goals – Page 48 – The PolyBlog

#50by50ish #36 – A stress test with a side of manscaping

September 26 2018

My 50th birthday was back in June, and I didn’t complete my 50by50 list, although there are a bunch more subitems that are done that I just haven’t blogged about yet. I’m counting this one though as 50ish.

What this post is not about

So let’s cut to the chase. I’m fat. Yes, there I’ve said it so others don’t have to. That’s not an invite to telling me your latest advice or what your Aunt Martha did to lose weight or any number of other things people like to say when people talk or don’t talk about their weight. I’ll be frank, this post isn’t about my weight as I never talk about it. And I do mean never.

For example: in the entire history of my relationship with Andrea, 16.5 years and counting, we have only talked about my weight in relation to some specific health-related issue (like my knees were sore, or a back adjustment), perhaps a dozen times in total. While I am generally open to talking about anything from gross events or experiences all the way up to extreme emotional intimacy, I generally do not discuss two topics with anyone other than my wife — sex life and weight — and both for the same reason. It seems to me to be the most intimate parts of life for anyone to discuss. That is not a normative statement. I don’t care if others talk about their weight, although I think discussing your sex life in front of anyone other than partners or potential partners is in bad taste.

If you lose 10 pounds, I will not compliment you. Not spontaneously. If you raise it as a goal you were trying to accomplish and you succeeded, I will congratulate you. But I feel uncomfortable doing so in any sense beyond the generic of accomplishing a goal. Why not? Because I would not chastise you if the reverse were true i.e. for gaining 10 pounds. I would not say you look terrible, I would not say you must feel a lot less healthy. Yet if you lose it, people feel comfortable saying the inverse. Going back to my previous paragraph, it would be like complimenting someone on which position they say they enjoy during sex — it’s too intimate, and really it’s nobody’s business, in my view.

I know a few people right now who are reading this and thinking, “Oh, you don’t mean me, I only say it because I’m worried about your health.” No, I do mean you. All of you. It is not your business, so why would you think, spontaneously, that it was okay to comment on it? Does that mean I get to comment on things about you that I think are bad? Like how much wine you drink or how snobby you can be or your romantic choices? No? Then, pardon my french, you should probably shut the fuck up unless invited to comment on something like that. And know that I will likely never invite you to advise me on that topic. (* That’s not entirely accurate. I asked my wife about an Epicure plan she did that she was happy with, and a friend at work recently accomplished a big goal so I was asking him how he did it. Somewhere around twice in about 50 years of life. Just saying.) For me, it is a lot like commenting on a woman being pregnant if you don’t know she is.

And, as an aside, or maybe not, just because I’m male doesn’t make me immune to body shaming concerns, and thanks, I can see my weight and how I look any day of the week. I don’t need to be reminded when I’m spending time with friends. I’m extremely body conscious in certain situations. Like swimming. I rarely have enough internal “don’t give a shit” energy to force myself to swim when other people are around that I know. At a beach in the middle of nowhere, I don’t care; although I might be self-conscious still, it won’t stop me from going swimming. However, at the cottage with family, I’ll likely swim only when not many other people are around, and if I do, even then I’ll wear my rash guard in to hide my whale carcass a little bit. A mental shield. So, to be clear, that’s NOT what this post is about. But I promised myself that I will be brutally honest when talking about myself on this blog, or there’s no point in writing it, and I want to flag this upfront so people don’t get confused about what the post is actually about.

A stress test

Because of my weight, or more pointedly, a recent increase due to my using my BiPap machine (lucky me, I’m part of the small percentage that gains weight instead of losing it with the use of a PAP machine), it was a good time to schedule a stress test and just see if there is anything going on, partly related to family history and partly my own history. I would also say though that part of my desire to check in, do health checkups, etc. is related to turning 50, and part of it is looking ahead to retirement — what health investments do I need to be making now to ensure I have the health I need in my retirement to support the lifestyle I want?

We scheduled the stress test for the Riverside Hospital, and everything was a go. At least, it was a go logistically. Mentally, not so much. Sure, I’m committed to doing the tests, but truthfully I hate hospitals. I know, hospitals are generally never popular with anyone outside of the medical profession anyway, but my experience with hospitals is mostly negative — my dad (from seeing him in bed with tubes and stuff when he was about my age and various hospitalizations up to the end, where he was silent, sleeping, unconscious); my mom (a year of uncertainty leading to palliative care); and the first two traumatic years with Jacob and our constant visits to the Ottawa General and CHEO before things evened out for him.

