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jebazzled · 3 years

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troubleshooting: common quandaries and thots to overcome

It's no surprise that people whose major hobby involves writing, the internet, and fandom are often people who carry a lot of anxiety and tension around with them. For many of us, writing is something we do to escape, relax, unwind, and flex creative muscles we might not get to use at work or school. I get it.

For many of us, however, it also seems like forum rp is a stressor, a cause of great anxiety and insecurity. We've all seen or known people who go through a major rp-related crisis.

Sometimes, these crises are truly major - catastrophic falling-outs and permanently damaging rumor mills and etc etc. But a lot of the time? Well. It's not that it's "in your head," because obviously what you are feeling is very valid. But I think sometimes the way we think of internet spaces fuels dysfunctional thinking.

This isn't quite a tutorial; it's more in the vein of my tough love re: writer's block. I'm going to talk through some common scenarios, anxieties, and other issues I see in the rp community, and offer my (fully unsolicited) thoughts and advice. As always, your mileage may vary, but I'm trying!

Topics covered, because this one is a LONGBOI:

Insecurity & thread reactions

Insecurity & completionism/ Being Liked

Jealousy (especially ship-related)

The server is not therapy.

So here's the thing about the internet: for better or worse, it's for everyone.

On the far end of the spectrum, this means that the internet is a great incubator for toxic garbage. See: right-wing radicals, etc. But for most of us, this means that there is room on the internet for weird little me and my weird little hobby. You can find a community to talk about virtually any interest. You, for example, found the rp community.

So here's the thing about the internet: for better or worse, it's for everyone. This means that while you can find a community to talk about virtually any interest, you are never going to find a community that is completely without flaws.

There will always be people who annoy you, rub you the wrong way, or who you think are mean-spirited and negative. There will always be someone you don't get along with. There will always be people who disagree with you.

I have been in servers where members come to me time and time again to complain about other members, as though I am going to boot someone for wanting to talk about x just because they, personally, are sick of hearing about x. I am not going to tell someone to change their personality because someone else, personally, finds it annoying.

Offline, you wouldn't tell your manager at Starbucks to fire Susie because you don't like talking to her. You would simply not talk to her outside of a professional context. You would simply not take your break at the same time as her. You would simply not make small talk with her when the store is quiet and would instead, like, read the liner notes on whatever CD is at the register. (Does Starbucks still sell CDs?)

There will always be people in your community who you do not like and whose logic does not make sense to you. If they are not doing anything genuinely abusive, they have as much right to be in your community as you do. There is, in fact, likely someone in your community who finds you somewhat annoying. C'est la vie.

A community is not an environment custom-curated to your exact specifications. It is a community. You are not entitled to it being perfect. You are entitled to a space free from harassment and bigotry. If the space is free from harassment and bigotry and you cannot enjoy the space because someone else in it is existing harmlessly in a way that you dislike or find irritating, you have the option to leave the community. Discord server links are not a binding contract!

This is all to say: I think a lot of us expect far more of our online communities than is fair. Remember that every single person in your server is an individual human being with an interior life as rich as your own, and a list of neuroses possibly as extensive. None of them, yourself included, are perfect.

Oh, speaking of that list of neuroses! Let's tackle it, babe.

Your neuroses are not anyone else's problem.

It is on you to work through and overcome your anxieties and insecurities.

It is kind of other people to accommodate your growth, or to modify their behavior so as not to trigger your anxieties and insecurities. They are by no means required to do so.

Note: they do need to respect your triggers, if you have them and list them.

So here we go: troubleshooting frequent freak-outs. Buckle up!!!

Insecurity & thread reactions (or lack thereof)

Some people experience a lot of anxiety and insecurity around how their writing partners react to their threads. This might surface in the form of feeling unappreciated/disliked if the thread partner doesn't drop an emoji react on the link in your server's tag channel, or in feeling like no one likes your writing because they aren't swooning over it in #affirmations/ #thread-shoutouts/ #quotables/ etc.

You are serving as both texters in this meme.

So... you don't actually know what's going on with your thread partner at any given moment, you know? Personally, here are some possible scenarios with me as your thread partner:

You tag me and I put a passage from your post in #thread-shoutouts: I am at my desk, on my computer, not engaged in active DM conversation with anyone, and your post either made me cackle or it made me emo

You tag me and I DM you to gush about it: there's a lot happening in the server right now/ I don't want to derail a public conversation

You tag me and I react with an emoji: I am at date night with my girlfriend and she is in the bathroom. I have had time to read your post. I probably haven't put it in my tracker and will try and remember later, when I find it in one of 100 tabs open on Safari on my phone.

You tag me and I don't react at all: I am swamped with work and read your post in between emails. Instead of taking a second to react I immediately jumped into my tracker to log your reply, and now I am back to emails.

You'll notice none of these rationales are: "I don't react at all because I dislike you as a human." "I actively chose to quote Susie in #thread-shoutouts and not you because I want to hurt you." "I don't DM you about our thread because I hate our thread."

It doesn't have to be that deep! Stop hurting yourself. Let yourself assume the kindest option. After all, don't you want people to assume the best of you, too?

If your thread partners know you value emoji reacts or thread shoutouts, it is kind of them to do them. But it isn't inherently unkind for them not to, either. You're better off trying to kick that need for public validation.

Overview for addressing thread reaction insecurity:

If your server has a thread shoutout/quotables/etc channel, mute it. Don't look at it. Stop giving yourself something to fixate on.

When you are worried that someone hates a thread because they aren't giving emoji reacts, instead of building a narrative in your head that may or may not be true - communicate! "What beats do you want us to make sure we hit in this thread?" is a good introductory question to see if a thread is doing something for either or both of you, and gives your partner a chance to say something if they do want it to go in a different direction and would be more excited.

If someone is continuing to write with you, regardless of whether they post an emoji, it is probably because they enjoy writing with you!

Be deliberate about your thread premises! In my experience, threads done "just because" without a specific purpose (e.g. building chemistry between ship partners, introducing a subplot about a cursed hairbrush, kidnapping a house elf) are the first to lose steam and lose interest. It's entirely possible that someone likes you, likes writing with you, and simply doesn't prioritize this thread above their others because there's nothing meaningful to prioritize!

