Hold Music

My social life is pathetic. My sleep is horrid. I spend all my time knowing I should be sleeping or studying, wishing I were out having fun, and doing nothing at all.

And the weather is beautiful, damn beautiful, for this brief moment between 'seasons.' What do I do with that? Sit outside alone? Go for a walk alone?

With no word from schools, everything in my life is paused, expectant, waiting for disappointment. On hold... beepbeepbeep... beepbeepbeep...

And I Dance Dance Dance!

This summer, I have increasedthe amount of dancing I have ever done in my life by roughly 3076.8 %. No really, I have only ever done the High School Sway and the Why ARE These People Grinding Into Me And Knocking Me Over I Don't Even Like Rap? dances. So, I decided to try the weekly Lindy Hop beginners dance lessons while interning at UCF. I am still clumsy, but it seems to be working! I even attended a couple of the intermediate lessons in swiveling my swivellly hips.

*swivels for showing off*
Speaking of swivelling my swivelly hips...this class has been a nice way to chat up about 30 different guys in an hour. This is actually not terrifying for me, and this is new. Most of them are quite nice and fairly good looking. Most. If only I could remember more than one person's name from week to week. Who am I kidding? I didn't get a single name right tonight.

Jacob? Jeremy? Jason? Oh...your name is Steve. That was my next guess.

I almost don't want to talk about the Charleston, because it gave/is giving me fits to learn. I very nearly gave up entirely, and I did give up on the intermediate lessons when they introduced Charleston. But tonight we did just a little bit of it, something they had not shown us before, and I actually almost didn't suck at it entirely. Progress.

Here is where I need to address how my brain works, or rather fails to work properly. I absolutely cannot process information when there is too much "clutter" entering my brains. Put me in a room with more than one conversation going on, and there is no way on Earth I will be able to understand what you are explaining to me. I don't study to music with lyrics, or with people who talk too much (you know who you are), or in the coffee shop on a busy day.

So...(I like ellipses)...if we are in the middle of a dance move, with music playing that you have to raise your voice to be heard, I will not understand the relatively simple concept the instructor trying to get me to implement on the fly. Ever. The man is fighting a losing battle with my brains.

This makes me sad. Will someone show me how to make my brains work right? Please?

*swivels for showing off*

Regenerations

Who fans know that The Doctor changes. Something happens to him and he's the same, but different. As Jason said: "Looking back at my life i realized i can do the same except i don't get the whole new face thing to go with it." He wanted to know if anyone else felt like their lives go in regeneration stages, so here we go:

The First Me:
I would say that my first incarnation was this terrified, timid, lonely kid. I'm naturally pretty quiet, and moving schools every 6 months and being teased kept me completely within my shell. There were several years where I can say I had no friends, zero, none. I was once assigned a friend...which still makes me not really trust that people want to spend time with me. This began to change towards the end of middle school, when I put my foot down about the changing schools thing.

The Second Me:
I guess that's the beginning of the second version of me, the first regeneration. I began speaking up for myself, speaking opinions and knowing that others would not agree. I was still painfully shy in many ways though, and most people from back then would be surprised to know that it was an improvement. Having a consistent set of sincere friends, joining a few groups/programs, and getting back into band all helped me become more comfortable with people. My family was still pretty nomadic, but within the same couple of counties, and I insisted on being driven to MY school. I think this version of me, the one that continuously improved, lasted through me joining the military and my first year in Okinawa. I tried to keep it going through the first year of my marriage, but, well we know how that goes.

The Third Me:
Lets say this regeneration started as I lost a lot of ground when I met Michael. He was such a social type that I expected spending time with him would make me more social. Instead, I was partitioned off from his social life, unless it was some event "We" were invited to by mutual co-workers. My social awkwardness embarrassed him, and the loneliness of being married was far far worse than the loneliness that drove me to get married. I still completed my associate's degree during this time, and developed a few work friends. We aren't going into the ultimate downfall of the marriage, but lets just say trust is an issue again. I don't know that I can trust myself anymore to know that someone is bad for me. I don't trust my own decision-making.

The Third Me(current incarnation):
Hoo-boy! This one is more interesting than the previous, and it took longer to come about. First I left the military, started a physics degree, and finally the divorce finished the regeneration. I'm still getting used to the new me. She buys clothes, the kind with colors other than grey and black! She can do more with her hair than just messy ponytails! She can even wear makeup! (no shit, I've learned to wear makeup) She flies to see a hot friend at the drop of a hat. But this is just surface change, a reflection of the internal changes I've brought about. I'm still not ready to articulate those changes, its too soon. I may not even be able to recognize them until the next regeneration...

But for sure, one of those changes involves not double-spacing at the end of sentences. Apparently it is soo last decade. Who knew?!?!!

Uh, Um, Like...Fuck.

Now, I was about to pedal my happy ass to the bike shop to pick up a cargo net, and maybe then take a dip in the pool to celebrate 130 miles on my bike so far and a hellish assignment behind me. Then I realized, that distant rumble? It is electricity falling from the sky. Fan. Tastic.

So anyway, the hellish assignment was a formal proposal, which I chose to do over bike parking and stuff on campus. Five pages, not including the cover letter, table of contents, appendices...were due this morning. I had three and a half days to do research, come up with a real proposal, and write all the damn documents (10 MS Word files later...). I also got dubious honor of being one of only two people presenting my PowerPoint slides this morning. I was up until 1am. I gave up on including any images in the document or the presentation.

