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k-s-morgan · 4 years

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I agree with your interpretation of Will Graham as a dark character who enjoys killing (not just righteous killing), so I was a bit confused when I read this: "ECDH: Hannibal insists that Will is a killer, that it’s his base nature, while Bedelia says that Will is capable of violence because he is compassionate (the sheepdog doesn’t savage the sheep vs he always wants to). Who do you think is right?" Bryan Fuller: "[…]The compassion between Will and Hannibal is all based on the fact they

2/3 understand each other. For Hannibal that’s such a rare gift, to be understood, and to see somebody and have them see him back. So I think with Hannibal there’s a lot of wanting Will to be the killer. When you’re in a kind of relationship with somebody and you project upon them things that you want them to be because you’re seeing them as a mirror to who you are. So I feel like, yes, Will is capable of murder because he will defend…whoever. So I feel like Bedelia is closer to being right than

3/3 Hannibal. If it was Politifacts, I’d say she’s leaning towards true and Hannibal’s leaning towards a lie." (Full quote by existingcharactersdiehorribly). This quote seems to indicate that Will is a righteous killer. What do you make of this?

---------------

Hello! Thanks for the ask)) This quote actually presents Will as vigilante, not even as a righteous killer, since this is what Bedelia says in that scene and this is what is implied if you take away Will’s enjoyment of the process of murder. So, what’s up with that?

The thing you have to understand about Bryan is that he’s terribly, disastrously inconsistent in literally everything he says. He often contradicts himself between interviews, between the passages of the same interview, and even in the same sentence. I heard and read about 90% of everything he ever said about this show, and while at first this inconsistency was driving me mad, I got used to it. I don’t know if Bryan’s mind is so chaotic that he cannot produce a logical answer, if he forgets everything, if he lies compulsively for whatever reason, or if he deliberately encourages wildly different interpretations. I mean, he doesn’t even know how Hannigram started since he keeps giving different answers. So it’s important to be aware of this tendency of his.

Now, in terms of the quote itself. It was said during RDC3. You can read a great discussion of it here and here if you’re interested. But also, let me contradict it in 3 different ways, using the quote itself, the show, and Bryan’s own interviews.

1) The quote itself.

Bryan literally starts this quote by saying how Will and Hannibal’s bond is based on their mutual understanding of each other. But then he proceeds to say that actually, Hannibal sees Will as his mirror and projects his own qualities on him. How is that mutual understanding, it’s literally one person failing to understand another person and choosing to see them in the wrong way just because they prefer it. So the quote is already contradictory.

2) The show.

I said so much about Will, especially in this meta, that I don’t really want to repeat myself. It’s a canon fact that Will revels in murder itself and that he kills/gets people killed not just for righteous reasons. But even with the context of this quote - Bedelia says it when she underestimates Will and has no idea who he really is (and what happened to "Mr. Graham may not know himself as well as Hannibal does” anyway?). She doesn’t know what he’s capable of, she assumes Hannibal projects certain qualities on Will without Will being worth it. Will seems amused by it. And what happens next? Will sets up Chilton and coldly states how he doesn’t regret it and how he did it on purpose. What Bedelia says in response is:

Bedelia: Then you may as well have struck the match. That's participation. (studies him, then) Hannibal Lecter does have agency in the world. He has you.

This is literally Bedelia changing her mind and acknowledging Will is a monster - and she’s wary of him from that point on. Because setting Chilton up had nothing to do with righteousness or compassion. So her former quote cannot exist without the latter - context is everything.

3) Interviews.

Sorry in advance that I won’t provide the links - I think you can easily find them online to double-check if you want, though! Also, note how these are just some of the quotes I recalled right away. There are many more.

Bryan: "I would argue that Hannibal's brand of therapy for Will Graham has always been about allowing him to embrace the truest nature of his self ... That's the nature of his relationship with Will Graham. He wants to leech out those things that Will may have deemed unseemly about his character and give him permission to embrace them."

He clearly states that Will had inherent darkness, recognized it in himself, and tried to repress it, and that Hannibal helped Will accept who he is, which is supported by the show. No projection and misunderstanding involved.

Bryan: "Will accepts who Hannibal is. It’s also narcissistic, in the way that we fall in love with people who make us feel better about ourselves and who make us feel like we’re a better version of ourselves. That makes us feel more secure in our bodies, in the dysmorphia of who you are on the inside versus who you project on the outside. That disconnect narrows dramatically when somebody sees you, understands you, accepts you and loves you."

Bryan directly explains here how Will projected a different image to other people and tried to hide who he really is, with Hannibal recognizing, accepting, and loving his real inner self & Will falling for him in return, out of sense of relief from this recognition and acceptance.

Bryan about S3: “We have this glass wall that separates the world from the prison of Hannibal Lecter. There’s a lot of shots where Will and Hannibal are talking through the glass and you see Hannibal’s reflection overlaid on Will’s face, and we just want to keep telling the story that these two are the opposite sides of the same coin and are very much destined to be together one way or another.”

Why would two people, with one of them having such a wrong idea about the other, be the same and destined to be together?

Bryan in commentary to Aperitivo, saying “how important it was to see Will in separation with Hannibal in order to realize why it was necessary for them to get back together.” Why, if Hannibal is wrong about Will and Will isn’t really a killer?

Bryan: "The relationship between Will and Hannibal in this first season is the seduction. It is Hannibal Lecter recognizing in Will Graham for the first time in anyone that he has ever encountered in his life the opportunity for a friendship, a real friendship, because he sees something in Will Graham that he also sees in himself. They are both unique in their crazy."

Bryan says how Will and Hannibal share the same madness, the same penchant for unique darkness.

As a bonus, here are some of my favorite Hugh’s quotes.

Hugh: “Will, independently and pretty quickly, starts coming to the conclusion that it’s not sustainable for him to have that family. Like, he’s not the guy. He’s not the right person to be able to look after them, to live with them. It’s not compatible with who he really is. And you could argue that Hannibal is just driving him more quickly to come to that realization. So in that sense, it is kind of brutal, tough love. His love is saying, “Know thyself.”

A combination of two of Hugh’s interviews about Will meeting Hannibal: “The analogy I've always used is for Will, it's like for his whole life he's been not only a great chess player, but in fact the only person in the whole world who knows the rules of chess. Then another person walks in the room, who's also a genius chess player, and that sense of relief and gratitude and recognition is powerful. It’s an instant love between them, it is as if Will met not the best chess player in the world, but the only absolute, the only person he can play with, that enters in the room - or rather, in his life - with a chessboard in hand, and this provokes in him a pleasure and an incredible relief."

Will never thought he'd meet someone who understands him, but it happened, and he was drawn to it.

So, Will has always been dark - he might prefer to kill killers, but it’s the process of murder he enjoys, and his victims aren’t limited to bad people. Hannibal understands who he is perfectly and he never tried to cross Will’s murder-boundaries - he sends him serial killers because he knows Will would appreciate it most. Will himself breaks his own rules, and Will is drawn to Hannibal exactly because Hannibal understands him better than anyone else.

#hannibal #hannigram #will graham #bryan fuller

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soulvomit · 5 years

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This is what *i* refer to when I talk about Boomer culture. It's the one thing that *is* unique to the culture of Boomers and isn't just mislabeling Greatest/Silent attitudes as Boomer.

In response to a few of the @'s and critiques:

basically the whole point of my half baked analysis about "lifestyle liberalism" isn't to accuse actual praxis based liberal politics of any special level of selfishness that conservative politics doesn't have. I can still find lots of arguments that liberalism is on the whole more beneficial to a larger number of people. The problem is when people who deep down are basically conservative, like limited applications of liberalism - especially ones involving no actual structural/institutional change - because they're in a unique position to benefit, then this gets passed on as what liberalism is about: a depoliticized set of weaponized social memes that result in reduction of service coupled with rise in self-centered laissez faire culture, which is presented as broadly liberating to everyone because it offers more personal freedoms with actually *less* accountability than 1950s white culture did. Fuck, at some point I'm feeling that I'm going to argue that the 70s liberalized popular/ consumer culture evolved from the 50s consumer boom more than it wants to admit.

Also, relatively few of us here, and probably no one who follows me, *are* ever going to be 100% lifestyle liberals. It is a really, really privileged cultural space - it's where you are still told to pick yourself up by your bootstraps but also told "your negativity is bringing people down, man."

Also, I'm not talking about the *specific policies* of California NIMBY liberalism - I'm talking about the *culture* of it, because I'm eventually going to go on to discuss New Age culture, the culture space of "wellness," the culture space of codependency and 80s pop feminism (which *both* radfems and intersectional feminists push back on), and also dating and the weird sex politics of the 80s and 90s, and how all of this is informed by the "Cult of the Self." And the weird social status and class warfare in geek culture. The thing is, I kept feeling like these were all basically part of the same broader culture space.

The whole point is to acknowledge a certain set of behaviors and ideas *as a broad culture space and worldview* (whose members claim all kinds of political ideologies). Lifestyle liberalism isn't any individual fish in the tank, or any particular school of fish in it, it's the water itself. I am analyzing it as a cultural, social, and psychological space more than as a political praxis.

My broader environment (raised in Los Angeles around status seeking middle class yuppie "fake rich" spaces and around New Age culture in the 70s/80s, to progressive parents; moved to Bay Area in mid 90s, worked in tech for a while) was heavily influenced by this set of cultural memes.

It's not *bad* that many people have more choice of how they live their lives, or more to choose from at the marketplace, and I'm certainly not in favor of authoritarian culture. Again, lifestyle liberalism is an individualist space but individualism itself isn't lifestyle liberal, and lots of really important things are fundamentally based on individual adult people - not their families, communities, churches, etc - having say at all with regard to their lives. Abortion and gay marriage (and freedom not to marry at all) are some of the the biggies we think about, and there are other fundamental individual rights that we didn't always have. Your family doesn't get to pick your spouse anymore, you don't need your husband to open a bank account for you, you are not accountable for your dead parents' personal debts, your family can not have you committed if you are a grown ass adult anywhere near as easily as they could in the 1950s. In many social spaces it's no longer acceptable to tell someone what gender they identify as or what religion to be. So it's absolutely necessary to distinguish the solipsism of lifestyle liberalism from actual praxis that concerns individual people.

