A Good Way To Let Off Steam

"Let off some steam, Bennett."

-- Arnold Schwarzenegger, Commando

Steaming tea kettle 5-26-14

"Sometimes I need to blow off steam and go dance really hard."

-- Kristen Wiig

Yesterday was one of those strange Bizarro World days where everything I tried to accomplish went to Hell in a hand-cart.

Nothing major happened. Nothing serious. It was more like a day-long accumulation of pesky little stupid shit.

It seemed like no matter what I did, or tried to do, I was stymied, thwarted, interfered with -- all of which left me feeling very tense, angry, volatile, combustible. 

Steamed.

Even my trusty, reliable, sure-fire ways to blow off all that steam backfired, which just made me more steamed.

By the end of the day, all I wanted to do was get blasted, shake my tiny fists at the heavens and scream "FUUUUUUUCK!!!" from the rooftop.

But I didn't.

Because I had an Ace up my sleeve.

After supper I left the dirty dishes for the boys, strapped on my helmet, leather and boots, and went out for a long motorcycle ride.

There was a hazy, misty quality to the atmosphere as I zoomed along the coastline of Lake Erie, watching the sun slowly sink through the clouds towards the water. 

A few miles in, my lungs uncoiled and expanded all the way down and I finally breathed deep, full breaths instead of the shallow anxious ones I'd been breathing all day. 

Anxiety, frustration, tension, disappointment -- all that shit from my shitty stupid day began to fall away, so I just kept riding until it was all out of my system and I'd left it behind like a greasy smear of roadkill on the pavement. 

I kept riding until I felt better.

I kept riding until I felt good.

Listening To My Gut

"You must trust the small voice inside you 

which tells you exactly what to say, what to decide."

-- Ingrid Bergman

Headless Barbie 5-29-14

"Don't try to comprehend with your mind. 

Your minds are very limited.

Use your intuition."

-- Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle In Time

"Call it intuition, a hunch, or a gut feeling --

if we followed it, we just might be happier."

-- Stephanie Sarkis, Ph.D.

I had to make a difficult decision recently.

For me, it was an extremely difficult decision because it involved letting go of something good, something I really wanted to do, a good thing that I truly love.

I knew my gut was telling me, plainly and simply, what I needed to do, but I wasn't ready to listen.

My heart was also giving me multiple mixed up feelings about my options, while my head was shouting out its own tangle of conflicting advice and rationale. People were getting in through my ears and their voices were trying to out-shout those already clamoring inside me and the whole "conversation" was making me sick, literally. 

The more I struggled to supervise the arguments and counter-arguments, to reconcile and sort out all the "what ifs" and "yeah, buts," the worse and worse I felt in my gut. 

My gut was in such turmoil, in fact, that I became seriously, physically ill. I didn't fully understand why at the time, because there were other factors at play as well, but this decision over what I should do about this thing --  it was wrecking me.

And even though my gut was telling me exactly what to do, with all the other bickering going on, I couldn't hear it. More accurately, I didn't want to. Because my gut was telling me one single thing and it was the one thing everybody else was arguing so vehemently against. 

The most difficult thing. 

Long story short, my gut finally got my attention loud and clear by going on an extremely unpleasant and prolonged strike. It refused to budge until I finally broke under the pain, pressure, stress and exhaustion of it all.

My gut won the argument.

Miraculously, everybody else shut right the fuck up.

Turns out my heart and my head didn't really care as much as they were pretending to. They just like the sound of their own voices.

When the difficult decision was done, over, I was so relieved, because the difficult thing turned out to be the exactly perfectly right thing. I haven't questioned its rightness for even a minute since.

I'm pretty sure my heart and my head knew they were wrong all along. In fact, I'm sure they knew they were wrong when they said yes to this "thing" months ago, this thing they ultimately had to give back because my gut said so. 

I'm also certain that my gut was already speaking months ago, but back then it was in a whisper and I wasn't willing to trust it until it shouted louder than all the rest and knocked me over like a wrecking ball.

My head tries to convince me with its intelligent, articulate, thought-out arguments.

My heart tries to break me with its passionate, emotional pleas. 

But my gut? My gut simply knows what's good for me and what isn't.

Plain and simple.

If only I'd learn to listen.

Acupuncture

"Pins and needles, needles and pins.

A happy man is a man that grins."

-- Ralph Kramden, The Honeymooners

Hard boiled egg with pins 1-22-14

"There must be something to acupuncture --

you never see any sick porcupines."

-- Bob Goddard

Don't give me that "I don't like needles" crap.

Acupuncture is good for you.

It is my firm, non-professional-personal-experience-based opinion that there's pretty much nothing that acupuncture can't help. I'm not saying it can "fix" everything, but it can definitely make it easier to handle just about anything life throws at you. 

I'm not saying acupuncture can make your mother in law go away, but it can ease the migraine and fury she causes you. And a whole bunch of other stuff.

Any "stress," whether it's physical, emotional, psychological, or a combo of all three, is a good target for the acupuncturist's needles. I'm not going to try and list all of acupuncture's amazing benefits here, because you can just Google it and find everything you need to know. For starters, and a list of stuff acupuncture can help treat, click here: stuff acupuncture can help treat. For more information and to find a certified acupuncturist near you, click here: National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine

I'm living proof that this shit works. 

Suffice it to say, there have been days when I've lurched like Quasimodo into my acupuncturist's treatment room on the brink of physical disaster and emotional collapse, and strolled back out smiling blithely and wondering what the fuck everybody was so stressed about.

Like yesterday. My shoulder muscles were all fucked up because I've been working out too hard. Today, they're as supple as taffy.

And the needles are not scary. They're super, super tiny. Like, hair thin. And if you close your eyes and just listen to the music, you won't even see them. And they don't hurt. They actually feel amazingly good. If there is any pain, it only lasts for a second, and then all that tension and pent up stress and discomfort releases blissfully. 

So stop being such a big candy-ass baby. Stop whining about your problems and try it already.

Aaah-cupuncture.

Say "chi."