Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Health’ Category

Friday Five – It’s Friday

Posted in Alive, Denton, Friday Five, Getting It Together, Health, Lament, Mental Health, Revolution, tagged , , on November 8, 2024| Leave a Comment »

It’s Friday, everyone. We made it. 

I am anxious about my health, my job, my friends (especially those of us whom the prevailing culture seems to want to annihilate), my country, and the world in general. I am not ok.

This week has been a lot, and it’s Friday.

It’s Friday, and I love you, and here are some things I want you to remember to do.

I hope your weekend is restful, and I hope you get to spend it with people who have your best interests at heart.

Read Full Post »

Day 31 – Hope’s Beautiful Guises

Posted in 31 Days, Books, Food, Health, Hope, Mental Health on November 1, 2024| Leave a Comment »

“An open bakery in the morning is one of hope’s most beautiful guises.”

Nina George, The Little Village of Book Lovers

Today, I enjoyed this lovely pastry from The Market by Clark Bakery, our very own on-campus bakery. It was flaky and messy and awesome.

Just like life is sometimes.

This year, there have been good days and bad days, but very few days have been all one or the other. Days I remember fondly were still usually hard. Most days this year have been meh overall.

But even days that were super traumatic had a little spark of hope in them. Sometimes, that’s all that saw me through.

The comfort of a friend.

Actually being able to taste a cup of coffee (which was a rare treat during chemo).

A cool breeze.

Sharing cat pictures.

Coming home to a care package in the mail.

A flaky, messy pastry.

Likewise, every book I’ve read this year has played some role in helping me push through to the other side of whatever was going on while I was reading it. No matter how hard something was, the stories were always there. When I didn’t have the energy to do anything else, I could still read. When I got tired of repeating updates about my health, books gave me something else to talk about.

I’ve enjoyed sharing a small portion of that with you this month, and there are many more quotes I had lined up that I hope to write about in the future. I encourage you to keep a quote journal, whether it’s to jot down things that inspire you in the books you read, in articles from your favorite cultural icons, or even in memes that catch your eye as you’re scrolling through your social media feeds.

Look for hope. In all its beautiful guises.

Read Full Post »

Day 30 – Readathons Gone Awry

Posted in 31 Days, Books, Getting It Together, Health, Home, Joy, Quiet, Seasons, tagged , , , , on October 30, 2024| Leave a Comment »

“One doesn’t need magic if one knows enough stories.”

“I was delighted to sit in the corner with my food and a book and speak to no one.”

Heather Fawcett, Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries

This past weekend, I participated (loosely) in Dewey’s 24-hour Readathon. The official time was 8 a.m. Saturday to 8 a.m. Sunday (EST). But I (and various others in the Discord and in the Facebook group) rarely actually stick to the time of the event. My goal, for example, was to simply read a collective 24 hours. I think the Dewey’s team is on to us – instead of hourly challenges, they just listed a handful of challenges to complete “at any time during the readathon.”

I completed no challenges.

I didn’t read a full 24 hours.

I barely remembered to post the picture of the stack I was choosing from (see above) on the group’s social media pages.

I carried on with plans to attend my favorite yearly Halloween party and Spiderdead, brazenly cutting into the hours I would usually set aside on readathon weekends to read.

I finished three books, but only one of them is actually in this stack (Fang Fiction – pretty cute!).

What I got out of the readathon was still pretty magical.

I got to tuck into stories about found families and books and several other favorite themes. I ate good, simple food, so I rested better (weird how that happens) and thus felt more refreshed when the weekend was over (despite it being a “busy” one). I embraced my full homebody self without the usual twinge of guilt about what a person who lives alone should want to do on the weekend.

These twinges are getting smaller and less frequent as I age. One reason for this is that I’m accepting who I am more and becoming less apologetic about it with each passing month. Another reason is that I get so much joy and restoration out of my alone time that there is little to no room left for feeling bad about it.

At any rate, I had a great weekend, and I look forward to many more like it as the season changes.

Reading more makes me want to write more. I’m reflecting on my reading this year.

Read Full Post »

Day 21 – Thunderstorms and Fairy Tales

Posted in 31 Days, Alive, Books, Church, Health, Hope, Resolutions on October 21, 2024| Leave a Comment »

(This is a little aggressive for a Monday morning, Dove. Calm it down.)

