I just finished working out at the gym

Phew! That's better.

Why do things always click into place when you're not thinking about them? I can't wait til research has come to the point where we can understand background thinking better. It almost makes me want to never think about anything, and let the gnomes running the treadmill decide things for me.

I know, I know, you have to have the knowledge in the first place, and put in the initial energy. Just because most famous scientists think of their major discoveries on the toilet or while walking the dog doesn't mean they would have made those discoveries without being a scientist in the first place.

I've been thinking about Willpower today, and how it's a muscle that should be used gently but regularly. It's hard to find willpower when you're weak, tired, or unhappy, but if you use, say 70%, of your possible willpower each day, you're getting a good workout and there's less effort required during the times it matters. Like when you're feeling really bad and turn to crap food for comfort. That's not the moment to decide to be healthy or start using that whithered away W muscle.

What is willpower anyway? Is it even necessary in the long run, or only to get yourself out of a really deep hole? If we didn't have all these holes of modern society, would willpower be a joke?

i wish i hadn't started thinking about jobs

I started looking at LinkedIn, at Craigslist, and doing random google industry searches. My body is covered in a cold sweat and I'm on the verge of crying.

What is wrong with me?

Everytime I move I do this. I start from everything and end up finding nothing. I wish I knew what I wanted. I'm so bored with this panic attack career nightmare. It's as old as the British accent.

I'm gonna have to back off now before I start crying in the internet cafe. Alright Vanessa, suck it up. Things will be ok. You have skillz. Even if you start at the bottom bottom somewhere, they'll figure out, as usual, that you are great. The key is to find the bottom of the correct mountain.

Sometimes I'm convinced that the only thing I know how to do decisively is take tests. I'm buried under such awe and jealousy of all you people that know what you're doing and take logical steps to continuously further your careers. Or even if you don't do that, the fact that you have any career at all feels like another planet to me. I wasn't made for this world. The more I read, the further away I drift. If only I could read forever, and sail away on a sea of abstraction.

Food advice

Here's a healthy food tip:

Restaurant food is often rich and heavily seasoned. When eating out somewhere unhealthy, aim to eat about half your meal. Then, when you eat the other half at home, add a bunch of greens or other fresh veggies to it, heat, mix, and eat. You won't even notice the added health content probably, because the original sauce had so much salt, seasoning, and fat content. It actually tastes better to me this way, then I don't get sodiumed out. Also, your tasty meal goes further. I first got this idea at Scopa, where they often put a handful of fresh rocket on top of their pizzas. And when I buy kebabs or sandwiches for lunch now, I make sure I have a bag of mixed greens, a fresh avocado, etc that I supplement the food with. More and better bang for your buck!

The same philosophy can apply to desserts. If you supplement that brownie with an apple and some nuts, you'll probably eat half the amount of brownie you normally would have eaten, while getting the same chocolate joy. And the added joy of a less sickly heavy tummy. Experiment with increasing the time between mains and desserts to decrease the linkage between a full tummy and a sweet craving. Sweets are fun, but not when you HAVE to eat them at the end of any big meal. I notice I actually eat smaller quantities of dessert when I eat them by themselves, because my body is better at detecting sugar levels when I don't have a stomach cushioned by meat, fats and slower carbs.

That's all for now! I love not working!

Pain (Emo Blog)

Heh. I figured out my back issue. It was due to my chair not being tightly fixed upright. I've never been able to figure out how to get it to stay in one position. It turns out the solution is NOT even close to intuitive. You have to manipulate 2 levers at the same time, rather than just lifting the forward one to move forward or the backward one to move back. Terrible design. It's taken me 3 months to figure it out.