It’s not really a fear, just a hatred, and I coupled this with not being sure what to expect for the actual stress test experience. I’m winded more easily than I used to be (still not asking for comments), and my cardio capacity has been reduced of late. Plus I wasn’t sure if I would have to run or just on the treadmill, or use the breathing tube to measure oxygen use (often seen for athletes). Neither would be good experiences for me, with my bad knees and claustrophobic feelings of tubes, combined with a huge gag reflex. At least I didn’t have to drink chalk dust. But I wasn’t exactly looking forward to it. Not to mention I’ve heard stories of people having heart attacks during the test, which to my mind, is the definition of stress.

On the comedic side, if you want to know if I’m stressed, just ask! Check! Having a stress test is stressing me out! Check! Oh, you mean physical heart stress. Well, pooh.

A couple of days before, I get the confirmation from the hospital, with an added note — stop taking any blood pressure medicines that are beta blockers. I don’t know a beta blocker from a football blocker, so I trundled off to the pharmacist to be sure. Yeah, I could have googled, but if I missed something, I would feel stupid. So the pharmacist confirmed neither of my blood pressure meds — amlodipine and hydrochlorothorazide — are beta blockers . Nor my reflux med. Great, good to go. Nothing to stop taking. Dun, dun, dun.

I get there, figure out (wrongly) where to park, find out as I get close to the main building I picked practically the farthest lot from the door, but that is good for my health, right? Meh. We do the check-in, finish my blood pressure pre-tests, and my numbers show I am jacked with nervousness. It drops to regular after a bit, but that’s normal for me, and not unexpected when you put me in a hospital. I make a short preventative trip to the washroom, head back to the waiting room, and the it is on to the test.

First question — did I stop my BP meds? Yes, ma’am. No beta blockers for me. What about calcium-based pills? Wait, what?

Oh, yeah, apparently I was not supposed to take beta blockers OR calcium-based pills i.e. the amlodipine. It basically lowers my BP which makes it easier for the heart to work or something, which means during the stress test, it’s going to be harder to raise it up to my target of 144 bpm, the magical rate of 80% of max.

Umm, someone should have told me that info when they told me about the beta blockers, but okay, now what? Well, we can do the test anyway, it will just be a bit harder. Riiiiiight, because I was looking forward to it being harder.

I get free manscaping of my chest as she promises me I’ll thank her when they remove the sensor pads later. As an aside, I do thank her. And it itches as it grows back in and feels weird, I must say. Those who do it willingly elsewhere? Add that as a third topic not to be discussed with non-partners.

On to the treadmill I go, the doctor okays me to start and disappears, and the tech starts me up. I can stabilize myself lightly on the hand rails, which is good, as my balance isn’t great, as long as I don’t “grab” which will reduce the stress and lower my heart rate. Keep all the weight on my legs. No problem. A simple walk up a hill.

We increase the rate, and then again. My heart rate is NOT going where it needs to go. And I’m starting to puff. We’re only 3-4 minutes in, but my heart rate is stuck at 75% and not very active beyond that, but meanwhile I feel like my breathing is going to cause me to black out. And she wants me to not only hit 80% but to sustain it for another 5-6 minutes after that? No way can I do that. I’m dying and feeling like I’m going to lose balance and fall. And they want me to run? Nope.

I have to stop. I’m embarrassed, but too focused on breathing to care. My vitals are fine, no panic indicators, but my head is pounding and I know my BP is jacked again. I sit down, relax, calm myself, and it goes back to normal.

I can come back again with no amlodipine, or we can do a medication-based test over at Ottawa General (not sure the particulars, but seems kind of like jacking my heart rate with adrenaline for a sustained period). There are apparently a couple of different ways to do it, I’ll have to talk to my regular doctor, but that’s it. I’m done for that part of the day.

But I’m not really done

Sure, I had an #EpicFail on the stress test, partly just me (probably 90%) and partly the meds (10%) that threw it off a bit, but I’ll deal. I really just wanted the all-clear to start a more aggressive exercise routine but I’ll have to start slower while we wait to test the higher range later.

