#I am a chronic marathoner of content

[sinkat-arts]

One thing I love about the Buddy Daddies Experience: There’s no source material. No manga, no light novel. Nothing. It’s an original animation. As such, we’re all experiencing it for the first time together... which is super neat! Very cool! No spoilers! Only everyone being delighted by these idiots all at once on the weekly.

One thing I hate about the Buddy Daddies Experience: There’s no source material. I NEED TO READ AHEAD! I NEED TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS! THIS SLOW DRIP OF 20 MINUTES PER WEEK WILL KILL ME!

That is all. Carry on.  

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

I Knew You Were Trouble When You Walked In 4

Warnings: non/dubcon, medical procedures including dialysis and chronic illness, dry humping, and other dark elements. My username actually says you never asked for any of this.

Characters: Pete Brenner, short!reader

My warnings are not exhaustive but be aware this is a dark fic and may include potentially triggering topics. Please use your common sense when consuming content. I am not responsible for your decisions.

As usual, I would appreciate any and all feedback. I’m happy to once more go on this adventure with all of you! Thank you in advance for your comments and for reblogging.

Before you depart, you leave an extra tip at the counter. The owner was more helpful than he needed to be. You feel indebted.

As you go out into the street, you give a long glance in each direction. You're paranoid even after the hours that passed since the unwelcome encounter. It's not just that one time, it's that this guy keeps popping up.

You walk the block warily, checking over your shoulder every few steps. Your building is quiet now that the maintenance is done, at least for the day. You go up to your apartment and drop your bag by the door.

What a long, strange day. Still, you got a lot of work done. You can just relax. You have another appointment tomorrow and that will be less than soothing.

You go to the bedroom and pull out a set of pajamas. You change a piece at a time, stretching as fatigue knots your muscles. You pull up the shorts as a shadow flickers by the window. You turn, finding nothing but the dimming sky and the rattling fire escape.

You don't think much of it. The wind often shakes the metal ladder and your apartment never quite gets the full shine of daylight. You grab your laptop and turn on the same show you've been marathoning for almost a week. You nestle into bed and yawn, even if it is a bit early to turn in.

You try to unwind and let go of the stress needling in your temples. You close your eyes, the heaviness less crushing, more hypnotizing. It drags you down even as the tension longers in your body.

You dream of the cafe and its moody owner, the other man like a shadow outside the window, the ambience overcast and sinister. At the edge of your subconscious is the glare of the laptop screen, the garbled audio skewing to a hum. A cool flow washes over you and sends a shiver up your spine.

You rouse slightly, enough to pull the top of the quilt to your chest. You hug the patchwork and grumble as you roll onto your side. You seal your eyelids and cling to the sleep that weighs on your lashes. The blackness slowly spreads and all at once splinters as your name gristles into your ear.

Your eyes snap open to darkness. Your laptop is closed and set on your night table. There's a weight over you that suggests more than a blanket. You feel something wiggle under your side and realise an arm is hooked around you, their hand tucked beneath you.

You go rigid and inhale, ready to scream your lungs out. The hand swiftly slides free and smothers your voice. You whimper and squirm against the intruder.

“You know, sweetheart, I just wanted to talk…” his nose brushes along the shell of your ear, his damp breath on your nape.

You whine and grab at his hand desperately. How did he find you? Jow did he get in here? This has to be a nightmare!

He hushes you and nuzzles your hair. He presses a kiss to the back of your head and growls. He wiggles even closer to you, rolling his hips against you.

“Now I don't feel like talking,” he snarls.

Your eyes gloss as his strength traps you. You don't understand. What did you do to deserve this? Why does he care so much?

“You know what I feel like?” He rasps, rocking against you as his breath shudders with his fervent motion, “I feel like holding you down and seeing if the rest of you still works.”

You squeak as you claw at his thick wrist. Your heart thunders and your ears burn. You've never felt this helpless.

He keeps his rhythm, his crotch chafing against you as his other arm snakes under you. His hand flutters up to squeeze your chest. He grunts between his quickening pants as the bed shakes with him.

“I can be a nice guy,” he huffs, “but you make a guy wanna be mean.”

Your tears break free, leaking down to stain your pillow. You writhe and throw your elbow back. He growls as you catch him in the same spot as before.

He leans his weight into you, turning you on your stomach as he crushes you against the mattress. He pins you with his body, thrusting against you as the fabric between your bodies grows warm. You murmur and bawl into his salty palm as you feel his bulge hard and throbbing against you.

“That's it, baby, that's it,” he coaxes as he rocks faster, “almost….”

He slips his hand behind your head and pushes your face into the pillow, suffocating you. He coughs and grunts and spasms. He shakes and his pace turns erratic and he slows, little by little, until he still and gulping for air.

He falls limp over you, his head next to yours as he pets your hair. He purrs and turns to kiss your temple. You turn your head away from him and sob.

What just happened?

[jadewritesficshere]

Warmth

Eddie Munson x Reader

Summary: Eddie takes you home after work (1150 words)

Contents: Reader suffers from chronic pain, smoking weed, no gender descriptors for reader, reader is called Baby

Please note I am not a doctor and do not take any medical advice from me ok thanks also each person's health is different from someone elses so please be kind to each other thanks bye

You sigh as you finally lock the door for the store. You had started the day out with working your regular shift. Which had been fine, even if you had felt a little stiff. Then that coworker called in sick...again. And your boss begged you to stay late...again. You had wanted to say no, but the prospect of getting a bit extra in your paycheck, well, you couldn't pass it up.

But now your body was screaming at you. Working for twelve hours had your joints aching. Some days you could barely roll over in bed without the pain. Could barely think a coherent thought as your joints and muscles screamed at you.

And other days, the good days, you felt you could run a marathon. Not because of an absence of pain, but the pain was so little compared to what you were used to it felt like nothing. Some days started like this and ended like the bad days.

And today was ending like a bad day. Especially because that one manager, the one who seemed to not like you, was on duty. Your boss, the sweetest old man in the world, didn't care if you sat in a chair at your register. But the manager who came in for the evening shift once the boss was gone? Took it away and called you lazy, even if you were the best cashier they had.

You slowly but steadily made your way to the van that was sitting idle in the parking lot. Through the passenger window you can see Eddie smoking a joint. When you opened the door, startling Eddie, smoke furled out. You climbed in and slammed the door shut.

"You know this is just begging for someone to call Hopper right?" You groan as you turn to grab your seat belt. "Figured you'd wanna smoke and relax a bit, thought I'd get it started for you." Eddie's arm reaches across you grabbing the seat belt before you could and buckling you in. "I can do it myself," you mumble.

"Yeah, you can. But maybe I want to take care of my Baby, hm?" Eddie hands you the joint," When you said you'd be late earlier, you uh said you already weren't feeling the best. Figured I could do what I can to help. Not that you can't do it yourself, you can, but you know-" "I know. Thanks."

It still was hard to accept that this is how your life was. Even harder to accept help. The thought that people were helping out of pity made you want to scream, even if you knew some people, like Eddie, were helping because they loved you not because they pitied you.

The van roars to life as Eddie presses the gas a bit too hard, causing the entire van to lurch. Eddie winces and mutters an apology. You inhale on the joint, letting the smoke fill your lungs. You crack a window to let the smoke out, humming as you close your eyes.

By the time you make it to Eddie's, you can feel the weed in your system. Softening the edges of everything. The pain easing up slightly as you relax.

Eddie tumbles out of his side, almost face planting, as he rushes to get to your door. He throws the door open and bows, "My liege." You huff out a laugh as you graciously take his hand, gripping it tightly as you step down and out of the van. Eddie winks at you as he kisses the top of your hand, causing you to swat at him. Eddie chuckles as he drops your hand to go and open the door of the trailer.

You follow Eddie inside and to his room after kicking off your shoes. Your only thought is laying down and going to sleep. You barely shrug out of your uniform before collapsing onto his bed. Usually, Eddie would make some joke about getting naked, but tonight he forgoes that and instead dims he lights, sensing how tired you are.

Eddie's bed is old and yet somehow more comfortable then yours (probably because Eddie moves around so much in his sleep he doesn't stick to just one spot like you do, which causes your mattress to deflate and sink in one spot). You toss the nearest blanket over you, sighing in relief that you made it through the day.

You can hear Eddie enter and leave the room a few times, mumbling to himself. The sound of his rings hitting his dresser. The creaking of the drawers opening and shutting as he finds something to wear to bed. The distant beeping of a microwave going off before Eddie leaves the room again.

"Made you something," Eddie says as he reenters the room. "Not hungry," you mumble into the pillow. "Its not food- well, it is but not anymore? I mean we could eat it buuuuuttt..."

You peek an eye open to look at Eddie. In his hands is an oddly shaped lump. You can recognize the familiar pattern as the curtains in Eddie's room (and the realization there are no curtains anymore hits you). You can tell it was supposed to be a rectangle, but is more oblong like an oval.

Eddie gingerly places it against your back and- oh. It's warm.

Eddie crawls onto the bed next to you," Remember the heating pad? How it died? Well, figured might as well make my own and save us some money. Filled with rice, so if we really need to I guess we could eat it but I don't think that's uh the best idea."

"You sew?" You ask softly. Eddie grins at you," Mama taught me." Eddie readjusts the bag against you where it fell away. "Eds..." Eddie hums looking up at you," Yeah?"

"Thank you." "Anytime Baby. I'd do anything I can for you." You smirk at him," Anything?" Eddie rolls his eyes as he grins back," Weeelll-" you both chuckle. You roll back onto your side and close your eyes.

And as you lay there you think of how much Eddie loves you. How often he shows you his love. How he opens doors for you and closes them. How Eddie doesn't treat you as glass like some of your friends do, but how he still cares and makes you comfortable. How Eddie doesn't try to limit you and let's you set the pace for yourself. How Eddie took down his curtains to make you a heating pad because yours went out.

You reach back and slowly link your hand with his. Eddie hums slightly, linking your fingers, before shifting and wrapping his arm around you, drawing you closer.

You can feel the warmth from the rice. The warmth of Eddie's body. The warmth from his breath as he falls asleep. And the warmth from your heart as it yells out how in love you are.

[zara-renata]

Sleepy time with Xavier | ao3 | masterlist

Summary: You suffer from chronic fatigue and worry that Xavier is only placating you when he says it's fine on the occasions you're too exhausted to follow through on plans together. On one such bad day, he reassures you in a way that you can no longer doubt. Notes: And now for something entirely different from the Sylus series (regular readers, please don't stab me in the face). I am bursting with ideas for the Sylus fic and will continue posting regular updates as before (work permitting), but I was directly inspired by @starfallforest's fic about how, due to his evol, Xavier lights up like a supernova when he orgasms, and bends space-time so that you can feel what he feels and the lines of identity blur between him and his lover. I had insomnia the other night and kept thinking about the hurt/comfort possibilities of being able to literally feel your lover's feelings, and I want to use that idea in the Sylus fic because there are hints that he can enter dreams and manipulate consciousness, so this is my thank you to a sweet person who inspired the idea. Xavier x fem!reader, Xavier x mc, second person POV. This story contains: mc with chronic fatigue, hurt/comfort, bottom!xavier, pegging, oral sex (f receiving), tried to keep the sex more sensual than explicit but it's there. My first attempt at "smut", hope it's demure, hope it's classy. I normally write gender neutral reader, but i find it really hard to leave out body parts when drafting sexual content so i went with fem reader here. If anyone wants this story as either gender neutral or male reader (both of which would slightly affect the descriptions of the sexy bits), let me know because it would be simple to adjust. But if no one is interested in Xavier or other LI content from me, then I figured one version should be sufficient.

You come awake slowly, still tangled in a strange dream in which you were on a planet that is strangely familiar even though you somehow knew it’s not your own. You were sheltering in ancient buildings clinging to a high, sloping cliffside spilling down into a gray, turbulent ocean. Everyone around you was afraid, and somehow you had the knowledge, the way one sometimes has in dreams, that this was the end of this world. You were one of the last survivors of all the calamities that had afflicted this crumbling planet until now, at the final end of all things. All who were left were now huddled along with you, watching the sea. The meteor was coming. Nothing could be done to stop it. If you didn’t see it in the sky, you would know it was time by the sudden retreat and then rise of the ocean waves.

You wake, just as the tide receded—you were waiting in frozen fear, trapped in the terrible knowledge that when the water returned, you and everyone you knew would be swept down and into it, the final gasp of life on a doomed planet.

As you come awake, your heart is racing. You feel your chest with your hand, running your fingertips over the pounding there while reaching for your phone on your nightstand. You squint at the screen—it’s nine in the morning on a Saturday. Normally you’d be stretching languidly, enjoying the fact that you are able to sleep in on the weekends instead of hurrying into work. But the dream’s deep dread—its exhausting terror—lingers, and your body feels so heavy. It’s nine in the morning, and you already know that today will be a Bad Day.

You don’t remember a time when you didn’t have chronic fatigue. Maybe when you were younger, you wouldn’t fear the days on which just the most basic of tasks required for daily life are simply too much for your depleted body. Where taking a shower, or doing the dishes, feels as daunting as running a marathon with no training, or pushing an SUV uphill with the emergency brake still on.

But now your fatigue is almost a constant companion. It seeps into your body, siphoning your strength on the worst possible days. You sometimes think that the energy stolen from you by this condition would be enough to power Linkon City for a year.

It’s Saturday, and you resign yourself to just curling up in bed and drifting until hunger, or the need to go to the bathroom, offer enough pressing incentive to drag your deadweight out from under your warm soft duvet.

