Category Archives: Health

Health, Writing

The Emotional Roller Coaster

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Life is an emotional roller coaster for me, maybe for most people to a certain degree. Rare, I think, and probably drug-induced, is the person who doesn’t have emotional highs and lows. For some the track tops and bottoms are higher, the run-ups and -downs steeper, and the twists sharper than for others. But I think it is all there for most people.

Seasons in life are another factor. When we lived in Saudi Arabia the roller coaster was particularly pronounced. A lot had to do with our time in life (children ages 3 and 1). A lot had to do with the harshness of the country and culture. A lot had to do with being at the whim of the company for everything from drinking water to rides to spending money. Back in the good old USA was the merry-go-round to Saudi’s roller coaster.

I find the writing life to generate those roller coaster type swings. They can be quite wild at a writers conference, where you’re at the peak one minute and 15 minutes later, after a meeting with an editor, at the bottom of the trough. Other aspects of writing can do the same, almost as quickly.

Take Suite101.com for instance. I’m now up to 26 articles posted, in 31 days. Several of those articles rank high on a couple of search engines for key words I included in the articles. I had one article selected as an Editor’s Choice. I’m starting to generate a little revenue–emphasis on “little,” but that’s better than none. Everything was humming along.

Then, Suite101 adds the requirement, previously a recommendation, that every article include an image. No exceptions. So I quickly had to ramp up on how to find copyright-free images, how to download them to my computer, how to save them to the right type of image, how to upload them into Suite101’s image uploading system, complete with caption, file name, source reference, and available link. I got several uploaded on new articles, and even went back to some earlier articles and added some photos and map excerpts.

Then I captured an image of Ben Franklin to illustrate my latest article. Poof. The image wouldn’t upload. Not from my computer at work. Not from my computer at home. No reason why. It took a couple of days to get help from an editor, as the site trouble-shooting guide and the editor’s e-mails contain many terms I don’t understand. And I find I can’t really do things I don’t understand. I have to understand what I’m doing. Save the image as a jpeg or png file? What do those mean? Why, or when, should I use one instead of the other? Make sure the dpi is 72 or less? Okay, never done that before. How do I do that? And why is that necessary? Make sure the size is not more than y by z? That I think I can handle, but I’m not real sure. Use shorter file names? Okay, but how do I keep them straight on my hard drive?

All these are going to take weeks to come up to speed on. Meantime, all my creative writing time has gone into writing for Suite101. Now suddenly all my creative writing time is going to go to learning photos and images and how to manipulate them for the Internet. Doggone it. I want to write. I don’t want to be a photo manipulator, or a layout artist. The bloom has certainly come off the Suite101 rose. Whether it will bloom again remains to be seen. I’m not a happy camper.

Oh, I also was out of commission a couple of days this week, having a colonoscopy. Not the world’s greatest experience, but at least all seems well (one “small polyp” removed). Bad week to have that in terms of emotions.

Health

The Biggest Loser

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Well, our contest at work is over. We began it January 5th with about 20 people. Some of those quit the program; some were laid off. We limped to the finish line yesterday with 10 remaining participants. I had been in the lead since week seven, and had slowly widened that lead–well, I really widened it the week I had food poisoning, but that didn’t last. However, the eleven day road trip didn’t do much for me, even doing isometric exercises while driving. I came back from vacation up about five pounds. So I was worried.

Then, the man who is coordinating the contest sent out an e-mail saying that, due to inconsistencies in how everyone had been weighing, we were to make our final weigh-in with shoes off and pockets empty. I had been emptying my pockets, but not taking off my shoes. That clinched it for me. I came in first, with 7.01% weight loss in the seventeen weeks. I could have done better, but I’ll take it. The prise is a day off with pay, something I don’t really need but will figure out how to use.

Now comes phase two, losing the next 52 pounds to get to the upper end of my ideal weight range. I’d like to be down 25 pounds more by the end of the year, and hopefully cross the next milestone weight by the end of this month.

Stay tuned.

Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Health, letters, Writing

Well, not quite normal yet

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In my last post I reported that I was back to normal after the food poisoning the week of March 16th. I was wrong, though: I’m not really back to normal. Oh, physically I am, I guess. But mentally I’m not. All the good I was doing on weight loss is in danger of being reversed, as since the sickness I have no desire to eat right. The three days out of town, on conference fare, didn’t help. But at home I just haven’t felt like doing what I need to do to have the right kinds of foods for lunch or supper. Consequently, when I weighed in today, I was way, way up. I’m still a good amount ahead from where I started, but if I don’t get back at it today…. It probably hasn’t helped that Lynda is still away. No accountability partner.