As I’m driving home, I confess I’m not feeling great. My whole body feels “off”. Like I have some sort of low-grade infection everywhere. As I hit Baseline Road, I get a series of little twinges in my chest. Not for long, just short little pinches. On both sides of my chest, underneath my sternum. I reposition, it goes away. I’ve had positional stuff before, but never on both sides. I get home and do a bit of yoga and my back cracks in three places. Oh, that explains the discomfort. Everything goes back into place, and I feel fine. Hmmm. Nothing like being hyper aware to make you hyper paranoid.

Anyway, in the meantime, I also did some bloodwork on the way home that was pending for a month or so. Three days later, I get a call from the doctor on my voicemail saying my bloodwork has anomalies in it and I should come see her. It sounds like “come soon”, but the next available appointment isn’t until October 18th by which time I figure they should have the test results and advice re: the stress test too. Oh boy, oh bliss, oh joyful bliss.

I take the appointment but advise them to check with the doctor if the 18th is too far away. Apparently it is, and they want me sooner. Thursday is apparently soon enough, so I go tomorrow. I’ve narrowed the likelihood down to one of four likely issues based on what they wanted to test for and what I asked them to add. We’ll see if any of the four are right and how serious the “anomalies” are. My rough guesses in order of severity:

There might be signs of an infection…I feel like my two other wisdom teeth are trying very hard to grow in, and my ears and throat have been messed up the last few weeks, including the day of the blood test (it feels like I’m swallowing glass), but I don’t feel it is particularly “urgent” with everything else going on right now;
My body might be showing signs of inching closer to diabetes thresholds, which they always test me for given my family history and my weight, but the test comes back negative generally except for occasional anomalies in the bloodwork — but when they poke further, it comes back clean;
My cholesterol levels, or thyroid, or something similar have spiked, but I suspect if so, it is again temporary; and,
The big potential scary one is last on my list, as I asked them to check some of my protein levels. A couple of my lymph nodes around my neck have seemed more swollen of late; if my wisdom teeth aren’t active, then my tonsils are going wonky; my cluster headaches have increased (maybe just due to my increased weight); I’ve had a bit more cramping, gas and bloating of late; and as I noted, I’m having a bit more breathlessness / winded than normal (also likely weight-related). Almost all of those symptoms point to other things as more likely causes, but what the heck, I had them check my protein levels since we were doing the blood work anyway.

And while the appointment tomorrow is nice to have scheduled, I fully expect that any anomalies they found in the bloodwork will just result in more tests, so I won’t necessarily get answers tomorrow. Just another step in the process.

That’s it. It’s not a pretty story, and I don’t have an ending yet. But I like to be honest about my sharing my experiences, where I can. Basically, in the end, I don’t have the body I need to do some of the things in retirement that I want to do, so I’m upping my maintenance regime. I just wished it didn’t stress me out so much, only intending the pun slightly. But I did get to try free manscaping, so there’s that.

Reading Jeffrey Kottler’s “Change”: Chapter 8 – Transformative travel and spiritual journeys

September 18 2018

Chapter 8 of Jeffrey Kottler’s “Change”, entitled “Transformative Travel and Spiritual Journeys”, covers a specific type of “change” tool, popular in such novels as Eat, Pray, Love and Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail.

The premise, in part, derives from several aspects of change. First, by undergoing a challenging experience (such as hiking the Pacific Crest Trail), you find renewed confidence in your ability to make changes in your life. Second, by pulling yourself out of your daily life, all the anchors that hold you in place — routine, work, life in general, etc. — are displaced, freeing you up to make a change, since many of your reinforcing resistors are missing. Third, since the event/trip is clearly aimed at making a change i.e. if it is a “spiritual journey”, you have already made a firm commitment, often the first step to lasting change. And fourth, the trip often lasts several days or even weeks, ensuring that it is not a simple one-off event that you can blow off the next day since when the next day comes, you are STILL on the journey i.e. it has an ever-increasing cumulative effect to distance yourself from your regular life and farther and farther from the “life you know”.

