dynamic elf

meh

Tue, 03 Apr 2018 17:09:17 GMT

OK, so, the last month or so has been really rough. I wanted to throw myself into bicycling while waiting for the biopsy and test results, but we had storm after storm after storm and I just couldn't. Instead I've watched a lot of television and spent random times weeping about household tasks. All in all, not a great trade.

Biopsy was yesterday. Now I just... wait. Dress the wound. Stand still. Breathe.

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dense like dying stars

Wed, 28 Feb 2018 23:59:49 GMT

As someone with a rather rocky family health history, I generally lean towards extra testing and doctor visits whenever there's a question. And having recently turned 40, the time came to Talk To My Doctor About Mammograms.

Now I do also like to do my research on stuff when possible, and I wasn't entirely sold on mammograms (see this article for a rundown of why). So at my checkup last year, I chatted with my doctor and thought she had recommended not doing it. But then the question came up again this year and she said, basically: let's go with yes. So I did! I didn't have strong feelings against it personally, just mild ones at a policy level, so I figured, what harm can it do? I understood the risk of false positives.

Narrator voice: she did not understand the risk.

So I went to my appointment, had my boobs squished (ow!), had friendly comments from the technician about how perky my breasts were (whee!), and went on my merry way to work, determined to not go back the next year.

Later, in a meeting with my boss, my wrist kept buzzing.

Hey, look, it's a phone call from a number I don't recognize! [IGNORE]
They're calling again! [IGNORE]
ANOTHER call? Give up already! [IGNORE]
OK fine, grrrrr, I'll go answer. I do- and they've found an abnormality, they say. I need to come back for an ultrasound ASAP, they say. We schedule it for the following Monday. I try to be chill - this is literally the risk I had read about extensively, obviously I'm cool and prepared, and the shakes that I have that night are totally unrelated.

I spend the next three days obsessively reading about breast cancer and feeling my breasts. I can't find the lump. I am fully prepared to go to my ultrasound and laugh off the negative result I get and still not go back for another mammogram for a decade.

I decide to take the whole day off as a sick day even though the appointment will be short. "I'll enjoy the time", I think. "That's it, it's just a good excuse for some down time."

I sleep a lot.

mek takes me out to get food at Forge and then brings me to my appointment, and I am getting less good at pretending it's all okay, but at least it will be over soon. They won't let me take a photo of the ultrasound to post to twitter and laughingly show everyone the tiny lump I have grown, and I feel slightly petulant until they explain to me that it isn't a cyst, it's tissue, and it's too small to feel but they need to take a biopsy of it and I kind of nod and the nice nurse who complimented my "sweet kicks" is now telling me how big it is (1.5cm, so roughly an olive pit) and how the biopsy works (a really big needle and some novocaine, just in your boob instead of your gums, and you get to watch it on the ultrasound cam!) and I'm smiling and nodding still and I understand but it all feels so surreal.

So now I get to wait a month. First I meet with the surgeon (she's a little fireball!, says the nurse), then the next day there's the biopsy, then a week later I meet with the surgeon again to learn and discuss the results.

At every step, I get a little bit further from reading medical studies and a little more scared. I no longer feel like I understand the risk of a false positive. I no longer intrinsically grasp that I almost certainly do not have cancer. "I'm not that stressed, it's just scary," I think to myself, and then the next day my back seizes up and I can't walk. And now I get to wait a month.

Even if it turns out that I do have breast cancer, and not a harmless fibroadenoma, it really doesn't look like it'd be the big scary type. I think the worst reasonable scenario is that I have the little lump removed and we're done. And if this happens, I am definitely not going to recommend to all of my just-turning-40 breast-having pals to get mammograms, because I still think it's a bad policy.

But right now, I gotta be honest, I'm a little scared.

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on working for a magical elf

Fri, 23 Feb 2018 23:24:59 GMT

For many years, I had a wonderful high-intensity job, doing things I was awesome at: making magic out of minimal resources, growing and developing people along paths they were meant to go down, becoming a trusted advisor and confidante to customers and helping them solve thorny problems. Making systems that removed roadblocks rather than adding them. Solving problems once the RIGHT way so that they never needed to be solved again. All that good shit.

