Happy Birthday to My Blog—Now What?

“Everywhere is within walking distance if you have the time.”

Steven Wright

My father always used to surprise and delight me when I was a child when at random times he stated some often inconsequential but fun fact about our family such as “7 years ago this day, Mom and I had to wait in line extra early to get tickets to see Dog Day Afternoon.” Sometimes he’d have more significant milestones to remember such as the day we went on a certain vacation or the day he got sworn into the bar (for lawyers, not drinkers, although I’m sure there are correlations in some circles). He wrote it all down, and as best I can tell, by sticking to the simple facts, he was freed up to keep a very replete record of events big and small.

I don’t know if it’s as a result of that per se or of just being wired so similarly (I wouldn’t make a good lawyer, but then again, it was always a question to me whether his heart was in the law)—but I do enjoy marking time and remembering certain noteworthy events if only in my mind. Thus we have a birthday blog.

I said I was fearful to write one. This quickly gave way to being fearful I’d drown in the vast ether-wasteland of bad bloggers or worse yet, those blogs that get completely ignored for lack of anyone noticing they exist!

That has given way to delight that my very dear friends and some friends I haven’t even met, do read and supply the most affirming encouragement to go on (which is not a nice way of saying you have only yourselves to blame for this blog’s livelihood).

The original inspiration for the blog was having seen the movie “Julie and Julia,” three times in all. Considering how many times I go to the movies (and let’s just say that a full 50% of my movie going times these last 12 months involved seeing THAT movie)—it pains me to say that the only other films intriguing enough for me to break away from my sewing machine in order to see them in the theater had the words 3-D (are those words?) and Pixar embedded somewhere in the advertising.

I still smile every time I think of that self imposed mission of Julie’s, and in a way, I consider myself on such a mission this year—particularly since my formal work as a technical writer ceased in March of this year—2 days before my 46th birthday, another fact mentioned in my first post.

This brings me back to my father’s perceived mixed feelings about his work. I so want to have meaningful work, something that draws me toward it, even if that’s idealistic. I take it as no coincidence that this year brought the occasion of my brother’s graduation from law school, at age 43. 

I know, at least I think I know, that it took great courage for him to walk unhesitatingly toward the drum of yearning for this career, the same one that sometimes seemed to imprison my father, and darn well do it. Anyway. The look on his face when he walked out of the auditorium in cap and gown said it all and I perhaps egocentrically took it as a harbinger of a similar conquest in my life.

I spoke of my training as a social worker and a process of inching back toward it. Well in 48 hours my private office opens for business. I am volunteering at a crisis hotline as well, and am preparing a presentation to give to our couples’ group. It was so easy, really. I asked and they said yes—but what it took to ask is the story I’ve been telling in this blog.

So what lies ahead? Of course, as ever, I haven’t a clue, and I’m becoming more comfortable with as well as delighted by that fact. Writer that I was and am, the words may not come quickly but you’ll find them here as long as they keep coming.

Happy Birthday to my blog and thank you for riding along. 

"I have met the builder and broken the ridgepole. I shall not build that house again."

THE BUDDHA, UPON HIS AWAKENING

Who flips that switch?

“You think he's gone? He's not gone. That's the whole point! He's never gone!” Dr. Leo Marvin speaking of his patient, Bob Wiley in “What About Bob?”

Lately I’ve been observing what’s behind that switch. You know the one. Maybe. For me, it connects to two things, blind rage or compulsive eating. There’s a match made in hell, eh?

The overwhelmingly tired soap opera about this phenomenon stars me as myself, whomever that is at the moment, usually a woman on the outside but a disgruntled toddler within. I look as if I’m going about my life doing ‘the next right thing.’ Could be something quite mundane, like catching a nap, even.

My experience is that I go from whatever to waking up in this overwhelming urge to yell my head off or, less belligerently toward passers by, eat anything not nailed down (“Katy bar the door,” as my father might say.) All reason goes flying out the window, and in the case of overeating, I can’t honestly recall at those times why I ever wanted to do anything but eat my way through my kitchen, my neighborhood, my country, and this planet (and not necessarily in that order, either).

In OA, some say this is all the proof we need of Step 1, that we are powerless over food and our lives are unmanageable, if not in and of itself, then as a result. In Zen, we speak of these moments as the experience of becoming identified with a regressed part of ourselves, sometimes referred to as a subpersonality.

For me, it’s the real reason I stick out any self-improvement program. I’ve been haunted by this feeling my whole life and at times I feel like it owns me. Because I get there and see only all the food I can possibly eat my way through along with this unstoppable feeling that I must eat it.