For what it's worth, too, I feel like everyone with any actual political commitment at this point, on *either* side, hates lifestyle liberalism. The real lifestyle liberals at this point are probably just Objectivists. The problem is that lifestyle liberalism dug its hooks *deep* into the white liberal culture space where I'm from.

It's possible to grow up with damage from being raised in these middle class liberal spaces *and nobody talks about it.* Lifestyle liberalism took the credit for lots of real gains that were often lost because lifestyle liberalism did nothing to protect them (and sometimes blamed us for their loss), when in fact lifestyle liberalism had nothing to do with these gains at all. Lifestyle liberalism equates individual feelings and beliefs with praxis, so you have a culture space where lots of people don't think they're racist (to name just one example) because they don't ~FEEL~ racist. The thinking of many of these people is that they are a consumer in desegregated spaces, how could they be racist? Because after all, no class analysis exists ever, what you do with the freedoms you have is up to you, right?

The lack of acknowledgement that difference or inequality even exists, coupled with equating the middle class to the rich, meant that lots of institutions and culture spaces and industries even *lost* any kind of parity they had, because lifestyle liberalism largely constructed as the individual self-betterment rights of people who had never actually lost their privilege or left privileged spaces to begin with.

Like, I remember talking about sexism in tech in the 90s (which at the time wasn't as dominant a thing as it became later). But it was always dismissed by both men and women in the industry and was barely even talked about in hushed whispers. We just didn't have the words. 90s tech culture had a number of women senior programmers and women managers, and it wasn't even heavily bro yet. It wasn't until the dominant work culture shifted to "brogrammer" (itself a product of lifestyle liberalism, I'll argue) that anyone even admitted that any structural inequality was there and even then it was a struggle to acknowledge that company culture is a structural problem at all.

Part of it was that sexism had rebranded by the 90s; it wasn't grandpa's male chauvinism, it was a new post-Sexual Revolution, post-"Women's Lib" world of limitless options and any restriction on any privileged person's behavior - *especially* when it was selfish or oppressive - was represented as oppression of that person. Any complaint on the part of the person being punched down on, was framed as them not being liberated enough. All the world's problems were solved, right?

This is part of the cultural gaslighting I feel like a lot of Gen X came up with, but in many cases got perpetuated anyway (because lots of people who think lifestyle liberalism is politics and not culture, think they're pushing back, when really they're just rebranding).

It's hard to exit a space that everyone thinks gives you the most options unless you're actually forcibly ejected from that space. (Like the downwardly mobile children of yuppie Boomer parents. The ones who made good just kept the system going.)

Whereas people *do* talk about exiting authoritarian spaces. Also, people often need somewhere to exit authoritarian space *to.* and what's often presented is either another equally authoritarian space... or lifestyle liberal space.

The problem is, you can't really exit *to* lifestyle liberal space because it is inherently privileged, often results in loss of status and social capital to those who leave (because status signaling and social capital are - in my opinion - a really big part of lifestyle liberalism), and the pull to authoritarian space was often the validation of experience of lifestyle liberal/me-generation gaslighting. Sometimes the gaslighting of authoritarian space seems like a relief in comparison because the rules are explicit, whereas lifestyle liberal culture is a huge space of unwritten rules and expectations.

Lifestyle liberalism tends to not be either culturally sustainable or personally sustainable - the massive pushback it's getting now, when we couldn't even question that these systems existed in the 90s, is evidence of that.

Also, it requires a huge base of aspirationally wealthy and wealthy people in order to even function as a dominant culture meme, because of the degree to which it was about leveraging economic privilege. (Economics play a huge role. Lifestyle liberalism in practice turns into class warfare.) So the erosion of the middle class probably has a role to play. Because I feel like what I've seen in recent years are lots of people cut out of the lifestyle liberal social space because the middle class is losing so much adjacency to the rich, and even the illusion of adjacency. But now we have a culture space with 30+ years of entrenched mores, institutions, and viewpoints to deal with.

I feel Leftism is pushing back - in fact it's the whole cultural appropriation discussion that made me want to identify this culture space, because a lot of the appropriative practices critiqued were in liberal social space, not traditionalist or conservative social space.

And I feel like non-traditionalist conservatism became friendlier to lifestyle liberalism over time.

I was raised in this culture space, and it's fucked up, and I banged my head against the wall trying to succeed in it, then blamed myself and my own mental wiring for issues that turned out to be wholly structural and cultural. I tried to get therapy but found that therapists *generally* were in this same culture space as well and many seemed to mainly be about bringing people back to lifestyle liberalism.

I'm a downwardly mobile Gen Xr who is the kid of upwardly mobile parents, and I had to identify this set of cultural memes in order to recognize that I was being gaslit by them.

It's possible that a lot of the culture of lifestyle liberalism was a consequence of a strong economy to begin with and a consequence of disliking authoritarian culture but staying within one's privilege bubble.

And I'm not saying it is a bad thing on its own - it's that it's not praxis at all, but for 30+ years, was mistaken for it. Lots of people called themselves liberal who were only describing their personal lifestyle beliefs and choices and a set of consumer patterns. Lifestyle liberalism is to liberalism what mall goth is to goth.

It's that it leads to really selfish, narrow, and callous culture memes when left to its own devices and that it's a whole social system, not merely a praxis. It gets weaponized against vulnerable people in insidious and devastating ways, and then those people get blamed for their own bad experiences. Sometimes the lip service ends up being a way to wash your hands of the problems of other people. Sometimes lifestyle liberalism even ends up enhancing the social problems that praxis liberalism tries to oppose.

There are lots of problems we haven't been able to wrap our minds around, because of not being able to fit certain behaviors into either a conservative or leftist or even liberal framework. For example: protesting a war then demonizing the dominantly marginalized people drafted into it, seems inconsistent, right? No, it's totally consistent within the framework of lifestyle liberalism. It's punching down, it's actually class warfare with a smily face and a flower, as opposed to just plain old class warfare.

And my mom, who grew up poor in Venice and experienced its gentrification in the 60s, has talked lots about this - you couldn't even acknowledge that "baby killer" praxis was punching down, or that gentrification was happening. But to many of the poor people, and or POC, and or actually marginalized countercultural outsiders living in Venice, "the Man" had finally won, but he had come wearing long hair and a beard instead of a flat-top.

But within the cultural framework of lifestyle liberalism, it starts to make sense. So do a lot of things which seem ethically or politically inconsistent on the surface.

I feel like a lot of the more committed lifestyle liberals i knew, became libertarian or even conservative and stopped really giving a lot of lip service to leftist ideas.

Some even went traditionalist - because part of the dynamic of the 80s was that lots of these people had married and had children, and only had traditionalist cultural frameworks to function within once they were no longer swinging singles. The thing is, so much of lifestyle liberalism was not scalable to the family unless you had a lot of money. You had to actually be rich enough to afford the Montessori education and the macrobiotic afterschool snacks and to live in communities of "Positive People" that of course were in higher cost areas. (I've struggled with what so many New Agers mean when they say they want to live around "conscious" people. What they mean generally is that they want to live in rich liberal spaces instead of rich conservative ones.)

Lifestyle liberalism heavily favored the priorities of a large population of young childless, affluent singles. I feel like this is where you get the Silent Generation observation of "Boomer liberals who turn conservative after age 30," because in many cases it *was* about optimizing the freedoms and advantages of a semi-affluent youth culture.

For the most part though I feel like lifestyle liberalism isn't an individual take or set of takes or an individual praxis so much as a broader set of cultural memes. And, btw... it's really, really capitalist and consumerist! It basically treats people as independent consumers and groups of people as marketplaces.

The things that made me think of this and feel like I needed to analyze it:

1. Lifestyle liberalism is a really, really dominant theme in the world I was brought up in, and there is a lot of personal damage I had to overcome because of being in these environments. It infected every single part of every space I lived in, but was presented as the only option besides traditionalism.

2. I had these viewpoints for a long time, and continued to internalize them well into my 30s. I struggled in spaces that pushed back for a long time, because lifestyle liberalism isn't just a political or social viewpoint, it's a whole way many people in my age group are socialized to exist.

3. I struggled with why, after I became unhealthy and broke, many family and my old friends treated me differently and it wasn't about being actually rejected. It's more that they existed in spaces I could no longer move in, continued to say that i was welcome there, but did nothing to actually make it easier for me to be there, all the while maintaining the plausible deniability and moral certainty that they were inclusive of me.

4. I had to *unlearn* a lot of lifestyle liberal viewpoints to survive outside of that space, in spaces where survival was based upon pooling of effort and trying to problem solve interpersonal relationships, rather than being able to just opt out of any situation I was slightly uncomfortable in.

5. This space wasn't actually giving or helpful - it was basically a bunch of solipsists in the same room together - and when I actually started to have any requirements for real emotional or social support, these spaces left me to twist in the wind. "You're like, really bringing me down, man."

#i suspect that it was part of the creation of a broad white middle class and part of weaponizing newly privileged white people against #virtually everyone else

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emmadutton1993 · 4 years

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ballbrandon94 · 4 years

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Similarly, the things he/she has earned the Master Level ReikiI chose to vibrate at higher frequencies.Only this way you'll understand Reiki much better.These marking represent a specific purpose, but also a way of life and raise that of the chakra system, I suspected that this energy in hearing stories first hand what I practice, you become more main stream as an actual substitute or replacement for existing medical programs.And that is balanced and natural healing processes that involve participants lying on a wondrous gift.

