As I'm getting settled in, I'm finding that my new life is taking up much of my time. I'm not sure when I'll be able to return here. For those who have been checking in here, thank you. But I may find myself saying goodbye to this blog.

I am glad, though, to be moving forward with my life. I hope I can stand as proof to anyone who doubts that lives can be transformed. They can be, and it's worth the effort.

This kind of lifestyle isn't sustainable, people driving around everywhere by themselves in a car. I opted out of this, but in that process, I'm subjecting myself to some discomfort. I could've taken the bus instead of riding my bike, but not all the bus stops are shaded, and the buses vary in frequency. I could be out in the sun for hours if I took the bus.

I am committed to viral change, but sometimes I wonder how this can be possible. How can I sell people on a carless existence? It's very uncomfortable to live this way in south central Texas. I was downright miserable today. I can't say that I'm glad to be in this mental state, but I can't bring myself to own a car anymore. But who's going to be on board with me?

An obvious solution is improved public transportation and the cessation of this fucking insane overbuilding of roadways combined with better city planning. Ahahahahaha! I'm not asking much at all, am I? Frankly, I don't see the gubmint helping me and my kind on this issue any time soon.

In the meantime, how the hell can I keep up my hope?

Maybe I can convince people to give up their cars from October to April at least?

Just to be clear, I don't mean to scold any of you readers who ride around in a car by yourself. But this is an issue that I think needs to be talked about, regardless of people's feelings. It seems to me that our political leaders avoid this very conversation because they don't want voters to feel bad about themselves and their consumption and lifestyle habits.

Anyway, I'm going to be taking a short blogging vacation for Memorial Day. Y'all enjoy your weekends!

I foresee some wiseass might make a comment questioning why women bother wearing bras, but I'm not comfortable with even the minimal amount of jiggle that my small boobs produce. Bralessness feels too exposed for me. I've experimented with bralessness in the past, but I feel vulnerable when I do it, even if I'm wearing a camisole/shirt combination. Too bad strapless bras feel so weird, though. I feel like they're going to fall down any minute, even if they fit well.

I had been drinking water all day, and felt okay when I got home, so I didn't hydrate. I ate dinner and went about business as usual, but around 9:00, a weird torpor set in. And then after 10:00, my head started pounding and the pain intensified over the next several hours. I figured I was dehydrated and kept drinking water until my urine ran clear, but the pounding in my head kept waking me up during the night. Right now, it's almost 3:00 pm the next day, and the pain *still* hasn't fully gone away. I still get occasional stabs of dizzying pain in my head.

I remain committed to living a car-free life. But I'm still used to the complete freedom of owning a car, and haven't yet learned to fully compensate for the consequences of not having one. So, I have learned that:

1) I need to carry a water bottle with me, like bicyclists do.
2) Since I don't have to commute to work during the rest of my stay in Texas, I should avoid riding during rush hour if at all possible.
3) I need to think of different ways to dress that combine safety and heat protection.

I'm also surprised at my inability to bounce back quickly. I mean, I drank water last night, but the headache and weakness remained. Of course, I realize that people get weaker as they get older; I just didn't expect it to happen so soon. I'm still in my thirties for chrissake! The other night, I got really tired swimming laps, whereas in previous summers, I adapted to the exercise very quickly. Being ill right now, I'm going to indulge in some self-pity. I am struggling to learn to age gracefully in terms of my appearance, but this other stuff really sucks.

*sigh*

It's not like I'm determined to get into the meat counter guy's pants, but it would be nice to have a flirtation. I just don't know how to do it.

:(

Allow me to brag. Last night, I decided to see the max weight I can lift. I did 120 pounds on the chest press machine! Three times! That's my body weight. The dude who used the machine next took weight off! Eee! I love being strong.

120 pounds! I spent the rest of my workout doing high weight, low rep exercises. I'll do different shits later this week. Today, I'm mildly and pleasantly sore, so I didn't overdo anything.