“There’s a thunderstorm brewing inside me and I think it will break soon.”
Stephen King, Fairy Tale

On Saturday, I walked the survivors’ lap at the Celebrate Life 5K. It turns out, the survivors’ lap was a short jaunt around the grass near the starting point for the race, for which I was grateful. I was already up early; I’m not sure I could have done much more.

And we didn’t. We walked our circle to many, many cheers and then just kept walking out to our cars to go get breakfast.

Recently, I haven’t felt like doing a lot of things. This is not to say that I haven’t wanted to, though. I very much wanted to run the full race on Saturday but I am just not up to it yet. I wanted to clean my apartment on Sunday but barely managed to finish the laundry before I was worn out and needed to rest.

I noticed this morning that I am now in the practice of going through my calendar at the beginning of every week to see what I can remove from it, just in case. I have question marks beside things I printed in bold, assured letters just a month ago. It’s a little disappointing. I had hoped to be feeling a lot better by now, but more extended rest is needed.

This may be the calm before the storm, though. I feel it brewing.

To be fair, I always feel a surge of expectation in October. The end of the year is in sight, and the beginning of the new church year is a little over a month away. I hold off on posting hopes and plans for the upcoming calendar year until the end of December, but I’ve already started musing to myself about what those will be.

(It’s gonna be good. I’m pretty excited about it.)

(Assuming all my test results in the next couple of months are what I want them to be.)

For one thing, I turn 50 next March, and I plan to be extra…everything…about it. Several friends have reached/are reaching this milestone before then, and I’m excited to celebrate with them, too.

The main thing, though, is that I want to live in ways that make me feel better – feel alive and vibrant – no matter what happens. Storms come whether you are prepared for them or not. I want to be more prepared.

And as for the thunderstorm building inside me…let it come. It’s time.

I’m reflecting on the books I’ve read this year. Click to see the list!

Read Full Post »

Day 14 – Correct vs. Fun

Posted in 31 Days, Health, Mental Health, Music, Work, Writing, tagged , , on October 14, 2024| Leave a Comment »

“…because she didn’t know if it was better to be correct or fun, and why did it feel like she always had to choose between the two?”
Alison Espach, The Wedding People

Almost halfway through the month, and this is the quote that is resonating with me most this morning. I feel this way in several areas of my life.

It comes through in my art. There is a tension between my training and my enjoyment. I outline and then write a rough draft and then edit…except that is more focus and work than I can commit to right now. So I keep writing but in ways that are more fun. I blog, I write bad poetry (and let it stay bad…for now), and I experiment with stream-of-consciousness journaling. I am a classically trained pianist, but I have found so much freedom in just sitting at the keyboard and playing around with whatever sounds, chords, and melodies come forth. I stick to just enough of my dance basics to be safe (turns out, the basics of dance are mostly about avoiding injury) when I fling myself about in a haphazard way in my living room. I love the foundation that my training has given me but I also love breaking out of it when I need to.

It comes through at my job. I don’t think I’m a good manager. I want the job to be fun for my team, but I spend so much of my day harping on corrections – mostly about basic stuff they should already know – that I feel more like a nag. A nice nag, but a nag nonetheless. I also find it exhausting and dehumanizing to be held responsible for the actions (or lack thereof) of other people with precarious levels of give-a-damn. I know it’s not a unique problem – this is just management in a nutshell – but it’s still gross. I’m still waiting for the big bucks that are supposed to make it worthwhile to hit the bank account. I need to learn how to be inspiring, but I just don’t know that I’m that person.

It’s coming through in my life in general right now. Life isn’t super fun these days. Or, it can be, but there is a high price for anything that lasts longer than an hour or uses a lot of energy. The “correct” thing is to rest and not overdo it, but it takes so little to overdo it that I’m not sure that’s even a reasonable expectation. Overdoing it and the ridiculously over-the-top physical consequences of doing so seem inevitable. This would be a great time to be independently wealthy so that I could spend my precious energy only on fun things.

One of the ways I’m slowing my roll this month is not being super picky about writing a post every single day. It will happen most days – just not every day. It’s especially nice to take a break on the weekends.

Where do you get caught up in the struggle between being correct and being fun? Or do you? Is it just me?

