Good morning, friends. I wanted to start off by thanking you, as today I crossed over my 1000th pageview on this blog, which prior to the past two months I think only my mom and cousin even knew existed and which I hadn't contributed to in about a year. Your readership, and comments, help me to stay motivated to write and share, and as an outlet I find this both therapeutic, at times surprising, and deliciously brainpower-flexing. As my tagline has always stated, this is a forum to exercise my (mostly) dormant writing ability, which I feel has significantly and sadly deteriorated out of disuse since my college years.
I have always loved writing. When I was about eleven or twelve I attended the summer writing camps at George Mason University, where I had my first creative writing workshop experiences. I was so weird, so inspired, so *artsy* in those days, I could often be found wandering the backyard with an old film camera, drawing sketches of flowers or practicing at the piano, of which I never took one professional lesson. I daydreamed, and wrote stories and poems, and thought that when I grew up I would be a writer and illustrator of children's books.
As I grew older, I started to evolve my plan to include young adult fiction, and maybe not so much illustrating as just writing them. I had one big project, which I worked on for years and even brought back in high school and then for a time in college, which I always thought would be "my first novel". My mom and my best friend have seen the first chapter or two. It was during a creative writing workshop in college that I dug it out of the old computer files, restructured and rewrote and added to parts of the story, and realized that I had close to 50 pages worth of writing, with chapter-by-chapter plans for the entire rest of the novel, and yet... I decided it was complete garbage.
Any young aspiring writer who takes a creative writing workshop in college should be forewarned - classmates make AWFUL critics. NOBODY in a creative writing workshop (except possibly the professor) is a real professional writer or editor, and NOBODY knows what they're doing. Everyone is terrified of sharing their work, their most personal creative endeavor, their soul, and baring it in front of their peers, and everyone fears that their own work is not good enough, that nobody will understand, that they won't like it. And yet, they can be so seemingly cruel and unfeeling about the work of others.
My classmates did not like my story. They didn't understand it; they thought it was outdated, or that they were missing some important aspect of the story. One classmate had the gall to go on and on about a minor point in the story - that the main character happened to have a Walkman CD player - and used it to prove a point that the story was obviously either taking place in the past, or that the kid was poor and therefore couldn't afford an iPod. This made me mad - partly because this detail was based on the fact that I had my own Walkman CD player (YES, they made CD players and not just portable radios!) which I was using at the time and happened to have with me in my backpack, and partly because HOW SPOILED AND NAIVE ARE YOU TO THINK THAT EVERYONE IN THE WORLD HAS AN IPOD IF THEY CAN AFFORD ONE???
Sorry, friends. I guess this still bugs the cr@p out of me. I did, in fact, also have an iPod. I now have an iPhone 4 which has most of my music on it, and I do think portable CD players are a bit outdated. But I don't think the choice of music electronics had anything pertinent to do with my story, and I resented the assumption that just because my character didn't have the latest technology, that my story was somehow old-fashioned or that the character was poor because of it. Upper-middle-class over-privileged college kids who don't have to work to pay their own college tuition can be so narrow-minded sometimes.
I'm going off on a rant and a tangent, and for that I apologize. Let me take a moment to rein it in back to the present and the point. The point was that they didn't understand my story. They thought it was childish without realizing it was intended for a younger audience, and was therefore purposely written that way not out of a lack of writing ability but for the simple reason that college students were not my intended reading audience. They focused on silly details and failed to grasp any of the points which I held so dear, and they ripped my private story, one which I had never shared with anyone, to shreds. My confidence as a writer was completely shot on that day, and has never fully recovered - I have not tried to write any serious work of fiction since then. Ironic, as Creative Writing classes are supposed to spark our creativity.
So now I write mostly from real life. I write news articles for the student paper at work, make pamphlets and fliers and marketing blurbs. I interview students for a departmental newsletter which I create on a bi-weekly basis. But I don't write poetry, I don't write stories. The closest I come to creative writing pursuits is in this little blog, where I pour out the contents of my brain which don't fit into my nine-to-five (actually eight to four-thirty) lifestyle, and hope that somewhere somebody is reading and sharing and understanding me. That somebody will leave a comment or acknowledge that it is difficult to share that which is most personal and unstructured. That they understand, or want to understand, or have a question to ask.