I confess, I’m not strongly attracted to this method as a change tool, partly because I think true change is incremental and a daily journey, not a “one and done” experience. For every transformation / spiritual journey that turns into lasting change, I suspect there are 10-20 others where the person goes right back into their routine when they come home. They experienced a profound experience perhaps, but they didn’t change their environment, and if you go right back to that environment, you relapse. Literally, in the case of addicts, who might get clean off in a rehab clinic (which is needed to ensure no access to drugs, for example), but if they return to the same life they had, in the same house or apartment, in the same job, with the same friends and family, the likelihood to relapse is pretty high. For travel, the premise in part is that you can “be” whoever you want to be, and that is extremely freeing. But when you return, you are much closer to your own reality than the invented one for travel. For me, it is a bit like relationships — anyone can have a good date with someone or even a weekend trip, but that is hardly an indication of a strong foundation for the future when people have to wash dishes, do laundry, and take out the garbage.

Kottler notes some interesting variables though. Where lasting change happened, the person was likely to have undergone an uncomfortable or even traumatic event that forced them to dig deep and find new solutions. A shock to their system, if you will, and they fought their way through. Overall, though, the list is pretty bland — a mind ripe for change, insulation from usual influences, problem-solving, new experiences/adventures, altered/heightened states of consciousness, and teachable moments.

However, what did interest me was on page 169, he lists approximately 25 “types” of transformative travel, and buried within the list, were certain types of “ritual” trips — an initiation ceremony, Aboriginal walkabout, rite of passage, vision quest, religious pilgrimage, or a ritual ceremony. Each one includes an act or a series of acts that says to the person “you are passing from one reality to another”. I see a lot of merit in this, although perhaps more as a final aspect of a change, something you do to celebrate your transformation, a graduation if you will, from your old self to your new. I hadn’t really thought of it much as a tool for change itself, but it is obvious that it could easily be used that way. I am also strongly attracted to the deliberate nature of the rituals, as opposed to some of the other types of travel that seems more “accidental happenstance” (business trip or tourist trip that goes awry or off the grid). On page 182, Kottler includes a laundry list of what may precipitate the desire for a spiritual, religious or ritualistic journey and while the majority are negative catalysts (hitting bottom, trauma), some are more positive (desire for communion with others or nature, internal resonance with the divine).

As an aside, I LOVE a list on page 172 of the reasons people travel. Separate from questions of change, it is a GREAT list of why people might want to travel and what they are looking for from their travel experience:

Escape from daily pressures. This is the type of typical holiday that people plan in order to rejuvenate themselves. The goals are selective and modest, focused primarily on entertainment, fun, and relaxation.
Pursuit of pleasure. Related to the previous category, these trips are designed to provide pure stimulation, accompanied by relaxation, drinking, massage, and other forms of recreation.
Time out for contemplation. In order to reflect on your choices and life path, it is often useful to get away from normal routines. Whether in a retreat setting or structured time for solitude, the goal is to sort out future plans and perhaps initiate an action plan.
Social interaction. People often travel to meet other people, or deepen relationships with existing family members and friends. In other scenarios, travellers join groups for the companionship as much as the convenience.
Adventure. People pursue all kinds of challenges to test themselves or feel a sense of accomplishment. Options might include river rafting, backpacking, mountain climbing, caving, or all kinds of exploration or discovery.
Education and learning. People choose to travel to see the sights, visit museums, or study art, architecture, culture, or history.
Service. Some people plan trips that involve some type of volunteer work to assist others.

At the end of the chapter, Kottler sums it up a bit too simplistically for my taste, but it isn’t completely inaccurate either:

To summarize, there are three distinct components of a life-altering trip. First is what happens before you leave and how you [pre]program the experience. Then there is the actual experience in which critical events occur and memories are created. Finally, last but hardly least, is what happens afterward and how the experience is processed, folded into narratives, communicated to others, and understood by yourself.

In short, it seems like the same issues when dealing with any traumatic experience — how did you view the event beforehand (if you knew it was coming), how did you interpret it during the actual experience, and what story did you tell yourself afterwards. If you saw it as something to endure, your outcome is going to be a lot different than something you willing experienced in order to test yourself and come out the other side, and how you tell yourself what it means when you’re done.

