Category: Meta-Blogging

Fuel gauge on empty

Running on Empty

On By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, Meta-Blogging, The Voices in My HeadLeave a comment

Fuel gauge on empty(Just to continue the car metaphors from yesterday, plus bonus points for the 70’s rock call-out.)

When I came back to JALC, I was very deliberate in not setting myself an explicit “I’m going to post every day!” kind of goal. It’s another reflection of that practice/pressure dichotomy: even if, in my heart of hearts, I was kind of hoping I could post every day (or, at least, almost every day), I didn’t want to put that out there as a super-strong goal, for fear of the beat-up I’d inflict on myself when life happened and I missed a day or two.

Now, I’m not entirely missing out on posting today, but this is definitely one in the “quick hit” variety.

‘Cos life, it certainly is happening.

I head out to the center tomorrow afternoon. I am excited. I am nervous. I have a fair piece of packing, travel logistics and generally getting my sh!t together to accomplish tonight. And in the midst of all of that, I’m not really having two coherent or insightful thoughts to string together into a more substantive post.

So: I’m off to get myself ready for travel.

Not even time left over for another castor oil pack. (Which, for the record, have gotten easier to do after the first couple tries. Just like I predicted. *grin*)

———-

Image credit: http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=8422

Are You In Or Are You Out?

On By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, Health at Every Size, Meta-Blogging1 Comment

With the demise of Google Reader (my long-ago link into the blogosphere), I’ve been trying to work out whether the Fatosphere blog feed is still operational, and whether “Just Another Lifestyle Change” is still in the club.

As best as I can make out, the answer to the first question is a double “yes” (double on account of availability in both feedly and blogspot flavors), while the answer to question #2 is, I think, a “no.” Evidence for that latter theory: my “I’m back” post from last night hasn’t hit the feed, leading me to guess that years of silence led to my blog being culled from the feed on account of appalling inactivity. (It is also possible that new posts are now manually moderated for inclusion into the feed resulting in an inevitable time lag, but I think that’s less likely.)

In all honestly, I think I’m more relieved than disappointed at the notion of having been edited out of the feed. There’s certainly part of me that would have liked to still be there, cos hey! more potential readers. But I’m also aware that during the past week, as I was actively contemplating starting writing here again, that I delayed and procrastinated a tiny bit for fear that I was still in the feed.

Don’t get me wrong: I am still very committed to the ideals of fat acceptance/size acceptance as I understand them, and I expect that as the weeks and months go on that I’ll have opportunities to explore those topics.

But — even though all the conventional wisdom is about finding your bloggy niche and sticking to it — I don’t want to just be writing about fat acceptance topics here.

For example, if I’m reading a really interesting book that’s marking a distinction between “happiness” and “pleasure,” and I want to contemplate the overlaps with my own noodlings about living on mission, I don’t want to censor that line of exploration simply because it’s not a “fatosphere” kind of post.

More pressingly, I’m about to spend some time actively learning about and exploring different methods for physical detox. And this is going to include some serious work on the huge percentage of processed food and sugar in my diet.

I know to my core that my detox journey is not for the purpose of losing weight. But I know it is possible that my weight may fluctuate or drop in this experiment, and I also know that the dominant discourse around detoxing in the U.S. culture is all about weight loss. So I imagine that me describing my detox journey on the Fatosphere feed might be a very tricky thing to do — no matter how strong my intention to present the journey through the lens of size acceptance.

So, everything in its rightful place. Including “JALC,” twinkling on its own in the bloggy firmament.

——

PS, and apropos of nothing aside from a coincidental overlap with my post title: Swedish pop never gets old. Oh ABBA Museum, someday I shall make thee a pilgrimage….

Counting in Glacial Time

On By MezzoSherriIn Meta-Blogging, The Voices in My Head6 Comments

Okay, that was one hell of a hiatus.

I am somewhat comforted to see that the Merriam-Webster definition of the word uses an author’s and a (rock?) band’s five-year hiatus as examples in the usage notes. You see, I only took 4-and-a-half years off,* so I’m ahead of the game, right?

Something like that.

Anyhow, it’d be redonkulous to try and summarize all that time in a post, so here’s just a couple random highlights:

  • Our New England wedding (3 years ago) was (mostly) delightful, with me in all my Spanx-less glory, and our New England road trip honeymoon was sufficiently inspiring that we ended up moving up to the Boston area within the last year
  • In between those two life transitions I started a different blog,** and spent lots of time and energy on work and my TV addiction. (And iPad games.)

