Before the job swallowed me I spend every morning listening to KPFA, reading blogs and writing my daily post. I've been trying to get that grove back with no success. I tend to write posts later in the day now and I rarely read anyone. It's not that I don't read because I'm not interested. I'm just still relatively caved in emotionally. And also, it's overwhelming.
This morning I tried to get through my blog roll. I keep trying to make it smaller thinking that might help but ... I just can't. I have always been amazed by how intensely emotional blogging is and how much it has always felt like the school yard always felt to me. My longing to belong is almost as strong as my longing to be left alone. I remember the thrill of seeing my blog on the blog roll of someone I admired. Extending the metaphor of the school yard, it felt like being one of the cool kids. Ironically, the cool kids in blogging (for me) were probably not that cool in school. I like the big brains. Bigger brains than mine. I don't always get them but I like the feeling of pushing toward the thinking. I like the artists and the poets and the mommies. I like too many. I can't let go of anyone.
I wish I understood this place I'm in. I know I need to connect. I want to connect. And I want to bury myself in a game or a book or a movie or dusting or anything. I think I'm afraid to fail. But. I mean. What does that mean?
Bloggers have books out and have television shows and there are movies about them. Bloggers are referred to as news sources. Bloggers have blogged their way onto the big stage. I stopped blogging and stopped writing and stopped thinking and feeling to some extent. Obviously not entirely but ... yeah. I used myself up dragging myself through my day, my week. Years went by. I'm angry. I'm frustrated. I'm uncertain, floundering, stuttering. Hopeless. Hopeful. What do I care about? Why do I care?
I think it might be more accurate to say that I'm writing a journal. I'm not interested in being a pundit. Well that's not true I am interested. I'm interested in writing about being fat in political terms. I have things to say about everything else but the chattering is already so loud, so hyper and so bifurcated. I turned on CNN this morning and the (cough) news person was voicing an opinion about Miranda rights. And that's what's happening now. Opinion. Even when I agree I often find it annoying. I did not agree with this particular person so I was a little extra annoyed.
So I'm writing a journal and I'm trying to understand things about myself out loud in public. At this point I'm mostly talking to myself, which is probably best.
A friend of mine wanted to leave a comment on the food blog but found the process onerous. It is much more complicated than it used to be. Signing in, password protections. I understand why but it does hamper the spontaneous act that commenting can be. Oh lord I used to love comments. I didn't always love the snarky, the need to correct my spelling and my grammar, the just plain mean ones. But, hey. If you put it out there you need to deal.
Oh jeez I don't know what I'm doing here. This is a reaction to reading as much as I could and seeing some beautiful pictures and some news about families. This is a reaction to seeing that my name has been taken off some blog rolls. Of course it has. I didn't write for years. This is a reaction to wanting to write and not having anything to say and having a torrent of things to say stuck in the back of of my throat and wanting to be in the mix.
I'm going to go wash some dishes.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Sunday, May 09, 2010
Representation
I have written reactions to the ways in which fat people are represented on television in the past. These days I struggle with "what's the use" and I have to push though it.
The other night I was watching Grey's Anatomy. The show began with the doctors being lectured about sensitivity. As the first patient arrives at the emergency entrance it becomes clear why. The patient is an extremely fat man who arrives in the back of a truck. Right away I'm worried. The patient makes a lot of self deprecating jokes, which the staff struggles to ignore. His beautiful (by cultural standards) wife arrives and reveals that she is pregnant.
The first and, for me, truly terrifying moment comes when the head of the hospital says he won't OK a surgery the man needs because of the risks. He says something about not giving him care since he obviously doesn't care about himself. It's an uncharacteristic response from this particular doctor and he reversed the decision quickly in the next scene. I realize that this is television and a drama but it was terrifying because it felt too real. The man refuses the surgery because, despite all of his laughter, he is dreading having a child because of what he won't be able to do with his child and fear of the child's shame.
The wife had all the good lines. She overhears some of the doctors wondering how the couple has sex and she jams them. Her confrontation with one of the doctors is the turn around moment in which the doctor confronts the patient and talks him into the surgery. The surgery was graphic, which is sort of the way this show does things. He survives and in the end is told he needs to make "lifestyle changes", which he willingly agrees to while he smiles at his wife. Picture my grimace.