Keep your eyes on your own paper and stop reading so much into what other people do or don't do. It's probably not that deep!

Insecurity & completionism/ Being Liked

You would not be the first person to exacerbate their own problems because of a sense of duty to the spirit of completionism. Here's the thing, friend:

You do not need to write with every member.

You do not need to plot with every character.

You do not need to be in every subplot.

You do not need to have a character in every member group.

People fall into this trap thinking that if they can be everything to everyone, it will make them popular/important/beloved/a truly included member of the site.

But quantity is not the same as quality. You might have a thread with every character onsite but if half those threads are under a "they're on the same bus" premise, then yeah, people aren't going to want to keep up with that thread, and it's going to contribute to your thread reaction anxiety!

Write characters you are excited about. But more importantly: write plots you are excited about. Write threads you are excited about. You can be friends with people in your server without writing with them! You are better off writing a smaller number of really well-plotted, juicy plots that everyone involved feels heavily invested in than in writing a lot of watery threads for the sake of writing with every single person. It's hard to believe, but many people would rather NOT have a thread and wait until there's a juicy reason to than write a thread that doesn't have any development relevance simply for the sake of it.

If you're finding that it's hard to find juicy or plot-driven reasons to thread with many people, that might be a hint to write different types of characters. While yes, people exist who are very self-contained and isolated, the purpose of rp isn't to be a direct mirror of real life. It's to have fun while writing with other people. If your character is not fun to write with other people, they are probably not a good fit for an rp setting.

RP is not a popularity contest. This is not high school. No one is voting for prom queen. Be kind and be open to ideas and collaboration and people will like you. People will enjoy writing with you! People might even go out of their way to write with you. And they will be writing things that matter to both of you. That's winning, dude.

You might be tempted to pinpoint a "popular group" in the server and fix your sights on becoming one of them. This is also a failing proposition: often the "popular group" you might first identify is incorrect, and you are mistaking "exclusivity" for "importance." Sometimes sites have a small, tight-knit group with intricate inter-group plots and a very visibly closed-off dynamic. Since that dynamic mirrors the popular girls you were raised watching in teen movies, I can understand why you would assume that these people are the most important people to befriend on a site. They're not. They're cliquey and exclusive, and trying to get them to make room for you when they have intentionally and performatively set themselves aside from many other members is like... lmao, dude, it's not going to work.

Not only that, but the fact that these people are hard to pin down? It's not a selling point! The most beloved members on any site are not the ones who make you beg for a scrap of their attention. The most beloved members are the people who are friendly and kind. THAT is who you want to Get In with.

Overview for addressing completionism tendencies and "what if I'm Left Out" woes:

This is not a popularity contest, and you are a grown up. Focus on having fun and enjoying writing. That is not something you can do if your first priority is Getting In with the people you think are a site's "Popular Crowd."

You do not need to be everything to everyone. You cannot be everything to everyone.

In fact, everyone will appreciate you more if you do less and you do it well.

Focus on the positive. Who cares if Susie and Sally won't write with you? Sarah and Sam love writing with you! Yes, it would make sense for Susie to plot with you because your characters work together - but again, this is a hobby, not real life, and if you and Susie don't vibe, your characters don't need to interact! Why write with people who make you feel insecure? Trick question; there's NO reason to!

I understand the drive to be well-liked. Trust! I, too, desperately want to be well-liked. You'll have better luck if you don't try so hard. Be yourself and make friends with people who genuinely like you. Stop worrying about what the site's yearbook will look like. There isn't going to be a fucking yearbook.

Jealousy (especially ship-related)

Do you ever find yourself feeling a spike of anxiety or resentment when one of your favorite writing partners writes with someone else?

This reaction is especially common where ships are concerned: when one partner writes AU ships with their character, or has a plot with their character's previous partners before their OTP, etc.

It's a bit territorial, and it's not a good look, friends!

Your writing partners get to write with other people. How much they enjoy writing with other people has nothing to do with how much they enjoy writing with you. How much they write with other people has nothing to do with you. What they write has nothing to do with you. It's not all about you!

It truly doesn't matter how anxious you feel when your writing partners write with other people. They are entitled to write with whoever they want! What makes you nervous about them writing with other people?

In a forum rp environment, the best way to secure fulfilling, satisfying character arcs for your character is to plot with multiple others. That includes you, on both fronts: your writing partner needs you for their character's development as much as you need them! They aren't going to just stop writing with you arbitrarily.

If they do stop writing with you, there is probably a reason! Are they still on the site? Are they still writing? Are they going through something in real life that might impact their muse? There could be a hundred reasons why they are writing more with Susie now than they were with you, and they could be anything from "Susie is out of town this week so I want to give her a lot of replies to come home to" to "a ladder fell on my head and I am recovering from a concussion" to, possibly, "your territorial behavior makes me uncomfortable, and I would rather write with people who do not make me feel bad about writing with other people."

This behavior is especially weird in a ship context, and is something worth unpacking. When you write ships, do you resent/get anxious about your ship partner writing AU ship threads? About their character having previous partners? About their character having crushes that they do not act on?

An AU ship is an alternate universe specifically because it is not real. Susie and Sally shacking up in a space AU has no bearing over whether or not Susie and Marco end up together as finals.

Just like human beings have romantic history, it makes sense for characters to have romantic history, and these plots give your writing partner an opportunity to write plots that they might not get with you. For example, your writing partner might want to write a breakup plot with weird friendship tensions, which might not be a relevant vibe for Susie and Marco. But your partner can explore that with Marco and Sally. Again: it's not all about you, and your writing partner gets to write what they want, and you do, too.

Sometimes I think we can trace the territorial side of ship-oriented plotting to toxic monogamy culture, as described here. Particularly relevant are the below:

the idea that you should meet your partner’s every need, and if you don’t, you’re either inadequate or they’re too needy

the idea that commitment is synonymous with exclusivity

the idea that your insecurities are always your partner’s responsibility to tip-toe around and never your responsibility to work on

the idea that your value to a partner is directly proportional to the amount of time and energy they spend on you, and it is in zero-sum competition with everything else they value in life

Your writing partner is not cheating on your ship by giving their character other ships. If it feels that way to you, you are getting too emotionally invested, and you should probably back off of ship-oriented plotting for a while to unpack why you are feeling this way.

