Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

Tonight's dinner was lamb patties, with rice and sauteed scallions and bell pepper. Earlier in the day, it occurred to me that I could skip the cooked vegetables and just have lamb, rice, and a half sour pickle. When it came time to cook, I decided it would be mentally easier to make something I've done dozens of times, even though it's more actual work, than to vary the menu. So, that was tasty, and we had different vegetables for lunch and for dinner, which feels like an accomplishment this time of year.

(Posting this more as "oh, that's how my brain works" than because the food was new or noteworthy.)

There's a grapevine at one edge of my mother's back garden, and she mentioned this afternoon that there were grapes. I took a look, and then a couple of grapes. Even the ones that are ripe, or close to it, are somewhat sour, as well as juicy and a bit sweet, but there's enough flavor there that I ate a handful, even though we bought grapes, and clementines, blueberries, kiwi berries [sic], and ground cherries (under some other name) at the supermarket this morning. I bought the kiwi berries because I have never had them, nor heard of them, and it was all of £2 for the package.

Today has been the sort of low-key day--grocery shopping with a ride from Mom's upstairs neighbor, lunch, then sitting outside reading the Guardian and doing the crossword, and plenty of conversation--that would have been routine when my mother lived a few miles from me, not a few thousand. Having been to London a few times before means I can relax into 'I'm here to visit my mother' in a way that would have been more difficult without that experience. It's not confidence that the things will be here later, it's that I have already seen Avebury, and the Tower of London, and the Rosetta Stone, and so on.

Twenty-two years ago, I went to Hong Kong to see it before the handover from British to Chinese rule, consciously thinking that New Orleans would be there later. Then Hurricane Katrina happened, and I still haven't been to Louisiana.

Twenty years ago, in Paris for a week, I took the opportunity to climb all the way to the top of Notre Dame Cathedral, because I wasn't sure I'd be capable of it on a future visit (123 steps with no handrail or landing). Another trip to Paris is still on the wish list, with cattitude and adrian_turtle, but that tower is gone. I don't know what if anything this train of thought leads to--I'm not going to jump up and figure out what else to see this week, I'm going to read my email and then take the laundry out of the washer--but I seem to have boarded it.

Something I got from talking with a partner, rather than therapy: the idea of emotional weather. That is, sometimes I'm feeling bad because of random variations in air pressure or hormones, and it's not merely pointless but potentially harmful to try to answer "what's wrong?" as "what is bothering me?" rather than as "I'm just feeling down right now." Because the question "what's wrong?" presupposes that something is, and if asked in those terms I will assume an exogenous something is, and looking for an answer may pull up old memories, or things that might in other circumstances be bothering me. Example: it can be true both that I'm feeling down, and that it would be nice if I'd done X, without it being true that I'm unhappy because I didn't get to do that thing.

If the immediate answer to "what's wrong?" is "my knee hurts" I will then go in directions of "should I ice it?" or "would stretching help?" I may also consider "is that the arthritis, or the neuropathic pain, or the old injury?" but mostly in terms of "would an NSAID or tylenol help?" And whatever answers I come up with, either acting on them or saying "none of that seems useful" is a natural stopping point. If the immediate answer is "I'm feeling sad" my next question is still likely to be "about what?" (which presupposes, again, that something has happened/been done) rather than "would some herb tea help, or petting the cat, or going outside for a bit?"



(This started as a comment to kaberett, but I think putting the second half here may help my own moods/state of mind.)

I'm trying some mindfulness/awareness-of-the-moment stuff, in the hope that it will help with anxiety and mood generally. I realized while doing one of my gym exercises that exercise seems to be my best focus-on-here-and-now thing: yes, I spend some time thinking about other things, but I'm also paying attention to the movements and the way my muscles feel, and the verbal part of the brain is often going …4, 5, 6, 7,… or "see if I can do another set of these" rather than thinking about plans for the rest of the day, or news, or such.

Also, I have been saying now and then that living in Bellevue and spending time here and in Seattle, without a car, is an exercise program in itself. Not a complete one, and I'm not trying to use it as such, but some amount of cardio and leg exercise. I think this is true; at the same time, it may be either an excuse for not doing as much other exercise as I believe I should, or a form of "I don't mind all these hills, they're good for me." Mostly I don't mind them, but some of the steeper bits of downtown Seattle are still no fun, especially when I'm tired. (Fortunately, if I'm tired I'm probably going uphill: up is just strenuous, down is more likely to be dangerous if I slip, at the level where it's a steep sidewalk or staircase rather than actual mountaineering.)

