2023.08.28—pm Update

The Mindfulness Biz

I thought Dan Harris’ Ten Percent Happier episode was a good pause point amidst the frothiness of the “mindfulness” chatter I’ve been listening to.

I spent the first half of my 2010s researching Doodling/Knitting/Memory/Mindfulness and have not been surprised to see it becoming shorthand for “just calm down,” (which isn’t really the point). Harris’ episode reminded me of a much older episode of The Art of Charm podcast with Tony Stubblebine as the guest talking about “Ruthless Meditation.” That ‘cast was my first introduction to meditation’s goal not being to “bliss out” and “empty your head” but more the practice (b/c there will be no perfection) of training yourself to go to that calm space whenever needed—especially in the middle of situations that are not calm. I believe Stubblebine used the image of “Reps” as one does at the gym. Every time your mind wanders, you gently pull it back to breathing—one rep. Your goal is not to get to a point where you only have to do “one rep” and call it a good meditation session. The more reps you *have to* do, the better your brain is being trained so it will be ready to serve you when you need it.

Why so much focus on this, Jill Bolte Taylor, Ten Percent Happier? Because of Pacing (I told you I’d get here). Apparently Pacing is what ME/CFS patients and now Long-Haul patients are told to do.

We know what that means under normal circumstances—if you’re running a marathon, you need to pace yourself so you don’t use up all your juice in the first three miles. Makes perfect sense. In order to get to the point where you can run that marathon, you pace your training, too. You add a little more distance every day or so, thus you gradually work your way up to the full 26.2 miles. That’s the part that’s so perfidious for us. lf we add too much of “a little more every day” we don’t just get sore muscles, we risk setting ourselves back to the starting line. It’s not a pretty or comfortable line.

Okay, then surely that means that our “little more” needs to be a REALLY little more, right?

Well…a little more of what? So far it’s been thinking that seems to wipe me out fastest (terrifying, especially because prepping for podcast episodes used to take 1–2 hours and now take 4–6). And sometimes it’s physical exertion that does me in. Plus, there’s no way to know which will kick in when.

Saturday morning I took two hours to go shopping for some necessities. That’s 25 minutes driving each way (I went early, so no traffic at all), and the rest of the time I spent walking slowly, leaning on the cart, with my purse in the cart rather than on me. I was okay, I thought, this should be okay.

But no.

I wasn’t exhausted this time. Instead I set my stomach back to close to square one and needed to stop eating for awhile (which is how I lost nearly 40lbs between April and August—not healthy).

Yesterday we went to see Oppenheimer—how exhausting could it be to simply sit in a theater for three hours? I didn’t drive there or back, we walked a few hundred yards to a Barnes and Noble after the film and I rested there…but within 30 minutes I felt it start up—headache, stomach ache, exhaustion. I slept in the car on the way home, hoping that would help. It didn’t. Not really.

I barely slept last night, so I expected to be a wreck today. I rallied for a couple of hours (enough to work on the Etsy store for a very little bit) but now I’m back on the bed, propped up and feeling like crap.

So which was it that did me in? Walking to Barnes and Noble—indoors and air conditioned? Going to see a movie at all? Would I be in better shape if I’d seen a lighter film? (Even Barbie has some emotional hard-hits in it, but would it have been better? Would the pink have helped heal me?)

The frustrating answer: maybe? Then again, maybe not?

There is no Users Manual for Long-Covid, which is not a surprise—we only have three years (or less) of data to go on, after all. But nothing for ME/CFS either? That is galling (as I mentioned in my Note on Friday) but not surprising. We don’t do well with caring for people in the US, less well with people in pain, and far less well with people in invisible pain.

So, Ten Percent Happier? I don’t know if I’ll get to ten percent in the near future, but I’m trying to let my Fog-outs be a chance to let my “Character 1”¹ shut up for a bit and even get “Character 2” to go to the Time Out chair to think about its behavior. “Character 3” can’t go bungee jumping, so this leaves me with my “Character 4.”

In the middle of feeling like crap, not being able to think straight or type particularly well right now, I find that I am, indeed, grateful.

Truly.

I’m grateful my kids are home for a bit. I’m grateful I married Andrew. I’m grateful that as horrible and scary as COVID was (is?) it’s also the reason I see my far-flung family every weekend. I’m grateful that I don’t live in a food desert so that when I can eat, I can at least find something healthy to eat. I’m grateful for CraftLit and all of the wonderful people it’s brought into my life. I’m grateful for my Mom Squad here in Eastern PA—the most supportive group of women I’ve ever had the good luck to live near.

I know there’s more, but that will have to do for now. Tomorrow is recording day. Wednesday I’ll try to post about NIH Long-Covid trials.

—Anon

1. Character’s 1–4 are from Jill Bolte Taylor’s book Whole Brain Living. (Link goes to an interview with her discussing the Characters.) Mine are named Wilde, Eeyore, Tigger, and Whatsit.