The actor who played the part is a fat man who wore a fat suit. I was reminded of an episode of House in which Pruitt Taylor Vince wore a fat suit. I am some what irritated by this but maybe there aren't a lot of 700 pound actors. I preferred the characterization on House because the man was able to be his own advocate and not need a beautiful wife but both men were resigned to death because fat people don't really love life and don't have the will to fight for it, right?
On House the man has terminal cancer. He will die, not because of his weight. Irony. Or something.
I've been trying to sort though what I think is understandable in terms of what it takes to create a drama and what I think is unnecessarily hopped up and what is just plain offensive. The phrase life style choices, for example, sets me off.
People in the high numbers are referred to as super sized by the fat community. I'm not really feelin that term. It just feels like a way of trivializing. I don't believe anyone gets that fat from too many calories and not enough exercise alone. I think something else is going on. It's difficult to articulate in positive terms.
Any idea that fat may be unhealthy causes tension in the fat community. It's understandable since the health industry continues to use fat as a one size fits all basket into which everything wrong is dumped. Fat people will never get good health care while this is true. I believe fat to be a natural expression of physical diversity. That doesn't mean my weight isn't a factor in things that go wrong. My knees probably do hurt more because of my weight. That said, until all people with sore knees are fat it's not useful to focus on my weight. I want doctors who talk to me about a health issue the same way they talk to any size person. I don't really mind when my weight is mentioned in a laundry list of things because my weight is part of my health history. I will have issues that other people don't have. When it's part of the whole picture it's normal. When it's singled out as THE issue, it's just not useful.
Talking about health in binary terms is not particularly useful for anyone. The book I'm reading quotes D W Winnicott:Health is tolerant of ill health; in fact, health gains much from being in touch with ill health with all its aspects. He's talking about psychological heath but it's an idea that works for me in more general terms. No one is healthy. All of us are dancing along a path that encompasses health and ill health. It changes every day for reasons we can control and reasons we cannot control.
The book goes on describing people with denial about health issues and the value those patients gain when they own their issue. Before the acceptance the patients are: continuously encoding information about their defective bodies and at some level they do indeed have knowledge about their handicaps and the emotional implications thereof. I am not saying being fat means you have a defective body. In fact I think this language is less than useful for the issues that the book is discussing. However, fat people are told they have a defective body almost daily. It's a struggle to unseat that internal identity. And with the struggle to unseat the conflation of defect and genetic expression often goes the understanding of real handicaps and the emotional implications thereof. If I deeply understand and own that I am a fat person and have no particular value attached to that fact I can own and parse related issues. Life style change is a buzz phrase. Not useful.
Should people who are so fat they become immobile diet and exercise to lose weight? I don't know. I think everyone benefits from a healthy diet and moderate exercise. My wish is that people of that size would be in a dialogue with the health care community, which might reveal a deeper understanding of how it happens. What I want for them is enough space and care to be as healthy as they can be with or without weight loss.
Darlene Cates is a fat actress. There's a moment in the Gilbert Grape movie when she is meeting her son's girlfriend for the first time and she says: I wasn't always like this. The girl friend says: I wasn't always like this. It's one of my favorite movie moments. It's so real and so leveling. I don't love everything about the representation in that movie but there were some great moments.
What's the use? Television and movies are about entertainment and the story always organizes around the "beautiful" people. It's a chicken and egg. Are those the beautiful people or do we just see so many of them we have come to see them that way? They all look alike. It's boring.
I wish there was more complexity in the way fat people are represented. I did get a smile from a recent episode of Glee in which the token fat character shakes off body shaming with a wonderful song.
Yeah. I feel that. Don't you bring me down today.
The other night I was watching Grey's Anatomy. The show began with the doctors being lectured about sensitivity. As the first patient arrives at the emergency entrance it becomes clear why. The patient is an extremely fat man who arrives in the back of a truck. Right away I'm worried. The patient makes a lot of self deprecating jokes, which the staff struggles to ignore. His beautiful (by cultural standards) wife arrives and reveals that she is pregnant.