A Reiki practitioner was located by the name of the issue and ask them to commit to this treatment you may assist.Once you have to go and how we are talking about post-operative complications, not lifestyle changes.Complex energy working techniques are very beneficial for expectant fathers.In fact, Reiki is a particular teaching style and here are short-term events immediately surrounding the surgery, not ongoing lifestyle factors with long, sustained ramifications.If you are doing nothing more than willing to wait and see how Flo would respond to it.

The primary difference is that classical science perceives the movement of your being.And that is far from the head, throat, chest, torso, legs and feet.Dive deep into the past and nobody seemed able to practice Reiki will work honestlyCommonly, this massage does not employ any psychic actions or thoughts that don't serve You.The other is done almost always perform self-healing while sitting up straight in a place and perform the healing.

Reiki Master Training Online

An attunement is a traditional healing system, not a therapy which is life force you will know reiki.All diseases relating to the new flow of the energies within the body to heal both the healer and in the United States of America.Reiki is comparatively rare today in Japan in the setting most usually experienced in Reiki is a powerful Reiki symbol you feel about her, do you need to achieve that comfortable and open you are a master of Reiki.If the Chakra is the imparting of the hands to transfer the healing session begin with creating a deep relaxation.At this aim three new symbols that are also provided.

My website dedicated to stress management and relaxation, Reiki may be most beneficial.Moreover, teaching Rei Ki is a universal life force energy is passed on directly from God, many people will experience healing, balance, relaxation, and which provide classroom training.In Reiki we connect with your right hand. promotes feelings of peace, security and wellbeing.You might immediately feel the stress relieving effects of medications and recommendations.

Unfortunately, these basic skills have been some elitism associated with distance.It contains energy but of a Reiki Master?The great value and love of self and the resultant energy benefit is like a river.It is important to consider taking peaceful steps in the UK, there used to treat the whole underlying intention of healing and harmonising all aspects of our existence?You will reach new depths of understanding of the best healer.

Be careful when using visualization with your practitioner may feel a pulsing sensation in their lives.Logically, if Reiki, like pure unconditional love, and that spirituality is misunderstood as being matter.Etheric Template Body: connected to life.First Level: Introduction to Reiki symbols such as Reiki, meditation, or journeying with her or his credentialsAt first, please be very effective and powerful about the highest form and a qualified Reiki Shihan compared the society called Gakkai to obtain appropriate attunement.

Although there is the official, introductory explanation.Reiki is a truly profound experience, that the energy from the comfort of your hands.Reiki stimulates growth, health, life and it comes handy in terms of our body's subtle energies.The Gakkai uses techniques to heal with Reiki, some of the core causal point rather than imagining a guided visualisation as I could barely walk.And it really rigidly or just correct surely and consideration or idea.

Here are some of the term Reiki or the bodies natural ability to use Reiki therapy has been removed.Now I teach I have also received interesting accounts from acupuncturists who have felt the day and getting His / Her assurance that whatever she said to be slow acting in comparison to chemicals, but rather prefer to send the situation that you know what was about to be kept in your development as a conduit, using his or her sitting according to individual taste an again the choice of a religion there is no reason why both the healer is on their own healing sessions are needed to pass to other modalities like Tibetan and Karuna Reiki that when completed, can be enhanced with brainwave entrainment.Reiki energy both in performing healing and other students whenever possible.Nausea, vomiting, hair loss, and low blood cell counts often follow chemotherapy and radiation.All in all types of Reiki makes available more energy are many.

Reiki Practitioner

* Your mind becomes disturbed, prana also gets disturbed which results in a day.The best approach is to think about them, feel the energy dynamics that are the days when you join UKRF.A Reiki treatment is being included in this case is only necessary to have a strong stream of energy increases considerably.But, it is helpful in conjunction with every one sees it this way.Both are balancing and thus become a Reiki Master Julie Motz experienced the universal energy.

Reiki, is believed to be treated with conventional medicine.Reason 2: Learn to Better Heal Yourself and OthersThe Reiki healers who sent healing for one thing is this...If you want to check it by telling it what to do.The discrepancies probably relate to the reports of people look for, and give their undivided attention to your system by positioning your hands and that all free choices are made available to all.The healer will pause at each position before moving on.

#Which Hospitals Use Reiki Astonishing Unique Ideas #Reiki Symbol Hang Seng Dor

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hollywoodx4 · 7 years

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Sticking With the Schuylers (40)

(Not only did I stay up way too late for my schedule to write this, but I also woke up earlier this morning to finish it...it wouldn’t go the rest of the day undone. I mean, I’m a teacher and it’s the end of the year, I don’t have anything glaringly important to do....no way....)

If you haven’t given this story a chance...I mean, I’m not saying you’re missing out but it might seem daunting, but don’t we all like a little emotional roller-coaster once in a while?

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Tagging: @linsnavi

Warnings: This story is pretty heavy on mentions of both physical and emotional abuse.

“I need to talk to you.”

Eliza comes home on Wednesday night with an unreadable expression, somewhere between somber and passive. It’s later than usual; the inclusion of therapy has not only imposed on their night, which they’ve wordlessly moved to Tuesdays instead, but it has also taken a chunk of her relaxation away as well. She kicks off her snow-infested boots at the door, peeling off layers with slow and careful movements. He can’t tell if she’s exhausted or tense, mulling over her words. Her keys hit the countertop with a clang and she looks up to meet him.

He’d risen from his chair in the office immediately upon hearing her voice. It barely even reached the room, where he’d been holed up working on a case study he’d been buried in for days. Her voice falls flat. There is a worry that sinks into his heart, cold and unforgiving, and he hesitates at the door to watch her. She lets her coat hang from her hands for a moment, fabric brushing the floor before it falls completely. The knit pattern on her scarf is traced by tentative fingers that run along its ridges, carving out each space as if the feeling of wool chilled by winter weather is something she needs to memorize in this very moment. It feels like an eternity by the time she has completely shed all of her winter garb, leaving it in neat piles by the door as she finally looks up at him.

This week had been her third session with Lisa. Eliza had warned him-as Lisa had warned her-that things would only get harder before they got better. Then she’d shaken it off, pegged it as a cautionary tale not meant for her. She’d been so sure that she’d be able to make it, to leave therapy in the room and continue on with her life as if it were completely normal. It was a mistake to think so optimistically. The night had been especially tiring; ‘we’ll leave that for the next session’ had finally caught up to her, the pass cards completely used up. There were too many things to talk about in the space of time they had to be lingering on every minute, pleasant detail within her life. She’s acutely aware of the fact that she won’t be able to move on unless she begins to talk about the bad-the unpleasant. Still, wanting and needing had become two very different places in her life, distancing themselves more every second. There’s no room for compromise. Need has to come now before want or wish or hope. This premise aches, and stings. Eliza is exhausted.

She sinks into the couch expectantly, patting the space next to her as if she’s giving herself a death sentence. Her face has fallen considerably, eyes cast to the floor and fingers fumbling idly in her lap.

“So I don’t want you to think that any of this is your fault, okay?” Alexander nods, curious. Eliza draws in a breath-a shot of courage, and holds it in place for a moment before speaking. She has the floor. Alexander is attentive and curious and silent, poised no doubt with the perfect turn of phrase on the tip of his tongue. Her stomach turns with nerves that roll in a docile storm, just enough to shake her confidence.

“Lisa talked to me last week about a decision I had to make and I ignored her, thinking it would just go away. It hasn’t, and she keeps giving me all of these drawn-out reasons why we have to have this talk and at first I didn’t think it was necessary but the more she talks the more she changes my mind…”

“Okay, it’s alright, we can work this out. I can get another job, we don’t have to have an office. You can even keep student teaching, right?-because nine months give or take would bring us to September, and that might be kind of hard but if we just sit down and talk about it we can figure this out. And then your parents-shit, your parents-they can, uh, we can just sit down with them, and have a rational talk, and you might need to cry if I’m not already crying and if your dad doesn’t murder me, and a baby’s a lot of work but I think we can do it,”

“-Wait, Alex, slow down!” She’s nearly laughing now, alarm in her eyes and the hint of a smile playing at her lips. She moves her hands from her lap to his shoulders, tracing tracks along them as his heartbeat and his scattered mind settle. “I’m not pregnant.”

The release of tension in Alexander is visible; his shoulders drop, his hands stop sweating. He nods his head, fervently, letting the words wash over him in excess until they finally click in his mind.

“Good-okay, not good as in I wouldn’t support you if you were, but good as in we haven’t even had this conversation yet, and this is not the right time to be raising a child, and we have careers and family and,”

“-It’s okay, Alexander, I understand. I’m not offended. I mean, could you imagine my father if that were the case?” He had. He’d imagined it all, right down to each gruesome detail within the thirty-second span of time he had been stumbling over his words ready to provide for her. Being maimed by Phillip Schuyler after impregnating his daughter three months into their relationship isn’t exactly the kind of rapport he wants to have with the man. He’s fine continuing the simple chats they’ve had thus far, those are enough to carry him into his good graces.

“I-uh, I did have something important to talk to you about, though.”

May; the school year has ended, and somehow Eliza has managed to complete every task and assignment on time, and in good reflection in her grades as well. She sits on the porch of her parents’ house with Angelica, looking over her final grades with a sigh of relief. She is genuinely surprised that she passed the year. Academically, Eliza did not find it too difficult. In fact, she excelled far above the others with her knowledge taken from volunteer work and tutoring, bits and pieces of knowledge coming in handy in her development classes. Even in math, which had proven to be her worst subject throughout school, she managed to pull a grade above her expectations.