Three posts without a comment and I find myself discouraged but not dissuaded. I will keep writing, keep sharing, keep trying to recapture that sense of wonder I had as a young aspiring writer, and hope that someday that spark of imagination will come back to me. I miss that about me. Life as an actual REAL LIVE ADULT is kind of boring without it. Working, grocery shopping, exercising, paying bills and stressing about them, driving and paying a fortune at the gas pump every week, I'm not old enough to be jaded about this life. I want to play. To wish. To daydream. To TRAVEL. But, alas, traveling is expensive, and until I can figure out a way to have this full-time-with-benefits job that I really enjoy and yet which does not earn me enough for extravagances such as travel or memberships or vacations or fancy groceries, I'll have to settle for virtual play, virtual travel, virtual daydreams.
Come and daydream with me, friends. Because life is too short to spend it being bored, eh?
I mean to write today about how we are waiting on the news from Joey's doctors, to find out whether the Chemo is working or not, to determine the outlook and course of the remaining treatments. To muse on how the waiting and not knowing is the worst part, and how helpless and alone I feel. To tell you all about my training for the upcoming charity 5K race, and how I've surprised myself by channeling all my stress and frustration and helplessness into beating myself bloody against that indoor track (no, not literally - there is no blood, just sore muscles and exhaustion and a few new blisters on my feet). How I've beaten my projected goal time by ten minutes already, and feel like I could probably improve even more in the next several weeks.
But perhaps all that will have to wait for another time, as I've already probably gone beyond my allotment of time to ramble at you for the day. If you're still with me, if you're still reading, if you care or have any thoughts about what I've shared here today, please leave a comment below so I know somebody's still listening.
Thank you for sharing this with me. I love you all, dear friends. Try to do something interesting and creative today, if you're of a mind, for me. Until next time,
~swinginpoet
Thursday, June 20, 2013
Monday, June 17, 2013
Today's the Day
Today could very well be the day that determines everything, yet I find it hard to get too worked up until I know for certain. I don't want to delve into probabilities or statistics, or examine too closely the various options until I know which one is the truth. All I can do is maintain my calm and focus on work until I know for certain, and then move forward with the information at hand.
This morning, Joey went in to the Cancer Center for his second PET scan. This scan will determine the extent to which the chemotherapy has been working - either the tumors will be gone or nearly gone, in which case the prescribed treatment schedule could cure him completely; or the tumors will be somewhat diminished, in which case extra treatments or additional therapies might be needed to achieve that result; or - and this is the one I can't contemplate too closely - the tumors will have made no change (or grown more o_0) in which case.... I don't know what will happen.
I feel like for the most part I have been doing better about this whole thing in the past week or two. I am back on track at work, being productive and getting assignments done again. I have been sleeping... okay. Better than before, I suppose. I have been exercising and working towards that goal of running the 5K in just a few weeks. So far my best has been a 2 mile trek, alternating running and walking each quarter mile, which took me about 28 minutes. At that pace, I could finish the 5K in 43 minutes, which I think is probably pretty decent. I think I might even be able to do better, if I keep up with my training.
I spent my first full week in my apartment alone. Yes, I did visit Joey on two separate evenings, but I spent every night at my apartment alone, cooked for myself, cleaned and organized, watched tv, and generally kept myself fairly busy. It wasn't terrible. Towards the end of the week I started to feel the familiar lonely / bored / I-don't-know-what-to-do-with-myself-and-I-hate-this feeling, whereupon I had a glass of wine and went to bed early wishing I wasn't alone. But I got through it, I didn't weep or rage or do anything especially impulsive or crazy.
It has been six weeks since the diagnosis, six weeks of living on my own, and I still feel like I'm living in Limbo. I wonder if finding out the test results today (or later this week if they take awhile to process) will change that. Once we know, once the plan is sure, will I feel relief? Will a burden of stress be lifted from my shoulders, or will I feel pretty much the same? It's entirely impossible to tell at present.
And so we wait, and we work, and we wonder. Life goes on, one way or the other. But we hope and pray and cross fingers for one option over the other, and silently cry out in frustration at the waiting. But only silently.