The first and, for me, truly terrifying moment comes when the head of the hospital says he won't OK a surgery the man needs because of the risks. He says something about not giving him care since he obviously doesn't care about himself. It's an uncharacteristic response from this particular doctor and he reversed the decision quickly in the next scene. I realize that this is television and a drama but it was terrifying because it felt too real. The man refuses the surgery because, despite all of his laughter, he is dreading having a child because of what he won't be able to do with his child and fear of the child's shame.
The wife had all the good lines. She overhears some of the doctors wondering how the couple has sex and she jams them. Her confrontation with one of the doctors is the turn around moment in which the doctor confronts the patient and talks him into the surgery. The surgery was graphic, which is sort of the way this show does things. He survives and in the end is told he needs to make "lifestyle changes", which he willingly agrees to while he smiles at his wife. Picture my grimace.
The actor who played the part is a fat man who wore a fat suit. I was reminded of an episode of House in which Pruitt Taylor Vince wore a fat suit. I am some what irritated by this but maybe there aren't a lot of 700 pound actors. I preferred the characterization on House because the man was able to be his own advocate and not need a beautiful wife but both men were resigned to death because fat people don't really love life and don't have the will to fight for it, right?
On House the man has terminal cancer. He will die, not because of his weight. Irony. Or something.
I've been trying to sort though what I think is understandable in terms of what it takes to create a drama and what I think is unnecessarily hopped up and what is just plain offensive. The phrase life style choices, for example, sets me off.
People in the high numbers are referred to as super sized by the fat community. I'm not really feelin that term. It just feels like a way of trivializing. I don't believe anyone gets that fat from too many calories and not enough exercise alone. I think something else is going on. It's difficult to articulate in positive terms.
Any idea that fat may be unhealthy causes tension in the fat community. It's understandable since the health industry continues to use fat as a one size fits all basket into which everything wrong is dumped. Fat people will never get good health care while this is true. I believe fat to be a natural expression of physical diversity. That doesn't mean my weight isn't a factor in things that go wrong. My knees probably do hurt more because of my weight. That said, until all people with sore knees are fat it's not useful to focus on my weight. I want doctors who talk to me about a health issue the same way they talk to any size person. I don't really mind when my weight is mentioned in a laundry list of things because my weight is part of my health history. I will have issues that other people don't have. When it's part of the whole picture it's normal. When it's singled out as THE issue, it's just not useful.
Talking about health in binary terms is not particularly useful for anyone. The book I'm reading quotes D W Winnicott:Health is tolerant of ill health; in fact, health gains much from being in touch with ill health with all its aspects. He's talking about psychological heath but it's an idea that works for me in more general terms. No one is healthy. All of us are dancing along a path that encompasses health and ill health. It changes every day for reasons we can control and reasons we cannot control.
The book goes on describing people with denial about health issues and the value those patients gain when they own their issue. Before the acceptance the patients are: continuously encoding information about their defective bodies and at some level they do indeed have knowledge about their handicaps and the emotional implications thereof. I am not saying being fat means you have a defective body. In fact I think this language is less than useful for the issues that the book is discussing. However, fat people are told they have a defective body almost daily. It's a struggle to unseat that internal identity. And with the struggle to unseat the conflation of defect and genetic expression often goes the understanding of real handicaps and the emotional implications thereof. If I deeply understand and own that I am a fat person and have no particular value attached to that fact I can own and parse related issues. Life style change is a buzz phrase. Not useful.
Should people who are so fat they become immobile diet and exercise to lose weight? I don't know. I think everyone benefits from a healthy diet and moderate exercise. My wish is that people of that size would be in a dialogue with the health care community, which might reveal a deeper understanding of how it happens. What I want for them is enough space and care to be as healthy as they can be with or without weight loss.
Darlene Cates is a fat actress. There's a moment in the Gilbert Grape movie when she is meeting her son's girlfriend for the first time and she says: I wasn't always like this. The girl friend says: I wasn't always like this. It's one of my favorite movie moments. It's so real and so leveling. I don't love everything about the representation in that movie but there were some great moments.
