Archive for the ‘Stress’ category

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What To Do When RPatz Just Doesn’t Cut It Anymore–(I’m Not Talking About His Hair.)

November 13, 2009

What to do when the fascination for Robert Pattinson finally runs dry?

Maybe it’s the conclusive evidence of handholding.  (See Robsten photograph, November 10th or so, Le Bourget, France.)

Or maybe the realization that he really is just a young, charmingly goofy but nonetheless, movie star.

Or the news that he wears hair extensions for parts of the new movie.

Or all the Veterans Day celebrations, the tragedy at Fort Hood, the seemingly irresolvable situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the endlessly debated and diluted health care bill, the continuing rise in joblessness, and its concomitant psychological, physical, economic toll (the fact that these are real people’s lives).

Whatever.  Somehow you’re just not so interested anymore.  You haven’t even glanced, walking by, at the Vanity Fair cover.  (Okay, maybe you’ve glanced,)

Even re-reading a Twilight book provides no more escapist zing. (Ho-hum, there’s Edward again being handsome, sweet, overbearingly controlling.)

Fine.  But the problem is what do you do now? With all those spare moments of restlessness, disgruntlement, intermittent despair, which, for the last few months, have been pleasantly occupied by dark smoldering eyes tortured by paparazzi?

1.  Take up computer bridge.  Or better yet, poker.  Even better, scotch.

2.  Sleep.  (This five hours a day business seems to be showing on you.)

3.  Blog at least twice rather than once a day.  (No.)

4.  Finally read Marcel Proust’s The Remembrance of Things Past.

5.  Clean out your closet.  (Yes, your dog likes to make a little bed among the rumpled piles, still, there may be some good clothes down there.)

6.  (Do I have to?)

7.  Actually read the details of foreign policy decisions.  And the health care proposals. And the initiatives to create jobs.

8.  (Are you serious?)

9.  Go see the new movie, New Moon, as soon as possible.

10. It opens only one week from today!

Aha!  A plan!

Categories: Robert Pattinson, Robsten, Stress
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Crazy Day Nights, Bed Tea

November 12, 2009

Crazy days, no nights.  Yes, the sun sets.  Quite early, in fact.  But you know those weeks when, even after darkness falls (which, okay, never completely happens in the City), and all the lights are off in your apartment (except for the little green and red ones in the various cable boxes), and the down blanket is tucked softly around your shoulder (unless it suddenly feels too hot), and your sleeping socks are comfortably on feet that would otherwise be too cold or too dry to relax (yes, it would be better if one was not a footie while the other a knee sock)– but you know what I mean–those hours when you should sleep but your mind still churns through numbers, conversations, projected conversations, or worse, if you do drift off briefly, images of the back of a computer, torn open so that wires and tubes protrude, the same wires and tubes that hold the only copies of your most dear and precious files.

My husband dreams of things like flying; Mao Tse Tung floating down the Yangtze in an inner tube; himself, naked, except for a pickaxe slung across his back, scaling the wall of a garden party where all other males are strapped into spats and morning coats.  As a result, perhaps, he is always promoting the virtue of many hours of sleep, or, at least, the prescribed eight.

He doesn’t understand that this prescription is not appealing to those who dream, if at all, about the backs of their laptops torn open.

I, on the other hand, am a great believer in sitting in bed for long periods,  propped up by pillows, awake, but feeling both mindless and blissfully guilt-free because (a) it’s either too early or too late for the overdrive to control; (b) I really am pretty tired after all the nights of torn-open computer backs; and (c) that mindless part I mentioned earlier in this sentence.   All the while drinking bed tea, which, for these purposes, I will define as virtually any steaming hot beverage, preferably with a bit of milk in it; and happily reading, re-reading, re-re-reading, or, in the last few months, blogging (haha!),  writing to anyone else out there who also craves some slightly mindless rest.

I wish I could pour you a cuppa….

Ah….

Categories: Blogging, Stress, Uncategorized
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Blocking Writer’s Block – Part X – Grow a Thicker Skin (But Not, Perhaps, A Carapace)

November 9, 2009

How do you inure yourself to criticism?  How do you view it as instructive rather than destructive?    (Note that when I  say “you”, I mean me.  This is a task I find truly difficult.)

When I first considered this question, I thought of a cockroach—something with not just a thick skin, but a hard carapace.  A creature that is at the height of evolutionary sustainability.  A survivor.

