A Dinosaur with a Quill

On 29 May 2014 By MezzoSherriIn Life-Long Learning, Meta-Blogging, Self-Acceptance, Topics of Study5 Comments

I work in a very laptop-obsessed office. Every meeting we have is vaguely comical: all of us clustered around a table together and making zero eye contact because so many of us are staring at the screen and/or typing busily away taking notes. It’s especially funny in the offices furnished more by a bistro table than an actual conference table — imagine, if you will, some bizarre version of office jenga.

I’m not going to say I’m immune to exhibiting some of these behaviors myself. I carry my laptop into most meetings, in case something comes up in conversation that I need to pull down off a website or pull up out of my email or the document server. But unless I’m capturing the formal minutes of a meeting, I don’t usually use the computer to take notes. Instead, I use the old-fashioned tools of pen and paper.

Yes, I know: this makes me a veritable dinosaur in the contemporary work world. I’ve even read a viciously dismissive article by an Evernote aficionado* that talks about how anyone who takes pen and paper notes automatically loses her respect:

I knew right away, when you walked in here with a paper notebook — a paper notebook! — I realized that this meeting was not going to be a good use of our time. . . . You could be one of those romantic types who say that the visceral process of putting pen on paper liberates your creativity and engages lateral thinking. If you’re an after-hours poet, then, yes, that paper notebook will come in handy. For this, though, can you please go back and grab your laptop?

I’ve tried multiple times to adopt electronic note-taking methods. Nothing yet has worked to my satisfaction. I’m not sure that nothing ever will, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find myself, some stretch of time in the future, trying another technique, another structure, another iPad app, to crack the note-taking enigma.

But for now, I’m at peace with my antiquated habits. Especially now that I’ve tucked away these two articles (one and two) that suggest my handwriting habits may not be such a bad thing after all. Both articles summarize a study done at UCLA (or was it Princeton? the study authors split their affiliations between those two universities, but I’m fuzzier about which campus actually housed the research) comparing the efficacy of typed note-taking versus handwritten notes. As summarized by Wray Herbert in HuffPo:

Those who took notes in longhand, and were able to study, did significantly better than any of the other students in the experiment — better even than the fleet typists who had basically transcribed the lectures. That is, they took fewer notes overall with less verbatim recording, but they nevertheless did better on both factual learning and higher-order conceptual learning. Taken together, these results suggest that longhand notes not only lead to higher quality learning in the first place; they are also a superior strategy for storing new learning for later study. Or, quite possibly, these two effects interact for greater academic performance overall.

The scientists had an additional, intriguing finding. At one point, they told some of the laptop users explicitly not to simply transcribe the lectures word-by-word. This intervention failed completely. The laptop users still made verbatim notes, which diminished their learning. Apparently there is something about typing that leads to mindless processing. And there is something about ink and paper that prompts students to go beyond merely hearing and recording new information — and instead to process and reframe information in their own words.

Take that, bitchy Evernote ambassador! Science trumps your unfounded assumptions and prejudice! (Actually, science probably won’t do a damn thing to chip away at Ms. Evernote’s preconceptions. We always cling mostly strongly to the myths that are most unfounded.)

Anyhow, I’m sure there’s a connection between my old school pen-and-paperness at work and the continued parallelism of me blogging while maintaining a pen-and-paper journal as well.

Sometimes my diarizing feeds into the blog: keeping a physical journal can help me have space to process and synthesize things prior to presenting them out here. Sometimes the diarizing stays contained on the notebook pages: a place to process things that are too raw, too private, or just too far off-topic to make sense here. So, partly because of the ways it supports my writing on JALC, and partly for how it supports my life outside of here, I see myself happily filling more notebooks with pen-scribbles for years to come.

* Who is oh-so-coincidentally hawking her own “How to Use Evernote Effectively” e-book.

———-

Image credit: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/with-ipad-and-notebook-around-who-needs-a-pen-anymore/article2883480.ece

The Well of Intuition

On 20 May 2014 By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, Flagrantly Feminist, Self-Acceptance, The Voices in My Head, Topics of StudyLeave a comment

This great power, intuition, is composed of lightning-fast inner seeing, inner hearing, inner sensing, and inner knowing.