Then, as many-but-not-all-of-you know, that situation changed. I'm not going to get into that here, but ( here's some backstory. )

I wound up having coffee with someone who I'll describe, for storytelling purposes, as a gruff magical elf, who said, "you seem nice. Want to come work for me? I ride a bicycle and there's coffee. Also I'm from Maine." I've heard worse offers in my life.

This elf, who we will not name because it gets awkward quickly, had a job that he loved: making magic out of minimal resources, growing and developing people along paths they were meant to go down, and being a trusted advisor and confidante to customers to help them solve thorny problems. The only problem was, he had a bit too MUCH job, so, he said, it seemed like a good idea to give some of it to me.

I said yes, because who says no to an elf? Not me.

So I spent a while quietly trying to make order out of chaos wherever he pointed me, and mostly doing okay at it. But to be honest, most of my time has been spent putting distance between me and the bad things that made me feel worthless, not positively pursuing any particular vision. And even when I'm asleep on my feet, and trying not to cry, and kinda just trying to stay out of the hospital, I'm a pretty decent warm body in a chair, so nobody fired me. Or even told me I dress funny.

But I did say this guy was a magical elf, and one of the tricks he is particularly good at is lovingly calling me on my self-negating bullshit. I have a lot of self-negating bullshit, so that's not a small task, but I think he's not really a small-task kind of elf.

And that brings us to the whole point of this post, which is to tell you what the elf told me today in the five minutes between a long meeting and our respective bike rides home, which doesn't seem like much time but which was enough to make a seemingly offhanded set of observations that made me tear up a bit.

He said:

You know, you're good at your job. Anything I ask you if you can do, you say "yes I can!", without hesitation. And this whole thing you have going, where you say, yes, I can do anything you ask, right now, backwards and in high heels? It's a good thing, I like it.

But here's what I see. I see that sometimes there are some problems that make you light up inside to talk about. And these problems, the ones you fall in love with solving? Basically none of them are in your job description.

I think you need a new job description.

And I think your willingness to say "yes I can" and your competence, they're getting in your way. Because what you're not answering is: do you WANT to do the thing? Is this a problem you're going to fall in love with solving? Because those are the problems I want to give you. I think you'll be happier.

And he said:

The whole reason I brought you on was so that you could take a third of my job away from me, and I have NEVER cared which third.

But YOU should care which third.

When you started, I gave you a part of my job that seemed interesting. But I think there are some things over in a different part of my job which I'm OK at, but which you would be AMAZING at. And you should probably stop saying yes to everything and just find the things you'd love and do those instead.

And if you can't figure out what you want directly, and if you need to pretend that it is as a favor to me that you find those things rather than finding them in service to your own desires, fine, I'm here for that fiction, but, like, do it already.

It's a healing thing to hear, is what I'm saying. Coming out of a situation that was full of mistrust and bullshit and landing accidentally in a situation where the biggest feedback I've gotten was "sure, you do your job great, but what if it was all different so you liked it more because you deserve to like things" is... disorienting.

But thank you, elf, for saving my ass.

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Fri, 23 Feb 2018 03:01:23 GMT

Here is what I want more of:

Play.
Color.
Bicycling.
Adventure.
Naps.
Things I haven’t done before.
Beauty.
Intention.

What do you want?

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bus!

Mon, 19 Feb 2018 20:26:25 GMT

I’m downtown with two kids right now. I put $20 on their T passes and showed them how to get to downtown crossing on the orange line. I know they’re not likely to use that knowledge on their own right now, but they seem dazzled by the ability to get themselves to Primark without an adult driving a car.

This is exactly what I wanted, living in the city: kids who take agency for granted. But it’s also more than a little bit scary, you know?

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On Boringness

Mon, 05 Feb 2018 13:46:27 GMT

A week or two ago, I read an article in the New York Times (oh Times, I still can’t quit you) about turning your phone to grayscale to make it more boring. The idea, says the article, is that if your phone is less exciting, you will be less hooked on it in bad ways. And while I love how much I can stay in contact with the world via my phone, there is no denying that I spend too much time looking at it when I would rather be doing something else.

