the year that was
Jan. 1st, 2023 09:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettIt's two years, more or less to the hour, since I had my first migraine in adulthood; since the end of May this year I've had somewhere less than two weeks free of migraine symptoms.
It was, nonetheless, a good year for me.
Looking at my notes from the end of 2021, I was pleased and surprised that I was regularly making it all the way through a Pilates sequence, once a week, most weeks. In May I bought more Pilates books; by June I was managing two sessions a week fairly reliably, one from my previous books and one the "introductory"/"essentials" programme from my new books; today I've done my third session this week, and I'm making progress toward the standard Beginners' programme. I somehow had no idea I'd only been doing the more advanced stuff for only six months -- but I am delighted to report that I keep finding more joy in it, and more curiosity about what my body can do, and to my bewilderment I am hurting less.
This year I also managed to cycle up The Hill in my local environs without stopping for a rest half way up. I've been very gradually increasing the amount I walk in my day-to-day life, and my body has mostly tolerated it. (I still push too hard and have to take rests, sometimes.)
And some of the migraine preventives I was tried on made me very ill, and none of them prevented migraine, and the fallout from my first appointment at a specialist headache clinic back in April rumbles on, and: I'm still, actually, alright. Despite it.
I have been finding things I can do in spite of my terribly tedious genetic neurological disorder, and I'm adjusting to life with permanent photosensitivity. (Sometimes I forget just how many changes we've made to my home, this year, in the interests of maximising what I can do, and then I spend time in a place where the lights aren't all turned down low and background noise isn't reduced as much as possible and I discover that I am, in fact, still very much in the middle of a migraine attack.)
One thing:sciatrix procured a collection of ridiculous Nordic Ware cookie stamps on my behalf, and I've used them (for the Ottolenghi glazed gingerbread tiles that provoked their acquisition, and for Teebäckerei). My tiny magic resulted in a rice cooker, which has been delighting me. We have added a pile of new recipes to our regular rotation -- an Ottolenghi broad bean kuku; a Food52 cauliflower butter masala; amaretti, and (also using the cyanide) the apple and almond traybake; paella we can make easily with things that are stable in storage, for a pile of vegetables; I acquired a DOLSOT and we made SO MUCH BIBIMBAP. I played with various sourdough breads, including focaccia and pita and naan and a potato and rosmary and nigella loaf, and also with aloo paratha, which I did not make with sourdough. I've been tweaking recipes, too: I finally managed to recreate the Ottolenghi confit tandoori chickpeas to my satisfaction, and similarly finished adjusting my jollof rice recipe; salt and pepper tofu also much improved. And: I got my grandmother's recipe for Faschingskrapfen, and they were easily and by miles the best I've ever made.
I've played the horn (or at least buzzed my lips) every day. I've done Duolingo (almost) every day. I've surprised myself with how much fun I've had refining processes at Admin: The LRP, and I can't quite believe I've only been doing that for less than a year. In addition to the LRP field, I visited both Cornwall and Cambridge several times; the various Zoological Society of London zoos likewise; we watched some uncooperative badgers at Wakehurst; we visited a remarkable amount of greenery.
I read fewer books that I'd have liked -- 34, some of which were rereads -- but I also managed to scrape together the brain to read several things I'd been wanting to for a range of values of "a long time" (I think the winner is the book on mindfulness-based cognitive therapy that I first started reading circa 2012; I enjoyed Tamsyn Muir's The Locked Tomb immensely.) I have derived a lot of joy from my ongoing Fancy Stationery special interest. I have, I think, played more games than usual; all of them, I think, were a shared activity with A.
Who has now been part of my life for over eight years. I've managed to tend, haphazardly, to some other relationships, as well: I am incredibly grateful to have written to and visited and reconnected with my piano teacher, who has been enormously important to me. I have finally replied -- last night -- to a number of e-mails that got mired in the thesis swamp.
The thing that has been rattling persistently around my head, the last few days, is Derek Walcott's Love After Love:
It was, nonetheless, a good year for me.