Xavier lets himself into your apartment with the key you made specifically for him, since you use a fingerprint scanner to get in yourself. He slips out of his shoes and hangs up his jacket on the wall rack in the foyer. Something about the stillness of your place has him holding his tongue, when usually he’d call out softly to you to let you know he’s here. As he makes his way further into your home, he notes how the curtains are still drawn in the living room, and that the kitchen is tidy in a way that lets him know that you probably haven’t used it yet today.

It must be one of your bad days. He was looking forward to going to hotpot with you tonight, the date he knew you were also looking forward to this Saturday night, but he’s already reaching for his phone to call and cancel the reservation. His earbuds are in, so as he quietly lets the restaurant know you won’t be coming, he gets to work assembling snacks on a wooden cutting board and getting the kettle going for a caffeine free tea. He lifts the kettle from its base right before it begins to beep as it finishes warming up, and pours you a mug in the chipped World’s Greatest Hunter cup that Caleb gifted you when you graduated from the Hunter Academy. He then carefully carries everything back to your bedroom, where you’re curled up amidst the soft duvet and mountain of pillows and plushies so that only your hair is peeking up above the covers. He pauses, soaking in the sight, overcome with how adorable you are. His slow heartbeat hitches, for just a breath, at the gratitude of being able to see you like this, so close, instead of dreaming about you from a great distance.

He sets the board on one of your nightstands, lifts the steeping teabag from the mug and places it in the little bowl decorated with shooting stars. A gift from him since you love drinking calming tea so much. He then reaches back, pulling his cozy white hoody and undershirt from his torso and dumps them on the floor. His jeans are next, and then he’s lifting the duvet, slipping in behind you with a sigh. 

You come awake again—terribly relieved that this time your sleep was peaceful, dreamless—only to find your beautiful boyfriend’s warm body curled around yours. Maybe his solid presence at your back is why you didn’t have another unsettling dream.

You blink, coming to your senses all at once. You grab your phone from your nightstand and see that it’s well past the time you had agreed to head to the restaurant. 

You feel awful. You hate that your body betrays you like this, and so often ruins plans not only for you, but for your skilled warrior of a boyfriend too. Your sweet, curious explorer. So often you aren’t up to following through on plans the two of you make together on your precious days off from the stresses and risks of being a hunter. He has never complained, but you feel terrible, every time, for not having the energy to do even the most mundane of activities and ruining his rare chances for fun or relaxation as a result.

“Are you awake already?” his sleepy, soft voice drifts from behind you. He tightens his arms around you.

You snort. “Already? I wish.” Your stomach twists in hunger. “I should have gotten up hours ago. Why didn’t you wake me?” you ask forlornly.

“I didn’t want to interrupt your rest. And I can always use a nap.” You can hear the smile in his voice, right before you hear him yawn languidly.

You’re grateful that he never complains. You’re grateful that he never seems to be bothered by you having to flake out on plans, and never seems disappointed at last-minute cancellations. But you also can’t quite believe that his peaceful facade is the whole truth. There is always that undercurrent of worry lurking in your mind, wondering when he’ll finally have enough of being forced to deal with your condition. He rarely offers reassurance on his own—it’s only when you ask him, “Are you sure you’re okay with this?”, that he always replies with a calm, “Of course.” You never quite believe him, despite your best efforts to trust him.

“Still. I’m so sorry that we missed plans, again, because of me,” you murmur, curling a little tighter into yourself.

He pushes himself up on his elbow. “C’mere.” He gently urges you to roll over and face him. He smiles down at you, his ocean eyes soft as they drift across your face. “I made you some tea, but I guess it’s probably cold by now. And also some snacks. Wanna watch the latest episode of Super Hunters?”

You just stare at his pretty face, struck again by how utterly lovely every part of him is. Not just the sweep of his nose, his generous mouth, the blond of his soft hair. But the inside of him too. Gentle. Kind.

“Are you sure you’re not upset?” you finally ask, heart aching with how much you love this man, hating the fact that you’re so needy for reassurance from him.

He leans forward, taking your hand in his, and runs his nose along your forehead, down one of your cheeks, before he brushes a feather-light kiss to the side of your mouth.

“I’m sure. I can think of so many things we can do, right here in this bed. Things that are just as fun as eating good hotpot,” he answers, eyes drifting from your eyes to your mouth, to the skin above your sleep tank top, and back again.

“Like watching Super Hunters?” you tease, lifting an eyebrow. Because you know him. And you know that one of the things he loves as much as eating good food, is loving you with his body.

“Like watching Super Hunters, or…” he reaches out and runs one finger along the curve of your breast. “If you’re not too tired, I’m happy to do all the work. But if you’re not up for it, I’m also happy to order in for us, and spend the rest of the night watching shows with you.”

This, too, you have trouble believing. He has never pressured you into intimacy, but you worry when he says it doesn’t bother him when your fatigue, your faulty body, affects this part of your relationship with him, as it does everything else. You don’t know how to reconcile the cognitive dissonance in your head—you know that Xavier is not the kind of man to feel entitled to sex, or to get angry for needing to cancel plans because his partner has a medical condition out of her control. And yet, you also feel guilty for not being able to offer him more consistency in both of these aspects of your shared life together.

You lie there, soaking in his beauty. Your eyes drift from his lovely face down his strong throat, the breadth of his shoulders, his defined pectorals. The darker blond trail of hair starting at his navel and drifting down into his pretty little blue boxer briefs. You’re exhausted, but you want him. You always want him, whether it’s just holding his hand, or much, much more. You’re not going to let your frustrating body get in the way of the pleasure he’s offering you, on top of everything else tonight.

“How about we have those snacks, and then we can… do something other than watch Super Hunters.” Your breath is caught as a surprised, pleased smile lights up his face.

“That can be arranged,” he says softly.

Later, after you’ve had your fill of the fruit and nuts, the crackers spread with tasty toppings, and drained the mug of cold but still soothing tea, he gently urges you onto your back under the soft duvet. You’re cocooned, both warm in the little nest of your bed, as he licks into your mouth, kissing you slowly, seeming to savor the tea lingering on your tongue. You respond, tongue meeting his, enjoying the languid pace of his kisses. Time slows, becomes meaningless, as he leisurely drinks his fill of your mouth.

After a lifetime, or perhaps only a few minutes, he slips from your mouth, and begins pressing gentle kisses down your throat, drifting down, down, pausing at the softness of your breasts, running his hands up and under your sleep tank top until you lift your arms and let him pull it from your body. He lets it fall somewhere over the side of the bed. His tongue is warm and wet as he nuzzles your breasts and gently sucks lower, running his nose along the skin of your belly and resting his cheek there, just for a little while. You sigh softly, luxuriating in the feel of his weight on you, his warm breath against your skin.

After a while, he moves again, down, down, tongue sweeping down your hip, lips pressing slow kisses to the inside of your thigh. You feel his big hands gently grasp your hips, and his agile fingers are pulling down the sides of your underwear. He lifts your ass for you so you don’t have to expend the effort, and then the underwear is tossed just as your tank top was.

He nudges your legs wide and settles his big body between them. Your heart's rhythm speeds, the rest of you responds to his attention. Your fatigue fades into the background as all of your focus narrows to his tongue between your legs, the wet insistence of his lips on the most sensitive parts of you. He makes small appreciative noises in his throat, the same that he makes when enjoying a particularly good meal, and you’re reassured that this at least, he loves doing for you.

The pleasure in your tired body builds, and builds, but he’s in no hurry. His fingers join his tongue, advancing and retreating. Sometimes he pauses, resting his cheek on your thigh as he did on your belly, simply breathing you in, tongue running along his own lips, as if he’s savoring the taste of you. Time passes, and all at once the movement of his tongue, the pressure of his mouth becomes too much, and you come on a quiet gasp, softly—the peak of your pleasure stretches, feels like it lasts beyond what is possible. Finally, you’re catching your breath, sated, drifting back into your body from the timeless orgasm he just gifted you.

Wordlessly, he reaches beyond the duvet to pull your strap from your nightstand. He lifts one of your feet and slips it through one part of the harness, and then repeats the motion with your other foot. He slowly drags it up your legs, goosebumps trailing his fingertips in the chill of the air exposed by the duvet falling down a little as he fixes the strap in place between your thighs and gently tugs on each bit of the harness to ensure that it’s resting securely and comfortably against your skin. 

When he is done, you are filled with a pleasant fullness, and a new heaviness rests between your legs. While he was pleasuring you, he had used one of his hands to soften the way for you, leisurely working your wetness into himself. He rolls onto his side, the little spoon, and scoots back against you. He reaches for the lube in the nightstand, and you laugh softly when the scent of cookies and cream fills the air. 

“What?” he asks, and you can hear the lift of his lips, the smile in his response. “I love cookies and I love sex, why not enjoy both at once?” 

How can you argue with such logic? You’ll never be able to eat cookies again without recalling his warmth, his big body pliant against yours, and you realize that you’re just fine with that.

He reaches behind, between your bodies, and coats the cock of the strap with the lube. He then helps you work it into himself, little by little, until you’re fully seated and pressed warmly against his broad back. He sighs and you feel him reach for his own dick, stroking leisurely. With each slow, rolling undulation of his body rocking back into yours as he seeks his pleasure, your own builds, desire again temporarily eclipsing the exhaustion. You begin to rock your hips, little by little, and he whimpers softly with each thrust. You trail kisses down the back of his strong neck, gasping a little at how good it feels to press into him, for the motion to press the seat of the strap deeper into you, his skin silk under your lips, his whimpering an incentive to go a littler faster, to push a little deeper, just to hear more of it. His muscles ripple and shivers sweep along his skin under your touch. 

Gradually you speed your thrusts, and you feel his hand working faster on his cock by the movement of his muscular arm. He has been here with you before, so he is not afraid or hesitant like the first time. You angle your hips a little, and are satisfied when you hit his prostate, evident from the loud keening that comes out of your normally soft spoken boyfriend. You’re on the edge of coming again, only waiting for the telltale clenching, the moaned “I’m coming” from Xavier. 

When he finally falls over the edge, you go with him, and he lights up like a supernova, back arched, his thick backside grinding into your hips. He’s blinding, magnificent, the light under his skin almost too much for you to look at directly. He is starlight. He is the sun, soaking you through, warming your skin, your exhausted muscles, the blood pumping through your veins, down, down to the marrow of your bones, the tender center of your tired soul.

You squeeze your eyes shut against the blazing form of your lover, and you’re suddenly adrift—space and time are an origami flower folded from the parts of you and him, him and you, drifting like petals on a breath, stardust in the a vast ocean of night. 

You are him, your skin translucent, blazing bright as a star, your body filled with so much pleasure—filled with so much affection, gratitude—and sorrow. Sorrow for the fact that you don’t have the poetic words to convince your lover that the days she’s most exhausted are some of the days he loves the most, just lying with her reading quietly, sheltered in this safe harbor from the cruelties of time and distance. You understand that for her, her exhaustion is a burden, a source of guilt and helpless anger. That she thinks of her own body as flawed, when all you can see is its perfection in every curve, every breath, the regal line of her nose. You would never wish for her to suffer because of the exhaustion racking her body, but you sometimes think that she was made just for you, her fatigue mirroring your own—lying in bed fulfills you as much as exploring a new city, tasting a new favorite meal. You’re so content to be lost right here with her in this familiar but never boring geography of bedsheets, the topography of her body a map you want to read with your hands like braille, to learn, to lose yourself in every day. You hate that you don’t seem to have the words to reassure her that you love all of her, because of, and not despite, all the parts that make the whole of her. 

Time stretches, space contracts. You fall back into yourself. The blinding beacon in your arms slowly fades, Xavier’s warm bulk suddenly solid against you again. He sighs, sated. You can feel his rapid breathing expanding his strong lungs, his broad back against your chest. 

You drift together quietly in the peaceful aftermath of the love you just shared. The relief coursing through you is like slipping into warm water, soothing you in a way that brings tears to your eyes. You trust that the experience you just had wasn’t a lie—you were feeling Xavier’s true feelings as you reached the height of pleasure, together. You don’t believe that he’s capable of lying, of placating, as his soul melted into yours, twin stars bound together.

This is enough for you. An unexpected gift, a reassurance you never dared hope for. But Xavier isn’t done. He begins to speak, without you having to ask.

“Please don’t feel bad, on the days you’re tired. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be,” he says softly into the peaceful quiet, only the sounds of your breaths, his breaths filling the room. You don’t have the words to answer him right now, your pleasure-soaked body feeling heavier and heavier as you sink further back into awareness, the fatigue exacting its price for the energy you just expended loving the precious man in your arms. You just hold him a little tighter, nuzzling into his soft blond hair. He seems to receive the message as he slips his hand in yours and squeezes tightly.

After another endless moment, you hear him say almost inaudibly, “I love you.”

“I love you too, star boy,” you manage to whisper into his hair. You drift again, and the memory of your dream floats into your thoughts. You think that you could endure anything, even the end of the world, with this man in your arms.

[whats-another-song-contest]

Just jotting down my initial thoughts on melfest 2022 here, ‘cause they're doing roundabouts in my head. As a fan I am usually very much an enjoying-the-live-shows kind of person, as opposed to one who looks up any and all info they can get outside of them, so I'm unsure of how the points I'll bring up may fit into wider discourse on the matter.

If you watched mello last year you'll know that that was Christer Björkman's final year producing the show, and that this year he was succeeded by Karin Gunnarsson. Though she has been gradually taking over (I think) Björkman's responsibilities since 2017, this is her first year holding the full reigns of the show. That is the extent of my knowledge of the show’s running, but I would suppose that it is why we're seeing so many changes being made this year. These changes are the subjects of my musings.

