(Preliminary grumble: WordPress 1.2.1 for iPhone ate a nearly-done draft of this post when I tried to go from local draft to online draft. It also didn’t update to 2.x through the standard App Store update process despite both being free. WTF, WordPress?!?)

Sigh. Another long stretch without posting. It’s not like I have nothing to say. One look at my Twitter feed will tell you that. And I have posts cooking in my brain about favorite topics like Lost and The Best Bands You’ve (Probably) Never Heard Of and a bunch of other things as well. (I mean, I saw MUSE live, ferchrissakes! MUSE!!)

So why no blog posts from me? I’ve been feeling really frozen up inside, my guts knotted by anxiety, for months.

You ever get the feeling that you’re standing at a Rubicon in your life? What’s more, have you ever felt terrified, even though you know that crossing over is The Right Thing To Do™?

I’ve been there for a while now…almost a year, really, since I started the current job. In other respects, I’ve been there a lot longer. Depending on how you prefer to look at it, it could be since I had surgery, since I left home en route to college, or even going back to murky childhood. I’ve definitely written on the subject before, though.

And I’m feeling kind of “reinvented out” after the number of times I’ve done it in my life, so I really want to get this one right in order to not have to do it agin anytime soon. It’s hard work, don’tchaknow!

A few things have me brooding on this topic again:

1. Getting ready to move out of the apartment I moved into shortly after starting at my old job, thereby shedding the very last vestige of the life I led during the Tale of Woe™
2. Watching other friends being or becoming all self-actualized ‘n’ stuff. (There are six links in there, folks!)
3. Feeling like I’m finally about ready to start expressing myself in the world now that I’ve finished the process of creating the “release version” of me.

The hardest things I’m going to have to learn are self-motivation and discipline, my twin bugaboos. Need to turn those dreams into action and all that. Like I’ve said before, inspiration is never my problem. It’s that “perspiration” part that always gets me.

Universe, help me channel the Spirit of Nike®…

It’s just that taking that step and really committing to not procrastinate ad infinitum, to not constantly sedate myself with the modern opiate of the masses, and to stop fearing the risk of failure is just pants-wetting terrifying after a lifetime of the bad patterns.

My rational mind knows that doing is a skill like any other, one that anyone can learn regardless of initial talent for it (which is good because my initial talent level is roughly that of a rhinoceros with a neurological disorder taking up skateboarding). My irrational, software-virus-ridden mind tells me something quite again in the voice of my parents, every teacher I ever let down by not fully realizing my Awesome Potential™, and every friend or lover I ever offended in a moment of thoughtlessness. Unfortunately, that voice has always been so much louder than the voice of reason inside my dense cranium. (‘Sides, nowadays, even the voice of reason is starting to sound a bit suspect…)

So, the emotional pressure has built up inside of me and I feel like something’s gonna give. EIther I’m going to become Super Self-Actuated Sonya™ or I’ll just give in to my couch-tuber tendencies forevermore. Ye gods, that sounds emo! >.<

I just hope that, much like Lane Meyer, all I need is a taste of success, and I’ll find it suits me.

In the meantime I stand, tremulant*.

*10 Scooby Snacks™ to the first commenter to correctly identify the source of this title. And yes, I know it’s not a real word!

Round about the 12th of August, I was taken to a wonderful event by my new friend, Dana (as opposed to my old friend, Dana, who calls new Dana “Zuul,” which new Dana finds amusing). It’s called Bawdy Storytelling, as many of you who follow my Twitter stream already know. I went and enjoyed it immensely…and thought to myself, “Talking? About sex? And getting applause and laughter? I can do that!”

And the theme for September was kinda cool and a bit challenging to me, so I had to do it. I approached the instigatrix of the thing, the bodacious Dixie de la Tour, and volunteered. Her handy helper, Kitty, worked up the ad I used based on my input to her, and I came up with the following story.