Leave some thoughts below, if you would. I'm not feeling particularly eloquent today, but it has been too long since my last post and I don't wish to lose momentum on writing. Thank you for reading.
-Leenie
This morning, Joey went in to the Cancer Center for his second PET scan. This scan will determine the extent to which the chemotherapy has been working - either the tumors will be gone or nearly gone, in which case the prescribed treatment schedule could cure him completely; or the tumors will be somewhat diminished, in which case extra treatments or additional therapies might be needed to achieve that result; or - and this is the one I can't contemplate too closely - the tumors will have made no change (or grown more o_0) in which case.... I don't know what will happen.
I feel like for the most part I have been doing better about this whole thing in the past week or two. I am back on track at work, being productive and getting assignments done again. I have been sleeping... okay. Better than before, I suppose. I have been exercising and working towards that goal of running the 5K in just a few weeks. So far my best has been a 2 mile trek, alternating running and walking each quarter mile, which took me about 28 minutes. At that pace, I could finish the 5K in 43 minutes, which I think is probably pretty decent. I think I might even be able to do better, if I keep up with my training.
I spent my first full week in my apartment alone. Yes, I did visit Joey on two separate evenings, but I spent every night at my apartment alone, cooked for myself, cleaned and organized, watched tv, and generally kept myself fairly busy. It wasn't terrible. Towards the end of the week I started to feel the familiar lonely / bored / I-don't-know-what-to-do-with-myself-and-I-hate-this feeling, whereupon I had a glass of wine and went to bed early wishing I wasn't alone. But I got through it, I didn't weep or rage or do anything especially impulsive or crazy.
It has been six weeks since the diagnosis, six weeks of living on my own, and I still feel like I'm living in Limbo. I wonder if finding out the test results today (or later this week if they take awhile to process) will change that. Once we know, once the plan is sure, will I feel relief? Will a burden of stress be lifted from my shoulders, or will I feel pretty much the same? It's entirely impossible to tell at present.
And so we wait, and we work, and we wonder. Life goes on, one way or the other. But we hope and pray and cross fingers for one option over the other, and silently cry out in frustration at the waiting. But only silently.
Leave some thoughts below, if you would. I'm not feeling particularly eloquent today, but it has been too long since my last post and I don't wish to lose momentum on writing. Thank you for reading.
-Leenie
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Running for Health and Healing
I am not a runner.
I have never considered myself to be very athletic. As a child and through high school, I took dance classes (ballet, tap and jazz) and I even made it to performing a solo as the Sugar Plum Fairy in the Nutcracker my senior year of high school.
I did marching band, which most people don't consider a sport per se, but it did involve being outside (sunburn!) and practicing outside in the heat (passing out from dehydration!) and competing against other bands (trophies!), so it's kind of like a sport.
However, I have always hated to run. P.E. classes, to me, were a unique form of torture. I never managed to get through the mile run without walking about half of it, until one time in 10th grade when I decided to push myself and see if I could run the whole four laps without stopping. I pulled in at 8:05, surprising my teacher (who always thought I was just lazy), and then sat down and almost immediately passed out, landing myself in the school nurse's office.
It was almost a yearly tradition that I passed out at least once during marching band practice, from heat exhaustion or dehydration. Once I got hit in the head with a bass drum during a water break. Only once did this happen in college, after a particularly brutal practice in the heat with not enough water. An ambulance came but I refused to go with them because I was embarrassed. I insisted I was fine and they finally let me go back to my dorm.
After college, my exercise routine consisted of walking from my room to the fridge or tv, from my apartment to my car, from my car to work, and really not much else. And I ate whatever I felt like. I think I spent an entire summer having cheesy eggs and bacon for breakfast nearly every day. After several years of this lifestyle, I finally had a doctor tell me that my cholesterol was dangerously high.
I started small. Eat a salad sometimes. Try to have some veggies in the house. Maybe not have bacon EVERY day of the week. I thought about buying 1% milk instead of my usual 2%. I joined a gym with my mom for a couple of months, and went to zumba classes once a week with her. This was by far the most fun I'd ever had working out, and it was a nice activity to do with my mom (who, admittedly, is in way better shape than I've ever been despite being much older than me). I quit when I moved and couldn't afford a gym membership, but I did miss that.
