Eyeing the world

 The other day, my mother attended a seminar with this exact title. It was supposed to be related to her inner life and issues, but I really took offense with that presentation. Of course, she couldn't watch the entire thing, so I'm just gonna criticise my understanding of its first half: the half about self pity. The presenter started talking about how people who pity themselves get trapped in a cycle of negative feelings; how they complain a lot, and by complaining, they emphasize their own bad situation even more. They aren't interested in help, or helping themselves, instead, they actively try to feel worse. At this point, I basically blew up. The presenter was a theologian and a "mental hygiene specialist", but not a psychologist, or, dare I say, a psychiatrist. I could remember my depressive episode way too well. It wasn't about me not wanting to get out: I genuinely felt like there was no way out. I was too fat to train, I was too sad to work, too poor ...

 I'm trying to make a vlog of the experience. I just loaded all the not-workout recordings into my editing software, and I have 4 and a half hours of footage. Pray for me. I'm not even entirely sure of the story I want to be telling. After all, it would come off as an ad for people to do Insanity, which I don't intend it as. I don't want people to get the impression that this program will melt ten kilos off of them in two months. I don't want to make it look any less challenging than it was, or any less fun, or any less painful. There were weeks where I was sore, periods when I was training with a knee brace, and moreover, this is just the start of it all. I'm gonna do the program again, for two reasons: one of them is I'm hoping to lose another ten kilos with it, but the other is to see if I even would. I think I should emphasize its effects on my mental health more - for that it would help if I'd actually been diagnosed with depression. I did write an ...

 I don't know what I could tell anyone about discipline that they wouldn't find out from an influencer or some inspirational quote. Or maybe I do? Maybe. I don't believe in discipline. I don't believe in self-control. We aren't "in control" of things at least 80% of the time. Discipline might get you out of bed for a week, but to actually do it long enough to form a habit (in theory, 21 days) or an entire lifestyle (apparently 90 days), you won't be able to rely on it. Discipline lasts you a day, maximum, but in my experience, about an hour. I don't think we're able to "suck it up" for days, but maybe it is my brain being different from everyone else's. So, how do I wake up at 5 am and train? People do tell me that I sound so disciplined, that it's almost as if I were in the military. And what gets me to wake up? Is it David Goggins? No shade, but no. No amount of inspirational speech can get between me and my love for sleep. ...

 I didn't want to call this one Drama 3, since the actual interaction went just fine. I have hypothyroidism, and half of it was removed when I was 14. I've been taking hormones since. This monday I went to an endocrinologist, to get results, a prescription and... dunno, a shoulder to cry on. She did look at my results, said they were okay and that I should keep my current dosage, which I will definitely will do, and was glad to hear. Then she asked if I had any problems at all - yes, this turned into a discussion about periods. So now I have an appointment with a gynecologist, and will have to do blood tests too. We did talk a little about my weight - first she only asked if there had been any changes to my weight in the past year. I told her I gained 25 kilos in 2020 and was now trying to lose that. I had lost 10 kilos in the past two months. We carried on for a while, but then returned to this and she said she'd calculate my BMI. I said it would be around 38. She asked me...

 I am honestly beyond shocked with what has happened to me so far. Yes, I did go into this with the expectation to actually get down to 100 kg by the end of it, which would be around 2kgs a week lost, and I still feel attached to that outcome, but much, much less. I can definitely feel that my mental health is better, it is like I'm a new person now. I hear my coworkers complaining and my brain goes "couldn't be me". But then, at the same time, it says "remember when this was, indeed, us?" and of course I remember. I do feel like exercise is the thing that's keeping me out of that horrible rut I'd fallen into in 2020. So, now, as I'm at the end of my first Insanity cycle (one week left!!), let's sum up what expectations I had and didn't have, and how I did on them so far! I actually put all the things into an Excel sheet, thinking it'd be really helpful for me to track. And boy, am I tracking! I'm tracking my weight daily, the wee...