Now, there’s also been a lot of story going on around my involvement with Bawdy, and I’m going to tell it. Just not in this post. Oh, and what I did on stage only bears a family resemblance to the below, but I’m working on getting video from Dixie et al so I can embed it here, allowing you all to compare and contrast.

Overall, I think I did rather well for a first-timer who hasn’t graced any kind of stage since high school, but I could have done a few things better. (Note to self: Better time management!) Still, I felt surprisingly comfy up there and felt like I had achieved a good rapport with the audience so, oh yes, I will be doing it again.

First, the ad, which I put up on Craigslist W4W.

==

I’m only into other femme-identified queer or bi women (cis or trans women included). NOT into boy/masculine energy at all, so no butches, FTMs, andros, or genderqueers. Sorry, bois! Big pluses for dangerous curves, dangerous wit, or dangerous desires…I’m more of a RACK girl than SSC.

I’m serious about meeting and playing if it feels right, so let’s make a story we can both tell for years to come (and come and come…you get the idea. )

Femme-azon seeks fellow fabulous femmes

I’m a 5’11″, curvy 37-year-old femme switch looking for some good ol’ fashioned kinky geek-on-geek action. A night, a week, a month, more…? Up to our chemistry, really!

I’m only into other femme-identified queer or bi women (cis or trans women included). NOT into boy/masculine energy at all, so no butches, FTMs, andros, or genderqueers. Sorry, bois! Big pluses for dangerous curves, dangerous wit, or dangerous desires…I’m more of a RACK girl than SSC.

Sexually & kink-wise, I’m a very physically/sensation-oriented person. S&M is delicious fun to me! Things like power exchange and bondage don’t interest me much in and of themselves, but can make fine accompaniments to a decidedly sensual main course.

I want someone who isn’t a newbie to women, kink, or polyamory. Been there, done that, got the toaster.

I’m not much into bars and not at all into clubs, so let’s think of something where we can hear each other for a first meeting. The Academy of Sciences? Soak in a hot tub? You tell me!

I’m serious about meeting and playing if it feels right, so let’s make a story we can both tell for years to come (and come and come…you get the idea. )

Your pic gets mine. Put “amazon” somewhere in the subject line so I know you’re not a bot.

==

And now, the story…

==

Hi…I’m Sonya. Since most of you don’t know me and this is my first time doing this—so do please be gentle—let me start by saying that I’ve been meeting partners over the Internet for 20 years now. Real Internet, too…none of this dialup BBS stuff! That’s right, I got online at UC Santa Cruz all the way back in 1989. For those in the know, I was a “b-geek.”

(Aside: Anyone here remember finger files? They were the old-school version of a profile page. You just typed “finger so-and-so” and got whatever info they posted about themselves. And no, laughing at that never got old!)

So I got all the classic blunders out of the way relatively early—falling for someone halfway around the world, importing lovers, exporting myself to a lover, being taken in by someone’s well-crafted but fraudulent identity…hell, I even got over cybersex—which we TinyMUDders called “TinySex” at the time—right around 1992 or so, and we used to do it well back then.

Over the years, I’ve met people over email, on forums, on irc, on MUDs (remember MUDs, MUCKs, and MOOs?), over IM, on dating sites, on social networks, at geek parties and cons…every which nerdy way you can imagine, except for one: Craigslist.

Somehow, that particular sex and dating phenomenon passed me by. Maybe it’s just that I didn’t think of it as anything but a hookup medium when I’m something of an intimacy junkie. Maybe it seemed “too easy.” Maybe it was some of the horror stories I’d heard. I dunno. But then I came to this very room a month or so ago and heard that we had an assignment and I was pretty jazzed about that. On the one hand, it felt like a challenge, but on the other, I’d been ‘net-dating for decades and lately I’d had some unexpected mojo between meeting amazing women in person and over good lo’ OKCupid. Surely, Craigslist couldn’t be that hard!