I probably mentioned on here earlier that Taisuke gave me a talk on CD by Pema Chodron, called Getting Unstuck. It's all about working through thoughts with an addictive quality, through meditation techniques. Some of my addictive thoughts are quite pleasant (fantasy, sex, food) and I'm not entirely convinced I want these thoughts to lighten up, but I have plenty of negative thoughts - anxiety, bitchiness, annoyance, anger, self-loathing, addictive urges, etc. The usual spread. This week when these thoughts have happened I've tried to breath through to the underlying emotion that happens first, before the thoughts crowd up. And I've found something strange. The underlying feeling of pain and discomfort is always the same. Sadness and more positive experiences are different, but all that negative stuff is the same root. The black place. I carry a piece of depression with me wherever I go. I thought it was totally gone, but it's everpresent. I've smoothed over it with positive thinking, friends, luxuries, and a healthy lifestyle, but I haven't solved it. It's funny how much we carry our pasts with us. So much pain. My breathing feels thick and heavy when I do this. It's almost too much to handle. I woke up this morning at 6 fretting about asking people for references for my upcoming job search, and imagining getting sucked into temping or the wrong career field again. Mega anxiety and doubt. I slowed down and paid attention to what I was feeling that caused these thoughts. Gradually the thoughts grew shorter and shorter until I was left with pain, and a light background buzz of thought flashes. Pain is a skilled hide and seek player. My intuitions that depression and anxiety are different from sadness were confirmed tenfold with this exercise. Sadness is front pain, light pain. Pain I gladly embrace fully (probably why I'm such a good crier.) This is much less comfortable and comes from the center of my body.

I'll keep practicing and let you know of any further updates to my mental development. This is all very exciting for me.

I've been doing data entry all week, along with 3 other temps the Ministry quickly scrambled to hire after realizing demand for scholarships outstripped past years by a fair bit, and my back is killing me. I've tried all sorts of positions, but I think it has to do with the ridgidity I hold my body in when tabbing through fields, combined with repetitive turning to the right to pick up the next paper application. I'll try moving my papers to the left for awhile. Of course, that means I'll have to move my mouse back over to the right, encouraging a different sort of repetitive stress injury. Office work is a strange balancing act of preventing your body from destroying itself. Data entry is my second least favorite type of work (the first being customer service, which is far too artificial for my nature. I was the kid that would fake sickness to avoid the door to door sales stuff we used to do to raise funds for our school. Luckily my mother also hated it and was quite happy to let me sit it out). At least I'm being paid at the Executive Assistant rate, rather than the Data Entry one.

My healthy kick is going well. I lost a kilo over the past week. My skin feels good, probably due to the free avocadoes my boss continuously brings in.

Quick World Report

Francisco is traveling across Utah, in and out of phone reception. I am dieting. In New York, my father is breathing a big sigh over relief about a now resolved hugely annoying traffic ordeal. As I chew on a piece of red pepper (my favorite color), my friend Miranda sells off her possessions to fund another one of her continental bike adventures (Africa this time). Ben is somewhere in Wellington, doing something (I wouldn't know what, I haven't talked to him in months. I should really call that guy). My email to my sister Zoe is bumping its head against a technology wall outside of physical space: delayed delayed delayed. The mail system will keep trying to deliver your message for another 43 hours 57 minutes. I wish I could pat the mail system on its back and tell it to stop trying so hard, that 43 hours from now cities could be fallen, that I have other communication systems to fall back on.

I was going through everyone's blogs yesterday, startled that yet again I have not kept in quality touch with people near me, that our minds are light years apart. My friends have so much going on in their lives right now and I in my self-absorbed bubble am not aware of any of it. Brenda and Taisuke moved! Did I know this? No. I meant to ask Allen about his blog last night at TV night, but had some strange severe allergic reaction to Ken and Jeanne's house and was incommunicado for the whole event. My mac n cheese was great though. I ate leftovers for lunch today and felt rad, even if the bread crumb topping was a bit soggy by that point. I pretty much used the recipe on foodnetwork.com if you want to make it. I added cayenne pepper, doubled the amount of cheese and noodles, but only used 1.5 - 1.66 times the amount of all other ingredients (and only 1 egg), because that's how I roll.