Reflecting on my reading this month…

Read Full Post »

Day 11 – Friday (Not) Five – My Inner Hobbit

Posted in 31 Days, Alive, Books, Friday Five, Getting It Together, Health, Mental Health, Quiet, Work, tagged , , on October 11, 2024| Leave a Comment »

I subscribe to quite a few blogs/newsletters, and that’s where a lot of my daytime reading goes. Here are my musings on three that stuck out to me this week. There were a couple others from Substack, but just as it was getting interesting, the prompt to become a paid subscriber popped up, so I’ll spare you those. I may have more to say about that later (not all bad…just…more).

  • Loving Your Inner Hobbit – Ask Polly (aka Heather Havrilesky). “The truth is, I think that most of us — even those of us who outwardly appear lazy or disorganized or prone to underachieving — hold ourselves to uncomfortably high standards. We’re plagued by guilt without consciously realizing it. We’re ashamed of our regular human urges. We feel like we’re letting ourselves down constantly, just by being human.” I have been feeling this a lot recently. I mean, I have overachiever tendencies all the time, but I’ve trained them to stay mostly dormant. Not right now, though. I have a lot of anxiety – mostly about work, but also about other things in my life that I feel like I’m missing the mark on. And as much as I would love to blame other people, the bulk of this stress really is just coming from inside the house. All the grace other people are extending to me seems to bounce right off this hard shell of expectations that I have for myself. I want to embrace my inner hobbit (that’s pretty much my whole personality, btw. Ultra homebody. I don’t know anyone who loves being at home as much as I do.); I just seem to have temporarily forgotten how.
  • Coffee Table Books – Ginger Horton (MMD Book Club). “Gift books and coffee table books—you know the ones, usually hardcover with loads of glossy photos or illustrations, probably picked up in that impulse section of your local bookstore, or even in a boutique or on vacation—provide some of my favorite reading experiences. And yet when a friend asks, ‘What are you reading?’ I’m prone to forget to mention that gorgeous volume on the nightstand that’s been flipped through many times or the little book of essays that sits in the breakfast nook.” This rings so true for me. Some of my favorite reading experiences are not the things I talk about the most. They’re not the books I read cover to cover and then mark as read on my reading tracker apps. They’re the design books in my living room that I thumb through when I need to see something pretty or the short humor essays I read (or re-read) when I need a quick laugh. As I get more shelves and reorganize my collection, that’s becoming more of what’s on my TV shelf – books that are best enjoyed in increments.
  • Bracing Yourself: How To Process Breast Cancer After Treatment Ends – Bezzy BC. “You won’t be told how to manage survivors’ guilt or how to respond to the continuous stream of messages that will no doubt flood every inbox you own. You won’t be prepared for the fake quick fixes your loved ones will tell you about because they heard it from a complete stranger in a grocery checkout line. You won’t be told how to feel when people you have contact with every single day drop off the face of the earth because your cancer diagnosis is too much for them.” Another thing I wasn’t told is that there’s this weird space between treatment and after treatment. I’ve rung the bell, signifying that the big three – chemo, surgery, radiation – are done. But I still have the port because I’m still getting immunotherapy treatments every three weeks, and I still have routine checkups and tests in the upcoming months to confirm that what we did actually worked. Is it really “after” if there are still appointments on the books? If I still feel the lingering symptoms from radiation and chemo (or maybe even surgery)? Part of processing involves knowing exactly where I stand, and I’m not really sure how to do that. The ground under me feels pretty shaky right now.

I am staring down the last few hours of work and then I am looking forward to a restful weekend.

Hope your weekend is everything you want it to be!

And I hope you’re enjoying my reading reflections this month.

Read Full Post »

Day 8 – The Right To Lament

Posted in 31 Days, Alive, Books, Health, Lament, Mental Health, tagged , , , , on October 8, 2024| Leave a Comment »

“I thought that my recovery required that I turn in any right to lament. Sick people were allowed to lament; healed people should be grateful. It wasn’t until years later that I realized how alone I had felt.”
Abby Norman, You Can Talk to God Like That

(It’s not years later yet for me. Conventional memoir/reflections-writing wisdom tells me that it may be too early to write this post. But here we go anyway.)

In August, I finished my radiation treatment for breast cancer (click on my Instagram feed in the sidebar if you want to see the video of me ringing the bell). It was a good day. I was so happy and relieved. Going forward, I have quite a few tests to make sure the cancer stays gone, but there’s a good chance that the hardest parts are behind me.