I can see you’re way ahead of me here….

Now, I’m going to assume that you’ve all committed my Craigslist ad to memory by now, and you’d better have. It will be on the midterm.

The delightful Ms. Kitty Stryker did a brilliant job of condensing my slightly rambling email into a few short, sweet paragraphs summing me and what I was looking for up quite nicely. So now it was time for me to do my part of the job…to post it and start sorting through the responses.

So I did. And I waited. But I didn’t have to wait too long. This was easy! Or so I thought…

No one told me about the bots, you see. At first, for a short while, I just thought I was dealing with incompetent pseudo-literates…

I would rather chat with you than just reading your post and see what your like. If your a real person then hit me back here and if your not, then you won’t see this. If you are, Im lookn forward to chattin with your.

Uh-HUH. But when one of them tried to pitch me a skeevy-looking dating site, the penny did finally drop.

Then there was the pic-trader, who lured me in with a few pictures of some random nymph, no doubt harvested from some porn site or some other unsuspecting dupe. Whoever it was lost interest when I stopped short of nudes, some healthy suspicion having finally crept in on my side.

I was still waiting for a real human to reply…that is, aside from the two of my friends who replied to say, “Sonya? Is that you?”

Greeeeaaaat.

But then, finally, one reply. And what a reply! I thought for sure that my story was now assured and I would be able to appear before you today, triumphant. (Silly, silly me…)

My first real response to my ad came from a woman who’d actually been in one of the very few pornos I had ever sought out and bought myself—Good Vibes’ “Voluptuous Vixens.” Her picture was beautiful…a curvy, smoldering, tattooed latina temptress with piercing eyes and a playful arch of the eyebrow that said, “Well? What are you going to do about it?”

Naturally, I wrote her back.

But before I get to that, her reply had already illustrated a screw-up on my part in the presentation of the ad…I’d provided the headline, and the initial one read, “Femme-azon Seeks Same.” So, here I had this goddess, this porn-star, responding to MY ad and apologizing for not being “a big tall Amazon woman.” Clearly, that would have to be changed if I ever wanted or needed to use the ad again.

And, fortuitously enough, there was going to be one of the entirely-too-rare women’s play parties at the Citadel that weekend. So, we arranged to meet there. I was cruising on this assignment! I might even have time for extra credit, I thought. (HAH!)

Things started to go wrong when I got a call from her apologizing profusely, saying that she hadn’t been able to secure a volunteer shift at the party and couldn’t afford to pay her way. And, just my luck, I was a bit light myself so I couldn’t be all suave and sugar-mama-y and just say, “Hey, no problem…I’ll cover yah!”

So, the play party plan was canceled. But we made a raincheck for some Indian food the following Tuesday. Hmm, I thought…a restaurant date during the week seems a lot less likely to produce immediate sexual interaction than a play party. Maybe I need to hedge my bets and re-post my ad…

I came up with a better headline (“Femme-azon Seeks Fellow Fabulous Femmes”) and tried to re-post it. I thought all had gone well, but for some reason I couldn’t browse the ad. It was acting like it wasn’t there, even though I could go right into the editing page again. Something wasn’t kosher.

“No biggie,” I thought. “Must be some transient glitch. Maybe I’m better off deleting and re-posting.”

BIG…MISTAKE!

In dear old, 20/20 retrospect, I should have just waited 5 minutes or so to see if there was any lag in publishing on a site as big as Craigslist.  But noooooooooooo…I delete the post. It shows as deleted. So far, so good.

I go to RE-re-post it, and get an error telling me that the post was “substantially similar” to another recently-posted ad—namely, the one I’d just deleted—and that it wouldn’t allow it again in the interest of keeping people from feeling spammed. And I’m fine with that. As a former social network admin, I’m a booster of anti-spamming technology! But I’d deleted the other ad. It was no more…it had ceased to be…or at least it had anywhere except in whatever overactive watchdog database Craigslist was using.

