Memory, and the lack thereof.

Something that's been bothering me for .. well, two years or so now is memory loss. As in, my loss of recall.

I used to be able to recall events that happened with incredible clarity, as if they were happening right now.

Today? I can't remember what year I graduated my engineering degree, or what year my uncle died. I can work it out - but I don't remember the events. I can barely remember the first time I met my husband, our first kiss, or our wedding. What I do remember are like photographs - single frames - instead of being able to remember the sounds, the touch, the tastes, the smells, the feelings and what I saw as a seamless whole.

And it's more than just not being able to remember long-term memories, things that happened years ago. It's being unable to remember what happened last week, last month, needing to visit a place a few times before remembering where it is and what it looks like.

What I do remember is having near-perfect recall of places, and how to get there; or being able to remember what I did last week; or being able to remember people's names and faces; or being able to remember what year important things happened, and in what sequence.

I remember being able to do this things as recently as ... well, after visiting linkedin, I know it was in 2009. I couldn't remember the year, but I could remember where I lived and worked.  Kind of. So I could work out when it was. That's fairly typical for me, these days.

I have improved a little over the past year; I no longer have quite so many issues with recent events. According to some friends, early in 2011 it was truly frightening to see how quickly I forgot things; how much I just didn't remember day-to-day. Now, if I've met someone, I'll at least remember I *have* met them, even if I don't have a clue of their name or anything else about them, although I do sometimes recall names. I usually remember if I've made appointments, and often I'll get the day and time right, although I still occasionally double-book myself. This is nowhere near my previous levels, but ... it's better than it was, when I had to set myself alarms three times a day to remember to take my pills, and write notes to myself so I'd know I'd eaten.

Even at my current level of improvement, it is still incredibly distressing to have lost so much of my life. So much of the things I know I used to know, I no longer do. So many skills. It reduces me to tears if I think about it too much.

I have no idea why this has happened to me, or how to fix it. I have had more pressing and immediate problems to deal with. Those are, however, mostly either under control or uncontrollable, so I can start dealing with this particular issue.

I'm going to start by sending this entry to my GP, and beginning a document that chronicles my major life events, so I can at least put things in the right order in my mind. I can only hope that some of my memories are recoverable, and not gone forever.

Obligatory Year Changeover post

So, 2012 is drawing to a close, and 2013 is about to start. It's fairly traditional at this point to look back over the year that's gone, and look forward to the new one.

What happened in 2012?

• I was depressed for most of it, but I seem to be out from under the worst of it
• I went to Bendigo, Ballarat, Florence and Seattle for the first time ever
• I saw the Olympics
• I cooked a turkey for the first time ever, and in fact, made roasts a regular thing
• I bought a slow cooker and have been using it with wild abandon
• I have successfully not killed plants
• I have tried (and failed several times) to exercise regularly
• I changed medications from dexamphetamine to modafinil
• I got out more - although I also did spend a couple of stretches housebound for a month
• I lost 10kgs
• Moved to vibrams as my main shoe choice (good for my footsies and spine)

What do I want out of 2013?

• I want to establish regular exercise, with a view to doing parkour classes regularly
• I want to go to Florence again, and also Paris, maybe Wales, Cornwall, or Scotland
• Continue to not kill plants, and establish a working kitchen herb garden on my windowsill
• Do a photography walk in/around London at least once a fortnight - suggestions for locations solicited
• More firmly establish the practice of home cooked meals for both of us
• Establish and grow closer friendships with local people
• Not lose contact with my friends in Brisbane or around Australia
• Write more consistently
• In general, live a more consistently active life, the does not have quite so many bust cycles where I am housebound/bedbound for days/weeks/months at a time
• Work out what my immediate (2-3 years) goals are, and pursue them
• Lose the remaining excess weight of about 15kgs
• Have a more even emotional keel than the previous 3ish years

Well, those are quite some lists. I feel in 2012 I was in a bit of a holding pattern - I didn't accomplish much, not obviously - but getting the better of the diagnosis-related depression is actually kind of huge. I've also mostly got over the culture shock from moving, with a related decrease in my general stress/anxiety levels, which is also noteworthy. 

I'm moderately ambitious for 2013. I'm hoping to establish a new baseline for life that I'm happy with - nothing too major, but enough so that I don't feel like I'm rotting away, or doing the non-tv-watcher's version of sitting at home all day watching daytime TV.

Questions, comments, and suggestions welcome.

"I just wish I was normal."

I'd bet that most people reading this have said this at least once in their lives, usually without any understanding of what normal actually might be.

I've thought about what being normal is quite a bit over the years, because it seems quite normal to question whether or not oneself is normal.

Because I've had quite a lot in the way of education, I've come to understand normal (with respect to any given aspect of life) in a more mathematical sense than most people, I think. I generally sum it up as 'within two standard deviations of the mean'. Okay, so pull out your rusty statistics knowledge, while I explain that a bit. Or you could go look it up on wikipedia, because that would be faster and probably clearer.

The mean is what is generally known as average. That is, you take all the responses, add them up, and divide by the number of responses - that number you end up with is the mean. If you plot all the responses on an axis, you often end up with a Bell Curve. It's been noted for quite some time that a number of things - including human responses - tend to fall within certain ranges, and with some mathematical tricks, these are easy to quantify. About 50% will fall within one standard deviation, 90% within two standard deviations, and 99% within three standard deviations.

So when I say 'normal' I usually mean 'about 90% of the population'. Of course, the fact that I use numbers and mathematics quite consciously to define that puts me outside that 90%, I suspect.

I suppose it's all part of how I am very rarely normal.

I know that there's a lot of promotion of the idea that being other than normal is good, and you should try and stand out from the crowd, blah blah whatever. This kind of thing ignores the other side of outside normal - the negative side.

I've been known to describe my life as an inverse bell curve - that is, that I have amazingly awesome and shockingly awful things in my life, and not a hell of a lot inbetween.

On the amazingly awesome side, I have the dearly beloved, with whom I have just celebrated 11 years of happy marriage - and at age 31, that's definitely not normal. He loves me just the way I am - however that happens to be at the time. I'm unusually bright. I have had an enviable career. I have an unusually broad range of hobbies and interests. When I can exercise, I tend to be very, very good at anything involving patterned movement - which is what a lot of people find difficult to master, and have really fast muscle development. I've successfully lost weight. I read really fast. I've been elected to a community organisation without running a campaign. I've been relatively wealthy.

On the shockingly awful side, I have autism. I have Idiopathic hypersomnia. I had an astonishingly bad case of PTSD, the resolution of which allowed the idiopathic hypersomnia its day (turns out the anxiety was the only thing keeping me awake). I have a fullblown dairy intolerance. I'm allergic to paracetamol. I have spinal bone density distortions of the type that ends up as crush fractures before age 60. I have crazybad myopia for someone under the age of 90.

In the normal range, I'm female-bodied. I have blue eyes. I am 161.5cm tall. I am probably about an average weight - which is to say, overweight. I wear jeans and tshirts. I play computer games. I'm an Australian (this is probably no longer normal, as I live in London). I have one sibling. My parents are still together. I like cats. I don't have enough savings to buy a house, and I spend a fair amount of worry on money. I dislike housecleaning. I like tea, and wine, although not together. I've spent most of my adult life with a caffeine addiction. I have one piercing in each ear, in my earlobes. I've struggled with depression.

In the neither positive or negative but simply outside the normal range - I have an unusual configuration of bust and ribcage. I have unusually pale skin. I have amazingly narrow feet. I have tiny hands. I can hear up to 23 kHz. I have one and a half bachelor's degrees, in two utterly different fields, both technical. I'm a female with an engineering/IT degree. Before moving, I had an unusually wide social circle, and had an unusually high number of people I considered close friends. My hair is hip length and red - naturally.

