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The morning was lovely and began with a nice walk.
The middle of the day was taken up with work.
As per usual, a crash came this afternoon. I could not get myself to do the next day of Tank’s training, even though I knew I should. Instead, after scolding myself adequately to spur activity, I did half an hour of core and leg exercises that I got from physical therapy.
No, I didn’t get any sort of cool injury to require PT. I got a middle-aged bookworm’s injury: my hip decided that it hated the chairs at a conference I attended that it no longer wanted to function properly. Walking was fine. Trying to step up even one stair and my right leg would try and collapse from the hip.
I did feel mentally better after my PT session today, although I was so physically wobbly I had to sit down for a while before I trusted my legs enough to take a shower.
Not a bad day in the end, though not “on plan.”
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Actually sticking with health and fitness goals is really hard. Clearly. I said back in April that I was going to get hold of my fitness and my diet and become the woman I want to be. Guess what? I haven’t done that. Not even close.
I got a gym membership, and I’ve even gone to the gym – generally two or three days in a row, then a really long break. (Once I did manage to crack my head really good on the concrete wall of a racquetball court and it took about a month for that to not hurt to touch and I didn’t go to the gym until it felt ok again, so that time I had an excuse. Flimsy, but at least something).
I got a workout bench for at home, and dumbbells, kettlebells, exercise bands, a yoga mat, yoga blocks . . . basically all the cool “at-home gym in the living room” stuff. I even used all that stuff for a few weeks.
I’m signed up for WW and two different workout apps – “Centr” and “Tank’s Training.” Off and on I do one of Tank’s workouts (the Witcher workout at the gym kicked my butt). I haven’t touched Centr for months, and WW for even longer.
Some weeks I buy ingredients to make healthy dinners, and if I can get the prep work on them done before depression and self-loathing or ennui sets in sometime from noon onward every day, I even make those dinners. But mainly I crash, stop caring or trusting myself to do anything right, and we end up ordering out.
It’s not that I don’t know how to work out and eat right, it’s just so hard to make myself care, and keep caring. If it was me keeping someone else motivated and on track, that might be different, but myself? It’s just so hard to care . . .
So, for my own accountability – and in the hopes that maybe if I I acknowledge to myself that this is what everyone else sees every day when they look at me (although usually I wear whatever I think will hide my body the best) – I’m going to post pictures of where I am right now. Today.
There I am. 5’3″ and 227 pounds of pure flab.
Heck, the fact that I even put on workout clothes today is because I was wasting time on YouTube looking up videos on various superhero workout routines. (It made me realize how few female superheroes there are, and even fewer worthwhile female superhero workout routine videos on YouTube. Grr.)
I ended up on the workouts for Stephen Amell as The Green Arrow (when it comes to actors physically becoming characters, he really did). I like his workouts in that they are really about functional strength and agility.
I felt stupid sitting on my butt watching videos about working out, so I put my workout headphones on (yet another piece of workout equipment I haven’t much put to the proper application) and did squats, v-ups, balance work, some band work, and a few other things to get my heart rate up and my body a bit annoyed with me until the video ended.
Then I decided to make myself accountable to my blog at least, even if no actual person ever looks at it. Maybe this will be the motivator that finally pushed me into a solid routine of exercise and a healthy diet (not dieting, just eating healthy foods).
So I’ll watch my superhero shows and shows with kick-ass characters I want to be, and read books with characters that inspire me to improve myself (yes, Nesta, I’m looking at you), and look at all the actors who have embodied all these characters in real life. I’ll watch Tank’s videos and streams that never fail to inspire, and Stuart’s too. And, maybe just maybe, I’ll find that part of myself that other people have seemed sure all my life must exist, and find my drive and dedication to stick with this and physically embody the person I want to be.
I have neglected my blog for years, trying to sort through . . .a lot of things. I’ve tried posting baking videos on YouTube, then got too self-conscious to be on camera and stopped that. I set up a Patreon to share my writing, since I am an aspiring author. It isn’t here because for the moment I don’t feel comfortable putting my fiction writing out there anywhere that isn’t behind a paywall, and thus visible to a much smaller and more select audience.