What's the use? Television and movies are about entertainment and the story always organizes around the "beautiful" people. It's a chicken and egg. Are those the beautiful people or do we just see so many of them we have come to see them that way? They all look alike. It's boring.
I wish there was more complexity in the way fat people are represented. I did get a smile from a recent episode of Glee in which the token fat character shakes off body shaming with a wonderful song.
Yeah. I feel that. Don't you bring me down today.
Thursday, May 06, 2010
Self Care
I did some yoga today. I'm stiff and my breathing is ... well ... I'm barely breathing. I managed one breath deep enough that it hurt. I imagine that part of my lungs hasn't expanded in a few years. When I was young and tried to do exercise that I hadn't done in awhile I would be able to do it. I might feel stiff or achy afterward but I could do it. Not now. I have no range of motion, no stamina. Everything feels like a strain.
Barbara and I had an interesting talk about several body issues the other day. She has this great articulation about self care. When you're a baby and even a young child your parents take care of you. Hopefully. As you grow up you begin to take over. Again. Hopefully. But when you're young it doesn't usually take much time or energy. As you get into middle age self care begins to require time and energy. That has certainly been my experience.
I remember when I was a preteen and teen I was excited about self care. I bought lotions and acne creams and nail files. I read teen magazines for instruction. In my late teen and young adult years and became more invested in a rock and roll identity I began to eschew self care. Drugs, alcohol, risky behavior. Yeah baby. At the same time there was hippie identity, which included macrobiotics and yoga and drugs that didn't cause irreparable damage. All of which was expanded upon by the New Age in which self care revealed the true depth of one's self worth and probably concern for the planet.
I remember a time when I ( and many of my friends ) went directly from aerobics class to a bar and usually straight to the bathroom where we had a rolled up dollar bill in one hand and a cocktail in the other. And it always seemed to me that the people who partied the hardest were the first to show up at class the next day.
This is the American way. A commercial for junk food is followed by a commercial for a weight loss product and then one for a pill to enable the consumption of foods that may be difficult to digest and then an exercise program.
I always leaned toward the identities that hurt. And I think I did that as an act of rebellion. I'd been told for so long that, since I was fat, I was ugly and unhealthy. The simple eat less/exercise more equation was never simple for me. It required eating so much less and exercising so much more and never really resulted in success. Read: thin. Rock and roll, hippie identity gave me the attitude needed to reject some of that junk, buoyed no doubt by my grandmother's disapproval of dieting.
The book I'm reading mentioned referenced the Lacan Mirror theory and sparked a memory of standing in front of a full length mirror as a preteen admiring my flattened belly and budding breasts. My thighs were still "too big" but another week of diet soda would fix that. Uh. Not so much. I compare that to how I feel when I look in the mirror now. Older. Full belly. Drooping breasts. I've done standing in front of a mirror and work on changing what I see bit. And I often have moments of seeing beauty. What I'm certain of is that the view in the mirror changes even when my body doesn't. What is really reflected is how rooted I am in any given moment.
I feel resistance, bordering on contempt for people who do self care. I used to hate the lotion girls. You know, the girls who have a lotion for every part of their body. Now I am a lotion girl. Lotion for my feet. Lotion for my legs. Lotion for pain. Lotion for my hands on the desk, at the ready. It's exhausting.
My knee is much better but still hurts sometimes. And I experience days when all of my joints ache. It can be completely debilitating. Hence the yoga.
I watched an episode of House the other day in which he comes to realize how his anger and mistrust of everyone is a way of keeping him separate. I'd seen it before but something about it hit me this time. I'm trying to understand my own self imposed isolation. A conversation between Moyers and Barry Lopez brought on more thinking.
"And then you have to ask yourself, "Why does the Dalai Lama laugh? Why does Desmond Tutu--you know, was somebody that I worked with once--why is he capable of such laughter?" And I think part of the answer is that they're fully comfortable with the riotous expression, the darkness and the light, of what it means to be alive."
I like that. It feels lucid and useful.
"There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light."