That said, of course be clear about boundaries. This applies both to M-rated content and to parameters of plotting. For example, you might tell your partner that you are not interested in a plot whose core conflict is "will they or won't they." You want to write these characters with the longevity of their relationship never in doubt. You might not want a plot where one character is cheating on the other. You might want these characters to be monogamous. That's fair! It's not fair for you to expect your writing partner to limit the plots they do that do not actually involve your character to avoid triggering your insecurities.

Overview for dealing with jealousy:

It's not all about you! Your writing partners deserve to have a good time as much as you deserve to have a good time. They can enjoy writing with you AND writing with someone else.

Be very clear with your boundaries. If there are plots between your character and another character that you cannot write, let your partner know before they accidentally step in a minefield.

Be willing to step away from ships. There are plenty of plots that do not involve ships. If ships make you a jealous and anxious mess, you should stop writing ships and work on that journey. It is more important to be a good writing partner than it is to write romantic ships.

Writing is such a personal thing, and we all of course connect very deeply to our characters - it only makes sense that we be invested in their outcomes! But if your gut reaction is one of jealousy, this is something that you need to work on, not something your writing partners should need to tiptoe around.

The server is not therapy.

Because rp is an online hobby, it can be easy to forget that every person you interact with in the server or forum is also a whole ass person on the other side of the screen. Which is to say, your rp friends do not exist to be your emotional support.

Of course they can be supportive - some of my closest friends are people I have met through rp! But online as in real life, you need to remember that everyone is always going through something. You are never the only person in the world who needs support, and you need to be thoughtful in how you engage with your friends here.

Do you listen when they share their problems, or do you immediately change the subject to talk more about your own? Do they not share their problems at all - is this a one-sided close friendship? Are the majority of your DMs to them seeking comfort, advice, affirmation, validation?

If you need a text-based counseling service, BetterHelp can connect you with a therapist. A therapist is a person whose job is to listen and ask nothing from you for their own personal emotional needs.

Your friends - online as in real life - are not therapists. They will not always have the bandwidth to help you. They will not always feel comfortable helping you. The internet breeds a sense of intimacy, the idea that regular chat conversation makes for a deep knowledge of another person. And of course this is sometimes the case! But in many cases, the person you are asking for psychoanalysis in the DMs on Discord doesn't actually know you very well. And if you have been relying on them for emotional support, you might be wearing them out.

Overview for not treating your rp friends like therapists:

Be thoughtful. If you have something heavy you want to talk about, first ask if they have the bandwidth. For example: "Hi Susie! Do you have the energy to give me some advice on x work issue?"

Listen. If your friend wants to talk about their issues, stop thinking about how you can relate and it sounds just like that time you... and just LISTEN. If you want to offer advice, keep it about them. If you don't know how to help, commiserate. "That's rough, buddy."

Self-check. Look at your chat history as though it's between your friend and someone you've never met. What do you think of this person? Are they a good listener? Do they reciprocate the support they get from your friend? Do they remember things your friend tells them about their own life? Or is this a one-sided conversation? If you're realizing that you're leaning too much on this friend, give them some space. If you're realizing you've gone way overboard leaning on this friend, maybe apologize and promise to be more conscientious going forward.

Be considerate. Remember that every person you know from the internet is so much more than what you've seen - I don't mean that in a "all internet users are creeps" way, I mean that in a "even if you've chatted in a server with some every day for six months, you still don't actually know them super well." Think of other people you've spent Some Time with. Think of your lab partner in 8th grade bio. You shared a desk with them for an hour a day five days a week for two thirds of the year. How much of your life did you share with them?

This tutorial got LONG - sorry, friends! Lots to talk about. I'm always happy to give Real TalksTM like this one. Feel free to drop into my askbox if you have a topic you'd like me to cover. I'm full of thoughts and feelings, and it would give me great joy for y'all to ask for them for once.

I hope this is helpful, and wish all y'all the best. Happy writing!

#rp guides #resources

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hecallsmehischild · 4 years

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On Losing Weight

Recently I was asked a question that prompted me to pull together all the information I could remember about how my husband, Sergey, and I have been eating over the last few years. We both struggle very much with food and have been trying to do better by our bodies for a long time, but are wary of all the diets and fads. This post has details about what we’ve tried to date and what has worked for us. Most of it is written by me. At the end, Sergey wrote a few paragraphs also. Very long post under the cut.

Disclaimers and a few generalities

One thing about eating and weight loss is that accountability really helps. However, I’ve found personally that even if everyone in your family means well, accountability partners should not be within the family. The main reason I've found is that there's too much baggage with any family member (with the potential exception of your marriage partner) for accountability to ever go well and function as it should. Resentment, triggers, irritation, even accidental shaming crops up because of old baggage and derails everything. You need accountability with someone who you don’t carry a lot of baggage with, because there’s often a huge emotional component to eating.

It takes a LONG time to lose large amounts of weight. You can lose five to ten pounds relatively quickly, but often your body will stabilize on the new number and then you may find it very hard to get lower for months, so continuing to try new things is helpful.

You will yo-yo between 3 and 5 pounds all the time. That is standard. So think in five pound increments in any direction, because your bodyweight is constantly in flux over a few pounds. For this reason, weighing once a week is a lot more accurate than weighing every day and will cause a lot less despair and frustration.

We are not vegetarians at all. We cannot offer any thoughts on a vegetarian diet.

Whatever you do, food-wise, has to be part of your ordinary life. Short term diets set you up to fail. Changing your lifestyle is what will produce long-lasting changes.

Also, some of the things my husband and I try, in some ways, appears to walk the line of eating disorder. I’m watching it very closely with that in mind, and I still don’t think it falls into the trap. Sergey and I do not have enough activity to burn off all the food with take in, so we’re trying things to decrease our food intake AND increase our activity, so that we reach a reasonable balance. But people who have (or are tempted by) eating disorders need to take care, and I would recommend not reading this post or else proceeding with utmost caution.

Obviously not all of the things we do are feasible for everyone, but maybe even hearing some of our ideas might spark a different way of thinking about food and being active for you.

