THESE DAYS

I took a series of nude photos of myself over the weekend. I had been thinking about it for a while, how I had done this many years ago, but never revisited those photos or thought about retaking them. It was a birthday thing. I did it during a time of creative struggle and insecurity. I would have thought that I would have revisited the nude photography after losing weight, but I just never really wanted to take the time to do it. I wrote a whole blog post about the pros and cons of nude photos. Then I deleted the whole thing. I think really, I didn’t want to write a whole entry about honesty in photography and then not post the picture. Because I was not about to publicly post a nude photo of myself.

I am a professional.

The story itself is one you’ve all heard before. It was the kind of post that reeks of the navel gazing that comes with turning a year older. It’s a story I didn’t really feel like telling again, but the one that I came up with because right now, I’m feeling a little bit like a dumpster fire. Michael tested positive for COVID on Friday and has been quarantined in the basement for the last five days. He’s fine; it was like having a bad cold. The weather turned gross and coated everything with a layer of ice and snow. This kept me from wanting to leave the house to even go grocery shopping. Work is real weird and politically dramatic right now. I’m doing my best to keep my head down and focused on the work, which isn’t hard because there’s a lot of microscopy related science happening right now. My yoga practice has gotten sketchy because anytime I am forced to be still with my thoughts, I start crying.

Every day, when I start to berate myself for not walking enough or skipping a workout or eating a cookie, I pause. Then I gently close my eyes and whisper “Be kind to yourself.” In those moments when I am alone with my own memories and tears start to leak out, I gently close my eyes and whisper “Be kind to yourself.” On those days when I fail to be inspired to take any pictures or write any words, I gently close my eyes and whisper “Be kind to yourself.” On the days where I feel like I am only putting in about 50% of effort, I gently close my eyes and whisper “Be kind to yourself.”

Tomorrow, I turn a year older. I gently close my eyes and whisper “Be kind to yourself.”

TAKE A LEAP

Instagram photo by Cindy Maddera * Feb 29, 2016 at 9:02pm UTC

See this Instagram photo by @elephant_soap * 2 likes

People were going crazy over Leap Day yesterday. I think I saw about fifty posts regarding the extra day this year. Some were annoyed we had an extra twenty four hours on a Monday while others were all about taking advantage of the extra time. What will you do with your extra twenty four hours, Cindy? Well...I kind of see it like money. There's no "extra". In fact, I am suspicious of a calendar that is so wrong all the time that every four years it has to throw in an extra day to "fix" it. Someone posted something about the British skipping eleven days in September in 1752. Eleven days! It all had something to do with the Calendar (New Style) Act of 1750. This reminds me of getting in my car and driving to a destination and not having a freaking clue how I drove the car to that spot. 

I kind of just wanted to take a nap with my extra twenty four hours. Michael and I made it back from our whirl wind weekend trip just in time to start a load of laundry and turn on the Oscars. Our trip reminded us of some 80s vacation trip where you pack as much stuff in a thirty six hour period. We at lunch on the Hill, we looked at our cheek cells at the Science Center, we walked all around downtown, we went to a casino and then we walked all around downtown some more. We had dinner at this great oyster bar where the oysters where the biggest oysters I've ever seen. I have over a hundred pictures to process and edit and organize. Maybe that's what I should have done with my extra twenty four hours. I didn't. Of course. Instead, I used my so called extra time to do more laundry, make us a delicious pot pie for dinner, clean the bathroom and watch The Walking Dead. 

I didn't completely waste my Leap Day. It was seventy degrees here yesterday (while today's high is forty). At one point, after spending hours in a dark room marking worms on a slide, I decided to go walk a loop outside. I had already missed my window of opportunity to get to the gym for treadmill time. When I reached the farthest point of the loop, I just kept walking. I walked all the way over to the Nelson and up and around the sculpture park. There were people stretched out on picnic blankets on the Nelson lawn. A small girl was kicking a ball back and forth with her mom. I passed a young man with a baby strapped to his chest. He was walking along the path, the baby facing out with his little arms and legs waving and kicking around like crazy. I noticed tiny pink buds forming on the hedges. The sun bounced off the glass walls of the labyrinth as I watched a couple slowly wind their away around inside. I felt the sun, warm on my face and smiled. 

Lately I have been slightly panicked about getting enough steps in during the day. I've started tracking my food again, which stresses me out because somewhere in the middle of the day I realize that I haven't eaten enough calories to maintain or lose weight. There's a dress I plan to wear on Saturday, that I'm afraid is going to be uncomfortably tight. I keep getting reminder calls from my doctor's office to schedule an appointment to check my cholesterol and on Saturday, I learned that it would cost $1,465,000 to send my body into space. The Science Center has a space scale that tells you your weight in dollars. I was not amused. I feel myself falling back into my destructive weight loss habits. But yesterday, while I was walking through the sculpture garden, I didn't think about any of those things. 

I guess you could say that I used my extra twenty four hours to cut myself some slack. And I still got more than ten thousand steps in.