 So, 2020 hit me quite hard. I could play it in any direction, in fact; i could say i'm lucky for not getting the virus and already being vaccinated, and for finding this wonderful man of mine... or i could just as well say that it wrecked my mental health, deprived me of contact with my friends, even maybe that the events caused me to gain circa 25 kgs. It also made me wonder. What was it, that didn't allow my brain to tank like that, since apparently exercise is my main antidepressant. It isn't always efficient, but greatly improves my quality of life. And I recalled that not only did I go to some classes (kids aerobic and ballet) when i was 8-14 years old, I did in fact start to get worse mental health after I stopped with ballet. I did that for two reasons: my old classmates made fun of me for it, and I wanted to give myself a better chance at socialising with my new class, and the surgery I had to get on my thyroid, which brought me a one-month sit-down prescription. I...

 i've heard this concept a few times during the last year. first, it was on some witchy tiktoks, a "friendly reminder to do your shadow work", and i had absolutely no clue what that could mean. my mother read some books about childhood trauma, and talked to me about how not only do people have an inner child, this child has two aspects: one is your shadow child, all the times you've felt rejected, for example, and one is your sunshine child, the moments you've felt happy. then, finally, my man came along and told me that the shadow is a concept in jungian psychology, and what is meant by it is all the parts of one's personality that are repressed or rejected. and, well, in my life it was this shadow that got me into martial arts. i was (am?) really interested in death, how monumental and mundane it is, and how causing death is supposed to leave a stron emotional impact. before i started, i didn't really reject or repress any of that, i was after all a teen...

 i must have mentioned already that i purchased a menstrual cup (well, actually, two, but the second was free). and how much of a hassle it was to bring home, and how much i like it. well, today i got my period again, for the first time since march, and i decided to put it in again. all the struggles from last month were nowhere, not only did i know how to fold and keep it folded, my stomach is now a lot smaller and it was very easy to coordinate everything. it didn't open on my first try, so i wobbled it a bit, and voila. i'm a master of this now. and then i went to train. it's semi-important to note that i am sore from yesterday, because it had TWO workouts: the fit test, where i presume you're supposed to go allll out, and then some interval cardio max whatever, that is about 59 minutes of work and 2 to 3 minutes of ads. i did them both, naturally. so today i trained a bit lighter, and i did notice some exercises seemed easier - others though were a lot harder, becau...

 Anyone who's ever tried to change their body on purpose would know that sometimes your body's plans don't really align with yours. And I don't strictly mean weight loss here, though this is the area I have the most experience in. The only time I don't hit a plateau is when I eat "normally", that is, without any purpose or goal, just when I want to; because then I can go up up up as much as... well, I can't say I'd like. And I bet it would be harder if I was actually trying to bulk. But where exactly is the balance between loving your body in every shape or form, and taking care of it? I only presume there's something twisty here because of internalised fatphobia (I presume). After all, you can be healthy at a heavier weight, and even better, health is not an indication of worth. The thing is, though, that health is a goal of mine. Not my only one, I want some aesthetics to happen, too, but without doing all the stuff I'm doing in a healthy...

 whoever read my posts from January, or just has heard me talk about my life, will recall how deep an impression the film had on me. And it's kind of banal, to be frank. I originally watched the film after having read that "the pizza scene" changed someone's life, or body image, or whatever we wish. So, let me first describe what the movie elicited in me. I was, honestly, stunned. Stunned by the travels, the gorgeous foods and people, though I might say the cinematography was average. Good editing, of course, is what doesn't call attention to itself, but good cinematography might be harder to define. I just haven't felt like any of the shots had left any lasting impact on me, or the soundtrack, for that matter. The single exception is the Brazilian song, Samba da Bencao (I apologize for not using the proper letters), the Portuguese immediately stroked my eardrums in a familiar way, and I found the song to be quite soothing, enjoyable. I even have it on my spot...

    I barely got away from home, and I already dove head first into finding queer cultural places and events in my new city. I wanted to claim this place with all my being, especially since I was dating a girl at that time, and she really didn't want to go out in public with me. Not even to hold hands. No parties, either, only if it was Very Straight. So I wanted to find us safe spaces, and in fact, the only time we kissed outside of "the four walls", was at a party specifically organized for queer women (though straight women were also welcome, and men tolerated, if chaperoned by a woman). This resulted in me finding (but not actually visiting) the city's one gay bar. and then, later, desperate, searching for the terms "cluj pride", but mentally I was already disappointed, because I assumed we only did Pride in Bucharest. I was wrong. It was a happy accident, maybe, but my search did bring up a website (that is still up today!). At the time, in March, it o...