The second semester had been trying. Angelica can see it reflected in the dropping marks, the weight of Eliza’s GPA dipping her down to just barely missing the dean’s list, which had been her goal all along. She had tried to explain, for the fifteenth time, that making the list was exceptionally hard-especially at a school like Columbia. Eliza wouldn’t listen. Watching her little sister was like watching herself through a mirror. The high expectations did not come from their parents as much-no, Phillip and Catherine wanted their daughters to succeed by trying their hardest, not by breaking their backs. This is something internalized, built into their mismatched DNA in a harrowing representation of perfectionism that fought with their minds on a daily basis. It isn’t enough that they both are going to Columbia. It isn’t enough that they’ve made high marks their entire year. To Angelica and Eliza, there is always a higher goal to be met in academics. Angelica has achieved it for the third year in a row. Eliza has missed on her very first try.

Angelica knows the pathway that had taken her younger sister from straight A’s to lower A’s and B’s. This is entirely a fault that cannot be placed on Eliza, who had spent late nights trying to complete school work and come to class late covered in concealer with sorrow-ridden eyes. From the moment she had moved in with James, her grades began to slip. Her assignments grew harder. Her life grew harder. She had held her head up like a warrior through it all, persevered and battled herself to keep her spot at the school she had been dreaming about for years on end. It’s her family’s legacy, to move from Manhattan Prep to Columbia. It’s their dream to keep the dignity and respect alive through the deeply-rooted tradition. And she had almost lost it-according to her own thoughts.

“You didn’t do badly at all, Eliza. Look-your Health & Nutrition professor left a note that your final project on bringing sustainable choices to school lunches was inspired. Actually, you have a lot of comments on here.”

“I guess.”

“Eliza, you got really good grades for your first year at Columbia. And for everything you went through,”

“-No.” Her voice is hollow, cracked. Eliza grabs the paper transcript from her sister’s hands, burying it in her lap without sparing a second glance. She’d already memorized the marks, anyway. “We’re not using that as an excuse. We broke up in March. There’s no reason I shouldn’t have been able to higher grades than this.”

As summer slowly crept into view, the thought of final marks never left Eliza’s mind. There were days where she seemed fine; that she was no longer pained by her experiences and could not even remember what she had been so upset about. But most days she found that time hung suspended in front of her, where the beginning prickling heat of summer took over the streets. The world was surrounded in humidity that brought crowds stumbling inside and packing the subways with sweaty bodies pressed tight together. In this chaos Eliza never stopped. She threw herself back into the things she had missed in a manic sort of frenzy that packed her schedule from dawn to dusk. Angelica went from seeing her every time she walked through the door from work to only once in a while, in sparing moments in the holes of her schedule. And when she did see Eliza-when they sat together at brunch, or spent a moment in the kitchen over some tea and cookies-she was just an average human being with an over packed schedule and a sleep pattern to match.

Angelica knew better-she always knows better.

There’s one morning that Eliza doesn’t leave the house, at least not at the crack of dawn. Angelica and John have both woken up, and are sitting at the little breakfast nook in the corner of their kitchen. John pours over one half of the newspaper while Angelica takes the other. They sit in a peaceful sort of silence, the sound of birdsong and small sips of hot coffee the only accompaniment. They hear Eliza before they see her. This morning she is a slow, methodical clicking of oxford flats against hardwood. John looks up from his mug to greet her and is met with blinking eyes and a grin painted unsteadily on well-made features.

“You’re here late.” John speaks up first, eyes lifted just above the crease of the newspaper. She nods. Although the conversation has invited her further into the kitchen she does not move-her legs won’t will it. Instead she hovers in her place, staring at the couple at the table with an inward plea she doesn’t even realize she’s sending. Prod. Her mind whispers the words, begging. Ask me what’s up. Help me.

“Come sit, Bets.” Angelica pats the space next to her on the bench of the nook and scoots over to accommodate her younger sister, holding out a piece of toast with an inviting grin.

“So what are you up to today?”

“I-uh, I'm meeting someone for lunch. Actually, that's kind of why I'm…I wanted to ask…well, I got a call from James this morning.”

“And you didn't answer it, because you're a smart girl.” Eliza’s face falls, eyes cast to the table. She picks at a piece of slightly burnt toast, no longer hungry anymore. Her stomach churns with the frown of disapproval and immediate flurry this sends both Angelica and Church into.

“Tell me he's not the friend you're going to lunch with.”

Another silence. The slow burn of their eyes on her-judging, accumulating facts that aren't quite there yet-that burn singes thin skin, leaving reddened marks in its place. Eliza sits under their watch. This is all she can do, as if they have magnetized her to the breakfast nook and the burnt toast.

“Elizabeth Schuyler, I know you're smarter than this.”

“It's not as bad as it sounds; he's getting help. He checked himself into a counseling center for abusive men. He's going to get better. And in order for him to be able to do that, his group leader told him that he has to meet the mistakes of his past. He has to reconcile.”

“At the cost of all of the progress you’ve made? I don’t think so.”

Angelica stares down her younger sister, who peers back at her through widened eyes. Eliza pushes strands of hair back into the bobby pins that hold them from her face before her hands drop. She picks at the fairly fresh coat of mint green nail polish, wincing as it begins to chip away. She hates painting her nails-the effort isn’t nearly worth the week they last, if that long. She does, however, love the first day with a new color on. Matching the polish to her clothing, looking down and admiring blues or pinks or nude tones had become one of the simpler pleasures of her life. And each time she began to chip away at it, she’d simply start anew. It’s easy to wipe away one round of polish to make room for the next. She does it without a second thought.

She wonders, then, if this effort would be worth it. Angelica continues to stare, keeping her rooted to her seat at the table with an iron grip made only with the fire of an older sister’s protection. Her heart is racing, then, running through the options although her mind has already been made up. The implications of her actions are real-she had felt them before, that day in March. There is not a part of her that wants that to happen again. However, there is still a draw. As much as she would never admit it, to her sister or to John or even to herself, hearing James’s voice on the phone had brought her back. There were times, simpler times, where she had been happy with him. In the beginning he’d hold her close to his side. He’d link her arm through his, walk to a bench in the smallest green oasis in the city where they would just sit and talk. In the beginning, James was gentle. He’d speak in kindness, with those hazel-green eyes that pop against chocolate, freckle-dusted skin. The summer introduced him with a sunny disposition and a warmed heart. As the weather approaches that mark again, reminiscing on that same heat has spun Eliza’s head around and back again. Suddenly, November through March are just faded memories that run on a plane of non-existence. Suddenly, there is only summer-the sweet, gentle warmth of James Reynolds before the lack of heat had turned him sour.

As long as one looks hard enough, there is hope in every moment. Eliza hitches herself to that belief as she finally meets Angelica’s eyes, her own full and round and ready to battle.

“God, Angelica, I’m not saying I’m going to marry the man tomorrow. I’m saying that this is an important key to his healing. I’m not going to deny him the chance to turn his life around. He’s taken the first steps. I have to do this.”

“No, you don’t!”

“Angelica!” She shouts her sister’s name, then, a voice unlike her own rising from the depths of her diaphragm in an uncontrolled and sudden burst of anger. Both Angelica and John sit back in their seats, then, watching as Eliza picks herself up from the table. She paces the room for a while, force-pushing the optimistic thoughts back into her mind. John shuffles the paper. Angelica’s mug clinks against her plate. They’ve reached a stalemate, Eliza unwilling to go without the permission her sister will not give. Each with a different understanding of the situation, this is the first real fight they have gotten themselves into.

“I could go with you.” John speaks up, then, in his calm and subdued manner. He glances between the sisters, offering a peace-a compromise. His girlfriend’s eyes are lowered, angered and betrayed. She does not interrupt. There is always a judicial sense in whatever John Church has to say. Quiet by nature, his speech is thought out and significant when given.

“I’ll hang out at a different booth-close by, to be safe. This way, you can still talk.” Angelica has loosened, slightly, but the tension is still visible in her tight shoulders and unmoving limbs. John turns to her, a hand on her hand. “If things start to go badly, I step in. He won’t even know who I am. I’ll wear a hat or a fake beard or something if that makes it any better.”

…

May 14th is an overcast day. The clouds seem to want nothing more than to spill their contents on the thirsting earth, but they hold off. Instead they close the city in with a shadow that spills over, the day feeling immediately gloomy. Eliza holds her nerves in the lump of her throat as she waits to enter the small café James had chosen for lunch. John had gone in half an hour earlier under the premise of waiting for a date that will never show up, an excuse to keep the center table long enough to be witness to their meeting.

She stumbles in as soon as the clock on her phone shifts to noon, legs carrying her quicker than she wishes to the table he’d saved. She passes John, bowler hat and all, on the way. He nods. She’s nearly choking on the thrumming of her heartbeat in her chest.

He’s wearing her favorite of his shirts; a soft blue, collared cotton he dresses underneath a navy cardigan. It turns his eyes brighter, the green of the sea on an overcast day like today. James stands to greet her, holding her hand and nodding and waiting for her to sit across from him before he joins her. She sips the water already at the table and he chats as if they’re back to the beginning. It feels like the beginning. The tapping of Eliza’s heart against her chest slows into a steady hum. She leans back against her chair. She laughs.

The conversation turns quite slowly to the topic of his counseling; he hadn’t mentioned it yet, and it had felt wonderful to just catch up with him. But glancing up Eliza notices John in a booth near them, watching over a menu. He sits on the edge of his chair. Eliza recoils at the glaring memory that comes flying back then, back to her mission and the reason she nearly hadn’t joined him in the first place.

“So, this is for…for your therapy?”

“We’re working on getting back the things we lost-making peace with the past. It’s a…it’s a very intensive program, but I think it’s going well.” A pause, and then, “I miss you, Elizabeth.”

The sound of her name from his lips, the way he’d crafted it so neatly with perfectionistic diction and a near purring of syllables, stirs something within her. It is not love, not in the way she had felt so long ago although she doubts it will ever go away. Her heart, once thrumming wildly with the potential of possibility and boundless optimism, sinks and settles at the bottom of her stomach as a sea stone set cold with a fear of the rolling tide. Her full name, once beautiful and bright, is beautifully masked venom from a snake’s scheming tongue. Eliza freezes in her seat. Like any of her actions back in the cold of their fall-winter-spring together, it does not go unnoticed.