This is where I say again that I have an amazing support system. I am surrounded by people who love to hear good news because it’s currently true, not because I’m pretending or hoping it will be true. And even when the good news is currently true, they understand that there is more going on in any given situation, especially an ongoing trauma such as cancer treatment and recovery, than just the facts or prognosis. They know how to leave space for despair, even when they can see that things are working out or will likely work out in the future.

Even with such a support system in place, however, there have been (and continue to be) so many times I feel like my problem isn’t quite big enough to merit complaint. It is often hard to convince myself that I have a good enough reason to take the rest I actually need.

If you’ve had chemo or other types of treatment, you’ve been bombarded with reading material detailing how many things can go wrong. If you have spent time in those waiting rooms – you know exactly how bad it could have been. You’ve seen it. You meet so many people who have it worse.

With a few hiccups along the way, my recovery has gone pretty well. I’ve had some scares and setbacks, but I’ve generally healed as the medical team expected me to.

Add to this that I am Gen X, oldest daughter, former gifted child, and high-masking neurospicy cocktail of a human, and before I even know what’s happening, I’m should-ing myself to death.

Should be grateful.

Should be happy.

Should be energized.

Should be back to normal.

Should be better – at my job, at my hobbies, at my life.

To my distress, I’m not usually any of those things these days. I am having a hard time.

Maybe I’m writing this post because I need a reminder right now that I have the right to lament.

My body looks different than it did before. My relationship with my body was already complicated, but now it seems like a stranger who assumes a familiarity that isn’t there. I feel like my body thinks it knows me because it follows me on Instagram. But we are not real-life friends right now.

I’m having more neuropathy symptoms now (specifically, tingling and numbness and poor grip in my fingers, especially in my right hand) than I did when I was undergoing chemo.

I am easily saddened and overwhelmed. I spend a large portion of my day and energy fighting back tears so that I don’t cry at the slightest inconvenience or change in plans. I sometimes cry for what seems like no reason anyway.

I’m tired. So, so tired. Just all the time.

I don’t know what to do with all my feelings. But I am slowly remembering that I have the right to have them. Even the negative ones.

Maybe you need someone to tell you that you have a right to lament, too. I urge you to give yourself permission to do so.

Sometimes reading brings up hard things. I’m writing out some of my reflections this month.

Read Full Post »

Day 4 – An Always Within Never

Posted in 31 Days, Alive, Beauty, Books, Church, Health, Mental Health on October 5, 2024| Leave a Comment »

“I have finally concluded, maybe that’s what life is about: there’s a lot of despair, but also the odd moment of beauty, where time is no longer the same. It’s as if those strains of music created a sort of interlude in time, something suspended, an elsewhere that had come to us, an always within never. Yes, that’s it, an always within never.”
Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Today’s post may be a little short. I’ve not been feeling well this week. I tried to push through, expecting my default version of taking it easy by going to work a little later and canceling a meeting or evening plans a couple of times would do the trick it usually does/used to do.

But no.

Last night I didn’t sleep a lot because I was up and sick with a fever and various other unpleasant symptoms. I finally admitted to myself around 4:00 that I wouldn’t be able to go in today at all.

I hate it. I’m so tired of being sick. It may be quite a while until I’m back to what I’m used to seeing as normal for me. The despair is so heavy at times that it’s almost a tangible presence.

I’m not much of a bright-sider, but I know that little touches of light and beauty are good tools to guide me out of the dark. Things like kind words from friends, the perfect cup of coffee, my favorite sweatshirt. My faith. My art. Constants that I can always depend on even when it seems like the bad things will never go away.

My always within never.

I’m sharing reading reflections this month. Click for the long list.

Read Full Post »

31 Days of Reading Reflections

Posted in 31 Days, Alive, Books, Health, Mental Health, tagged , , , , on October 1, 2024| 2 Comments »

This year has been nuts. Even with a truly outstanding medical team and the rich support of friends and family, cancer made sure that I felt more like a pin cushion or an experiment than a person most of the year. -1,000/10. Strongly do not recommend.

Several things have saved me. I’ve never felt like I was in this alone. There has always been at least one person willing and able to accompany me (or drive me) to my appointments, treatments, and procedures. I have received so many gifts. I always suspected that if I had a specific love language, gifts would be it, and I think this year has verified that. I also have been fed and texted and encouraged and cared for in so many other ways. Even people I didn’t expect to think about me at all have come out of the woodwork to give a kind word, donate to GoFundMe, or offer much-needed wisdom.