Now I wasn’t going to be able to re-post my ad for what I figured to be at least a good, solid 24 hours.

But hey, why was I worrying? Dinner with a porn star was approaching. Surely, I’d be charming and scintillating and we’d be firing on all jets and soon. And I was! Not that it helped, of course.

She showed up looking as if she’d just stepped out of her picture, only far more wondrous for being in 3-D and full-motion. Her curves and hauteur made her look like she should be a queen on a litter being borne by Aztec bearers. Her tattoos read like war-paint in life and in love. And we ate Indian food and talked and talked until she had to run home to the primary…without us ever really having broached the topics of sex, BDSM, and comparative tastes.

Watch carefully, ’cause here’s where I blow it.

‘Cause you see, I’m SO not “cool.” I’m not smooth. I’m not suave. Somehow the scarcity sexual economy that was my virginal pre-college years left its mark on me. When I want someone a bit too much, when my hormones get over-carbonated, I get a bit too eager, too puppy-like. I’m no stalker, mind. I try to resist this, but it’s insanely intense and that intensity has a way of ruining things with anyone who isn’t frightfully secure in herself and patient with someone suffering the carbonated hormones. Some women find it cute…just not enough of them.

So…back to the story at hand…she emails me shortly after midnight that same night expressing concern that our talk hadn’t headed in that direction and that she was worried I might be too much of a top given that she herself was very toppy. I happened to be up and online when it came so I replied immediately to reassure her that, no-no! NONONONONO! I’m a switch, and one with a rather neglected bottom side at that since people don’t meet an outgoing, assertive, brassy, large woman and think to themselves, “piggy bottom,” much to my eternal dismay.

But she had only sent the email a few minutes ago! She must still be up…maybe it would be OK to call? So I called, and got voicemail. And got nervous. And blew my cool. And tried to ping her a few more times that day over email and IM.

And, when I did get to talk to her next over IM, she said she felt that I’d been “coming on a bit strong.”  And that’s pretty much where things stand today with her. I star-crushed, I wanted my story way too much, I spazzed…and I managed to scare off a bloody porn star.

Meanwhile, back on good ol’ OKCupid, I found myself getting mad responses from bloody amazing women. Some to me messaging them, and some without any prompting from me whatsoever. Whatever mojo I had that was abandoning me on Craigslist seemed to be going strong here.

So I set up a few dates…but they were going to be entirely too close to tonight and I wasn’t really expecting sex on the first date with any of ‘em. What was I going to do?

But then, a lifeline. Another reply on Craigslist. A reply that started, “You sound way too good to be true.” *squee!*

My respondent was a library assistant who, in her spare time, plays rugby in queer leagues I hadn’t previously known existed. Geeky…physical…what a combination! And the picture…coy, slim but not skinny, chestnut-brunette, bob-haired, looking somewhere between a librarian and a demure Catholic schoolgirl, but with such a wicked little half-smile.

We made contact and made our date…for this past Friday. Oy. That’s cutting it too close! We’re going to have story rehearsal on Monday! *auuugh* Why do I feel like I’m in college again, grinding out a paper at the last minute? And why on Earth is it SEX I’m finding a way to procrastinate on?

I take her to a friend’s party in the East Bay. We nibble gourmet hors d’oeuvres, chitchat amiably with some of the most delightful people I know, play an amazing round of Rock Band…including some of the new Beatles game. ooOOOooo…

And, despite a truly delightful chat about sex and BDSM and all the yummy stuff, as I drove her back to her car I knew that I had failed in my Craigslist assignment. I would have to take an incomplete. Maybe, if I was very lucky, Dixie or Kitty would spank me.

But the next night, I had one of my “first dates” with one of the wonderful women I’d met on OKCupid. And I have to admit, this one had me in a complete lather. She’s smart, wise beyond her years, open and bold to the point of intoxication for a blunt kinda girl like me, and she writes Harry Potter slash. But we won’t hold that against her.

And physically? It was like she had walked out of a highlight reel of every sexual fantasy I’d had since I was a teenager. Long, coppery red hair, porcelain skin straight out of a Keats poem, a delightfully goth flair, tall enough that I don’t feel like Andre the Giant next to her, blue eyes with a mischievous twinkle, pouty “snakebite”-pierced lips just designed for kissing, hips you want to grab and pound with the nearest available strap-on, an ass begging to be spanked or plowed..or both!…big, beautiful, creamy-complected, rose-nipped breasts I don’t think I could have possibly stopped sucking on once I got started.

But she was young, not terribly experienced, and I didn’t want to repeat my earlier mistake.

I shouldn’t have worried. A few drinks and a very strong “magic” brownie later, and she’s having her way with ME in such a way that I feel so used, so violated…so fucking happy I couldn’t believe myself.

After a time of happy snogging and petting, of slow discarding of article after article of clothing, the pot kicked in. It turned her every touch into fireworks. When she sucked on my nipples, it was like they’d been hardwired right into my clit and all I could do was come and come and come helplessly…ecstatically.

I don’t think I could tell you how long it lasted. It was simultaneously eternal and criminally short. We kissed, we explored, we tasted and nibbled and caressed until she had to head home.

Ironically, though, we had to stop short of anything much beyond “2nd base.” (Albeit 2nd base with a very long lead toward stealing 3rd.) To go farther than night would have necessitated a mood-killing call to the skittish primary boy who’s new to sharing.

But right in that moment, as much as I might have liked to rip off her panties, I was content not to. It was a reminder of how profoundly sexual extended foreplay and delayed gratification can be. Besides, we have another date coming up next weekend and I don’t mind quivering in antici…pation.

So, I may have failed at doing things a new way on Craigslist, but it was nice to know that doing things my usual way on OKCupid was working so well!

And oh yeah, maybe Craigslist didn’t treat me so badly after all…I do have another date with a certain rugby-playing library assistant coming up soon, too. Maybe I’ll tell you about it the next time you see me on this stage.

…you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.“
—Ferris Bueller

So, you may have noticed it’s been a couple of months since I blogged last. Life has been crazy to say the least. My new job has become hectic to a point of making me wish I could clone myself even despite the inevitable rent that would cause in the fabric of space and time…or maybe just an amusing xXxenophile vignette.

My fling with Amy ran it’s course, but I still adore her and have a sneaking suspicion she’ll be around in my life for the foreseeable future. And it was delightful while it lasted. She’ll forever have a special place in my memory and my heart as the girl who helped me get my groove back.

‘Sides, if not for her, I never would have been shining as brightly as I was when I met Renie at a women’s pool party over at the delightful House Weirdness. And the *click* was probably heard around the world.

I’ve had a lot of partners and lovers. A lot. I’ve had several primary partners. None of them have ever been on the same wavelength with me like Renie is. I’ve finally found my partner in crime. As poly as I am, as kinky as I am, as desiring of adventures together and separately as I am…and seems to know more about making life good than I do despite being 10 years my junior. I’m in love…truly, madly, deeply.

But I’ve also met a bevy of beautiful Amazons…more on that later. That’s important.

I’ve also found some new motivations and meanings in my life…both long-term and short-term. I’ve already alluded to one of the short-term ones: Geek Salon. Part intellectual salon, part geek house party. Something like a mini-BayCon every month. I’ll talk more about it later, but I will make it happen and you’ll hear all about it here.

The other idea is one I’d had for a long time, but it took meeting a wonderful woman named Beth to crystallize with the right metaphor…the right name: Amazons. In a queer women’s culture that seems to be obsessed with butches, andros, genderqueers, and FTMs (not that there’s anything wrong with them, mind), and in which even a group calling itself the “Femme Posse” was a disappointing queer ladies’ auxilliary that seemed to do nothing but plan Butch Appreciation Day, it’s time for the powerful, femme-loving femmes (even if they love others in addition to their fellow femmes…no one’s demanding exclusivity here) to reclaim their space and their pride in the community, dangit.