This weekend I could not focus very well. I started Saturday with a couple of household things. We added a console TV to the living room, which hides the lower shelves of a corner cabinet. This cabinet (not a built-in) needed to be raised anyway, since it is 18 inches shorter than the built-ins on the other end of the wall. So Saturday morning, using some salvaged 2×6 boards, I “built” an 18 inch riser for it and installed it. Then I reloaded all the shelves with the nicknacks that had unceremoniously cluttered the hearth for a month. The console TV hides the riser very nicely. Oh, I also raised the console TV the thickness of two 2x6s, as it was a bit close to the floor for comfortable viewing. This all consumed the morning, much of the time working with the salvaged wood to back out nails and separate pieces prior to sawing.

After that, though, I had a very hard time tackling my next project: income taxes. I made a good start, but my concentration faded. As it was snowing outside, I didn’t particularly want to walk as a means of clearing my head. So I puttered on the taxes, got a little done, surfed the web, played mindless computer games, and watch a little NCAA basketball.

I also read in my recent book purchases (the Tolkien letters, the C.S. Lewis letters, and misc. C.S.L. writings), in the Mark Twain Hawaii letters, and in a writers mag. Even with those, I found my mind wandering, and I went from item to item with little comprehension. I gave that up and, as the snow had stopped, drove to Wal-Mart to pick up a few things urgently needed (peanut butter among them), then did laundry and dishes. That got me through 6:00 PM, and a PB&J sandwich through 6:30 PM. I tried the taxes again, and made a little more progress.

Saturday evening was better as far as concentration was concerned. I worked on my outline for In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People, and outlined the next seven chapters. That will get me about half way through the book. I was able to read with greater comprehension after that.

Sunday, at a church dinner, I thought my sickness was coming back. Fortunately, it was only one episode and I seem to be fine physically. Still, that gave me a too-easy excuse not to walk or exercise. The taxes again resisted the five hour concentrated effort needed to complete them. I outlined the rest of a political essay I started, then went back to my reading. I found some of C.S. Lewis’ letters on his spiritual life quite interesting, Tolkien’s letters to his son during WW2 less so.

So what will this week hold? I need to get back on the stick as far as exercise and diet are concerned, and get back in the form I was in two weeks ago. I need to have that concentrated time to complete our taxes. It looks as if we will get a nice refund, and I need to get that in the works. And I need to get back to writing, so that if I do get to go to a conference in May (hopefully the Blue Ridge one again), at least I’ll have something to present to editors/agents.

Tonight I get my wife back. Yeah!

Health

Functioning on Three Cylinders

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Tuesday I picked up a bug. Well, at least it was Tuesday evening I began feeling nauseated, with a tight and painful stomach. I lost my supper about 11 PM, went to bed, and was up at 2:15 AM for the big…well, I’ll spare you the details. I was up every 15 minutes through the rest of the night. Wednesday I just stayed in bed or in my reading chair, trying to find strength to function. Finally, at 6:00 PM I went to the nearby dollar store and bought some Gatorade to replensih fluids and electrolytes. I went to bed at 8:45M, and didn’t get up till 8:00 this morning. Haven’t eaten anything since Tuesday evening.

Consequently, I’m behind on everything I planned on doing. I finished Dune Messiah, and planned to blog a book review yesterday. Maybe tonight. I had hoped to send off “Mom’s Letter” to at least two markets by today, but have not been able to complete the last, little research needed.

Tonight is writing critique group. I was really hoping to go and present two Documenting America columns. I guess I’ll wait and see if I can finish the day at work and how I feel at 5:00 PM. I wouldn’t have come to work today except for needing to get some PowerPoint slides done for my presentation next week.

Dune, Health

All Consuming

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I’m dieting again, vigorously so, and as before I find it an all-consuming activity.

I have struggled with my weight all my adult life. Ever since the summer before my senior year in high school, when I put on weight purposely to try to do better at football that fall, I have struggled. Every year or two I would diet, sometimes with success. Many years I did not include exercise with that, believing I was too busy to exercise. Diet, I told my doctor, would have to suffice if I were to lose any significant weight.

