By Any Other Nerd

Estimated Reading Time: 21 minutes Imagine trying to write a very simple email to a colleague to explain that you do not have time to do something.  How much time would you spend on it?  2 minutes?  5 minutes? 15 minutes? 45 minutes?  When it took me to write this email to a colleague in early November, I had a stark realization that something bigger was going on...and that thing's name was traumatic reaction.   Photo by SIMON LEE on Unsplash Preamble (or where I explain why I'm writing what I'm writing) For pieces like this, I hem and haw a lot before deciding to write it and share it more largely and permanently with the world. In a world of an attention-driven economy of media that values novelty and sensationalism, I worry that some may think these posts are an attempt to get attention or even more troubling, indirect asks for help. Those are easy places to land, especially if you do not know me (and maybe even if you do know me?). Ultimately, I can as...

Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes Back in mid-September, my COVID ticket finally got punched--2.5 years was a good run.  It was inevitable.  Not because it had to happen but because it had been a long time since my partner, I, my place of employment, my family--nearly everyone--decided to give up on navigating a world where we took care to remember the most vulnerable are left to have to do all the extra labor of caring and protecting.  It's a very common and unfortunate way we exist and something that lots of folks with disabilities of all sorts know all too well. And COVID knocked me on my ass.  I started to really notice symptoms on a Thursday, but in hindsight realized there were symptoms 2-3 days before that I hadn't realized or just assumed were other things. As Thursday turned into Friday, it was evident that I was sick but the first and second tests I took showed negative results. By the end of Friday, I was full chills, aches, brain fog/headaches, and just u...

Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes Ok, this is definitely a departure from recent posts and also, definitely feels like something that I would write about on this blog.  After all, I've previously written blog posts about the effects of life on the body including  chasing food tastes , losing my steps per day record , a year of using standing desks , and the gross things that happen to your body in long-distance running . It's a post I've had in my head for at least a year and was reminded recently when I read an article about cold showers. Recently, I turned on our outdoor shower (it was the feature that came with the house that I did not realize I would value so much) and felt that it was time to write this piece.   So for just over two years, I've been taking cold showers and it's come to the point that I rarely take a heated shower.  Rather, the cold shower has not only become my preferred shower method but one that feels most comforting and refreshing....

Move: How the New Science of Body Movement Can Set Your Mind Free by Caroline Williams My rating: 3 of 5 stars There's lots of anecdotal and scientific evidence that elevates the connection between mind and body--essentially raising the question of whether they are separate (as Global North cultures like the US often insist through discourse and policy).  Williams grabs hold of this consideration and reframes our thinking, offering that our brains evolved in relation to humankind's ability to move and be active in particular ways (on our feet, interval activity throughout the day, moving in natural ways that reflect the life of a hunter-gathering life, etc). The book then proceeds through different types of movement (aerobic exercise, muscle building, breathing, rest, stretching, etc) to explore what the current scientific studies have to say about how these impact and relate to our state of mind (from mental health to alertness to cre...

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk My rating: 4 of 5 stars It's cliche to say everyone should read "this" book. I know--and yet, I can't help think that van der Kolk's work needs to be in front of all of us.  So maybe not this book, but the TED Talk of this book or something.  His work is both a partial history of his work as a psychiatrist over the last 50 years exploring and extending our understanding of what trauma is, how it manifests in people and the current scientific understanding of the different ways to treat trauma.  On all of these levels, van der Kolk's writing is informative, accessible, and insightful for readers. He provides a range of examples from the culture's more traditional examples of trauma to lesser-known and understood forms. His most powerful contribution is embedded in the title--how the body keeps score of trauma.  That is, ...

Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works by Evelyn Tribole My rating: 4 of 5 stars First and foremost, this is not a "diet" book and it's not a book to resolve issues about your unhappiness with your weight, per se. That's made evident repeatedly throughout the book that their goal is not to help you lose weight. That, I think is one of the book's most powerful and important messages and hope that others will understand what they are trying to do.  The entire framework of the book settles on the belief (and mounting evidence) that part of the problem with body image, eating disorders, and feeling unhealthy in our bodies stems in part from a loss of listening to our bodies express what they need and acting on it.  The authors draw out a wide range of ways this happens, emphasizing the issues through specific anecdotes and research. The book contains a lot and definitely recommend taking it in (get ready for a b...

Estimated Reading Time: 5.5 minutes Welcome to  stranger days--my blog series  exploring daily life, challenges in times of the COVID-19 pandemic, and just sharing insights or thoughts about how to make it through these days.   I've heard it said that much about addiction is about chasing the elation of the first experience.  Trying to recreate the dopamine payout but never quite getting there. This description also reminds me of how memory works. We are often not remembering the event itself but recalling the last recollection of it; a reflection of a reflection that may be endowed with many flaws.  In both cases, it's a sense of trying to get to something one simply cannot get to.   I've been thinking about that for the past week as it relates to my experience with eating.  I've always had a struggle with it and being homebound for four weeks with an abundant fridge, ample stress, and a range of emotion (the last two being big trigg...

So my usual readers will know that I certainly do some level of paying attention to numbers.  I keep track of books read , goals achieved , and other types of accomplishments --many of which are the accumulation of daily-efforts or things that I have managed to turn into habits, thereby increasing my chance to actually complete the goals that I have.  In 2017, I set and achieved a goal of 15,000 steps a day for every day for the whole year .  I achieved this goal despite running into occasional sickness and injury.  As I turned to 2018, I continued with 10,000 steps minimum a day, which was much easier since that's often covered just by my workouts (running or the elliptical).   Here it is at the last day of the streak. I had continued on this progression throughout 2018 until June, when after 536 days (a numerical anagram of 365 days, interesting enough), I had to reset the clock.  I had made it a year and a half streak and it all had to stop....

Those active readers will remember that I set out with some goals in mind for 2017 .  They were reasonably ambitious and in the end, I have mixed results.  Some I hit, others I missed entirely, and yet others are somewhere in the middle.  I'm ok with this and don't see it as a failure.  I had a lot happen in the past year including both my partner and I starting new jobs, moving, and completing significant steps in my doctoral program.  So the fact that I upheld many of these goals at all made me quite happy. Complete a Triathlon  This did not happen.  I had trouble with getting into a training routine and then also scheduling it.  It was not the smartest idea to try for this during a year in which so much happened. 15000 a day Nailed it!  Every day, I completed more than 15,000 steps a day.  Overall, this was a challenging goal for me and it augmented a lot of what I did in terms of working out.  I forwent a lot of bicycling ...