I’m all for a good brain hack, so I gave it a whirl. Took the color out of my phone, but set the Accessibility Shortcut to bring the colors back if I needed them to look at a photo. Instantly my feeling was UGH, WHAT HAVE I DONE? What Puritan anti-fun bullshit is this, deliberately sucking the joy and beauty out of an object? Even the Times article has called it making your phone “worse”, and I had to say I agreed.

For a few days I kept finding that I had turned the colors back on just for a moment and then left them on. Inevitably I would notice this when I felt myself getting sucked in and cycling through apps without motive. But as I’ve become better and better about leaving it grayscale, I think it’s working. Now, to me, the bright colors and red badges on my home screen look shocking. And I haven’t done any kind of systematic analysis, but it certainly feels like I’m more likely to perform the following magic trick:

* Pick my phone up for a purpose
* Use it for that purpose
* Put it back down again.

One pleasant side effect of making the phone less interesting to look at is that it makes the world MORE interesting. I’m spending more time casually observing things, which has always been one of my favorite pastimes, so that’s cool too. Also, I love seeing people’s selfies and Instagram photos in grayscale. I always check them in color too, but it feels like I get a secret window into the composition.

So I dunno! My brain often doesn’t generalize to other people’s brains, but I’m finding this exercise more interesting and joy-filled than I had expected to, based on that initial OH FUCK YOU, PURITANS reaction.

If you’ve tried it: how’s it working for you?

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OK, let’s give it a shot.

Fri, 02 Feb 2018 12:47:24 GMT

You know what I miss MOST about this platform? The ability to freely mix text and photos. It baffles me that this still isn’t even possible on Facebook, not that I ever really actually got the hang of Facebook anyway.

Things I notice about the web interface so far: it’s working well on my phone. And this big, huge text box really DOES make me want to write more words. Huh. All you people who never left, thank you for keeping the lights on. I think I’m gonna like it here.

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Thu, 14 Oct 2010 15:22:16 GMT

I love the It Gets Better project. Sure, it encourages kids to dream of escaping their shitty little towns rather than figuring out ways to stay and make it better. And obviously, in the long run, making it better is the way to go. But you know what? If you hate life so much that it makes you want to die, maybe, just maybe, dreaming of escape is a seriously life-affirming thing.

But this is the one that moved me to tears:

Just give Mr West Texas there a listen. It's 13 minutes; fair warning, I was probably bawling for six of those.

And, if you don't feel like crying, but rather feel like punching your fist into the air because sometimes people are fucking awesome, read this story about Krystal Ball, a woman running for Congress in Virginia who had a phenomenal response to someone leaking some mildly racy pictures of her and her now-husband from a costume party years ago.

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Wed, 13 Oct 2010 15:05:36 GMT

I love being the only woman on a conference call and always introducing myself by name when I speak. It almost makes up for the fact that I have to do it every day.

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Thu, 07 Oct 2010 20:02:51 GMT

So, I saw people linking to this essay on Single Dad Laughing about bullying, Memoirs of a Bullied Kid. Which led me to You just broke your child. Congratulations., which in turn led me to this post, which is the point of MY post: The Disease Called "Perfection".

His basic idea is that when nobody is willing to talk about the things that are hard in their lives, we all suffer, because we believe everybody else has it made -- they never feel self-loathing, they never fail to do the dishes three days in a row, they never feel lonely or fucked-up or inadequate. And so we don't want to admit to being the only weak person, the only one struggling, which, in turn, just makes the struggle harder.

This feels simultaneously so true and so hard for me. I often choose to think about the good things in my life and focus on those. I usually only post here to be silly or share interesting things; my deepest and hardest trials almost never show up. I'm sure this makes me look a lot more stable and sane than I really am. But part of it is an act of willpower, too: isn't it better to focus on the awesome things, and live in those? I don't ignore the difficult parts of my life, but nor do I dissect them in public. Isn't that good?

Well -- maybe it is. But maybe it only is up to a certain point.

In that post and its followup, Single Dad Laughing encourages people to bring up their difficult and messy parts. I'd like to do this: post some stuff I'm ashamed of in myself, or things I hate, or just... maybe, things you didn't know were messed up inside me but really, they really are. If you feel up to it, post one or two yourself, either anonymously or with your name attached. Maybe he's right - maybe we will all feel less alone.

