I completely forgot that I had signed up for Level III of the Shambhala training this weekend and because it started this evening, I’m not retro’d yet. I’ll post it tomorrow evening. Preview results: mixed. I need more external accountability and I need to get out of the house EARLY every day or I end up reclusive.
Category: Uncategorized Page 4 of 5
I’m guessing that most people are familiar with the standard components of a bra size (at least in Canada & the US – I don’t know international sizes). There’s band size – a number, ostensibly in inches (e.g. 38) that represents the circumference of the ribs below the breasts, and there’s cup size – a letter or string of letters (AA, A, B, C, D, DD, etc*) which is based on the difference between the band size and the circumference around the broadest part of the breast (generally right over the nipples).
I needed some new bras and since it had been a long time since I had bought any, I figured I’d get sized. I went to Victoria’s Secret (since I assumed they’d know what they were doing) and they did the standard measuring. I picked out some bras I like (I prefer “T-shirt style” – no visible seams + underwire).
They’re torture.
The problem is that those two degrees of freedom, band & ‘cup’ don’t adequately cover all possible shapes, especially where there’s an underwire.
We also need ‘radius’.
Radius
Let’s say we have two people with the same circumference under the breasts & across them. Let’s also say they aren’t clones, and actually are shaped fairly differently:
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- Person A
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- Person B
Note that the underwire curve of each person is rather different.
These are not the same
So guess what happens when we don’t take that into account when building bras?
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- Person A – ow! (This actually stabs Person A in the armpits. I assure you)
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- Person B – ow!
It’s 2015. We can do better.
*interestingly, some schemes stop adding new letters at D and just keep adding more Ds, (i.e. DDD=E, DDDD=F)
Unlike many of my colleagues, I’ve never been a ‘personal process’ type of person. I’m happy to use Agile planning & project management at work, but it always struck me as being a bit artificial to plan one’s own life the same way one planned team projects.
Now that I’ve been off work for a while, I see more value in it. Not going to an 8-5 job means that suddenly where I had structure, I don’t, and it’s much harder to make progress on things I want to achieve (or indeed, to do anything that doesn’t involve getting sucked into social media for an entire day).
So, inspired by a few posts I’ve read I’m going to do a weekly sprint plan on Sunday afternoon, and will do a retro Friday afternoon (Saturdays will be ‘free’ days – I can still do things on Saturdays but it’s a bonus day, not a normal day). To raise the level of accountability, I’m going to post the plan & retro notes here. This week’s plan is a bit rough and I expect to add to it as I go, but like the lady says: “Do It Anyway”
[The actual organizational scheme I’ll be using in Trello will probably change – there are posts out there that suggest ‘the best way’ to use it, but I will review and tweak as I go. At the moment, I have included a list for Fitness/Wellness, but I’m not sure that makes sense – it may be more appropriate to just fit those into a repeating schedule rather than re-entering those same cards every week]
Here’s this week’s plan (as of right now):
What would you do? That’s the question we’re supposed to answer to figure out what matters to us, what we should focus our lives on.
What do you do if you can’t answer it? If you just have no idea?
Epiphany: The same process that works best for recipes also works best for following new technology tutorials. Read the whole thing through first to try to understand it rather than jumping in to follow along.
(Unlike with recipes, it’s normally not as big of a deal to stop to install needed requirements in a tech tutorial but even if it doesn’t cause you to burn the roux, it sure as hell can block you from finishing the dish)
Go listen to this first. No, I haven’t listened to it. I am a woman who runs on headlines, not articles, you think I have time for that kind of thing? A podcast? psshah!
Done?
Back when I went to university the first time (The Original Series – TOS) I was studying theatre. That, in retrospect as a woman in computing science/tech, is fucking weird to reflect on.
So! Much! Emotion!
So! Much! Bodywork!
Masks! (no, seriously, Masks!)
One of the assigned textbooks was “Freeing the Natural Voice” (I’m not linking to Amazon, you can’t make me!)
Wow. I mean, just… wow. In a fit of purging a few years back, I got rid of that book but I was sad every day afterwards. (Aside: I need to go back & do those exercises. The more time I spent in offices in software, the tighter and clampeder my throat and voice got. I can do better. WE can do better)
As mentioned in my last post, I’m attending a Shambhala meditation retreat. The director is a prof of dance and theatre at Western Washington University and man-o-man, is he speaking with his natural voice!
Despite the fact that 2.75 hrs is TOO DAMN LONG for us newbies to sit/walk/sit meditate without more lead-in (especially us oldies!) the relaxation in his larynx, his voice, his manner, reminds me of where I started out (duh, theatre, dance, voice, c’mon: you should know that by now) and makes me melancholy for where I am now. I’m searching for human feeling and the more time I spend talking with my old-tymey actor comrades, the more I wonder if that’s where my heart lies.
I’m attending the level 2 of the Shambhala training this weekend – Birth of the Warrior. I took level 1 over the Labour Day weekend and although it was extremely valuable and I came out of it feeling alive and connected to other people (and signed up for level 2 while still attending level 1), as recently as this morning I was thinking about cancelling.
