Inside My Velvet Rope

Tonight I successfully completed the 3-Week Plank Challenge by holding plank for a full 3 minutes! I am physically and mentally stronger as a result of doing this challenge. I hit a couple of mental blocks, but I tried again the next day and the next, if necessary, until I was able to hold the full amount for that day. While I don’t see a measurable difference in the mirror, I feel very different. I am more toned, stand and sit straighter, engage my core more, and can carry my weight far easier than I could at the beginning of the month. This has been a success!

I’m proud of me.

The temperature is 77 degrees F, breezy, and partly sunny. I am outside in a tee-shirt and jeans with a sweater draped over my arm for the trip home. I could get used to this.

Still not sleeping well, in spite of a dose of pharma kava before bed. This is distressing, especially since I have a busy week planned.

I have come to the conclusion I am not loud enough. I listen to the amount of noise my neighbors make in the course of their everyday lives, and I feel as though I am tiptoeing through life.

Translation, in a Numbered List of No Particular Order

1. The weather outside is damp and dreary.
2. T hurt herself at work (aggravated an old, but healing, lower back injury), which means for the next couple of months the lion’s share of the housework falls on me. That means on top of the dishes, floors, bathroom, grocery shopping, and general tidying I usually do, I must now also do the laundry.
3. I do not feel like going out and doing the laundry and grocery shopping. (See #1.)
4. I am tired.
5. I am mildly cranky. (See #4.)
6. I do not appreciate hearing my neighbors’ living noises, specifically their music, their arguments, or their telephone conversations
7. Introduction to Improvisation is full of music theory I am learning as I go, and it’s pushing my “You Are Inadequate” buttons.
8. My sinuses are bothering me a little. (See #1.)

I think that covers everything.

In better news, I have just ordered comfort food from our local Mexican place. Not that my budget really has room for that, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Yesterday I found two flat kids in my PO box and took them with me into Brooklyn for the afternoon.

Flat Noemy, Flat Maurius, and me at Pier 1 in Brooklyn. You can see One World Trade Center in the background, on the far left. The Flats are from Phoenix, AZ and were very excited to visit the city.

We had lunch with friends, then spent a couple of hours at a nighttime photography meetup.

Jane’s Carousel lit up in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, with One World Trade Center in the background.

It was a long, fun day!

I’m two full weeks into this plank challenge as part of my quest to strive for strength, not skinniness. Sunday was the first time I had not been able to complete my full time. It wasn’t due to muscle fatigue; I haven’t reached muscle fatigue yet on any of those days. It was mental fatigue, as I’ve found this is just as much (or more) of a mental exercise.

Yesterday afternoon, with much self-encouragement, I managed to hold plank for the 2:00 I couldn’t handle the previous evening. And before I went to bed last night I managed to hold the plank for 2:10, so I’m all caught up! Today it is on to 2:20.

This challenge has me facing the fact that I find it very difficult to get past physical discomfort to do anything. When I am physically pressed I quickly begin thinking, "There is no way…how am I ever going to get through this?" Ever since I started this challenge I have worked on changing the way I approach these things. I remind myself I’ll get through it, because I’ve done it before and gotten through it. That goes for everything, from completing this challenge to staying awake while coming home in the wee hours on Sunday morning after seeing T’s saxophone teacher perform. I feel the toning benefits in my body, too. My legs and core are a lot stronger now than they were two weeks ago.

Now, to apply that thinking to my "Introduction to Improvisation: Week 2" homework. The teacher has thrown some…interesting music theory at us, the likes of which I have neither seen nor heard, before. I’m rushing to finish Week 2′s assignment before time runs out tomorrow, then it’s on to Week 3. I am learning a lot in a very short amount of time, but I’ve downloaded all of the videos and handouts to review in the future. F7 Altered scale? Really? Who comes up with these names?