I'd love to have a normal level of health, for instance. No unusual medical conditions, allergies, or intolerances. Hell, I'd settle for the idiopathic hypersomnia being under control to the point where I can work full time, maybe workout a couple times a week, and not burn out.

Most of the other normal stuff - troubled relationships, limited interests, lack of passion, children, dead end jobs - that I can live happily without. I am curious as to what it's like to live that way, but not enough to try and experience it myself.

Looking over what I've written, the only normals I really yearn for are physical. Which is probably pretty normal for someone with a chronic medical condition that impacts their physical day to day life.

In that sense, I guess, I've gotten what I wished for - I'm normal.

Discontent.

It occurs to me that my life is boring. I am very definitely discontent.

Part of it is that I am having a not-quite-optimal day; the secondary router dying (leaving my desktop without internet), the dishwasher needed to be re-run, those have contributed to a less-than-chirpy mood. It's bigger than that, though.

I have no big goals at the moment. There's my bucket list, of course, but the vast majority of things on there are a very long way away.

Day-to-day my life involves domestic stuff. Keeping house. This isn't emotionally fufilling, nor is it interesting to talk about. Parts of it have specific interest - the various ways in which I try to cut our ongoing costs, for instance, or sometimes try out new recipes, but by and large it just holds no interest for me. Keeping the house kind of clean certainly isn't something I'm passionate about. While I'm fairly interested in reducing my environmental impact, and eating from local producers, and eating organic, once I've done what I can do, there's just not that much more to talk about.

Keeping my plants alive, whilst in a way kind of interesting, isn't really all that fascinating. I mean, I water them every so often. Other than that, I look at them. What else, really, is there to do? Glaring at them does not make them go faster (much as sometimes I wish it would).

Speaking of, something else has sprouted! It's the little one on the left. I think it's a nasturtium or sweet pea. I can't quite recall which I planted there. The one on the right is probably a cornflower. This is justifying my decision to only plant 2 seeds per variety, in case I had good germination success.

There's health and fitness stuff. The problem there is mostly that I find it hard to do things. And hard to recover. I find it difficult to willingly sign up for extra pain, when most days, I'm in pain anyway. Not to mention my tedious and irritating tendency to crash and burn after a few weeks, and end up worse than when I started. I'm currently addressing that, somewhat, by doing my daily records, and trying to correlate that to my daily activities. This should help me find my limits without breaking through them and suffering the consequences. In the meantime, though, it means that any significant level of fitness activity is right out.

There's knitting. When I have the energy/lack of back pain for it anyway. And when I do, I knit. Also, the nice postman gave me a present the other day. 800m/100g, hand dyed silk. Mmmmm. I'm going to enjoy turning that into something pretty, that's for sure. But I don't do enough of this kind of thing to really make much interest of.

Photography has a daunting backlog of photographs for me to go through at present. The more there is to do, the harder it seems, the less likely I am to do anything. Sound familiar? It's stupid, I know, but there it is.

Music is waiting on speakers for the listening of, and me getting my backside across London to get an adjustable thumbrest installed on my clarinet for the making of. Speakers arrive tomorrow, and well, I'll get the thumbrest done ... sometime. Probably.

Fashion, clothing, style, what-have-you, is waiting on a lot more energy. I am getting to grips with how I feel about myself, and really trying to find clothing that is accessible (in terms both of cost and of effort involved in wear and care). I had a colour stylist appointment the other day, and discovered that I am horribly difficult for a professional to pinpoint, in terms of an optimal colour palette. In the stylist's words, my personal style is dramatic and functional. A lot of this is news at 11, so to speak, but it's nice to hear my self vision confirmed by an outside observer. I would like to have a few fashion shoots done with various outfits and looks, but of course, that requires money, time, and energy. And I'd like to be somewhat slenderer before making a permanent record of what I look like. See above about energy, etc.

Still, on the weight loss front, I'm at least not failing too badly. My diet is (fairly) clean. I've gone up a little, but not much. I'm still hoping to see 72kgsish in January, and below 70kgs for my birthday. This occupies a fair amount of brain time, for me, but is one of those things which I can't help but feel probably isn't interesting to a wider audience.

It does occur to me that one of the reasons I am discontent and bored is that while some of the things I do are all very nice and well and good, they aren't productive. I don't produce, I don't get paid. A fairly core part of my self-value system, in this case, the part dealing with how I conduct my life, is how much and what I contribute to my family unit, and society at large. I don't even pay taxes. Of course, I am crazy lucky to be in this position and not worrying about where my next meal is coming from, and this is all very first world problems. Knowing I ought to be grateful for what I have does not, however, make me feel cheerful, so much as guilty for not being cheerful.

There is a possibility that if I was healthy, and if I didn't need to work in order to create and maintain a suitable level of buffer money, I would feel the same kind of discontent, were I not engaged in some form of volunteer work, or freelance research, or similar.

It is probably shallow of me that a fairly major way in which I judge myself is on my financial input. It also appears to be a fairly immutable aspect of my character. I'll note I don't judge anyone else this way; like many things, I have one rule for me, and another rule for everyone else. Having a disabling condition isn't good enough excuse for me, emotionally, although intellectually I realise this is kind of crazy. "Look at Stephen Hawking" says the emotions, while my brain retaliates with "... different problems, different person, and a whole hell of a lot smarter than me." No bets on which usually wins.

I guess the way to fix this is to get a damn job.

So I just applied for a work-from-home, freelance editing job. I'll be applying for a few more, I think. I can write, I can do the spelling and grammar thing, and whilst it probably won't be *much* money (and, oh god, I have to figure out taxes, VAT and all that), it's a lot better than sitting on my backside bewailing my fate. Positive action, etc. This kind of work seems to be something I can reasonably do; I have the experience (from both writing my own documentation and working as a writer at Red Hat), and writing is something I can do with reasonable competence on minimal energy. Full time, not so much, and in person, not so much; but as a from-home, flexible delivery schedule thing - that, definitely. So long as the other router doesn't break.

Self-management.

I moan and wail all the time about sitting at home doing nothing.

Now, there's a lot of truth to that: I certainly don't spend 40hrs of week getting paid, nor do I actually really produce anything obviously tangible at the end of any given day, usually.

On the other hand, I've been using Workflowy to write a series of task lists. This list is the list that combines what I do, what needs to be done, and what I want to be doing. Without having a job, it comes to somewhere between 4 and 10 hours a day of stuff in the do daily section. Okay, some of what's on the list is pretty optional, and I certainly don't get all that done every day.

I do need to make a list which differentiates between what I am doing and what I want to be doing. Which is actually a task on that list.

The time estimates in there derive from how long it takes for me to do those tasks, by the way. I do time myself doing things fairly frequently. It's a bit weird, but I've been doing it since I was a child, and it's fairly firmly ingrained.

One of the things that Steve of Nerd Fitness talks about with managing to establish habits is reducing the willpower needed to perform the habit. My internalisation of this concept has a lot to do with my experience doing automated testing and with having my nose rubbed in the barriers to doing anything at all on any given day.

My daily tasks are a lot of overhead to try and automate. To be honest, I'm not sure how to automate most of it, short of having a minder. I outsource the majority of the house cleaning by getting a house cleaner to come in once a week for two hours. Several of the daily tasks are there because doing something small once a day is easier than doing something huge once a week. Partially because I'll remember to do it if it's habitual, and partially because small things require small amounts of energy.