Throughout this time, I have also (especially?) been continuing my consciousness study. Something I’ve been looking at during the last six months especially is the sense of wanting to write about what matters to me, but not really knowing what it is that I have to say or to write about.***

And then, as I was thinking over some self-care projects that I have coming up, I remembered this blog and re-read the posts from all those years ago.

Maybe I’ve known what it is I have to write about for a while now. Maybe I just set it aside till I was in a better place to take it on.

* Well, 4 years and 7 months, but who’s counting?

** Which also got mostly abandoned. Evidently, I have been better for the starting of things than the sustaining of them.

*** Doesn’t that sound kind of hilariously familiar? (The more things change…)

Hiatus to Be Human

On By MezzoSherriIn Meta-Blogging3 Comments

Remember 2 weeks ago when I was predicting I’d be all quiet and non-bloggy on account of Dad’s New England memorial and whatever next step of grieving that might kick off? And then how I got all kinds of talkative?

Now I think I’m in that spot of sadness.

I don’t really know why — well, I “know why” in the big picture, of course. I just don’t quite know why the feelings are so much stronger during these past couple days.

But they are. That’s all there is to it.

So if I’m disengaged from commenting or posting or other email/internet communication, please bear with me. I’ll resurface when I can.

Showing Up

On By MezzoSherriIn Don't you want to be thin?, Meta-Blogging, Self-Acceptance, Spirituality, The Subtle Body1 Comment

It was a kinesiology training weekend, so my hours have been very full and I am now exhausted. I can’t believe I’ve made it through 8 of the 10 training retreats. It seems like only yesterday I was just starting to learn the ReUnion Process. Conversely, it seems like I have undergone lifetimes since the first training session.

There’s a lot of new (and renewed) material from this weekend that I have to integrate around the deep potential this work carries for me to reach new layers of self-acceptance. But one of the big messages form the weekend was about the simply — and simply powerful — importance of continuing to do the work. In doubt, in confidence, when you’re feeling triggered, when you’re in the flow, when the work is challenging. Show up. Keep showing up. Keep doing the work.

Strikes me that it’s not a bad mantra to hang onto in the more focused project of growing into fat acceptance, or to the even more focused project of maintaining a blog. So it’s a shorter entry tonight. Nevertheless, I showed up.

==========

In other news, there’s a new MTT (“Meridian Tapping Technique,” formerly known as EFT) resource I’m thinking of tapping into.* But, like every other MTT resource package I’ve ever seen, this one has the evidently-obligatory materials about “Tapping for Weight Loss.”

So, do I get the package because I want to learn better ways to use MTT for other health and mental health issues (anxiety, insomnia, cramps, headaches, chronic pain), and just accept that the inclusion of weight loss materials is just another symptom of the deep cultural assumption about how thin=healthy? Or do I skip the resource package as a one-woman protest against the mindless perpetuation of that cultural assumption?

* Tap into. Get it? Get it? (I slay me.)

Strangers with Expertise

On By MezzoSherriIn Don't you want to be thin?, Meta-Blogging3 Comments

My most recent post was the first one to appear on the Fatosphere and Fat Chat feeds. (Thank you again to Bri for doing the work to maintain them!) If I hadn’t seen that with my own eyes — I happily subscribe to both feeds in google reader — I might have figured it out anyhow on account of some new commenters who stopped by with encouraging words as I faced off against body dysmorphia and some family baggage.

More puzzling to me was the drive-by “just lose the weight” comment that I deleted before it saw the light of day.

The wording itself wasn’t especially interesting (even though I’m kicking myself for having deleted it, thus lessening the accuracy of my reportage these days later). Certainly not as abusive or insulting as I’ve seen hurled at other fatosphere authors. A statement as mild in tone as “just cut the excuses and lose weight,” authored by someone identifying zirself as “fitnessguru.”

All of which is to say: I am emphatically not whining ‘cos someone said something mean to wittle old me. Instead, I am just truly and sincerely puzzled about what reasoning exists behind this gesture. Would someone really follow the FA blog-feed and assume that all the authors there aren’t sincerely FA but are instead simply putting on a brave front until they find the way to become thin again? Would that someone then be so lost in the “thin is the only way!” headspace that they’d then make a habit of targeting FA writers with renewed exhortations to just lose weight?