Every week I rotate my plants. I enjoy watching the way they move toward the light. I have a plant that is only happy in one spot in my apartment. It really wants more direct light than I have available but it survives in that one spot. I move the furniture around it. Some of my plants are fine far away from the window and others need to feel the rays of the sun. So a "worthy expression" is determined by our individual natures.
I am someone who like the autumn and the early sunsets. I like the retreat inward. I also like this time of year when every morning is a bit brighter and every evening comes later. I know I need my inward time but I also need to be in relationship and dialogue to grow. How much of each changes all the time and my default is withdrawal. I have to push myself out the door. When I was younger it was the opposite. I wanted to be out in the mix all of the time.
I watch as House resorts to snarky, meanness and then watch as he becomes aware. In and out.
Yoga requires inwardness. I do often listen to the news while I do yoga but it seems less useful. Yoga is now physically and emotionally difficult. My resistance to self care continues. I lean toward it. Off balance and stiffly.
Barbara and I had an interesting talk about several body issues the other day. She has this great articulation about self care. When you're a baby and even a young child your parents take care of you. Hopefully. As you grow up you begin to take over. Again. Hopefully. But when you're young it doesn't usually take much time or energy. As you get into middle age self care begins to require time and energy. That has certainly been my experience.
I remember when I was a preteen and teen I was excited about self care. I bought lotions and acne creams and nail files. I read teen magazines for instruction. In my late teen and young adult years and became more invested in a rock and roll identity I began to eschew self care. Drugs, alcohol, risky behavior. Yeah baby. At the same time there was hippie identity, which included macrobiotics and yoga and drugs that didn't cause irreparable damage. All of which was expanded upon by the New Age in which self care revealed the true depth of one's self worth and probably concern for the planet.
I remember a time when I ( and many of my friends ) went directly from aerobics class to a bar and usually straight to the bathroom where we had a rolled up dollar bill in one hand and a cocktail in the other. And it always seemed to me that the people who partied the hardest were the first to show up at class the next day.
This is the American way. A commercial for junk food is followed by a commercial for a weight loss product and then one for a pill to enable the consumption of foods that may be difficult to digest and then an exercise program.
I always leaned toward the identities that hurt. And I think I did that as an act of rebellion. I'd been told for so long that, since I was fat, I was ugly and unhealthy. The simple eat less/exercise more equation was never simple for me. It required eating so much less and exercising so much more and never really resulted in success. Read: thin. Rock and roll, hippie identity gave me the attitude needed to reject some of that junk, buoyed no doubt by my grandmother's disapproval of dieting.
The book I'm reading mentioned referenced the Lacan Mirror theory and sparked a memory of standing in front of a full length mirror as a preteen admiring my flattened belly and budding breasts. My thighs were still "too big" but another week of diet soda would fix that. Uh. Not so much. I compare that to how I feel when I look in the mirror now. Older. Full belly. Drooping breasts. I've done standing in front of a mirror and work on changing what I see bit. And I often have moments of seeing beauty. What I'm certain of is that the view in the mirror changes even when my body doesn't. What is really reflected is how rooted I am in any given moment.
I feel resistance, bordering on contempt for people who do self care. I used to hate the lotion girls. You know, the girls who have a lotion for every part of their body. Now I am a lotion girl. Lotion for my feet. Lotion for my legs. Lotion for pain. Lotion for my hands on the desk, at the ready. It's exhausting.
My knee is much better but still hurts sometimes. And I experience days when all of my joints ache. It can be completely debilitating. Hence the yoga.
I watched an episode of House the other day in which he comes to realize how his anger and mistrust of everyone is a way of keeping him separate. I'd seen it before but something about it hit me this time. I'm trying to understand my own self imposed isolation. A conversation between Moyers and Barry Lopez brought on more thinking.
"And then you have to ask yourself, "Why does the Dalai Lama laugh? Why does Desmond Tutu--you know, was somebody that I worked with once--why is he capable of such laughter?" And I think part of the answer is that they're fully comfortable with the riotous expression, the darkness and the light, of what it means to be alive."
I like that. It feels lucid and useful.
"There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light."