I can buy into the notion that it’s a small, needy part of me confused as to what’s needed to feel taken care of. But not when I’m under its spell. Then it’s just me needing to eat and eat and eat until she’s done. I can blame some tangible things like making my hunger wait too long, or eating a triggering food like wheat thins with just enough of a hint of sweetness to feel an overeating switch inside engage. But there are other factors to, before it comes on, completely unknown to me except for what I infer by how I feel when I’m done overeating.

In Zen we meditate to that we can cultivate the mind of sitting still and seeing without judgment what arises. This compulsion is so perfect for this kind of observation, I know, although I feel blindsided every single time. It is a very counter-intuitive process of in essence waiting for the disturbance to happen so you can watch how it comes about. By disturbance I mean that which takes place mentally and extremely discreetly, to result in a landslide of emotion that did not exist but 5 minutes or 5 seconds before.

"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone." Henry David Thoreau

Someone Like Me

“Guess what? I have flaws. What are they? Oh I donno, I sing in the shower? Sometimes I spend too much time volunteering. Occasionally I'll hit somebody with my car. So sue me-- no, don't sue me. That is opposite the point I'm trying to make.” Michael Scott, “The Office”

In our sangha, we speak of ‘conditioning backlash’ whereby your ‘reward’ for a sought after experience that frees you from an unwanted freedom or behavior is nothing other than an apparent redoubling of effort to seize your sensibilities. That’s what happened following my ability to wait out an overwhelming craving in my last writing.

It wasn’t until several days and binges later, yesterday, in fact that I could ‘catch’ my mind wanting to wander down the alley of what I can only describe as an internal debate over whether to eat something more at the conclusion of dinner and how dreadful I’d feel to just ‘stop’ for ‘the whole evening’. Though it was like averting eyes from a roadside accident I could feel an internal pulling away and some intuitive assurance that I’d be better off if I did. Sure enough, I went on about my evening and had the most peaceful ‘food day’ among other things, I have had in a month—since I decided it would be OK to have a piece of my brother’s graduation cake to be exact.

That experience is my internalization of what is referred to as mastery, although I have no idea if I’ll be able to repeat it at will. That is the point we reach when we really ‘know’ the internal conversations are just that—voices in the head borne from a conditioned past extending who knows how far back—and though powerful and convincing and causing us to identify strongly with its/their pleas—are not us, but simply housed by us. When we really know that to be true, is when we all of a sudden have available to us the choice to turn away and behave differently.

Of course there are no end of spiritual traditions that espouse that reality. In the 12-step program, that experience can be thought of as surrendering to power greater than ourselves to restore us to sanity as stated in Step 2. Grace is a lovely way to hear it described as well. Most recently I have heard it described as being blown from the belly of the whale, JUST at the point at which we give up all hope (another way, maybe of describing surrender). In any case, I came, I saw, I let go and eating, along with the rest of life, is more peaceful today.

“You must know that you can swim through every change of

“Won't you help me sing my song

From the dark end of the street

To the bright side of the road” Van Morrison

A Job for Howard

“It's a terrible feeling, isn't it — the self-will run riot? Here you long to inwardly resemble the Dalai Lama humming to himself, or Therese of Liseux at dawn Christmas morning in prayer.”-Anne Lamott

I snapped! Well, some "I" did. I hate hanging in there to watch it, too. That’s worse than the snappage. To date, I have lost about 18 pounds (I strive to weigh myself once monthly only) and I had the sense I underate at lunch yesterday. A few hours after when John was snacking on blue chips a part of me ‘went wild’ and just ‘had’ to have chips and cheese together. That I did and that was that but I felt rebellious after and really not happy after dinner was over. 

That was of course yesterday, not necessarily related to what happened this day. Yet today I did have enough at lunch but I still went for a bread/cheese snack and not in the way it’s recommended either, at least by my sponsor. I’m having a hard time knowing what is right for me, separating it from what I feel I should be doing according to my sponsor, even though my sponsor says there is no wrong way.

I like her a lot. She is younger than me—but that barely comes up. Her background is highly resonant with my own -- most especially when it comes to spiritual beliefs. She has defined her higher power as a guiding force of connection through us all, and that very much is how I've come to think of 'my' higher power. She’ll refer to God and that suits me fine, as it’s rather cumbersome to refer to praying to "my inner guiding feeling of human connection".