But here, on this long-neglected blog, I’m going to try and keep myself accountable as I start on a new journey. A quest to find the woman I sometimes glimpse in the mirror before I actually look at myself, the woman that I feel stirring deep down on my best days.
I currently weigh 230 pounds. I despise the woman I see in the mirror when I let myself look too long, especially a full-length mirror. The woman in that reflection disgusts me. She did this to herself – I did this to myself. Long ago when I was young, I put on a coward’s armor rather than fighting and raging like I should have, like I knew even then that I could have. I’ve worn this armor ever since, letting it build up, letting it get worse. I’ve always known how to take it off, I’ve even managed it once, mostly, without even trying. But then I let it all come back because I was depressed. Because I hated myself enough that I didn’t care. I didn’t think I was worth the effort.
I read a book, a series of books actually – The ACOTAR series by Sarah J. Maas – that offered me something that no self-help or self-improvement book I’ve read ever has. I read A Court of Thorns and Roses and A Court of Mist and Fury and saw in Feyre the same horror at her life that I sometimes feel, a life of safety and protection and drowning. I read A Court of Frost and Starlight and A Court of Silver Flames and saw much more of myself in Nesta that I even knew I had inside there, deep in my shadows. Where she turned to drinking and sex, I turned to food and sloth. She helped me see what it was that I hate so much when I look too long at myself. And she showed me that I can get past the things that have damaged me, the things that make me despise myself. I can become the woman I want to be.
It will be no uplifting fantasy story for me – I have no Cassian to support and guide my training, no Gwyn or Emerie to train beside me, all of us believing in each other and pushing each other to believe in ourselves enough to put in the work. It’s just me, and the only great triumph in the end will be looking at that woman in the mirror and, finally, being proud of her. Finally loving what I see when I see myself.
But I’m not entirely alone, even if I’m looking through a one-way mirror. There are others out there, supporting me even if they don’t know it. There’s Tank Tolman, who videos are always supportive, always kind. There’s Stuart Mackey, who has his own shadows behind his eyes, but keeps fighting, keeps trying, and somehow manages to encourage and lift up others through and in spite of his own trials. They have no idea that I exist, but I see them, and they do help me.
For the foreseeable future, this blog will shift its focus to this journey I’m beginning. A way to keep myself accountable and help myself succeed, and perhaps, if someone else is standing where I stand now and finds this, I might be able to help them too.
I am always looking for ways to use up some of my sourdough discard, because I always have at least one jar of discard in my fridge. I’m also frequently looking for ways to use up old bananas that have gone past where I want to just peel and eat them (one they get more than just a few little brown spots, they’re for cooking, not snacking.) So this recipe is a perfect way to use up a bit of both.
I found this recipe on the Bake from Scratch website. If you want to try these yourself (and your really should, they are super tasty), go here: https://www.bakefromscratch.com/sourdough-banana-chocolate-chip-muffins/
It is a fantastic recipe, with measurements by both weight and volume (I much prefer weight, but it’s nice that they are both available).
This recipe is really easy and really forgiving. You don’t need to be super precise, you don’t need to follow every step exactly, as long as you get everything into the mix.
The only thing I discovered as I made these — or as I portioned them, actually — was that the recipe’s idea of a muffin tin and my idea of a muffin tin were apparently different. The recipe says it makes 12 muffins. For me, it made 24. I’m not complaining at all, but I think we must be using different sized muffin tins. Mine was for normal-sized cupcakes, which makes cute little muffins. If you were doing the kind of big muffins that you get in stores and you had that sort of tin, then this recipe would work exactly right. If you’re like me and you have home-sized cupcake tins instead, it makes 24 smaller muffins (which are wonderfully snackable and shareable). The only difference is that the baking time will shift downward. If you do end up with 24 portions, then you probably want to bake for 12-15 minutes, not the 20-25 the recipe calls for if you have 12 larger muffins.