Every week I rotate my plants. I enjoy watching the way they move toward the light. I have a plant that is only happy in one spot in my apartment. It really wants more direct light than I have available but it survives in that one spot. I move the furniture around it. Some of my plants are fine far away from the window and others need to feel the rays of the sun. So a "worthy expression" is determined by our individual natures.
I am someone who like the autumn and the early sunsets. I like the retreat inward. I also like this time of year when every morning is a bit brighter and every evening comes later. I know I need my inward time but I also need to be in relationship and dialogue to grow. How much of each changes all the time and my default is withdrawal. I have to push myself out the door. When I was younger it was the opposite. I wanted to be out in the mix all of the time.
I watch as House resorts to snarky, meanness and then watch as he becomes aware. In and out.
Yoga requires inwardness. I do often listen to the news while I do yoga but it seems less useful. Yoga is now physically and emotionally difficult. My resistance to self care continues. I lean toward it. Off balance and stiffly.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
I like to think of myself as tech savvy. Maybe I should say tech savvy-ish because there are huge gaps in my knowledge.
I downloaded music for the first time today. Six songs. Six bucks.
What Can I Do? - Antony
I Will Internalize - Martha Wainwright
You Are The Everything - REM
Gotta Have You - The Weepies
In My Arms - Teddy Thomson
Starlight _ The Wailin Jennys
I'm enjoying them. We got a MP3 player when we finished an expansion pack. I used it sometimes but I like having my ears open. I can put them in my Blackberry, which I sometimes listen to when I'm doing laundry.
It's cool to be able to buy one tune but I love buying discs. I love the feel of a stack of discs in my hand. I love cover art and reading lyrics. But I don't have the money to go crazy buying discs. And six bucks, new music. It's all good.
I downloaded music for the first time today. Six songs. Six bucks.
What Can I Do? - Antony
I Will Internalize - Martha Wainwright
You Are The Everything - REM
Gotta Have You - The Weepies
In My Arms - Teddy Thomson
Starlight _ The Wailin Jennys
I'm enjoying them. We got a MP3 player when we finished an expansion pack. I used it sometimes but I like having my ears open. I can put them in my Blackberry, which I sometimes listen to when I'm doing laundry.
It's cool to be able to buy one tune but I love buying discs. I love the feel of a stack of discs in my hand. I love cover art and reading lyrics. But I don't have the money to go crazy buying discs. And six bucks, new music. It's all good.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
There's something about the way I play the Sims that I think is peculiar.
I play with the aspirations in mind. I mostly make family and learning Sims which seems congruous with how I understand myself. I like community and learning. Popularity and fortune Sims annoy me but I make a few of each of them. Superficial friendship and money. Not my thing but I pair them with a family Sim and they add some kind of balance. And then there are Romance Sims. I do make them but I play them as if they are in a separate game. I don't like them to mix with my families. There is one exception. I let them have relationships with my learning Sims. Romance and learning go together for me.
So I've been doing my death march through my Sims world and having lots of fun with it. There isn't much game play specific to elders. I talked about this with the designers who did agree but for the most part didn't care. The game is designed by young people and they are driven by their own interests. I made a plea with lots of game play ideas once to a designer on Sims 3 and he liked the ideas but ... there's only so much time and energy and they believe they're more likely to sell to younger people.
When my Sims are elders I usually move them in with one of their adult kids so they can help with the babies and toddlers. Keeps the annoying babysitters out of the way. I've worked my way though all of my families. Part of the thing I want from all of this is a tombstone on every lot because learning Sims like to see ghosts. While I was playing out the last days of each elder life babies were born, kids grew up, adults realized lifetime goals, houses got bigger and full of more stuff, ghosts appeared. Fun, fun, fun.
I had one family made from two learning Sims. The male learning Sim had an affair with a romance Sims and I moved him in with their adult son. He'd been living with another one of his children but I needed him to get out of that house for a variety of reasons. He and his learning Sims wife had been separated for awhile because she lived with another of their children. When he moved in with the son by the romance Sim I forgot that the learning Sim wife didn't really know that family and I moved her in. I didn't realize it until I had the elder couple flirting and the adult freaked out because ... it was his father flirting with a woman who wasn't his mother.