I could blame genes. On both my dad’s and mom’s sides of the family we find problems with obesity, especially with their siblings and cousins, and in some earlier generations. But that’s futile. Plus, I feel like I am naturally a thin to average weight person, and I have just let go of proper eating and exercise. No, the genes are not the cause in my case, I don’t believe. Best to blame myself for laziness and lazy eating.

I peaked in 2005-2006, hitting the same highest weight over several months in those two years. But beginning in March 2006 I began losing, slowly, oh so slowly. I tried to exercise a little more (walking on noon hours, for example), eat a little less, and eat a little better. By the end of the year, I was 20 to 25 pounds lower than my peak. In 2007 I kept it off, and in 2008 I lost another 10.

Beginning the first of the year, running sixteen weeks, the company is having a “biggest loser” sort of contest, organized by some of our employees. I’ve never watched the program, so I don’t know how closely we are matching it. Mainly it’s weigh-ins every Tuesday, and encouragement during the week. Some of them are going to the gym together, eating together. The layoffs the end of January cut the ranks of the participants by a few. I was running second or third most of the time (based on percent loss), but last week surged into first. I gained a half pound, but the leader gained four, so I moved ahead.

We weigh at 8:30 AM, but I pre-weighed a little while ago and was down 2 pounds. Hopefully that will keep me in first. More importantly, I’m now at the lowest weight I’ve been since May 2001 when I slimmed down for my daughter’s wedding.

The problem is, when exercising as I have been, and dwelling on correct eating, and resisting the temptations to pig out, I find weight loss to be all-consuming. It’s on my mind every moment of the day. In the evening I think about what I could be doing to lose some more. It’s on my mind when I turn out the light at night and when I hit the shower in the morning, as I’m sitting in my reading chair and when I’m at the computer.

I’d like to be able to do this without it being so all-consuming. Other things must use the gray cells too, such as writing, Bible study, devotions, reading, etc. I’d like to be able to read ten pages in Dune Messiah without thinking about what isometric I could be doing while sitting, reading, to burn an extra calorie per minute.

Maybe, just maybe, when I reach my target weight goal, I will find the obsession gone. God, let it be so.

Edit on Wednesday: At the official weigh-in yesterday, I was down 2.75 pounds! That kept me in first place. In fact, I stretched out my lead, as the two guys who are closest to me either stayed the same or had smaller loses (as a percent of their body weight). While I’m more interested in losing weight than in winning the contest, being if first place by a healthy margin is a good result. Eight weeks to go.

Health, writer's platform, Writing

Clarity

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Yesterday morning, as soon as I rose and completed my new litany of exercises (six straight days now), I began a morning walk. My destination: the post office, to mail some bill payments. The post office is about 7/10 ths of a mile away, over fairly level road. However, I wanted a longer walk that that.

So I walked down every side street off Sherlock Road. By way of explanation, Bella Vista is all hills, ridges, and steep valleys–hollows, the locals call them. Collector streets are built on ridge lines, and local streets are cul–de-sacs off the main roads, following finger ridges till they plunge into the hollows.

On the way to the post office, walking on the left side, of course, that meant I had to walk down four side streets. Of course, that meant I had to walk up to get back to the main road. Coming back from the post office, I had three side streets to descend and ascend. The whole walk took sixty-five minutes, and I was plenty tired.

As I made all these side trips, I was struck by the clarity of the woods. By this time in winter, the pin oaks are finally dropping their leaves. A few stubbornly cling, mostly to lower branches, but most are gone. The early budding trees–the Bradford pears, forsythia, red buds, and dogwoods–have not yet popped. Some might by next week, but not now. So this weekend is probably the one with the greatest clarity through the winter woods. Houses across the hollows, unseen most of the year, are obvious. We can see our distant neighbors’ backyard business.

I continue to look for this clarity in my writing career. Book? Articles? Fiction? Non-fiction? Op-ed? Bible studies? All of these I have tried, and I can see myself writing them all. The writing sages say build a platform first. If you have a platform, editors can’t hardly turn you down when submitting book-length queries. I’ve got platform building ideas, but keep hesitating to trigger them for fear they will sap all the creative time and energy I have.

