24 hours on OkCupid = It's dude message mad lib time!

So I signed up for Okcupid. And it is a SHARK TANK. The men have some rough competition in there.

At first I put myself as bisexual and hid my profile to only non-straights. Without a picture, I knew no one would want to look at it and it'd give me a bit of time to write a bit. Worked. Not a single visit. Then I changed it to straight and posted a photo. In 24 hours, there were about 100 messages.

Living sweet hell.

If I was to take only 1 minute quickly scanning their profile and giving them a polite rejection, that would be an hour and a half of my time. That's ridiculous. It's impossible to even reply back to them all, and let alone keep everyone straight.

To add to this, the inbox they give you only has room for 300 messages. Then it's full and no one else can message you unless they have a paid account. Then you get 5000 or something. This puts the pressure on to really just hack and slash indiscriminately. Every random "hey, ur hot" is another hair in the drain, building the clog.

And if any guy didn't realize what was going on in the ladies inboxes, I could see how they'd get jaded very quickly. Because the likely hood is that they're writing the same message that every one else is and these things no longer work when you are one in one hundred. It'd be pleasant in one on one conversation, but it's an overwhelming wave online. Which duh, riles up all the desires to clam up and hide in the receiver. There's no chance in hell she's going to respond to him unless he has a very eye catching photo, thumb nail size mind you. Nothing else is there to differentiate the guy in the message.

We could make mad libs.


(Greeting), you (verb) like a (positive adj) (noun for female). I think it would be (intensifier for an adj) (adjective to describe something positive) to get to know you. We should (verb) sometime.

or

(Exclamation)! (Noun for female), you are so (physical descriptor).

or for the minimalist,

(greeting).

or simplest yet,

(sound people make while eating food).


These of course, make fabulous combos too! Mix and match for your pleasure! Splice and break them apart! Reduce to text speak!

Needless to say, the messages are over kill. It's probably easier to just use the search function and go from there. :/

Vehicular Archaeology

After putting cleaning my car off for several...I don't know what unit to use, I have finally found myself in a corner where I need to get it done because I am driving people in it to a wilderness medicine conference this weekend. And I'm going to make this quick, because of course there's 2 tests sandwiching a weekend that has a conference in the middle of it and a paper due sometime around then too. 

----Breathe.

But I had to waste my time posting this archaeological dig because it is too good to pass up. And so you can know why I can't have nice things. 

Cleaned the car...found the following. 

1. a huge bag of sea shells + drift wood
2. water color post cards
3. My camera!
4. Oh and the camera bag! Completely separate from said camera of course. 
5. 2 umbrellas
6. 2 fist fulls of pencils and pens
7. 1 plastic grocery bag worth of receipts, old grocery lists, directions, and other garbage. (But not food garbage. That's my line.)
8. 2 metal water bottles
9. an iron
10. books on the following topics: Myers Briggs Personality Test, nutrition, cardiophysiology, handwriting analysis, jazz improvization, anatomy, and random psychology magazines that Mom put in my Christmas stocking last year. 
11. a 16 oz mushroom box filled with raw garnets.
12. 3 rolls of emergency toilet paper and one roll of paper towels 
13. 2 jugs of emergency water
14. band aids
15. my camping backpack. Which is held together with duct tape and filled with insurance documents.
16. The sound track for "The Mask". 
17. 1 sunglasses bag filled with change. 
18. 2 samples of dishwasher soap
19. deodorant
20. An unopened laboratory grade chemical shield gown. 
21. An unopened carabiner, still in package. 
22. and of course, tons of doodles that I have no plans for what so ever. But I'm keeping them anyway, until I look through them all.

The car is one step closer to clean! Which of course...it's now all in my room instead.

But no time for that thought! I need to get the sand out and pass this clinical diagnosis test tomorrow. 

yes.

Pressure washing.

Everywhere I go, I'm surrounded by beautiful, radiant women who hate their bodies. Combined with the natural perfectionist/obsessive under current that follows around a lot of med students, I'm worried about my friends. But as one person, there is little extra I can do in my position.