Work is wrapping up fine (went out to a lovely dinner at Chow with coworkers, James and Maire on Monday), life is easy, dieting is actually working this week. I must be in the strong part of my cycle. My head is clear. I bet people are finding me more sexually attractive than usual. Oooh, strange creepy sexual dreams last night.

Seasons Affect my Disorders

Today I decided that I won't be taking a trip to the South Island before leaving NZ. Since I've arrived here, everyone's pretty much been saying, "Go to the South Island. It's soooooo much nicer than the North Island. If you think this view's nice, WAIT til you see the SOUTH Island." So I'd got it into my head that I'd be taking a trip to the glaciers, mountains, and coastline of the rugged south during my last 2 weeks here. It was totally stressing me out, thinking about planning a vacation in the middle of packing and saying good bye to everyone. Plus, let's be honest here, I need the money. I've got some expensive unemployed time coming up and can use every cent my temping procures.

So! I'm not going anywhere this month. Weekend camping trips or hikes are as far as this lady is travelling.

Man, what a relief. Sometimes solving your problems is as simple as saying No.

No, I will not spend one of my last few precious moments here on a date with you.
No, I do not want that fancy fatty food.
No, I do not need another drink.
No, I don't feel like talking anymore.
No, I do not need anything from the store.
No, I don't have to use up all my coupons/gift cards/flybuys points before I leave.
No thanks, I can't afford that right now.

My life is exciting enough thank you. I've seen the "real" New Zealand. Another solo adventure in the countryside sounds exhausting. I think of all the money I'll be saving and giggle manically. I'd love to do something awesome for all my friends here with my newly identified time and fundage. First step: make them baked macaroni tomorrow. I dream about that one Dad used to make. I've been trying to call him for the recipe but now that we are, for all practical purposes, 8 hours off of NY, it's become a complicated thing. The sun is gone by 6, I can't talk to the East Coast, and I wake up too early. I hate this time of year. Thank god for hemispheric strategising.

Monkey Cult

I just had my first fresh feijoa. I'd been avoiding them based on my unpleasant experience with feijoa "inspired" cocktails, but, as usual, it turns out the fresh experience is a different story. I wasn't sure how to eat it so I just peeled off the outside. Next time I might peel a thicker layer off, since the edge approaches unpleasant tartness. The middle is fantastic though. Eating the soft middle in combination with the harder outside is like eating delicious sour candy. A+ effort, Feijoa!

It's been a really lovely week. Low stress, lots of exercise, a sudden feeling that my stuffed monkey is God.... He hangs from my ceiling, head cocked to one side, eyes straight at me when I lie or sit in bed, a slight smile on his face, so I suppose it was only a matter of time before I started infusing him with spirituality. I've been drinking canned beer in bed this week, and every time I flip the tab off, I get up to the letter G. I was disappointed not to be getting any F's, but after the third occasion I thought to myself, maybe it's the monkey! Maybe he has a crush on me! I was brainstorming what his name could be, and came upon Guy. That almost fit. "Guy guy guy," I thought. "Guy....God! Of course he's God."I mean, if everything is God, why not my monkey? I ended up starting into his black plastic eyes for a couple solid minutes. It was a cool experience.

Ok, you can all laugh at me now!

I also got to thinking how similar the "All is One" religious thought is with the more modern idea that there are no conscious minds outside of one's own. The feeling that this world is created in one's mind. Who thought of that, I forget now? Anyway, if all is one, of course there is no consciousness outside of your mind! They are all you! We're all sharing the same mind. The more I read, from all religious and philosophical extremes, the more I get the feeling that everything is converging on one idea. Whether it's an idea that the human mind has just evolved perfectly to think up, or the TRUTH, I don't know. Does spiritual certainty equate with Truth? How much can we rely on the "I know I'm right" feeling? And if we can't, what else is there? Science and logic seem to be fueled by that feeling as much as any other discipline, although it's harder to see.