Over generations, these intuitive powers became as buried streams within women, buried by disuse and unfounded charges of disrepute. . . . I think we can be confident that things lost in the psyche are all still there. So, too, this well of women’s instinctual intuition has never been lost, and whatever is covered over can be brought back out again.

~~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves, 76

Although my focus with the HCG journey was on detoxing rather than the usually-marketed weight loss routine, I will admit that I wondered whether the experience would support me in being able to move more fully towards intuitive eating. After all, the dietary regimen has given me a chance to get out of the habit of processed food, and I also had lots of opportunity to study the ways that my hungers are sometimes more about emotional needs than actual physical sustenance.

However, having been out of my dietary/cooking routines during the four days of the retreat, I’m not sure that intuitive eating thing has really kicked in. Instead, I can recall several moments when I kept eating — taking cashew after cashew out of the bag for a snack, or going back for that extra little bit of egg salad at lunchtime — well past the point of physical hunger. Responding instead to emotional tension or anxiety.

I don’t say this out of some self-flagellating, confessional instinct. After all, as I’ve said before (and will surely say again and again): I am not striving for a perfection movement.

What instead interests me is the awareness that I don’t yet have a lot of faith in my ability to eat intuitively.

Or, quite honestly, in any level of my intuition.

The concluding movement from the weekend was a highly creative and individualized one, a movement that very much asked us to tune into our intuition. And although I have enough admiration for Clarissa Pinkola Estes that I will not choose to argue with her when she suggests that the well of intuition can always be mined and revived, I still gotta say that my intuition is feeling pretty far underwater.

I’m still too much trapped in my brain, caught up in the fear of “getting it wrong” to have the kind of surrender, the clear channel that allows my intuitive wisdom to come to the fore. And, as with my witnessing around those “extra” cashews, I am trying to name this in the spirit of honest self-examination rather than in a blaming/shaming tone. ‘Cos that sort of beat-up is the same kind of mind voice and ego eruption as the ones that kept me bottled up during the weekend.

Now I know, even in my self-imposed containment, I had some small offerings of intuition to make. And I also take some comfort in trusting that my faith and believing were contributions of their own flavor — perhaps an energetic support to those individuals who were more able to open up their creativity and intuitive insights.*

Still, it’s an area where I can keep studying, an area I can look to grow and express more fully. Which is why I started listening to the audiobook of Women Who Run With the Wolves during this morning’s commute. It’s probably well past time for me to become acquainted with this classic of feminist spirituality.

* Yeah, I know: coming up with this kind of justification to feel better about my contribution does serve also as a between-the-lines admission that, however much I’m trying to stay in witnessing rather than in self-castigation, there’s a little bit of that “mad at myself” piece going on. So, yeah: that happened.

Trading Two Left Feet for a Regular Pair

On 12 May 2014 By MezzoSherriIn Meta-Blogging, Pop Goes the Culture, Self-Acceptance, The Voices in My Head, Topics of StudyLeave a comment

I spent some time this evening getting organized and doing a little packing for my weekend retreat. And I should be doing my homework for said retreat. Instead, I’ve been trying to figure out another blog post while I watch Dancing with the Stars.*

Like with theater and musical theater, I have loved ballroom and contemporary dance for years. Unlike with musical theater, I have never had talents in that direction, so my love of dance has always been the love of a spectator rather than an aspirant.

(I mean, I can bluff my way through some basic stage choreography, like a lot of community theater participants. I think my natural musicality can give me some help in that department, but nevertheless: this gal would never be considered a triple threat.)

I’ve never been sure how much of my lack of dancing talent comes sincerely from a lack of talent in that direction and how much is the legacy of having lived dissociated or semi-dissociated for so many of my formative years.

There’s probably some aspect of a sincere lack of talent. I’m not naturally athletic in any direction, and I consider dance to be as sincere an athletic endeavor as any other sport. And then, when you look at my natural genetic body shape as compared to the body type of most dancers,** there’s another signal about how I’m not naturally suited for terpsichorean pursuits.

But as I’m learning more and more to live in my body and in communication with my physical self, and as that study overlaps with the possibility of me dipping my toes back into musical theater, I find myself wondering if the flavor of that experience might be a bit different now than from when I was last on stage, some decade or so ago.

Not that I’m expecting to be transformed from a faker to Fosse overnight, but I do wonder if there will be a bit more ease in my next dance audition. Hard to predict, but certainly something to watch.