I've lived those sorts of thoughts as well. I never had a full blown eating disorder, but I certainly had my fair share of disordered eating. And I too ignored everyone else's proclamations that there was nothing to change. When you have that sort of mind set, you look for ways to confirm it.

Truth is, there's no way of finding ease with your self through changing your body. The body isn't the problem; it is the mind. The beauty paradigm you store in your head. I was never able to change my own thoughts about myself until I stretched my thoughts about other people. And that's not easy. You have to put yourself in an environment where there's a supportive peer pressure telling you that something else is beautiful, and then you have to participate yourself. You know, become indoctrinated.

What we find beautiful is at least a half learned behavior. So you have to educate yourself.

I did this when I was in undergrad by joining a livejournal group where women posted pictures of themselves, often naked, and then we just showered each other with compliments. You found something, no matter what. You do that enough, and you really do start seeing beauty in other women. Eventually, even yourself.

And that's the thing, it is physically impossible to see your own beauty unless you see it in a very wide range of people. The pleasantries you give to your friends are not enough. You have to think these things without being prompted. Only if you let bodies be art, all of them, you'll be ok.

The crazy part is, you fall out of practice too. Eventually I grew tired of livejournal in general, and I stopped using the service, including the communities. I was quite fine for some time, but within a few years, I had gone back to my same old paradigm. Which of course, I never really realized how narrow it was until my own body changed by maybe 5-10 pounds. It was enough to put me over the edge back into self deprecation and the same communal dissatisfaction that we're all so familiar with.

I got sick a few weeks ago, lost a bunch of weight due to dehydration, and when I looked at my legs it was like this wash of relief over me. Like I started to recognize them again. Reflecting, I realized the thoughts themselves where what was sick. I mean, I had food poisoning. Vomiting bile, then blood. Couldn't get my appetite for a few days afterwards because I was constantly nauseous ..and I was...sorta happy? This is fucked.

And you look around at your classmates and they've all got a regimen. They're determined to become the doctor who walks the walk and looks like the pinnacle of health. Which is still airbrushed. Pressure washed.

So I've had to look inside myself a bit deeper and realize the range of beauty I see is narrower than it was four years ago. It is. I lost my artist's eye. And this is a shitty way to live. It's time to pull out some nude art. In fact, that's going to be my next couple of pieces after I get through this rough patch in school. Tests + volunteering + conference + papers due + projects + guilt over not studying for the STEP, blah blah. The drill.

Free time! Next week, you'll be mine. And we'll make something pretty.  Er...next next week.

Going back tomorrow?

Man, when gunners gun, they gun for life. You want to hit the gym again, the very next day? and yes, it has to be exactly when the complex opens, not after class. That time is for review and preview. All of it. 

I really could learn a thing or two from his time management skills. Some people are so on top of their shit it's eerie. I on the other hand, am a horrible crammer. There is just much more to do in life. I also waste a lot of time on the internet. Sometimes I wonder if the world was more productive when there was no internet. Then I remember how much time I wasted in grad school photocopying one article that was only in print. So something has to even out. 

6 AM. 6 am. 

And this isn't social hour where you do the same exercises, spot each other, and take turns goading the other person on. Nope. This is get in, get straight to the plan, get out. Hell, if it's going to be that way, I'm doing my own thing too. I've done the follow and let the guys pick the exercises thing before. If they follow the stereotype, (and they usually do, because it's a stereotype for a reason) then there's always way too much arms and chest, legs and butt are largely ignored, and all the exercises work on a single muscle, with a single joint moving. Which single joint exercises are fine...but lets do them after the multijoints like squats and pull ups. Then we'll keep our form fresh for the most complicated stuff. 

Ultimately, it works out better that we go our separate ways. Because until I find a female work out buddy who actually wants to lift heavy iron, I'm never going to find someone who wants to hit the same areas with the same frequency in the way that I do. Men and women have very different goals if they're trying to build their physique. Masculine and feminine physiques have very different muscular emphasis.

So if we're going back again tomorrow, hmm. I usually rest at least a day in between, and know what to hit because by that time, something is itching to go and the other half is sore. But I'm not really feeling that right now because my DOMS usually peaks 48 hours later. So I think I need to actually come up with a plan for tomorrow. 