I love it. Despite the many things that went wrong on Saturday—from rising rates of covid infections at a late stage in development forcing Oscar Zia to deliver the line "in school we were taught that the zero-eights sucked" while standing on stage in the middle of Globen (08 being the dialling code for Stockholm), to the cat-app-strophy, to our absolutely beloved train wreck that was Oscar Zia himself (who handled his role very gracefully despite the script being rendered useless within the first 15 minutes)—I think the show felt much more fresh and engaging than it has for several years.

So I ask myself: why? What was it that I liked so much, and how does it compare to the last few years?

At its core, what I think it comes down to is the stripping back of all unnecessary theatrics; a baring of the simple humanity which ultimately constitutes the core appeal of mello. Mello is “all of Sweden’s party”, and to fill that role it needs to be less intricately ritualised, high-concept science-fiction, and more of a plain and simple action-romcom, if that makes sense. In this way, I think that the technical difficulties and general mayhem of Saturday actually worked out to the show’s benefit rather than its detriment; professional prowess and prestige got to take a backseat in favour of the actual people thrown into the mad spectacle it is that we call Sweden’s most watched entertainment show.

Specifically I would point to a few different changes. Firstly: the removal of the reprise for the direct-to-final songs. While I love doing marathons of old mello and Eurovision performances on YouTube as much as the next fan, and I am sure the production teams are very proud of their work, the reprises have always felt like more of a chore than something worthwhile to me. It takes time for new music to weed its way into your brain and take root, to find some meaning beyond just the words, rhythm and melody. A first performance may [catch your attention, awaken a curiosity in you to pursue this as yet vague and undefined feeling], but the immediate repetition only serves to confront this dawning interest with the shallow, not-yet-meaningful performance. It invites a level of scrutiny and self-awareness in that crucial moment that I associate with anxiety rather than with relaxed Saturday night entertainment, and anyone else suffering from anxiety I think will agree that its main function is essentially to obscure any other emotion behind a wall of technical concerns. A chronic cringe, if you will, that is antithetical to forming any emotional connection to its target.

I also presume the removal of the reprise allows the performers themselves to freely enjoy the moment of their victory, without the pressure of a looming performance, and thus also better enabling them to share that joy with us viewers. It also frees up valuable broadcast time for new content rather than needlessly wearing out what is supposed to be the core aspect of the show. All around, I think it is a very positive change.

Secondly, we have the new voting procedure. In my book this is another positive, that while it makes the process perhaps less suspenseful theoretically (by the grand final we will know what 4 entries received the most votes in the heats), I think in practice (perhaps counterintuitively) it will turn out both much more engaging for the viewers, as well as more fair for all artists.

The simple fact of the matter is that all participants are not in mello necessarily to win it; many are there for the exposure the competition brings them as artists—do well at mello and suddenly you will be on people’s minds. By eliminating the favourite, people are forced to shift their attention to the remaining acts, which is both beneficial for the artists and more interesting for the viewers. It is, again, a less technically correct but more human system.

Finally, a more general point. General, because it is so vague I don’t really know how to define it, but if I had to try, I would call it the “out with the old, in with the new”. It is found in how I, correctly or not, felt there was a bit more time between the acts—more space to breathe and process what we were being shown, and thereby also find more things in it to enjoy. Like the show wasn’t already bored with its own premise and wanted to skip to only the new and interesting bits.

Then there was the overall flavour of the songs, which I think skewed more toward something you wouldn’t bat an eye hearing on the radio tomorrow (or TikTok, or wherever The Youths™ get their music nowadays) than many entries from the 2010s, which harken back more to the schlager songs of old (which, don’t get me wrong, I love them to bits, but as a genre it’s been more than exhaustively explored over the last few decades—there’s a reason mello is also dubbed “the schlager festival”).

In this point I would also include my feeling that there were fewer “mello is the dearest thing in all our hearts” moments. You know the ones, we’ve seen more than enough of them over the years, perhaps culminating in the announcement of the official Melodifestivalen Hall of Fame. In my view, these moments try to portray the show as something it is not: more sophisticated, more cohesive—they try to define the indefinable. The point of mello is that, ultimately, it is pointless. It has no inherent meaning, and so everyone gets to assign it their own. Everyone has an opinion on mello. It is the one time of year that us emotionally repressed Swedes get to say Fuck You to jantelagen and proclaim ourselves the undisputed experts on a subject that is fundamentally meaningless. Mello is supposed to be stupid, it’s supposed to be dumb and cheesy and light-hearted; not a dissonant mix of sincere and self-aware—this isn’t a marvel movie.

The reason “Love Love Peace Peace” and “That’s Eurovision” worked in Eurovision is that they lasted one year, then other countries made the competition their own and moved on. Perpetual self-reflection will only get you stuck in a rut, trying to define something that’s slipping further and further back into irrelevancy while the world moves on around you; it is not a recipe for continued development or connecting with people.

So to sum up I’m very glad with the changes I’ve seen so far, and am very hopeful for the coming shows. The show feels tangibly refreshed and refreshingly human, and I can’t wait to see more of our lovely hosts and exciting changes to the format. I hope this rambling glimpse into the wiring of my brain has been, if not enlightening then at least somewhat interesting, and finally I will leave you with this cursed fact:

A decade ago on the day before Saturday’s heat, the 4th of February 2012, the first semi of that year’s Melodifestivalen was held. If you know your mello herstory, you’ll probably recognise the entries that qualified for Andra chansen—Jag reser mig igen by Thorsten Flinck and Sean den förste Banan by Sean Banan. Possibly you’ll even remember Dead by April rocking your socks off with their straight-to-final entry Mystery?

What I can guarantee, though, is that you do remember the second act to receive the ticket which would bring her straight to the final in Globen, and ultimately all the way to Baku—yes, this was the day that twelve-year-old me, along with an at the time record-breaking 3,371,000 viewers, were first introduced to the phenomenon that was Euphoria, performed by Loreen: the song that went on to give Sweden our first Eurovision victory in 13 years, and arguably that redefined the entire contest.

Now I know what you’re thinking: this doesn’t sound cursed though, quite the opposite in fact? Well, just hold tight.

Because if when Britts think about Scandinavian drama, they think crime, we Swedes pull out our UNO reverse cards—we love us some Midsummer Murders, Vera and Endeavour. Right after mello, you’ll often find SVT broadcasts some British crime drama or other; this year it’s Showtrial, in 2020 it was A Confession—starring Martin Freeman.

Can you see where I’m going with this?

On that fateful Saturday night of February the 4th 2012, before I could leave the living room and head off to bed, on the TV screen I saw a bright blue pool illuminating three dark figures in the middle of some kind of confrontation. I didn’t know what it was at the time, but something about the Aesthetics™ of it captivated me, and I think this moment was crucial in forming what would, two years later, erupt into a fully fledged obsession.

And that, my friends, is how Melodifestivalen introduced me to BBC Sherlock, and why in my mind Euphoria’s performance will always be missing an ominous blue light coming from below. It is also another way that mello is the root of why I came back to this godforsaken website, after deleting and staying away for 4 years, and why I can never leave again. Where else will I ever find someone capable of grasping the weight this seemingly simple fact still holds in my heart and mind?

Stay strong out there. Peace out.

/ Maddie

(I literally just had 3 thoughts. How did this turn out as almost 2k words? Also, receipt for the cursed fact: X. No, I cannot believe it isn't a rickroll either. Click the SVT1 option on the far left and scroll down to 20:00, you'll see it's mello, and at 21:30, Sherlock.)

[thejenhardy]

Ever Wondered Why? Bedridden Mom Series part 26

Ever Wondered Why?

Do you ever wonder “why me?” 

Why do I have these symptoms?

Why am I the one who has to go through this?

Why can’t I do what it seems like everyone else can do?

Well, I don’t have the answer to the question “why me?” But I have the answer you need.

Ready? It’s…….Stop asking the question "Why me?" 

Start Asking Yourself How:

How can I make it better?

How can I do what I want to do?

How can I modify my favorite things to make them work for me?

Start by subscribing or following to Hardy Mom, I guarantee there will be more great and inspirational content to help you get where you want to go!

Some inspirational people who stopped asking "Why Me?"

Nikki Brown - A website designing, horse training, homeschooling, business coach, and legally blind inspiration 

https://coachnikkib.com/

Rita Abel - The grandmother who makes lego ramps: https://www.goodnet.org/articles/germanys-lego-grandma-builds-wheelchair-ramps-out-bricks

Dick Hoyt - The guy who carried his son, Rick,  on marathons and triathlons: https://www.cerebralpalsy.org/inspiration/athletes/dick-hoyt

Sam Mitchell - Host of the Autism Rocks & Rolls podcast, and international speaker promoting autism awareness and a personal friend of mine. https://sites.google.com/egreene.k12.in.us/autismrocksandrolls?pli=1

You can be like Nikki, Rita, Dick, and Sam. 

You can change the world, but you need to change your perspective first.

Stop asking “why me?” And start asking “how can I?”

Find out more in the episode

Thank you for joining me today! I'm having a blast creating the Bedridden Mom Series & it would be an honor to have you share these episodes with someone who has a chronic illlness, pain, or disability, or who loves someone with one of those. Thanks!

Want more? Go to HardyMom.com and you'll find hacks to simplify this chronic life, and ways to live well and enjoy your life again - with any health challenges.

I'd love to hear what you think about this episode! Send me a message at HardyMom.com/contact

Have a blessed week,

Jen

Check out this episode!

[akitsureishii]

What’s New Baby Blue

Awake to shooting pain in my legs..

Not from running a marathon but sleeping in a bed.

My pounding throbbing head.

Not from partying hard from a drunken night.

But from a aggravated individual wanting to always fight.

Literally tones of their aggravation or frustration climb up from the back of my shoulder blades increasing reaching my neck it grows then boom feels like my temples will burst.

Pulsating.

Pain every day when I open my eyes like its waiting to tell me good morning.

It’s gotten worse lately it’s been hitting hard for a few months.

Makes you feel like will it ever end.

Sometimes I can hardly bend over or stand up.

Oh but the moments I feel at my best maybe your worst.. this is just my course.

My journey began with debilitating headaches when I was in my late 20’s

To chronic pain issues in my early 30’s

To pain in my legs and my knees at 40..

I have had one surgery after another for this or that..

Thinking this maybe the rabbit in the hat..

The cure all to my woes.

I just want the pain to go.

To not come back..

At least for it to leave my legs and my head.

I don’t which of them is worse.

They take turns...

One will ease up then the other will jump into drive and take me for a burning throbbing aching ride.

Passengers with me through my day and my night..

They will be with till my minds light burns out for the day and sleep carries me away.

My solitude my few moments of to drift off where the pain can’t follow me.

The exhaustion from the day takes it all away.

Till it says good morning.

I’m not bitter maybe a little sad.

To incapacitated to work and do simple things taken for granted before..

Everything simple as a to do list around the house and going to town can be a tedious chore.

I embrace the days when the pain gives me a bit of break.

I go balls to the wall trying to shove everything into those moments I have needed to do but haven’t been able..

I feel so good on productive days their the best.

The days when me and my girls get to do something fun.. also the best ♥️

So much better than having to lay down and rest.

I like to move around and take walks.

When I feel like I am able to drive and my legs aren’t bothering me a trip to the gym is nice.

The good days have been few and far between in months..

Just been slumped.

Through all this God, my faith, my family, and my will keep me going.

Excuse my bemoaning before not that my pain is valid and doesn’t get to me at times because it most certainly does...

What keeps me going and makes me feel lighter and smile is counting my blessings one by one.. till I feel so content and at ease..

I can get through my day letting my blessings and my faith carry me through another day.

Still I rise and I rise

By LC

[emptymanuscript]

@whenshiphitsthefan​ Asked me a question:

Dumb and perhaps unanswerable question but what's it like writing 3k+ words in a day? Even on my most productive days I can sit for 8 hours and do nothing but write obsessively without even stopping to eat but I only have like 1-2k words down when I finish. Obviously there's no wrong way to write blah blah blah but I don't get how even when the words are flowing for me they come at a fraction of my typing speed.

My aggressively worded, long ass OPINION is below the cut.

Ok, first, this is a Perceptive question. Your spotting a big and poorly communicated issue. It’s just embarrassing because everyone who gives advice games the system. We all end up looking like we do 10k an hour 10 hours a day 10 days a week. It’s not a good system. Most of us have actually figured that out. But we’re also not sure how to then get people to keep listening to us here when there is an infinitely nicer sounding lie over there. So we just kinda keep misrepresenting ourselves. It’s the social media effect.

Is it an unanswerable question though… mmm… halvsies. I was reminded recently of one of my more personally influential writing teachers, Eileen Workman, a wonderful, magnificently giving woman, who I have sadly not seen in forever. One of the best tidbits of wisdom I got from her was, while there are no 'right' answers, there are always a multitude of wrong ones. Now it’s easy because we writers are often a pretty negative lot, to focus on that last part. There are a huge number of wrong answers to any writing question. Oh, dear, how can you find what you need in that swamp. A little harder is to look at the first part and have that negative voice pop up in your head again, ‘There’s no right answer? So there’s no answer?” And no, that’s not what it means. It means there is no single, one and only, answer. But that’s very different. There are answers, there are answers that are right for YOU, and you get to pick and choose which answer or answers best fit your needs at this time. There is such a multitude of wrong answers precisely because the absolutely right answer for someone else can still be the absolutely wrong answer for you. I don’t know you or your work better than you do. So I can’t actually tell you what to do. Though I’m full of myself so I will try. All I can actually do is say this is what I know and this what I experience, and I hope they help you think about your similar problem.

