My Visible Core

So, this is what my belly looks like:

I don't show it public, and I never have. Well, maybe I did when I was a small child, but at some point I learned that I did not have the kind of belly that was okay for showing. Even today, fifty pounds lighter than I was a decade ago, I feel incredibly uncomfortable with the way it looks. I remain thick around the middle (though other parts of me have thinned out so much that it doesn't even look like part of the same body), and I bear both the stretch marks from pregnancy and the loose skin from weight loss. It is what it is, but knowing that doesn't keep me from moving quickly when changing my shirt, or being sure to wear shirts that reach my hips to avoid an accidental belly exposure. More than anything else, I hate that I still feel this way after so many years and personal epiphanies.

Several years ago, I wished I would have gotten a huge sunflower tattooed on my belly before I got pregnant, so that I would have been able to see the changes that have happened with my body, reflected in a beautiful sunflower. I didn't, but now I'm thinking it's time. 

I have several tattoos, and they are all visible. They are all meant to be visible, part of my lifelong pursuit to decorate myself and own my own flesh. If I want to get to the point where I feel comfortable baring my midsection in public (or even in the privacy of my bedroom with my partner), perhaps a good first step is to emblazon it with something unapologetically big and beautiful. My sunflower won't be like a two dimensional drawing, because I am not two dimensional. It will droop and fold and curve, and it will continue to change as I exercise (or not), and age. 

I sent this picture to my tattoo artist today. Even taking the picture, alone in a room, felt scary and humbling. Sending it made my heart race. At the same time, though, I felt like it was a move toward freedom. Who knows... maybe you'll see me in a bikini this summer.

Happy No-alcohol-vember!

As a part of my ongoing quest to improve myself, I have decided to abstain from alcohol completely this month. Why have I decided to do this?

1. A glass or two of wine in the evening has become the primary way I "de-stress" from the day or deal with immediate stress (difficult child, crabby partner, etc.). This strikes me as a borderline unhealthy coping mechanism, and I'd like to explore other ways to calm myself.
2. When I quit smoking, I gained about 10 pounds. I've also been drinking more, and I'm sure those two things are connected.
3. Drinking in the evening causes me to be sleepy earlier. The time after my daughter goes to bed is the only time my husbutch and I have alone together, and I feel like I'm cheating us out of that when I am ready to crash at 9:30pm.
4. Alcohol is expensive, and we have been exceeding our alcohol budget by about 35% every month for the past six months.

So it's making me fatter, sleepier, and more broke. Allegedly. I'm not certain that abstaining for a month will make me feel thinner, more energized, and richer, but hey, isn't that what experiments are all about? The biggest and most important motivator, for me, is reason #1. Drinking has just become too much of a crutch, I fear. Especially since quitting smoking, I find myself craving chemical therapy, something, anything. I've also been drinking more coffee, I've found. If I had pot, I'd probably smoke it. Why? To take the edge off, I guess. To help me relax and calm down from any stress I'm feeling. To adjust my attitude, to give me a break, to make me feel better.

It's that act of looking outside of myself for something to make my inside feel better that gives me pause. I know, we all know, that happiness and contentment can't come from things outside you. These are things you cultivate within yourself. We all know this, yet we subsidize our existences with alcohol, drugs, excess food, shopping. I know what it feels like to be trying to fill that hole. That's how addiction works, and most of us are addicted to something. It doesn't matter that I'm not an alcoholic. I've become dependent on alcohol to smooth out the rough edges, and that ain't right.

So, the logical solution is to re-learn how to regulate myself without the numbing effect of alcohol. I'm honestly not sure what I'll learn by doing this, but I am curious. Will I feel the need to eat more? Will the urge to smoke increase? Will I be more stressed out? Will I still enjoy the company of friends without being socially lubricated by alcohol?

I guess we'll find out!

Commuting a Little Closer to the Earth

I've been thinking about self-experimentation lately, and trying to figure out what to give up first.  My first thought was to start with coffee, as that is one of my few self-described addictions (meaning, I drink coffee every day, and if I don't drink coffee I get decidedly grumpy).  I even started cutting down on coffee by limiting myself to drinking it black (I'm normally a cream-and-sugar kind of gal), and that brought me down to a cup or so a day on workdays.  Easy enough, but I'm not interested in moving forward on that one yet.... especially since I don't feel any less tired overall since cutting down.

Well, it didn't take long before the choice of what to give up next became a little bit easier.

That's my car.  I've had it for about four years, which is pretty good as far as my car-owning history is concerned.  It was a good car, needing only occasional maintenance and the regular repairs to be expected from a used car. Until two months ago, when it suddenly became dysfunctional.  The diagnosis: it needed a new engine (I'm no mechanic, but I'm pretty sure that's the part that makes the car GO). We're talking a couple thousand dollars in repairs.