( This morning's exercise numbers, cut as usual )

I had my more-or-less usual session with Emilie on Thursday, this time after spending some time at the office holiday party. That was slightly weird: around Thanksgiving they sent around email saying that instead of an off-site party, they were going to donate to some good causes (and they did seem like good causes) and just give us a lunch. Then about a week ago there was a message with the subject "Re: Holiday party (revised)" saying that no, there was going to be a holiday party in the afternoon on 12/16, lunch in the office and then a "cocktail reception," reply by 12/10 if you planned to attend the off-site party. I decided to go, in part for the hope of a raffle prize (I didn't win).

In the end, I had some good conversation with a bunch of people while eating ziti and lasagna and salad; and then talked about books with one coworker, and then gyms and exercise with a couple of others, until the drawing. Then I left (bars are always loud, and they were playing music, making conversation even less plausible, and wandered up to the gym via the library.

( gym details, and some introspection about the process )

This morning (Saturday) I had an appointment with my dentist. The dentist I think of as "my dentist," who I've been seeing at least since 1995, is only seeing patients on Saturdays now. I don't like his partner (the partner is competent, but not as patient with me as Dr. Mahindra), so I went downtown this morning. So, I have clean teeth, and apparently there's a tiny bit of cavity that he wants to keep an eye on (seen on X-rays). The dentist is near my branch of the gym, so I worked out afterward.

( more details, mostly numerical )

I was on Size Acceptance 101 Friday night; that went pretty well, though not perhaps as focused as I'd have liked. I mentioned this to Adrian, who said that 101 panels tend to be like that. But I think we said some useful things, and nothing really stupid, and the audience seemed to think we were being informative. One of my fellow panelists did complain about an ex-coworker who walked every day at lunch and cycled to and from work, and seemed disdainful of the panelist for how fat she was; someone else pointed out how problematic it was to criticize someone else for her body choices (and cycling 20 miles each way to work is a serious distance but not an absurd one), especially in the context of that panel, and she backed off, saying it was about her interactions with that coworker. Still a little problematic, but we went on to other things. One of those other things was people's attitudes toward exercise, both in terms of how it helps us connect to our bodies, and the ways (good and bad) that others react to a fat woman exercising, or wanting to exercise. [The panel was all-female, as was the other I was on and I think two of the three I have attended; this is Wiscon.] We talked about some health things, including the destructiveness of weight-loss surgery and of insurance industry attitudes toward it: in particular, people who have had that surgery because the insurer would pay for it, and insisted on it as a precondition to paying for treatment they actually needed or wanted. I felt a little off balance right at the beginning, because the moderator asked us to talk about our journeys toward fat acceptance and where that had started, and I don't really organize/remember things that way. It's not an unreasonable question, even though I don't have a good answer for it; wild_irises suggested that if this happens again, on that or some other topic, I just say "I'll pass, that's not how my memory works," (Other areas I can see that coming up would include "how long have you been poly?" and "when did you realize you were queer?"; I can say things that might be relevant on either, but I suspect not briefly or as an introduction to the discussion.)

My other panel was "Would you let your daughter…?" which I had offered to moderate thinking it was going to be mostly about guiding children through choices of books, movies, etc, and the reasons for why we might advise children (from small kids through teens) to not read/watch certain things, or want to discuss the implications of the material, and which wound up having a bunch of more general parenting choices, and some parenting venting/pitfalls stuff (including feeling judged by other mothers). The audience wasn't much larger than the panel, and it wound up being a pretty open-ended discussion; at the end, I addressed the audience and said "Thank you all for agreeing to be on this panel." So, not what I expected or really planned (to the extent that I did plan), but I think successful.

"Revenge of Not Another F*cking Race Panel" was a lot of fun: six panelists, all women of color, answering questions on audience-posed questions in categories including "We Welcome Our Robot Overlords," "Apocalypse A-Go-Go," "_________ in Space!", "Khaaaaan!", Super Michael Jackson Ballerina, and "Sparkly Pony." Questions in the last included "tell us about your bad Mercedes Lackey fanfic"; about as serious as it got was "Tell us about a time when you adapted a recipe to be vegan or gluten-free and it went really badly, or really well." The ground rule was that the panel could/would discuss anything except race; a few times panelists said "or is that about race?" and got a pass. (The origin of this panel, I gather, was people complaining that if there was more than one non-white person on a panel, they would be asked to talk about race or about a writer of color, and that they were tired of it: not that we shouldn't be talking about race, but that they wanted to be asked about as wide a range of topics as the white panelists are.)