When I got hired at my current job, they told me that one of the benefits was free access to the gym on campus. I went a couple times, but didn't really know what to do there. I walked on the treadmill. I tried a few of the weight machines. I got frustrated that I wasn't magically dropping pounds left and right from my half-@$$ed attempts at being healthier.
Joey and I had talked about trying to get healthier, and when he joined a gym in the hopes of training for the Tough Mudder event (see his post, "Something is Wrong with Me, Part 1" to hear that story) I was trying to really buckle down on this whole "going to the gym" thing. I started going a few times a week, and decided one day to see if I could still run a mile. I hadn't attempted this since tenth grade, and wondered if I would be able to do it.
My first attempt at running a mile came in at about 12.5 minutes. And I was exhausted at the end of it. Like, feeling sick and wobbly and my legs were cramping up. I had not properly hydrated beforehand, I hadn't thought to stretch or anything, and I was overall just embarrassed by how out of shape I was. But I kept trying it, every few days, and kept turning up the speed bit by bit until I was running the whole thing at a steady speed. After several months, I had my mile time down to 9.5 minutes, where it started to plateau. I couldn't go any faster. I was still getting light-headed at times, and there were days I had to stop early. My heart rate seemed dangerously high, according to the built-in heart rate monitors on the treadmill, but I kept at it with enthusiasm that started to flag. My best ever mile time was 9:07.
Finally, one day at the gym when I couldn't stand the thought of stepping on that treadmill one more time, I noticed that they had some student-led group fitness classes and decided to give their version of zumba a try. It was fun, but not as high-impact and fun as the professionally taught classes at Gold's Gym had been. I went to a few of these, and did my usual run and weight-lifting workouts on the days off.
Joey and I decided one day to make a deal. I had been getting frustrated with my lack of progress at the gym and getting bored with my usual routine. Joey challenged me to see if I could go to the gym *every* workday between that day and the move (March 1st to April 26th). The time limit on the goal made it seem attainable, but I had never spent so much time at the gym. The first few weeks were the worst, but once I started going it became routine and I actually looked forward to it.
I always went right after work, since the gym was on campus and I was highly unlikely to come back to work out (a 20-minute drive) after going home for the day from work. So almost every afternoon, I was at the gym at 4:45-5pm. I started looking at what fitness classes happened to be offered at 5:00 each day, as I was highly bored with running by this time. One day the front desk girl suggested I try out cycling, which was offered on Tuesdays at that time. I assumed I would hate it, as I have never been any good at bike riding, but was bored enough to give it a try and quickly fell in love. By the end of the semester I had gotten to personally know the instructor and several of the regular students - we had a group of about six who came every week, and we started to get to know one another by chatting about our lives during our cycling time. The people in the class, the fun music and the adrenaline made this an activity I looked forward to each week, and was sorry to miss when I had to work late or wasn't feeling well.
Between moving and then Joey's cancer diagnosis, I stopped working out entirely for the past six weeks. I was too emotionally exhausted, too busy with the move, and then I was sick for awhile. Spring semester ended, and with it the fitness classes. I felt a little bad about it, but after all I had mostly completed my goal. I had worked out regularly for two full months, and had even started to lose a little weight and feel a bit stronger. I intended to go back once things settled down a bit.
This was around the time I heard about the 5K charity race coming up in July. It will be held at the Waynesboro Extravaganza, a yearly tradition of crafts, music and fireworks which I have attended with Joey's family almost every year since we became friends. We usually just watch the fireworks from his family's front yard, but it is a fun tradition and I was looking forward to going this year. Well, it turns out they are having a 5K to raise money for the Augusta Cancer Center Bridge Fund, which happens to be the fund which is directly paying for all of Joey's cancer treatments. Next thing you know I was filling out a sign-up form and turning in my registration fee.