So, I decided to ditch the car.  It helped that I don't have a couple thousand dollars lying around, and that I don't want to use my credit card for purchases anymore.  It also helped that I'd been thinking about giving up my car anyway, and that it is currently Summer in Minnesota (the one time of year when people from other states are actually jealous of our weather).  I also own a bike, and my daughter is finally too old to be pulled in a bike trailer (my hamstrings still remember those days), and old enough to actually be able to bike longish distances with me (at a pace faster than I can walk).  It was time to become a bike commuter!

My commute from home to work is about 4.2 miles.  I've tried a couple of routes, and have found one that is relatively flat.  It takes me about 20 to 23 minutes to get to and from work, which, gratifyingly, is about how long it takes via car during rush hour.  Yes, I arrive to work pretty sweaty, but I work in a small office, and once I cool off I'm not any worse for the wear (plus, if I really felt I needed it, there is a shower at work I can use).  

The first couple of weeks, while fun for the novelty of it, were physically hard.  I was just exhausted by the time I arrived to work or home.  My legs felt like steel, and never seemed to relax.  They were just sore, all the time.  I wondered if it was ever going to get easier, and I wondered if it was really worth the tiredness and the soreness. 

I also wondered if my bike was part of the problem.  It's a hybrid (a cross between a road and mountain bike), and I got it almost a decade ago for free.  I took it into my local bike shop, and got some new tires (mine were very worn, and had more tread than I needed).  I also got it lubed up and inspected (this I have NEVER done).  It did indeed seem to ride a little more smoothly afterward.

Now I'm two months into my bike commuting life, and I have to admit it is getting easier.  I've shaved a couple minutes off my transit time, and I'm actually finding myself enjoying the ride most of the time.  Instead of feeling hard and laborious, it mostly feels energizing and strengthening. Mostly. Sometimes, when I'm riding up a hill against the wind with a full backpack, I'm really wishing I had a car. As the wind turns colder, I can smell winter coming. My plan is to keep biking through the winter, but we'll see. I'm up to the challenge!

The Audacity to Improve

I'm a pretty self-centered person.

No, really.  I don't mean that in a self-effacing, I-wish-it-weren't-so kind of way.  I have come to realize that this is just a core part of my being.  I am an introvert, meaning I recharge by being alone.  I spend much of my time just thinking about my life, evaluating the way I do things and wondering about what would happen if I lived my life differently in some way.

I'm a happy person, but there are things I'd like to work toward.  I want to be stronger, and healthier, and have more energy.  I want to be more present, more connected, and more peaceful.  I want to be more organized, and learn more things.  I want to be more content (this might seem ironic, given my penchant for self-improvement missions, but I'm confident I could work out the reasoning).

Sometime during my no soap experiment, I was chatting with my husbutch about this idea of doing personal "experiments."  I had been inspired by Leo Baubata's Year of Living Without, where he outlines 12 things he plans to give up, one per month, for the next year.  It includes things like coffee, sugar, and technology.  I was intrigued, and I started thinking about what I could give up... or, more pointedly, what I think I could never give up (because, perhaps, those are exactly the things I should be giving up).  So, I made my own list, and I shared some of these things with my husbutch.

HB's response kind of startled me.  Why, what's the point? she wanted to know.  I explained that I want to experiment with giving up certain things, just to see what will happen.  In a way, it's an act of "finding out what I'm made of."  HB was not impressed.  She asserted that some things I would not be able to give up, like coffee.  "You're miserable without coffee," she told me, as though this were an immutable fact.  She went on to say that she found the whole endeavor to be "a little self-righteous." When asked for explanation, she said that she just feels like some people are constantly "improving themselves," and in the process feel like they're better than other people, and that makes them arrogant and preachy.

I felt annoyed and defensive about this, but it also made me think.  Was I actually being self-righteous by embarking on my little self-improvement experiments?  Does the process make me more judgmental than others?  I certainly knew what she meant... I've known people who have done this before, especially when it comes to trendy diet changes like going vegan or gluten-free.  Suddenly, all they can talk about is how disgusting industrial meat production is, and all the chemicals in processed food, and how everybody should really do what they're doing if they want to be healthy and eco-conscious, and suddenly you can't eat your cheeseburger without feeling judged.  I get it.

