Fencing Bear at Prayer

"A tendency towards addictive behavior is a personality style.  People with addictive personalities tend to be perfectionist, obsessive, black-and-white thinkers who approach life in an all-or-nothing manner.  Moderation does not come naturally--if a little is good, more must be better.  People with addictive personalities also tend to be escapist, fleeing from discomfort through obsessive distraction or self-medication. "An addictive personality predisposes you to addiction, but it isn't all bad.  Some aspects are quite positive.  Think of all the interesting and talented people in public life who had to deal with alcohol or drug problems at some point.  The same single-minded focus that made them vulnerable to addiction contributed to their brilliance and success.  Both are manifestations of the addictive personality style--in one case it works for them, in another against them. " Addictive patterns similar to the diet-binge cycle can appear in m...

I wonder if this is what Luther felt like on first making sense of Romans 1:17 and realizing that he didn't, after all, need to do any works in order to be saved. I have spent more or less my entire adult life feeling like there was something wrong with me.  No--make that my entire conscious life. I can barely remember a time when I was not convinced that there was something that needed fixing. My weight, my appetite, my eating habits , my temper , my choice of a career . I've been melancholically counting calories since I was seven; telling myself I was a terrible person for feeling what I did since I was five; convinced that if only I could find the right piece of advice I would be able to fix everything and become a new person since I could read. Okay, at the very least since I started subscribing to Seventeen back when I was eleven or twelve. Decades of diets and advice books later, what do I realize at long last?  I never needed any of them in the first place. ...

Maybe it's the sunshine. Maybe it's being more or less on schedule with my reading for class this upcoming week. Maybe it's having my keyboard clean and my laptop's operating system reinstalled so that I don't get the Spinning Beachball of Death every time I start trying to type.* Maybe it's sitting here on the porch with my husband watching the Dragon Baby frolicking in the leaves. Or maybe it's reading more in Martin Seligman's Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life (New York, 1998), but I really am feeling better. More optimistic, even. Not so much yesterday when I started reading Seligman's book. I took his "are you depressed?" quiz and nearly maxed out (40 points out of 60, with over 24 points being in the danger zone for "severely depressed"). Apparently, I should be seeking professional help now. Like right now. As in yesterday. It's amazing I haven't killed myself. Or maybe I jus...

1. My diet will be perfect if I trust myself to eat whatever I want most. This means eating exactly what I want, whenever I want, without any other "do's" and "don'ts" than that what I eat should make me feel good. This means eating meat, if that is what I want. This means eating cake, if that is what I want. This means not spending my life denying myself what I want because I have read somewhere that this or that food is or is not good for me. Most amazing effect of this diet since Sunday: oddly, all those pastries in the coffee shops downstairs don't look so tempting any more, I'd rather have a tuna salad with boiled egg. 2. Sometimes it is a good thing that things break or wear out or get eaten by the dog because it is only in throwing away the old that we make space for the new. Like throwing away the desk and the futon so as to make way for the new chairs in our back room. Or giving up old exercise routines in order to have time for ...

I am sick of being the Tortoise. Okay, okay, sure. "Slow and steady wins the race," whatever race it is that I'm (stupid enough to be) running. But meanwhile there are these damn hares bouncing around all over the place, overtaking me, and I'm stuck plodding along in the heat and the dust, getting nowhere. I'm sick of everything that I think about coming with so many entailments. Of everything that I write needing so many footnotes. Of everything that I want to know being connected to everything else so that I have to read everything before I feel like I know anything. Couldn't I be a hare just for a little bit? They look like they have so much more fun than us tortoises.

It's 4 in the morning and I'm awake. Thankfully from that second (or third, or was it fourth?) glass of wine, not this time from crying. Not that I fenced all that brilliantly yesterday, but at least I fenced my D-Es well for once, even if I did lose all (yes, all) of my pool bouts. (This was Veteran Women's Epee, not Foil, but it still hurt.) So there I was yesterday morning, sitting by the strip and thinking about something that (I think) Aldo Nadi once wrote, about how we reveal ourselves on the fencing strip, and I started making a list of things that might affect how I behave on strip. At the time, I had hopes that just sitting there writing might help prepare me for the pools. Who knows? I might have gotten even fewer touches than I did if I hadn't made the list. Here it is, for what it's worth. 1. I like to make lists. Making lists makes me feel secure, as if I have quite literally circumscribed a problem. Lists are more or less by nature finite, if...

It's nearly time . I keep waking up thinking that maybe today is the day that I will be able to focus again. Alas, focus still seems to be eluding me. Or, rather, I am able to focus on everything but what I feel like I should be focusing on. I'm really good at thinking about puppies right now, especially my soon-to-be-my-very-own-puppy Joy . But more serious thoughts about the significance of the season? Well, let's just say it's easier settling back down into the couch with a novel or thinking about rearranging the apartment so as to get ready for the great Kitchen Remodeling next month. That book review that is now three weeks' overdue the extension I asked for? Still haven't read the book (for complicated reasons, having to do with more than just being distracted by puppies). That article that I had promised to revise this month? Not happening. At least over the summer I was able to keep some hard thinking going here in my blog. Now even my blog h...