Believe it or not, putting in my score of 4380 words that provoked this question in the nanowrimo website, I put that wobbly mouthed frowny face as my attitude toward it. For two reasons. The reason I wrote 4380 words is because I was behind, and I have now not completed that nano on time. And I am already a day behind on the official one. Which embarrasses me considering how many nanos I have “won”, it’s like being a marathon runner, signing up for the iron man, and not being able to clear the first mile. I not only should be able to do the work, I KNOW I can because I have done it many times before. And yet, I am having lots of trouble. Because I’m writing in this bang-bust cycle of nothing and then alot right now, my aim with the hope of hitting 5000 words.

And that’s the real answer for me. What does it feel like to write 3K+ words a day: an annoyance that I write so little and strong desire that I wrote 10K+ words a day instead. It’s not about how many words you write. I used to feel the same way about 5K. I used to feel the same way about 3K. Used to be 1K. It’s about how happy you are with your fulfillment of your own expectations.

Back in 2006, in graduate school on an entirely different continent from my birth for the purposes of a degree in the teaching and practice of creative writing, I was firm in what I thought was my reasonable expectation that I would shortly be a published author, that I would launch in a career in that, and could leverage that writing career into a teaching job at my alma mater, so I could teach all the little college brats like myself who wanted to become authors AND do it better than I felt I was taught myself. That was my expectation. And at low levels it still is my expectation.

Now, in 2020, with chronic pain, medicated for mental health issues that have landed me in the mental hospital twice, living 15 minutes from my alma mater where the one and only creative writing teacher is now one of my first teachers, who I have been holding a grudge against since 1992 because of how disgusted I am by the way he teaches, I am a little dissatisfied. He’s got the job I want and I’m not going to get it. And I hear about him teaching it all the time because I’m connected to the writing community here, and he is all there is. While I am teaching nobody. And have one short story and one self published novel to my name. I wrote the first draft of the sequel to my first novel, now more than six years ago and I’m pretty much giving up on it.

From the point of view of 2006, every time I produce something as pathetic as ONLY 3k+ words, it’s a slap in the face reminder of how little I have accomplished and how much I have failed in my life goals.

Which I don’t say to say, ‘Hey, feel sorry for me.’ That’s not the point. I say it because I suspect that this is an exaggeration of the same basic emotional tug of war that a tragic number of writers are going through. It is worth questioning do you have an equivalent of my 2006 expectations. It may not be as a big or dramatic. It may be as simple as ‘real writers write a novel every x amount of time by writing y amount of words every single day.’ And then what’s your reality? What are you actually living with? Was that part of your expectation? Can the number of words you are producing live up to that expectation? Will a higher number of words live up? How much higher? Are you sure it’s only that high?

Because my 2006 judgements and expectations, 10k an hour or whatever won’t cut it. Because the daily word count is what I am judging by. It is my measure. But what I’m trying to judge is only tangentially related to word count. My 2006 expectations are of a life I don’t have.

If I wrote a million words a day, it would just drive me nuts that I still wasn’t writing enough to make a difference. How much do I have to write? And I know that answer for myself, even if I usually look away. It is an impossible numer. It’s when you add every positive integer together and get -12. Because that’s what the impulse is really about, trying to get the life I expected of myself in 2006 when it’s 2020.

Is it the same for you? It may not be. We’re all different. But I wouldn’t be surprised if you had some expectation of being a “better” writer than you are already. Of being more “productive” than you are. Of already being an author. All those things are things you can’t ever write enough to fix. Because the word count is the wrong measure.

So, let’s take a step back. Farther back. In my aggressively held opinion, one of the best books on Creative Writing has nothing to do with Creative Writing. It’s called Start With Why by Simon Sinek. He’s got a Ted Talk that is essentially the same content, just less examples. His method is very simple. He calls it the golden circle. Three concentric rings. In the center circle is WHY. Why are you doing what you’re doing? In the middle circle around the why is HOW. How are you doing what you’re doing? In the outer ring is WHAT. What are you doing?

What you’re doing is writing. How you’re doing it is trying to hit a certain word count. Which may or may not be the way to go. Why you’re doing it… that’s usually real complicated. Took me years to figure out. Sinek’s critique is that most everything goes from the outermost ring inward. While in contrast, the most successful companies, which is his area of focus, go from the inside out.

You want to write a story. Cool. You’ll do that by writing to the point that you don’t eat and you don’t take any breaks and that will get you the biggest word count which will be the most amount of work in the time available. Because… You want to write a story. Which is cool. But it’s also a tautology.

Instead of that, I’d like to give you an example. Let’s take imaginary writer Bela. Bela hasn’t had a great life.

Bela believes that sharing her life story will help others who have suffered the same trials and tribulations but have no voice to speak it. She wants to speak in defense of those who can’t defend themselves. She wants to be the voice for the voiceless. That’s WHY she wants to writer her life story.

Ok, so HOW is Bela going to do that? Is she just going to scribble down her life story and then run down to the photocopy joint and spend her life savings on copies and then just jet around town tossing the manuscript copies out her window. We all know the answer is no. But WHY is it no?

Because, that doesn’t meet the goals of her WHY. What are her goals?

Sharing

Showing her trials

Talking to people who have suffered

Giving others a voice

Defending the defenseless

Speaking about things that others won’t or can’t

That’s six goals and none of them are necessarily writing. Writing is how she is choosing to ACHIEVE her goals. It is one choice out of many ways of HOW she can fulfill her WHY. AND they are exactly what she’s going to look into to figure out HOW to do that AS THE PROCESS of achievement.

How can she share? Well, that might be about tone. She might focus on writing in a style that shows we’re all in this together. Or it might be about pursuing a particular outlet for publication or/and partnership. Such as working together with NAMI to be able to speak to the numbers and types of mental issues that come from her types of previous trials. Doing that is not taking time away from her writing, it is acting in concert with it. Her word count would be less of a measure than her ability to express those words in the way she wants.

I’m just going to skip ahead to the last one because I suspect you get it. And the last one is best for the next topic:

How does she speak about things others can’t? That’s hard. That means she has to talk about things that she doesn’t want to talk about. That means she has to relive traumas she would rather shove down and ignore enough that she can bring people into the experience with her. Maybe even because of that.

Is she going to write that 8 hours a day, 7 days a week, without taking breaks, without eating? Plunging ahead just to get it out and done and over with?

No. For several reasons.

First, she can’t. If she’s digging that deep into trauma, that schedule is going to giver her a mental lapse. Part of her self care will need to be figuring out a sustainable schedule. Because she’s not in a sprinting race. Look back at what she wants to do. You see a WHY like that and you know it’s not about one day of writing. It’s not even one book. This is a lifetime endeavor. So it’s a lifetime that has to be figured out so she won’t burn out. Each bit of writing is just HOW she is dealing with these issues this time. So her health, for the purposes of all the times to come, is more important.

Two, even if she’s writing a happy scene in her story, she’s not a brain in a vat. There’s no friendly scientist helpfully pumping constant nutrients into her tub. If you don’t take care of your body’s needs, your capabilities, of any and all kinds, deteriorate. When you’re tired, you don’t think as fast. When you’re hungry you don’t think as clearly. When you’re engaged in long monotonous tasks, you don’t pay as close attention.

For you, it might be interesting to measure your word count per time period. If you aren’t on a sudden jag of inspiration, you might very well do more words per .5 hours when it is earlier in the day than at the end, when you are tired and hungry. Looking at the total word count is only looking at the average of your total output. So if you do very well at some points and very poorly at others, it looks exactly the same as if you just did an even string all the way along, which isn’t necessarily true at all.

Most people have specific times when they write more and better than other times. Most people also don’t figure out when that is. Myself, I’ve got the easiest version up. I can figure out on a monthly basis which day of the week I do the most writing and which day I do the best. It does not shock me at all that my busiest day of the week, Wednesday, is my least productive day. I have plenty of hours still to write on Wednesdays but my stress and other difficulties eat into the time I have and I can’t write as much or as fast because my mind is always half on the other stuff I have to do that day. I hate Wednesdays. Even though I technically could write as much, I won’t. Because all that cuts into my capabilities.

But this extends deeper than a day. It extends to hours of the day. Sometimes even minutes. It extends to what you have going on. It extends to how long it has been since you have taken a break. It extends to if you are hungry and definitely to if you have low blood sugar. It extends to you being tired. All of that contributes to lower word count numbers.

That’s not saying don’t work at the bad times. Work whenever you like, however you like. It does mean that the more you have going against you in a given writing period, the lower you have to set your word count expectations.

If you have been writing all day without a break and without food, you have to expect that your word count per minute will be significantly lower than at the opposite end of the day. That will bring your average down. So it’s either: don’t measure them equally, or do everything you can to mitigate the slow down.

This is relatively minor when it’s just this one time, to make up. But for most writers, that’s actually when most of their writing is happening: that “one” time to “make up.” And if that is the case, then it’s just a lie. It’s not a bad one but that is what it is. And what really has to be done is to treat that as the norm, and take care of yourself accordingly.

The first words out of Orson Scott Card to us going to his Uncle Orson’s Writer’s bootcamp were: “Exercise or Die.” Because it’s the same thing. Not metaphorically, just is. We don’t take care of ourselves because we don’t want to. We don’t have time. We can take care of ourselves when we’re caught up. It’s just this once. Nope. Because it’s not catching up. It’s that people choose “I want to be a writer,” as their WHY and the only way to fulfill that is to write, which is real trouble if you need to sustain your body while writing.

I know for my body, I’ve been in physical therapy for some years now. That’s not normal. But what my therapist keeps trying to hammer into my head is. What we, as writers, do with our bodies is not natural to our bodies and it does real damage. My physical therapist pretty much does say to me every other time that I have to get up. I can’t sit there for hours at a stretch. At least every 40 minutes you have to take a break, otherwise there will be physical repercussions.

That’s one of the reasons that the Pomodoro method is so popular and effective. Because it forces the body to move every thirty minutes. Not as convenient for the brain but the brain is part of the body, not the other way around.

The brain, as much as the rest of the body, needs food, exercise, and rest. Just to survive, let alone thrive. And we would say that to anybody except ourselves. Somehow we, as writers are exempt from self care. Yeah, right.  

Look back at Bela’s list. Writing isn’t the most important necessity, only the final one. You must write to have written. But you must sustain your capabilities in order to write. If you want to produce the most that you are capable of writing, the body must be maintained and cared for. You must be maintained and cared for. The more your body decays, the harder it is for your brain to work at peak efficiency. So if nothing else will get you to do it, do it for your word count. The healthier you are the closer you’ll be to your best. The less healthier you are, the more you will struggle to get those words down. And this is a cumulative effect.

Finally… Bella won’t go on that writing tear because she just doesn’t have to.

To be completely hypocritical given how much time I spend writing, nobody has to write like that. And it’s actually not the best way to write according to SCIENCE! Though to be a bit Republican about it, fuck the scientific establishment, you do you. And YOU can do your own science.

There are a lot of ways to write. There is no right answer to which is best. There are a lot of wrong answers to which is best for you. But you can figure those out. And among the possible right answers you can pull together and invent any number of strategies.

For myself, the most I have ever written in a single day was staying up all night in high school once to finish a short “novella” for the annual high school literary magazine. I wrote about 20 pages. So that was good. And then I didn’t write for three months. So that clearly wasn’t sustainable.

I did write for about seven years with the maxim of EVERY day. Better one sentence than nothing. And the longer it went, the more and more often it was just one sentence. Until I started talking to my therapist about it and she suggested I go into the mental hospital and not write anything for a while.

The most effective method in terms of word count per time for me, I honestly hate. It’s that same pomodoro method. Write for a short sprint, usually about 30 minutes, and when the alarm goes off, you stop. Period. No ifs. No ands. No buts. In the middle of ultimate inspiration you get your butt up and go take a break for a dead minimum of ten minutes.

Doing about six of those a day can pretty reliably bump up my numbers. But again, I hate it. It requires more self discipline than I usually have. It just has the advantage that I can’t get overused to what I’m doing or get as tired.

The other advantage it has is limits. Tasks expand to fill the time you have. You can give yourself too little time to write. You will not be able to meet your goals. For writing, you cannot give yourself too much time. You will just write and write and write until your time is up unless you’re already at the end. The Pomodoro method short cuts that. It teaches your brain that you don’t have all day. You have 30 minutes. That’s it. And your brain starts to respond to that and shove out more words at a time in an attempt to stretch the content instead.

But that’s timing, and honestly, that’s not what I usually find drives out the words. Timing and timers are great but it does come back to that WHY. Just adjusted for the moment. When I write, on the days I do well, I know why I am writing the particular section I am writing, I know how I want it to come out, and I know what general actions I want to happen. That combined with forcing myself to consider myself first and other things, like my word count, second are what really pushes me occasionally into the 5k+ realm in a day.

So how much are you pantsing and how much are you plotting? Would plotting more before you write help you to say more because you’d have goal posts?  Experiment. Be your own guinea pig. It might be the opposite. You might be plotting too much and you need to worry less about hitting these abstract goal points and more about just letting the words roll and feeling the emotion of the moment.