For related reasons, I went to a panel called "White to White," on ways white people can talk to/educate each other about race and racism. It was a lot about ways of pointing out when a statement or action is racist or problematic without eliciting the sort of defensive "am not! How dare you!" reaction that gets in the way of conversation: if someone reacts as if they've been accused of treason, they're not going to think about whether they should change what they're saying or doing. (A large part of what was suggested—and I agree it's useful, but it's far from sufficient—is to try to emphasize the statement/action rather than label the person, and if you're not sure, say that you find something problematic, rather than that you are sure it's racist.) This connects to stuff about choosing your battles; when do you say "that bothers me" and when do you say "How about that local sports team?" or "I need to go say hi to cousin Jay"? (There's no single answer to that; it depends on your energy levels as well as on the ongoing relationship if any.) They talked a little about the value, when listening/talking in a group, of making it clear that someone disagrees with the prejudiced statement: that even if the speaker doesn't change their mind, it's worth making clear that not everyone, maybe not anyone, agrees with it. And to remember that it's usually not a one-off: the person who dismisses an idea now may think about it later. (And that may connect to what I was saying above about often not being able to identify when, where, or how I started thinking about something.)

It would be nice to be in Montreal for Worldcon. But: I get 2.5 weeks' vacation a year, and I have other things I need to do with it. I also have finite energy, and Wiscon feels large these days. If I had lots and lots of time, yes, Worldcon and some days to recover afterwards. It wouldn't have been the "take commuter rail to Worldcon" thing I pulled for Millennium Philcon (my last worldcon), but there was a certain appeal to a Worldcon in a conference center right above the metro station I use semi-regularly when going for dim sum or to Maple Delight for ice cream.

Energy being finite, I will visit Montreal and the people I care about there later in the year, when everyone is less overwhelmed. The disadvantage is I don't get the cool energy of lots of people bouncing off each other, but I also don't have to put as much energy into the socializing when I'm seeing three or four people, or even a dozen for an evening when that isn't part of an n,000-person event. I live in a city of more than 8 million, but I don't interact with them socially in groups that size very often: the thousand people near me at a Worldcon are part of a different kind of thing than the hundreds near me on the rush hour subway, or even the crowd at a concert that I'm attending alone or with one or two friends.

One of these years, I will get to Worldcon again. In the meantime, I hope those of you who are there have a wonderful time. (I have enjoyed Worldcons; at this point, I doubt that I can do so if I have to go right back to work afterwards. Not if I think of the whole experience: because a month or year later, I'd remember the crash as well as the good stuff, and in the moment I'd have to deal with the tiredness and with working while that tired.

[Does anyone know if bittercon exists on Dreamwidth as well as LJ?]

As the days and weeks go by, I'm doing more and more bits of the new job. It is very good for my confidence, because when I take them up, they are well within my abilities and experience. In some cases, they come with unexpected flattery, like Susan asking how I wanted comments on a manuscript she's copyediting, and in the course of the discussion saying kind things about my science knowledge.

I got a very nice email from papersky a few days ago, inviting me to be on a panel at the Farthing Party. I thought about it for a few days--the topic looked plausible, and the other panelists she'd invited all seemed like good people to be on a panel with--before deciding that what I concluded after Wiscon still holds. I need a break from being on convention panels: I've gotten into a state, or mindset, where the nervousness beforehand outweighs the pleasure and satisfaction of being on a good panel.

That's when it does go well: when the topic is reasonable (including reasonably well-defined, and of a size suited to the available time), and I and the other panelists are prepared, and we don't walk into the room with badly conflicting agendas. Those characteristics define most of the programming I've been on, I'm happy to say. But the last few cons, I'm not getting out enough to be worth what it takes out of me, even with something like the Bechdel panel this past Wiscon.

Having thought about this, and concluded that I didn't feel significantly different now than I had in late May, I wrote back declining the invitation, and explaining. I mostly wanted to note the difference between "not that panel" and "not this year."

I almost certainly won't fill out a program participant questionnaire for the upcoming Wiscon, for the same reasons (only moreso, because there are likely to be an order of magnitude more people at Wiscon).

This is an instance of the general thought that this is a hobby, it's supposed to be fun, and if it's not, it's probably time to stop doing it. (In this case, I haven't taken on organizational responsibilities, which simplifies things: there are better and worse ways to unravel oneself from those.)

One of the things Wiscon asks for, when a person fills out the program participant questionnaire, is a short biography (for the program book) and a long one (for the Website). I did a short one, and think there's still time for a long one, if I have anything useful or relevant to add. If I don't, they'll use the short one in the program book.

The short bio reads: "Vicki Rosenzweig is a longtime Wiscon attendee. She was a Tiptree juror, and found the reading and discussions rewarding though sometimes exhausting. She conducts much of her social life online."

What else should I add, given that this is a biography of me for a feminist science fiction convention (rather than a CV, mortgage application, dating service, or a high school or college reunion)?

I'm guessing it's not too late to send a long biography, but the question seems potentially interesting even if it is.