Looking at my notes from the end of 2021, I was pleased and surprised that I was regularly making it all the way through a Pilates sequence, once a week, most weeks. In May I bought more Pilates books; by June I was managing two sessions a week fairly reliably, one from my previous books and one the "introductory"/"essentials" programme from my new books; today I've done my third session this week, and I'm making progress toward the standard Beginners' programme. I somehow had no idea I'd only been doing the more advanced stuff for only six months -- but I am delighted to report that I keep finding more joy in it, and more curiosity about what my body can do, and to my bewilderment I am hurting less.
This year I also managed to cycle up The Hill in my local environs without stopping for a rest half way up. I've been very gradually increasing the amount I walk in my day-to-day life, and my body has mostly tolerated it. (I still push too hard and have to take rests, sometimes.)
And some of the migraine preventives I was tried on made me very ill, and none of them prevented migraine, and the fallout from my first appointment at a specialist headache clinic back in April rumbles on, and: I'm still, actually, alright. Despite it.
I have been finding things I can do in spite of my terribly tedious genetic neurological disorder, and I'm adjusting to life with permanent photosensitivity. (Sometimes I forget just how many changes we've made to my home, this year, in the interests of maximising what I can do, and then I spend time in a place where the lights aren't all turned down low and background noise isn't reduced as much as possible and I discover that I am, in fact, still very much in the middle of a migraine attack.)
One thing:
sciatrix procured a collection of ridiculous Nordic Ware cookie stamps on my behalf, and I've used them (for the Ottolenghi glazed gingerbread tiles that provoked their acquisition, and for Teebäckerei). My tiny magic resulted in a rice cooker, which has been delighting me. We have added a pile of new recipes to our regular rotation -- an Ottolenghi broad bean kuku; a Food52 cauliflower butter masala; amaretti, and (also using the cyanide) the apple and almond traybake; paella we can make easily with things that are stable in storage, for a pile of vegetables; I acquired a DOLSOT and we made SO MUCH BIBIMBAP. I played with various sourdough breads, including focaccia and pita and naan and a potato and rosmary and nigella loaf, and also with aloo paratha, which I did not make with sourdough. I've been tweaking recipes, too: I finally managed to recreate the Ottolenghi confit tandoori chickpeas to my satisfaction, and similarly finished adjusting my jollof rice recipe; salt and pepper tofu also much improved. And: I got my grandmother's recipe for Faschingskrapfen, and they were easily and by miles the best I've ever made.I've played the horn (or at least buzzed my lips) every day. I've done Duolingo (almost) every day. I've surprised myself with how much fun I've had refining processes at Admin: The LRP, and I can't quite believe I've only been doing that for less than a year. In addition to the LRP field, I visited both Cornwall and Cambridge several times; the various Zoological Society of London zoos likewise; we watched some uncooperative badgers at Wakehurst; we visited a remarkable amount of greenery.
I read fewer books that I'd have liked -- 34, some of which were rereads -- but I also managed to scrape together the brain to read several things I'd been wanting to for a range of values of "a long time" (I think the winner is the book on mindfulness-based cognitive therapy that I first started reading circa 2012; I enjoyed Tamsyn Muir's The Locked Tomb immensely.) I have derived a lot of joy from my ongoing Fancy Stationery special interest. I have, I think, played more games than usual; all of them, I think, were a shared activity with A.
Who has now been part of my life for over eight years. I've managed to tend, haphazardly, to some other relationships, as well: I am incredibly grateful to have written to and visited and reconnected with my piano teacher, who has been enormously important to me. I have finally replied -- last night -- to a number of e-mails that got mired in the thesis swamp.
The thing that has been rattling persistently around my head, the last few days, is Derek Walcott's Love After Love:
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-01-01 10:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2023-01-01 11:01 pm (UTC)<3
(no subject)
Date: 2023-01-02 03:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-01-01 11:21 pm (UTC)Hoping 2023 is kind to you
(no subject)
Date: 2023-01-02 03:10 pm (UTC)And the same for you. <3
(no subject)
Date: 2023-01-02 12:22 am (UTC)Well done! I have done similar (fiddle instead of horn).