* Fumbling fingers alert: my initial typing of the title was Dancing with the Tsars. How’s that for a new reality-show concept?

** You will, perhaps, notice that I don’t even list ballet as a dance style I’m strongly a fan of. That shit is just way too body dysmorphic for my tastes.

The Value of a Wasted Day

On 11 May 2014 By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, Practicing in the Heart, Self-Acceptance, The Pressure to Fix Myself, The Voices in My Head1 Comment

Yesterday was somewhat rich with errands — Mr. Mezzo has a quick trip for family business today and tomorrow, so we were trying to get a full weekend’s amount of usefulness crammed into the single day. Then in the evening, I went into the final, most intense steps for the gall bladder flush, which consist of a couple of doses of Epsom salts to help “clear out” the system (as it were), and then a grapefruit juice/olive oil cocktail to encourage the gall bladder to release any accumulated stones in there.*

I had a fair amount of discomfort during the overnight hours, and thus far, there hasn’t been much in the way of internal “movement,” if you get my drift. (I had kinda hoped this particular issue would complete itself once I finished the damn HCG shots, but oh well.) So that’s been my excuse to take it kind of easy today.

There’s certainly things I could (should) be doing. I have a retreat weekend coming up starting early morning Thursday, and supposed appointments Tuesday and Wednesday nights, so I could very well be packing and getting organized. Alternately, I could be doing some UNpacking down in the basement, since I’ve lost some momentum there with last weekend’s concert and next weekend’s out-of-townness. And then there’s always the usual rounds of grocery shopping, cleaning and decluttering, checkbook-balancing, and so on and so forth.

I dare say those laundry lists of things are remaining undone. After all, if at 7 PM the most ambitious things you’ve managed with your day is to take a shower and start a load of laundry, there’s not a whole lot else that can happen at this point.**

Make-A-Deal-Doors — http://mathfest.blogspot.com/2008/04/monty-hall-probability-problem-in-news.html

I’ve had wasted days like this before. More than I’d like to admit. But tonight, rather than sliding into my usual funk of self-flagellation, I’m trying to be more at peace with my inaction. My choices at the moment seem to be either (1) stew in guilt and self-castigation for the next few hours, making my evening pretty darn miserable and undoing whatever self-care has been accomplished by such a relaxing day; OR (2) show myself some self-acceptance, trust in the rightness of my system needing/wanting rest today, and enjoying what few hours of awake time I have remaining for my Sunday.

So, as a change of pace, I’m going to try for Door #2. Perhaps I’ll get a little bit more done. Perhaps — probably — I won’t. Either way, that’s going to be okay.

(There’s also a whole side conversation that could be had about the types of hard work I am doing these days — between the HCG journey and this gall-stones cleanse, I’ve been putting a lot of time and energy into detoxing and that level of growth. Never mind the preparations going on for this upcoming retreat weekend. Perhaps it’s okay that some more “traditional” modes of self-care are being underplayed while I put my energy towards some things that are less readily observed but nonetheless crucially important.)

* No, it wasn’t quite as disgusting as you’d imagine. Close, but not quite.

** Especially if one is a Game of Thrones watcher and needs to be ready for that come 9’o’clock.

The War of the Greasepaint

On 9 May 2014 By MezzoSherriIn Pop Goes the Culture, Self-Acceptance, The Voices in My Head2 Comments

Mr. Mezzo and I made an excursion tonight to see a high school production of the musical Once on This Island.* I know: this is either a completely bizarre or completely banal and suburban choice. Perhaps both.

But, one of the guys we sing in church choir with is a retired HS music teacher, so he’s still plugged into “the scene” (such as it is). He mentioned at Wednesday’s rehearsal that this was a really good production. And, setting aside the question of production quality, it’s undeniably a great show. So off we went.

(As far as I can tell,the production was a good one for a high school show. I realized partway through the first number that it’s been YEARS since I saw anything more amateurish than a cast that integrated college drama majors with professional actors. I know it’s really unfair to compare those shows with tonight’s, but I was quite aware of the contrast between then and now.)