Little things help with this. I leave tabs in firefox open so that I don't have to remember to finalise my grocery orders, check my inbox, write a new blog post, check facebook, or where the clarinet repair place is. This does result in a lot of tabs open at any given time, but on the other hand, if I close all those tabs, it takes me a lot of energy to find and reopen them. The usual result of that is me not writing here, not reading my email, not doing my groceries until the last minute (which screws things up because then I usually don't get a good delivery slot), not interacting with people on facebook, and just losing the long running tasks.

Somehow, I also do the other things, the things that need to be done weekly or monthly or at longer intervals. Well, some of them.

And I have a growing backlog of one-off things to do.

There was a time in my life where I did most of the listed activities, had a full time job, and an active social life. That was around 5 years ago. A lot of what I do, or think about, is trying to get me back into a state where that kind of thing is possible for me again.

A lot of the rest is the mundane maintain the status quo activities. Personally, I don't find them inspiring, which is probably easy to see from the word choices I make when talking or writing about them. Being a housewife has never struck me as an emotionally fulfilling or satisfactory lifestyle for me. Being a systems administrator falls into the same emotional band. Nothing against sysadmins or house spouses, but I'm a progress bar kind of girl.

On the other hand, without routine, I very quickly come apart at the seams. A set daily, weekly, monthly routine frees up a lot of effort that would otherwise be spent on decision making. Or at least transfers to to times where it's manageable to set up, review, and debug.

The problem with routine is that when things change, they don't. Not by themselves. They're brittle under change. For me, it usually takes some weeks at least to settle after a change, or after an event which causes routine to be broken for more than a few days. Enough flexibility to cope with this kind of thing and it's usually not firm enough for in to be useful on a day to day basis. Or I just don't have the skills to design resilient routines that suit me and my life. Of course, when the proverbial hits the fan, what usually happens to me is out-of-control sleep - so I'm either unconscious or a zombie, barely capable of basic self care, much less anything else. Especially not if I'm emotionally exhausted, and I don't have the spare willpower to force myself to do things.

Part of my coping strategy is the quite large number of tasks on my list; doing these tasks helps minimise the collateral impact that occurs when my routine stops happening, and gives me slack time in which to recover. This helps in minimising anxiety during recovery, but does impose a burden of anxiety at other times.

Another aspect is what I like to call 'proactive laziness'. That essentially means doing a tiny extra thing now so I have less to do later. Things like having all the recipes I use regularly printed out and kept in a display folder in the kitchen, so I don't spend half an hour or so wandering around the internet going 'I know I had the link somewhere...', which is a waste of my time and effort. I'll note I've been pretty slack with this lately, which is my first thing to tackle in this challenge cycle.

I really wish I had a program I could fill out with my various tasklists, put in a few parameters, which would serve me up a nice page where I could tick things off, postpone things, etc etc. Remember the Milk is the least worst of this kind of thing that I've found. Its reminders, however, were simultaneously too irritating and too easy to ignore. I might give it another go again. Setup is a bit of a pain in the ass. I'll give it another go again anyway.

With such aids to memory, the difficult thing I find is figuring out what to put in, and what to leave out. Do I really need a reminder to empty, restack, and run the dishwasher? Probably not. Do I need a reminder with an irritating noise to tell me to shower? Probably, yes. Do I need an absolutely-impossible-to-ignore reminder to tell me to take my pills, but only when I'm awake? Definitely.

It's the conditional nature of things that's almost impossible to automate. I don't know, in advance, what kind of day I'm going to have tomorrow; whether it'll be one of those days where I'll take my meds, feel reasonably positive, get out of the house, and do things, or whether it'll be one of those days where I'll drag myself out of bed, to the couch, and desperately try to maintain some sort of grip on consciousness. Or if I'll be awake, but spend the day in one long frustrated scream inside my skull, because this isn't how I wanted my life to be.

At this point, I don't know what causes the ultra low energy days (except when it's obvious, like Monday when I was really ill). I'm working on finding patterns by filling out my daily symptoms, and keeping my activity logs so I have at least some correlation to what's happening in my life, and where my energy limits actually are. Once I have this information, I hope to be able to work exercise into my life again, and smooth out my energy level swings a bit. That, and manage my other energy sinks better.

This has turned into a bit of a ramble, but eh. It's my blog. So there.

Inversions: Challenge cycle Nov to Dec

New cycle, new challenge points. 4 goals, six weeks, but this time, some inspiration from George Orwell. 

 

 

Six Week Challenge The Fourth: Nov 12th to Dec 

 

Goal 1: WAR IS PEACE: Challenge my war on myself - Find and change one negative thought cycle or behaviour a week

 

I've developed some negative patterns. Not caring for myself, eating things that I know will bite me back, avoiding new experiences, that kind of thing. I don't necessarily expect any changes to stick; but awareness of habitual thoughts and actions is the first step.   

 

Goal 2: IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH: Challenge my ignorance - Complete monitoring every day

 

I've started using Patients Like Me to gather information about what's actually going on inside my head and body. This involves at-least-daily quick updates of overall mood, and recording what each of my major symptoms is doing. I may talk more indepth about this at another time. I will also attempt to keep a daily log of what I do, and publish it here on my blog. I may or may not publish my recorded charts of symptoms at the end of the period.

 

Goal 3: FREEDOM IS SLAVERY: Challenge Immobility, Inflexibility, and Atrophy - do my physio exercises daily

 

Well, that one's obvious. Although, if I manage to do other physical things, I get bonus points here.

 

Goal 4: DOUBLETHINK: Challenge my mind - Research and write at least one article on my blog a week about something I've learnt

 

Again, this is pretty obvious. I'm going to say it has to be at least 400 words, although I will allow new recipes, tea reviews, book reviews, introspection, and similar. 

Goals are subject to review and update if I find they are not working, or similar. 

This goalset is somewhat less physical than the previous ones I've set, rather more meta and very introspective. I will still attempt to maintain and increase my physical activity, but my focus is very sharply on what's causing me to not be doing said physical activity.  As always, my greatest enemy is myself.

Generic Update Post

I've been disappeared for about the last ... oh, two or three months.

The Olympics happened. I went to the Women's Epee, and I have photographs, which I will publish ... at some point. Once I get a better grip on the whole RAW thing.

I missed going to the Paralympics dressage because I was unable to wake up on the day. I was angry as hell about that.

I've been cooking roasts a lot lately. And tuna bake. And also making stock, which the at-home version is soooo much better than the storebought. And cheaper, even when I buy bones.

I haven't been doing much, or really any, photography. I just ... haven't had the will for it. I'm hoping to change that, starting with photographing my plants ... well, probably not daily, in all honesty, but at least sometimes. Maybe if I get really tricksy, I'll do a stop motion. Once I figure out how. And setup. And that kind of thing.

I've been trying to figure out how to continue my wine studies. I can't really swing the 2000 GBP and 18 days twice a year - which is what I'd need to attend the required residency schools. I can't swing the 8000 GBP (and I'm not sure about the hour or so travel every day) to complete the degree here, either. The Master of Wine requires I already have the degree and industry experience, so that's right out.

.... actually, my woes there will end up being a post in themselves. I'll do that later. Suffice to say, I am frustrated and angry and depressed over the whole thing.

Said frustration has transferred itself to doing any study at all. So I haven't been doing that, either. 

Fitness? I laugh at it. I was doing okay in September, but that came crashing to a halt. I need to re-establish a regular routine, but as always, logistics get in the way.

General health? Well, I haven't had a cold or gotten sick. I have had severe issues with sleeping - the anxiety over study, general existential angst, etc, has been giving me a bit of insomnia. And I was off my medication for a week because I was too exhausted and tired and sleepy to go down the road to get more.