And I’m going to make it happen…create my own private Themiscyra. I want it to be a thing…a meme…an identity. When a gaggle of fierce femmes shows up at the dyke bar/play party/club/whatever, I want heads to turn and people to whisper in awe, “The amazons are here!” And we’ll have our own space for just us, in person and online. I’ll start it…but I want my fellow amazons to join in and make it as great as I know it can be.

In the long term, I think I need to work on how to stop the damage that I now realize was done to me growing up. I’ve been so hampered in figuring out who the hell I am, loving that person, and in reaching out for what I want…feeling like I actually deserve it, and deserve happiness.

As my therapy goes on, the shape of it is becoming clearer through the haze of non-stop, low-grade (and sometimes rather intense) pain that was my childhood. More and more I see how I was discouraged from being me at every step along the way by my family, my peers, my circumstances. I still struggle with the idea of doing things for myself, from the mundane tasks of self-maintenance to the achieving of life-goals and the realizing of desires.

I’ve started reading books by a very interesting psychologist named Jane Middleton-Moz. In specific, her books Children of Trauma: Rediscovering Your Discarded Self (in which she explains that trauma isn’t just colossally bad individual incidents, but can also be an accumulation of smaller mini-traumas…and that the reactions of the significant adults in a child’s life can be more harmful than the traumas themselves…or they can practically delete the damage if they’re handled right) and Shame and Guilt: Masters of Disguise (reasonably self-explanatory).

I wonder if I’ll have to go back to college and study developmental psych now. Maybe I can find another way to advance the cause. We’ll see. Goodness knows I don’t want to be fixing computers and telling people how to access their basic application preferences for the rest of my working life, even if it’s paying the bills for now.

But first let me get Geek Salon and Themiscyra going.

It’s nice to have both short- and long-term goals, eh? I’m finding it to be!

BTW, shout-outs to Amazons I’ve met in recent weeks not mentioned above (in roughly chronological order): Dana K, Jetta, Tora, Celestina, Lucy, Lori, Violet, Tegan, and Brandi. You’re all amazing and you kick much booty. My Themiscyra is open to you all!

Hi, everyone out there in Internet-land. I know it’s been a while since you heard from me. Long enough that I actually had to clean some cobwebs off this bad boy, even (though goodness knows how they managed to latch on to a bunch of pixels).

Well, what can I say? The post-part-time depression got really bad after my brother’s lovely wedding down in Baja and I started losing enthiusiasm for pretty much everything. The only things keeping me going were my regular gym attendance, Chasing Amy events, Lost,  and my hardest of hard-core friends, like Deborah, Dana, Gina, et al.

So it got bad. Really bad. But, at the risk of sounding like a bad sports cliché, I didn’t give up. Once I gave up the delusion that I was was bursting with motivation and entrepreneurial spirit enough to actually start my own business, I started looking for a proper job in earnest. And I got one. This was the “Important Stuff™” I was nattering on about in my Twitter feed, for those of you who happen to follow that.

As of this past May 26, I’m the new Mac Server Goddess at Eaton & Associates and so far, I’m loving it. The people are great, the clients are varied and interesting, and it looks a lot like I’ll end up making substantially more than I did previously after figuring in their “profit-sharing” bonus plan.

So that’s one of a few things that have been keeping me massively busy since I found out I would get the job. Obviously, I had to get my old employer all buttoned down and school my replacement, for starters. Then I had a whirlwind weekend including a day and night at BayCon and something else I’ll be getting to soon enough. (I really should also post a separate piece on my BayCon experience. Believe it or not, after a lifetime of geekery, it was actually my first time attending a major con.)