Yet trigger them I must, if I expect to have any hope of publishing books with traditional, royalty paying publishers. In two future posts (perhaps not consecutive to this one), I’ll explain a couple of platform-building ideas I have, one old, one new, and use the blog as a sounding board for them.

ETA: I wrote the draft of this post Saturday night, intending to publish it Sunday afternoon. When I awoke this morning, deprived of an hour of sleep, I saw our huge Bradford pear in the backyard is now white. Overnight the buds popped. Our native woods don’t have many volunteer Bradford pears, but it does look as if I’m correct: this weekend should allow maximum clarity.

Harmony of the gospels, Health, reading

Inch by Inch

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That’s advice you always here:
“Mile by mile it’s a trial.
Yard by yard it’s hard.
Inch by inch it’s a cinch.”

I’ve often felt that the person giving such advice was running a two-mile race, not a marathon. Yet, I can see some truth in this in terms of my own life and the improvements I’d like to make in character and conduct, as well as the goals I have set for myself.

Take my weight, for example. Slowly over the course of about three years, I have lost 50 pounds. That was as of my scales moment Friday. Of course, that does no more than put me back to where I was on a day in June 2003. I’ve still got 54 pounds to lose to make it to the top end of my ideal weight range. So I have many more inches to go in this.

Take the Harmony of the Gospels I’ve been working on since, when was it, 2004? This is a project that for a long time I worked at between other projects. It started as a Bible study for myself, to use in teaching an adult Sunday School class and to satisfy my own curiosity about something. Yet, since then it has grown into a Bible study I am working on to be of publishable quality. Friday night I finished the second round of proof-reading. I have only one more step to go before I begin typing these edits and putting it in a format to share with my pastor. Only a couple of yards to go, inch by inch.

Take the book I’m reading, The Powers That Be by David Halberstam. I began this sometime before Christmas. A 736 page tome, I’m down to twenty-five pages to go, and likely will finish it tonight. Perhaps I was stupid for persevering through the whole thing rather than setting it aside after a hundred pages, when I realized that, while it was good, the reading was going to be tedious and I would be a couple of months getting through it. Oh well, persevere I did, and have only a few inches to go.

Take trying to be published. This is certainly an inch by inch proposition, as at this time I’m not prepared to self-publish. The problem is I don’t know how long the journey still is, or even if there is a final destination. Possibly the inches are taking me along a race track with no finish line, and I will never be published. Or perhaps it is only an inch or two ahead. Either way, in the last couple of weeks I managed to move a couple of inches forward, mainly in my realization of where my writing is relative to publishing standards, and in seeing the next two or three inches along the way.

Other things in my life have also shown inched progress. And I’m thankful for that.

career, Engineering, Health

Power Failure

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This morning at work we experienced a brief power failure. This is a blustery day. As I arrived at the office about 6:45 AM the wind was fresh and from the east. By 9:00 AM it was from the south, and the front was almost upon us. Radar showed a line of storms heading our way from the west, likely to last most of the day.

Shortly after I checked the radar on the Internet, our power went out. Only for a second; then it came on for a couple of seconds; then it went off for five seconds; then on again and has stayed on. Just those few seconds, but long enough to cause every computer to have to be re-booted manually, long enough to lose any unsaved data, long enough to cause everyone to get up and walk around in frustration. Whether the power failure was due to the front being upon us, or something else, I’m not sure. We have a large road construction project going on about two miles from the office, but if they did something, we would not have come on so quickly.

I’m experiencing a power failure of sorts myself. Since all the work this weekend, which I described in yesterday’s post, which followed close on the work of the previous week and weekend, recovering from the ice storm, I don’t seem to have much energy. My weight is down, the lowest it’s been since June 2003. Saturday I tried on some slacks that were hanging in my closet but not worn for years, and I fit in all of them. I should have more energy than I do, given that I’m at a better weight, almost 50 pounds below my peak weight of a couple of years ago. So what’s wrong?