Whatever the definition, I am struggling with lining my eating up with my inner sense of what makes sense for me, my higher power, or my mentor, as it’s sometimes called in my Zen practice. I feel myself lining up instead with an inner rebellious child who is hopping mad that she’s being forced to do what she doesn’t want to do. She has her system of control, flawed as it is, in place and tolerates the horrid inconsistencies around her by paying close attention to her food kingdom, reveling in the knowledge that there she lords over her ‘loyal’ but inanimate subjects of chocolate kisses, chocolate chip cookies, and an array of warm, buttery comfort food. She isn’t going down with a fight on this one.

I know she’s not after food. She’s after reassurance that there are steady, dependable things available just for her. The toleration of her as only one part of me after so many years of thinking I am the part she comandeered is in and of itself a huge undertaking. I can. I will. I want to—I know that, how? Ah…. Looks like a job for the mentor.

“I like to think that some even turned to Howard, who can be kind of a generic god for agnostics, a big warm caring galoot of divine presence — Howard, as in, "Our father, who art in Heaven, Howard be thy name."—Anne Lamott

Mild Mannered Reporting

"I can't stand to fly. I'm not that naive. I'm just out to find the better part of me." Five for Fighting 

Cheri posted a practice reminder recently suggesting we imagine what we'd ask Superman to do for us, if we could. For some reason this tickled a place of childish delight inside me, and has excited all my pleasure centers, to the point that I (almost) don't remember the second part of her practice reminder which was to see how much of that which we were asking of Superman we might be able do for ourselves. Luckily, my heart rushed in with the answer before my head could intervene and talk myself into world peace. "Plenty of money," was what I would ask for. Now I don't know how the ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound, or x-ray vision yields the ability to provide this, but that is the joy of awakening a child within, now isn't it? 

I suppose the plenty of money would cut out a lot of conversation in my head, ostensibly anyway, regarding what I can and cannot do with my time at this stage of my life where I find myself at a crossroads by dint of being out of work, yet too young to retire. So what *would* I do once I had this plenty of $$$? I'm almost too excited to contemplate, the thought seems so joyous. Off my stepdaughter would go to the college of her dreams, and so too my daughter to medical school following college. John could stay at his hourly job not one minute past when his heart tells him it's time to leave, and not knowing whether we would or not, we could stop the chatter surrounding the endless futile speculation about when we'll go back to a decent income level.

Assuming I had the time, (maybe Superman can do several things for us and longevity could certainly be added to the list), I could spend it on further learning in a new field, and ever so casually resume looking for work in my current field. 

The 2nd part to the question was to ask which of those things we could do for ourselves. This was also interesting and in some ways even more fun to think about. Remembering one of my first 'hooks' into practicing sitting meditation and studying with Cheri was hearing her underscore that all anyone *ever* wants is a certain feeling-- I think that I'd like to be able to provide the means for what I project is a fulfilling feeling that our girls would receive by making their educations just happen. In many respects this was a feeling I enjoyed by virtue of my own parents' generosity.

The other items fall into the category of a sense of urgency-- John needing to believe he can let go of his job when he needs to, me believing I can't stay out of traditional work and those things are so subjective, unless I am in the throes of believing the tug of war in my head. "What about benefits? What about money?" on and on. And of course there is validity to those concerns, but what gets lost sight of on a regular basis by me and I suspect others- is that those things need not become fuel for self-battering as they can be made to become by abusing 'voices' inside. 

As the Superman game suggests, facts can be laid in their place alongside a healthy sense of wonder and imagination with a result that might be something far greater in the real world than ever imagined. Right now I am just loving going about my day with a schedule all my own and knowing it's always going to include time to craft and lunch at home with food I had plenty of time to prepare. Maybe 'the next thing' will include income enough to make sure I always have that time and that personal space as well as the ability to pay the bills.

I have not been served wrong by taking the opportunity to wonder aloud or to myself 'just for fun,' that's for sure.

"Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm."

Emily Dickinson
Copyright 2010 Celia M. Feret All rights reserved. No part of this blog may be used without permission from the author who can be reached at celia.feret@gmail.com.

"You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step." Martin Luther King 

I'm avoiding writing in my blog. I'm not sure why but part of my Zen practice is to commit to something, almost for the sake of seeing who you 'become' (what lesser known part of you appears) when you don't want to keep, or can't even remember (!) your commitment. I committed to the blog this last time to take note of the feelings that arise as I relinquish food and eating patterns to excess, and I can't say why I'm turning away today from writing about it.