But I can’t quite stomach becoming more cockroach-like, and I don’t think I can advise it for you either.   Because, aside from its general lack of appeal, a cockroach scurries away from any bright light, which is exactly what a lot of criticism feels like–a too-bright light shone right into your eyes, or on your weak spots (that flap of flab at the back of a thigh.  Or worse, if you’re a writer:  those awkward transitions, that plot that just isn’t credible, that character, based on you, who’s simpering and inane.

The fear of criticism, or the experience of criticism, can be an old-style Berlin Wall to a struggling writer.  Not only is it an obstacle between your desire to work and your ability to work;  it is also a wall between the two halves of yourself—the half that really does want to learn and grow and improve, and the half which wants anything you do, no matter how flawed, to be called brilliant, at least, good enough.

Because I’m so bad at this, I can only give a few random clues as to how to get better:

1.  Don’t show work too early.  It can be both humiliating and paralyzing to have your reader point out problems that you would have caught yourself if you’d only waited a few weeks beyond the glow of completion.

2.   Take care to whom you show things.  It’s helpful if you truly believe that your reader respects you and your abilities, no matter what they say about the particular piece.

3.  Try to focus on what you can learn from a specific critique.   Keep in mind that even if some criticism may not be fully justified, it may still point out something that doesn’t fully work.

4.  After due consideration, if you feel your work is good, hold your ground.  Consider your reader’s perspective and taste.  Is it the same as yours?  Is it infallible?

5.  Distance yourself.  Those words on the page are not you.  What you wrote yesterday is not you today.  There are countless ways to skin a cat; it takes all types to make a world.  Which means—yes, you can revise it (no matter how impossible that feels).

6.  When all the above has been tried, and you really just can’t bear any more, scurry into a dark crevice.   But don’t just wait till it’s safe to come out again.  Work from there.  Keep working even from there.

For more on Writer’s Block, check other posts in this category.  And, as always, check out 1 Mississippi by Karin Gustafson, on Amazon or at link on ManicDDaily home page.

Categories: Stress, writer's block
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Thankful for Courbet

November 6, 2009
courbet_baigneuses (detail)

Courbet "Baigneuses" (detail - only one baigneuse)

The combination of  day job, blog, and endless post-season baseball games, have made it difficult to do decent yoga and/or get to the gym of late.  (Hard to blog in downward dog.)   This, plus some brownies that I made for a visiting nephew, have left me feeling very chubby this Friday morning.   To compensate for those feelings, I’m posting “Courbet”, an homage to the wonderful sensitivity of  Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) to the womanly  physique.

Courbet

All I can say is that
it’s a good thing we have
museums hanging Courbets,
Rubens,
Rembrandts,
the occasional Italian,
with their depictions of swelling bellies,
dimples gathered around spines, flesh rippling
like Aphrodite’s birth foam,
the creep of pubic hair juxtaposed by coy hands
whose curved digits
pudge, slightly sunken cheeks (above, below),
spidery blood vessels
rooting beneath the patina.
All I can say, as
I catch my face in the
glass, glance down at
my folio of torso,
is that it’s a good thing.

All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson.

Categories: poetry, Stress
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Sheepish About Halloween

October 31, 2009
Sheep

"Sheep"

I have a checkered history with Halloween.  It started when I was a little girl and my overworked mom took me to a late afternoon dental appointment at the end of October.  Unfortunately, this end-of-October date was “Beggar’s Night,” which, in my childhood state, was the traditional night for trick or treating.  Even more unfortunately, the late afternoon dental appointment turned into an evening dental appointment due to the discovery, during tooth cleaning, of one or more cavities.

As the clocked ticked, I slipped into despair.   I remember walking tearfully out to a cold empty parking lot, the day’s remaining light already slimmer than a dim yellow ribbon.   When we got home, and it turned out that all of my neighborhood friends had long since come and gone, my mother jumped into quick, guilty, action.  She pulled out one of her one of her favorite evening dresses (a black wool one with puffed fur sleeves), and converted some kind of round bin that my brother had once used as a Crusader’s helmet into a black cat’s head.

This unfortunate Halloween imprinted several resolutions into my brain which only blossomed fully in motherhood,when I was determined not to be the cause of similar angst:   (1) never make your child a dentist appointment in the month of October;  (2)  avoid cavities; (3)  make your kid’s costume in advance;  (4) make your kid’s costume; and  (5) if you don’t sew, convert other clothes.  (I never got over my admiration for the way that my mother threw together what turned out to be quite a glamorous black cat’s costume, once I took off that medieval helmet.)