I'm going to run a 5K, which comes out to 3.1 miles (I looked it up). I started going to the gym again last Wednesday, and am now formulating a training plan for how to accomplish this. Yesterday, I walked exactly 3.1 miles on the treadmill (just walked), and clocked in at 54 minutes, so that is my baseline from which to improve. I will work up to running at least half of that, and I will be asking my friends and family to donate to the fund on my behalf to help raise money for this wonderful charity, to help Joey and others like him who can't afford their cancer treatments. You can find the event page here: http://www.runthevalley.com/summer-extravaganza/. I will find more information on how to make donations and post that here as well.
Well, that is all for now. I'll let everyone know how the training is going. Who would have thought I would ever be running in a 5K race? But it's for the best cause I can think of, and it not only gives me motivation to get back in the gym and get back to working out, getting in shape and hopefully continuing to bring down my cholesterol numbers, but it also helps me to feel like I am directly helping Joey in a way that not everyone would or could. I am doing something that will help pay for his treatments, and all it takes from me is a few months of hard work and dedication and physical torture (haha) - what else could I possibly hope to do in this situation?
Wish me luck! Leave your comments below and I will post a link if any of you would like to donate to the charity fund :)
P.S. Please check out the new imgur post I've created for Joey, to introduce a wider community to his story and blog: http://imgur.com/gallery/KgHJp. Please take a look, follow the link at the bottom to his blog if you have not done so already, and click the 'like' button on the bottom. If he can reach 300 likes, this post will make it to the front page where everyone on imgur can see it and generate more traffic to his blog, so more people can share his story! You will need to create an account with an email address to be able to 'upvote', but I promise it's a legitimate site and won't be sending you spam or asking you to pay anything. Thank you for helping me to promote this cause and story, dear friends. I love you all for being here with me. <3
I have never considered myself to be very athletic. As a child and through high school, I took dance classes (ballet, tap and jazz) and I even made it to performing a solo as the Sugar Plum Fairy in the Nutcracker my senior year of high school.
I did marching band, which most people don't consider a sport per se, but it did involve being outside (sunburn!) and practicing outside in the heat (passing out from dehydration!) and competing against other bands (trophies!), so it's kind of like a sport.
However, I have always hated to run. P.E. classes, to me, were a unique form of torture. I never managed to get through the mile run without walking about half of it, until one time in 10th grade when I decided to push myself and see if I could run the whole four laps without stopping. I pulled in at 8:05, surprising my teacher (who always thought I was just lazy), and then sat down and almost immediately passed out, landing myself in the school nurse's office.
It was almost a yearly tradition that I passed out at least once during marching band practice, from heat exhaustion or dehydration. Once I got hit in the head with a bass drum during a water break. Only once did this happen in college, after a particularly brutal practice in the heat with not enough water. An ambulance came but I refused to go with them because I was embarrassed. I insisted I was fine and they finally let me go back to my dorm.
After college, my exercise routine consisted of walking from my room to the fridge or tv, from my apartment to my car, from my car to work, and really not much else. And I ate whatever I felt like. I think I spent an entire summer having cheesy eggs and bacon for breakfast nearly every day. After several years of this lifestyle, I finally had a doctor tell me that my cholesterol was dangerously high.
I started small. Eat a salad sometimes. Try to have some veggies in the house. Maybe not have bacon EVERY day of the week. I thought about buying 1% milk instead of my usual 2%. I joined a gym with my mom for a couple of months, and went to zumba classes once a week with her. This was by far the most fun I'd ever had working out, and it was a nice activity to do with my mom (who, admittedly, is in way better shape than I've ever been despite being much older than me). I quit when I moved and couldn't afford a gym membership, but I did miss that.
When I got hired at my current job, they told me that one of the benefits was free access to the gym on campus. I went a couple times, but didn't really know what to do there. I walked on the treadmill. I tried a few of the weight machines. I got frustrated that I wasn't magically dropping pounds left and right from my half-@$$ed attempts at being healthier.
Joey and I had talked about trying to get healthier, and when he joined a gym in the hopes of training for the Tough Mudder event (see his post, "Something is Wrong with Me, Part 1" to hear that story) I was trying to really buckle down on this whole "going to the gym" thing. I started going a few times a week, and decided one day to see if I could still run a mile. I hadn't attempted this since tenth grade, and wondered if I would be able to do it.