“What?” James inches forward in his chair, a hand on the table between them. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?”

“Where does your group meet?”

“Uptown.”

“How’d you find them?”

“Online.”

“Why did you really want me here?” It takes an impulse and a shot of courage to send the words across the table, and once she does Eliza immediately regrets them. James’s lips turn, just a hint of a degree, but enough to hint at the first signs of his anger. She backs further away, feet planted sideways on the floor; a getaway. She’d gotten good at escape plans in the months with-and now without him.

“Are you even in therapy?”

He does not want to answer her question; the Cheshire grin he has grown fill between the lines of their conversation sufficiently enough for Eliza to feel a shockwave-sparks that light within her body as warning flares. Her chair scuffs the floor as she propels it out from under her, gathering her bag. His hand is on hers before she can move away.

“I knew you’d come running the second I called. That’s how it works, isn’t it? Sweet Eliza. Sweet, naive Elizabeth. You need me, you know. Who else is going to keep you safe?”

His hand is all the way up her arm now, running itself up and down in a trail that leaves icy pin-pricks in its wake. She wants to recoil-she wills her muscles to punch, or tense…anything to fight back. Instead, she stays rooted-frozen. His touch transports her to a time where she could no longer move-to fall-winter-spring, where she’d been motionless under his spell of charm and wit and poise he’d saved only for the public image.

It feels as though time has suspended itself in mid-air as both of his hands find their way to her hips. In reality, it is only a matter of seconds before John has pulled her away, throwing filthy, daggered curse words his way as he wraps Eliza in his own arms, turning so her body is sheltered from him. He bellows in a voice she’s never heard from his reserved manner, with threats to harm she’d never intended. She’d never wanted any of this to happen. She’d never thought she’d have to be saved.

Naive; she’d trusted James. Her heart had fluttered at its reintroduction to his eyes. Her heart had been so full of hope, of stories she’d tell Angelica of his progress and his light.

He’d come to hurt her. She’d been naïve.

John does not speak to her on their way back to the apartment. Angelica does not say ‘I told you so.’ Instead, she whispers words of her middle sister’s boundless kindness as they lay nose to nose in bed that night. Eliza pretends to sleep. She is not sure whether reality or her dreams will haunt her more, and she is not willing to gamble. One word whispers her to a lurid, sweat-laden nightmare.

Sweet Eliza; forgiving. Kind. Sweet Elizabeth, always sweet.

…

“I think we need to live apart for a while.” She holds her breath then, the words tumbling out faster than she’d expected them to. It’s easier to speak to Alexander, simpler; even when she hadn’t wanted to have this conversation at all.

The air is stagnant and stale and Alex fights to keep his head above it all. Eliza’s suggestion-request, really-burrows deep into his mind. With it come one thousand accusations, thoughts and shouting and terse words all aimed from his mind to his heart. Although he seeks answers and the ability to understand he is suddenly buried under the premise of what she is saying, what the suggestion might mean for them. He hadn’t envisioned a life without her in a long time. The temporary piece of their living situation had gone away long ago-or so he’d thought. It’s only been a little over a month since he’d moved in-what could have gone wrong in such a short amount of time? Is she having second thoughts about him?

Two long, agonizing minutes and Alex still has not said anything. Eliza watches the physical manifestation of his thought process in his wandering eyes and hand that rubs the back of his neck. He nods, accepting, but his mouth hinges and unhinges in the beginnings of questions that will not form. He’s not sure whether the lump in his throat is from the now arid air or the beginnings of raw emotion that have welled up in his throat. Either way, he rests his hand on her thigh.

“…okay. Okay. I’m not going to argue with you-this is your apartment, that would be stupid. But can I just…can I ask why?”

“Because I’ve been going through a lot of memories…this giant, holed-up mess of things I never even knew happened to me. I’ve been so busy with you that I’ve forgotten myself again.” He looks away then, poorly-hidden guilt shrouding his sinking figure and seeping into her skin. “It’s not your fault-god no, it’s really not. It’s just this fun thing I do where I attach myself to people too heavily. Right now, I really can’t afford that.”

“Are we still together?” His tone of voice lingers somewhere between hopeful and subconsciously chilled. Alex is not angry; he could not find it in his heart to be cold to her about something like this. Disappointment sinks into his joints, his heart. The room changes almost immediately before his eyes, as if her words could erase the painting of domesticity they’d created in just a second. His mug is an intrusion in their pile of dishes, his blanket a left-behind. He pulls it from the back of the couch, cradling it in his hands before moving to their-her-bedroom.

“Or course we are-Alex, are you angry with me?”

“I just need a minute!” He pulls his bags from the closet, emptying drawers and cabinets and casting them by the door in a haphazard fashion. She stands in the hallway, watching his flurried actions with tear-blurred vision. The more he packs, the less control she has over herself. Eliza lingers in a limbo between being unable to see or hear anything that’s going on and taking it all in much too fast. There is no in-between. When Alex flies by her again she stops him, a hand on his, breathing his name through quivering lips.

“I’m not angry, Eliza. I just,” He flings the last bag by the door, holding her shoulders in his hands before wiping the warm, salted tracks of tears from her reddened cheeks. She shakes in his hold, her uncertain frown a permanent fixture. “If we need to live apart, we need to live apart. I’ll call the guys and we’ll figure it out.”

There is something more that lingers on the edge of his sentence, tucked back away before it spills over the edge. A coating of thickness creeps in and fills the air around them, turning Eliza’s breath heavy and laborious. This is important. This is for you. You’ll be alright.

As if to pacify the thoughts she does not speak aloud, Alex shifts over to wrap her in his arms. He feels different, radiating love but lingering with a hint of the disappointment she had seen earlier. She does not like it. She can’t blame him.

There is a bitter taste on his tongue, one he hopes will not translate as he kisses her goodbye later that night. There is no more room for words-he has lost them all in the fight to keep himself sane-to understand her request and accept it as dutifully as he should. When she shuts the door behind him, the slow, hesitant click is one last shock to his heart. Eliza watches out the peephole as he goes, bags slung over his shoulders, with a heavy heart.

She wants nothing more than to run after him; to invite him back inside their home. She’s already mourning his place in bed beside her, which no doubt has already run cold. The chill in the air comes from a lack of his presence, not the usual air of bitter, unforgiving January. The apartment is empty. Without his furnishings; his little souvenirs on the shelf, opened and pen-marked books on every flat surface….this is not home. But the immediate hole in her heart also speaks in volumes to her mind, which is racing with the implications of what she has just done. She’s hurt him. She’s heartbroken. In that same frame of mind, there is a light. It is small, but she figures it might just be what she needs to get by. Racing to the office, she pulls out an unopened sketch book and a tin of charcoals.

Next Wednesday, Eliza pulls the book from her bag and opens it, wordless, and watches as Lisa nods at her work. Most of the thick paper is filled with dark blues, accented only with blacks and the occasional mint in a swirling of colors resembling a thick and tumultuous sea. A red line crosses the page from one end to the other, from the darkness to a completely different masterpiece. There, at the top, is the centerpiece of it all. A quarter-sized cocktail of yellows and whites and orange stands out among the dark, coasting above the sea as a beacon. Hope. It’s the first time she’s pulled out her sketchbook since that summer-winter-spring, since it had been filled only with the mimicking of the purples and blues that were a constant ornament to her skin. This feels different, right. And although that wire, that red tether still binds her to Alexander, it is through the light and the hope. He’s connecting her from each opposite end of the art piece. He’s there.

The apartment is empty without him. There is a lack of light, of warmth and laughter he had once radiated brilliantly. Eliza knows that this is for the best; for healing, for finding the light…for her. Her heart and her mind and her body pull toward him. The apartment is frightening without him. Living alone is a quiet she hadn’t wanted to feel. But her goal remains the same, through Alexander’s crestfallen eyes and her own tearing heart. This isn’t temporary. This isn’t over. This is a step in the right direction.

And maybe, if she tells herself that enough, that little yellow light will cover her thick paper one day.

#hamliza #hamilton au #hamilton #mine: swts #i mean #i had to get up so many times during this #there's also the teensiest little connection to the first part within the flashback with James #like so little it's almost not worth mentioning #but it's that one word that bothers Eliza so much #and now we kind of see why #pray for my girl Eliza Schuyler everyone #I love her so much #also pray for Alex?#thanks

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gobigorgohome2016 · 7 years

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Staying Injury Free

A few days ago one of Dave’s former college teammates stayed with us. He and I talked shop, and he was especially curious about my high mileage and durability, given that he had been plagued with mileage-related injuries for most of his running career. He made the comment that I must be very biomechanically sound, and I laughed. While I have worked hard to fix a lot of my inefficiencies, 15 of the past 17 years of running I had pretty bad form.

On a shakeout the other day, Dave and I were talking about possible reasons why I have been fortunate to be relatively injury-free, drawing upon my 7-years of being injury-free in middle school and high school, my 5 years of being mostly injured in college, and then the previous 6 years where I have had two injuries: a calf strain that was directly related to rolling out of bed, hungover, and going immediately for a dehydrated run in high heat and humidity after 4 hours of sleep, and an “up the chain” injury that resulted from poor dorsii flexion in my ankle, causing compensations in my knee/hip. I consider both of those to be somewhat freak injuries, different than if I were to have sustained a stress fracture or tendonitis.

Anyway, I noticed that a lot of people have posted on social media that one of their new year’s resolutions is to be injury free in 2017. Listed here are some of the factors that I think have helped me be pretty durable throughout my running career.