Reading Jeffrey Kottler’s “Change”: Chapter 7 – Changing in psychotherapy

August 16 2018

Chapter 7 of Jeffrey Kottler’s “Change”, entitled “Changing in Psychotherapy”, would be where you might expect Kottler to say that change on your own doesn’t work and you really need a psychotherapist to help you. However, that expectation would be wrong, particularly as that would belie Kottler’s premise that basically we don’t know how change happens. Early on in the chapter, he dispels the “one true way” myth:

Psychotherapy is usually a last resort after all other options have been tried and failed…As we’ve already seen, most changes that people make in their lives take place in the outside world, as a result of circumstances, challenges, adventures, disappointments, conflicts, transitions, traumas, opportunities, and other critical incidents.
[snip]
Consistently (and incredibly) more recent studies have found that the therapist’s techniques account for only about 15% of a client’s improvement, compared with triple that figure (45%) for so-called “common factors” that are evident in almost all approaches. This includes things like the quality of the relationship, client expectations and characteristics, the opportunity to talk openly about their concerns, feeling supported, taking constructive risks, and developing new understanding of themselves and the source of their difficulties.
[snip]
Psychotherapy is often a significant part of [the change process], but one that represents only one piece of the puzzle. There are all kinds of other forces and extraneous events (improved economy, family support, new opportunities, spontaneous remission of symptoms, self-initiated actions, impulsive gestures, random conversations, films, and books) operating outside of sessions, and within the client, most of which we will never identify, much less understand.

And if that is all true, it leads to a question put succinctly by Kottler as why do paid psychotherapy if you can just do it yourself?

Some of the answers are speed of success, effectiveness and efficiency if you will. I crunched my psyche for 4 years on my own so to speak, and a trained professional could have perhaps stopped me from going down unproductive avenues. In some cases, picking up on an earlier point, I made myself feel worse about myself (or an aspect of myself) so that I could critically examine it, turn it around in my hands, and decide if it was something worth putting back in my psyche or if I should jettison it.

On page 158, Kottler has an incomplete list of 38 factors that can make a difference in promoting change in therapy. It’s a long list, but I think it could have been grouped and consolidated into a lot fewer headings:

Hopeful intent / willing to do the work — a positive mental outlook that you are capable of some change that the psychotherapy will help you get through, along with active engagement, willingness to model new behaviours, perhaps a public commitment to your change, and a willingness to consider new options, alternatives and solutions with adjustment over time.
Emotional honesty / know what you want — it doesn’t work if you’re not willing to be open and transparent, candid, emotionally true to yourself, trusting, disclosing and facing your past/present/future fears, challenging your old beliefs, having integrity and respect for your therapist and yourself, and accountability for the outcomes you generate.
Try new approaches / take action — even if you’re willing to do the work and know what you want, if you take no action to change, you’ll get the same outcomes you already get. The personal narrative has to change too, and it can be a chicken and egg situation if the story changes before the behaviour or the behaviour changes before the story, but you’ll need to face your fears, rehearse new skills, devote new resources to the effort, and take constructive risks.

There are certainly other factors around support, planning, etc., but for me, those three elements are the ones that resonate.

Reading Jeffrey Kottler’s “Change”: Chapter 6 – Growth through trauma

August 15 2018

When I started to read Chapter 6 of Jeffrey Kottler’s “Change”, I expected it to mirror the previous chapter i.e. that instead of hitting rock-bottom through some sort of death spiral, you would hit rock-bottom as a result of some traumatic event. And while that is part of the chapter, the focus is on the reactions to the trauma, i.e. how “post-traumatic stress is not the universal consequence of tragedy or unfortunate events”.

In fact, in a table, Kottler outlines some of the potential benefits of post-traumatic growth:

Toughening up;
Staying in the moment;
Altered priorities and values;
Greater appreciation of relationships, etc.;
Higher self-esteem;
More tolerance for others/empathy, etc.

But what determines whether a traumatic event leads to negative or positive outcomes? As expected, the answer is always “it depends” but some of the ideas mentioned included:

Severity and kind of event;
Personality traits of the person (optimism, resilience);
Prior experience with adversity;
Pre-existing conditions;
Absence of blame and shame;
Drugs and alcohol;
Personal resources;
Support system;
Spiritual beliefs;
Meaning making.