I had planned to work right up until the day I left to make as much money as possible, but Fuck It. The past three years have been TAXING as hell, and I plan to get in as much quality sloth time as possible in the next month.

I'm going to read whenever I want; I need to recapture my intellectual curiosity, which has recently been limited to things like figuring out who's going to be eliminated in each episode of Top Chef. In the past week, I read Generation Kill and finally finished The Omnivore's Dilemma and Inside the Victorian Home: A Portrait of Life in Victorian England.

Now, I will start Civilization, which has been sitting on my bookshelf for over a year. However, as I read the table of contents a little while ago, I started to feel sorry I bought the book. The book, while critical, doesn't really question the conceit of "Western Civilization." Can you draw a direct line from ancient Greece/Rome to The West, as he apparently does? And even more basic than that, can you lump a bunch of shit together under that monolithic category? Given that, how far does he distance himself from Samuel Huntington? Well, I guess I'll find out when I start reading it.

I'm going to swim regularly, maybe practice my butterfly stroke. I bought a month's membership at a gym, so I'll do some weight work and do some reading on the elliptical machine and stationary bikes. I spent 1 hr 15 min on those machines last week, not 'cause I like them, but because I was so fascinated by the description of a sustainable farming operation in The Omnivore's Dilemma, a farming system modeled on nature. Stopping exercise would have meant an interruption in my reading! I said "farming operation," but it isn't as prosaic as that term sounds; it's a creation of sheer beauty possessed of wondrous symmetry. It restored my faith in humanity, even. My feet were numb when I got off the elliptical and I went on to numb my ass on the bike.

I'm going to figure out ways to make vegetables interesting. I'm tired of interesting salads. I want interesting *cooked* vegetables. Anyone know of an excellent vegetable cookbook?

Heh. I guess "Sloth" really isn't a proper name for this post. I guess "Pleasurable Projects" is a more accurate description.

Thanks to Rufus for pointing out this fascinating article. The author, a neuroscientist named Susan Greenfield, discusses how the human brain continuously -- not just in childhood -- remains plastic and changes at the microcellular level in response to experiences and stimuli.

She briefly describes an experiment involving three groups of adults who had never played the piano. One group sat in a room with the piano but had nothing to do with it, a second group was given intensive piano lessons, and the last group was told to imagine themselves going through the piano exercises. The brain scan results? Not surprisingly, the control group (the one that did nothing) showed no changes in their brains. The group that did the piano exercises showed significant structural changes in the parts of their brain that govern finger movements, but most surprisingly of all, the group that imagined playing the piano showed almost as much change in their brains as those who actually played the piano!

Greenfield's article dealt with her worries about the effect of technology and psychoactive drugs on our brains; however, for me, that piano experiment struck another chord: What implications does this have for people like me, people who need to heal from trauma?

Here's another interesting article about "lies" versus what we might call "future truths." In the experiment described in that article, college students were asked about their grades and academic histories. Almost half embellished their records, but instead of becoming tensed and stressed when lying -- which happens to people who are lying in order to cover up crimes, for instance -- they became more relaxed as they lied. To paraphrase the article, this was because their goal was not to deceive; rather, the "lies" can be seen as a statement of aspiration or an attempt to project themselves toward their goals. In earlier studies, the research team found that students who exaggerated their grade point average actually went on to bump up their grades, often by the very amount they exaggerated.

I'll admit that I'm engaging in dubious speculation and making connections that may not be sound. But what I read in those articles resonates so much with my own experience. Imagining things: that's exactly what I had to do to get healthy. I told myself all the good things I wanted to believe about myself, and I acted as though I really believed it. There is a starting point: you, unhappy, feeling broken. Then there's a goal point: you, healed, whole.

How do you bridge those states? How on earth do you get to the goal? There's no map or set of instructions. All you can do, really, is imagine yourself there. In my case, I suddenly, almost magically, found myself there. My old thought habits are greatly diminished, if not totally gone. Granted, the magic was only in hindsight; I did a lot of work, invisible work because it was all in my head.