If I know that part of WHY I am writing Ashla & Bogan is that I want to actually demonstrate a friendship between Anakin Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi, so Obi Wan is being honest that Anakin was a good friend. Then HOW I want to do that today is to write about Anakin Skywalker trying to save Obi Wan Kenobi’s life by stealing him out of a medbay and racing him around the hospital just ahead of Count Dooku. It’s not a random chase. The necessary events have to be based around my central WHY, which confines me and points me the same as the Pomodoro. I know a lot about the basic structure of WHAT beats I actually want to write and what their goal is before I ever start typing. And as I type, the beats that need to flow in next generally come to me because I know, at the core, what I’m up to.

The less I have to come up with on the fly, the faster I go. When writing papers for school, which went faster? Having the research done and selected materials ready for access before starting the paper? Or writing the paper and then grabbing for materials for research in progress?

Fiction is not that different. You’re inventing the materials but if you are inventing in the middle of writing, you are devoting a lot of energy to that instead of just on how to communicate what you’re inventing. And that will slow you down. That’s why people’s speed usually improves moving towards more plotting instead of towards more pantsing.

Everyone’s mileage varies but you only have one pool of energy for the whole you. So two tasks concurrently usually slows people down, exactly the same as a computer. If I have to imagine up on the fly what Count Dooku is going to say, even in principle, when he catches up, then I have to pause and figure that all out in the moment. Even if I can keep writing, it’s not going to be as fast as if I just typed up the speech I already imagined. So, something to think about.

Also Improv skills can also help. I am really good with rolling with it. One of my favorite tools is, “Yes…”. Can Anakin outrun Count Dooku? Yes… and… Count Dooku can cheat and cut through the wall to catch up. Can Anakin beat Count Dooku? Yes… but… he can’t do it with a lightsaber. So can he draw on the Force to do it? Yes… the dark side. It cuts off about half of my possible decisions and makes me think faster with the added advantage that it naturally presents itself as point - counterpoint which works well in written fiction. So that might help you out as well.

And finally… the really terrible classist item that I can’t make fit anywhere else and is unfortunately 100% true. You have to spend money for a high word count if you want one. Not necessarily a lot but some is necessary.

There is just no way around this, you only have a choice of how you spend the money. And the hope that you have already spent it in some way. The people who venerate Kerouac and his ream of butcher paper and typewriter or that all you need are a pencil and paper are fooling themselves and fucking lying to you. The world has moved on. Not from the typewriter but from all the other people whose name doesn’t get on their name on the cover who made up for that style of production. Those people have all lost their jobs and consequently, we have lost the ability to rely on them to make up for our own troubles.

The barrier to entry for just starting writing is nearly non existent. That far, and no farther, they are right.

The barrier to regular continuation of writing is fairly high because we’re still not evolved to do it. Story yes. Writing no. We are not designed for this activity. And you have to compensate for the fact that you are destroying your body if you want to keep it up.

If you want to write and you want to write a lot, your body is going to suffer. We do a very different exercise but it’s the same thing in principle as athletics as a career. Thankfully, we can cheat in some ways that athletes can’t. Relatively modest increases in pricing can result in significant gains. And relative increases help us on similar levels to all or nothing investments. Which isn’t true for athletes so much.

The more you invest, the better off you are AND that doesn’t mean you have to invest a yacht’s worth. It can be that one sentence sort of thought. Just one sentence, just one way of taking care of yourself, is good enough to start with. Just keep doing it as you can and build what you have to build.

Myself, I have Scrivener, Word, Textedit and several other writing programs that I don’t use anywhere near as much as those three. Luckily, no one has to have Scrivener, and you can write in anything you like as long as it works for you. Doesn’t matter as long as it makes you comfortable. Luckily you can also put off Word until you are done with a story and actually feel like submitting it.

But if you are going to submit in any professional way, you MUST have Word. Period. Not an option.

Luckily, Word also has the advantage that it is one of the best programs for holding large document files. It knows how to work with novel sized data in ways that pretty much everything else doesn’t. That’s a perk. Take those where you can get them. Until you need Word, find the program that you love and stick with that. If it’s free, great. If it’s not… consider it a work related expense. Because it is. You need to spend that money to make your work quality. Because discomfort in your access to the document will slow you down. Always. Think of it like glasses. You need glasses in order to read, if you need glasses. You need a program you like in order to write to keep it all clear in front of you. This isn’t an option this is a need. Treat it that way. If you have any issues with your current program, take time to see if another program works better. That will let you go faster.

You also need something for hands, wrists, arms, back, etc.

I have a Herman Miller Aeron Chair. It was a gift. They are good. I don’t know that they are so much better than lower priced competitors that it is worth paying more than 1K for. It’s a chair. A good chair. A 1K+ chair… that I don’t know. I suspect you can spend a quarter of that and get something perfectly adequate in exactly the same ways. But you do need something. If I’m sitting on my bed instead, about 3 hours into the writing sprint, the ache in my back starts taking precedence over the ache in my soul to write. So, you need to find a way to stop that. It’s especially good to stop it before you notice it. Because you will start to slow down before you are consciously aware of the discomfort. Absolute best is to make yourself comfortable years before it rises to the level of consciousness. Because all this stuff has cumulative effect. One day of aches is bad, but sitting the way that will give you aches once your body gets older has a much greater and more painful effect. It’s what the teachers have always said, sit up straight or it’s going to stick that way. To which my response was ‘Fuck you,’ and now it’s stuck that way.

I have a Kinesis Advantage keyboard. Not the Kinesis Advantage 2, the first one. Because that’s how long they last. I’ve heard people say that they have had their Maltrons, (which the Kinesis is the cheap American knockoff of) for multiple decades. I’ve had mine right around a decade. It was and remains the best $350 I have ever spent - or the best $3 a month I’ve spent, paid up front, for the last decade. The reason I physically CAN type as fast as I do is the Kinesis. Because most of the little aches and pains of typing are gone. I can type thousands of words a day, every day, for months, without pain. But once you get carpal, your days are numbered. Every tiny little strain eats away at your body and makes you slower. It starts fast and it accelerates. It takes me longer to redevelop symptoms than it does to cure them with my good keyboard but there’s no point really. Much better is to never develop any symptoms in the first place. Because I cannot recommend hunting and pecking while wearing a wrist brace while it all still hurts.

Thankfully, from what I hear, there is a great spectrum of effectiveness for keyboards. You can spend less and still be in good shape. But if there is one bit of money that is going to help your typing speed, it’s forking over for a good ergonomic keyboard. You just CAN go faster on an ergonomic keyboard once you adjust than you can on a regular keyboard. And it keeps that wrist brace off.

Also, not necessarily monetary, usually more about time, look into how you type. I mostly touch type. Mostly. But I do better if I also look. There are also alternate layouts. Colmak actually has studies showing that it is faster. I have a keyboard overlay for Colmak but I never use it because I can’t adjust to it so far. So, it’s always looking for what works for you. The Qwerty touch type experience may not actually be best for you.

OR there’s 10K an hour’s essential tip: buy a microphone and Dragon Naturally Speaking. Because almost no one can type 10k an hour, no matter how prepared you are, or how good your keyboard, but a lot of people can talk at 10k an hour with some aggressive practice. I’ve done that. My results are middling at best. I think in tandem with my typing enough that I feel like I pause too much to make it worth it. But your mileage may vary. I’ve also been able to just use what came with my Mac almost as well. So it’s definitely not zero money but you might be able to get away with money you’ve already spent. Or not, as it pleases you. I guess it more likely that most people will not reach 10k an hour. Most will not reach 10k a day. Just ever. And holding yourself to something you can’t do, just because someone else can do it, is an unfair comparison between the two of you and an unfair expectation of your body. Find your maximum and build around it.

But also, most people have no reason to hit 10k or whatever. We’re not writing business proposals for the meeting on monday. We’re mostly taking time out of our lives to create something that has not existed before we tried to cram it into existence onto a page. That takes time. Same way making the lightbulb took time. You can’t go as fast if you are doing more or are having to loop back around again and again. Or as is most common: both. Writers are doing too much work to go at their top speed in other endeavors.

For instance, I wrote the first 4k of this in noticeably less time than it takes me to do half that word count in a piece of fiction. Because I don’t have to make any of it up. I don’t have to imagine it. This is just what’s already in my head. So it’s easier. Faster. Because it is a different activity. I can’t judge the two by the same standard.

Because this is transcription, really. I’m just putting down what I already think, more or less. Trying to create at the same time is another activity which takes from the same pool of energy and also takes time. So I have to go slower. Inevitably. And then there’s the reason I love Nanowrimo. While we’re trying to do two tasks that slow us down, we try to add a third one in there, elegance. We want to make sure that it doesn’t just go but that it also looks good doing it. Leave that for editing and you will go faster. I am a deep fan of the double parenthesis. “She ((however you move the stick shift to make it go faster)) and sped off into the night.” Or “He ((did something cool with his hair)) and winked.” Because the double parenthesis never occurs in regular writing and I can just search for it, and anything I put in it is an editorial note that means I never have to get a word right or interupt my flow to look up a detail. And if it’s a first draft, especially a Nano, I don’t need the right word, I need just whatever I need to know to figure it out later. If I even do that much work. When I’m being good ;) my shifting the time costs away from the moment of writing, creating before and editing after, I can do more writing in a given moment.

And yeah, that’s about what I currently know about it. Though I am always learning if I can. It comes down to:

Making sure you are measuring what you want to measure. And, if you are not. reconsidering your measure and measurements.

Have in your head specifically WHY you are doing what you’re doing.

Take care of your body.

Try not to write at the expense of your body, even at select times.

Try different schedules. Keep track of which schedules produce the best results.

Adjust your ratio of Pantsing to Plotting, even in specific scenes and sprints.

Spend some money to take better care of your body and your writing than you can yourself.

Treat creation, transcription, and elegance as three separate tasks. If you have to do all three at once, it’s going to take you longer than any of them on their own.

AND: Remember to not beat yourself up over any of this because all of it is hard. Treating it as easy is another way to delay yourself by devoting some of your limited energy to conflict with your own psyche. What you do is what you do. When it is done, it is done. If you decide you want to do better or more, work out a plan for experimentation going forward instead of focusing on how the last time wasn’t good enough.

I hope something in here helps ups how you are feeling about your productivity. It’s all opinion. And everyone is different, as you say. Experiment and see what works.

[nelliievance]

Is Cardio Useless Or Harmful? Will It Make You Fat?

Lots of Cardio Makes Your Muscles Waste Away and Makes You Get Fat? Hmmm… what about “Ultramarathon Man” Dean Karnazes?

The “Too Much Cardio is Harmful” Controversy

I promised, in my recent post about shorter more intense training, to talk more about controversies over excess cardio. Much of the discussion is about too much volume of intensity, which can be harmful to the cardiovascular system, leading to conditions like AFIB. as I covered here and here. But there’s another level to the discussion, authors who argue that even lower intensity activity like jogging are useless or even harmful. You can find this all over the internet, just search for “cardio and muscle wasting” or “cardio makes you fat”. Some of it comes from pretty well known strength and conditioning coaches so I’m not inclined to dismiss it. The argument is not that all cardio is useless, high intensity interval training is usually recommended, but steady state cardio is considered at best time-inefficient, or even useless or harmful.

This debate is relevant for the large percentage of people exercising that are interested in body transformation (fat loss along with retaining or gaining muscle). Even people who think their main objective is losing weight probably really want body transformation. For this purpose, those who are not fans of cardio argue that resistance training is the most important type of exercise. Cardio at a higher intensity, such as high intensity interval training, may play a useful role, but many say that the typical cardio you see people doing, such as jogging, is low or medium intensity steady state cardio and is not useful, at least for body transformation.

I actually agree with the priority order of resistance training first, followed closely by high intensity cardio. I avoid medium intensity steady state cardio (MISS) as I’ve discussed here. My main goal in doing low intensity steady state (LISS) is enjoyment and relaxation, but I also feel it has value for fat loss. So whether or not LISS cardio is a good idea is the main point of contention. There are two main arguments to support the view that it is not useful or even harmful.

Excess cardio can cause the level of cortisol to be chronically higher in your body. This puts your body in a catabolic state which over time can lead to muscle wasting.

Concurrent cardio and strength training can lead to an interference effect I described here, so that you gain less muscle than you would have if you did strength training alone.

The potential for muscle wasting leads some to claim that “cardio makes you fat”, because losing muscle slows your metabolism, so you burn less calories and get fat. But as we’ll see, significant muscle loss only occurs when doing a lot of cardio, so I think this claim is exaggerated.

What The Science Says

There are two main pieces of scientific evidence. The first is that if you do cardio training concurrently with strength training, you will gain less muscle than if you do strength training alone: Cardio can interfere with muscle gain. It does not prevent it, it slows it down [1]. There is a really good discussion (with references) here about concurrent cardio and resistance training, which gives tips on how to minimize the interference. In that discussion, I learned the interesting fact that the interference effect is worse for running than low-impact cardio modes like cycling, because the eccentric contractions of running causes microdamage to muscles.

The second piece of evidence is that long cardio events, like running, cause levels of cortisol (sometimes referred to as the “stress hormone”) to rise, for example cortisol levels rise significantly over baseline values during a marathon and remain so for a few hours afterwards [2]. Cortisol, in excess, has a catabolic effect and can lead to muscle loss [3]. So chronically doing an excess amount of cardio could lead to muscle loss. But excess seems to be routinely doing at least the level of training endurance athletes like marathon runners do, which can lead to longer term elevation of cortisol [4]. It is a little more complicated however, because the intensity level matters. I suspect many of the runners with elevated cortisol levels may do too much MISS training. Evidence of this is a study showing ultramarathoners not to have elevated cortisol runners [5]. They run longer distances than marathon runners, so if it were simply a case of “too much cardio”, their cortisol levels should be worse. The difference is that ultrarunners typically train at lower intensities than marathoners. And the average runner doing 30 to 60 minutes a day of LISS cardio almost certainly does not have chronically elevated cortisol.