Another way I’ve made it through is by honoring that I need regular quiet time for rest. Of course, this is true all the time, but it has been especially vital this year. When I chose quiet as my theme word for the year, I knew I had to pursue it intentionally. I figured it would mean that I would need to lay aside a lot of the things I do to keep busy – things that I genuinely enjoy but tend to cause me more stress than other responsibilities and practices. I expected a lot of FOMO. 

Instead, I’m happy to report that my feelings on the matter have gone the other way. Apparently, JOMO is also a thing, and I have it. I enjoy seeing people, but when I can’t or when plans get canceled, the disappointment I feel in not getting to do the thing in question is often overshadowed by the absolute delight I experience in escaping several factors that often come along with it – the noise, the crowds, the germs, the commute, the cost, or simply the constant energy expenditure it takes to make sure I am projecting the right socializing/listening/personing face to match what is actually going on in my head. 

I didn’t really mean for the year to be this quiet, but I’m also not upset about it. I love quiet so much.

One of my favorite practices that I’ve honed this quiet year is slowing down during my reading time. Part of this practice is practical. My attention span has been sparse(-r than usual) and I get tired more quickly, so slowing down has been necessary to even retain what I read. Another benefit of a slower pace is that it leaves room for jotting down meaningful quotes that stand out to me. These quotes have their own journal, and it’s the most consistent journaling I’ve done in a while. 

This month, I want to let you in on a little part of it. I’m going to share a different quote each day that I’ve taken from the books I’ve read this year and write a reflection on it. I can see this becoming a regular thing here, but it’s daily during October. 

I’ll catalogue the posts here for reference. Enjoy!

Day 2 – Stardust and Stories (October TBR)

Day 3 – Echo

Day 4 – An Always Within Never

Days 5 & 6 – Dance

Day 7 – Between the Pages

Day 8 – The Right To Lament

Day 9 – Practice

Day 10 – Wisely Ambitious

Day 11 – Inner Hobbit

Day 14 – Correct vs. Fun

Day 18 – Extraordinary, Mundane Fall Bucket List

Day 21 – Thunderstorms and Fairy Tales

Day 30 – Readathons Gone Awry

Day 31 – Hope’s Beautiful Guises

Read Full Post »

Friday Five – National Book Lover’s Day

Posted in Books, Food, Friday Five, Health, Work on August 9, 2024| Leave a Comment »

It’s National Book Lover’s Day, so I encourage you to celebrate accordingly. It’s also the first day of Mean Green Move-In at UNT, so I am looking forward to going home to celebrate as well. Tomorrow is another busy day so the celebration may be cut short with an earlier bedtime.

Five things that grabbed my attention this week:

  • I think I’d be a great book butler. Maybe that will be my next career.
  • Joy the Baker is featured in Houstonia magazine. I love her and I love that she’s in Texas now. As a lifelong resident, I welcome her as one of our own. 
  • It is easy to find arguments online for food being either strictly for fuel or for health or for pleasure. Why not all three? I love this long read that reminds me of the importance of fueling my body by eating the things it’s craving and thus probably needs to replenish missing nutrients and to do the things I’m asking it to do.
  • I really appreciate everyone who has helped me feel like a human this year. I am also loving the Olympics but there are too many things I want to say about them to fit in this post. Just…Simone Biles, Jordan Chiles, Stephen Nedoroscik, Ilona Maher…love them.
  • And finally, in political news, I’m still extra liberal and not impressed with this middle-of-the-road, “at least we’re not the other guy” nonsense. The thing that stuck out to me most this week was Harris’s response to the protesters at her rally. “If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.” Since she knows these particular protesters would not be likely to vote for Trump either, this comment seems designed to shush and shame, which is an interesting approach to asking for someone’s vote. I’m not sure it’s the best campaign strategy to win over those of us for whom continuing the current administration’s stance on Israel/Gaza is a dealbreaker. We gave Biden/Harris a chance for these past four years and they have proven that once they’re in office they don’t care what we think. So many of us need to see change before we vote for her again. If she doesn’t want Donald Trump to win, maybe it would be better to listen to liberals whose votes she doesn’t already have than to settle for a quippy sound bite.

    Edited to add: More of this. Also, just…more. But this was a better response than before.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »