It's Only A Paper Rose

Y'all may have noticed that I haven't been around much. I don't think I mentioned it here, but I've taken a temporary job doing phone support for tax software during the busy season.

I was expecting it to take up a fair amount of my time, given that it's a full-time-plus-OT kind of deal, but what I wasn't expecting was just how mentally exhausting it would be. In retrospect this seems rather shortsighted—it turns out that learning how to operate and troubleshoot two different software programs, as well as huge chunks of the incredibly complicated U.S. tax system, is super draining! who knew?—but, yeah. I've been keeping up with workouts as a self-preservation mechanism, since they keep the associated anxiety from eating me alive, but by the time I'm done with a full shift plus a workout I'm just...mush, physically and mentally. And I haven't even started the serious overtime yet...this is my last two-day weekend for a month, I've got 12-hour workdays happening starting tomorrow.

I just hope I can at least keep the workouts going.

It's only for a month. (Maybe more, if the IRS extends the filing deadline again...but I'll burn that bridge when I come to it.)

On the up(?) side, I've been taking very well to the work—surprise, surprise, it turns out that I'm really excellent at talking to people. I might not be the fastest or most knowledgeable troubleshooter, but 90% of my clients love me by the time we're done talking, and that earns me a lot of leeway. Especially with the New Jersey clients who're notorious for being fairly impatient...I guess I speak fluent East Coaster, haha. One of the products I'm supporting recently made a switch to an entirely web-based program, and I've carved out something of a niche for myself being the person who gets the seventy-something CPAs on board with the new setup, in one case giving a remedial course on how tabbed browsing works. I figure if I can get a New Jersey caller to say "Now, you take care of yourself out there" at the end of a call, I've done good.

There's a strong possibility they'll be offering me a full-time position at the end of the busy season, which...I don't know if I want to take. Which feels a little silly, as I've spent all this time getting to know the software and the pay is quite decent, but frankly, I miss writing. And massage. And with vaccinations becoming more available, I may be able to do the latter again soon.

Anyway. If you reach out and I don't immediately get back to you over the next month, I promise it's not because I don't love you. <3 Soon enough I'll be back to my usual analytical reading/writing self.

Onward.

As usual, spring feels like it comes about three weeks late to Chicago, but it's finally come—there are no days in the upcoming forecast where the weather's dipping below freezing, and in fact it's supposed to get up to 70 (albeit cloudy and windy) next week. More to the point, yesterday was the first day where the weather was nice enough, long enough, for me to take Gabriel up to Sauganash for my Monday commute. I was a little concerned about being out of shape; it's about five and a half miles each way, depending on the route you take. But I've been going to Sculpt semi-regularly (which always includes a good cardio section) and also biking to and from Lincoln Square (between 1.5 and 2 miles each way) regularly, so it wasn't anywhere near as much of a strain as I was concerned. It probably also helped that I was careful to actually eat enough calories; Brian pointed out that maybe part of the reason I was so tired all the time last summer was that I get so busy running from engagement to engagement that I forget to eat. (I'd still eat at mealtimes, usually, but I have trouble downing huge portions at once; I'm more of a grazer.) So I was careful to make sure I got enough food...and aided in that goal by Breanne (the studio manager) bringing in chocolate cupcakes that were bigger than my fist. The fact that I demolished about two-thirds of one with lunch, and still ended up under my calorie budget, gives you an idea of how much I was moving yesterday, haha.

My evening C2 was particularly interesting. I had a student walk in fairly early; I went to sign him in...and his name came up as "Chris Evans". He was not the Captain America Chris Evans, but of course I had to take a second look. When he caught me looking, I made some dumb joke about "You're a little smaller in person,"; he dutifully laughed and headed to the locker rooms, and my desk shift partner and I chatted a bit about various celebrity sightings we've heard about in the yoga community. Then he comes back, asks some minor question, and when I give him an answer, thanks me and flashes a truly megawatt smile—like, I'm pretty sure he practices in the mirror—before heading into the studio. My colleague and I sort of sat there, stunned for a moment, until I commented, "Well, *now* he's as good-looking as Captain America." Alas, he lives downtown and was only in the area for a work event, so I'm unlikely to see him again, but dang.

Needless to say, I was particularly pleased that my class came out extra well—not that it was perfect (no class ever is), but it was the second week doing this sequence, so I already had a good toolbox of cues, I could see people improving throughout the class (always a sign you're teaching well), and I'm particularly pleased with my theme this week and felt I wove it in solidly without hammering on it too hard. Honestly, I think it was one of the best C2 classes I've ever taught; it's amazing what wanting to impress an attractive audience member does for one's inspiration.

In weirder news, I have literally not read anything book-wise this week. Some of this has been the aforementioned cycles being taken up by house-hunting (it's a surprisingly emotionally-intensive activity, especially when you have a partner and you're having to negotiate your respective needs), but also, the time I normally spend reading has actually been taken up by writing. For the first time in a long while, I have an idea in my head that won't let go, despite being emotionally murky and requiring multiple rewrites—usually I lose interest after a week or so if I haven't found the clear arc. My brain is still convinced there's something good there, though, so I'm keeping at it...so this is basically an apology for not having a Wednesday book post tomorrow. I promise I'm not turning into one of those "I want to be a writer but I just don't have time to read" people, heh.