These resolutions had mixed results for my own children, especially for my oldest daughter.  (Oldest children often get the fullest brunt of parental ideology.)    I don’t really need to go into the cavities part other than to say that I allowed that child on her first Halloween (at age 2) to conveniently lose her pumpkin of Halloween candy.  (Yes, this was horrible horrible horrible and I have since tried to make it up to her with a great deal of Swiss chocolate.)

The costume part is better. I believed that children, even very young children,  should participate in the making of their costumes.   The strangest example was the sheep, a costume that my oldest daughter “decided” on when she was 3.  (I think it may have started as a lamb, and I say “decided” in quotes, because I suspect that I had some hand in the idea since the sheep costume had a puffiness suspiciously reminiscent of my black cat fur sleeves.)

Our/my brilliant conception was a huge white sweat shirt upon which my very small daughter glued cotton balls.  Many many many cotton balls.  I made a hat, with ears, out of white cropped panty hose, also covered by my daughter with cotton balls.

It made for a very cute, very “woolly” sheep (if wool were cotton.)   Of course, it’s true that  “sheep” was probably not the first thing that came to people’s minds seeing her.  Halloween does not generally bring sheep to mind.

The sheep outfit was intended to be comfortable.  Unfortunately, instead of that cold Beggar’s Night of my youth, it was an unseasonably warm, drizzly afternoon.  Cotton balls get very very heavy when drizzled on.  And hot.

It’s hard to be the oldest child.

Happy Halloween.

In between tricking and treating, check out 1 Mississippi, by Karin Gustafson, on Amazon or at link on this homepage.  (Thanks.)

Categories: parenting, Stress
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Comments: 5 Comments

Friday Night End Of Long Week Poem

October 30, 2009

Please, love

Please, love, summon some zing.
Famished for faith; belief in self
would fill that belly.
So I think.
But in the meantime, head teams,
heart empties, pen rambles, the part moon
fails to inspire.
Please love, summon some hope.
We enter this life for a purpose, rarely met.
In the meantime, life force puddles.
Please sweet, summon treasure
from this mean time.
Make it worthwhile in the having and
not simply in its loss;
please, love.

All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson

Categories: poetry, Stress
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How To Do Ashtanga Yoga In One Short Breath

October 20, 2009

I am a longtime and very proud devotee of Ashtanga Yoga. This is a form of yoga pioneered by Shri T. Krishnamacharya and the much beloved Shri K. Patabhi Jois. It involves six fairly long series of poses (though most practitioners stick to the first “Primary” series), which are intended to energize the body, clarify the mind, and purify just about everything.   Ashtanga is supposed to be practiced six days a week, preferably in the morning.  (An empty stomach is recommended; a non-empty stomach is regretted.)

It is a great form of yoga, especially for people, like me, who have a hectic schedule, as it is designed for self-practice.  Not only does Ashtanga provide a  series of pre-set poses, it includes certain transitional movements between each pose. This takes decision-making out of home practice, an immense benefit for those who already have too many other things to think about.

Breathing in Ashtanga, as in all yoga, is super important: each transitional movement corresponds to a specific inhalation or exhalation, and each pose is ideally held for eight steady breaths.  This means that Primary series, if done right, should take between an hour and an hour and a half, to complete.

Some of us, however, have managed to shorten the required time span to approximately fifteen minutes.

Here’s how:

1. First, practice for years. It’s important to know the poses in your bones so that when you whiz through them you don’t need to spend a single extra second thinking about what comes next.

2. Second, be Manic.

3. And slightly depressed.

4. Start a daily blog.

5. But keep your day job.

6. Most importantly, fuel the flames of family and personal drama with long drawn-out conversations or email each morning, so that you really don’t have more than fifteen minutes to do yoga. (Ignore possible effects of yoga’s calming influence, if done correctly.)

7. Don’t mind if you wrench your knee or shoulder throwing yourself into convoluted positions. (Alignment always felt kind of boring anyway.)

8.  Who said you had to do the complete pose?   At least, your bending that wrenched knee.

10. Try not to mind that a practice that is supposed cultivate deep breathing and energetic stillness is whipping by in panting exhaustion

11. Congratulate yourself on the fact that you are practicing yoga at all.

12. (If you can call that practicing . Or Yoga.)

13. But keep practicing anyway. (As that great sage Scarlett O’Hara said, tomorrow is another day.)

Categories: Blogging, Stress, yoga
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Late (Subway Blog)

October 6, 2009

Late late late.  What is it that makes some people (i.e. me) almost inevitably so?