So what have I actually been doing? Playing world of warcraft, reading a lot. Also, researching the wine thing takes a lot of time. Doing chores. There's another post in here about how I'm not doing anything coherent because I don't have anything to aim at, but again, I'll leave that set of angst for later.

What am I planning on doing? Making plants stay alive, figuring out if it is at all possible for me to continue study, getting less unfit, reducing my ongoing overheads task list. Which I need to write and braindump.

So, how have you been?

Life is pain, princess.

Well, it's been a rough few weeks.

I didn't have a lot of energy after returning from Florence, and then there was the Olympics, and then I got some kind of gut bug and was in pain for ages.

Another irritating mishap was having a molar disintegrate on me. Turns out I'm going to need a crown. Meh.

Due to a coincidence of timing, I also was exercising my reproductive freedom and got a copper intrauterine device (IUD) inserted on Monday.  If you're squeamish about girl cooties, don't follow the jump (men being disturbed by such things is more than a little silly, but hey, that's a rant for another day. Women being disturbed by such things is only excusable on the same level as a guy wincing when another guy gets kicked in the crotch).

The theory and practice of energy reserves

Today I am coping with what inevitably happens when I exert myself the previous day.

I am exhausted.

Admittedly, I didn't get to sleep until about 3am. And I didn't sleep in past 9, so I only got 6 hours of sleep. I did spend quite a lot of time dancing, and also walking, last night. I also spent more than the usual effort to make dinner yesterday. I had two glasses of wine and a bottle of Coke; this unusually high dose of sugar and caffeine may be a contributing factor to how I feel.

As a result, my usual dose of wakeypills is just enough to keep me from going to sleep sitting at my desk. Barely. If I ate something and took away the vaguely irritating feel of hunger, I'm not sure I'd be awake long. If I went to lie down on the bed, I'd be asleep in moments. I've utterly exhausted my energy reserves - at the moment, I'm trying to work up the energy to go get myself a cup of tea. Probably peppermint; caffeine has funny interactions with other stimulants, and I'm not in a mood to risk feeling even less awake.

For context, a normal person, on 100mg every eight hours, can easily stay awake, with elevated alertness, for 40 hours without side effects. In that same 40 hours, I will typically have had 8 hours of sleep, and 600mg to give me approximately two 12-hour periods of wakefulness, the quality of which is highly variable. There are another 18 hours in which my wakefulness will probably be fairly low grade, and my alertness will almost certainly be low. I will be able to perform simple, repetitive tasks, such as reading, reading internet articles (but probably not remembering them well the next day), or staring at the wall. Tasks like stacking the dishwasher, making a simple, familiar meal, or playing a familiar video game that requires any form of fast reflex action or thought will probably be too high energy. There's quite a big difference between myself and the frontline soldiers (or the students and truck drivers who consume the bulk of modafinil sold).

I note in passing that this current state is a vast improvement over a few months ago.

There's a long way between me and normal. I use 'normal' in the sense that it is medically normal for an adult to not require sleep during the day; to be able to function at a reasonable level of alertness and wakefulness during the day; to have a standard response to heavy-duty stimulating drugs where sleep is prohibited for the time the drug is in the system. Of course, circumstances of disrupted sleep, depression, some forms of anxiety, high levels of stress, bacterial or viral infection, or similar are exceptions to this normal. Even so, I'm aware of very few adults even under those circumstances who would go to sleep sitting upright if they stopped concentrating on not sleeping for a couple of minutes.

Moving on to why I feel so rotten today. I've noticed in the past that I can build up energy reserves over time, so that a particularly active day, week, or month doesn't knock me flat. Everyone has these - everyone can occasionally push themselves further and harder (sometimes hugely so) before they have to go back to a normal level of activity to recuperate. Things like swot vac and exam week, NaNoWriMo, a software release, a two-day hiking trip, a marathon. Those are circumstances where you extend your reach for some sustained period; afterwards, the best word I've come up for the feeling is drained. It's not so much exhaustion, but the sense that even after you rest, you have nothing left to give. Your batteries are flat.

Over the last few weeks, I've had a lot of things inhibiting my ability to build up a reserve - a bad head cold (still not quite over) and the week in Kirkland which drained my reserves to the point I was quite literally in bed for a week. So I've zeroed my reserves, and haven't built them back up much.

Yesterday's exertion (maybe an hour all up of mixed low and high intensity cardio; making dinner using new recipes) was enough to drain me again. Not as bad as the Kirkland trip; I'll probably be back to my normal low level of function tomorrow. I have my generally increased physical and mental activity to thank for this increased resilience. The more you do, the more you can do, as the saying goes.

Obviously, I'm walking a pretty fine line between doing more and doing too much. To a certain extent, I can borrow from my reserves a bit to extend my reach slightly - but only when my reserves are full enough such that I don't drain them by doing so. To recharge my reserves, I need to rest, and not just physically. It's the mental aspect, the energy involved in decision making that's important. During normal times (that is, when I've recovered enough not to be utterly flat, but I still don't have full reserves) this needs to be active rest - a term familiar to anyone who's delved deeply enough into the world of fitness. Mentally, this means learning new (but not overly challenging) things, routine planning activities (like a weekly grocery shopping list and meal plan), or easy creative things, like writing a blog entry.

Clearly I need to plan my time better, and further in advance, so I don't hit bottlenecks like this - at least, not until I have the reserves to deal with it without derailing the following day entirely. Of course, planning activities with that kind of scope are fairly decision-intensive and mentally draining, which is a wee bit on the challenging side when I'm running low.

Sometimes I feel like I'm in a bit of a Catch-22 situation.

Oh well. Small changes will eventually add up to big ones, I hope. One day at a time.

Goal setting - the element of risk and reward

So as I rambled in my catchup post, my goals are missing the risk and reward element. This element is supposed to add extra motivation for achieving one's stated, published goals.

This rant was triggered by this post about habits, and especially the part about accountability.

The problem is, I can't think of an appropriate forfeit, or if it's even an appropriate motivational strategy.

Money based ones don't work, because it's not my money I'm spending. Commitment based ones don't work, because I can't really commit to anything because I have the irritating tendency to either not sleep or sleep too much. The same goes for doing stuff forfeits.

The only one that's occurred to me is cutting my hair - and LIKE HELL THAT WILL EVER HAPPEN. It's not a forfeit I'd follow through on. Even a centimetre for each goal not met - well, it's just plain disproportionate, is what it is. The Grow The Hair Project is 4 years old so far, and has another 6 years to go. And I don't have a hairdresser I trust, either. Still - given a hairdresser I trusted with my hair, a long enough timespan, and a few other things, it's about the only idea I've had so far that makes any kind of sense. Actually, the more I think about it, the more it sounds like a good idea.

Except, should I forfeit due to things I can't control, It also raises for me the question of the value of a forfeit in my circumstance. Due to things utterly beyond my control, I may not reach my goals in the time set. In the previous six weeks, for instance, I lost three weeks: one to travel and injury, one and a half to hypersomnia and recovery, and half a week to a cold.

Without either the injury or the hypersomnia I would have had a chance. Combining the two, and I was dead in the water. Throw in travel and a cold and well, it's a good thing I'd nearly achieved my goals by week 3, because I haven't been able to work out since.

I did a lot of walking and photographing on my trip to Kirkland, true. So I stayed active and doing things - but it wasn't directly related with the goals I'd set myself. Well, except the photography for giving me fodder for a post I didn't get around to doing yet. Still - I did my best, given I couldn't run or lift weights because of my injuries (although I did bring along workout gear in case I got better enough, soon enough to use the workout facilities where we were staying). So, I did my best given I couldn't do much.

It does seem easy to me, however, to say 'well I did my best but it's not my fault, really!' as a means to get out of actually doing my best. On the one hand ... there's definitely been days where I've been tempted to use it as an excuse. On the other hand, there was a week where I woke to eat, sleep, pee, and shower occasionally. Followed by one where I walked around the house in a daze, only awake by courtesy. The first week I couldn't avoid, even if I'd had my meds available. That's simply what happens when I push myself for a week. The following week was potentially avoidable, if I'd called up prior to the trip, got a doctor's appointment, and got my meds in a timely fashion. Except - I called as soon as I got back, expecting that, as usual, I'd be able to get an appointment within a week, and got told the next available appointment was four weeks away. Even so, I could have in theory walked down that day to request a new prescription sans appointment - but it was right before the weekend, and not only a weekend, but the Queen's Jubilee weekend. That meant that it would be at least a week before my script would be ready, since it takes two working days, it was a Friday afternoon, and the next working day was the Wednesday. I was still exhausted, and decided to put the request in on Wednesday. That didn't happen, at which point the next day I could get my script was the following Tuesday (if I put it in Thursday) and between coming down with a cold and everything else, I only finally got to the practice yesterday.

Which reminds me. I forgot to call the pharmacy. Which means I can get about half my prescription filled tomorrow, and have to pick up the rest on Thursday, most likely. Great. They say the medication is too expensive to keep much in stock, so they only order in two boxes. As a result, every single time I go down there, they say 'come back for the rest of it tomorrow'. I did ask them nicely to start ordering an extra box, since my script isn't going down and I'm not going anyway, and they said 'just call us the day before you come to collect your medication'. As if it's that easy, sigh.

Right, so with that rather longwinded ramble above, I can see how setting forfeits might work - and then might make me feel like I'd just rolled a series of ones for my saving throws, and had about as much control over the outcome. That is, it's chance, not skill, that determines success or failure.

That's unsatisfactory, to me.

What's also an option is shifting the goalposts. I mean, I had half the challenge wiped out - but I got further (sometimes MUCH further) than halfway on my goals. Still - I'd give myself brownie points for getting better than halfway, rather than successes for getting halfway, if that makes sense. It feels too much like cheating, or gaming the system (Kobiyashi Maru, anyone?).

As motivation, rewards appeal more to me. They're easier to figure out what to do for them (I still want lots of things), and it's a lot easier to say 'I didn't meet the goal, so I don't get x'. I either met my goal or I didn't; being monkeywrenched just means I miss out on a shiny, not that I have to give something up. Being lazy means I don't get the shiny either. There is no way to get the shiny except by excelling.

I already have a list of things I can reward myself with. New corset, new thinkgeek or threadless tees, new earrings from Etsy, something like that. Something meaningful, that I'll use and think of frequently, worth about £60 or so for achieving all my goals. Not so much something like new camera kit - that's too expensive for a 6 week turnaround. Well, until I can work or have an income, anyhow.

The flaw here is that I am tempted to set my goals too low. 

A solution exists, in the form of Extra Credit and Make It Up goals (kudos to Serenity of Nerd Fitness for this idea). Extra Credit goals are the stretch beyond your set goalpoint. Make It Up goals are that 10% you fell short by due to poor circumstance, but made up by substituting similar goals that are still achievable. Extra credit goals let me set goals that I will need to stretch for, without the guilt of falling short if I get monkeywrenched. Make It Up goals let me still attain goals if the bad things happen. Together, they allow me to set a framework up within which I think I can succeed. It's a lot more work than my usual goalsets, and I'll have some hard thinking and self-analysis to do.

So after all that rambling - with this upcoming round of goals, I won't be using a forfeit framework for motivation. I'll be using a reward framework, and a goals framework which includes substitution options for when I'm ill, and extra credit options for when I'm not. This will allow me to both not panic about falling short of my goals, as well as pushing me to reach for my limits.

That's the plan, at any rate. I'll see how it goes, both motivation wise and whether or not I actually improved sufficiently during the period with all things taken into account.

Back again - monkey wrenches, new goals, and what next.

It's been a long few weeks.  Also, some flowers I saw yesterday.

Going to Kirkland was awesome, and I'm putting together a post with photographs and everything. I have, however, uploaded most of my photographs to the usual place.

Coming back from Kirkland was not so awesome. I couldn't sleep because the plane was doing this weird vibrating thing that felt like being shaken awake every 30 seconds or so. So I kind of started passing out a lot once we came down from cruise and started approaching Heathrow. Oh well, joys of travel.

The three weeks since then have been ... suboptimal. The first week was recovery; I pushed myself really hard mentally and physically when I was in Kirkland, to go places and see things. Whilst I'm glad I did, it wore me out on a lot of levels. I spent the week after we got back mostly asleep, because I was really that tired. And then, because I was silly and didn't book to go see the doctor before we went, I ran out of meds. So the following week was kind of spent trying to work up the energy to go request a prescription, since I couldn't get an appointment sooner than the end of January. To make life more fun, the Wednesday before leaving for Kirkland I had a really bad shoulder spasm. It's just about recovered now - a month later. I also had a bit of a strain in my left ankle, which made travel interesting. Oh, and last week? The dearly beloved brought home a cold. He's been suffering since before last weekend, but I caught it by Friday, and that really put paid to achieving my 6 week fitness goals.

Oh well.

I console myself with the thought that I got very close to most of my goals - and that had I had one fewer monkey wrenches thrown in my works, I probably would have got all of them (except the one that involved doing something every second day).

So, today is the start of a week of rest, before formally restarting for the next 6 week goal period. That said, I've already decided on my goals for 18th June through to 30th July. Here they are with my previous (30th April to 11th June) goals:

Stamina - Running.
I started out with 1.5km in 15min. My goal was 2km in 15min. My most recent run (in mid May) was 1.8km in 15min.  I'll work towards my original goal, with a backup goal of 3km in 20min.

Strength - Pushups.
My previous goal here was to go from 6 really old lady pushups to 12 really old lady pushups. I achieved that, so now I'm going for 12 full extension from knee pushups.

Strength - Lower/mid trapezius development.
I went from 3x10 4kg one arm rows to 4x4 40kg bent over rows. This round, I'm working on doing an incline pull up, I think they're called. Basically, lying on a bench under a bar, and pulling myself up to that bar. The end goal is a full pull up of course, but hey, baby steps. I have no idea what my baseline is in terms of the bodyweight exercise, so I'm going to test myself out as soon as I'm well.

Diet - general clean up.
My specific goal was no more sugar added drinks, and I managed this, with the exception of a coke on a day that I thought I had an appointment (which turned out to be moved) and a couple of cokes when I was in Kirkland. I've also taken up drinking orange juice again, but I'll probably cut down on that over the next few weeks. I'm going to maintain the no sugar drinks, and add in moving towards Paleo. The major part of this will be reducing the grains in my diet, especially gluten. In concrete terms, grains no more than twice in any four days, except when I am travelling and have no choice. This is a major sacrifice, because I love my gnocchi, and my fish fingers, and a bunch of other things. I need new convenience meals. If anyone has ideas for low-effort, fits-elsie-requirements food, please tell me? I'm running out of ideas.

Flexibility.
This one I screwed up. I was going for every second day mobility workouts, for a total of 21. I managed a total of about 11, I think, before I got monkeywrenched. Part of this was hitting ones I couldn't do, and part of it was my shoulder injury. However, I'll keep trying for this one. Flexibility is really important to me, I just need to find ones I can scale to my level, and not injure myself doing.

Life.
My goal here was to make at least one significant blog post a week. On average, I think I exceeded that thoroughly. On specific ... well, the last three weeks weren't so good for that. Still, amongst other things, I did get into the habit of daily achieving things, and acknowledging those things, which was a major mental health improvement. Over the next six weeks, I'm going to aim to keep up my at-least-once-a-week goal, and include on top of that, at least one photography post, one cooking post, and one knitting post (hopefully of a completed project).

Expected Monkey Wrenches.
Trip to Florence - the dearly beloved is speaking at EuroPyCon, and I'm tagging along. I'm not going to the conference, because frankly I haven't recovered enough to get anything out of it - but I am definitely going to see a bunch of things while there. This trip is going to be 30th June to 8th July. I've worked out my daily itinerary, which should limit the impact on my mental energy. I'm investigating some socks to wear with my footshoes, and taking my boots, so my feet don't scream at me so much. I'm also packing sunscreen. I expect recovery to occupy most of the following week, but this time, I'm going to have medication sorted out in advance.
Olympics - We're going to see the Fencing on the 30th of July, YAYAYAYAYAY. But - London's going to be kind of a mess. This may inhibit my ability to get around somewhat.
Social events - there's a few parties and whatnot on that I've been invited to - and those things can take me a while to recover from. Still and all, planning helps, right?
Other - I probably will have an attack of the meh at some point, or at least one injury. I've got appointments before and after my trip lined up with my physio, to make sure I'm in top shape, and I'll also be doing my best to avoid further injuries.

Okay, that's out of the way.

It does occur to me that with these goals, there's an element I'm missing - the put up or shut up and reward bit. Basically, put up or shut up is a meaningful penalty that I forfeit if I don't achieve my goals, and reward is what I get if I do achieve them. This has the meat of a blog post of itself, so I'm going to turn it into a rant and do it later.

In the meantime, I'm going to carry on with my usual Tuesday - putting away groceries, tidying up a bit, and trying not to fall asleep. Oh, yeah, and Diablo 3. I really want to get all my characters to about the same level so I can clean out my stash, it's annoying.

Oh, and charge up my camera battery and stuff because I have a photography trip to Brighton coming up on Saturday, hurrah!

DOMS (not the fun kind)

This was going to be an achievements post, but then I got into rant mode. It happens. Twice in two days, actually. Enjoy.

Woke up tired and sore today. Annoying, but oh well.

I'm researching branched chain amino acids (BCAAs) to help mitigate the delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) I get from working out. For some reason, I have both prolonged and intense DOMS. Most people, as it happens, get this for about 12 to 36 hours post workout, that is, starting 12 hours after a workout and going until 36 hours after the workout. So basically just the next day. For me, it seems I get it for around 12 to 60 hours post workout. This, amongst other things, makes for a really awkward work/rest cycle.

To put it more concretely, say I work out on Monday evening. Normal recovery would then allow me to work out on Wednesday morning. Personally, I'm still sore, and I certainly will still be sore this evening. I'll be okay probably tomorrow morning (Thursday). This leads to a cycle of something like this: Mon (eve), Thurs (morn), Sat (eve), Tues (morn), Thurs (eve), Sun (morn), Tues (eve), Fri (morn), Mon (eve) ...

Frankly, that's not going to work for me. There is the other option, of course, of doing only 2 workouts a week - but with a fixed group session on Friday evenings, that means I get only one chance a week to work on my fitness goals. I mean, exercise is exercise, and that's good, but I have goals.

There have been a few studies done on the effect of BCAAs on DOMS. It seems to be effective in some degree in reducing both the duration and the intensity of DOMS. As I understand it, the BCAAs act to reduce muscle damage during a workout, and also promote muscle repair post workout. It does mean swallowing a bunch of pills before and after, but well, I can deal with that.

Intensity of pain wise, my DOMS is also fairly severe. Usually, DOMS is related to the amount of effort you put in - it's basically caused by muscle damage and repair. Generally, your muscles will inform you during the workout how much damage they're undergoing, and from there it's generally easy to work out how sore you're going to feel afterwards. For some reason, I don't really get those signals. I can do a workout where I go nowhere near my maximum effort, feel nothing but nicely warm and loosened up afterwards, and the next day I'll be stiff and sore. If I actually go all out, the next day I'm lucky to be able to shuffle around, and sitting down and standing up become exercises in pain tolerance. And I'll be like that for the next four days. I wrote about this a while back here.

For mitigating my pain and recovery, the current things I'm doing are protein before and after; electrolyte solution during and after; no caffeine the same day or following day; calcium supplementation after; and low rep sets with heavy weights. Each of these things have helped a bit, dropping caffeine the most.

BCAAs are the only thing that aren't yet part of my regime, so here's hoping they help too.

State change

This morning, I've reflected on the changes that have occurred in the last few weeks.

A few weeks ago, I was depressed. I cried or felt like crying all day every day. I didn't leave the house, because it was too hard. I didn't write, or cook, or take photographs, read new books, or do anything much. I hadn't called my family in weeks. I hadn't had a marginally acceptable night's sleep either, due mostly to insomnia caused by the depression.

What changed?

 Nothing.

I have a history of depression and anxiety. Quite a long one, really. Caused at various times by various things. This one was mostly culture shock compounded by hypersomnia, and adjustment to a lifelong illness.

This episode was, in some ways, the worst I've had for nearly a decade, and it was very self reinforcing. It was a feedback cycle - I didn't do things, felt I should, felt worse, so I didn't do things. That's a pretty strong cycle, and the generated feelings did leave me pretty much comatose or zombielike, and in any case were rather effective at preventing me from doing anything much.

But the cycle was clear. That, in the past, has frequently not been the case. To get out of this all I had to do was break the cycle. Amongst other things, this would return me to my normal sleep patterns, which would also tend to enable me to do my normal activities.

I used anger. Not the whiny, useless, energy-draining spinlock frustration I'd been engaging in, but full-blown raging anger at the universe. I said a giant "FUCK THIS!" to myself.

That's really all it took for me to start the process of getting rid of the backlog of tasks and associated guilt. I was too angry to be guilty, and I was energised by that reckless anger.

Of course, the anger wore off. But by then I'd accomplished enough and set up enough frameworks to keep accomplishing things that it didn't matter. I was free from the black cloud for the first time in nearly a year.

The somewhat daily posts are part of this framework. That's where I tell myself that I am doing things; I can do things; I have done things - things which matter to me. Doing a load of laundry or restacking the dishwasher doesn't sound like much, until you realise that those chores are things I've been unable to do regularly for the better part of the last 3 years. Mundane in the grand scheme, yes, but a vital part of helping me feel like I'm an able person.

Another element is addressing my physical fitness, and setting up support frameworks to ease the personal load on my mind. I know that my lack of fitness is limiting my physical energy greatly, so becoming more fit is a really cracking good idea. I find it easier to keep appointments than to just make myself go to the gym. And I find it easier to achieve goals if I set small, measurable goals, and if I have encouragement from peers and friends. Rejoining the Nerd Fitness community is a part of that.

Creativity is also rather important to me. To a limit, the more creative activities I do, the more I can do - similar to physical fitness, I suppose. On the other hand, having deadlines (such as the daily deadlines imposed by the 365 project I attempted) doesn't work for me at all, mostly because of my physical limitations. I therefore set myself this goal: for six weeks, I will write at least one blog post a week that wasn't the daily update. The weekly post could be a ramble, a photography post, a cooking post, a book review, or whatever seemed good at the time. I'd say, judging by my archives, that this goal is doing what it's supposed to be doing. It's giving me sufficient motivation to write, photograph, and cook, without loading me with stress. So instead of a single post a week, I'm doing significantly more than that - and not only that, I'm creating elsewhere.

A broad theme I've been thinking along, which is implied by all the ways I've addressed my situation, is self-acceptance. Learning to work within my limitations. Before, those limits distressed me greatly, which shrunk the limits hugely. The goals I've set have a great deal of flexibility built in, even though they are highly specific and time-driven. Some days I'm not going to be able to do much more than lie on the couch and read. Some days I will be able to take photographs for six hours. I can't predict when in advance which day will be which, but I can take advantage of the good ones, and not stress about the bad ones.

This has the effect of greatly expanding my limits. I have fewer bad days when I'm generally positive about the direction of my life.

I have a very long way to go in certain areas to get back to something resembling what I once was, yet I have significantly more confidence in my ability to get there eventually.

It's looking up.

13, with links to many photographs!

So, I've thought maybe I should put a photo with each of these, to make them less boring. Not that they are necessarily boring, but as an exercise in anything other than propping up my self-esteem, they lack interest. To me, anyhow. If you've got a different opinion, feel free to share it :P

Also I want to get back into daily (or semi-daily) photography. Well, at least, more frequent photography. Not sure I want to attempt a 365 project again - it might be more stress than it's worth at the present.

Here's a picture for you, taken on my way to the physio.



So, anyway, on with the things I've managed to do:

• Went to physio, got told I'm inspirational and I'm doing all the right things. Yay!
• Processed and uploaded LOTS AND LOTS OF PHOTOS. Many, even. Some from stargazing near Ballarat, the trip to Edinburgh in December, some trains in Tiaro, some chicken soup, and the alchemy exhibition in the Science Museum. And some flowers.
• Talked to my brother on skype for a couple of hours, which was awesome. 
• Started researching new lenses for my upcoming travel. I am teh confused. Is it possible to replace my 18-50mm and my 55-200mm lenses with a single lens? With image stabilisation? I'd like to do that if possible - that and my nifty fifty and a macro lens would cover everything I currently want, I think. Recommendations for an extremely amateur photographer who photographs flowers, architecture, and art but not people? Canon platform, btw. Actually, I'm going to make a post on this. Stay tuned.
• Researched what I'm doing to do on my Florence trip. Looking at seeing the Uffizi Gallery, Argenti Museum, the Accademia, and a couple of walking tours of various districts. I'm there Sunday through Sunday, first week of July. Oh, and we're coming up through Pisa. :D
• Definitely keeping up the exercise - managed to get 40min walk on Thursday. I think I'm going to go back to High Street Kensington to do a photo shoot of a church there, on a day when it isn't raining quite so much. 

This took ages to publish because I was waiting for my photos to upload. Soooo many photos. I should really keep up with them better - then again, that's exactly what I'm doing! Props to me.

Achievements 12 - catch up

I missed a few days, because I was feeling down. A summary:

• I caught a Red Bus for the first time EVER!
• Got myself some Vibram Fivefingers
• Caught a red bus for the second time
• Blogged about it
• did housework, cleaning, etc. 
• Made chicken soup to a new recipe
• Filled out my food diary consistently
• Figured out how to hit my minimum daily calories instead of going into massive deficits
• Did my mobility workouts
• Did most of my other workouts
• Took photographs
• Published my photographs (some of them, anyhow)
• Went on a geek date with the dearly beloved to the Science Museum
• Went to weekly gym seminar thingo - got weighed in, apparently I've successfully misplaced about a kilo.
• Tried runescape

Rightio, up to present day. Today, I:

• Unstacked/restacked dishwasher
• Tidied the place up - Wednesday is cleaner day. 
• Washed my hair.
• Filled out my food diary, I've been good with this.
• Signed up for spotify, so I have music to listen to while working out.
• Researched adult beginner gymnastics in London. I still need to do a lot of strength and flexibility work before I can actually go ahead with gymnastics-specific skills and training, but knowing where to go when I reach that point is a good thing.
• Did two mobility workouts, on shoulder flexibility. Man, do I have a long way to go. Still, it's a heck of a lot better than about 6 weeks ago, when I couldn't even get my shoulder into a neutral position at all.
• Took advantage of my hair being washed and out to take a couple of photographs.
• Did a quick blog post about said photographs.
• Made lunch. And breakfast.
• Defrosted meat for lunch well before midday (it takes ages to defrost here - 2+ days in the fridge, 5+hrs on the bench).
• Went to the gym and KICKED ASS (will post about that in a bit)
• Made dinner - baked veges with bangers on top! Easy 1 pot meal.

My First Footgloves

My recent enthusiasm for moving my backside and getting fit has resulted in a truth becoming obvious: I need to replace my sneakers. After a few minutes on the treadmill it becomes clear that while they once supported my arches, they no longer do so, and besides, I've worn holes in the heels.

It seems that recently, barefoot or minimalist shoe have become fashionable in certain circles of the fitness world. Experiments on my own have led me to believe that for my particular foot and body geometry it's probably a good idea to at least thoroughly explore this alternative. So, yesterday I hopped on a tube and then a tube and then my first ever London bus and then I walked to buy myself my very first pair of Vibram FiveFingers.

So why exactly have I gone from one extreme to the other? It's pretty obvious that's exactly what's happened. I have gone from sneakers that are rigid, have huge amounts of cushioning, correction, and support - to what are basically, thin gloves with a tough layer.

Let's start with my biggest problem - pronation. My ankles fall in. Both of them. Quite significantly. So that's a major problem my shoes need to correct for.  Here's a picture of my feet side by side (my left foot is on a book to adjust for the difference in height).

Oddly, it seems that in terms of correction ... the fivefingers are better, or at the very least, equivalent. Despite not having anything there to do the correction with. That's a wee bit weird - until you consider the shape of the thing. I have crazy narrow feet. An AA fitting, I've been told. Most women's sports shoes come in a C fitting - even finding ones that are a B fitting is challenging. My old sneakers are about a B fitting, so even though the shoe itself has all this wonderful reinforcement - my ankle has heaps of room to move because the shoe is simply far too wide. On the other hand, the fivefingers are adjustable to even my narrow feet - even people with narrower feet than mine would easily be able to adjust them to fit.

This moves on to arch support. Surely the sneakers come out better? Well, maybe when they were new. Now, because my ankle isn't kept true, over the time I've been using them the arch support in the foot has been stomped sufficiently flat that I can't rely on the shoes to put my weight where it ought to be (on the outside of my foot) and instead it goes straight down the inside unless I'm paying very strict attention.  Again the fivefingers come out well ahead here, because there's nothing to stomp flat. It's already mostly flat. Not only that, my foot's neutral position in the shoe channels my weight to the outer edge of my foot.

My last major problem is impact while running - or any movement, really. Surely the sneakers will come out ahead here. Impact changes depending on which part of the foot strikes the surface first. I experimented with this in my sneakers a bit. It turns out that heel striking jars me all the way up to my jaw. I feel it, and it is uncomfortable to start, rising to painful. Toe striking is much more comfortable. The problem is - to toe strike in my sneakers I have to really think about every single footfall. That's not so much of a problem when I'm walking along at 6kph. When I'm running at 9kph or sprinting at 11kph, on the other hand, it gets significantly more challenging. Doing some tests while trying the fivefingers on, I naturally toe strike at anything much above an amble. I can heel strike if I really want to. I don't want to usually.


Of course, it's not all sunshine and rainbows. The first time I put on a pair of fivefingers, it took me a good half hour to get them on. These are not time friendly to try on (today, it took me a good 30secs - or about the same time as normal shoes and socks).  Finding a stockist who actually has a full range (or close to) so you can find one that actually suits your foot is quite challenging - there seems to be rather larger demand than supply at present. And not every style will suit every foot - I chose Komodo Sports, because of the styles I tried on, they suited my foot best. None of the LS shoes fit correctly - of course, they're made more for people with a high instep and wider foot, so that's not a surprise. I'm not at all happy with the colour, but well, they'll do as a sneaker replacement. Until I get my second pair.