One Meal a Day

Three meals a day makes a lot of sense if you’re doing hard labor all the time. It doesn’t make as much sense if you have a desk job or take care of a house as your main occupation. So the first thing we did a few years back is cut down to one meal a day. It could be anything at all, but it had to be just one meal. That alone dropped us both about 10 pounds down. We’d have one meal around lunch, and later in the evening we would share a large bowl of some sort of fruit (like tangerines or cherries). The aim was to eat things that were both good and filling. Variation keeps you from getting bored and abandoning the lifestyle.

Meals were often grilled salmon or home-warmed burgers (lean, when we could) or a soup from Trader Joe’s. Some of our meals now:

Two burgers with lean beef patties, pickles, and some mayo on bakery fresh onion rolls

Lox (with is VERY low cal, if expensive) on onion rolls with tomato and onion, a little oil and pepper and salt

Sharing a whole roast chicken from the store, plus a roll each

Large can of tuna mixed with a little mayo on two onion rolls

Shredded chicken and mashed potatoes from the store’s fresh packaged food section

Pot roast and mashed potatoes from the store’s fresh packaged food section

Meatballs. Just meatballs.

A spicy beans/rice/sausage/mushroom dish we brainstormed that we make in a pressure cooker

Home-made chicken mushroom fettuccine alfredo. Not super healthy, but hot and homemade. (this is a “maintenance” meal, see what I mean by that later)

A bag of chicken fried rice from Trader Joe’s

Soup from the grocery store (not the canned kind, but the fresher ones sold by the store)

Two larger sized tamales

One frozen pizza (inspect the full calorie count, you’re shooting for something between 600 and 1000 calories total, which does exist but it takes some looking and experimenting with types) whose flavor can always be spiced up with extra mushrooms or garlic powder. Not the Tostino’s or Party pizzas. I promise there are healthier, tastier, and more varied pizzas to be had in this calorie range.

Chicken breast or chicken thigh meat is sold frozen. Cook that and make that into sandwiches for very lean, filling meals. Use of various spices encouraged.

A tray of baked “catfish nuggets” which are chunks of catfish cooked in the oven

A tray of baked white meat chicken nuggets

Cocktail shrimp (thawed from frozen) with cocktail sauce

I have just broken into the frontier of omelettes, also low-cal and filling in conjunction with onion rolls.

Sergey would often go to a salad bar and load up on the salad, then also load up on the chicken noodle soup which is very filling and very low cal.

Sergey eats his meal closer to noon or one. I try to eat my meal around 3 or 4 if I can hold out, because then I’m not groaning about how hungry I am in the evening or being kept up by hunger pangs. For me, that’s the mid-point of the day and the one that helps me deal with hunger best.

Snacks and Sweets

Snacks are always tricky, and large bags of anything salty are automatic failures in this house; we are incapable of portioning them. So we stopped getting them unless we acknowledged the truth to ourselves, which is that one bag is one serving size no matter what the back says (i.e. we embraced that we’re being bad and got it anyway).

For a while Sergey and I had an occasional bowl of non-buttered popcorn with powdered salt. This worked for a bit because it was pretty filling, but Sergey found himself making multiple bowls so we had to stop because that defeated the purpose.

Some stores sell very small snacks individually portioned, like a tiny foil pack of variously flavored olives, or banana bites coated in cacao, etc. Those are great. Rice cakes can be good, though I get tired of them after a while. I like the cinnamon apple and chocolate ones best. Speaking of cinnamon apple, individual oatmeal cups are good too. I aim for around 140 cal for a snack.

Sometimes I will snack on a lean burger patty or chicken thigh-meat piece, each of which is about 70 cal.

By himself, Sergey often would (and still does) fill a large bowl full of small quartered tomatoes mixed with pepper, oil, and onion. He can put away two of these tomato salads a day as “snacks.” He says they’re very filling, good for you, and low-cal. He’s leaning more on bowls of baby carrots and sugar snap peas these days. Sometimes he will make a large bowl of Golden Apple slices to chow down on.

I keep NO ice cream in the house. I may get a larger quantity for a birthday celebratory binge, or use individual containers as a reward system, but I never “stock up” on ice cream. Birthday? Maybe 4 of the personal containers of various flavors, and that’s it for my birthday treat. Reward system? Once I get to a certain weight, I allow myself to have one small personal container of ice cream (or my other favorite, a jar of honey pecans) a week. The incentive to get to a certain weight balances out the slow-down on the weight loss the treat causes, because this can’t be all about deprivation or I couldn’t sustain it. Being able to sustain a way of eating into a lifestyle is a huge deal.

I keep dried cranberries in the cabinet. Sometimes if I’m hungry and need to hold out, I’ll grab one handful of those to eat. I keep larger quantities of oatmeal too, but I’m not sure if that’s working against me or not, because I dump high quantities of honey in to bring it up to my sweet tooth standards so it might end up being a bad thing for me. I haven’t sat down to figure that out yet.

I make a mean chunky cinnamon applesauce that is a delicious and pretty healthy snack, too, when I have the energy to make it.

I would like to make sweets all the ding dong day, but it works against us, so I have to reserve my sweets making for when there’s a large group to share them with. Otherwise we would eat all of that ourselves.

Tools that help

Making your own food at home becomes a lot more enjoyable and feasible for low-energy people like us when there are tools that cut back on the effort it takes. To that end

A good 6 qt pressure cooker does everything a crockpot does, but it has more options and is faster.

A good food processor can do almost anything, from applesauce to milling oats to slicing veggies to finely dicing the onions you don’t want to deal with, to making ice cream out of frozen bananas and cocoa powder. We have an older one and it still does wonders, even though some of the latches don’t work right.

A good indoor grill machine.

Electric mixer/beater. The effort of making cookies goes down by a third to a half the personal energy cost when you use this, plus the process goes faster and the texture is so much better.

A dishwasher. A good dishwasher means you aren’t spending a ton of energy cleaning up all the dishes you soiled just making food. Did you know there are portable dishwashers that hook up to your sink if you don’t have one in the home? I just learned this...

This one heavily depends on how much you’d use it, but it can be very inexpensive to get an electric citrus juicer. I can go through about 40 lemons for a party-sized quantity of lemonade and it wracks out my wrist to do that manually, so I got a good one for about $20.