I never have romance Sims get married and if they flirt in front of their kids the kids will cry and freak out but I didn't know the adults freaked out.
The father died a day or two before the mother. There she was in a house full of Sims with whom she had no relationship. It was kind of sad. This whole complex drama developed because I forgot about something I'd played earlier.
Playing through the families was pretty straight forward with exceptions like that family. I moved a few couples around. All fun. And now I'm in the romance world. The goal there is to make sure each romance Sim has woohoo with every other romance Sim. That means I have to jump from house to house. This morning I was playing with one adult romance Sim and jumped to one of her elder lover's home so that the elder could introduce her to another romance elder and yikes! As soon as the elder romance Sim greets her elder lover he goes to kiss her and the adult romance Sim has a jealous fit. Now she hates them both and I have to get her to love the elder male so they can fall in love. I don't have to repair the relationship between the two women but ... I probably will.
And this (after all of that) is what I find peculiar. In my life happiness is not a goal. I like being happy but I'm more interested in being whole. Life feels complicated and I think it's best to be aware of as many of the moving parts as one can be. I look toward something like a point in the middle of it all. When I play the Sims I want everyone to be happy.
And. Yes. I know they aren't real.
More peculiar yet is the whole keeping romance Sims separate thing. Again, in my life marriage is not interesting. Commitment is interesting. Love is interesting. But a civil ceremony (especially one denied to a whole bunch of people) isn't interesting. It's about property. And I do value sensuality and romance. In my Sims game I have my happy little families and my swinging romance hoochies. Separate.
It makes me wonder if I know myself at all.
I play with the aspirations in mind. I mostly make family and learning Sims which seems congruous with how I understand myself. I like community and learning. Popularity and fortune Sims annoy me but I make a few of each of them. Superficial friendship and money. Not my thing but I pair them with a family Sim and they add some kind of balance. And then there are Romance Sims. I do make them but I play them as if they are in a separate game. I don't like them to mix with my families. There is one exception. I let them have relationships with my learning Sims. Romance and learning go together for me.
So I've been doing my death march through my Sims world and having lots of fun with it. There isn't much game play specific to elders. I talked about this with the designers who did agree but for the most part didn't care. The game is designed by young people and they are driven by their own interests. I made a plea with lots of game play ideas once to a designer on Sims 3 and he liked the ideas but ... there's only so much time and energy and they believe they're more likely to sell to younger people.
When my Sims are elders I usually move them in with one of their adult kids so they can help with the babies and toddlers. Keeps the annoying babysitters out of the way. I've worked my way though all of my families. Part of the thing I want from all of this is a tombstone on every lot because learning Sims like to see ghosts. While I was playing out the last days of each elder life babies were born, kids grew up, adults realized lifetime goals, houses got bigger and full of more stuff, ghosts appeared. Fun, fun, fun.
I had one family made from two learning Sims. The male learning Sim had an affair with a romance Sims and I moved him in with their adult son. He'd been living with another one of his children but I needed him to get out of that house for a variety of reasons. He and his learning Sims wife had been separated for awhile because she lived with another of their children. When he moved in with the son by the romance Sim I forgot that the learning Sim wife didn't really know that family and I moved her in. I didn't realize it until I had the elder couple flirting and the adult freaked out because ... it was his father flirting with a woman who wasn't his mother.
I never have romance Sims get married and if they flirt in front of their kids the kids will cry and freak out but I didn't know the adults freaked out.
The father died a day or two before the mother. There she was in a house full of Sims with whom she had no relationship. It was kind of sad. This whole complex drama developed because I forgot about something I'd played earlier.
Playing through the families was pretty straight forward with exceptions like that family. I moved a few couples around. All fun. And now I'm in the romance world. The goal there is to make sure each romance Sim has woohoo with every other romance Sim. That means I have to jump from house to house. This morning I was playing with one adult romance Sim and jumped to one of her elder lover's home so that the elder could introduce her to another romance elder and yikes! As soon as the elder romance Sim greets her elder lover he goes to kiss her and the adult romance Sim has a jealous fit. Now she hates them both and I have to get her to love the elder male so they can fall in love. I don't have to repair the relationship between the two women but ... I probably will.