It can’t be enjoyment of that sick feeling in my stomach, the itchy anxiety that runs up the inside of my arms, the vacuum roar in my throat.

I jump on the first train I come to, an E, even though it doesn’t go exactly to the stop I need.   Then, at the next stop, a C—a C!— a local, but also the train that will stop at my station— pulls up across the platform.

I dash across.  I make it through the old grey doors.  I even get a seat.

As the E speeds off on the other track, the conductor of my C tells us that the train is being held in the station.   We wait.  He tells us again, just in case we don’t realize that we are standing stock still.  The vacuum roar spreads from my throat to my solar plexus; despair fills my core.  My little bit of lateness will now be a lot of lateness, and it is all my fault.  Stupid stupid C.

The train finally begins to move, but slowly, jerkily, like a Conestoga wagon over a rutted ditch.  The scene is somewhat different from the classic Western, however, due to the blackness outside the train and the gloomy fluorescence within.  What I should say is that the train moves like a Conestoga wagon somehow transplanted into a cheap diner at 2 a.m.

I feel horrible.  Yet, the despair caused by lateness is something with which I am well familiar.  Why?

1.         I tell myself it’s because I am busy.  (But most people in this city are busy.)

2.         I tell myself it’s because I can’t refrain from certain morning conversations, which, though irrelevant to the specific tasks of the day, are necessarily required for the construction of a “self” to get through these tasks.   This doesn’t seem a good reason either since a certain share of these conversations are arguments, which (I hope) are not actually the building blocks of that sense of self.  (I try not to wonder about that.)

3.         I tell myself it’s because I don’t much like waiting.  As a child of another overly busy woman who spent time in conversations aimed at bolstering the self in order to get through hard days, I did a fair amount of waiting when I was little.   (The only problem with that reason is that  I’m generally gleeful when early.)

4.         Perfectionism?   (Maybe.  I do tend to sweep my living room just when I should walk out the door.)

5.         Reluctance?  (On certain work days, possibly.)

6.        A need for specialness?  A desire to prove that I’m lucky, blessed with extraordinary gifts of good fortune, such as clocks stopping, trains taking wing?  (Hmmm…..)

Finally (finally), we pull into 42nd Street which is the station where I would have had to switch from the so much faster E, had I stayed on.  The platform is crowded.

Ah.

If you are a New Yorker, you understand the reason behind that “ah”.

If you’re not:  the full platform means that no other C has pulled up here recently;  that, even if I’d stayed on the grass-is-always-greener other train (the E, or even if I’d jumped the express, the A), I would not have caught up to a C train before the one I am sitting on.

Which means that I have, today, taken the very quickest combination of trains available on the New York City subway system.

Ah.

I run when I get off, feeling blessed.

Categories: New York City, Stress, Uncategorized
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Saturday Working At Office – Dog Tired

October 3, 2009
Towards the End of A Saturday, Working at the Office

Towards the End of A Saturday, Working at the Office

At The Very End of a Saturday, Working at the Office

At The Very End of a Saturday, Working at the Office

All rights reserved, Karin Gustafson.

If you like elephants as well as dogs, check out 1 Mississippi, at link above.

Categories: children's illustration, dog, Stress
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Thirteen Reasons Not To Set Up A Car Office

October 2, 2009

Re New York Times article of September 30 byMatt Richtel, “At 60 M.P.H., Office Work Is High Risk ,” here are thirteen (or more) reasons not to turn your car into an office:

 1.         The car in front of you.

2.         The car behind you.

3.         The cars on either side of you.

4.         The child who is in one or more of those cars.  (Also, the adult.) 

5.         The child that you may be driving to school (or the one who is already sitting in school.)

6.         Your frontal lobe.

7.         The hot – very hot – cup of coffee clasped between your legs (despite the warning emblazoned on its styrofoam sides that that coffee is “hot, very hot.”)

8.         The fact that you are evidencing to all persons with whom you come in contact, either digitally or through the window, (a) your complete lack of common sense, and (b) your narcissistic grandiosity regarding your own significance in the global world of commerce.

9.         The negative effect upon the demand for good public transportation i.e. a commuter rail or bus system, that would allow you to gab or type away while only irritating people,  not threatening their lives.  (Sorry, that one’s awfully PC.)

10.       The muting effect caused by headphones on (a) talk radio, (b) EZ listenin’.  (I guess that one’s kind of a benefit.) 

 11.   The oncoming speeding car.  (Oh wait—that’s you.)

12.       Can it really not wait till you pull over?

13.       Are you that bored with life?

Categories: Stress
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