This website is one Sergey uses to see what products are legitimately good, because Amazon is starting to have major issues with fake reviews PLUS Chinese knock-offs getting passed off as the good product. This site user-tests a ton of different brands of the same product and tells you which one they found to be best and why, then gives a few runners up in other categories like price or different type. I used this to find a good set of salt/pepper grinders, a good knife sharpener, and an individual serving coffee maker. I also found my electric mixer and citrus juicer on here.

Also, pickling things is fun and very cheap and easy.

A few radical things

This is our lifestyle, not a diet. We go crazy with our eating when we’re on a trip, but normal, everyday eating is the one-meal-a-day plan for us. Going to a friend’s place for a meal is a balancing act that we often fail (because it’s often all-you-can-eat), but we’re already brainstorming ways to compensate.

Here’s for something radical sounding, to be handled with care. While Sergey aims for around 1300 calories a day, approximately, I aim for under or close to 800. I’ve found that if I eat the same things as him, I maintain my current weight but do not lose any. It’s when I, the smaller and less active person, undershoot him, that I start gaining ground. When I reach the weight I’m aiming for, I will allow myself more leeway to get to his calorie intake level, because that’s “maintenance” level for me.

Here’s the current thing we are testing, so the results are not in yet. We’re doing this because neither of us has been able to budge our weight for a while. It’s a combination of factors so track with me. We like a place called Star Cinema Grill which is a movie theater that serves you a meal and/or drinks while you watch the movie. But even for one meal this is a very high calorie day if we go there. We swore off going for a long time, until their marketing department sent out a wave of “Two free tickets!” in the mail. Sergey figured that he would go, and then he would not eat for 48 hours to make up for it. I was a little concerned by the idea, but after thinking it over for a while (with the concern about eating disorders in mind) it didn’t actually seem that unreasonable. So I joined him in this. So now we’ve worked out that we can go to Star Cinema Grill on occasion as long as it’s followed by a 48 hour fast.

We had previously tried 48 hour fasts (which consist of, for example, eating lunch around noon on Sunday and stopping food until lunch on Tuesday, so that you sleep through much of the 48 hour period) but we first did the fast on ONLY water. By the second day we were both so lethargic and unfocused that we could hardly function. This time we allowed ourselves to have several rounds of tea or mocha throughout the day. That time, we experienced very negligible energy drops and made it through the period of no-eating with a lot less suffering.

NOW. I was reading Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, the expanded and revised edition, and at the end they included several articles they had written as bonus material. Please read this article to understand where I’m going next.

Excited, I rushed over to Sergey to make him read this bit. This is already sort of what we had been doing. Though this guy had distilled it down to sugar water, tea with a cube of sugar isn’t much different. My mocha had about three times the sugar, but was still on the very low end of calories for a day. So this idea (that sugar-water helps trick your body past hunger) was being confirmed for us by someone else. So we’ve decided to test out doing this 48-hour fast once a week, which may also allow for re-inclusion of things we tend to forgo more often (like weekly ice cream? Or a fresh batch of cookies?). Stay tuned...

Going out

We built a list of places and categories of how good or bad they are for us to go to. We divided them into Healthy and Healthy Cheat. Bad ones don’t make it on the list so we’re not tempted when we’re thinking of where to go out.

Healthy Restaurants are places where, if you’re reasonable with your choices, you can eat pretty much any one meal on their menu. (Lemon Shark is our Poke place in the area. Poke is unreasonably good and healthy and filling for you, and most will have vegetarian or cooked options on the menu if you don’t like raw fish. Jinya is a ramen place, though you have to be a little more selective about because some dishes are two meals’ worth, and Sweet Tomatoes is a salad bar also known as Souplantation in some regions)

Healthy Cheat Restaurants are places where we know we’ll probably eat more than we should, but the food is still relatively healthy. Tokyo Grill and Dimassi’s are both buffet places with relatively healthy options near us. Fukuda Sushi is our sushi go-to for now (though we’re looking to replace it as the fish quality went down).

Avoid most all-you-can-eat places like the plague, unless it’s a salad bar. Even then, if you gravitate toward the breads and creamy soups like I do, just say no.

Places we love that are also pretty bad for us on any kind of regular basis: Rudy’s BBQ, Star Cinema Grill, Wine Tasting Room (large meat and cheese platters), anywhere Italian.

Being Active

We took up Krav Maga, which had us doing off and on rigorous exercise for an hour twice a week. That went on for about a year. After I broke my toe, we switched to a home exercise regimen.

Instead of home exercise equipment, we opted for DDR pads, and have been doing hour-long DDR sessions most mornings. After an hour long workout (25 songs on easy-to-medium levels) we each do 20 crunches and then Sergey does extra burpees or push-ups. As the crunches get easier for me, I will be adding five at a time. I’m up to 30 now. Crunches were initially added to help me maintain the muscles that hold up a weak place in my spine, however now it’s also a good end-workout routine. I cannot get through all this without frequent water breaks because I drip sweat, and Sergey turns into a waterfall.

Sergey has added about 3-5 extra mini-workouts (a set of pushups or burpees) sprinkled throughout the day.

Some days we go to a park in the morning and walk for 30-50 minutes instead of DDR. It’s less strenuous, but a nice change of pace and scenery.

Some days we go kayaking in a nearby waterway, which REALLY works the arm muscles that day, but it’s a fantastic workout. We keep saying we need to go more often, but often forget.

Failing

It’s going to happen. It’s going to feel miserable. Sometimes I have found myself up at three AM, unable to sleep, making myself another whole frozen pizza or eating all the spaghetti leftovers. Sometimes I can talk myself into something slightly better, like a bowl of oatmeal, but not often. Sometimes I’ll just mix white and brown sugar, butter, and raw oatmeal and eat this lump-of-barely-cookie-dough as is. Sometimes I come home from the grocery store with an entire round loaf of bakery bread and eat it, much to Sergey’s fascination and surprise. One time I scooped one out and filled it with clam chowder and ate my own homemade bread bowl. It was great. It was also way over my limit.

Sometimes “failing” is known and expected, like around the holidays or birthdays. It’s okay to celebrate. Food is a very social and emotional experience as well as a sustenance deal. Keep picking yourself back up and trying again.