So, I fenced in a tournament yesterday (yes, another one !). And...well, you know what's coming. I didn't fence as well as I think I should . Not to put too fine a point on it: I fenced worse than I did two years ago in the same tournament (I missed it last year because I had stomach flu ). So, two years on and...no progress. Zip. Nada. Zero. Nothing. I'm going backwards even. And no, it doesn't help looking over the results to see that there were more upsets yesterday in the D-E table than just mine. I suck. I can't improve. I'm hopeless. So why don't I quit? I don't know. I wish I could. My life would be so much easier that way. Imagine, no more rage, no more frustration, no more feeling the way I do right now. Still wanting to smash something, preferably my equipment. No better off for having stayed to watch the remainder of the tournament, trying all the while to smile even though all I wanted to be doing was screaming. Feeling...

I had a thought for this post while I was praying this morning, but now that I'm sitting here in the hotel restaurant so as not to disturb my still sleeping roommate, my thoughts are all of a-flutter and I simply can't concentrate. It snowed last night (!). Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize (!!). I want a puppy (!!!). Jump, jump, jump. My thoughts are everywhere. The point of the post was going to be about how I don't like change, which, at the moment, would seem to be true. This post would be much easier to write if I were sitting in the usual spot where I blog, on the couch at home. It would probably be easier to write if I were able to sit with my laptop on my lap upstairs in the room. At least then I would be in my usual posture as I blog. As it is, I am sitting in a booth with unfamiliar lighting and noises around me, and all I can think about is how I can't think. I don't, as a rule, tend to like change. At least, I tell myself I don't. I have--a...

There are so many things that I wish I could do better than I do. Every night at dinner time, I wish that I knew better how to cook. Every Sunday in church, I wish that I could actually sing. On the rare occasions that I find myself at a party or wedding, I wish that I could dance. On outings like our visit to the Renaissance Faire this past weekend, I wish that I could take better photographs. Whenever we have people over to our apartment, I wish that I had a better eye for interior decorating. And on, and on, and on. If only I could make my life as beautiful as I can imagine it being: excellent food, beautiful music, exquisite furnishings and photographs, elegant dancing. And then, of course, there's myself. If only my clothes were more fashionable, my hair more manageable, my features more photogenic, my voice more pleasing, my carriage and gestures more graceful. No, I'm not going to show you a photograph; I hate seeing photographs of myself. Very rarely one com...

How do you tell the difference between procrastination as such and the dithering that would seem to be necessary to any work of the imagination? The mess (or, at the very least, my perception thereof) has subsided; my son has arrived safely at camp where he will be for the next four weeks (gasp! my little boy isn't so little any more); the floor in my office on campus has been swept (mostly) and the rug cleaned (sort of); I have my new glasses so can see clearly again (even if this pair is supposed to be my spare; my proper frames are now being fitted with, yes, progressives) ; I am rested, well-fed, not too battered by Sunday's tournament ; I've read that book about Mary that I've been carrying around in my book bag for months. As the baboon said to the lions, " It is time ." But I'm scared. It's hard being both melancholic and the one who has to do the jump-starting. Much better to spend the morning reading this amazing webcomic about The L...

A Meditation on Mess I've spent the past couple of days going through closets and cabinets sorting out things to give or throw away. It's possible, of course, that this is simply procrastination. According to my original plan for this week, I was supposed to be getting started on the next chapter of my book, but when I woke up on Tuesday, I simply couldn't face going into the office knowing that I had not done the clean-out that I had put on the to-do list for last week. Or maybe I just couldn't face going into the office and decided to clean closets in order to give myself something more urgent to do. Either way, my melancholic-ness* gets to express itself: balking at beginnings plus needing things tidy. But why should I--or anyone--find mess so intolerable, particularly at the beginnings of things? My family likes to joke that they can always tell when I am worried about getting started on a new chapter or article. Suddenly, all the clutter that was, if not invi...

The Care and Feeding of Melancholics* 1. " Melancholic " is a temperament, not an illness. Simply because your melancholic seems introverted and inclined to see the down-side of things does not mean that she or he is sick or clinically depressed. Nor--extroverted sanguines take note!--does it necessarily mean that she needs "cheering up." She may be grumpy because she needs some time alone. Above all, it is important not to take a melancholic's moods personally (but see below #6). 2. Melancholics need time to adjust to change and may be reluctant to initiate change themselves. They tend to see problems where others (e.g. cholerics) tend to see challenges or opportunities. Melancholics tend to set themselves high goals but can get stuck second-guessing themselves as they consider potential difficulties. Setting clear goals is, therefore, critical for them. Melancholics typically find it difficult to take the first step in a new project, but once they ge...

Self-help book for the week: Art and Laraine Bennett's The Temperament God Gave You: The Classic Key to Knowing Yourself, Getting Along with Others, and Growing Close to the Lord (Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2005). According to the Bennetts (p. 263), I am a near textbook example of a melancholic: "Slow to react, with intense reaction growing over time and of long duration; thoughtful; spiritual; deep; poetic; introverted; overly cautious; perfectionist; thinker; critical; doesn't prioritize well; tends to discouragement and self-pity; worries over possible misfortune; can be a hypochondriac; easily hurt; slow and sometimes indecisive; pessimistic; moody; goal-oriented; detached from environment; few friends; exclusive; likes to be alone; second-guesses; introspective; holds grudges; abhors injustice; is motivated by problems; looks at the down side; idealistic; self-sacrificing; sensitive; makes decisions based on principles/ideas." And that's not all...