At the same time, I know that I approach things like this a bit differently.  I like to try new ways of being because I want to be the best self I can be. I strongly believe that one of the things that can make life seem like a monotonous blur is never doing anything different or uncomfortable. I want to do things that make me uncomfortable, to test my own limits.  I want to separate my needs from my manufactured desires, and figure out whether the things I do and consume actually add value to my life.  Like everybody else, I want to be happy.  Maybe not like everybody else, I feel like I am already happy -- but that I am a work in progress.  I am always getting better, and isn't that the point of life?

I'm also kind of a scientist at heart, and I think that everything I do is ultimately a kind of experiment. I make thousands of choices every day, and each of those choices has a tangible effect on the world.  I'm a parent too, and as I frequently tell my daughter, there's no one right way to be a parent, and really I'm just making it up as I go along. Sure, I've read plenty of parenting books and digested lots of advice from others, but my role as parent boils down to a series of choices, and each choice has some effect. Who knows how it will all turn out?  It's like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, with an infinite number of pages.

And in the end, what makes my version of self-improvement not obnoxiously self-righteous is that I don't tell people how to live their lives (as long as they are not hurting anybody). In fact, I don't really talk to others about my experiments that much.  I haven't even told anybody that I've started a blog, including HB (and at this point, I'm not certain anybody is reading it). Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to talk about myself, but more than that, I like to think and write about myself.  This is what makes me self-centered, and it's how I center myself.

Dirty Girl: Coming Clean

All right, enough of that.

I just can't handle feeling like a total scrub (to use a term from my youth) for that long of a stretch.  Yes, I was still taking daily showers, and scrubbing under hot water, but I still felt like I had a thick film of grime covering my entire body, face and hair.  There were moments that I enjoyed the increased thickness of my hair, and the ability to sculpt it in more three-dimensional ways, but none of that mattered, as the oil weighed down my fine hair so much that I couldn't stand to do anything with it but pull it back.  It made me incredibly self-conscious. 

My face, too, was getting out of control.  Not only did I get a couple of big screaming pimples; my forehead and nose broke out in a relief map of little ones.  I know it's vain of me, but there is nothing that makes me more insecure and self-aware as pimply skin.  Especially since I don't wear makeup.

I actually ended this experiment just a couple of days after my last post, only eight days into my no-shampoo experiment.  So to be fair, I probably didn't give it enough time.  By all (or most) accounts, my skin and hair would have found their natural balance if I had given it another week or two.  I just couldn't imagine that happening... I failed to see how that thick layer of grease in my hair, unfazed by all the scrubbing and hot water, could possibly just fade away by itself.  

And in the end, I didn't care.  It wasn't worth the feeling of disgustingness that I endured.  Most people who do this, it seems, do it because they are super passionate (or super paranoid) about avoiding synthetic chemicals.  To that I say: Meh.  Sure, I don't want to ingest poisons or needlessly expose myself to carcinogens.  I'll do whatever I can to avoid that, within reason.  I just don't think that skipping the shampoo is going to make a difference.  And I am way too vain to find out for sure.  It made me realize that I mostly did this to see if I could do it.  The verdict: I can.  For eight days.

And, it's not like I didn't get anything out of this.  I realized that if I wash my hair with shampoo daily, it is much more static-y, fine, and flyaway.  So, I'm washing my hair every couple of days instead.  Or I'm just using conditioner.  There are no rules.  I'm an adult; I get to make up my own rules for myself.  (I can eat ice cream for breakfast if I want to! I just don't want to.)

I have to say, though, that I was amused (and a little disturbed) that my skeptical husbutch told me today that she hadn't realized I had started shampooing again.  She said that she had noticed my hair being a little extra oily in the beginning, but figured that it had "evened out" after a little while.  Seems logical.

Experiment result: Meh.

Dirty Girl: Day 6

What the hell was I thinking??

I feel grosser than I ever recall having felt.  My hair is a stringy, greasy pile, and I'm sick of wearing it in a ponytail.  It looks constantly wet, and when I pull it back it looks slicked back with gel (there's a good reason those guys were called "greasers").  Yes, I kind of like it that right when I get out of the shower, my hair is very sculptable... I can pretty much rearrange it however I want, something I can't normally do because of how thin and fine my hair is.  But once it starts drying, and it's not supposed to look wet anymore, it still does... ugh.

And my skin?  Well, the skin on my body feels great -- way softer than usual, and it doesn't smell at all!  I wonder if it would hold up through the winter.  The first couple of days, I did notice a little increased itchiness, and some random itchy bumps (which I had before, too), but overall my skin seems to be happy.