And this (after all of that) is what I find peculiar. In my life happiness is not a goal. I like being happy but I'm more interested in being whole. Life feels complicated and I think it's best to be aware of as many of the moving parts as one can be. I look toward something like a point in the middle of it all. When I play the Sims I want everyone to be happy.
And. Yes. I know they aren't real.
More peculiar yet is the whole keeping romance Sims separate thing. Again, in my life marriage is not interesting. Commitment is interesting. Love is interesting. But a civil ceremony (especially one denied to a whole bunch of people) isn't interesting. It's about property. And I do value sensuality and romance. In my Sims game I have my happy little families and my swinging romance hoochies. Separate.
It makes me wonder if I know myself at all.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
I started blogging after I'd graduated from my BA program. I was exhausted from running my coffee cart at school and attending classes. I wasn't sure what I was going to do next. I started poking around in the blogging world and decided to try it. It was always about trying to write but it became about being part of a community. I said something during that time about feeling reclusive and my friend said it was like me to make a bunch of new friends while being a recluse.
I'm not sure what happened to me during the last four years. I wasn't happy. I didn't feel like I was part of anything. I just dragged myself through the day. And I ignored my inner dialog because it wasn't ... useful. It didn't feel useful.
I really am having so much fun playing with widgets. But somewhere in the back of my mind a voice is nagging me about having a blog to write not to store social network links. I mean. Ya know. It can be both. But the writing should happen. Some time. I think.
I just can't believe how hard it is. The food blog writing is inching along.
Sometimes ideas start to surface but I lose the thread.
I did a bit of clicking though my blog roll the other day. I'm not the only one writing about not being able to write. It's so interesting.
Today I just thought I'd try. I've been sitting here. Watching news out of the corner of my eye. Eating a tangerine. Checking out widgets.
Sigh.
I'm not sure what happened to me during the last four years. I wasn't happy. I didn't feel like I was part of anything. I just dragged myself through the day. And I ignored my inner dialog because it wasn't ... useful. It didn't feel useful.
I really am having so much fun playing with widgets. But somewhere in the back of my mind a voice is nagging me about having a blog to write not to store social network links. I mean. Ya know. It can be both. But the writing should happen. Some time. I think.
I just can't believe how hard it is. The food blog writing is inching along.
Sometimes ideas start to surface but I lose the thread.
I did a bit of clicking though my blog roll the other day. I'm not the only one writing about not being able to write. It's so interesting.
Today I just thought I'd try. I've been sitting here. Watching news out of the corner of my eye. Eating a tangerine. Checking out widgets.
Sigh.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Wow.
I decided to change the Blogger feed to FB. This one updates through Twitter feed so I switched to the Food Blog. Maybe they'll both update now.
Anyway. I noticed that the food blog had a place for titles, something I hadn't been able to find on this blog and needed to use for the Facebook notes feed. I decided to update my template.
One false click.
I mean they warn you that you'll loose all your stuff but I just ignored that and all my sidebar links were gone. Gone.
It was that time of night when I wanted to put on my pajamas, kick back and watch TV or read. I did not want to figure out HTML. Plus I still had a sink full of dishes. I did most of them and sat down at the computer ready to do battle. But no. Blogger has made all of this extremely easy. I even figured out how to put my Botero picture in my header. Still haven't figured out how to add a title here.
More fussing about may occur.
I decided to change the Blogger feed to FB. This one updates through Twitter feed so I switched to the Food Blog. Maybe they'll both update now.
Anyway. I noticed that the food blog had a place for titles, something I hadn't been able to find on this blog and needed to use for the Facebook notes feed. I decided to update my template.
One false click.
I mean they warn you that you'll loose all your stuff but I just ignored that and all my sidebar links were gone. Gone.
It was that time of night when I wanted to put on my pajamas, kick back and watch TV or read. I did not want to figure out HTML. Plus I still had a sink full of dishes. I did most of them and sat down at the computer ready to do battle. But no. Blogger has made all of this extremely easy. I even figured out how to put my Botero picture in my header. Still haven't figured out how to add a title here.
More fussing about may occur.
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