Winter biking
This is the 3rd or 4th track by these guys that I have loved on Hype M. So I think I should go buy the album. I wish I could find Happy Cycling by Boards of Canada then my day would be complete.
Boards of Canada - happy Cycling
Update:Thank you Erin for the track, and thank you windchill for not attacking me this evening on the way home. I swear that was almost pleasant, I think the wind must have been at my back.
Update 2:Speaking of wind at my back, and trying to change behaviours learned slowly over time, (read on...) check out this lovely quote from Underworld that I have now read about 5 times since writing it in my little bedside quote writing book.
The poets of the desert nations told stories about the wind. It bucks and swirls and turns you around and knocks you flat. But it also speaks so softly only your inner spirit can hear it and this is how you correct your path.
earlier today
I decided to try winter-cycling again this year. For the first time since I was 23. I am hoping it will toughen me up. I know, first the weight-lifting then the scooting around in sub-zero weather letting my ears turn into frozen pink head nuggets. What is going on?
I'll tell you, I am still having that anger problem. Ie; I don't get angry, I get sad. I am not trying to fly off the handle here, I just want to stand up for myself. I hope if I challenge myself physically maybe I will also develop some emotional stamina, almost reflexively. I know I feel things in my gut so if I have a physical 6-pack maybe I'll have an emotional one as well.
Yesterday evening I heard my landlord (who lives on the first floor) banging around and shouting to wake the dead. I quickly walked downstairs holding my dinner, a bowl of spaghetti in my hands.
My landlord looked up at me from the lobby and shouted.
"It's fucking DISGUSTING THAT"S WHAT IT IS. THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE!"
I said; "I don't know what you're talking about"
"CAN't YOU SMELL IT. IT"S STINKS."
I replied: " I'm sorry, I can't smell anything"
"BLOODY GARLIC! THIS WHOLE HOUSE REEKS OF GARLIC BLOODY DISGUSTING"
"I'm just making pasta"
"WELL TURN THE FUCKING FAN ON FOR CHRIST'S SAKE!"
I left the house almost in tears, and walked over to Evan and Daniella's where I knew my brother was cleaning out the basement.
He gave me a big hug and I proceeded to cry and shake.
I have got to learn to stand up for myself during situations such as these. Not that they should ever happen. But really, I genuinely don't get angry I get shit-scared and then I get sad.
Not good.
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Comments
Yeah, I totally know how you feel. With New Year's around the corner, I'm sure I will once again make a promise to myself to start working out and standing up for myself, only to spend the year cowering again. Or maybe not. Maybe I'll get my act together. It's strange the way that the lack of anger somehow sublimates into sadness - as if, unable to direct that energy outward, one turns it on oneself.
But fwiw, I think that connection between toughening the body and toughening one's emotions is a good approach. I think it builds a kind of subconscious confidence - "I belong in this world and can master parts of it" - that hopefully seep its way into other things.
As for winter cycling, though... still kinda' dislike it, but I remember that you do feel like such a badass doing it. All these other people are shivering at the bus stop and you're just riding straight into that wind. That part is awesome. Good luck!
I have to say the working out part is easier to maintain once you get used to the routine. It also releases serotonin, so I wind up happier afterward.
I sometimes wonder if it's because I take no pleasure in anger that I find it so hard to do. My friend is a champion of getting angry, and (although I think she would argue against this vehemently) I think she kind of likes getting angry. She's still upset, but getting angry about it and raging and whatnot is a comfort zone. She *hates* being sad. In that way we are opposites. I am still weaning myself off the lamentable pleasure of wallowing in sadness. WRT being a saddo, the exercise has played a much bigger role in fixing that, then in making me more of a hard-ass in any sense of the word (yuk yuk).
Anyways what was I saying. Oh yeah, I think the basic truth is, when faced with something unlikeable, or with conflict people retreat into a negative emotion that they enjoy in a perverse way.
So I try to get to sad as fast as possible, because angry doesn't work for me. My friend is the opposite she takes the road to anger so fast she sometimes skips sad altogether.
I have another friend who is training to be some sort of shaolin monk of emotional health I think she'd say "embrace whatever is happening in the moment and it will suddenly not seem so aggravating and confusing" or something. She reads this blog, she'll chime in sooner or later I hope ;)
My plan of action in any case with Mr. Mean Landlord is if he does it again, to try and just say as if I were a kindergarten teacher and he were an angry 5 year old. "That is not an appropriate way to speak to me" and if he persists then I have no idea what I'll follow up with.
I'll start crying and windmilling like an angry 5 year old myself, and my won't that be delightful.
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