While working, I listened to the Minnesota State Senate debate the bill proposing same-sex marriage. I felt affirmed as a valid human being after every speech of support. I felt reviled, disrespected, and invalidated as a human being after every speech of dissent, no matter how the speaker claimed to otherwise “support” same-gender-loving people or claimed to not be a bigot. (How can you debate away someone’s human rights with veiled references to bestiality, come close to calling their feelings an abomination, then claim to support them? The cognitive dissonance, it burns.) I wanted to take to my Twitter and Facebook feeds with missives against those viewpoints, specifically so my brother and others who believe like him could see just how disgusted and alienated I am by their claims of love/respect/support behind their messages of same-sex relationships somehow being not a good or right thing.

But…they will believe what they choose to believe, regardless of the reality of who I and so many like me love. So if they will choose regardless of reality, I ought continue to love, regardless of their choice. Sure, legislators have the power to give and take away rights…so my energy, when it is not channelled into the reality of my life, ought to be directed towards them, not shouting at closed ears.

Perhaps some day these debates will no longer happen. Public opinion is swinging that way, thank goodness. The right of people to marry whomever they love and the right of same-sex couples to be served by any business they choose is self-evident to me and a growing number of other people. As long as our rights are cemented into law, that is what matters most. It doesn’t take away the sting of rejection by those who claim to otherwise love us, but it helps. A little.

Update: I will say this, though. I am angry that my human rights are under debate at all. I am angry members of my biological family feel there is no disconnect between saying they love me and saying they’d not attend, if T and I marry. I am tired from trying to be nice, be polite, and not bring up my anger each and every time I talk to them. My anger burns, and I wish I didn’t have cause to be angry at all.

Yesterday, for Mothers’ Day, I made the following post on FB:

This one is for everyone for whom Mothers’ Day is painful or complicated or bitter.

You are loved.
Your very existence is proof of your worth.
My life is better, having known you.
I am not the only one who feels that way.

That post struck more than a few nerves. Nearly 20 people clicked “Like”, and several more posted their thanks. There were a few other posts along those lines on my FB feed that day.

Wouldn’t it be nice, if everyone could celebrate Mothers’ Day with joy? But life is messy, which means people are messy, which means relationships are messy, which means shit happens, which means Mothers’ Day will never be joyous and pain-free for all. Such is life.

I called my mother to wish her a happy Mothers’ Day. (I had intended to make her a card using one of my fine art photos, but the holiday snuck up on me…I thought it was next Sunday!) She is happy and healthy and active with her church. She even had a chance to spend last weekend with her sister in Brooklyn. I am grateful.

Photography Today

I made this shot on my way to meet a friend for snacks and good conversation.

Bryant Park

I loooooooove the socks!

Photography Tomorrow

I am rethinking my approach to my photography, after a photographer-in-training and I discussed our plans for our photography. I reiterated/remembered my ultimate goal is for me to have my work shown to and purchased by art collectors. So my thoughts are wandering along the lines of, "Why would a collector pay top dollar for my work, if anyone can purchase a print of my work from the likes of Etsy?" I am not sure what I want to do with that question, so I am going to run it by an artist friend (whose work IS purchased by serious art collectors) and sit with it for a while. If any of you have any opinions, though, I’d be interested in hearing them.

I don’t intend to completely pull my work out of the average consumer’s reach. Perhaps I just need to separate out "consumer" works and "collector" works. I’ll definitely be thinking about this.

Update: I received confirmation that my gut is steering me in the right direction.

Last night’s dreams were much nicer. They were full of reunions with friends I had not seen in a while and the joy on their faces when I greeted them. I’ll take more dreams like that.

It might help that I allowed myself to publicly express the disgust that had fueled the previous two nights’ angry dreams. I hadn’t allowed myself that outlet, and my desire to not be passive-aggressive means I had simply suppressed my anger. No bueno.

I need to take extra care of myself this week, as my body is going through a rougher PMS transition than normal. Even Red Clover tincture didn’t stave off the night sweats and alternating cold/hot feeling throughout the night. At one point I thought I might have a fever, the cycle was so vicious. I’m glad I spent most of Saturday out of the house, because this week will probably be spent cocooning.

Me, Under a Cherry Tree
Brooklyn Botanic Garden
4 May 2013

The "rules" say fat or old people should never be photographed from below, because it shows their rolls or wrinkles. Fuck the rules. I like this self-portrait, double-chin and all!