So the two claims made above are supported by science, but only for excess cardio, and the amount that constitutes excess is quite a bit.

Common-sense Arguments

Another argument that you’ll typically see compares sprinters and marathoner runners, and asks “which body type you’d rather have”? Here is the great Usain Bolt compared to the current world record holder in the marathon, the amazing Eliud Kipchoge, who also informally ran a marathon is less than 2 hours. The attempt does not count as a world record because of the way it was paced. By the way I was saddened to hear recently that Usain Bolt has come down with the coronavirus, and I wish him a complete and speedy recovery:

The rebuttal to the sprinter vs. marathoner argument is that there is genetics involved here, as well as “selection bias“. Eluid was more slender to begin with, which made him more likely to become a marathoner. Usain was bigger and more muscular to begin with, which made him more likely to become a sprinter. But I’ve seen at least one counter example: In Mark Sisson’s book Primal Blueprint, he describes two young identical twins from Germany. One decides to become a bodybuilder, and the other an endurance runner, and the former ends up much more muscular and the latter more slender. I must admit I sometimes motivate myself to try harder at resistance training or high intensity training by telling myself “if you want to look like a sprinter, train like a sprinter”.

Is it that cardio is bad for you, or neglecting resistance training is bad for you?

A lot of people have a single sport they love, and other physical activities are more of a chore for them. If your cup of tea is something like running, hiking, biking, you may want to spend a lot of your leisure time doing what you enjoy and not spend enough time strength training. Note that all the examples I gave are leg-dominated activities. It helps if your sport is something that uses upper body muscles a lot, like triathlon, swimming, rowing, kayaking, etc. For this reason I have intentionally cultivated enjoyable activities that use the upper body, including canoe paddling, kayaking, and cross country skiing.

But even that is not enough, resistance training is still vitally important for health as we age. A good example of an endurance athlete that includes strength training is ultramarathoner Dean Karnazes, who has achieved crazy things like running 50 marathons in 50 states on 50 consecutive days. As seen in the photo at the top, “all that cardio” has not made his muscles waste away or made him get fat. But I’m sure the strength training helped a lot. The only specific cases of muscle wasting I’ve heard about are from people during ultra-endurance events where refeeding was difficult. For example, Scott Jurek lost almost 20 lbs (about 9 kgs) when he set the record for the Appalachian trail, but that was exercising for many hours for over 46 days, and he talks about the problems taking in enough calories in his book North. Since he was lean to begin with, this had to include a lot of muscle loss. I also recently read Mimi Anderson’s fascinating account Beyond Impossible: From Reluctant Runner to Guinness World Record Breaker, of her setting the Guinness world record for running JOGLE (running the length of Great Britain north to south- John O’Groats to Land’s End). She lost a stone (14 lbs or 6.4 Kg). most of it muscle, during the 12-day run. But she again talks in detail of having trouble taking in (or keeping down) enough calories. In contrast, Dean Karnazes is renowned for his ability to eat on the run. In his book Ultramarathon Man, he described running through the night and having a pizza delivery guy meet him with a pizza. How do you eat an entire pizza while running? You role it up like a burrito!

What about athletes whose sport is leg-dominant, but who still need considerable upper body strength to excel? A good example is cycling sprinters who do stage races like the Tour de France. They need plenty of stamina to get over several mountain passes, just to stay in the pack so they’ll be in contention for the final sprint. But they need upper body strength for the sprint, so in addition to hours of cardio per day of training, they do a lot of resistance training. Consider Thor Hushovd of Norway, nicknamed the “God of Thunder”:

All the cardio he does clearly has not caused him to lose muscle mass (or get fat).

Excess cortisol and the cardio-strength interference effect are not the only health negatives claimed for cardio. Other claims are inflammation and free radical production (discussed here). But again I think these claims would only be valid for doing cardio in excess or doing too high a volume of moderate to high intensity training.

I recently cut back on my volume of cardio because of the bad air we were experiencing. But lately the air’s been fine again, so I’ve gone back to my enjoyable long rides and hikes. But I do them at LISS pace, And I am sticking with making sure I give my strength training and high intensity work its proper priority, even if it is in shorter sessions.

References

Wilson, J, et al, “Concurrent training: a meta-analysis examining interference of aerobic and resistance exercises”, J Strength Cond Res, 2012 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22002517/ ).

Cook, N, et al, , “Changes in adrenal and testicular activity monitored by salivary sampling in males throughout marathon runs”, Eur J Appl Physiol Occup Physiol, 1986.

Tataranni P, et al, “Effects of glucocorticoids on energy metabolism and food intake in humans”,  Am J Physiol, 1996.

Skoluda, N, et al, “Elevated hair cortisol concentrations in endurance athletes”, Psychoneuroendocrinology, 2012.

Deneen, W, and Jones, A, “Cortisol and Alpha-amylase changes during an Ultra-Running Event”, Int J Exerc Sci, 2017.

Is Cardio Useless Or Harmful? Will It Make You Fat? published first on https://steroidsca.tumblr.com/

[year-of-the-neko]

I’ve recently started my marathon on Boruto and I realized a lot...

As a someone majoring in psychology and watching this show out of whim and the long lost Naruto fanaticism, it is, to some extent, painful.

A father coming home late, tired from overwork. Then the mother inevitably having to bear through the upbringing of the children…

Ugh. This reminds me of nothing else but how I was brought up.

Then the father, tired from overwork, [possibly] just snaps on his children when they demand his time. What else is there.

He's already causing emotional abandonment. Then he might subsequently result to verbal and emotional abuse.

Dammit Naruto. I cam't blame you. But I know this story isn't written so you get to be a bad guy.

My conscious self can tell, that it isn’t Naruto’s fault if he has no father to social reference to. He has no one to imitate to. He has a career he dreamed of when he was young, and that dream made him survive through such horrendous childhood. To dream big to become Hokage so that people acknowledge him... that was his coping mechanism against such an unjust world. But I get how painful it is to Boruto’s part.

Some children would rather suffer in poverty than be emotionally neglected, much as some children would want to fulfill their material wants because they can’t stand poverty. I get it. No one is the same. No one can be contented.

But let me reiterate so many times. It’s just... painful. I just empathize without control and I don’t know why so many times for the last 12 episodes, I’ve always felt the urge to cry.

He is the Hokage, yes. He has responsibilities. But he is also Boruto’s father.

If you are the grown up, wouldn’t be a shame that you let a small child adjust to your circumstances? Let along your own children? No matter what circumstances you’ve got?

It’s like as if Naruto committed the same “mistake” Minato committed.

Which leads to the existential thoughts: “I did not choose to be born”. “I don’t want to commit the same mistakes my parents made”. And all those rebellious phase catchphrases.

But in this modern era, do we really want children growing up with overworked, overfatigued parents who snap at them, verbally abusing them and demanding so much of them? Because as far as I know, it is the contributing factor why mental illnesses are on the rise. Because mental illnesses are usually chronically developed by the environment, most notably through dysfunctional families.

I know we know better. That’s why I wish we could be different.

Not that I was referring entirely to Naruto. I just remembered everything I felt as I grew up, isolating myself because if my parents don’t get what I feel, will my peers also even? In fact the real reason I started learning Japanese was tobe able to articulate my negative thoughts without people understanding AND misunderstanding my thoughts.

Lastly, that is the reason why you don’t marry at a young age. You will find yourself craving for that something you feel like you’re missing because you have a family, and you have a responsibility. You will look for your old self, indulged with so many self-fulfilling activities, but you find yourself you cannot indulge on them anymore because of your family. And I feel like that’s where some parents feel resentment towards their family, specifically their children.

Or am I overthinking things?

[franklinsam-blog1]

Can CBD Really Help With Anxiety?

There’s been lots of talk (and increasing evidence to support it) about how cannabis can be a helpful tool in treating anxiety, depending on the dosage and timing. But CBD, the non-psychoactive cannabinoid compound found within cannabis itself, is also getting quite the reputation for soothing anxiousness. From gummies to oils, plenty of CBD-based products claim to be a solution for your nerves. But is CBDreallythe anxiety panacea that it seems to be?

Using CBD for Treating Anxiety

Michele Ross, Ph.D., a neuroscientist based in Los Angeles, says that we know there are components of CBD that theoretically give it a relaxing quality that can aid in quelling anxiety. The scientific research on CBD’s effects still needs more work, but Dr. Ross says CBD is thought to bind to serotonin, a neurotransmitter in the brain that impacts mood and anxiety. CBD, she explains, binds to a serotonin receptor called the 5-HT1A and activates that receptor in order to add to the availability of serotonin in the brain to make you feel good—and not nervous or panicky. Plus, she says, there’s some evidence to suggest that CBD also works by activating GABA-A receptors, chemical messengers which are thought to have a calming, relaxing effect on the brain. “Physiologically, we know that CBD should work [for anxiety], we just haven’t really seen this play out in terms of clinical trials,” Dr. Ross says.

According to a 2019 study published in the journal Pain, CBD’s effects on 5-HT1A transmission in rats helped to lessen “anxiety-like behavior.” As far as humans go, a 2015 analysis that reviewed 49 existing studies found that CBD could be a way to reduce anxiety, panic disorder, and maybe even post-traumatic stress. And a 2011 study looking at people with public speaking anxiety and found that CBD could soothe their fears. The problem with that study, however, is that the participants were given 600-milligram doses of CBD, which Dr. Ross says isn’t as likely to happen for the average person who buys CBD gummies hoping to aid their anxiety.

“Studies of humans looking at the effects of CBD have rarely been all that great,” she says. “So there is clinical evidence that really high doses of CBD help reduce specific forms of anxiety, like social anxiety, but those aren’t the kind of products that are on the market—no one’s taking really 600 milligrams of CBD at a time, that could be a really excessive pill.” Instead, you’re more likely to find products that typically have lower doses, like 150 milligrams of CBD. “The reason why some of these studies that have looked at CBD have used such high dosages is that they’re just using CBD by itself, and they have to use a high amount for it to be absorbed by the body,” Dr. Ross says. “So it’s sort of hard to extrapolate from a study with 600 milligrams by itself to being like, ‘am I going to take a 5 milligram gummy and have it make me feel good?’

So, in that sense, the evidence that we have is more anecdotal than anything when you buy, say, a CBD latte at a cafe, the CBD content has likely been diluted, and any effects of the compound will, therefore, be reduced. “No one has really tested these kinds of things, such as whether CBD helps with anxiety if you’re just taking 5-10 milligrams of a CBD tincture that’s [added] with some other terpenes that make it more available for sale,” Dr. Ross says.Not to mention, anxiety is extremely complex. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, anxiety disorders are the most common mental health issue in the U.S., affecting 40 million adults.

Not only are there different forms of anxiety, like social anxiety, panic disorder, and generalized anxiety, people can experience anxiety in different ways. Even if CBD was clinically proven to relieve anxiety, it may not be an effective treatment for everyone.

Regardless, if you’re experiencing a major anxiety disorder, CBD shouldn’t be the only treatment you’re turning to — talk to a doctor who can advise you on taking medication, or seeing a therapist.

That said, if you’re interested in experimenting with CBD along with other anxiety treatments, Dr. Ross recommends getting products that come from a dispensary, because they’re more likely to have been lab-tested. She also advises starting with a lower dose, which can help you figure out how much CBD works for you. But in the end, she says, managing anxiety is a bit like managing chronic pain: You have to manage your expectations over a long period of time and remember that treatment is a marathon, not a race.

Find the best topicals and edibles to help you with your anxiety.

[smithbranden-blog]

Can CBD Really Help With Anxiety?

There’s been lots of talk (and increasing evidence to support it) about how cannabis can be a helpful tool in treating anxiety, depending on the dosage and timing. But CBD, the non-psychoactive cannabinoid compound found within cannabis itself, is also getting quite the reputation for soothing anxiousness. From gummies to oils, plenty of CBD-based products claim to be a solution for your nerves. But is CBDreallythe anxiety panacea that it seems to be?

Using CBD for Treating Anxiety

Michele Ross, Ph.D., a neuroscientist based in Los Angeles, says that we know there are components of CBD that theoretically give it a relaxing quality that can aid in quelling anxiety. The scientific research on CBD’s effects still needs more work, but Dr. Ross says CBD is thought to bind to serotonin, a neurotransmitter in the brain that impacts mood and anxiety. CBD, she explains, binds to a serotonin receptor called the 5-HT1A and activates that receptor in order to add to the availability of serotonin in the brain to make you feel good—and not nervous or panicky. Plus, she says, there’s some evidence to suggest that CBD also works by activating GABA-A receptors, chemical messengers which are thought to have a calming, relaxing effect on the brain. “Physiologically, we know that CBD should work [for anxiety], we just haven’t really seen this play out in terms of clinical trials,” Dr. Ross says.

According to a 2019 study published in the journal Pain, CBD’s effects on 5-HT1A transmission in rats helped to lessen “anxiety-like behavior.” As far as humans go, a 2015 analysis that reviewed 49 existing studies found that CBD could be a way to reduce anxiety, panic disorder, and maybe even post-traumatic stress. And a 2011 study looking at people with public speaking anxiety and found that CBD could soothe their fears. The problem with that study, however, is that the participants were given 600-milligram doses of CBD, which Dr. Ross says isn’t as likely to happen for the average person who buys CBD gummies hoping to aid their anxiety.