Here’s where I’m kicking myself that little bit for deleting the comment rather than saving it as blog-fodder. I don’t recall seeing a really blatant push for nutritional or fitness counseling, but with a comment-name like “fitnessguru,” I can’t help wondering at what point the conversation that began with “Cut the excuses!” was going to devolve into the bingo-card entry “I have the answer to being thin: eat less and exercise more!”

Strangers with expertise, wandering by and telling me how I should live my life, since my own priority towards fat acceptance and self-acceptance is totally silly and fucked up.

Frankly, I think I’d rather have the candy.

The Comparison Trap: When Blogging meets Life

On By MezzoSherriIn Meta-Blogging, Self-Acceptance, Spirituality, The Voices in My Head5 Comments

It’s interesting to me how my patterns of inadequacy and “not enoughness” can seep into so many corners of my life so subtly and so intractably.

Like here.

I started a blog because I wanted place to explore my own thoughts about self-acceptance. And yet I’ve found myself with a case of writer’s block these several days. Call it the Ecclesiastian block, a.k.a. the “nothing new under the sun” syndrome. Everywhere I look, it seems, there’s writers out in the blogosphere who are examining any topic I might, and they’re doing it with wit and thoughtfulness and profundity. In other words, they’re all doing it “better than I could” — at least, that’s what the voice in my head is telling me.

In other other words, I have fallen right into the comparison trap.

Comparison is just about the most effective self-esteem killer I know. After all, if self-esteem is intertwined with self-acceptance, what is the effect on self-acceptance when I look outside myself for the standards of how to be? Basically, it’s me stacking the deck against myself. Instead of honoring what is authentically Sherri, I judge my existence against someone else, which gets me into this loop where I beat up on myself for my inability to be someone else.

The absurdity of that logic should be evident in that last phrase I typed: beat up on myself because I can’t be someone else. Asking, expecting myself to be someone I’m not. And how fucked up is that expectation to put on myself?

After all, like Dave Matthews asked years ago, “Could I have been anyone other than me?”

Nope. And yet I so often fall into that trap of trying to be someone else, expecting to act like someone else, and then being bitterly disappointed and self-blaming when I (inevitably) fail in that project.

The road away from that habit has been a long one, and it’s not been an uninterrupted journey. But more and more I’m able to tap into an awareness of my authentic self, and the faith that I am authentically, uniquely perfect in my existence.

“Could I have been anyone other than me?” No, and that’s a reason to celebrate and to honor. And the beauty of that notion — and the fragility with which I am currently able to hold it — is likely the reason why that particular song always makes me tear up a little bit…

So in addition to Dave, I’m going to try and take a notion from my man Stephen Sondheim:

George: I’ve nothing to say

Dot: You have many things

George: Well, nothing that’s not been said

Dot: Said by you, though, George

“Said by you, though.” Things that have been said, things that are being said elsewhere, things that will be said differently by others — those things are still worth saying by me, if they’re things I want to explore and express. Because there is an essential difference between my voice and another writer’s. When I’ve fallen into the comparison trap, I fixate on that difference as the reason why my thoughts are “worse,” and why I shouldn’t bother saying them in public.

But when I separate myself from the habit of judgement, that same awareness of difference is the road to believing my words deserve their own airing. Not ‘cos they’re “better” than anyone else’s. Just because they are unique and strangely perfect in their own way, their own moment.

So I guess I fell into the black hole real fast, but at least I’ve come out of it pretty quickly.

A Tale of Two Blogs

On By MezzoSherriIn Fat is Just an Adjective, Meta-Blogging1 Comment

Once upon a time, I was a stick-skinny girl.

Then (around age 20) I hit my second puberty and became a girl with an hourglass figure. And still pretty skinny.

Then (around age 30) my metabolism changed again and I became Officially Overweight. And I learned to diet. And I lost weight. And I gained weight. And some of that project is documented here on the blog I kept from 2004-2007. And then some of the self-loathing that accompanied the weight cycling carried over here into the blog I kept (sort of) during 2007.

But then I started to change the way I thought about my body and being overweight. And a teeny tiny bit of that made it over onto blog #2. And I thought about continuing the conversation there, but decided …… no.

So now (as I’m approaching 40) I’ve decided to open up a new space for my writing. Not because I want to wish away my history but simply because I chose to open up a new space.

So here I am. Making another change for myself.