Let's see. Today I hit the following:

Squats.

Hip Adductors and Abductors. 

Hip flexors and hamstrings. (I have to look up the machine name that I use for this set of four. It's pretty neat, but kinda obscure.)

Pull ups, Chin ups, + Dips. (Assissted. I'm taking off 84 pounds of weight right now.)

Seated Rows

Flys

Back extensions

Then I rolled out my legs on the foam. 

There's not much you can do in just an hour. And I largely focused on my hips (because I have an injury there), my back and shoulders (because I am anticipating an injury from swing + I hunch too much and that is causing me to fold in like a bull dog), and a bit of legs and butt (because I am vain). Basically my major physique goals are to correct my posture and have fun buns. 

So tomorrow would be a good day to hit legs a little more seriously outside of the squat rack. It's probably a good day for kettle bells and lots of balance on the bosu ball. I also want to start getting into plyometrics, but I've got to do it in baby steps. And if that doesn't fill enough time, I'm going to run. Sounds like a plan enough. 

6 AM

The rest of the day could be shot, I could do nothing more productive at all, and I'd be ok with it just because I managed to get to the gym already.

Stirring Ant Hills.

I agreed to go to the gym tomorrow, at 6 AM before classes. Let's be real, today's morning routine consisted of waking up 10 minutes before I had to leave, and putting on a dress because I couldn't be bothered to match tops to bottoms. Couldn't be bothered with pants, period. ...Actually, class started a hour later than usual so today I got things done. THIS IS NOT THE NORM. I still wore the dress though.

So first I agree to run way farther than I ever thought possible, and now I'm going along with completely rewriting my sleeping schedule. Hey, motivation isn't easy to come by, so I might as well ride this out.

Besides, interesting things tend to happen more frequently when I go out of my comfort zone. Probably has something to do with novelty.

It may seem sort of dumb puppy to get my butt up to work out with a guy who's track record is to beeline straight for the cardio and plug in lectures on audio. That aside, I've got actual reasons here.

1. I actually like lifting, but I hate going by myself. Once I'm there, I work hard on my own and I don't need the motivation, but I have to GET there in the first place. Finding a gym partner is difficult even if you're going on their time. I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Also, I don't back out on promises made to live human beings, so I must go. I know how I work, and I'm fine with cornering myself to get the results I want out of my behavior. This is the perfect motivational wave. I'm gonna ride it.

2. There are changes I need to make in my body. I've lost 10 pounds over the course of the last year (mainly through getting sick and then never gaining it back), and I'm pretty certain that a fair amount of that was muscle. And! I've been putting more hours swing dancing and some of the less good leads have a tendency to yank you around a bit. So I'd like to bolster my shoulder with a bit more meat so it doesn't get injured.

3. Despite the fact that I am unlikely to have any sort of extended contact or conversation with my wandering train traveler, there was something he said that I'm taking with me. He was raised Taoist and I asked him what that meant, because I had never had it explained well to me. Truthfully, I still haven't. But he said something about going with what the world is telling you to do. Which I liked. Kinda makes me think of my grandfather's words "Opportunity knocks, but she won't break the door down."

And it's true, since spring break I have been working hard to push myself out of my box. Because the world is telling me right now that I need to build a new social circle, stirring up every ant hill looking for the good opportunities that'll bite.* So I've been signing up for things, helping out classmate's pet projects by painting for them, and learning to dance. Hell, I've even started working on myself, making strides to organize and clean my space and updating my image in steps. The car is next. I want to set my life up to be open to letting people in.

The world is not telling me to wake up at 6 AM and go to the gym. The world's telling me to get the hell out of the house. The world's telling me to engage and explore. The world's telling me that any time I've ever made personal growth, I've been damn uncomfortable. And that is when my game is best. So go.

With that being said, it's past 9:30; I'm going to bed.

------

*Yes, stirring ant hills. This actually describes the way I interact with the world quite accurately, and at least half the reason I like hanging out with this guy. He is a stiff upper lip, Ravenclaw, surgery gunner who happens to have a rare, beautiful smile. And I love irritating him to get at it. And in the usual circumstances I can't, I just love to be irritating.**

**Welcome to ENFP courtship.