These are also going to be really adaptable, particularly regarding your mix-ins. You could use different flavored chips (1/2 chocolate and 1/2 peanut butter chips perhaps?), or chopped nuts, or all of the above if you really want to go wild. This batter feels like it would also stand up to taking a more breakfast-oriented angle if you wanted to add oats or dried fruit.
When you first saw “The Artists’ Hearth” you might have been expecting to see beautiful paintings. Or sculptures perhaps? Line drawings at least? It does say “Artist” after all.
It does say “Artist”, and any of those forms of art may indeed appear on this blog at some point. But those are not the only forms of art. There are so many more. Go ahead and think of a few . . .
Did you think of music, or acting? Maybe graphic design or woodcutting? Then you would have been right, but there is still so much more out there.
Anything that you create, from drawing, to singing, to writing, to baking, can be art. This blog could have been named The Creators’ Hearth” but that just doesn’t quite fit the vibe that I’m going for. The same goes for “The Makers’ Hearth.” So I settled on Artist, with the broadest possible definition of what an artist can be. An artist is a creator, a maker. An artist is anyone who uses their skill and imagination and creates something where before there had been only individual elements of a thing and potential. Even if you are building robots for arena fighting, you are an artist. You have to come up with the design, how it is going to be individual and unique. How it is going to stand out. Yes there is a whole lot of engineering that goes into robot building, but who ever said that engineers couldn’t be artists?
“Ok, so a maker or a creator can be an artist. Fine. But why is “Artists” plural?” I named this The Artists’ Hearth” rather than “The Artist’s Hearth” (note where the apostrophe sits) because there are so very many artists out there, and so very many of them are far better at their art than I am. I wrestle with allowing myself the identity of being an artist. (A good many artists will understand the doubt, the “am I good enough” question behind claiming the title of Artist) Yet if this space is not just for myself, but for any artist who wishes to come and linger a while at my hearth, and share a bit of their art while they’re here, then it will have earned its name. Even if no other artist comes, having the plural there stands as an invitation. Come. Come sit a while at my hearth, and rest for a spell. The chairs are comfortable and the crackling fire is warm and cheery. You are welcome here.
It’s good to be getting back to my blog.
It’s also a little terrifying. Or at least scary. Particularly because I’m also starting up a vlog to go in conjunction with my blog.
Judging by who is out there to be found on easy internet searches, I’m too old to be a vlogger. Per my own opinion of myself I’m also not attractive enough and I don’t do makeup or style my hair or any of the things thatI ought to be doing to make myself visually appealing for a viewing audience. Perhaps best to stick to a blog where no one has to see me, jsut whatever I choose to photograph.
Oh well. I’ve started on a vlogging journey, and I plan on sticking with it. Why I decided to start vlogging is its own mystery. I have a vlog that I watch a lot, but it’s not by a baker, and that is what I have ended up vlogging — at least so far. From watching those vlogs, somehow I fell down a rabbit hole and fell into another vlog that, among other things, is about vlogging. That vlogger said to jump in and just get started, and it didn’t matter what I was vlogging. At least not at first.
So, I jumped in. I decided to vlog about baking, since that is something that I think that I can come up with new material to do and talk about at least once a week.
My plan is to accompany my vlogs with blogs, where I can take more time to talk about what I did and why. Also, include other things that I don’t talk about in the vlog.
I’m not entirely sure why I decided to try and be a content creator. I guess I wanted a stable job that I can do from anywhere. And I know, being a content producer isn’t exactly what would usually be considered a stable or reliable job, but when your other job is being an adjunct college professor, it changes your perspective on what counts as stable and relaible. Creating content only relies on myself and I can at least predict whether I will be working three months from now or not.
So here I go on a new adventure into becoming a content creator. If I’m lucky, I might even produce something that will bring a bit of an income eventually. time will tell.
Here goes.
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The Artists' Hearth 