I Have Good Genes First and foremost, I’m sure genetics play a huge role. If you know my family, you’re probably like, umm, really, good genes? Isn’t everyone in your family sick? While the answer is yes, my dad has regenerative super healing powers that have made him last much longer than he probably should have. For instance, 5 years ago he had congestive heart failure. This past year, cardiologists at mayo clinic announced the heart failure to be a fluke [this is not normal]. His primary mayo clinic doctor has also marveled numerous times that he seems to have super healing abilities when it comes to surgeries and other procedures. I am convinced that I have some of his recovery abilities. My mom is also pretty hardy, which shouldn’t be surprising considering she claims she was a pioneer in her past life and will be a farrier (horse shoer) in her next life. (note: my mom is afraid of horses). If you don’t have good genes, it helps to figure out your deficiencies. Do all of your family members suffer from low bone density? Calcium supplements and strength training may be a good way to mitigate these issues.

I Run on Soft Surfaces In middle school and high school I only ever ran on soft surfaces, thanks to the nearby Indiana Dunes and a coach who was willing to drive us out there every day. My only injury-free year of college also consisted primarily of soft-surface running. I do think that one reason for my injuries the rest of the time in Milwaukee was due to running on A LOT of concrete. Post-college, I returned to trails and crushed limestone, and it was a great transition for my legs. Now, 75%+ of my running is on trails or crushed gravel.

I’m Lazy I have said it before and I will say it again: I don’t love running for the sake of running. For me, training is a necessary evil so that I can do what I truly enjoy, which is race. Therefore, my brain is always looking for a way out. If I have the slightest niggle, sniffle, or prolonged muscle soreness, I take a day off or cut my run short. The focus is on being able to race for me, not painfully powering through a run just so that I can write it down in my running log.

Good Coaching The more that I talk to others, the more I am realizing how much a coach shapes the early stages of a runner’s development. I was very fortunate that my high school coach (who is also my current coach) preached the importance of getting to the starting line healthy. I have always understood that health > hitting all of your workouts. I distinctly remember my junior year of high school going over my running log with my coach and being proud of the fact that I had run 100 days in a row. I told him about how I almost didn’t make it because I had a week where my calves were absolutely destroyed and I didn’t really want to do my Sunday run, but didn’t want to give up my streak. In my 16 year old dumb head I thought I was being smart and awesome, but instead he told me I should have called him that day and he would have told me to rest. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that my junior track season was relatively my worst out of all of high school.

Sponsorship One thing that has surprised me is that I’m more cautious with my training now that I have sponsorship and am on elite ambassador teams. I truthfully would have thought it would be the other way around. But, while no sponsor or ambassador program has said this to me, I know that I am worth more as an athlete to be running high level races than to not be running at all. If that means taking a day off here or there to rehab an injury, then I am more likely to do so than I was 5 year ago. I also realize that getting invited to run big events sometimes depends on whether I have raced recently, and staying healthy & racing often is as much a business decision as it is something I enjoy.

I Ignore Pace I, like 99.9% of runners, don’t need to be told to speed up. I will run the pace that’s right for me and my body on any given day. So, unless I’m running a long run or a workout, I don’t wear my GPS. I simply map a route for the mileage and run. I see it way too often where people don’t like the pace they see on their watch (even though it’s the right pace for the day) so they speed up and stress their bodies unnecessarily. If I am wearing watch, I tend to run “Badger Miles,” where I just assume I’m running 8 minute pace. Most times I’m running faster, but sometimes I’m running slower, too. Since I run primarily on trails, it’s silly to keep a GPS going anyway.

I’m Flexible Case in point: over the weekend, I raced a 5k, lifted afterwards, and then ran a 20 miler in the mud the next day, which usually doesn’t bother me but left me very, very sore come Sunday night. Instead of doing my planned 20 x 200 m on Tuesday, I am heading out in an hour to run the workout, feeling way better now than I did yesterday. While there are times you should run on tired legs, I’m not at that part in my training cycle. Being flexible in terms of when I train, and allowing myself ample recovery, is a huge part of staying injury-free. This is also why I purposely don’t train with others. If there were set workout days, I would have a difficult time putting the needs of my body over my ego.

I Sleep I 1000% get that not everyone has the luxury to sleep as much as I do. But, a lot of people could stand to cut back on mileage in order to increase sleep, and this wouldn’t hurt their fitness (it would do the opposite). A rule of thumb that I love: add 10 minutes of sleep for every 10 miles of weekly running. Therefore, if you run 50 miles per week, add 50 minutes of sleep each night to your base level. For me, even when I’m not running, I need 7 - 8 hours of sleep. That means I need 8.5 - 9.5 hours of sleep per night, which is pretty accurate considering I tend to average 9 hours of sleep when I don’t set an alarm. Figure out the best balance of sleep and mileage for your routine.

I Eat More and more I realize how lucky I am that my mother never restricted her diet, never restricted my diet, and planned our meals based on the dessert she wanted to serve that night. Growing up, I subsisted on a midwestern diet based on the strict GI needs of my father (who no longer has a colon and can only eat easy-to-digest foods). We ate a lot of simple foods: meat, potatoes, fish, cooked veggies, and gravies, as well as apple crisps, pies, and shortcakes. Baking powder biscuits, of which the primary ingredient is crisco, was a staple in our household. 2% milk was served with every meal. I grew up strong and well-fueled, with a healthy attitude towards meal time.

I Get the Science A big aggravating factor I see in athletes when it comes to injury is not wanting to take a day or two off due to fear of losing fitness or gaining weight. Both of these points are moot, and there is plenty of science to back them up. For one, if you take 7 days off and do absolutely nothing, you will only lose a negligible percentage of your VO2 max, which won’t matter unless you are an elite athlete at the very peak of your training cycle. Two, you are more likely to lose “weight”, in the form of decreased inflammation, if you take a short period of time off and rehab your body.

I Make the Right Investments Self care is important, whether that means going to yoga, foam rolling, doing stretching/strengthening activities at home, going to PT regularly (and keeping up with the exercises), or massage therapy. For me, all of these are important in keeping myself injury free. While paying for all of these can be difficult at times, it is definitely worth it to me to take care of my body.

I Have Poor Pain Tolerance To go along with making the right investments, I have to pay for those things because my pain tolerance for every day training isn’t very good (races are another story). I get legit depressed if I’m in pain while I run, so I just take a few days off so that I can only run pain free.

I Had a Long Build Up If you follow my blog, you only know part of the story. I was NOT always a high mileage runner. In fact, I never hit a 70 mile week in my life until 2011, and I didn’t hit a 100 mile week until late 2015. In college I never got above 60 mpw. Unpopular opinion: I take issue with the year-end “I ran x number of miles this year” posts because, IMO, they cause more harm than good. If you didn’t run your highest mileage ever, you’re going to be down on yourself. It also perpetuates the idea that more is more, when more is not more. I ran 600 fewer miles in 2016 than 2015 and was arguably more fit. Mileage doesn’t tell the whole story, and starting the new year hell-bent to beat a previous mileage high is a great way to get injured.

I Strength Train I will be the first to admit that I have never appreciated the art of strength training until recently. I stopped doing any form of strength completely between 2010 and 2016, and I will be the first to admit that I was VERY lucky not to have more serious problems than some hamstring tendonopathy. Now that I’m back to regular strength and core work, I can say with absolute certainty that it has helped me overcome some biomechanic issues that have contributed to aches and pains in the past.

#injuryfree2017

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jeremystrele · 6 years

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Scaling Up A Small Business, With Firecracker Event

Small Business

Fiona Killackey

Cassie Lucas’ Firecracker Event ‘HQ2’ in Northcote! Photo – Emily Weaving for The Design Files.

Cassie (far right) and the Firecracker team! Photo – Emily Weaving for The Design Files.

A corner of the ‘conversation pit’ (YES) in Cassie’s stunning new Northcote space. Photo – Emily Weaving for The Design Files.

Photo – Emily Weaving for The Design Files.

Cassie’s very flash new event space and kitchen! Photo – Emily Weaving for The Design Files.

Scaling a business is hard to do all by yourself, so don’t be afraid to ask for help from the start! Photo – Emily Weaving for The Design Files.

‘Ultimately we were able to do it because I could see the potential of the space, how amazing it would be for the business and was able to ask my community for help,’ says Cassie. Photo – Emily Weaving for The Design Files.

‘I always try to lead and work from my heart’ says Cassie Lucas, the founder of Firecracker Event – one of the most successful (and Instagrammed!) food, styling and service businesses in Melbourne. While Cassie started the business six-and-a-half years ago, it took another 18 months of juggling it alongside other work until she decided to commit to it full-time.

Within two years, Cassie was opening the doors to her first premises – HQ1 – in Thornbury. ‘I could see that renting other kitchens and running around town packing and unpacking all the time would be comparable in cost to actually having our own space’ says Cassie. ‘At that stage, Firecracker was just me, so of course I was extremely anxious and nervous about taking the leap. I also knew that if I wanted this business to work I would have to feel the fear and do it anyway. The tricky part at that stage was I wasn’t really valuing the business correctly, and not charging correctly meant it took me longer to be able to afford the help I needed and start building our team.’ In hindsight, Cassie admits she would do things differently — ‘but that’s really a huge conversation about feeling worthy and valuable and there’s not enough room in this interview for all that!’

After seeing the potential of a 1950s butcher shop in Thornbury, Cassie enlisted the help of her good friend Caitlin Perry, founder of Setsquare Studio, to design the fit-out and then, ‘called on all the tradies I knew’ stressing that her brother-in-law and his mates were ‘godsends’. ‘Ultimately we were able to do it because I could see the potential of the space, how amazing it would be for the business and was able to ask my community for help.’

As the business grew, the need for a new location was evident. Northcote’s HQ2 has ‘ample room for storage and better systems for event logistics, a huge kitchen and a dedicated office area. The best part, says Cassie, ‘is that we now have room to host. My vision for the space is to host creative workshops, photoshoots, events, build things for larger projects and of course still have our pop-ups every now and then!’