Sergey, who is SUPER good at distilling core concepts, adds his own TLDR:

On Losing Weight

Dusty and I have both struggled with overeating. For me, there have been sad times when plowing through a huge meal may have been the happiest 20 minutes of my day, and it’s no surprise that I would resist any attempts to eliminate that. However, I’ve found that losing weight and getting healthier leads to better moods and reduces the frequency and severity of impulses to binge.

Whatever you do must be incorporated into your lifestyle—if you are “going on a diet,” then you are setting yourself up to fail. If certain behaviors become part of your ordinary day, and you maintain that for months at a time, it’s much more likely that you’ll be able to keep going.

The most important change I’ve made is limiting myself to 1 meal a day. After a short adjustment period, I feel only a little bit hungrier than I did with 2 meals a day while consuming half the calories. That meal should be a reasonably-sized meal (typically 800-1200 calories for men, 600-900 for women), not an extra-large one. If I get hungry again, I only allow myself some very low-calorie snacks like carrots, sugar snap peas, or tomatoes.

The second thing I did was institute a daily exercise program. Dusty and I start each morning with an hour of DDR when we can, and I stop what I’m doing every 3-5 hours to do a set of 20 burpees. As I gain strength, I plan to increase this number. We also go for walks or go kayaking when the weather and our moods allow. What’s most important is that you do something to get your heart racing and get sweaty, and that you do it every day.

The last thing I did was institute occasional 48-hour fasts. For example, I would have lunch on Monday and not eat again until lunch on Wednesday. If I have tea with light sugar during a fast, I only feel moderately hungrier than I would otherwise. It’s much more tolerable than I thought it would be. There is considerable research suggesting that intermittent fasting is good for you, and it can be a reasonable way to offset the binge you couldn’t resist having. It’s definitely a healthier approach than purging, which hurts both your body and your soul.

#food #eating #rlchild #exercise #if you struggle with eating disorders this post is not good for you #not vegetarian

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bthump · 5 years

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frame-to-frame replied to your post “frame-to-frame replied to your post “chaoticunneutral replied to...”

That’s fair, this prob does partly come down to semantics – i.e. his being purposefully v. unconsciously unaware. B/c I agree in those terms that Griffith is purposefully unaware of his guilt, but I’m resistant to Griffith being unconsciously unaware generally, which this can easily be conflated with – that he’s so emotionally stunted he can’t recognize his feelings for what they are. A valid take ofc, just I think not my cup of tea? Though I’m open to being convinced lol. This is such a subtle point to debate lol, but I still think both can be at play wrt his feelings for Guts – purposeful unawareness alongside an acknowledgement (on some level) of his attraction to him. Griffith is all about emotional repression, we know that, he needs it to keep his dream alive. I just don’t think this is incompatible with him also pining for Guts I think it comes down to how in control of his feelings he thinks he is. What sells me on this reading is “How long ago did someone I was supposed to have in hand instead gain such a strong hold on me?” b/c that brings control right into the way he thinks about his attraction to Guts. He can still acknowledge his attraction & even try to seduce Guts while also writing those feelings off as a crush/lust (which he can tell himself he’s in control of) Where the purposeful unawareness comes into play is wrt the true significance of these feelings: that they pose a threat to his dream. B/c however you read Griffith’s awareness, the “do I need a reason” scene is significant in that he has no coping mechanism to explain his actions. He clearly goes the route of purposeful unawareness afterward, but ofc it didn’t have to go that way if they hadn’t been interrupted I’m not sure I understand why the ch12 friend speech interferes w this, I think your meta still works with this reading, so you’ll have to elaborate pls! B/c to me it seems that either way he’s trying to diminish the depth of his feelings for Guts in response to a perceived rejection from him – and he can still know that what he’s saying is BS in his heart of hearts. Sry for length

Yeah I’d say it’s definitely more of a purposeful unawareness. While I think he is emotionally stunted in some ways, he’s not at all ignorant or lacking in emotional intelligence. LIke he’s actually really (uncannily at times, eg Foss) good at picking up on other people’s feelings, he’s empathetic (eg his interactions with Casca after saving her from the nobleman), he’s very socially aware and competent, etc.

But imo where his own feelings are concerned he has a giant blind spot. And tbh I do think that he is kind of incapable of recognizing a lot of his own feelings, not so much because of naivety but because he’s too used to avoidance and not used to confronting them directly. Like, it’s a willful blind spot, like we’re saying, it’s an ingrained negative coping mechanism. Maybe it started when people started dying at his orders, or maybe earlier, but yk, imo he deals with negative or inconvenient feelings by not dealing with them, by denying them entirely, and because of that he just has very little experience actually trying to understand his own feelings. But yeah like, I don’t think that’s exactly undeniable canon or anything lol, it’s more of a headcanon, and fair enough if it’s not your thing.

Hmm and while I definitely lean heavily on his emotional repression to be fair I def don’t think he’s incapable of examining his own feelings without lying to himself. We’ve seen moments of vulnerable emotional sincerity, eg “maybe it was my dream that killed this boy,” “am I dirty?” “do you think I’m cruel?”

I guess that to me those moments feel fleeting and quickly replaced by the denial and the mask, while I could see others reading those moments and seeing them as glimpses of Griffith’s more typical inner thoughts, which he just hides from others, rather than from himself. But yeah to me it always comes back to that monologue in the river - I just can’t read it as Griffith knowingly lying to Casca, imo it feels like pure bullshitting himself through a near breakdown, and it feels like a very powerful encapsulation of Griffith’s character as a whole. His moments of emotional self awareness don’t last because they’re painful, so they get buried.

But when it comes to Griffith’s feelings for Guts, ia that his denial method of dealing with his feelings isn’t necessarily incompatible with him still pining for Guts. Like guilt is a very different feeling from love, so it makes sense that he’d bury guilt but yk maybe not love. And I agree that self control is a big factor for Griffith, so yeah I could definitely see that if he feels like he’s got a handle on his feelings he wouldn’t need to avoid them/deny them.

And also because thematically Griffith’s feelings for Guts do lead to greater emotional self awareness in contrast to how he buries most of his feelings in pursuit of his dream, it makes sense on that level too that he’d be more aware of his feelings for Guts.