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Date: 2023-01-02 04:49 pm (UTC)A grab-bag of answers...
Date: 2023-01-02 08:02 am (UTC)Yay!
...to my bewilderment I am hurting less.
...For careful exercise that builds your strength and stamina instead of eroding it!
Can you DM me (or link to) further thoughts on this?
I think the winner is the book on mindfulness-based cognitive therapy that I first started reading circa 2012
Both CBT and mindfulness (or perhaps, mindfulness taught in a mindless way by unthinking Neurotypicals with no theory of mind) have a reputation for being damaging and appallingly exclusionary for people with particular peaks and absorption bands on their personal 'spectrum'. So: what are you finding in this exceptional book?
And... Poetry:
Sit. Feast on your life.
Thank you Alex, that made my morning!
So far, anyway. There's a line in that poem which is cruelly untrue for some of us: but 'Sit. Feast on your life.' is beautiful.
Re: A grab-bag of answers...
Date: 2023-01-02 08:14 pm (UTC)Okay, so, the big up-front disclaimer is that I go in knowing that these systems ar not designed for me, and -- crucially -- having spent long enough poking at the with interest that I can usually say "ah, okay, I can see what this exercise is attempting to do and how it thinks it's doing that; how do I modify it to be safe and useful for me?"
There was definitely stuff I rolled my eyes at in it, but that notwithstanding I did find Mindfulness: Finding Peace in a Frantic World more helpful than not. Looking at my notes (... once I remembered they existed...), it looks like I was mildly irritated by some of the terminology used to distinguish between complex emotional states and physical states. Similarly my notes contain "general strongly implied link between 'working out why' & 'solving the Problem' -- but these are not inseparable!" -- this was in the same general vicinity as
Like, on the one hand, yes, that all makes sense -- and on the other it's talking sideways past a significant part of my own experience, which is that I do much worse in situations I'm scared about when I don't have an "adequately" robust working model, that covers both why what's happening is happening and has actual predictive power -- this in particular is one of the bits I think is focussed on an audience that is... not me, in terms of neurodiversity & willingness to frame my thought processes in terms of models.
I also had mild hysterics over the chapter where one of your tasks for the week is to pick a time to go to a cinema, and then decide what you're going to see based solely on What's Starting Soon once you're there -- with the idea that you can go and see something you wouldn't ordinarily and practice feeling curiosity etc about it. So, er, I absolutely adjusted that one for the reality in which we're currently living (... and the bit where I have audiovisual processing issues, and also strident political disagreement with vast swathes of popular cinema...)
I didn't get on great with either the "Befriending" meditation or the "Exploring Difficulty" meditations, but they were both useful to try. But I really did find it objectionably useful overall!
but 'Sit. Feast on your life.' is beautiful.
It was one of my GCSE set texts and I am very glad of it, even though my brain is very insistent that it prefers the scansion with "upon" than "on". I am delighted that you see what I get out of it. <3
Threw a Scanner Dorkily
Date: 2023-01-04 07:32 am (UTC)Also... Geekiness disclosure: any competent Limericist is of necessity a stickler for scansion, and I use 'upon' a lot.
You'll see it in my prose, too, because I am a trained speaker who writes for the spoken word; and the even plain verse, which by definition has no scansion, still has a need for the natural rhythms of speech.
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Date: 2023-01-03 01:20 pm (UTC)♥
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Date: 2023-01-04 11:59 pm (UTC)A thing worth noting is that the most unpleasant sounds when I'm enmigrained are also among the sounds I find most unpleasant anyway. This makes a certain amount of sense given the migraine-as-sensory-hypersensitivity theory (related to but distinct from the migraine-produces-sensory-hypersensitivity model); overall, the thing that makes the most positive difference to me is reducing sensory input across the board; I'm better able to tolerate one particularly intrusive input if everything else has been minimised.
I'm sorry this isn't more helpful!
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