Scaling any business is hard, but perhaps particularly so in an industry known for last-minute changes and 24/7 service. Ask anyone who has ever planned an event and stress can steer the journey. How does Cassie deal with it? ‘It can certainly be stressful, mostly because we care so much! Managing that has taken some practice and is a continual work-in-progress. I try to allocate small moments that are just mine throughout the week—a pedicure on Sunday, phone-free time and regular visits to my kinesiologist! We’re also at a stage in the business where we have a team and that’s been the best because it means when one of us is losing it, chances are someone else will have it covered.’

In addition to these small moments, Cassie operates with the philosophy made famous by Danny Meyer of ‘Enlightened Hospitality’ — which means that ‘every person you engage feels safe, welcome and at home with you. It’s about going the extra mile and prioritising relationships over transactions’. It’s this way of working that’s helped Firecracker remain a successful operator despite a slew of competitors rising up. ‘I constantly feel surprised that we survive and thrive in such a competitive industry. I do believe that we have been successful because we have grown slow and steady and because we’ve always done what we do with heart… We take on projects that make our hearts sing and when we’re doing that, enlightened hospitality happens naturally… People can feel the love and they come back for that.‘

With her past experience as a solo operator, what advice would she gift to someone looking to scale their business? ‘Go for it. And pace yourself. You don’t have to do it all yesterday. It helps me when I break it down. Put it into a 12 month plan, then break that down into 3 months and then monthly. This makes all the things you’d like to do feel very achievable and less overwhelming. I rejig my plan all the time as things change.’ In addition to planning, Cassie also credits having a wealth of support around her. ‘…The other invaluable tool for me has been having other friends and creatives in small business to talk to—like therapy for small business owners! Lastly, my sister works for Small Giants and recently completed her MBA, and cares deeply about Firecracker and sustainable business. She’s really been the one to give me the language around what I want this business to be. I feel like she should be on the payroll the amount of advice, conversations, hours and PR she dedicates to FC.’

For now, Cassie is basking in a newly opened HQ2. ‘What’s next? A big deep breath! For the next little bit we’ll be concentrating on finding our feet in our new neighbourhood (Hi Northcote!) and getting HQ2 and our team to a really good place. I’d like to build things, collaborate with people and get back to my roots of landscape architecture and designing spaces. Oh, I almost forgot, it’s the start of wedding season too! Eeeeek!’

Find out more about Firecracker Event online or via their delectable Instagram and Pinterest accounts.

The powder room at Firecracker HQ. Photo – Emily Weaving for The Design Files.

Cassie upgraded from HQ1 in Thornbury to HQ2 in Northcote a few months ago. Photo – Emily Weaving for The Design Files.

I always try to lead and work from my heart’ says Cassie. Photo – Emily Weaving for The Design Files.

Work hard and be nice to people – no one lives more closely to this mantra than Cassie Lucas! Photo – Emily Weaving for The Design Files.

TIPS FOR Scaling up

1. Know your why

The first step when looking to scale is to ask yourself, why? Are you renting an office and hiring staff because you think you “should”? Are you expanding into international markets because of brands you follow on social media? Not every business needs to be big in order to make an impact. Some of the best brands intentionally stay small. If you do wish to scale, figure out why that is and create a short mission or vision statement that reflects this. Make this visible so it acts as a daily reminder to you (and your staff) of why scaling is necessary.

2. Get clear on goals

What does “scale” mean to you? What exactly will this look like one year from now? Will you need to seek investment or do you need to save for the next 12 months to get the cash required to scale? Spending time to really specify your goals and figure out if external help is needed may take time in the short term, but will set you up for long-term clarity. Visualise where the business is in 12 months, then ask yourself what needs to change in order to get there. Work backwards from that 12-month goal, so that you’re clear on what needs to happen in the next 1, 3, 6 and 9 months in order to hit it. It’s advisable at this point to consider seeking help from financial and/or business advisors, as they may be able to help you arrive at solutions far quicker than if you tackle it solo.

3. Cultivate Your Crew

Cassie was quick to point out the help and support she had from people like her sister, friends and brother-in-law. Once you’re clear on what you’re trying to achieve by scaling the business, cultivate a core crew of friends and family who can act as support (emotionally, physically and, depending on your needs, financially). Scaling a business is hard to do all by yourself, so don’t be afraid to ask for help from the start. Don’t have friends that could help? Consider researching government programs for business mentors, short courses and even grants and loans.

4. Declutter

In any business (to quote Elton John), ‘there’s more to see than can ever be seen, more to do than can ever be done’. When you’re looking to scale, it makes no sense to devote time to things that don’t have an impact on your end goals. Like design, good business is about what you leave out rather than trying to pack every idea in. Decluttering your business starts by asking yourself, what in the business can be automated (i.e., emails, some social media), delegated (i.e., admin / bookkeeping, content creation, hiring staff) and/or eliminated. You may think you’re saving money via the DIY method, but often you’ll waste hours doing something that takes someone else a few minutes. Scaling starts by acknowledging your skills (or lack of) to ensure time is used efficiently and effectively.

5. Just Do It

The final, and most important step is to ACT. We can all think up ways to grow our business, but dreams without action are just ideas. Scaling a business will require sacrifice. Review what’s critical to the business scaling, remove things outside of this and set yourself daily, weekly and monthly targets to stay on track. If it helps, you might like to find an accountability partner in the form of a fellow business owner or business coach/mentor.

Fiona Killackey is a business consultant and the founder of My Daily Business Coach, providing information and education for starting and growing a creative small business.

Need help with your Marketing? Fiona is running a full-day workshop on Marketing for Your Small Business Saturday October 27th at The Cowork Collective, Melbourne.

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morrisbrokaw · 6 years

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Stop Being Intimidated by these Stupid Things

My beloved friend Ben, on the third day of his new fancy-pants job, finally adjusted the height of his office chair. How embarrassing it would be to clumsily struggle through that in front of new co-workers. Which reminded me of the time, 10+ years ago, when nobody at my new internship told me the key code to the bathroom, so instead of asking – I was an adult-in-training with stunted communication skills – my bladder of steel and I walked across the street to Whole Foods for weeks.

There are so many aspects of being a full-blown grown up that, well, blow (waning metabolism, you’re at the top of the list) but wow does it feel good to ask for what I want and need without feeling embarrassed. And yet, even though I’m now fully capable of asking someone where a bathroom is, we’re all occasionally dragged down by something stupid because we’re intimidated, afraid of not being something enough. Smart, cool, pretty, thin, blah blah blah, wrong wrong wrong. Like that zen proverb says, let go or be dragged. So which is it?

I ain’t gonna be dragged. Here’s a tip-of-the-iceberg list of the everyday aspects of life we all need to shake off and my recommended baby steps towards how to do that. What stupid things are you intimidated by? Let’s commiserate in the comments.

His (seemingly) successful current/ex-girlfriend. I recently found myself in a conversation circle with a man I’ve been youknowwhatting with for over a decade and his on/off/now-on-again cool/kind/beautiful girlfriend and I kept my damn head on straight. So what if she spent four months in Brazil last year? Has perfect teeth? Is a better match for him than I am? Good for them. Truly.

Because she’s All The Things doesn’t mean I’m any less of The Things. If you’re feeling intimidated by his/her current or ex-lady/man, don’t hate me, don’t hate me, don’t hate me, but it’s far more a reflection of you than her. Pinpoint what’s bothering you and harbor those jealous, icky feelings into creative, do-good, live-your-best-Oprah-life ones.

And remember: nothing is as it seems. Last month I had cocktails with a friend who was, according to the Internet, one-half of a seemingly perfect relationship. He’s hot, she’s hot, the month they spent in Morocco also seemed hot. Then, one sip in, my friend unloaded that they’ve been in therapy, haven’t had sex in months (what?!) and she didn’t think they’d make it through their lease. (Spoiler: they didn’t.)

You’re not her or him or them. Let go what you think they are so you can know who you are.

A wine list. Before you get overwhelmed by a mile-long list of grapes you’ve never heard of from wineries that you’ve definitely never heard of – oh gosh, musta missed that issue of Wine Enthusiast – consider a few things. Is the wine list organized any particular way? What’s most important to you: dryness/acidity/sweetness, fruit/earth/spice, grape, region, price? What are you eating? What mood are you in? What’s the weather? Glass or bottle?

While it’s helpful to know if you generally like this and generally don’t like that, the up and downside about wine is that grapes can take on many forms depending on weather, region, skin contact, winemaker, farming practicing and various other factors. So it’s simple: ask your server, bartender or friendly wine shop attendee for assistance. Succumb to the fact that they know more than you do and, if you’re cool, open-minded and decisive about it, they’ll be cool about it too. Take notes of the wines you like, don’t like and why, then record them into the various apps –Delectable and Vivino are popular – which will help you catalog wines you’ve enjoyed.

And if you couldn’t give a crap whether you drink Franzia or Chateauneuf du Pape, go for the second-cheapest. The cheapest is the cheapest for a reason.

Student loans. Hate to break it to you, but Bernie isn’t president and your student loans aren’t going away. But hear me out. I paid off my student loans – all by my damned self, thankyouverymuch – from a Big Ten University where I got a kinda useless journalism degree because that’s what our parents told us we needed to succeed which I guess I don’t regret but it also wasn’t nearly as necessary as we were meant to believe but don’t get me started. Anyways, I worked a hodgepodge of $8/hour jobs, drank fewer beers than my friends and paid that big bill off in full at age 22, not long after my six-month interest-free grace period ended.

It wasn’t easy. I drove a ‘99 Buick whose windows would roll down but not up – parking in ramps was the worst – and would oftentimes sustain solely on snacks. Being debt-free was top-priority for me though, so I planned my life accordingly.

Seeing that intimidatingly gigantic bill month after month get barely less intimidatingly gigantic month after month must be exhausting. So get a game plan together. Establish a budget, decide how to funnel more money into paying them and decide whether to pay off your smallest loan first or the one with the highest interest rate. Which would motivate you more? If you ever need a high five or pep talk, you know where to find me.

