A little something new...

The Retired Bridgeburner is now two years old! Excuse me while I have a bizarrely proud parent moment.

Last year my "something different" was the 30 Day Chronic Illness Challenge. Whilst I enjoyed doing that, it has isuses with repetition and towards the end it became difficult to answer similar questions differently enough to make it worth posting. One of the key problems was in some cases I'd already covered the answer in an earlier post - there are only so many questions you can ask about the experience of chronic illness after all. At some point you enter the murky boggy waters of "Where have we heard this before?"

So, I'm doing something quite different for this birthday. I'm going to answer more typical life questions and see if they reveal any links into the more usual realms of this blog. I'm going to start it off with this post myself with a question fresh in my mind from a recent discussion with a friend, but I'm also quite openly asking for questions from you readers. I'm really looking forward to your suggestions!

So, the first one.

Given complete freedom, name a person you would like to meet and why. 

I doubt this will surprise many of you, particularly if you've stuck around with TRB for a while. Also, I'm cheating. There are two. 

J. K. Rowling

(I really recommend this Oprah interview to other fans - they're actually both very interesting women and it's a nice thing to watch.)

On one level, I'd like to meet her because I think she'd be an interesting person to talk to, and I love stimulating conversation. I've watched the few TV programmes she's done (Who Do You Think You Are, A Year in the Life etc) and my impression from this is of an interesting and grounded woman with a great outlook on life. Who wouldn't want to meet someone like that?

On another though, it's the same reasoning as I have for the second person. I'm a book person, and books are my first great love. However, as for I suspect all people there are certain books which do important things for you, whether it be to teach you something profound about yourself or because they make you feel at home. The Harry Potter books were one of my examples. 

There is a documentary on the special edition of Deathly Hallows Part 2 called "The Women of Harry Potter", in which Rowling discusses the the various female characters and the reasoning behind their creation and some of their actions. The final third or so is about Hermione, and Rowling reveals Hermione came from a very personal place as she is an exaggeration of her at a similar age, She talks about the sort of little girl she was at that age and the parallels with the character, and the first time I watched it I burst into tears and wept rather quietly for the rest of the discussion. The only way I can describe it is as if she had reached through the television and grabbed me around the heart. I can honestly say she could have been talking about me. 

The Hermione Granger comparison is something I smile and laugh at rather fondly now (yes, I can still do a rather good impression of "Just because you have the emotional range of a teaspoon!" and the like), but at the time it was something I held rather closely. For a chronically bullied young teenager, I cannot express the power of the existence of a pop culture figure who is very similar to you. The Philosopher's Stone film was released in my first year of secondary school, which made up what cannot honestly be called the happiest five years of my life. I'm not suggesting anybody thought Hermione was "cool", but her existence meant I wasn't alone. It made a love of learning, a high level of ability and a strong sense of what was right over what was "cool" that little bit less abnormal, and such small victories are very, very important at that age. They kept me just shy of the brink of despair.

Discovering proof that she was based upon a real person just perfected the sense of what the character and the books gave me. Even as my taste moves on, my love of re-reading the series endures because of that nostlagic attachment. They're also an easy thing to return to when I'm not feeling well because they're undemanding entertainment. It serves as a wonderful pick me up, and makes me feel good. What more can you ask for? 

Steven Erikson

("And ignorant historians will write of us in the guise of knowledge.... They will compose a Book of the Fallen.")

Yup. Predictable. 

As mentioned, books that do something important for you resonate, and I doubt it's unusual to wish to meet the person responsible for them. 

Aside from the books however, Erikson's other writing is often thought-provoking and challenging, and to me that's a wonderful thing. I adore stimulating discourse. I love anything that makes you pause and consider things, perhaps more so than you may have done before. 

For a recent example, he hosted a rather brilliant discussion on Reddit about authorial intent. The good folks of Malazan Empire shared this, and it kept me riveted and deep in thought for quite some time. There is nothing so wonderful for me as challenging and intelligent discussion. 

