Brain Bubble

Alright, this is more about body, but also about my brain's reaction to stuff about my body. For quite a while, I've been aware that I was hypermobile, and that a number of the weird jumping joint issues I've had on and off since I was a kid were likely related to that. When I first started having these discussions, I concluded that, while I was definitely hypermobile, my hypermobility seemed to be different than a lot of my friends, and I concluded that I probably had a non-standard variant of something. I had some vague hypotheses, but mostly settled with the "definitely hypermobile, but in a weird way" and was fine with that. In recent years, more and more of my friends have been getting diagnosed or self-diagnosing with hEDS, and I started to wonder. A lot of the experiences were shared. A lot of things did make sense. It still felt like I was a little different, but maybe that was just the feeling that your own experiences are always unique. Yesterday, I went...

I have a bit of an unusual take on body positivity. I love my body. I love my body. But I'm more or less neutral on my physical appearance. On the whole, I feel vaguely positive about it, but only very weakly so. There are a few features I quite like. Mostly I don't give it a lot of thought. But I love my body. I love biking 30 miles to give people cookies, or 100 miles to see my partner. I love that I can bench 100 pounds or squat 200. At a simpler level, I love the feeling of warming up on a cold day, or stepping into air conditioning on a hot day. I love the feeling of my partners' hands touching me, and I love being able to use my body to make other people happy. I love tasting a fresh berry that I just picked, or smelling bread that I made with my own hands.  I love my body because of the things that it can do. How it looks is something for other people. Enough people seem happy with that, but it's not my big concern. What I care about is all the things it does for...

Note: This was written in February, 2021. As I've alluded to before, I'm a bit of a gym rat. I like being strong, and exercise is one of the best things for calming my brain down. But also, it's my favorite drug. Being a responsible person who lives with a vulnerable spouse, I haven't been to a gym since the start of the pandemic. Early on, I got myself a set of dumbbells, and I've been making do. It's fine for keeping up on some things. It's fine for working certain sets of muscles. But they just aren't heavy enough for the large muscle groups, and with dumbbells a lot more things are limited by my hands before it really gets to the muscles I want to work. Recently I got myself a squat rack and bench, and then a bar and weights (yes, separated in time. There are reasons.) It's been a few weeks, and I've been working myself back up slowly, because it had been a long time, and I was trying to be responsible. I'm finally back to the point where...

I just finished a workout, so I think it's time that I tackle what is probably my second most important coping strategy after my external brain. I mentioned in my description that I am very much classic hyperactive subtype ADHD. My brain wants to be moving all the time. Small fidgets help a little bit, but only a little. Getting up and walking around the apartment periodically helps a bit more, but doesn't fix the problem. In order to get basically anything productive done that requires sitting, I need to be getting at least an hour of real exercise in a day. It doesn't have to be high intensity, but it has to be one or two solid blocks of time when I can really get moving. If I'm struggling with work in the middle of the day, one of the most useful things I can do is go to the gym or go for a bike ride. When I come back, I'll have much more focus. As a physiologist, I can talk about Brain Derived Neurotropic Factor, and things like that, but I really think the key ...