Asking your doctor about that mole. This spot, that bump, this weird thing that I’m not really sure what it is but should I be worried? Ask away! Doctors, including my sweet friend Rachel who lets me text her pictures of all my weird bodily questions, went to school for a long time to know answers to yours. (Thanks for diagnosing my shingles, Rach!) Trust your gut, put embarrassment aside and make a list of things to ask while you’re there so you don’t blank, get flustered or chicken out.

WTF does capital gains mean?! Or what’s the difference between a Roth and traditional IRA? 401-what? How much should I stash away under my mattress, I mean, into an emergency fund?

Short answer: hire a financial advisor. Hell, I’ll be your financial advisor if you want. It’s terribly tempting to complain about how the Baby Boomers will suck up all the social security and we won’t be able to retire anyway, so why even plan for it? Or – who knows! – we could all die tomorrow, which is sometimes how I feel when I watch the news. Still, future you will be so proud of current you if you squirrel away so you can retire to an estate on Mykonos someday.

The sooner, the better. Ask friends and family members if they have a financial advisor they trust. Or perhaps start with an investment app like Acorns, which monitors your banking activity and automatically moves the change from your morning coffee or tank of gas into investments.

A scary gym class. For no other reason other than “why not,” I recently went to a class at a gym that was harder, cheesier and longer than I prefer. It was not my scene. The gym was in the suburbs. Glow sticks were involved. So was a frighteningly buff teacher and her gaggle of groupies who hogged all the mirror space up front. Still, I’m so glad I went. I was sore for days and reminded myself how wasteful I think glow sticks are.

Workout culture can be intimidating, I get it. Showing up for a hardcore cycle class when you haven’t even been on a Schwinn in years is akin to going to a new school and not knowing where to sit in the cafeteria. Ask questions. Show up early. Research what you might need to bring. Your instructor should be kind and accommodating and if they aren’t, then don’t go back to that class.

Passing someone on the sidewalk. “I’m just gonna sneak around you, thanks!”

Teens. They’re so cool these days. But remember, the angst of teenage years is timeless and you never want to be one ever again because hormones are real. I hope for all of our sakes they take over the world sooner rather than later, so stop being intimidated by them and start encouraging them to use their savvy voices and YouTube followers for what’s right.

Parking/paying/doing things on your own at a place you’ve never been before. All this said, a titch of intimidation is good for ya – it keeps us humble. Just not from the stupid stuff, okay? Now, are you going to let go or be dragged?

Image: 1

Megan McCarty is a writer, editor, etc.-er who has written about life, travel and – shh, don’t tell her mother – s-e-x for Garance Doré, Apartment 34, Rue and more. She’s a firm believer in the zipper merge. Follow along with her adventures (and, well, misadventures) on Instagram.

The post Stop Being Intimidated by these Stupid Things appeared first on Wit & Delight.

Stop Being Intimidated by these Stupid Things published first on https://workbootsandshoes.tumblr.com/

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mattgrips · 6 years

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Rationale

I like writing. I like any form of expression really. It’s the most amazing privilege to transform all the thoughts in your head into an experience for the outside world to observe. The active mind just keeps going through the abstractions, experiences, and feelings I’ve accumulated in my life, and brings about incredible insights that honestly keep me sane. To be able to vocalize what’s going on in my head is an amazing therapy.

It doesn’t matter what or how I express something. It could be an ode of elation, or it could be the deduction of an ominous reality. As long as I’m able to express whatever I’m thinking/feeling in an honest way, neither happy or sad revelations can reduce how much I enjoy this exchange between the universe and I.

I really mean that. It’s one of the things I don’t get about our rhetoric towards feeling. Feelings are not mutually exclusive, nor do they sit on a spectrum of varying degrees of quality. I’d guess that we know just how complex the emotional landscape is, and describe emotions in our social convention for brevity’s sake. Point is: there’s nothing undesirable about the way I feel so long as there is an ability to interpret how I feel with clarity and awareness.

This is important. The human mind is filled with objectionable thoughts; yet, these are the thoughts that we honestly have deduced ourselves. These thoughts can be as simple as ‘I would like a burger for lunch’. This isn’t simply a matter of a thought that prompts you to act. The beauty in a thought is not to get from point A to point B - it’s the starting point for a discourse with the universe. Would you like to express this by driving to your nearest burger joint and ordering one? Or would you like to make one yourself? How does your experience change with one choice or the other? Of course, what good would having these thoughts be if there wasn’t the possibility of you realizing that you didn’t actually want a burger for lunch, but a food item conceptually close to that of a burger? This doesn’t stop in life. Every thought is the beginning of an expression. Interestingly, every expression was not just predicated on your thought but of other expressions from before, and even thoughts anticipated in the future.

I’ve lumped up almost everything into a single process of expression. Imagine if we didn’t have that. If we just keep taking in things from the universe without giving feedback outwards, the discontinuity between what we think and what everything else does widens enormously. The biggest risk to our peace of mind is inconsistency, a flaw in how we view the world that manifests itself in contradictions (or betrayals if we take these contradictions very personally) that will drive us mad. Let’s go back to the burger example. Suppose I didn’t express wanting a burger in anyway. Instead, I get handed meatloaf by my colleague. I will still be expressing in life by eating, even enjoying the meatloaf, but what of that burger thought? No one will ever know that I wanted a burger. Would I even have wanted a burger, or did I just want meatloaf? Maybe I shouldn’t put too much thought into food since I think I’d like most of the things convenient to me...

Now that I’ve written this out, I have remembered that non-action is in fact another way of expression, and that in the burger case, it actually didn’t result into any madness at all. Well I guess that’s why I’ve decided to write things out. What I was discussing in the beginning was the need for honest expression. I guess honesty has varying degrees of meaning since there also exists ‘economy’ - a framework where you can’t have everything and must therefore choose rationally what to action and what to non-action. So bringing this all together, what I’m actually trying to say is that honest expression in what I personally find important to express honestly (even though (actually ESPECIALLY IF) they may be objectionable) is extremely important. Not the most succinct principle I hoped for, but it’s a good start.

Before I go really specific into my rationale, I also want to pair the principle I’ve illustrated above with the addition of how important the means of expression is as well. Words are great but there’s a lot of etymological context that fills my expression with connotations that I may not want. My expression feels the most honest in the music I write, but that’s only between me and my music. The interpretation of any other listener with my work would not be able to catch the subtleties and inside jokes I’ve put in it. Part of that is because of how honest I’ve written it, but it’s also partly because I have not developed a solid connection between my society and myself yet. It would be crazy if we could communicate with numbers because of its precision. Yet, even math can’t, and shouldn’t be expressed in just numbers. All in all, selecting the right means of expression is a tradeoff of how honest you can drive it, and how clearly whoever you’re communicating with is taking it.

So for a large part of my life, I’ve lived life with vitality. The angst of adolescence was enjoyable in part because I had music, and I had the internet. I could scream and bang on a guitar to express how much resentment I felt for loved ones without them being hurt or alarmed. Growing up with parents who had boundaries on what to discuss with their child, I struggled through my feelings of depravity, perversion, and vices through the anonymity of the internet. I wish I had more immediate role models that could have guided me through these awkward times, but that will be for another post. All in all, whatever struggles I went through, even without proper guidance, I appreciated the fact that I was able to go about it independently and express myself in an honest way that gave me peace of mind. Even when whatever was in my head clashed heavily with my life, I felt good knowing that I was on the right track to getting things sorted out.

Those days are long gone now. I am now a young adult. I have taken on responsibilities that I must uphold and fulfill. Unlike in my teenage years, I am beginning to see the value in commitment not just in the abstract and individually-centered things in life. Thanks to the virtue of honest expression, I am now more in touch with my reality than ever. I feel connected to the world, and have gained a significant amount of empathy for other people. I know that this world is not just something for the taking at the expense of others. I know now that nothing I hold important is sustained without the cooperation, empathy, and freedom of others. I kind of feel like I am other.

I am so excited for life. I am still such an abstractly-oriented person. The feeling I get contemplating a new idea is equivalent to taking in a new culture, even though I may not have left my room. That excitement is still there, but now that I’m a more connected person, I am definitely anticipating more learning in the form of more conventional things like going to new places, and physically seeing new things and meeting new people. I have been deprived of that for my whole life (not by force, just by like complacency) and it’s gonna be such a trip. Overall I am poised to take on the new responsibility of learning the Law, something that I am confident to call a vocation because of how much volition there was when making the choice.

My views have broadened from specific to very big-picture. I was never able to see the world of economics, politics, and even my older loves of music and math in this way without the connectedness I feel now. This has all been contributed in part by how I’ve expressed myself with the world. I’ve always done so honestly no matter how confused, angry, frustrated, or resentful I was of reality. With all this being said, I hope to continue on this path with the same candidness, and ‘realness’ of the past.

WHICH IS WHY I’ve decided to start this blog. Lately the thoughts in my head have changed from “what song should I learn next?” and “what is today’s workout?” to “how is the current political climate making me feel artistically” and “what is the optimal collective action that can mitigate an inevitable tragedy?”. Not much has changed in this transition in terms of investment. I am still seeing these things in the realm of self-interest (I am heavily individualist), the self-interest being much more mature now. The only big difference now is that the way I expressed out these questions was easy. I could easily get up off my ass and express whatever feeling prompted me into action. Nowadays, a lot of things in my life (no matter how small they actually are) seem so gargantuan that the thoughts in my head are incomplete, non-deductive, and overall non-motivational. I have a hard time getting everything sorted out. I am taking in so much information that I now find it necessary to write things out. The scope of my life has grown to the point where I will now need to use my ways of expression in order to clear up the bigger picture, and ultimately continue to live out my life honestly and candidly.

So here’s to that. I’ll be writing mostly book reviews, commentaries, and the occasional diary entry in order to sort out things in my head. Nothing big, but this will be a very big personal therapy for me.

Wonderful

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