Occasionally though, you come across an author and you feel an instant spirit of kinship with the way they look at the world. Ms Rowling says in the interview linked above that she thinks you find out what you believe from what you write sometimes. I think the same can be true of reading as well. Throughout the Malazan books I had more than one "light bulb" moment. As I've said before, I first read Malazan when I fell ill and was awaiting my own light bulb moment when a doctor would finally tell me what the heck my body was doing to me. 

Timing is sometimes key, and those books came along at a very formative time in my life rather like the Harry Potter books did. I was older and hopefully wiser, and as such the connection is different and deeper. It's my adult love as opposed to the nostalgic childhood one above. However, they're both examples of an escapism I firmly believe I need for my own mental health. It angers me to sheer fury when escapism of this nature is derided as childish and having no place in an adult world. I don't think it's in my nature to be so wholly cynical, so it's anathema to me that the wish to escape into something reassuring which makes you feel good has no valid place. If there were ever books to prove that fantasy is not for the childish, it would be these. 

On the meeting front, there's a particular death in one of the books which monumentally destroyed me, and I really want to tell him off for that, somehow at the same time as congratulating him on creating such a perfectly crushing moment. Such is the perfect dissonance of those books at times. 

So there you go. I'm not remotely interested in "celebrity" or being famous for being famous. The only known people I would be interested in meeting would be those who've done something interesting. I'm not a person who feels things in a shallow fashion, and emotion runs very deeply for me. In a way I suspect that's part of why I have such health problems relating to stress, why it never fails to cause flare ups. 

Doing the things that make you feel good, whatever they may be, really are one of the keys to overall health and well being. Partially it's why I picked these two people - it'd be nice to say thank you in person, wouldn't it?

Who would you meet given the chance? 

Wishing you all many spoons xxx

"Don't read this or you'll go blind"

(For any Erikson fans who haven't tried these yet, I recommend you do. They're hilarious.)

 

The title above is the “warning to lifestyle fascists everywhere” which opens Steven Erikson ‘s novella The Healthy Dead, one of the Tales of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach. So, if you don’t like what you’re about to read and this results in loss of vision (whether temporary or permanent), I accept no responsibility whatsoever. I told you not to read it.

 

The Healthy Dead parodies modern society’s obsession with health and fitness and “what is good for you” with gleeful aplomb, hence I’m echoing the warning to start this post. There’s a reason for this.

 

I’m sick of being bombarded by what is (in someone else’s approximation) “good for me”. Aren’t you?

 

This week is my first week back at work post-surgery, and I’m virtually singing from the treetops in rapture. The novelty of being at home recovering had more than worn off.

 

Anyway, I set myself up for something of a fall in picking up the magazine left on the seat next to me on the train home one evening. I think it was Glamour, but in all honesty I can’t remember. You may not believe me, but faced with a choice between the denizens of the 17:52 to York or burying your head in any reading material to hand so they don’t talk to you, you’d read Glamour too.

 

One thing that should probably always be borne in mind with magazines like this is that whatever you’re doing is not enough. However fit you are, there’s always an extra spinning class you could take (I still don’t know what spinning is), and however happy you are there’s always another yoga session to be completed. I think I mentioned buying a yoga DVD some time ago. It’s still at the bottom of one of the moving boxes, probably breeding weird yoga-doing dust bunnies by now. In short, you should always bear in mind that YOU ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

 

So, don’t read those sorts of things and that solves the problem. Right? Right...?

 

Sadly not, because in my experience you never have to go far to find someone who has taken this ideal to heart and now thinks it’s their life’s mission to fix everyone else. By fix, I mean make sure they do things their way. Deviation is not tolerated and individual thought is most certainly not required.

