Some Small Realizations

New Year 2013. Chinese New Year, the Year of the Snake. My birthday. Check, check and check. We're already into March, for crying out loud, with the nicely palindromic 3/1/13.
And I still don't know who I am or what all my choices, intentions, achievements of this year will be! You'd think it would be important to find that out, in a time so tessellated with transition. The question of where I should live runs alongside the question of how to structure my mixed genre creative thesis and which of the many themes I'm so excited to write on will really fit, and meanwhile my mental flywheel spins questions of what "diet" I should consider myself as being on; what foods I'm currently eating I should quit, as always..
But some things I have come to know, and I've come to know them through listening to myself.
Some people say they prefer the beach, some the mountains; some don't like the outdoors at all. I've generally felt my usual frozen inability to locate a preference or decision among all the outdoor places I love to be.
But trailing the dogs one time recently, I came with them into some woods atop a bluff above one of the beaches we hike (I had to lift them down from bluff to beach swinging from the sea wall later, but that's another story). I felt myself in that light and presence. And yes, there is truth to the "Ela-treela" and "tree fairy" appellations I've had over the years. 
I love direct sunlight, but I also love the dappled light of woods; of jungle, even, and I love just being amid trees, feeling all that expanding-upward energy, vertical earth, almost.
This photo from those woods looks exactly like a poem I had been working on shortly before. Its title? Simply "Ars Poetica."

For another thing: I spent most of yesterday, my birthday, driving home from Anchorage, grateful for good roads and a good, comfortable, reliable car. I spent yesterday--and most of today too--feeling very sick...because of some things I chose to ingest that I shouldn't have (and knew it), and consequently, that I failed to ingest and should have (was already feeling too sick).
OK, my bad, etc etc... But here's what I learned!
As I was acknowledging to myself at one point that I felt truly awful, a voice inside said I wished I didn't feel like that, wished I could feel more like I normally do.
If I wish not to feel awful, and to feel more like my norm, a fortiori that means I wish to be alive, to be here feeling at all!
Syllogism aside, that was a huge recognition. For most of my life off and on, I've felt apathetic resignation toward being alive, with an apathetic preference not to be. And that's not talking about when I'm in a depression. So, maybe this is moving into one of those spells where I feel an element of active electiveness toward being alive.
Good.

Post-Epiphany; There but for the grace of...myself

This Epiphany day is only my third back home. Each day, both in its physical attributes and in the experiences it's offered, has been so different from the other that it feels like I've been back longer.

What is Epiphany/epiphaneia? It means epi-appearance -- an appearance/apparition/manifestation with something extra riding on top of it. That extra part could be how intense the thing is, like a really bright light, or it could be how intensely the thing strikes you, like a really bright light that brings you to your knees in prayer. 

A very ordinary object or fact could trigger an epiphany if it strikes you in a certain way. When days go by clothed in such diversity, they offer a backdrop for multiple Epiphanies far beyond the sixth of January.

Today, it came up several times, applying to different people, that working out while sick or insisting on working when exhausted or not paying attention to warning signs around one's mental health all are subconscious messages to oneself and one's body that "getting the work" done is more important than health, the body's needs, and even life. 

That's an epiphany. Leading to a further epiphany: I know I am a fire that can burn out and also a volcano that can overflow. I must also, then, be a firekeeper. 

Containing my fire is/would be a mark of respect: I am connected to everyone and yet I am contained. I acknowledge the breathtaking support I receive from so many loving individuals and from the universe, but on top of that, it appears to me that I need to shoulder myself.

When I consider some of the more unhappy people in the Place of No Shoelaces (and forgive me, I'm just beginning to conceive of writing about this), I saw no separation. 
No, I'm not the woman so unwashed that even her turning over in the night wakens her roommate with the odor. But I have neglected my own hygiene to a harmful extent only partially excusable by our lack of plumbing.
No, I'm not the woman who hides in her room, comes out occasionally with a vague smile, shuffling, can't say more than a short sentence to anyone. But I have been withdrawn into myself so far that other people seem sealed out hermetically with that slightly bubbling plexiglass, like on the windows here.
No, I'm not the man pacing the halls through the evening and night holding a murmured conversation with himself, his pajama bottoms periodically descending as he steps on them. But I have paced the halls day and night, with loud conversations inside my head.
I'm not the girl who banged her head against the door, fought the staff who tried to stop her, and had to be tackled. But I did bang my head against the door.