But, more than any unfair comparisons between the quality of Philadelphia professional theater vs. Boston-area suburban high school productions, what this really got me thinking about was the fact that I like musical theater more than I like classical choral music. How much I love it, actually. How much I miss it, and all the ways it broke my heart and shattered my self-confidence.

I’ve always loved musical theater, and yet a majority of my performing arts training and experiences have been in classical music ensembles. There’s a reason for this. Lots of people love doing musicals, and even if I have some native singing and acting talent, I’m rarely talented enough to make it out of the chorus. (Or even to make it INTO the chorus, a lot of the time.) I’ve certainly never been talented enough to make up for all the ways I’m not conventionally attractive enough to get a “good” part.

Especially as I think back to my own times in high school productions, I recall how desperate my yearning was to have a role where I could really be seen and acknowledged, and how the comparison piece — uglier than this girl, less talented than that one — always kept that door closed.

I’ve even been thinking back on the only audition I ever deliberately tanked. A story I haven’t brought to mind for a long, long time.

———-

The high school drama teacher wanted me to read for Cha Cha diGregorio in Grease. She pulled me and the other auditioner aside to make sure we knew that, unlike the way that character was portrayed in the film, she wanted to have the Cha Cha in her production to be slovenly, unsexy, unattractive. “I need to know if you’re comfortable being really uglied up.”

I said I was fine with it. I didn’t have the awareness to see, or the courage to say, how soul-destroying this scenario felt — all the ways I was already seen as ugly and beneath notice on a daily basis, and then to somehow go uglier for the sake of the show. And the instinctual certainty that whatever “uglier” happened for the show would follow me into my daily traverse of the classrooms and halls.

I wasn’t entirely awake about throwing that particular callback. I just kind of left my body. Which, in passing, is a pretty effective way to make sure you don’t get a particular role.

———-

During college and grad school, I got more into the choral singing thing but kept a toe in the amateur musical theater world. Then, I let theater go entirely and stayed on the community chorus path for a while. In some ways, it was an easy choice to make: a major city like Philly has so many professional actors, theater companies, and national tours of Broadway shows that there really isn’t room for amateur musical theater to happen.

There’s also a lot of ways classical choral singing is safer. Fewer people want to do it, so there’s less competition. And in most cases, there’s no harm in adding another good, trained singer to the mix, so my odds of “making the cut” stay high. And since members of each section are all singing the same thing, there isn’t that same comparison charge around who got the lead and who didn’t.

And yet. I think I love theater more.

I’ve started doing some research about what community theater companies are in the area. Trying to feel into the idea of auditioning. Figuring out if my ego is sufficiently in-check for me to be okay even if I only get into the chorus of a show, or don’t get in at all. Wondering if I’m sufficiently aware of being “over the hill” that my aspirations might be more realistic than they used to be. Wondering if my sense of “loving theater more” is truly sincere or is just a deeper winding of that addictive desire towards being acknowledged or acclaimed.

I don’t know yet what I’m feeling. And I don’t yet know what I’m going to do.

* Shall I confess the amount of thought and research that went into the question of whether or not the “this” should be capitalized?

Dueling Detoxes

On 8 May 20148 May 2014 By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, Self-Acceptance, The Pressure to Fix Myself, The Voices in My HeadLeave a comment

I continue to make my way through the final phase of the HCG protocol and its food restrictions (1 week down, 2 to go).

I am also at the midway point of a 5-day process (Tuesday through Saturday) for a liver/gall bladder flush. And, as I mentioned in passing a few days ago, that process comes with its own list of food restrictions.

Where it gets a little interesting is when you compare the two lists.

For HCG (this final phase): Foods to prioritize: lean animal protein, eggs, nuts, dairy, fruit, and veggies. Foods emphatically to avoid: grains, legumes, carbohydrates.

For the liver/gall bladder flush: Foods to prioritize: grain, legumes, nuts, fruits and veggies. Foods emphatically to avoid: any animal product (meat, dairy, eggs).

The attentive reader will notice that, with the exception of nuts, there’s no real shared protein source between these two mirror-image exclusion lists.

So what’s a gal to do?

Well, first off, this gal is going to have a quietly self-contained freakout about it all.

