Back to Basics

It's August, which, if you're me, really only means one thing - roller derby, thank sweet merciful Xenu, is back in season.

The Rebels have been back on skates now for about 4 weeks, easing our (wonderful, splendid, huge) class of fresh meat into the world of derby.

Getting back on skates is a bit odd for me, this season - in a good way. Since May, I've been taking classes/working out at The Bar Method, a workout that "integrates the fat burning format of interval training, the muscle shaping technique of isometrics, the elongating principles of dance conditioning, and the science of physical therapy to create a revolutionary new workout that quickly and safely reshapes your entire body."

I don't know about "reshaping my body," (if anything, my jeans fit tighter now than they used to - maybe my muscles are bulky? Idk.), but I'm definitely noticing a difference in my skating.

When the winter season ended back in May, I was skating like I always had - competently, but getting super winded after any form of sprinting, and generally feeling like the time I spent off skates (see: being a schlub) was just neutralizing any effort I was putting in to actually, y'know, skating.

Then Bar Method offered a free intro class, and I figured, what the hell. I'd heard about it from friends, and thought it sounding like a relatively sane (don't get me started on the cult of crossfit), low impact way to stay in shape/get in better shape for derby.

And, y'know, I think it's working. Bar Method spends a lot of time working on building core muscle groups, especially, in my case, in my wiggly jiggly thighs and calves. So when I got back on skates in July, and suffered through our first endurance practice - well, yeah, I got winded, just like everyone else. But it took me a few laps longer than usual to hit that fatigue point.

There are other differences, too. Instead of lolling around when we're doing a Four Corners drill or some such, I'm making an active effort to keep my body engaged. Leg lifts, planks, crunches, whatever, I'm now the asshole in the corner that you all hate, doing extra work.

I'm getting lower, and I can stay low for that much longer, thanks to all the thigh-stretchy things we've been doing in Bar. And because Bar Method really focuses on posture & balance, getting low looks less like me hunching over like a troll - and skating looks less like me tottering around like a Weeble-Wobble.

Four weeks in to this season, and I'm really liking what Bar is doing for me. I'm also really liking that I've proactively stepped up my game, all by myself. (I'm terrible at self motivation, going to the gym, etc etc etc. That's all probably for another post. Point is, this thing I'm doing is huge for me.) I wish I could be skating more, but that's just not in the cards right now. For now, I'm pretty pleased with where things are.

Be Like Mike

I've been stuck in this rut lately, where I believed that life was a thing that just happened to me, not a thing that I  could get out and take control of, not a place where I could make things happen. I would lie back and think of England, only England was my entire existence, the whole universe.

It hasn't been a fun year, to say the least.

But I'm snapping out of it. Slowly but (hopefully) surely, I'm pushing myself, going out, doing things that make me happy, making things happen that make me a more complete, better person.

To be a painter, you must paint. To be a writer, you must write. To be a derby girl, you must strap stinky pads on, face down the world's dirtiest track, and skate and black and jam and turn left and fall down, and do it over and over and over again. Fill the track up with your booty blocks, your rage, your passion, your unquenchable desire to be Suzy Hotrod and Amanda Jamitinya and Carmen Getsome, all at once, even if it's only for a nanosecond.

And if I can do those things, face down my fears of getting hit and not hitting hard enough, of getting hurt and not getting back up, of not making it through the pack or not chasing down the jammer, then maybe, just maybe, I can face the world, too.

New Year, New Plan.

Welp, Reverb 2010 is over, and while I might still plug in a few entries from the prompts, I think it's time to face the cold hard reality that ReadAGoddamnBook cannot exist on Reverb prompts alone.

It's time to refocus, and figure out what the hell this blog is going to be all about. I don't want to turn it into a journaling space (lord knows that Livejournal sees more than enough of that from me), but I don't want to hide behind a stringent concept. Reverb has shown me that there's something... freeing in being publicly honest about how my brain functions, and I don't want to lose that in this space. But I'd like to hone it in.

So let's start with this:

I finally admitted to myself that I'm burnt out on grad school. To that end, I've committed to taking a vacation term next semester.

Now, when I tell people that this is a thing that's happening, the first question that gets asked tends to be "Well, what are you going to do instead?" There's no answer that makes them all happy. People want me to have a gameplan, a long-term goal. The truth of it is, the thing that's driven me to this vacation term is the fact that I don't. I've been on this path for so long, that I've lost track of what it is that I want. So long term plan? No fucking clue. It's not on the table. That's not what this is about.

I want to take this term to figure things out. Try new things, fail at a couple of jobs that I'm not totally in love with. Volunteer. Teach. Maybe even write. Do things that terrify me. Date. Address some issues and concepts that I've toyed with, but never faced headon. Talk to strangers. Not default to obscure minutia and snark as conversation points. Catch up on schoolwork. Proofread a paper. Recalibrate. Readjust.

I'm not sure how it's all going to pan out, but I'm pretty stoked to try.