There but for the grace of...myself...  There, through grace of myself, went I.

I'm not the men and women who had no support system and nowhere to go that reduced the likelihood they'd be back inside soon. 
I feel so much gratitude for a great support system and that, at least for now, I have health insurance.
But at the end of it all, I am my own firekeeper. 
And the diversity of days reminds me of the "50 First Weeks" theme I had going last year. This acknowledgment of responsibility as firekeeper to my inner dragon is a resolution or intention, but no way am I going to make all my resolutions in the first few days of the year! 
Any of these diverse days is good for resolution-making and intention-setting. Return to the fire.

Writerly Goals, Body Image, Clothing Size as Arbiter?

I mentioned in my last post that I had some body image-related issues on my mind and wanted to share. Here goes: it has to do with the whole area of goal-setting, self confidence, and my intentions for myself as a writer.

For most of my emaciated 20's, I was a small size zero, or less, and for the more functional parts of that time, I never even thought about clothing size. I was able to keep the body image demons in check through appeal to the undeniable objective fact that I was tiny. For the last four years, after my deliberate and masochistic weight gain, disordered and partial weight loss, and the beginnings of dealing with a consequent damaged thyroid, adrenals and reproductive system, I've been bigger than has been comfortable for me, and have felt relatively helpless to do anything about it, especially when I couldn't exercise at all.

Last year around May, I started being able to work out again, and have done so, strenuously and consistently. Last year too, although I was constantly dieting one way or another (it's the only way I know to eat), all the diets shared the philosophy of eating to appetite, albeit restricting something or another, with the plan that this would send thyroid function and metabolism into supercharge. Well, last November I had to have my thyroid dosage increased, so obviously that didn't work. And a month earlier, I lamented my apparent lack of succes in body composition improvements on here.

I realized that I needed to be successful in achieving my body composition goals, because otherwise I can have no confidence in my success as a writer. If I can't make the body I live in OK to me (and no, acceptance of it as it was was not an option), then how can I expect to send my work out into the world and have it received as I intend? It seemed like a gap in integrity.

A couple months ago, I set the small goal that I should be able to wear size 2 jeans by the end of February (I was wearing 4's), and have been working on it through both diet and exercise. That seemed reasonable, measurable (I don't use a scale) and not excessive in terms of being likely to trigger a relapse. It seemed to go well, and the universe was moving with me, apparently, as my appetite has been virtually nothing during this time. Now here's where it gets really interesting. We went to our favorite boutique, Value Village, when we were in Anchorage this week, and I thought it was time to grab a pair of size 2 jeans to measure my progress and have ready for a month from now. I tried on several pairs--and they all fit, comfortably, not at all tight--except for one that was too big and turned out to be a 3.

Part of me wanted to be delighted--made goal, and a month early at that. But another part of me was immediately second-guessing. I never tried to get into 2's before I started this. I always needed a belt for my 4's. I seem to have an awful lot of fat on me still for someone wearing size 2, although honestly I can definitely see a difference from three months ago. But maybe I could have worn these jeans before I even started?

Could I have been at goal without changing anything? And where should I go from here? The writerly part of me that needed this success still needs success and change body-wise. But have I gone far enough already to satisfy that, or do I need to go further?

Whatever I conclude about what I'm trying to do with my body and how far to continue, the size 2 jeans were my message to myself that I can "do it" as a writer, the impetus I needed to impel me into giving full, serious, reverent, confident attention to doing whatever it takes to be a successful, engaged, significant writer and poet. And I'm wearing those jeans right now, roomy enough for long johns underneath, so there can be no more delay or excuse.

As that t-shirt Tia sent me says, "here comes trouble"--and man, what a different season that pic was taken in!

Do you ever conflate goals like this, so that achieving one has implications for another? Curious for any feedback on this.