I mean, the inner opera was pretty much Wagnerian in its epicness. The teenage frustration about having just crossed the finish line with my shots, having just “earned back” the chance to have full eggs and dairy and real salad dressing only to have to “give all that freedom back.” The identity who so strongly wants to do things properly, with care and attention, who feels completely undone by a structure where the self-contradictions ensure that one set of guidance is going to be disregarded and disrespected. It’s a cast of thousands in my brain, sometimes…

Okay, most of the time.

———-

This is the part of the story where it’s good to have coaches and supports for one’s detoxing movements. Which, luckily enough, I do.

Someone at my center has actually done this gall bladder flush in the midst of her own HCG cycle, so I was able to get the immediate reassurance that yes, indeed, it is possible to do both of these things together and do them “right.”

My coaches also helped me get a clearer mental context around things. The gall bladder eating suggestions are designed for people who have been eating the customary fat/oil/salt/sugar laden stuff. So, as a quick way to lessen the fat and oils you’re taking in (which is necessary for the flush to work), it makes sense to call that 5-day halt to eating animal products. For someone like me, who hasn’t actually HAD any fat or oil for the last couple months, I’m starting in a different place.

So my approach for these few days has been simply to revert to the eating guidelines I was using during the shots: lean protein, egg whites, produce — and a few cashews, just for variety’s sake.

I’m grateful to have found a solution. But I am also really looking forward to a time where I’m not wasting so much brain space thinking about the food I’m eating (or not eating). I don’t want to be asleep to how I (don’t) take care of my body, but I don’t want to be obsessed like this, either.

Not quite sure when and how I’ll pull that next transition off, but I had best to find myself a way. Because I am getting truly bored with myself for all this obsessive food talk. And if I can hardly stand listening to myself, I can only imagine how tiresome this is to my near & dear.

———-

Tonight’s soundtrack: Goldfrapp, Supernature

Lead Me Not Into Temptation

On 6 May 2014 By MezzoSherriIn Self-Acceptance, Stuff about Stuff, The Pressure to Fix Myself, Uncategorized2 Comments

I’ve done a halfway double down on the 5×5 goals tonight. Not on account of choir tomorrow. (Which I do have. I’m just hoping I’ll still manage to get tomorrow’s “quota” handled on tomorrow.)

Let’s call tonight’s double down a combination of playing catch-up and covering my ass (in case tomorrow’s rehearsal does throw me off-track).

Anyhow, one of the things I tackled tonight in the “everyday cleaning and clutter management” category was to get a (partial) handle on however-many days of accumulated mail. (Checkbook-balancing and bill-paying are definitely on the agenda for tomorrow morning or during lunch break.)

Now, one of the biggest categories of mail these days is the mail we call “junk”: advertising mailers, credit card offers, and lots and lots of catalogs. I’ve gotten pretty good at discarding the first two categories with ruthless efficiency,* but the catalogs have ended up having a slightly different ritual of their own.

Here’s how the system works. I put a basket in the living room specifically to hold catalogs, and as new ones arrive, I just keep adding them to the front of the “stack” until such time as the basket is full. Then I sit down and weed out all the duplicate catalogs until the basket holds just the most recent catalog from each company.**

I’ve been doing it this way for a number of years. Why? I wish I had a better answer for that question. At this stage of the game, the pattern has become so unconscious and unthinking that it’s hard to recapture whatever reasons I may have had to do this in the first place.

I think I wanted a rich collection on hand to give me ideas whenever a holiday came around where I needed to buy a gift for someone. I think I wanted sources of inspiration as I lived surrounded by parental hand-me-downs hoping someday to have/create a home environment that was more authentically expressive of my soul and passions. I think I hoped that being able to glance through catalogs and imagine having things would allow me to develop a deeper level of discernment around which desired-for purchases were items that would actually enrich my life and which were more passing, addictive, covetous moments.

That last thought/hope certainly never came to fruition. Not that I’m trying to suggest that my ongoing shopping addiction is caused by having catalogs in the house.*** However, I don’t think it’s been a great help to have them around. Better than nothing insofar as having a way to (somewhat) contain the paper monster, but still: probably not a great help to have them around.

So tonight, as I went through the accumulated mail, every catalog went right into the recycling bin. Over the weekend, when we’re gathering up paper for the recycling run, I’ll probably make a good dent in the basket, too. And, as new catalogs come in with the day’s mail, I’m going to experiment with tossing them straight into recycling with the rest of the junk mail.****

Will it have any great effect on my shopping issues? Who knows?