But I like Griffith being an unselfaware idiot who doesn’t even know he’s in love until he’s in a torture chamber lol. I love pining, but I also love the idea of Griffith lying to himself about Guts too, telling himself Guts is just a tool to help him win a war, that Guts will in all likelihood die for him so he has to does see him as just a soldier, etc. And steadfastly refusing to think about his feelings when he can’t cover them with a lie.

Idk I get that it could seem like, awkwardly naive and weird, but the way I imagine it is more like... bear with me because I’m about to get self indulgent and just talk about my Griffith headcanons lol, but basically I don’t picture Griffith sitting down and dwelling on his feelings if he can help it. It’s not like he saved Guts’ life the first or second time and thought “oh why did I do that? weird, idk, he’s a good soldier I guess, that must be it.” The way I see it it’s more like he just puts it out of his mind and doesn’t think about it. He socializes, he reads every book in his study, he learns to be the best at the sword as a teenager, he leads and fights and thinks of tactics, etc etc. Guts spends a lot of his time navelgazing about his feelings, but I don’t think Griffith does

He can think about intellectual things, like his goals and fate and his life philosophy but to me those all feel like smokescreens obscuring the emotional truths behind them. And when he gets too close to thinking about those emotional truths, he would have a million ways to distract himself, like by now I figure he’s just pretty pro at derailing his train of thought onto safer territory.

But yeah like the “do I need a reason” scene could’ve easily lead to a moment of emotional honesty and awareness if they hadn’t been interrupted imo. I mean it already was, it just didn’t get a chance to get very far. And afterwards I could definitely see Griffith contemplating his feelings for Guts honestly, giving thought to the way he cares about him and what it means, because he doesn’t automatically avoid those particular emotions. Maybe he already knows he’s attracted to him, or maybe he doesn’t bc of internalized homophobia, but the realization of love is burgeoning. Or I could see him already knowing and accepting how he feels and wishing Guts would catch up and finally understand that he’s not just another soldier to him. Or I could see him turning his thoughts towards seducing Charlotte, buying more books, investigating the attempted assassination, and deciding to ask Guts for help because he trusts him innately, without ever stopping to properly think about what saving Guts from Zodd meant. (And I default to the last one but I like all three.)

Lastly wrt the Promrose speech I just meant more generally that it’s a direct contradiction in the story that requires the reader to put some thought into Griffith’s character to reconcile it. Griffith prioritizes Guts above his dream, 5 chapters later Griffith says he has no friends. (It also contradicts the river monologue nicely, “for no other’s sake, for him, himself alone... a dream” vs “but if for their sakes, for the sake of the dead, if there’s something I can do, that thing is to win.)

And imo that basically just means that the Promrose speech has to be bullshit because it’s contradicted by actions and words in a much more emotionally revealing moment, but it’s up to the reader to decide if it’s bullshit Griffith has convinced himself is true, or if he’s just lying to Charlotte. Not that it contradicts anything we’re discussing.

#frame-to-frame #replies #character: griffith #headcanons #convo #a #b #lol @ you apologizing for length when I respond with this whole thing #character thoughts #theme: repression #ship: griffguts

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opalmothnightingale · 6 years

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Between Dysfunction and Function Lies a Step Path

5- 17 - 18 - I am on a step that is on the step path between the two phases of dysfunction and function... I’m not dysfunctional per se, as far as I define it, because for now, at this phase in my life, I am happy, I am content with how I’m doing things, my progress, etc... But nor am I fully functional either, by my own definition and not by most views would I be seen as fully functional, but I don’t mind because it keeps me safe and strong to stay on this step that is somewhere on the path up and down between function and dysfunction.

It’s like a healing step on the path. I can’t force myself to go up higher than I’m ready. I can’t make myself do more than I am really ready or have energy, emotional energy, motivation, clarity, answers or direction and more than I am ready to commit to now at this point in my life,... and so,... that’s it. Really that’s all. That’s why my first tasks to do on my goals are so heavily oriented towards senses, pleasure, construction of images and inspirational structures in which to even put the ideas or whatever for my goals and tasks to be organized in those structures, containers, ... and reminders, talismans, art,...

Visual reminders, sensory reminders,... And why it also will include as first tasks just pleasure and perennial pleasurable goals as goal tasks too, because how to have pleasure, sensory feelings satisfied, curiosity satiated, fascination engaged, these are big issues for me, big hurdles and

... No,... I can’t just avoid or choose to sidestep them,.. instead,

... against all my will or alignment, good attitude, etc,... Still, what seems to inevitably occur is,...

they can slide me right into a slippery slope in to a pit, if I don’t find how to avert them. They might be somewhere between dysfunction or function, not either one of those classes of who I am or what I’m doing in my daily life, with my set of problems and needs,...

But if I tried to bypass them, I would slide right back in the pit of depressiveness, pre anxiety, escapism, stress, confusion, trauma, ...

I know, I have had so much time and experience that I can see pretty clearly that is what would happen to me,... Therefore this is actually functional, in a way,... it is situationally funcitonal, as in, it is what i need to heal my depression, my anxiety, my dissociation and trauma and lack of motivation, boredom, sadness, loneliness, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc ... Ugh! It’s true, it’s real, this endless spiral of bad feelings and overwhelm and so many reasons to not want to try, not care, to feel depressed, sad, lonely, traumatized, unable to keep on going,

... or to keep trying, so worn out, despairing and hopeless and disgusted and angry and why try, etc, etc,... Yes,... And that is why for all these things that might just seem to be self indulgent, putting the cart before the horse, trying to have the fulfillment before I address the crises and problems but actually, it’s putting the horse before the cart, because the horse is indeed my own

... my own very fulfillment, by own meaning, joy,... love, sense of connection, intellectual and creative and social and bigger picture meaning and enjoyment, and so yeah... That is what it is... Because those things in my life, and my heart, and in my soul, they are so off kilter and out of balance that I really have to address them intensively before the other goals and values will stop getting so derailed so often and for such prolonged stretches of time...