How the fuck do you change your head, you might ask? Well, it's YOUR damn head! You have a CHOICE.

This fucken works, man. I'm not the same person I used to be. My brain is different. It is absolutely possible to change something as seemingly fundamental as your personality.

1) Fruit and chocolate together is now acceptable. Or at least berries and chocolate, and some limited citrus. I've also come to love dried fruit and chocolate after much experimentation with the bulk bins in Central Market. The chocolate-covered Bing cherries, blueberry chocolates, and mixed berry chocolates are to die for.

2) Fruit and meat. I think my distaste for fruit and meat together started as a child, when my mom would open a can of jellied cranberry sauce on Thanksgivings. But I'm starting to come around; for example, I had cranberries and wild boar sausages together the other night. I've also had dried fruit with various meats recently, and liked them. Which leads to the following:

3) Raisins. I've always liked raisins, but only by themselves. The only other form I would eat them in was raisin bread. But lately, I've had raisins in pilaf, raisins in various kinds of salads, and even chocolate-covered raisins (something I never used to even consider food) and enjoyed them. However, I remain close-minded about nuts. I accept them in one of three forms only: by themselves, in a trail mix, and finely chopped peanuts in certain Asian dishes. Otherwise, their very hard texture is off-putting when mixed with other foods. This rule is suspended for things like pine nuts or sunflower seeds; their softer texture makes them easier to incorporate into foods. But never desserts! Nuts do not belong in desserts, except when they come in brittle form (I don't like chocolate-covered nuts, except when combined with dried fruit).

4) Sweetness in entrees. The only sweet entree I used to like was sukiyaki. I liked to segregate the savory and sweet portions of my meal -- entree savory, dessert sweet. This has changed gradually over time and is related to my acceptance of the pairing of fruit and meat. I still reject overly sweetened curries and reject sweetness in soba sauces altogether, but it was the slightly sweetened nuoc cham, or dipping sauce, in Vietnamese cooking that brought me around with its irresistible combination of sweet-savory-fiery.

I wonder if I'll ever get over my aversion to organ meats, though.

I've absolutely no proof that this actually works, but I'm going to treat this as a grand experiment on my part. Who knows? Maybe soon the world will be full of foodie motorcyclists.

I do, however, miss listening to the radio. I also miss wearing things like skirts and sandals, and I'm tired of constantly fixing my hair after taking off my helmet. But with a gas bill of only around $25 a month, I get to feel wonderfully smug.

1) Scenario 1: A man makes a fortune from stealing from people. He passes that money on to his children. The rightful owners of the money demand it back. Should the children give it back, even though they themselves didn't steal it? Why?

2) Scenario 2: If you answered yes to #1, can the rightful owners demand it of the thief's grandchildren? Or the rightful owner's children from other descendants of the thief?

In recent weeks, I lost my "Everything Will Be Okay" feeling -- possibly due to stress -- and have been slithering around in a pit again (hence the "Craving" post of last Friday). But on Monday, I decided to act like All is Cool and make someone's day. At work, I joked around and made people smile and feel good and shit. But the breakthrough came at a pharmacy of all places. The clerk I spoke to had a deep, pleasant, mellifluous voice. So I told him, "You have such a mellow voice!" in all sincerity, and his face just lit up. He laughed, revealing a small gap between his front teeth (I find a small gap between front teeth endearing). I made his day, and that made my day. Later that afternoon when I went jogging, I saw the special golden afternoon light that I love filtered through bright green leaves and its beauty suddenly struck me like it hasn't struck me in a long time. A star burst warmly in my chest and I thought, "Indeed...Everything Will Be All Right in the End."

And last night, my neighborhood was filled with fireflies.

I survived some grim shit, people, and have no patience with cliches or platitudes. But it's such a simple lesson I learned, so simple it veers close to cliche: Step out of yourself. When you see how you can help others, you are taken out of your dark place. When I can be a source of joy, I know I will have joy. And that ain't no bullshit.