“Studies of humans looking at the effects of CBD have rarely been all that great,” she says. “So there is clinical evidence that really high doses of CBD help reduce specific forms of anxiety, like social anxiety, but those aren’t the kind of products that are on the market—no one’s taking really 600 milligrams of CBD at a time, that could be a really excessive pill.” Instead, you’re more likely to find products that typically have lower doses, like 150 milligrams of CBD. “The reason why some of these studies that have looked at CBD have used such high dosages is that they’re just using CBD by itself, and they have to use a high amount for it to be absorbed by the body,” Dr. Ross says. “So it’s sort of hard to extrapolate from a study with 600 milligrams by itself to being like, ‘am I going to take a 5 milligram gummy and have it make me feel good?’

So, in that sense, the evidence that we have is more anecdotal than anything when you buy, say, a CBD latte at a cafe, the CBD content has likely been diluted, and any effects of the compound will, therefore, be reduced. “No one has really tested these kinds of things, such as whether CBD helps with anxiety if you’re just taking 5-10 milligrams of a CBD tincture that’s [added] with some other terpenes that make it more available for sale,” Dr. Ross says.Not to mention, anxiety is extremely complex. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, anxiety disorders are the most common mental health issue in the U.S., affecting 40 million adults.

Not only are there different forms of anxiety, like social anxiety, panic disorder, and generalized anxiety, people can experience anxiety in different ways. Even if CBD was clinically proven to relieve anxiety, it may not be an effective treatment for everyone.

Regardless, if you’re experiencing a major anxiety disorder, CBD shouldn’t be the only treatment you’re turning to — talk to a doctor who can advise you on taking medication, or seeing a therapist.

That said, if you’re interested in experimenting with CBD along with other anxiety treatments, Dr. Ross recommends getting products that come from a dispensary, because they’re more likely to have been lab-tested. She also advises starting with a lower dose, which can help you figure out how much CBD works for you. But in the end, she says, managing anxiety is a bit like managing chronic pain: You have to manage your expectations over a long period of time and remember that treatment is a marathon, not a race.

Find the best topicals and edibles to help you with your anxiety.

[whatdidisay]

Resting Bitch Face

I want to talk about something mildly serious for a moment here. During my limited time on this earth so far, going out into the big world has made me painfully aware of a condition I have been suffering from since the commencement of my early teens. This condition has caused me to make horrid first impressions and has deemed me unapproachable. Although, a usually happy, friendly girl, who loves a good chat, apart from my chronic sarcastic tendencies, people would generally describe me a warm person. What use is this however  I ask you,  in a world where people make judgements on appearance? I don't mean this in a superficial sense as in by the clothes people wear, weight, height, piercings, tattoos etc. I mean my facial expressions.

 I Georgie Hewson have Resting Bitch Face.

 You may laugh, but this pandemic is recognised globally as a real thing. It’s simple to understand really. When I am truly in peace, off in my own world or giving a blank expression, I look like a bitch.

  Urban dictionary defines it as ‘a person, usually a girl, who naturally looks mean when her face is expressionless, without meaning to.’ I’m not going to discriminate here though, because I have had many encounters with male RBF sufferers s as well. Ladies, gents, boys and girls, if you read this at all, I know you will empathise me when I tell you of my the many times someone has said to me ‘When I first met you I thought you hated me’ or the time my boss told me I looked like a robot.

 In fact, if I had a dollar for every time someone told me I was intimidating, that I needed to smile more or that I make a horrible first impression, well, It wouldn't matter. Why?  I’d be on a yacht and you ignorant people who fail to recognise my very real middle class, white girl, first world problem, wouldn’t.

 I remember the first time I became aware of it. My now best friend and I were trying to recall when we first met when she informed me of her first impression of me.

 ‘I was scared of you, you were intimidating, it was your face.’ She said.

I was horrified. Up until that point my 15 – year old self thought I was friendly and approachable and the reason why my social interactions were potentially limited was because of something I couldn't change.

 Much to my delight when wasting time on the internet, I found several articles on ‘RBF.’ I found it was widely recognised even with scientific research! From somewhere like ‘Buzzfeed’ I’d take this ‘evidence’ with a grain of salt but this was published in Sydney Morning Herald, CNN and the Washington Post! Kristen Stewart has it, Kanye West has it, Anna Kendrick and even the fricking Queen has it!

 There comes a time in every woman’s life where she decides to accept the thigs she can’t change and I think I was lucky enough to have that figured out pretty early on. Admittedly, I still contour my cheekbones, curl my hair and all the rest, but at the end of the day I’ve learnt to look in the mirror and say ‘Hey, its good enough for me!’

 I have pushed my self to smile more, and snap out of ‘resting bitch territory’ whenever I can but I’d like to think that the right kind of people would be willing to look past my blank eyes and straight lined mouth to see someone who loves a good dog video and an iced latte.Too many times women are criticised for how they look rather than the content of their character. I could cure cancer and simultaneously  run the Boston marathon but if I didn’t smile enough, pluck my eyebrows enough or look a certain way, it would become the subject of a petty gossip column. I like my face, I vowed to myself that if I ever start a girl band, I’d call it RBF in honour of my lovely mug.

 In fact, maybe this whole ‘Resting Bitch Face’ phenomena you could argue, doesn’t exist. It’s called having a face and I’m gonna embrace it.

[p-s-e-u-d-o-n-y-m]

Hi, I know I never have original content or anything insightful to say or any real reason for you glance in my general direction, but I’d still like to ask for a moment of your time. 

I work with a charity called Extra Life. You may have heard of it through various twitch streamers, events in your area, hell, you may even work with them too. But they’re an organization that works with the Children’s Miracle Network hospitals to raise money to pay for treatments for kids with chronic and or life threatening illnesses. You see, if a family can’t pay for their child’s treatment, the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals wont make them. They’ll still receive that same life saving treatment at no cost, and this is one of the ways that we help to make that possible.

What’s more, we’re a gaming charity. Gamers of every variety (console, pc, table top, whatever) get together and work to raise money for this wonderful cause. There’s a national game day every year (This year its 11/04/2017) where we do a 24 hour gaming marathon to raise even more money. You can do it by yourself or with a local group, and as a person with a veritable FUCK-TON of anxiety that inhibits me from partaking in most “normal” social activities, this is a great way to feel like I, too, am a contributing member of society, and am helping all these incredibly strong little kids that need all the help that they can get.

So if you have a spare dollar lying around, I would take it as a personal favor if you could find time to donate to my page, and if you can’t donate, please boost this, or look around on the site for information on how you might be able to get involved in your area (if that sounds like something that you think you might want to do). 

Thanks fam <3

[thecoroutfitters]

Written by Wild Bill on The Prepper Journal.

As you know The Prepper Journal usually doesn’t republish already published articles, but every so often we come across some that truly add value to our followers and warrant further exposure. And with the “internet” being like the universe, ever expanding in every direction, some valuable content can easily be missed. While the focus here is the United Kingdom, population 65,000,000 it is simple to project the statistics on the United States, population 327,000,000.

So, thanks to permission from the Team at Target Crazy, I am sharing their article on The Mental Health Benefits of High Concentration Sports herein. While it focuses on archery it can be applied to any of the shooting sports as well as others, golf and billiards come to mind, as does chess.

If there’s one topic which appears regularly in the media at the moment, it’s mental health. It might be celebrities coming clean about their previous hidden mental health problems, or journalists and pressure groups highlighting the chronic under-funding of our health services over the last few years.

I often think… is this epidemic a by-product of modern western living? 

Perhaps a result of economic wealth and the influence and interference of technology such as social media. Mental health issues seem less prevalent than say fifty years ago among previous generations. Are they even seen at all in the developing world?

Data reveals that mental health problems are definitely on the rise and here are some enlightening statistics:

1 in 6 have issues

NHS Digital reveal that at any given time, one sixth of the UK population between the ages of six and sixty-four have a mental health problem  

6,000 suicides / year

There are about six thousand suicides per year in the UK, the largest proportion of these people are male, accounting for three quarters of this figure.  And it is the biggest killer of men up to the age of forty-nine reveals the Office for National Statistics who have control of the data gathered from the registrations of deaths in the UK

1 in 5 Women, 1 in 8 Men

Women are more commonly affected than men with one in five women reporting a mental health issue compared to one in eight among the male population, these figures come from NHS Digital and their Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey in 2014.

75% affected before age 24

The majority of mental health problems begin in childhood or early adulthood, with three quarters of problems established by the age of twenty-four, the Mental Health Taskforce revealed in 2016.  Young people do seem to be particularly susceptible.

Services are underfunded…

A whopping 23% of NHS activity is taken up with mental health issues but the corresponding funding is only 11%. (The Kings Fund 2015)

Medicine use is growing…

The number of medicines dispensed for mental health related conditions and illnesses such as depression and panic attacks, has more than doubled in the last ten years; this data comes from an NHS Prescription Survey over the decade 2006-2016. These statistics may be tempered somewhat by the growing evidence that anti-depressants are a more effective way to treat some of these conditions, therefore patients tend to be prescribed these drugs for a longer period of time.

How High Concentration Sports Can Help

The situation in the UK with regard to mental health is quite closely reflected in the US so apart from investing more money in diagnosis and treatment services, is there anything that individual people can do to help themselves? 

As Prince Harry said quite recently, “everyone no matter who they are has physical health and mental health“.

Physical activity and sport has a huge part to play in promoting and sustaining good mental health but surely it is not as simple as saying, ‘go for a run, it will take your mind off things’?  Sport in general is very much in vogue at the moment, not just for the evident physical health benefits but for the well documented effect that physical activity can have on the mind.  

This is because when we exercise, the brain releases certain chemicals which can help with mood and alleviate issues such as anxiety and depression, even if only for defined periods.  And of course collective sport, where we engage with other people whether as a group or in a team, also promotes our mental health as it offers interaction with others, fundamental for a healthy mind and outlook.

If sport is beneficial therefore to the state of our mind, surely high concentration sports must be the best elixir for those struggling with mental health issues? 

The four key mental factors in sport are considered to be:

Concentration

Confidence

Control

Commitment

The demand for concentration varies with the sport and is divided into three types:

Sustained concentration – relevant to sports with an endurance element such as long distance running, cycling marathons or tennis matches

Short burst concentration – evident in golf and cricket and short sprint field events

Intense concentration – sprinting, bobsleigh, target archery, darts, skeet or clay shooting

Negative emotions such as anxiety, anger or depression can affect the ability to concentrate so is this not a chicken and egg scenario?  

Learning techniques to concentrate intensely for short periods of time are fundamental to sporting success and can also have proven benefits for those who are struggling with mental health issues, ergo high concentration sports can be an excellent mechanism to help support mental health in a whole range of people. Whether it is supportive to existing conditions or to some degree preventative.  

This is because the amount of focus required trains the brain to concentrate on the here and now, to ignore negative self-talk and doubt by utilizing positive self-talk. Employing strategies such as ‘parking’ techniques to temporarily remove unhelpful thoughts and emotions and put them to one side for a defined period of time. 

Focusing on the here and now and forgetting your negative emotions is key to sporting success

From this, it is easy to understand why all these techniques used by successful athletes in high concentration sports, can have a positive effect on almost anyone.

Archery and Other Target Sports

Archery as a target sport requires high levels of concentration and offers to the individual perhaps not such an obvious benefit and that is one of self-discovery and self-truth, in fact a road to mindfulness and inner peace.

Mindfulness is a heightened state of self-awareness, a way of slowing down the moment and focusing only on that point in time, developing deep levels of consciousness, of how the body feels rather than by being solely driven by the constant jumble of thoughts and emotions in our heads.  Becoming more aware of immediate physical sensations and our environment allows us to understand and process our mental traffic; it’s not about changing it but more the ability to disassociate ourselves from it and see it for what it is which is something that does not need to govern and define our lives.

The Japanese who have not picked up a bow in anger for centuries (Editors Note: I challenge this statement) use archery, the ‘Way of the Bow’ or Kyudo as a mechanism to provide focus and self-discipline.  Kyudo has strong links with the teachings of both Shinto and Zen, providing a whole body and holistic experience of focus and concentration – whole body control means that the mind is also completely focused; Kyudo is sometimes referred to as ‘standing Zen’ because of the total immersion that is required in the technique.

How You Benefit

Archery requires significant mental input from the archer but this high level of concentration also gives rise to and develops many other faculties and emotions and some among these include:

Focus and concentration – mindfulness

Motivation

Self-efficacy

Patience

This can lead onto the following, positive lifestyle developments:

Improved sleep

Reduced levels of stress and depression

Sharpening mind and mental faculties including memory

A lessening of anxiety

Increasing brain capacity and power including problem solving skills

Other benefits may include:

Enjoying the great outdoors

Aesthetic appreciation

New experiences

New friendships and social engagement with real people rather than the virtual world

Improved self-esteem

Prevention of depression – just one hour’s exercise a week can help manage existing depression and help guard against future bouts through the physical activity and engagement with others

Relaxation

Fun and enjoyment

Healthy competition

Equality of participation, a level playing field for those who may be marginalised for example, due to physical disability

Co-operation, teamwork and leadership skills

Improved social skills through changes in brain function due to mental training and focus

Inclusion

Target archery is an all inclusive sport so can be enjoyed by children, older people and the less than physically able.  There is a level and involvement for everyone.   But don’t let me wax lyrical about how inclusive a sport archer is, meet Martin Douglas who suffers from Asperges Syndrome and let him tell you how archery has helped him deal with this condition and how in fact, mild autism has made him a better archer.