I'm in more casual debt than I'd care to admit to. I used to be extremely good with money, but when we had Natalie, somehow I stopped keeping track as well as I used to. I'm being careful again now, but I am spending a LOT of time, money, and energy crawling out of a hole I am ashamed to have gotten myself into.
Like many people I know, I loathed middle school. But I wasn't the bottom rung on the ladder - sure, I was a total outcast, and sure, one day all of my best friends decided to hate me, but somehow that didn't stop me from laughing at the tiered leather skirt that Valerie Palmer proudly wore on the first day of eighth grade, which I never saw again because I'm pretty sure she left school crying that day. I hope to god I don't ever do that as a grownup.
I sometimes raise my voice in anger at my kid. Not a lot. But... I always try to calm down and talk about it later, and apologize for being out of line, but still: I YELL AT MY KID. Every time I do it, I'm pretty sure it's the worst thing I've ever done.
Sometimes I can't stand being ON. I enjoy being a dynamic person, but sometimes I just can't face the idea of getting up the energy to be me, so I lie in bed and feel bad about that. Then I get grouchy and snappy. Sometimes I just sit and do nothing at all, rather than enter a social situation - sit in my car, sit in my bedroom, just sit and wait.
I probably envy more of you folks than you know, for tiny things or huge things, for contradictory things.

There. I know those aren't actually deep dark secrets, but each of those things is something I've actively suppressed posting about in the past few weeks because it might look bad, or give people the wrong impression about me somehow. I'm generally pretty positive and happy about myself and my life, but I also spend time feeling crappy and disliking myself for one reason or another.

But, actually, writing them down felt good. There it is: I'm not perfect. I'm pretty up front about some of the ways I'm imperfect (I'm flaky, I'm messy, I'm impossible to schedule with), but I don't spend a lot of time talking about how hard it is to put away my clothes or how sometimes I have angry flashes of self-loathing when my pants don't button or my belly pooches out over the top. Or how some days, I love my kid but I just don't want to be a parent that day, at all.

I love the world, and I love all of you in it, my crazy friends, in all your glorious imperfections. Seeing the things people have dealt with in their lives, the things they still deal with every day - I am in awe of you. I am also impressed by every single one of you (and there are many) who are able to live their trials and hardships out loud. Thank you for sharing them with me. Every one makes it easier for me to live in this world as the flawed, imperfect human that I am.

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dude you have no koran

Fri, 17 Sep 2010 15:09:43 GMT

Best autotune dance remix of an impetuous political skate punk all week.

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Wed, 15 Sep 2010 17:37:19 GMT

From fafblog, Mistakes Were Made:

"If you had to do it all over again what would you do different?" says me.
"Nothing!" says Giblets. "Giblets has no regrets!"
"I think I'd travel more or go back to art school or maybe not drive the car off that cliff back when you said 'Hey Fafnir let's drive this car off that cliff'," says me.
"Oh, so we're back to this again!" says Giblets. "That was like, eight whole seconds ago. Let it go already! You're livin in the past!"
"Or at least maybe I'd pick a smaller cliff," says me."This's been a really long cliff."
"Y'know what your problem is?" says Giblets. "You're always looking back. 'Oh boo hoo, remember the Good Ol' Days, back when we lived on the ground and we weren't on fire.' Well Giblets lives for today, and we're air people now! We live in the air! At least for the next several seconds."

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from lyonesse and ivorjawa

Wed, 15 Sep 2010 17:01:00 GMT

Post a photo of yourself right now, as-is, no photoshop (or gimp or photogene or whatever). The original text said "show your flist the real you!", but I show my flist unedited photos of myself on molblog fairly frequently. OK, so, here's the REAL real me -- tired eyes and all, no crafty angles, just sitting at my desk being idly hungry.

Your turn! I love seeing people's faces.

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Wed, 08 Sep 2010 15:16:55 GMT

Do you like your work? How often, and how much?

My job is extremely frustrating and sometimes very rewarding. My uncle said that if you like your job 2/3 of the time, you're doing pretty well. I'm trying to figure out how to think about that. Even if I don't live for my job, I have discovered over the past few years that I really do love HAVING a job, so I figure I'd better make sure that I enjoy whichever job I have.

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Just a placeholder

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 17:57:06 GMT

Hello -- I am not currently posting in this account, but I will be reading here and won't rule out posting in the future.

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