What people think they look like when they run:
What I actually look like when I run:
Finally, one day at the gym when I couldn't stand the thought of stepping on that treadmill one more time, I noticed that they had some student-led group fitness classes and decided to give their version of zumba a try. It was fun, but not as high-impact and fun as the professionally taught classes at Gold's Gym had been. I went to a few of these, and did my usual run and weight-lifting workouts on the days off.
Joey and I decided one day to make a deal. I had been getting frustrated with my lack of progress at the gym and getting bored with my usual routine. Joey challenged me to see if I could go to the gym *every* workday between that day and the move (March 1st to April 26th). The time limit on the goal made it seem attainable, but I had never spent so much time at the gym. The first few weeks were the worst, but once I started going it became routine and I actually looked forward to it.
I always went right after work, since the gym was on campus and I was highly unlikely to come back to work out (a 20-minute drive) after going home for the day from work. So almost every afternoon, I was at the gym at 4:45-5pm. I started looking at what fitness classes happened to be offered at 5:00 each day, as I was highly bored with running by this time. One day the front desk girl suggested I try out cycling, which was offered on Tuesdays at that time. I assumed I would hate it, as I have never been any good at bike riding, but was bored enough to give it a try and quickly fell in love. By the end of the semester I had gotten to personally know the instructor and several of the regular students - we had a group of about six who came every week, and we started to get to know one another by chatting about our lives during our cycling time. The people in the class, the fun music and the adrenaline made this an activity I looked forward to each week, and was sorry to miss when I had to work late or wasn't feeling well.
Between moving and then Joey's cancer diagnosis, I stopped working out entirely for the past six weeks. I was too emotionally exhausted, too busy with the move, and then I was sick for awhile. Spring semester ended, and with it the fitness classes. I felt a little bad about it, but after all I had mostly completed my goal. I had worked out regularly for two full months, and had even started to lose a little weight and feel a bit stronger. I intended to go back once things settled down a bit.
This was around the time I heard about the 5K charity race coming up in July. It will be held at the Waynesboro Extravaganza, a yearly tradition of crafts, music and fireworks which I have attended with Joey's family almost every year since we became friends. We usually just watch the fireworks from his family's front yard, but it is a fun tradition and I was looking forward to going this year. Well, it turns out they are having a 5K to raise money for the Augusta Cancer Center Bridge Fund, which happens to be the fund which is directly paying for all of Joey's cancer treatments. Next thing you know I was filling out a sign-up form and turning in my registration fee.
I'm going to run a 5K, which comes out to 3.1 miles (I looked it up). I started going to the gym again last Wednesday, and am now formulating a training plan for how to accomplish this. Yesterday, I walked exactly 3.1 miles on the treadmill (just walked), and clocked in at 54 minutes, so that is my baseline from which to improve. I will work up to running at least half of that, and I will be asking my friends and family to donate to the fund on my behalf to help raise money for this wonderful charity, to help Joey and others like him who can't afford their cancer treatments. You can find the event page here: http://www.runthevalley.com/summer-extravaganza/. I will find more information on how to make donations and post that here as well.
Well, that is all for now. I'll let everyone know how the training is going. Who would have thought I would ever be running in a 5K race? But it's for the best cause I can think of, and it not only gives me motivation to get back in the gym and get back to working out, getting in shape and hopefully continuing to bring down my cholesterol numbers, but it also helps me to feel like I am directly helping Joey in a way that not everyone would or could. I am doing something that will help pay for his treatments, and all it takes from me is a few months of hard work and dedication and physical torture (haha) - what else could I possibly hope to do in this situation?
Wish me luck! Leave your comments below and I will post a link if any of you would like to donate to the charity fund :)
P.S. Please check out the new imgur post I've created for Joey, to introduce a wider community to his story and blog: http://imgur.com/gallery/KgHJp. Please take a look, follow the link at the bottom to his blog if you have not done so already, and click the 'like' button on the bottom. If he can reach 300 likes, this post will make it to the front page where everyone on imgur can see it and generate more traffic to his blog, so more people can share his story! You will need to create an account with an email address to be able to 'upvote', but I promise it's a legitimate site and won't be sending you spam or asking you to pay anything. Thank you for helping me to promote this cause and story, dear friends. I love you all for being here with me. <3
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