So you stand a better chance of surviving and growing if low to moderate severity, you`re optimistic, you`ve overcome previous adversity, you don’t have a bunch of other factors you’re dealing with, you’re not to blame or shamed by the event, not relying on drugs and alcohol to get by, decent personal resources, strong support system, a spiritual belief system that puts things in perspective, and a way of interpreting what happened in a constructive fashion. Obviously, you may not have all of them, but it increases the likelihood of responding to an event with a more positive outcome.

If people have these “conditions” in place before the event happens, then Kotler argues that “such individuals already have solid skills to manage and bounce back from adversity, [and] they often take such challenges in stride, returning to their previous level of functioning but not necessarily spring-boarding to higher levels.”

By contrast, I was interested in how he talks about avoidance in both positive terms (buying time until the person is ready) and negative terms (denial or extreme procrastination). Overall though, Kottler notes that “responses to crises are often guided by how you conceptualize them”. I was also interested in how he views “secondary trauma” i.e. the impact of witnessing trauma happening to others.

In the end, though, I was a bit disappointed with the chapter. While there are some tips on how to recover, mostly obvious things (“take care of yourself”, “get help”), I thought there should be more about how people respond who DIDN’T have the ideal factors in place before the event. Without it, it reads to me almost like “if you’re strong enough to get through it, you’ll get through it easier than those who aren’t”.

#50by50 #35 – Build my blog – 1000 posts, 1M words

August 14 2018

Back in April 2016, I reached a milestone for my blog — 500,000 words. I was pretty happy with that although, to be completely candid, it’s not that impressive considering I’ve had some form of a website since the early 2000s, and some email-like blogs before that too. But I reached my 500K goal just over two years ago.

This past week? I hit 1 million words and 1000 posts or pages (with this post).

Over the last two years, I’ve expanded my efforts, blogging a lot more regularly and on different topics, building various pieces as I went. My HR guide isn’t done, I keep getting distracted by some other issues, but it is the most active area visited by people. Second to that, of late, are the astronomy posts, particularly for alignment of the Celestron NexStar 8SE which is a bit finicky. I also get an inordinate number of people visiting one of my book reviews — a Jeffrey Archer short story collection — and if I am interpreting the hits correctly, most of them are doing so because it is on some sort of ESL curriculum somewhere that is used by a LOT of students, hence search engines lead them to me.

But I’ve also expanded into other categories…I stopped being quite so pure in my categories (I used to force-fit my posts into single categories, now I allow them to tag multiple categories), and I have 23 broad topics:

Astronomy (36 posts)
Book Reviews (145)
Civil Service (22)
Computers (80)
Development (27)
Experiences (119)
Family (94)
Goals (168)
Governance (23)
HR Guide (69)
Humour (67)
Ideas (39)
Learning (77)
Libraries (5)
Music Review (9)
Photography (27)
PS Transitions FP (13)
Publishing (28)
Quotes (82)
Recipes (18)
Spiritualism (17)
Television (149)
Writing (21)

That adds up to 1335 posts, but in reality, this post is only # 963. I have another 37 pages on the site such as indices for Book Reviews, TV Reviews, contact stuff, PS Transitions, etc. and of course, the index for my HR Guide.

I have somewhere around 90 posts planned already, and some basic research done for another 200 probably. And that’s just maintenance. I want to start blogging about retirement planning, stress management, and libraries (and no, they don’t have much to do with each other).

But for now, I’ll take my 1000 posts and pages and 1M words and pat myself on my head. I had wanted to blog more often than I was, added it to my 50by50 goals, and the extra 500K words in about 2.25 years seems pretty good to me. Around 200K per year. And that’s not me trying to get individual totals up, i.e. I’m not padding my posts, that’s just being more prolific on more topics, and where I’m interested, not trying to limit myself to 500 words (I thought about doing that, but not really my style…could I get more readers with shorter punchier posts? Sure, but I wouldn’t like the resulting copy.)

Is anyone reading? The short answer is yes. I used to average single digits to my blog per day; since I started blogging more prolifically on topics like Phoenix and telescopes, my hit rate is north of 50 per day (my new normal) and the site regularly pushes the 150 to 200 mark. Not bad for a personal site with no click bait or ads.

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