Will it have an immediate effect on the amount of paper clutter in the house? Why yes, yes it will.

And I’ll celebrate any win I can get.

* Except, of course, in stretches of time when I let the mail pile up unexamined. Like now. (Also, for the record: “ruthless efficiency” as regards credit card offers includes a trip through the shredder. For the offer paperwork, not for me.)

** There are, yes, a few companies that just go straight to the discard pile rather than being part of this whole ritual of commerce and covetousness. But not as many as you’d think, and definitely not as many as there should be.

*** After all, who needs catalogs to spark temptation when there is the Internet and the corporate media machine?

**** Or tossing most of them, if there turns out to be a catalog that is honestly timely and relevant to some purchasing decision of-the-moment. Hey, this is all about practice, not perfection…

———-

Tonight’s soundtrack: Gipsy Kings, Este Mundo.

Image credit: http://www.organizedhousewife.com/2012/11/02/practical-solutions-boundaries/

Fall Down Seven

On 5 May 20145 May 2014 By MezzoSherriIn Self-Acceptance, Stuff about Stuff, The Voices in My Head, UncategorizedLeave a comment

My 5×5 ritual fell a bit by the wayside last week. Knowing that choir rehearsal would pull focus on Wednesday, I “doubled down” on my goals last Tuesday as preliminary compensation — but somehow, that day’s interruption in routine caused a general halt in momentum. Said halt was, of course, further perpetuated by the number of hours this weekend that were devoted to matters choral.

But, as the old saying goes,

Fall down seven times, get up eight.

[Word-nerd digression.]

There’s part of me that’s always wondered about this saying. To my sometimes overly-literal way of filtering words, the scenario’s math just didn’t work out. If you’re choosing to demonstrate perseverance in a circumstance where you fall seven times, then you need to stand up only and exactly seven times: one for each time you fall.

I’d even wondered is maybe the saying got mistranslated along the way, but today’s office hours with Professor Google suggests that the common translation of the phrase is pretty accurate:

this Japanese proverb reflects an important and shared ideal: “Nana korobi ya oki” (literally: seven falls, eight getting up)

So now I’m simply telling myself that the first time one stands in this proverb is when getting out of the bed in the morning and prior to the first of fate’s knock-downs. I find linguistic comfort in that notion.*

[End digression.]

So, in yet another round of the “practice, not perfection” movement in my life, I’m re-engaging in the nightly rituals of house care.

Even though I had yet another choir rehearsal tonight, I have already met my daily quotas for folding laundry and addressing the clutter. Now it’s time for some unpacking and putting away of things.

Persistence.

* I know: none of this demands the level of thought and attention I have lavished upon it, but this is how my inner nerd operates.

———-

Image credit: http://calvin12345.blogspot.com/2010/07/blog-marathon-post-failed-failed-failed.html

Working in Concert

On 3 May 2014 By MezzoSherriIn Practicing in the Heart, Self-AcceptanceLeave a comment

This evening, I am hemming my chorus dress with packing tape. It arrived too late for me to be able to find a seamstress and get it done the right way, but the concert is tomorrow and something has to be done so I don’t trip myself (or anyone else).

It’s been a long time since I was involved in a choir or concert where we were striving for the level of artistry and polish we’re attempting here.

The last couple rehearsals have been hard ones as we try to get all the pieces to come into place together. Today’s dress rehearsal was especially high on the stress factor.

New location with entirely different acoustics, the first time all the players — us, pianist, soloists, organist — were all together. Lots of logistical challenges: figuring out where the soloists will be, trying to get visual communication between the conductor and all the limbs of this messy musical octopus. And never mind the whole rigmarole of transitioning the church from worship space to concert formation back to worship space again under very tight time pressure.

This is nothing new. There’s a reason there’s so many cliches and truisms about rocky dress rehearsals. I have had similar experiences before, and if I continue this re-engagement with music and performing, I am sure I will have similar experiences in the future.

But it’s an interesting exploration to watch myself in this setting now and reflect on the ways I used to internalize the stress and perfectionism of these endeavors. Now it’s kind of as if I’m holding it a bit more loosely.

And by that I don’t mean at all to suggest I’m slacking off. As in years and choirs past, I am still doing everything in my considerable power and training to model exceptional attention to the conductor and strong musicality, especially with the dynamics and diction that are so needed in this particular concert locale.