Mel Clarke, originally from Norfolk and now living in Worcestershire, is just one example of how disability is no bar to participation in archery.  A former European Champion in 2002, Mel was the first disabled archer in Europe to make it onto the able bodied team a year later in 2003. Mel has since gone on to compete at the World Championships and the Olympics with considerable medal success of different colors.

Participation in archery is possible with all types of disabilities and impairments and perhaps the most difficult one can imagine, being blind, is also no bar to involvement as there is a thriving organisation called British Blind Sport which promotes archery among many other disciplines.  Visually impaired archers use what is described as a tactile sight to help them take aim in case you are wondering.  

Archery has a place for all age groups from the young to the elderly and embraces a whole range of archers in between including those with disabilities as well who compete on a level playing field with their fellow archers – it is one of the most inclusive sports.

More Than Just the Mind

So is target archery really a physical sport?  

If it is possible for the young, the old and the less physically able to participate in it, does target archery offer any physical benefit to the participant? 

Yes it does.  

The connection between mind and body welfare has already been discussed but target archery does offer many purely physical benefits including:

The development of upper body strength through the shoulders, chest and arms

Hand co-ordination and control

Balance and co-ordination

Flexibility

Core strength and endurance

Calorie burning

Weight loss and enhanced body shape and posture

Improved mood and well being from endorphin release

​Target archery is a year round sport which promotes the benefits of the great outdoors and the friendship and camaraderie of others before you even lift a bow to take a shot.

The average 35 year old female can burn 144 calories per hour target shooting and that is not within a hunting environment which clearly offers even more potential for calorie consumption with the hike to and from the target destination across varying and perhaps challenging terrain.  And don’t forget, the weight of your bow and pack and, the energy required for mental focus and concentration either when you take a shot.

Target archery and bow hunting is a sport that is hard to beat in terms of what it can offer the participant – stated mental health benefits, physical exercise and the companionship and friendship of other archers, with plenty of healthy competition to boot.  Inclusive to all types of people and set in the great outdoors, you will be hard pressed to find a sport that can offer as much to the individual, sustaining good mental health being just one among many of the key benefits.

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The post The Mental Health Benefits of High Concentration Sports appeared first on The Prepper Journal.

from The Prepper Journal Don't forget to visit the store and pick up some gear at The COR Outfitters. How prepared are you for emergencies? #SurvivalFirestarter #SurvivalBugOutBackpack #PrepperSurvivalPack #SHTFGear #SHTFBag

[hallcolt2-blog]

The Weekly Roundup: Your Go-To Guide For Everything You May Have Missed This Week & More! 9/8 – 9/14

Welcome to Ben Greenfield’s Weekly Roundup and Cool New Discoveries!

Ben Greenfield’s discoveries from the latest news from the fronts of fitness, nutrition, health, wellness, biohacking and anti-aging research. I also recap my upcoming events and special announcements so you can keep up with giveaways, discounts, and more!

New Discoveries Of The Week: Cool New Things I’m Trying, Books I’m Reading, And More!

– Shoes I’m Wearing

Xero Terraflex – Nine times out of ten, if you see me actually wearing any shoes these days, I’m wearing the black and white Terraflex from Xero. They’re basically a minimalist hiking shoe and trail running shoe all in one, but low profile enough to where I can wear them with jeans at a cocktail party or restaurant too. To me, they feel like slippers, but still let me clamber over rocks and roots. Plus they’re vegan (I don’t even know what that means) and have a 5,000 mile warranty. Grab some here.

– Exercise I’m Doing

Foam Roller Adductor Thingy – Thanks to the folks at Human Garage in LA for turning me onto this move, which breaks up adhesions in the adductors and turns on the glutes and decompresses the spine, all in one single move. About three times per week, usually during my morning stretching session, I…

A) grip a vibrating foam roller HARD between my adductors down by my knees;

B) squeeze my butt as hard as I can;

C) reach down and touch my toes while curling my vertebra down one by one;

D) hang there for a few seconds, continuing to grip with my adductors very hard;

Get The Low Carb Athlete - 100% Free!Eliminate fatigue and unlock the secrets of low-carb success. 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E) stand up and reach for the sky.

…Then I move the roller a few inches up and do it again, repeating until I get the roller all the way up to my crotch, as high as it can go. I’ll do a video of this move sometime this week likely on my Instagram channel.

– Article I’m Reading

Why Are Obstacle Course Races So Popular? – As I prepare to compete down at the Spartan World Championships, this one caught my eye. The article begins like this:

“Completing a marathon has long been the ultimate feather in the cap of an amateur endurance athlete. But the idea of trotting along a boring old paved road for 26.2 miles doesn’t thrill everyone. For the endurance athlete who gets bored easily, a new genre of race has emerged—peppered with obstacles requiring feats of strength and dexterity (Crawling under barbed wire! Climbing a rope! Throwing a spear! Burpees!), and designed to be an over-the-top spectacle where participants emerge covered in mud (and maybe blood), as if they’ve survived a battle.”

Read the whole thing here.

Podcasts I Recorded This Week:

Every month, Ben Greenfield releases never-before-seen videos, audios and PDFs inside the BenGreenfieldFitness “Premium” channel (just $10/year to access!). You can click here to go Premium and access an entire vault of protected content!

–The Most Powerful Cellular Exercise Machine That Exists, How It Works & Exactly How To Use It.

–The Single, Most Comprehensive Stem Cell Procedure Known To Humankind: How A “Full Body Stem Cell & Exosome Makeover” Works.

Articles I Published This Week:

– The Big Problem With Gyms, Why You Need to Exercise Outdoors & What To Do About Air Pollution.

My full article feed and all past archives of my articles are here if you want to check out past articles.

Articles & Podcasts Ben Greenfield Was Featured In This Week:

– Outside Magazine– The New Science of Healthy Living

– 7 Weight Loss Podcasts That Actually Help Listeners Tremendously

Special Announcements:

::: Come Live With Me In A Mansion in Napa :::

A spot just opened up for the private RUNGA Napa retreat I am hosting this October. Join me, my wife & an intimate group of like-minded individuals for an incredible done-for-you getaway– it’s everything you would expect from a retreat designed by myself and my friend Joe Distefano and more:

Daily mobility, movement and wellness workshops with Ben Greenfield, Scott Dolly and Joe D.I.

Intensive breath work, cold immersion and emotional resiliency training

One-on-one consultation with me

Small group fitness training, including kettlebell instruction for all levels

Kundalini yoga and vipassana meditation

Sourdough bread-making workshop with Jessa Greenfield

Two manual therapy sessions with Scott Dolly and integrated movement training with Julie Brautigam

Plant based essentials and raw chocolate workshop with Emilía Rún (and her secrets to some of the world’s best raw, vegan, keto-friendly desserts)

Every year, I am blown away by the transformations that occur during the retreat. The combination of yoga, mindfulness practices, earthing, breath work, human connection, mobility and focus on our pursuit of ultimate health, sets the fertile soil for us to come into our full potential. Plus, every attendee get a free, personal 1-1 consultation with me. This spot will *NOT* last! Couples and individuals welcome! Code “BEN” at signup will get you an extra gift upon your arrival! Sign up here.

::: Learn Simple, Proven Ways to Avoid the (Actual, Real) Danger of EMF :::

Let’s cut straight to the chase: I probably don’t need to fill you in on the concept that there is great potential for constant exposure to electrical pollution, electromagnetic fields (EMF), WiFi routers, cell phone signals, cell phone towers, microwave radiation, etc.

It’s no secret that I am a bit kooky about all of this and that I’m more than a little concerned about the deleterious effects of EMF exposure. As a matter of fact, my family and I don’t even use WiFi at home– opting instead to hardwire our computers to the net.

My friend, Lloyd Burrell  has put together this EMF summit where folks like myself, Dr. Mercola and more are going to cover the best strategies to protect yourself from these digital toxins, which are causing chronic inflammation and a host of other conditions. Check it out!

Upcoming Events:

– October 14 – 16, 2018: SPARK BioHacking Conference, Toronto, Ontario. The 2018 SPARK Bio-Hack Conference features a series of talks by leaders across a range of fields with an eye on optimizing human performance, recovery, and longevity. Researchers, medical specialists and other biohacking experts will share provocative, informative, and inspiring presentations meant to amplify your life. Registration is now open, secure your spot here.

– October 11 – 14, 2018: 2018 RUNGA California Immersion Retreat, Napa, California. Runga is going to Napa! Join me, my wife, Jessa, Joe DiStefano and a small, intimate group of like-minded individuals for a weekend-long getaway. We’ve rented a beautiful mansion located in one of the most iconic countrysides in America– Napa Valley. We’ve thought of everything that you could possibly need to gently “press the reboot button” on your body and completely tune in to your heart, mind, body, strength, and spirit. Join the waitlist!

– November 1 – 4, 2018: Live It To Lead It Health Centers of the Future Seminar, Las Vegas, Nevada. Create the life you want, the marriage you want, the family you want—all fueled by a practice that radically changes the lives of your patients. this three-day event, you’ll learn the latest medical discoveries in cellular health, get a marketing plan for scaling your practice and find ways to build residual passive income. Join me!

– December 2-8, 2018: RUNGA Retreat, Dominican Republic. You’re invited to join me at RUNGA in December 2018. Join me in the Dominican Republic, one of the most beautiful places in the Caribbean, for this retreat. In all RUNGA activities, RUNGA invites you to come home to yourself. To see everything you’ll be getting into, just click here. Use code BEN when you register so you get your gift when you arrive! I’ll be there, too. Join the waitlist here.

– December 14-16, 2018: World Congress 2018 Hosted by the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, Las Vegas, Nevada. If you attend any conference this year, make it the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine’s 26th Annual World Congress. The fact is, in an era of andropause, low drive and deteriorating men’s health, it’s shocking that both practitioners and the public aren’t aware of ancestral wisdom and modern scientific and medical tactics that can be used to optimize male physiology. It’s time that changed, and I’ll be teaching exactly how to make men, men again. Join me!

– April 6-7, 2019: FitCon Summit, Salt Lake City, Utah. FitCon® encourages everyone to Find Their Fit. It does not matter whether it is powerlifting, Crossfit, bodybuilding, roller derby, or even axe throwing. Be sure to visit the Kion booth in the expo!

-View the Official Ben Greenfield Fitness Calendar Here

This Week’s Most Popular Instagram Pic:

This Week’s Most Popular Tweet:

If you want to save the planet, #vegetarianism probably isn’t the answer… https://t.co/A4MSI0ChDx

— Ben Greenfield (@bengreenfield) September 13, 2018

This Week’s Most Popular Facebook Post:

These days I’m only in the gym about an average of once every two weeks or so. I’ve recently been exercising outdoors far, far more than I ever have. Here's exactly why exercising outdoors is so therapeutic:

Posted by Ben Greenfield Fitness on Tuesday, September 11, 2018

This Week’s Most Popular Snapchat Story:

This week on Snapchat I showed you around Tokyo Japan, where I traveled recently for speaking gig. I showed you authentic Sumo wrestling by the best of the best, took you along for two Japanese cooking classes, showed you the handcrafted pour over coffee made in Japan, and more. Add me here on Snapchat to follow along!

This Week’s Most Popular Pin from Pinterest:

Ben Greenfield Fitness saved to “Ben’s Nutrition Advice.” Read the article here.

Featured Product:

Kion Lean is a proprietary formula designed to assist with weight management and healthy longevity that combines the benefits of rock lotus and Glycostat (wild bitter melon extract) to support:

Healthy liver function*

Blood sugar regulation*

Healthy body fat levels*

Anti-aging factors associated with longevity*

There are just a handful of true blue zones or longevity hotspots in the world. One is Bama County, located in western China on the slopes of the Himalayas. Amongst Japan’s many islands, the people of Okinawa are also the longest-lived. Okinawa also has a secret very similar to Bama County – and in both Bama County and Okinawa medical researchers have found that key foods play a significant role in the longevity of the inhabitants.

In Bama County, much credit is given to the daily consumption of a plant they call shilianhua, or “rock lotus”. In Okinawa, a role similar to that of rock lotus is filled by “wild bitter melon”. This is not the bitter melon commonly found in many vegetable markets, but a smaller and far more bitter version that grows wild. Both rock lotus and bitter melon are in Kion Lean. So what do the rock lotus and wild bitter melon in Kion Lean have in common that promote optimal blood sugar levels and insulin response that support healthy weight management, liver health, and longevity?*

The answer involves caloric restriction and insulin.

In short, rock lotus and Glycostat® work better in combination. Both promote better blood sugar control with less insulin.* Both promote healthy blood pressure.* Both support healthy liver function.* And both mimic changes in cellular energy metabolism typical of caloric restriction.*

So even if you can’t live in a longevity hotspot such as Bama County or Okinawa, Kion Lean can bring the longevity hotspot to you, all while supporting a healthy, lean physique!

*These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

*These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA.

Need Help Fully Optimizing Your Brain & Body? 

Did you know you can consult one-on-one with me so that I can personalize a nutrition or fitness plan for you to reach your goals? Are you training for physical performance? Trying to shed fat or gain lean muscle as fast as possible? Ready to tap into the most cutting-edge health, fitness and longevity protocols? Contact me so I can get you exactly what you need to reach your goals as safely and quickly as possible.

Leave your comments below – and any news or discoveries that you think I missed!

Cheers,

Ben

Ask Ben a Podcast Question

Source: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/article/weekly-roundup-articles/ben-greenfield-weekly-roundup-9-8-9-14/