What is the fight?

I promised to use this blog to write about love. Since I made that declaration, many things have happened and my world is not the same.

Today I’d like to talk about “the fight” and “the war.” While I try to stay out of politics as much as possible, I cannot deny that I am a citizen of this earth and a member of modern society and that to a certain extent that means I am not exempt from its consideration, nor safe from its follies.

I am still in shock at the result of the US election. I have been tip toeing around my friends and family, particularly those who I know like to spout their mouths off or be argumentative, because I’m just in too much pain and shock to deal with them gently. Usually very patient, I snapped more than once since last week. Before I can tell you about the fight, I want to explain a little about my sadness. I hope you can humor me just a bit — my therapist said talking about it is good for me.

TEDtalks and Intelligent Information Consumption

I try not to read the news because it makes me sad. However, TED talks are just long enough for me to listen to while I eat my breakfast and usually they’re of a higher quality with real content, so sometimes I’ll indulge.

However, I’ve noticed a marked decline in the quality of even the TEDs since they first came out. When I was a graduate student three or four years ago, the talks were these 15 minute summaries of a respected academic’s work. They served as a trailor for getting to know the thinker in greater depth should one choose to do so. Then I noticed some speakers weren’t academics or researchers or even policy makers, they started to include inspirational speakers. I remember one woman talking for 8 out of 15 minutes about how she knew the secret to finding happiness and it was simple, but not easy. It wasn’t until the 12th minute of the talk that I learned that her secret was, “patronize my books and consulting courses to learn more.”

The War Within Our Midst

I try not to read the news. It almost always makes me sad. The other day I took a risk and decided, for the first time in half a year, to see what was rolling through my twitter feed. I picked up this article from Films For Action because I trust their coverage to be meaningful.

Source: John Pilger on ISIS: Only When We See the War Criminals In Our Midst Will the Blood Begin to Dry

And it made me sad. It made me so, very, very sad.

Stealth Sexism in Sports| ACTIVE

Sometimes a cyclist’s eyes are bigger than his or her legs. How many centuries can you realistically prepare for in a season?

Source: How Many Centuries Can I Ride This Year? | ACTIVE

ストレッチのおトク

Source: When to get a massage | Ella

持久系のスポーツは２０１０年、離婚と同時に始めた。その３年の間に正気を守るために向かって頑張る何かが必要だった。友達の言葉が心の中のスイッチを入れた

３時間走れば、都心からどれほど離れるかは知っている?

知らなかったから知るために出向いた。最初は良かったが、すぐにオーバーで怪我をしてしまった。ロッス師匠と共に働いているPhilamassages、Excel Physical Therapy、にはとても助かったが、とても大変だった。多分こんな経験をしたからこそいまだに身体のケアーに非常に細かい。

My Experience With Massage

Source: When to get a massage | Ella

My relationship with endurance sports started in 2010 with my divorce. I needed something to works towards to keep my sanity during the three-year ordeal and my friend’s words to me threw a switch inside my head:

Do you have any idea how far outside the city you can get if you run for three hours?

I didn’t know, which is why I set out to find the answer. At the beginning I did well, but soon I found myself suffering from overuse injuries. I worked with coach Ross Martinson and his partners at Philamassages and Excel Physical Therapy. Perhaps it was this early experience that put me so in tune with the care and maintenance of my body, but I like to believe I had always made it a priority.

Coffee and the Law of Conservation of Energy

So, I’m working hard to heal myself from all the damage of swallowing the Standard Narrative whole with a side of Standard American Diet to go. My latest assigment from Mary is to take coffee out of my diet. She promised me it won’t be forever, but I need to go for a month without coffee. I’ve been drinking coffee since I was in high school. I never drank it because of the energy boost it claims to give people (I’ve never needed the extra boost), but more because it was a social thing and a hot beverage that had more substance to it than tea, which I’ve always registered as hot colored water. Taking coffee out of my life is going to be difficult.

Mary suspects me of having adrenal fatigue and I think she’s pretty on point with that. She also thinks that coffee is messing with my digestion. On top of that I have struggled with anxiety and ADHD for as long as I can remember, possibly from as young as 8 years old. What she told me is that coffee can actually sap your overall energy and ability to focus, exacerbating both the anxiety and the fatigue. That is the opposite of why most people drink it, so it got me to thinking.

The Pain Cave?

Source: Digging into the Pain Cave – the psychology of suffering, Part 2 | Ella

Found this series of articles on Ella, Australian cycling website devoted to the more graceful gender. I wanted to comment directly, but their authentication system is too cumbersome (Disqus AND email verification? Next they’re going to send me a differential equation displayed in CAPTCHA). Instead, I’ll just add my thoughts here!

A Brilliant New Perspective

President Obama, in an unprecedented move to protect the earth’s ecosystem at the expense of big business, rejected a request to build a pipeline connecting Canada’s tar sands to oil refineries in Texas.