 

On a basic level, we all know eating well and exercising are good things. I’m not here to argue with that. However, I am endlessly irritated by the idea that only one person’s preferred form of exercise is valid, or that their lifestyle is eminently superior. I can’t quite decide whether I think these one-size-fits-all people are just excessively narrow-minded or in actual fact not that bright – because you don’t have to apply many brain cells at all to realise the idea is utterly ludicrous.

 

For a personal example, the next person who comments to me about my lifestyle in relation to chronic illness is going to regret it instantaneously. Hell hath no fury like a small lady whose had enough of your nonsense.

 

If I want your opinion, I will ask for it. Otherwise, the likelihood is you don’t know nearly enough to make what you’re about to say remotely informed. So here’s a refreshing new idea for you: just shut up.

 

I know what my body can cope with given that it has Petunia in tow, and I also know that it can cope with far more now, three years on, than it could when I was diagnosed. I’m probably as fit as I’ve ever been right now – despite the fact I’m not exercising every day or attending a gym.

(Yes, but I've developed an unreasonable dislike for turning right, so sod you.)

 

“Never get anywhere with that attitude”, will I? Just watch me.

 

Something that commenters of this ilk seem to wilfully forget is that Fibromyalgia (or indeed any chronic illness) is not a bad habit. It’s not a singular health-impacting issue like for example drinking too much or not eating enough. It’s an illness, and it’s here to stay. Therefore, I can’t stop drinking, eat more, start running or take up any other one-step solutions and expect the problem to be solved.

 

You know, I might even brand that on to the next offending individual’s forehead. This is going to require a very small typeface indeed.  

 

Since I started with the fitness point, I may as well tell you what I get up to on this front. I do Pilates several times a week (I’ve a couple of DVD routines memorised now, which is nice), and I do basic things like squats and sit-ups just about every day. I’m planning to try a jive class and return to horse riding as mentioned previously. I also really need to crack the dancersize DVDs out again, but since we moved to the Upside Down house it’s a case of needing to rearrange the furniture each time I want to do so and that makes me lazy.

 

There, I said it, the diabolical L word. I’m inside right now but I can’t see any fire raining down. Lightning has yet to strike the building in response to my presumption, and the lynch mob have yet to appear to confirm what a terrible person I am.

 

If being lazy is indeed such a terrible thing, then after my three and a bit weeks of recovery from my operation I have definitely become firmly entrenched in the ranks of the hopeless. I did very little, mostly because I had a sewn-up hole in my head which protested if I did anything more. Joffrey was horrible, but the surgical site that was Not-Joffrey-Anymore certainly made up for it in being grumpy about any sort of activity at all. However, I also did very little because I could.

 

For a short time, it was glorious. I soon grew bored of it, but that short period of total “laziness” (otherwise called relaxation and recovery in this case) was very good for me. I wasn’t doing any of the usual things that were “good for me” (including eating properly, but neither would you if you could feel the stitches pull with every bite) but, oddly, it didn’t kill me. Rumours of my resulting demise have been greatly exaggerated.

 

I appreciate it’s the time of year when the lifestyle change idea is firmly set at fever pitch, but what you really should be thinking about is what *you* want to change for *you*. One size does not, despite rumours to the contrary, fit all. If you want to get fit, find an exercise you enjoy which suits you, no matter anybody else’s sneering or know-better attitude. You won’t continue with something unless you enjoy it, so that should be your foremost criteria of selection.

 

If you want to make changes to your lifestyle, be guided by what makes you feel good. If it isn’t yoga, for instance, then I promise you that’s absolutely fine. I realise I keep bashing yoga, but while I’m certainly not against retrieving my DVD from the mutant dust bunnies and giving it a try at some point, it’s probably the “fix-it” suggestion I grow most weary of hearing. 

 

In short, in fitness as with all things in life, do what suits you and makes you happy. Sod everyone else.

 

If the lifestyle fascists don’t like it, stick copies of The Healthy Dead everywhere in eye line. As Mr Erikson was good enough to warn them, they might indeed go blind.  

 

Settling down with more Tales of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, and wishing you all many spoons xxx