I suppose there is a part of me that wants to think my urge to overeat doesn't exist when I'm not struggling with it, and of course in Zen practice that is absolutely the truth. Suffering cannot exist in the present because when we are present we are attending as fully as possible to our thoughts, feelings, and sensations. Though those might not always feel good or in sync, we are usually able to take them for what they are and not so much see them as an enemy tide sweeping us into whatever unpleasantness conditioned mind would have us lunge toward.

Wishing there were more food on my plate is not in and of itself a crisis. Believing I "deserve" more and that I can't resist the call toward more tips the balance of contentment and pain toward suffering. And the endless debate of "I know I shouldn't but I can't resist," is the ultimate stronghold for suffering because we can spend a lifetime believing that that debate is something other than a pointless sham, designed to pull us out of present awareness into an unresolvable, futile conversation-- a thinly veiled, if very compelling, "damned if you do, damned if you don't".

I now write down what I eat each day and email it to my sponsor. Some folks commit to what they are going to eat ahead of time and send or call that in to their sponsors. I chose the former because that seemed more do-able and it has the benefit of helping me really see what I eat and, even more illuminating how. Many things have been predictable, some have caught me by complete surprise. The revelation that I'm not in need of more than 3 meals a day is huge and strikes me as funny all at the same time. I was so sure I needed a snack between lunch and dinner but that snack was a small meal (!). I noticed instead that having an actual snack, in the form of an apple or the fruit, is more than sufficient to last until a dinner at most any hour.

The largest surprise has been the depth of what I am forced to call affection for food. I am at turns grateful for the realization and embarrassed that something inanimate and eventually deadly when abused can have become an object of adoration for me when I have so much love in my life and within myself. Seeing all of this clearly, without what's called a food fog, is more than anything joy producing because I no longer feel led down the garden path of delusion that eating out of control will solve some sort of emotional deprivation in my current or prior experience and that feels like the way out of emotional bondage. I suppose it's not unlike being in an abusive relationship and then 'one day' waking up to the knowledge that you do not have to keep participating and the future though not certain, is sure to be brighter than the past with this knowledge.

Avoiding writing these things down provides another decoy to really seeing, which of course is the path toward true freedom. Both my 12-step program and my Zen practice speak of 'the key' as willingness. While those keys abound, I figure I'm good.

"It is not my experience that we are here to fix the world, that we are here to change anything at all.  I think we are here so the world can change us.  And if part of that change is that the suffering of the world moves us compassion, to awareness, to sympathy, to love, that is a very good thing." Cheri Huber

Moment by Moment

Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.
Woody Allen

The horrible for me is realizing I could stand to lose at least 50-70 pounds and the miserable is standing on the scale after an eternity of what feels like the worst deprivation ever, lasting 1 month total, to find out I'd shed exactly seven of those unneeded pounds. The only reason I'm not flooded with self-hating thoughts regarding what a failure I both feel like and no doubt will turn out to be as I try to quench a tsunami like desire to over eat, is that I'm so busy remembering to phone my sponsor and figure out what vegetable or how much salad I need to make to fill half my plate that I don't have inordinate amounts of time left over for anything else. That and I lie down to go to sleep and become riddled with anxiety that even without the excess poundage, I'll somehow starve between dinner and breakfast (this I have come to learn is a common fear amongst overeaters!).

All in all, I am getting through, one day, one meal at a time as the encouragement often. goes. What I'm seeing is how very much free access to food and a perceived need to eat throughout the day, pervades my identity. So  many times I've reached for something I wasn't hungry for and even stopped to ask myself why I think I'm doing 'this'. The answer quite often was 'It's who I am. It's what I do."

I just completed a food history, something it never occurred to me to do in easily 25 years of making concerted constructive efforts to reduce the need to overeat. I don't know why I find it surprising how important I've made eating but it has infused every ordinary and extraordinary breath I've taken as long as I can remember.

I love knowing this and really seeing this as I work at not needing to eat when I'm not the slightest bit hungry, yet I am well aware of this appalled aspect of myself that is horrified the extent to which what I think I need is so different from the fact of the matter. In addition to the revelatory knowledge that very little starving takes place between those who get a nutritive dinner and breakfast the next morning, it has also come as a shock that one can subsist on 3 moderate meals and that if a snack is in order, the traditional apple, banana or other type of fruit can suffice, even satisfy any biological hunger that might arise. You couldn't provide me more shocking data if you told me not only is Elvis alive, but I am he. (And by the way, can you prove I'm not?)

"The greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it." Emerson