redbird | Misc. comments 52

More comments to other people:

From a comment to

trouble about having more appetite after he does cardio sessions:

On the other hand, lately I've been working out mid-morning (and skipping my usual pastry with the second cup of tea), and fine eating about 20-30 minutes later. That's time to shower and change, walk to the nearest decent Chinese restaurant, and be brought food. And I do seem to eat more lunch if it's right after a workout than I did directly after physical therapy the other day. The physio included a whopping six minutes of cardio with a "hand bike," a few minutes doing some exercises with a one-pound hand weight, stretches, ultrasound, and icing the elbow.

Thanks. I hadn't analyzed this in this much detail.

In response to a post by

janetmiles about the difference between "I prefer X to Y" and any claim that one choice is inherently superior to the other:

Related to this, "I prefer X to Y" does not mean "I don't like Y." I decided this afternoon that I would rather have dim sum than pho, but if Kam Fung hadn't been right there, pho would have been a fine thing.

What I think I need to watch out for, occasionally, is the inverse of that: if I don't actually want X or Y, it probably doesn't matter which I would mind less. And if it does matter, I still should be clear that it's "I don't really like either of those, but if I have to pick, I'll take X," but I'd rather have Z, or nothing at all.

A comment to

xiphias, who was talking about getting the number of laps he does at the gym back up to where it was a couple of months ago:

I used to spend a lot of time at the gym reminding myself that comparisons are odious: it doesn't matter how much weight the previous person was using, unless they left too many weight plates on the machine and I have to get them out of the way. But comparisons to what I/you did a month ago can also be problematic. Yes, you know you have been able to do this, and you will get it back, but the point isn't that 12 < 18; it's not even 12 > 6. It's that 12 is > 0. You're in there, and doing it. (Which does lead to the question of why I'm keeping all those notes about how many exercises and at what weight, given that I'm mostly doing body-weight stuff where I'm not grabbing free weights or setting machines, and that I don't take the notes with me to the gym for reference. Hmm. I'm doing it from habit, but does it still have value?)

In response to

elisem, who was talking about sharing cool things, and different reactions to not knowing stuff yet, and asked what people mean if they say they feel guilty about not posting:

When people talk about feeling guilty for not posting, is that always what they mean? Do they feel they have somehow shirked an obligation? Or do they mean something else: they miss posting, they feel wistful, they resent the obstacles in their lives (time, energy, attention span, mood, sufficient sleep, whatever it is) that are getting in the way of them posting? It's probably different things for different people, but the phrasing of these things as obligations to a community is starting to look really weird to me.

I said: Sometimes it can feel like an obligation, not to the community/readers, but to the project, the narrative. I have had the same reaction to my paper journal, which I explicitly do not intend anyone else to read, and almost never look at previous physical volumes of myself: but the telling of the story seems to matter.

There may also, with LJ/DW, be an aspect of feeling as though I "should" keep my friends informed of what's going on in my life, but they are different if intertwined strands.

I can't find a "misc. comments 51" post, but having posted this as 52 and created a file for "53" I think I'll leave it alone.

Misc. comments 52

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