Thursday, January 26, 2023

 Thursday, January 26, 2023

  Today was my third day wearing a movement monitor just above my right hip for WHI research. I also had to record when I got up and went to bed daily. I almost forgot to note the times when I got up this morning.

  The scale had been going in the wrong direction. I was 144 pounds this morning,  up from 138 pounds a few months ago. I'm unsure if it's the chocolate intake finally catching up with me or the noodle soup I recently started having each morning. It's probably the noodle soup because the weight gain correlates with my eating it. Cutting back on chocolate wouldn't hurt, either.

     Meghna Chakrabarti of NPR's On Point had a guest talk about the evolutionary purpose of anxiety. We need it to prepare for an uncertain future. Statistically, anxious people perform better. I always found that true. I worked to find a way to function without anxiety. Anxiety is natural. It helps us take action in potentially risky situations. It tells us we have to take action. I realized that I surrender to anxiety in many ways by avoiding scary actions instead of taking them. I've got to post my ad for tutoring on Craigslist. That's how I got several clients in the past. Once I have finished my dental work and no longer have significant gaps in my teeth, I will work on the videos with teaching hacks for reading. I need to get more activity in my life in general. Too much leisure is not a good thing.

   I got a delivery from Oofos for the two remaining pairs they had in stock. I started ordering four pairs. They were the wrong size. I called to arrange an exchange. They said they were out of one of the colors. I requested a refund for the one pair and expected to receive the three remaining colors in my size. The other day, I called to find out what happened to the three I was expecting. I was told they no longer had a shoe in one of the other colors. "Okay. Give me a refund for those shoes and send on the two remaining ones from my original order". Today, I received two packages from Oofos.  One contained the two shoes I was expecting. The other had a pair I didn't order that wasn't my size.

  Thoughts on avoidance as a coping strategy. Many years ago, a friend asked why I was so angry at my mother. She was difficult. The friend's parents made mine look like saints. Her parents were absolute nightmares. I asked her if she was angry at them. She said no. I asked, "If you think about what they did to you, you're not angry?" She said, "Oh, if I think about it, I'm furious." We had very different ideas of how the human mind works.

   My friend assumed that if something was not in her conscious mind, it was not a problem. I believe all that is hidden in the unconscious mind has an impact. Our behavior is controlled by that, whether or not we're aware of it. I learned the concept of the human mind at my father's knee. Unfortunately, he didn't give me the tools to deal with that knowledge. I learned those through Vipassana meditation.

   S.N. Goenka, the founder of the form of Vipassana I fortuitously became involved with, taught that awareness and equanimity were like two wings of a bird. They had to be equal. My awareness was much greater than my equanimity. Some people, like my friend, emphasize equanimity over awareness but confuse denial and avoidance with true equanimity. And then there are the poor souls who lack both equanimity and awareness.