But where in the past, I would feel a certain level of pressure and superiority in that — feeling as if I needed to be extra “on point” to make up for my peers’ inattention — now there’s a softer feeling to it.

For better or worse, I’d be lying if I denied having some ongoing awareness of ways in which I am often more “on point” than some of my peers with the technical details. (After the years of choral experience and formal training I’ve had, that’s kind of inevitable.) However, there’s not the same tone of judgement that I used to hold with that. Instead, the focus is more towards being the best piece of the texture I can be, trusting that my little contribution will organically aid the whole.

It’s good to be singing in a group again.

But now I need to finish “hemming” that dress.

———-

Image credit: http://www.icare4autism.org/news/2012/09/medication-study-for-adolescents-with-autism/

Plate of hummus with veggies and pita chips

Transitional Thoughts

On 2 May 2014 By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, Health at Every Size, Self-Acceptance3 Comments

So the shots are done, the super-low-calorie transition days are behind me, and I’m now officially into the next (final?) phase of the HCG experience.

A few vignettes, mostly food-related:

———-

I had understood that sugars, grains, breads, and starchy veggies (corn, carrot, potatoes) were all still forbidden during this phase. What I didn’t wake up to until yesterday was that things like beans, lentils, and chickpeas are also verboten. So my fantasies of enjoying celery sticks with hummus or making a batch of my three-bean chili are on hold for another few weeks.

———-

I’m trying to get a bit more understanding of the body sensations around hunger and satiation. At this stage of the protocol, there’s no limits on the amount of food you can have — just a strong recommendation to be conscious of eating only till you’re full, rather than going into any addictive eating patterns.

Being aware of actual hunger and stopping points is something I haven’t always (often?) been paying attention to in the last couple years, so it’s kind of a new sensation.

———-

Now that I don’t have to monitor my portions so obsessively, Mr. Mezzo and I can go back to doing some cooking together. Which is a nice return to form.

We’re probably going to use my HCG cookbook for a good stretch of these weeks. The flavors are good, we can figure out how to adjust the portions to make things with a full package of chicken or beef, and that way we’ll know that I’m avoiding sugars and starches like I’m supposed to.

———-

I’ll be doing a gall bladder/liver cleanse late next week into the weekend. The first step of that? Cutting all oils and fats out of your diet for a few days. Just a few days after I was allowed to bring them back into my diet after a six-week break.

Yeah, there’s some flavor of irony to that.

———-

The first use of Chapstick was every bit as blissful as I had hoped it would be.

———-

I am astonished to see the sheer quantity of foods that have added sugar in them. It took me a LONG time reading labels at Whole Foods to find mustard, spaghetti sauce, salad dressing and almond butter that don’t have added sugars and are thus permissible to me right now.

I still haven’t found any ketchup or flavored yogurt that would work.

Even though I haven’t been strongly focused on this detox movement as a way to “create healthier eating habits” for myself, I had been quietly toying in the back of my mind with the notion of making this experience the starting point for a longer-term reduction in the quantity of added sugar in my life.

On the one hand, my recent label-reading has me thinking that could be a really important step, considering all the hidden ways sugar’s been pushed into the cultural system. On the other hand, there’s a whiny child part of me that’s feeling annoyed with how hard it’s going to be if I do keep moving towards sugar reduction, because of all the ways it’s hidden in the food supply.

———-

I have not succumbed to old addictions by coating myself with cheese sauce. Yet.

But I am so making some form of cheese omelette for myself this weekend.

I also have fantasies of getting a Dunkin’ Donuts iced coffee — no flavor, no sweetener, just ice coffee and cream. If I add my own Stevia drops, I think that might just be within my new set of restrictions.

———-

Image credit: http://naturalnoshing.wordpress.com/2012/01/01/black-eyed-pea-hummus/

Self-Love: It's Just Another Lifestyle Change

Category: Self-Acceptance

A Dinosaur with a Quill

The Well of Intuition

Trading Two Left Feet for a Regular Pair

The Value of a Wasted Day

The War of the Greasepaint

Dueling Detoxes

Lead Me Not Into Temptation

Fall Down Seven

Working in Concert

Transitional Thoughts