost art. Maybe writers will find a way to communicate deep feelings with just abbreviations and emojis. Wouldn’t that be an achievement? I dare you to do it. Because old-fashioned me will keep holding on to a frayed dictionary from 2003 which contains real words.

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I don’t know how I feel

That’s pretty much true these days.

I’m mostly tired. I work a lot. I sleep little. I write (not blogs), eat too much sweet stuff, drink too much coffee, constantly schedule meetings with friends and meetups with strangers and try, amidst everything, to find a window to work out. Did I mention how little I sleep?

I consider myself a pretty straight-laced person, fairly smart, reasonably balanced (or able to find balance) but lately I’ve been wavering between bouts of gloominess and energetic optimism. From neurotic day to neurotic day. It’s kind of like how the stock market behaves. But while there’s money in that for speculators, what’s in all these different moods for me?

I don’t see it. I just don’t. Maybe the confidence that if I’m feeling the blues, all that is going to be gone tomorrow or even in the next few hours? Because it’s a mood, you know? It’s temporary.

I’ve been thinking that there’s something wrong with me. And i think I know what it is too. It’s the long Chicago winters. I don’t mind the snow or the cold, but the lack of light is like a disease that starts with mild symptoms, teasing you into thinking it’s manageable but then, you discover it’s the freakin’ plague and you’re a goner.

That gets me angry and that’s unsettling because most of the time I don’t know if anger is a negative emotion or a positive one. Like, if you’re apathetic, feeling angry can give you a lot of energy. But then, it depends. How angry can you get before you become (self-)destructive? So I’m taking my anger at the seemingly never-ending Chicago winter with a grain of salt. ‘Cause i’ve got plenty of those, you know, to melt the ice on the sidewalk in front of my house. 

I have no remedy for any of this right now, except patience. But that’s a costly one because I’m not known for having much of it. Winters make me lose the little that I have and then it’s just hard to build it up again. I’m dreaming of an untacky way to turn my apartment into an oasis of warmth and sunniness but so far, I’ve only been able to think of ocean view wallpaper all around and the appropriate nature sounds on my Sonos system. Then every time I’d get home from work, I’d sit under imaginary palm trees and take a few hours of vacation from the cold and the dark. 

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Sad and funny

What’s it like to be a bat?

I can’t see. It is always dark. I’m a bat.

But I can fly. I love flying.

But it’s dark. I can’t see.

So I scream.

Constantly.

I scream. So I can see.

I’m a bat.

I am hungry.

I scream. I see nothing. It’s dark.

There it is.

A fly.

Dinner.

Or breakfast.

I don’t know.

It’s always dark. I can’t see. I’m a bat.

I scream less. It doesn’t notice me. I fly faster.

Bzz-pak!

It’s… yummy. It’s disgusting!

I’m a bat.

I’m an animal.

I don’t care.

I fly some more. What’s that?

It’s… awful! I feel even more blind now.

Let me go!

I want home!

Get away from me!

I fled to the safety of my home.

What was that? It was so… bright.

Must have been the sun! Whatever is that.

Ew… Never again.

I’m tired. I want to sleep. I close my eyes.

Not like is matters anyway.

It’s always dark. I can’t see. I’m a bat.

Hey, do you think I’ll get some batgirl tomorrow?

[compassseeker1-blog]

Eating ice cream while on a diet

Hi, all!

The holidays are over! Yay or nay? 

Anyway, I set a goal for myself to look pretty (read: skinnier) by the time summer starts. I don’t have patience for very disciplined diets and I don’t trust the buzz surrounding the diets shown on TV. I mean, somebody’s paying someone to promote those diets, right? Are they good for you? I don’t know. Somebody’s also getting paid to tell you that they’re good for you.

I consider myself a modern woman. I make my own decisions and when it comes to diets, I don’t want to suffer needlessly. Why would I?

After several feeble tests over the years, I realized that one of the diets that worked for me without requiring me to starve myself AND work my ass off at the gym is the one that allows me to eat anything I want by 5 pm and then survive through the rest of the afternoon and evening on one single snack. It does come with pain. It does come with suffering. But that’s limited to the few days, or one week, it takes you to stop craving crazy snacks in the evening, like, in my case, popcorn with hotdogs, or humongous cheese-filled pastries.

Does it work? Of course it does, but it does not give you results as fast as a stricter diet combined with a workout. But it also doesn’t make you want to go around strangling people and hating yourself. It’s one of the few diets I’ve tried where, after a few days of starvation, I don’t end up telling myself that doing this is totally not worth it and that I should enjoy my life while I can. What that leads to is the immediate abandonment of all dieting goals. That’s what happened to me with other, more extreme, diets. I love carbs. Giving up on them made me miserable. I love sugar. Giving up on it made me hate everything, from flowers in bloom to cute old ladies walking their dogs in the park. Being able to have anything you want, every day, and then abstaining for only a few hours before bedtime, does the trick, albeit more slowly than others, as I’ve mentioned. And it is sustainable, people. I’ve been able to maintain a diet like that for almost a year.

Then, of course, there’s the playoffs season and friends come around every other evening, with pizza and beer, and you just have to partake. Once, twice. As we know, fat piles on faster than the food stains on a toddler’s bib. Then guilt starts accompanying every mouthful of anything 100 calories and above.

I don’t really feel that guilty. Because I know that I can start my sustainable diet right away and the suffering is minimal. And guess what? That one snack in the evening can be anything: an apple, a cup of yoghurt, a bit of beef jerky, or a scoop of ice cream.