Oh, except for my face.  I am a little extra pimply these days, on my nose and on my forehead, and of course I've developed a monster pimple on my chin.  Now, this isn't really anything new -- I do break out once in a while, usually in the form of one big screaming pimple somewhere around my chin area.  And, I am supposed to start my period any day now (side note: I'm actually three days late...a rare thing, as I am queen of the three week menstrual cycle... but one of the many great things about being gay is that I don't have to panic about being late!), so the combination of hormones and suddenly using no soap might be too much for my complexion to handle at the moment.  I'm actually pretty confident that if I started using face cleaner today, my pimples wouldn't clear up any faster.  Boo.

I was preparing for some "adjustment time," of course, during which my body and hair overcompensate and then even back out.  It's only been six days.  But I feel completely self-conscious and unattractive right now.  I feel almost depressed, and certainly more irritable and unproductive.  It's one thing to have greasy hair and clean skin, or clean hair and greasy skin, but having both is making me feel like a fucking pariah. 

So of course I must ask myself: What's the point?  What am I really trying to accomplish here?  Well, for one thing, I really dislike the idea of giving up so quickly.  I mean, if I am not going to give this the old college try, then why have I been dirty for six days?  For fun??  No, if I'm going to do this, I might as well do it.  But honestly, I don't know if I can live this way for three more weeks...

Dirty Girl

So yesterday I came across an article about one guy's experiment of not using soap or shampoo when bathing.  The original plan was to try it for a month, and he ended up being a convert to the no-soap, no-shampoo lifestyle.  According to him, he actually smells better than he did when he was using soap, and he no longer struggles with dry skin and dandruff.  Hmm.

Here's the basic premise: body and hair soaps are chemically manufactured, and interfere with the body's natural ability to clean itself and maintain homeostasis.  I read through the comments on the article, and they were overwhelmingly positive sentiments about other people's own soap-free experiences.  Reported benefits range from softer skin to no more acne to more manageable hair.

Okay, I can dig that logic.  It makes sense to me that my feeling of "needing" to use soap is at least partly caused by two things: 1) I have always used soap while bathing, and 2) Maybe soap is like a drug -- you only need it because you use it (this is also my suspicion / apprehension about chiropractors... but that's a different contentious topic, one that I don't have enough facts with which to sustain my opinion). Of course, I am also fully aware of how I feel when it's been a while since I last washed -- dirty, greasy, unattractive, smelly.  I am pretty sure that I don't want to feel that way all the time.  To be fair, advocates of abandoning soap don't advocate abandoning showering -- one should still shower or bathe every day under hot water, scrubbing one's body and hair thoroughly as though soap were still being used.  And, by all accounts, people trying out a soap-free existence will notice a period of two to four weeks where they feel much dirtier -- hair will be greasy, skin will be oily.  The theory is, however, that this will pass as the body "evens out" and recovers from its dependence on oil-stripping deodorizers, enabling your natural protective and cleansing processes to thrive. 

Of course I'm curious.  I don't have any major complaints about my hair or skin as it is right now, but there are a few quirks, and I wonder how they would be affected by quitting soap. I get pimples much more often than I'd like (Seriously?? Am I still in high school?).  My hair is pretty thin/fine, and frequently looks either greasy or dry/brittle.  Last winter I suffered through terribly itchy skin, all winter (for some reason, this had never been a problem in the past).  None of these issues are particularly debilitating or interfere with my ability to be cute, but I couldn't help thinking, why not give this experiment a try myself?

I ran it by my husbutch, and of course she thought it was a terrible idea.  She just doesn't even understand the logic, why I would even bother.  "I am a stickler for cleanliness," she added.  I told her I'm going to give it a try anyway, and to be patient with me for my next few weeks as a greaseball.  She ain't happy about it, but what can she do?  I am confident that she'll voice her opinion loudly if things really do get bad.  One confession: I only told her I was giving up shampoo... I didn't say anything about soap, as I am sure she would have flipped her lid (I can admit this here, of course, because I don't think anybody actually reads this... )

So, today is Day One.  I took a shower this morning, but just used hot water, and made sure to use lots of scrubbing action on my hair and body.  I gotta say, it was a really quick shower.  For the hell of it, I didn't wear deodorant either.  Now here I am, halfway through the work day.  This is how I look so far:

How do I feel? Honestly, pretty greasy.  As predicted, my hair is already feeling oily and stringy... and because it is so fine, there's no hiding that.  Shortly after I took this selfie, I put it back in a ponytail... I have a feeling I'll be rocking that style for a few weeks.  Other than that, I feel okay... my face also feels fairly greasy though, and I'm worried I'm going to acquire some new zits.  But whatevs.  I'm still curious, and eager to see how this plays out in the long run. I'll keep you posted.... hopefully you won't be able to smell me from where you're sitting!