It’s just what I have to do, what I need to do,... And even though it might take me a lot longer just to do the actual tasks, when I include all these “personal” goals about my social, creative, intellectual, sensory, pleasure, passions, etc related stuff, really though,... I could not even bring myself to function otherwise... Because it would be easy to just line up all the tasks to do for the other goals and values, but that’s putting it down on paper, but doing it is another thing, and as we can see in many peoples’ lives, this doesn’t always work.

People know what they should do on their purported most important goals and yet sometimes they can’t do it, like there’s some kind of internal block or they keep falling into depression, apathy, dissociation,... That is my sorry story for so much of my life, but now I am finally realizing what to do about that and it’s something that many would not give credit to the solution but it doesn’t matter

.... It just doesn’t matter,... Hardly ... at all,...

So,... It doesn’t matter, ... The slightest registering in my mind or emotions or heart, for any significant sense or length of time, at all,... whatsoever,... Meaningless, but to laugh at, to laugh as I turn away, ignore, scoff at the absurdity of their intent to control and dominate others’ lives,... The internalized voices will be laughed at and I will not care, and move right on easily, quickly,...

So it does not matter,... Whether they give me credit for my own self healing, ... What matters is if it works for me, myself, and for my daughter too and all those who will be helped if I find how to finally help myself enough, lastingly and stably, over time...

So that is why I can’t go with the excuse of depression, anxiety, trauma, or any other thing, and say I just can’t function. I can’t be a level just above that where I’m not totally drowning in obvious misery or emotional disturbance, but instead using comforting escapism to drown out the pain and anxiety, fear, misery, disgust or whatever, either... While putting on a happy face to the outside world that “I’m ok”, “Don’t worry about me”, “It’s just a bad day”, “I’ll feel better soon”, etc, except for the fact that I spend far far too much time in those down days... It’s the socially acceptable thing to try to minimize and hide these down times, if you’re not all out and out obviously miserably debilitatingly agonizingly intense levels of sadness, anxiety, or trauma,... It seems to me... If you can numb it, then that is considered approved, acceptable, to just hide it while you numb it and wait it out, minimize it, hide your shame and “negativity” that you can’t find a better way to function...

But I understand the need to be not wallowing, even if it means being a little “escapist” to cope and eventually feel better, and not to tell others your problems if they can’t help you feel better and they would be brought down by telling them about it,... But I have finally found a better way to feel better, a better step up the step way between dysfunction and function...

And it’s all these things that I’m talking about that might seem self indulgent, self absorbed, self centered, etc,... Self love is really what it is,... Which is a tricky thing these days, not often really always fully understood, or supported, sometimes overindulged in truly unhealthy ways, and yet often not supported in some of the truly essential ways that some need,... Not recognized as a need, but instead still seen as an indulgence, nice to give yourself a little indulgence here and there like a present for a friend or something, not seen as some kind of vital huge need that overshadows your life, and yet just look at all the people who are depressed or escapist, apathetic, numb, unmotivated, neglectful of their goals and important things in their life,... And it makes me wonder if some of those people might also need something like what I feel I need, with all these things I’ve been talking about as some of the first tasks to do on my first goals and values, the self centered, pleasure centered, inner work, joy, and pasison centered things that have no “productive” value immediately obvious to anyone often, yet still I feel I need to address them alongside or before some of the other more “urgent” or “productive” or “service to other” and “duty” type things... You can’t “do your duty” if you can’t even function, though, can you?

Some people become severely depressed in obvious dramatic ways but others just feel empty, dissociated, escapist and become neglectful and numb towards both others and themselves while hiding the shameful truth from others and often themselves too, to a certain or even a full extent, ...

blocking the truth from their own consciousness,... unable to see it,... too ashamed, too dissociated,... Even if they see they are doing things they might think are “wrong” or “immoral”, etc but they just feel driven, compelled, without thinking what else might allow them to satisfy their needs without becoming totally drowned in self centered escapism and lack of responsibility and neglect...

Well, just some thoughts,... I think they’re worth something, to some people... To me at least,... Even if they’re taboo. Very taboo in our work and give and be social and extroverted and productive, active, etc, etc type culture.

But we are not all like that, not all meant to be like that. I can be very caring, very generous, but only if my own needs are met. Some peoples’ needs are fairly well met just by being a part of society, being around others, I think, but my needs are actually drained that way and so it’s like I’m a totally different creature, a different orchestration, a different machine or a different program,... Not to put it into mechanical terms but just,.. You know, I just mean that I have a totally different set of needs and the order in which they have to be done...

Feed myself first, slowly grow, then bloom and fruit in profusion, to be given to others these fruits, indirectly. The tree growing the fruit not interacting with those who receive it, oftentimes, ... Except the tree that might grow, the family, the loved ones, the few that are actually truly close to me, who really want

... Or care about, at all, in any meaningful way, lasting, loyal, non attacking, non criticizing, non controlling way.

Who care for me, with no strings or greed attached, that is to say, but just openly accepting the gifts I can give as I can truly give them, ....

Very few care, it’s true, then,

So ...

Very few care, really, about what I can even give, at this time, and who I can even give what they want, at this time,... And even ever if I can give more as I want to, one day, to other people, it will be, again, distant, ...

and indirect, I think, often or generally, for those others... Only my daughter, my spirit, cats, spirit love, forest love, god, and nature, plants and

... all the amazing wonderful fascinating animals and earth, elements, energies, and the mysteries, which are,...

...life in nature... Those are the ones I can be around more closely and

... Just perhaps only ever like that,... But I’ll see... It’s not my concern, except to live for today and go where the river flows and takes me along,... wherever it is...

It’s fine with me,... It has to be,.. I can see that much and am grateful for what will be, as much as I can find,.. for what is, every day a good day,... etc, etc.\

Hmm... so yeah, a few thoughts, worth little except to me. My therapy for the afternoon, again... My trudging, stumbling, untangling slowly the huge entanglement. I am very proud, ... so proud of myself, really and I feel so worthy but so humble, too, ... still. The irony of that two sided coin,.. Oftne humility and pride go hand in hand best, true humility, true pride, good humility or good pride, at least that is, I guess one might say, I would say,... Hmm,... I wonder if others see it that way but whatever, oh well. Not that I care,... Because I just must live my own life, still, as ever of course,... So I will,... On with the rest of my day, now,... Have to be going and doing other things,...

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