Oh the presentation. It was probably painful to watch, but they would be surprised to know that I actually showed improvement in public speaking. Why, I didn't talk insanely fast and quiet, or even run out of breath completely. I was just all "um...where was I again, what was i about to say here, oh look awkward pause!" Amazingly, I still got a 95%, probably on consideration the painful patheticness of my nervousness and the fact that I had no time to practice between writing the paper and preparing the slides.

I certainly got enough riding in, though, pedaling all over campus to look at the placement of bike racks, getting an interview with the campus police chief, coordinating pretend involvement from the bike shop, and pricing fliers.

On Fat

First, the video by Joy Nash


So this a picture of me, 5 years ago:


I know that at the moment this picture was taken, I felt like a cow. I look back now, and I see that, wow, I was kinda cute. But I still crop my lower body out of this picture, because I still look at it and feel as awkward as I did the moment it was taken. That is a shame, because the pond scenery is sooo beautiful. The bigger shame is that I had to feel so awkward in such a lovely photograph, just because my clothes didn't fit me right.

I. Looked. Great.

But I was so overjoyed at finally FINALLY being able to get into and zip up a size 10 pair of shorts, that I didn't realize that it didn't mean that those pants FIT ME. With the unfortunate shirt, I was stuck on the idea that I was a size Medium, forever an always, up top. I was so terrified, mortified, at ever even trying on a size Large *gasp, horror* that I actually put up with an entire wardrobe (term used loosely) of shirts that stretched tight over my round belly.

I was the most physically fit of my entire life. Back then I weighed 141 pounds, overweight by Air Force standards for my height. Lets keep in mind that at this point I had zero social life and spent 1-2 hours PER NIGHT at the gym, in addition to my unit's thrice-weekly mandatory mile run and calisthenics, and I ate a cobb salad for lunch and dinner every day. I could do 65 situps in 60 seconds, but I still had the round tummy, and I always will. FACT.

Here's me last month:

When I posted this picture to Facebook, I cropped it to not show my arms, and squeezed the image a little. Yup. I still can't stand the sight of myself in the camera's lens.

Now, I don't bother weighing myself anymore. I am done hating myself because of that number. Maybe it is around 165, I dunno. I wear a size 12/14 pant, and Large/XL shirts. I can't shop at most stores in the mall because they have shitty selection that high, and I get asked "why are you here, skinny?" at Lane Bryant.

I have biked 100 miles in about 5 total weeks. I do yoga or an abs workout 4 times a week. I have found healthy, simple foods that I enjoy, and I refuse to eat something "healthy" that I do not absolutely love.

Today I made pound cake, and I will delight in every brandy-infused bite for the next week.

Fear

This is a personality test I just took, not a horoscope or a quizfarm thing. I don't know how "right" they are, but some of the questions turned in my gut a little, and I surprised myself with a few answers.

Enneagram Type 6 - Loyalist

Conflicted between trust and distrust

People of this personality type essentially feel insecure, as though there is nothing quite steady enough to hold onto. At the core of the type Six personality is a kind of fear or anxiety. [...]What all Sixes have in common however, is the fear rooted at the center of their personality, which manifests in worrying, and restless imaginings of everything that might go wrong. This tendency makes Sixes gifted at trouble shooting, but also robs the Six of much needed peace of mind and tends to deprive the personality of spontaneity. The essential anxiety at the core of the type Six fixation tends to permeate the personality with a sort of "defensive suspiciousness." Sixes don't trust easily; they are often ambivalent about others, until the person has absolutely proven herself, at which point they are likely to respond with steadfast loyalty. The loyalty of the Six is something of a two edged sword however, as Sixes are sometimes prone to stand by a friend, partner, job or cause even long after it is time to move on.

[...]

The truly confounding element when it comes to typing Sixes is that there are two fundamentally different strategies that Sixes adopt for dealing with fear. Some Sixes are basically phobic. Phobic Sixes are generally compliant, affiliative and cooperative. Other Sixes adopt the opposite strategy of dealing with fear, and become counterphobic, essentially taking a defiant stand against whatever they find threatening. [...] Counterphobic Sixes are often unaware of the fear that motivates their actions. In fact, Sixes in general, tend to be blind to the extent of their own anxiety. Because it is the constant back drop to all of their emotions, Sixes are frequently unaware of its existence, as they have nothing with which to contrast it.

Wish me luck

I'm about to go to a BBQ. Eek! Social Event!
*hides under rock*

*aahh cozy rock*
Problem: I'm having some rather unfortunate effects from the cheeseburger I had yesterday. This might not be good at all.

Wish me luck.

-TJ

**update**
Reasonable amount of fun, people to talk to so I didn't have to watch the game. Ate too much. No inappropriate odors from me. All in all, a successful social experience.

Now my arms hurt...

So the office cut out early and went bowling this afternoon. I'm not normally very good at all, rarely break 100, but its one of the very few "sports" I like. Mostly because you only move 5 feet per turn, and you can drink, and its indoors. So today I did really well (for me) and my first game was 135. Smoked the competition, such that it was (i mean, I beat them...). Second game was 116, which put me in 3rd, but the best in that game was only 136.
So I think I did pretty well overall. It was fun.

We've got new Dr. Who tonight, plus 2 hours of brand-new Battlestar. Its a good day. BBye!