I have heard it said that toxins are stored in the body’s fat, and so losing weight by losing fat will release those toxins. I did some Internet research on this, and while many people make this claim, I couldn’t find any expert web site that I felt gave a definitive statement saying this was so. Could the mere act of losing weight at a good clip result in tiredness and sluggishness, regardless of whether toxins are released or not? I’m also fighting an injured right shoulder. I say injured, but I suppose it could be just a severe outbreak of rheumatoid arthritis. It doesn’t feel like my rheumatoid usually does, however. It feels like an injury. The pain is almost constant, even when at rest. I’ve learned to avoid using my right arm when I have to move it at the shoulder, and it seems marginally better since I’ve gone to this routine. My regular doctor appointment is in a couple of weeks, so I’m hoping I can get by till then and see what he thinks.

Maybe this personal power failure is partially due to economic conditions. Maybe it is partly due to the growing realization of the futility of trying to publish books. Maybe it is another (or two) life circumstances I am dealing with. More likely it is a combination of all of the above.

God, help me out of these doldrums, that I might better serve You in power and boldness.

Health

First week in the weight loss program

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Well, all that activity late last week and over the weekend paid off, aided and abetted by proper eating and just a little bit of exercise on two days. With a weight loss goal of 1 pound per week, but with a hope of actually achieving 1 percent a week at least for a few weeks, I weighed in today 2.25 percent lower than last week! So I’m way ahead of expectations.

I know, I know, the first week is always the easiest. And most or all of that was pounds added over Thanksgiving and Christmas. That’s the negative way of looking at it. But also this puts me 39 pounds below my highest weight of three years ago. It has come off steadily, an average of just over a pound per month. Now, with concentrated effort, it’s dropping faster.

I know I won’t be able to maintain that pace, and that a pound a week is more likely a correct long-term expectation. But oh does it feel good!

Health, Politics

Corporate Foraging

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This time of year is when I forage, in the office. Beginning about Dec 15th, the ladies begin bringing in little treats. Or various vendors begin dropping off gifts such as tins of popcorn or meat trays or boxes of peanut brittle, not for me but for the company as a whole. Or we give out meat and cheese trays to our clients, and one department head always mysteriously orders one too many, which of course we then have to consume. If I wanted to, I wouldn’t have to take a lunch. Although, since I can’t have the sweet treats, I do have to limit my foraging to what I’m supposed to eat.

Of course, foraging in the office has a different effect than it had in the days of hunter-gatherers. Back then, foraging took considerable energy and effort. One stayed slim and trim and built muscle while foraging. Today, it merely means taking about six steps from the corridor to the conference table in Dept 1, or ten steps in Dept 2, or…you get the picture. Foraging has a negative impact on the body, an impact which I am indeed feeling.

This is not a political blog, and I have made very few political posts. Normally, when I want to make political comments I head over to The Senescent Man blog and post there. But today I will comment on the “corporate foraging” going on in America. First the big lending companies, then the banks, and now the big three automakers all want someone to bail them out, to infuse money in them to allow them to keep operating without declaring bankruptcy. We have a presidential candidate from the party of “fiscal responsibility” who proposed spending 300 Billion dollars to buy “worthless paper” to artificially prop up house prices. Talk about an ultimate oxymoron. We have a president from the same company who defies the will of congress and of his own party and loans money to those automakers, saying it necessary to discard free-market principles to save the free market.

What will the outcome be of this? The US government becomes an owner in these companies, or in some cases becomes their creditor. The taxpayer pays for this, either with more taxation today or more taxation in the future. None of these is a good outcome.

What was the cause of this crisis? Greed, pure and simple, it seems to me. People were greedy, wanting to own houses they couldn’t afford, and wanting those houses to always go up in value. Workers were greedy (through their unions), wanting to have the highest pay and benefits package they could squeeze out of the company. Corporate officers were greedy, wanting the highest possible salary and bonus with the best golden parachute waiting should they fail. And stockholders were greedy, wanting the best possible profit this quarter with rising stock price, with no thoughts to long-term viability of the company. Our members of congress were greedy, wanting to be seen as the promoters and sustainers of prosperity. Rather than all the sorry characters in this sorry story fessing up to their greed and seeking to make amends, they go to the taxpayers with their hands out and say, “Please fund our greed!”

Greed is what causes my foraging in the office, with the result that my body is in worse shape, and post-foraging depression when I realize just how many pounds I have to lose, pounds I’ve lost a few times already. And greed was the cause of the bubble that had to burst, resulting in Panic of 2008 and the corporate foraging taking place before our eyes. The depression that will follow will be the result of simple demographics, as the baby-boomers age and spend less; but it will come.

This has truly been a sad year in America.