There’s a meme going around that I’m going to grab. I don’t know what it’s called, but I think of it as the ABCs of Life. It’s just writing prompts, really, and ghoddess knows I could use some of that. So every once in a while I’ll write a post using the alphabet.
A=Awareness
It figures that the first letter would trip me up. Boy, do I ever need writing prompts these days! I went with “awareness” because it’s the first word I saw that made me actually think of something. Perhaps I should warn you that I had a sleepless night. Plus, today is a fasting day. Given that I usually use food to make up for lack of sleep, I’m in a lot of trouble today. It’s probably not surprising that I wasn’t inspired by a list of words.
So what’s with awareness? It’s a state of being, one that I aim for. Awareness of the world around me. Awareness of my place in the world. Awareness of my breath, my body, the path I walk. Awareness of people, and the joy or sadness they experience. When I am in the state of Awareness, I feel anchored to the planet. I feel useful. It’s something I have to work on because I can go around quite oblivious to everything around me. This is even more true when I’ve no sleep. I cannot say that I am Aware today. It’s all I can do to keep my eyes open.
B=BayCon
I went most of my life without ever knowing about science fiction conventions. In the last five or six years, we’ve been attending Baycon in Santa Clara. It’s become an important part of our lives. Every year, we register for the next year’s con before we go home. We are still terrible about getting to know people – we are both introverts and this gets worse when we’re placed in a crowd of people. We tend to stick with each other because it’s easier than figuring out who we can talk to. I really want to make some good friends, people that I can look forward to seeing every year. Perhaps some of that awareness will help.
This year, I’m doing something different. A group of South Bay writers very kindly let me crash their party to rent a table in the dealer’s room. We’re going to sell our books. I’m really looking forward to this – not least because I’ll get to meet some people! I’ve met one of them in previous years, but I don’t think I’ve chatted with the others. Oh please, let them like me…
C=Calories
It has to. I’m fasting, so of course, I’m thinking of food. It’s actually not that bad. We’ve started on a 5/7 eating schedule, where we fast two days out of seven. Tuesday and Thursday are the elected days. We eat breakfast, then nothing else until breakfast the next day. I do get hungry, but it seems to come and go – I’ll feel hungry for a few minutes, then get busy with something and the feeling goes away. Rick says he experiences the same thing. But we’ve also noticed that we don’t get as much done on these days. We feel more tired and less able to concentrate. Yet I’m able to go to water aerobics on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, and I’ve been teaching a childbirth class on Thursday nights. I’m always energetic during that and never even think about being hungry. Which is amazing, considering that when the class starts, it’s been almost 12 hours since I’ve eaten.
The pounds are not melting away, but I did get below a plateau, as I mentioned in a previous post. I think I’m still losing, but it’s very slow. Maybe I need to fast three days a week. That would be hard to do, because Rick does NOT need to fast that often. He would be much too thin if he tried that. Yet it’s hard for me to not eat anything when I’m fixing him a meal.
It’s something we’ll be working on.
So that’s all the alphabet I’m tackling today. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll see the word for D will be.
Marlene Dotterer 