You see, there’s a project I’ve been working on that hasn’t been going well. There’s been some ambiguity of ownership and a recent technology change that has resulted in a learning curve that I can’t climb in time for the deadline. There’s someone else who might be able to get it done in time, but it’s not clear if that person is available. I’ve suggested a smaller scope that I could achieve but I don’t know if it’ll be accepted.
So my natural response in that situation is to cancel all my personal commitments – the ones that are for my own well-being – and to spend all the time I can scrape together to try to blast up that learning curve and deliver the project. But here’s the thing. I’ve already spent a TON of time trying to learn it. The docs are poor, there are insufficient reference examples, and an additional two days isn’t going to make a difference, given that the platform is one I only started looking at a couple of weeks ago. And I signed up for this program a month before this project came along.
And I’m not great with self-care and personal boundaries. When I say my natural response is to sacrifice my own well-being for the sake of the well-being of others, I am not kidding at all. I tend to apply about a 10x weighting factor on the importance of things that others care about over those I do. So I made it clear that the project scope was not achievable for me given the platform change and went to the Shambhala centre tonight.
I’m already glad I did. The program director has already said something that hit me really hard: we are so used to trying to ‘fix’ things, to ‘manage’ things, to ‘solve’ things (which is fine for our jobs – that’s often what we’re paid for) that we treat life as a series of obstacles to be overcome rather than a sequence of experiences to encounter. We spend our time thinking “if I do THIS, then I’ll be fixed” or “if I can accomplish that, I’ll be set!”, but what happens when we’re ‘done’? Are we just dead then? What does it mean to have ‘solved life’?
It’s understandable, of course, because solving things gives us a shot of dopamine. Our brains are literally addicted to figuring things out. We really do have to retrain our brains to give that up, and apparently meditation is the best tool we have for that. I did a great job with daily meditation for the first 5 weeks after level 1, but then started to fall off. You know, about the time I started taking on projects and commitments for others. I am NOT good at putting myself first and need to get better at it. This weekend is a start.
I really didn’t want to have to get involved in politics but I’m starting to feel like I have no choice.
This post from Rebecca at Think Simple Now has some really good advice in it, and in particular touches on something I’ve recently realized I strong mental bias about:
“There Can Be More Than One
The Universe is a big fan of multiplicity. Just take a look at how many different flowers there are, not to mention the variety of colors. Just because someone is doing what you want to do doesn’t mean you can’t do it too.
That was shown to me when my friend said I could work at a radio station too. There were several stations where I lived, and she wasn’t even DJ-ing in the same state! How had this never occurred to me?
Since realizing this, I’ve noticed that this thought comforts me and serves to calm down that jealousy most often. A blogger I admire published a book and it’s on the best seller list? There are a lot of best sellers in a year. I could be one of those.
Someone already said they were bringing their amazing salsa to dinner? I’ve got a killer recipe for fava bean hummus.
Remembering that there is not just one of anything can help us all truly celebrate each other’s successes and achievements. It can also serve to help create working relationships among colleagues and peers.”
I do this ALL. THE. TIME. I can’t write because writing is Christine’s thing. I can’t consult because consulting is Reza’s thing. I can’t work in social media because that’s Lorraine’s thing. I can’t get into web development because that’s Mike’s thing. I can’t make a travel blog because that’s Sally’s thing.
That is one hell of a way to limit yourself and to keep you from trying anything new. It’s a great recipe for just sitting on the couch surfing and moping. And lord knows there’s more than one of us doing that thing.
So, in the spirit of trying new things, I picked up some very inexpensive starter paint supplies from Michaels‘ on Tuesday to play around with. To be fair, one of the reasons I got interested in painting was that I don’t really know anyone who does it. But I’m sure I’ll meet someone who does and when I do, I’m going to remind myself that there can be more than one person who paints. And writes. And makes websites.
Bill’s secret recipe for pork back ribs (he STILL won’t tell me what goes in the simmering broth), and an adaptation of two of Elise Bauer’s SimplyRecipes
Coleslaw (mayo version) with:
- 1/4 head green cabbage
- 1 full carrot
- 2 green onions
- 4 Tbsp mayo
- ~1 tsp yellow mustard (ok, one medium ‘squirt’)
- ~1 tsp dijon mustard (a similar squirt)
- buncha freshly ground black pepper
Pretty faithful to the original but with a boosted carrot ratio & a bunch more ‘sauce’
Creole Potato Salad, but with a couple of twists:
- replaced the (loathed) green bell pepper with a dill pickle (Vlasic’s for the relative firmness)
- didn’t exactly measure the potatoes – about 16 new potatoes
- 1/3 cup creole mustard
- 1/2 cup mayo
- 4 hard-boiled eggs instead of 6
- 1 stalk celery
- didn’t have a regular small onion – used 3/4 of a small walla-walla
- thought it could use a bit of greenery so added about 1/3 cup flat-leaf parsley (the relatively flavourless parsley)
Because of the dill pickle, I didn’t actually have to add any salt – the potato salad has a bit of sweetness to it.
(Mostly writing this so I remember it the next time I want to make it, but if you try these variants, let me know what you think)