BTW, going from depressed to the point of permasloth to getting up at 6:30 every “school day” and scurrying hither and yon pretty much instantaneously has been a jolt that my system really hasn’t adjusted to fully.

There have also been changes of seismic proportions in my personal life. I’ve met not one, but two wonderful women who’ve really helped me kick aside the last remnants of The Tale of Woe™ which has dominated my personal life for about 3 of the last 3.5 years. In chronological order, they are Melanie and Amy.

I met Melanie at the home of a mutual friend and was already fascinated by her before I realized she doesn’t live locally. In another, earlier time both the distance and a certain shared characteristic would have caused me to give up interest then and there even though she and I have more chemistry than I expect is strictly healthy. But she does come steaming through here every couple-few months and tells me she’s trying to find a way to get out here to stay. Needless to say, I’m doing everything within my power to help with this immigration project even if it isn’t a whole hell of a lot. I like this picture of her in her goth-princess finery!

Of course, once I have such a thing as disposable income again, she gives me a reason to go back to Jolly Old for the first time since 1990. Always meant to go back…

And then, at a recent Chasing Amy event I met Amy. But not the Amy who runs it. (Though that Amy, aka Ms. Kitty, is like buttah, dahhhling!) I mean this Amy. I’ve been spending every spare moment I can with her (and sometimes her lovely fiancée, John, too. Ain’t polyamory grand?) and as a result have had emotions woken up in me that I hadn’t properly felt in my whole post-op life…emotions I was really starting to wonder whether or not I’d ever feel again. And, again, she’s someone I might have looked past not that very long ago precisely because of the perfectly lovely fellow she’s going to marry. Doesn’t make her any the less into me, though goodness alone knows why. (But I’m not gonna question my good fortune!)

The net result of all of the above is that I’ve been experiencing a curious phenomenon: Happiness.

Now I just need to learn how to adjust to these new rhythms of life, making time for work, play, home, and everything else. Consequently, I propose slowing the rotation of the Earth to create a 25-hour day and its orbit around the sun to allow for 8-day weeks.

And, oh yeah, I still need to find more time to write in these very pages. I have ideas for posts that have been stewing for weeks and hopefully haven’t gone past their “use by” date.

But, to all my friends, family, and assorted loved ones, thank you THANK YOU THANK YOU! for putting up with me while I lingered in The Pit of Ultimate Darkness. I can’t imagine I’ve been a while hell of a lot of fun to be around.

Hugs to you all and *happy little sighs.*

I sleep now!

Within the last couple of months, I’ve undertaken something that would probably leave most of the people who’ve known me at any time in my adult life more than a little speechless: I started exercising regularly.

There have been previous abortive attempts at same scattered throughout my life — a few months of Shorinji Kempo in my teens, a personal trainer in my mid-twenties, wrestling lessons from a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu mistress and former GLOW girl (seriously!) — but they all had one thing in common. I never did a damned thing outside of class, and none of them lasted more than a few months.

This time, I started climbing fake rocks at a place in Sunnyvale called Planet Granite with a mix of new and old friends, spurred by new friend, Joyce. To my amazing surprise, I was actually able to get all 260 lbs. of me up some of the easier climbs once I got them to dig me up a harness in “extra lard-ass” size. Truth be told, I didn’t expect to be able to do even that. This last week, I actually managed a 5.6 climb (they’re graded 5.1-12, though that’s a bit misleading as 5.10-12 each have sub-gradations a-d, so a 5.6 is still a relative beginner climb).

It quickly became apparent that, even doing this once a week (so 4 or 5 times a month) which is how often this particular group meets, it was going to be  more economical to get a monthly membership. And, conveniently, Planet Granite also has more conventional gym equipment. So, I made something of an “exercise buddy pact” with one of my bestest friends, Dana. I figure it beat any of the alternative pacts we might be making since both of us also struggle with depression.

