On Being an Outsider

 

This is just a quick post, because we just moved to San Diego, yay! But this means there are a ton of items on our To-Do list. And while it's tempting to quietly shift them to our Let's Pretend We'll Get Right On That list, they are things that actually need to get done. Whereas writing a blog post for a handful of readers with better things to do? That doesn't fit on any sensible list.

Yet somehow here we are.

Anyway, so for a few days my feeds kept adamantly pointing me to an Atlantic article about the upside of not fitting in, explaining all the nifty benefits that come from being an outsider. The underlying article is four years old, so I'm not sure why they were pushing it, other than that they somehow sensed I needed something to blog about.

I actually agreed to the premise, in theory... yet something about it stuck in my craw. I seem to be someone with a very sticky craw, given the number of things that accumulate in there. (Note: I went to double check what a craw was and discovered that all these years I'd had it wrong! It's a pouch in the throat that certain birds use to aid in digestion. I'd somehow always pictured a large Crow clutching something in its Claw.  Crow + Claw = Craw.  It's unsettling to realize one has reached one's sixties with kindergartner's understanding of a common expression for something not sitting quite right).

So what did the article say about the benefits of being an Outsider and what made me grumpy about it?

Zoned Out: So Which Damn Cardio Zone(s) Should You Aim For?

There are many reasons that Cranky Fitness stopped pretending to be a blog about fitness, and became Just Cranky instead. One of them is: health and fitness research keeps contradicting itself. Who can trust it anymore?

And yet, I can't help it: I still keep clicking on headlines and reading studies and listening to experts and watching little how-to videos. I'm frequently asking Chatty, my AI health research assistant, for her cheerfully confident yet often inaccurate advice.

But every time I'm convinced I finally know what the "best" answer is to a health question? Some new take from an equally credible source comes along and says, nope, that was all wrong! How to sort out these scientific cat fights? Who do I listen to? 

Is it best to just "zone out" and ignore it all and go with our guts? 

So I'm still struggling a bit with cardio due to hypoparathyroidism, a rare and completely bonkers endocrine disorder I managed to acquire after cancer surgery. So it feels super important to try to optimize the cardio I can get away with.

But it turns out Expert Advice has changed a bit since back in the Cranky Fitness days! So what's the surprising new twist?  

Hasta Luego...

A quick note before we dive in: I hope all of you currently affected by snow, ICE, power outages or other menacing phenomena are safe and well! Reading the news from afar it seems like quite a lot is going on at the moment. 

Anyway. So Hasta Luego is a phrase they use all the time in Spain to say goodbye. It means roughly "see you later." (Literally: "until then/later.") But the Spanish will use it for goodbyes even when it's unlikely you will ever see them again. It just sounds nicer: like they're already looking forward to the next time they'll get to share your delightful company, even if they are a taxi driver who just took you to the airport.

As it happens, my wife and I are on the cusp of needing to say a whole lot of "Hasta Luegos" to people we really care about. But we're not exactly sure when Luego will be. It could be a long time from now.

Facing hard goodbyes is wrenching, and we hate it. But we're mature adults, so we know exactly how to handle it:

We're just pretending it's not actually happening.

Anyone got any better ideas? How do you all cope when you become fond of people, and then end up living very very far away from them?  My wife and I have been doing various versions of this for our entire 35 years together, so you'd think we'd be better at it by now.

Dream On...

 

Lately I've been (sort of) keeping a dream journal. I wake up a few times a night anyway, so if I can remember anything, I'll scribble a few short sentences down, in the dark, in a small notebook. 

"Meatball earrings."

"Lunch with Fisk, so happy!"

"Feeding the vultures. Andrea..." (our vegan friend) "denied eating the hamburger, but she did."

"No Cokes allowed in workplace! Paintball war."

"Light blue cat. Didn't like me at first. Patience." 

In the morning, I may spend an extra five or ten minutes in bed, trying to decipher the cryptic wandering phrases, often written one right on top of the other. Some mornings it's amazing: I start writing what I remember, and more details start coming back, and other dreams make a shy appearance at first and then reveal themselves more fully as I scribble dream-nonsense for pages and pages. Other mornings: nothing.

If I go over my notebooks periodically, it's exciting to see how easily I can freshen those dream memories right up. Many of them remain fairly vivid even many months later. I can still picture those big meatball earrings I was wearing last summer! Even if I can't remember if I've brushed my teeth this morning without checking to see if the bristles of my toothbrush are wet.

But why take precious morning time to do such a silly thing, which honestly is sometimes just frustrating? The fragments are so damn elusive, and so often just when they start to feel graspable... they slip completely away. 

Are there some secret psychological benefits to be had from keeping a dream diary, and getting more acquainted with the insanity that takes place in your brain every night?