The other downside is that if you're used to your shoes supporting your feet, it'll take you 4-6 weeks to adjust fully to the fivefingers, so their website says. I expect it to take somewhat less time for me, since whilst I haven't been doing much in the way of running barefoot, I have gone for bare or socked feet most of the time the last couple of years. The adjustment is mostly learning to use muscles in your feet that have atrophied. They'll also change the way you stand and walk, which will affect your hips, back and neck - positively in the long term, but as with any such adjustment, it may not be comfortable to begin with.

If your feet are too distorted by wearing years of punishing shoes they also may take a very long time to get used to, since they force the foot into a more natural shape - toes separated, no heel elevation, emphasis on the pad of the foot. They also have a very distinct prejudice against having second and third toes longer than a big toe, although roughly equal length is accommodated.

Lastly, these are not for everyone. It does take a certain level of self confidence to wear them in public - less so now that they are becoming more common, but they are distinctive. Colours are limited - I'd prefer a plain black, personally, but the best I can do with this model (when I find a stockist who has them) is black, grey, and gold. They feel like going barefoot - even I, the intrepid I-don't-care-what-other-people-think-of-my-clothes person, felt somewhat undressed wearing them in public. And I need to find a pair of socks. Knee high ones. Because my ankles and lower legs get cold. Yes, I am a wuss. We all know this.

Personally, I think I'm sold on them.

Achievements 10

Once more into the breech ...

• Caught up on twitter and email around 8am
• Filled in yesterday's food diary. Note to self: eat more. About double.
• Talked to my mum on skype, yay!
• Cleaned up kitchen lots.
• Emptied bins.
• Had breakfast in the AM.
• Tidied the house.
• Ordered some electrolyte powder and protein powder, since things like powerade are expensive, and I need more easy-to-consume protein in my diet.
• Read up on chicken soup recipes. I feel like chicken soup for dinner tomorrow, and we have some chicken-with-bones in that needs using.
• Also read up on savoy cabbage recipes. Seems I can do my usual bacon, onion and garlic trick - that'll go nicely with some rib eye steak and maybe some mashed spud, I reckon.
• Joined up on MyFitnessPal, since MyNetDiary decided to start charging extra for services I'd already paid for. 
• Went to the gym, and did a lot of strength work.
• Had a nomnom awesome meal of rib eye steak, savoy cabbage&leek, mashed spud, and shaved lean ham for dinner, putting me pretty close to my nutrition targets for today.
• Another long, hot bath to offset the strength work and hopefully make me less sore tomorrow.
• MobiltyWOD - forward hip flexor stretch. I modified it, since the example given stretched my quads rather than my hips.

'Night all.

Achievements 7

More doing stuff! Including some things I forgot to include in earlier posts.

• Signed up for a 12 week 'Lose and Shape Up' program at my gym. This is a theory and a group training session a week; the training seems to be mostly bodyweight suspension exercises, which fits nicely in with my endpoint fitness goals.
• Signed up for a 6 week amazingly nerdy challenge at Nerdfitness. 
• Got 10hrs sleep.
• Had a cup of oolong tea. I think it's nice, but ... not as nice as jasmine pearls. Since I can't have much caffeine, I'm going to go back to my jasmine as soon as this packet is finished.
• Figured out an outfit for interview tomorrow. May post a photograph for review later.
• Read all the website from my prospective employer.
• Finished reading "Diaspora" by Greg Egan.
• Got up to Ch 11 of "Agile Web Development with Rails".
• Nerded some more about my Ardvino design.
• Got a fair way through Book 1 of A Song of Ice and Fire. 
• Got clothes out for tomorrow.
• Packed gym bag for tomorrow night.
• Packed handbag for tomorrow day.

Questioning the 'aim high' ideal

I've been engaging in a round of goal setting and whatnot as part of self.fix() lately. Looking at the advice out there, it seems that a common wisdom is to set barely-achieveable goals, on the theory that if you fall short, hey, you improved, awesome. The idea is, the higher your goal (so long as it's within the realms of potentially realistic) the more you'll achieve in a given period of time.

This is not how I work.

I've tried that approach in the past, and what's happened is the first time I slip up I get a little bit depressed (because I know how slim the margin of success is) and it gets worse as time goes on. Not to mention that the further I'm going to undershoot, the more anxious (and depressed) I get about the whole thing as time goes on. Or, I go all out - and break myself in various ways.

This time, I'm trying a new approach: lots of small goals. Part of this is my Achievements posts; they're recording the tiny, mediocre, mundane goals I achieve on a day to day basis. A way of reminding myself that I am accomplishing something.

Likewise my fitness goals. My workout yesterday set a baseline from which to improve. Whilst I do have very long term goals, these bear little to no resemblance to my shorter term goals. 

So I have goals like eating twice a day, cooking four dinners a week. Improvements on my current situation, and a bit of a stretch for me right now, but certainly not earthshaking or awe-inducing.

I was asked yesterday by one of the guys at the gym what I'd aim to get out of a 12 week lose and shape up course. When I told him that I would aim to increment my exercises such that I would see an improvement over the course of a month, he ran off the spiel about aiming high. When I told him that I'd tried that, and it was for me a recipe for depression and failure, he was surprised, but became less so when I explained the burnout and the anxiety/guilt mechanisms behind it.

I know that with mediocre goals there is, for most people, a temptation to coast and rest on their laurels. Not so for me; until I get to my endpoints, every time I achieve a goal, there will immediately be another replacing it. When I get to the point where I can easily do 10 knee pushups, for instance, I'll start alternating with full pushups until I can do 10 full pushups easily. As I achieve each goal, I'll plan an extra increment beyond the new goal.

For me, continual adaptability is the key; life throws me curveballs, and in order for those to not completely throw me off, I need to have a maximally flexible approach. At the same time, I desperately need structure and plans to follow, otherwise I'll sit on my backside and do nothing at all.

The constantly incrementing mediocre goalset seems, to me, to be a way to satisfy these seemingly mutually exclusive needs.

What are your thoughts on goals, planning, goal setting, and how they interact with success and failure?

Achievements 2

• Finally transferred home-made chicken stock from icecube trays to ziplock baggies. 
• Thought about dinner and got meat out of the freezer to defrost. There will be stew. Stew, I say! And maybe dumplings. Not 100% paleo, but well, I do have stuff to use up. And a husband to keep happy. Even if he does make the kicked puppy eyes when I say 'NO TOUCHY' when he tries to lift the lid and check on the dumplings before they're done. Speaking of, I'd better get out more meat and do a bigger batch this time. Last time there were no leftovers and I was all :( because I wanted it for lunch. This time, there will be leftovers! I hope.
• Had peppermint tea of awesome instead of softdrink for non-water drinking stuff.
• Put together my gym bag (gym clothes, deodorant, change of undies and socks, pen, notebook). 
• WENT TO THE GYM. 15min run/walk (1.5km), 3x12 one-arm rows with 4kgs, 3x12 airsquats, 6 knee pushups, 2x30sec planks from knees, a lot of stretching. 
• Asked about the lose and shape up program running at the gym - 12 week course, primary motivation is accountability and in-person support. I'm thinking about it.
• Collected my voicemail for the first time ever in the UK.
• Remembered to buy diced bacon and non-milk on the way home FROM THE GYM. 

Right. Time to make dinner. And have a long, hot bath.

• Made dinner. Beef and ale stew with gluten and diary free dumplings. Was very tasty.

And now, sleepytime.