(Side note: Conventional gyms seem to really engage my “panic” reflex…there’s some combination of the usually excessive lights, general “fishbowl” atmosphere of gym-rats in stylin’ exercise togs showing off their svelteness, and the loud and driving eternal 120-140 bpm techno-throb that just stimulates me in all the wrong ways. But not Planet Granite. The gym equipment is off to the side in a shadier part of the building, everyone’s either focused on the climbing or in their own little world, and the music ranges from tolerable to actually enjoyable while staying at lower volumes. Exercising there just doesn’t bug me, thank goodness.)

So, I’ve been keeping up with that a little bit every day, which is a first in my life. So, yay me and all that.

But do you know what it feels like to go from stiff, sedentary, and 36 to exercising 5 days a week for a good hour a day? OWWWWW. Even stretching out when not exercising doesn’t help. When I’m home working my semi-job or plotting my new direction(s), my limbs feel like lead.

But I have to do it. I have to keep my promise to myself. I have to do the hard thing, the boring thing, the slow progress thing, the repetitive thing. I just keep telling myself that I will see improvement if I keep it up. I’m not even hung up on any one number…weight, inches, dress size…’cause I know that way lies madness for someone like me. Setting milestones for things I’m doing strictly for me and for my own good is a recipe for missing them. As Douglas Adams once said, “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”

No, I’m doing this because I know that, even if I don’t see drastic change in these metrics anytime soon, my mood will still benefit from the endorphins, my heart will become healthier, I’ll develop more endurance, and I might be able to do some harder climbs…though I have no real desire to do the hardest ones or ever climb a rock outdoors. That said, I do like the wall as metaphor. Facing it, struggling up it, overcoming the harder bits, and getting to the top even if I don’t do it the 1st time. (Or the next few times for that matter…)

So it’s not just about physical toughness for me, but mental toughness as well, which is something I’ve been sorely lacking lately. “I give up” had been my middle name for a while now.

And even just getting sick with your standard-issue creeping crud this past weekend and having to miss one workout caused a nasty backslide. It left me feeling really down, going back into the vicious cycle of hiding alone at home, kicking myself, and then kicking myself some more for feeling bad after I kicked myself.

I don’t know what it is about rock climbing that’s done it for me so far, though. I guess it has at least a little bit to do with the fact that my general lack of coordination isn’t nearly as much of a factor as in something like a martial art. It’s just you and the wall. I’m sure some skill will become more necessary as I try to do anything higher than a 5.6, which I figure is probably about as far as I’m going to be able to go on pure bloody-mindedness until such time as I lose fat and gain strength — particularly arm and upper-body strength — and develop some modicum of skill. It also doesn’t hurt that I have a whole cadre of climbing buddies, some of whom are very near and dear to me.

But for now, it’s the metaphor that really counts. All my life, I’ve felt a massive internal resistance to anything that excessively resembles hard work or drudge-work. Is it some childhood rebellion turned toxic in adulthood? Early-prodigy burnout writ large? Do the whys and wherefores even matter anymore?

Regardless, it feels a lot like starting a climb…staring up the wall and feeling like I’ll never make it, like I’ll never be able to haul my economy-sized carcass up some strategically-placed hand- and foot-holds to where I can touch the top and enjoy the little reward of either abseiling or rappelling back down, depending on how much the climb took out of me. That bit is fun, actually. You feel kinda like Spider-Man.

Between the climbing and the blogging, who knows what other good habit I might be able to inculcate in myself. Maybe I’ll finally make better use of the lovely USB keyboard controller Dana gave me (so she would feel moved to get a better one *chuckles*) and start re-learning music, of which I’ve done none since minoring in it at college.

But, lest this sound too positive or optimistic, I have one hard, high internal climb ahead of me, and I’m probably going to fall. A lot. Sometimes you get the wall, and sometimes the wall gets you. I just hope I keep having the wherewithal to take a wee rest and make another, better try at it at least one more time than I fall.