It's been a slightly weird week.

I posted last Monday about my experience working on actively letting go of anxiety, and how surprised I was at my success - not just in the moment, as most such effects are, but throughout the evening. I'm pleased (if also slightly puzzled) to report that the effects have continued through the week. That's not to say I haven't experienced unpleasant emotions (more on that in a moment), but that background mental hum - the one that sometimes fades and sometimes grows louder, but that I always know can turn into an anxiety episode if I'm not careful to manage it - is just...gone. It's weird, like when the power goes out and you suddenly realize there are computer fans and a fridge and a HVAC system and all these sources of white noise that you've learned to ignore, and without them everything suddenly feels...quiet.

The especially weird part is, in some ways this past week (and especially the last few days) has been tailor made to trigger my anxiety. My calendar was booked close to solid - I even saw a client on a day I'd planned to take off because she was only in town and available that afternoon. Late Friday/early Saturday Brian and I had our bikes stolen right off our back porch - and given that it's a second-floor porch right off of our bedroom, that's a pretty anxiety-inducing trespass. And today I was supposed to be teaching three classes at Sauganash, but last night I had some kind of random gastric distress that may or may not have been blood sugar related, but is definitely the kind of unexplained body issue that normally causes me acute anxiety (both due to the unknown nature of it and the adrenaline waking me up to use the bathroom every hour); also I had to send out a flurry of texts this morning looking for last-minute subs for my classes today, which is always stress-inducing.

And don't get me wrong, I am certainly unhappy with all of these things. (I may even have expressed myself in particularly unladylike language about both the bikes and the missed work.) But, while I have been annoyed and frustrated, I haven't had that hamster-wheel feeling of being trapped in an anxiety spiral, or even the sense that the anxiety's hovering in the background waiting for an unwary moment, that I might've had not long ago. And, unsurprisingly, that's made everything much easier to deal with, both because I've had the extra cycles to do so, and because it's much easier to keep things in perspective. (For those who're concerned: we have renter's insurance that should cover most of the replacement cost for the bikes, the worst of the distress seems to be over although I'm still very short on both energy and sleep, and I was able to get emergency subs for my classes today without too much trouble.)

Some part of me wonders how long this is going to last - much as I'd like to think it's a permanent shift, I strongly suspect the background hum will creep up on me again at some point. Maybe I should start meditating regularly and see if that helps? I will have to consider further...after sleep, I think.

What I've just finished reading

Ancillary Mercy, by Ann Leckie. A couple of years ago, Brian and I started watching Star Trek: The Next Generation via Netflix, and it occurred to me how fundamentally different it was from anything I'd seen on television over the past couple of decades; specifically, the way the Enterprise crew fundamentally assumed from the get-go that any aliens it encountered, no matter how powerful or strange, could be reasoned with - they might or might not hold the same values humanity did, but that there was always some common ground. Several of the best episodes ("Darmok" comes to mind, though there are others) centered on this idea, in fact. (I'm far from the first person to observe this about the show, but growing up watching primarily Star Trek spinoffs and very little other television, it never really struck me until then exactly how unusual that was. I remember, in fact, watching the new Battlestar Galactica in my twenties and thinking how much more appropriate it was, in a post-9/11 landscape, to have a sci-fi show that addressed the more distrustful aspects of humanity...and only realized some seasons later how depressing it got because it almost continually refused to acknowledge the flip side, perhaps because it was afraid of being compared to Star Trek.)

I bring this up because this series is one of the first that I've seen that does something different with the space opera formula. Even my beloved Vorkosigan series, delightful as it is, tends to have easily-identifiable characters and follow fairly standard plot arcs; this is hardly surprising, as tropes and archetypes are integral to our storytelling traditions. But the Ancillary books could almost entirely be summed up in this one line, from a recent installment of a different space opera franchise: "This is not going to go the way you think." And while lots of stories attempt to do what Leckie does here - subvert expectations, zig when you think it's going to zag, create fascinating characters and a meaty conflict with a satisfying resolution without a single Giant Space Battle - I've rarely seen it pulled off with such aplomb. It's not Star Wars-style space opera, about myth or the expectations that myth generates; it's not Star Trek either (the one alien race we have even tangential contact with, the Presger, are notable for precisely how alien they are - threatening not due to their desire for power or territory or resources, but because we can't even conceptualize of what they want). It's something completely its own, and refreshing, and so well-built that I can't quite believe it's over - the characters and their world still exist vividly in my head, long after I've put the book down.

What I'm currently reading

Winter Garden, by Kristin Hannah. I feel like this book started about ten chapters too early - I'm seven hours in to the audiobook and it's only just starting to really pique my interest. While I get what the author was doing - Nina and Meredith's mother is so completely closed-off that it takes their father's death, the frustration of Nina's career prospects, and the dissolution of Meredith's marriage in order to get them to the point where they're finally in a place to make the effort to get her to open up - it basically translated to six and a half hours of listening to "hey, these people have problems, and hey look, those problems are getting worse!" Which, now that I think about it, may well be preparing me to dive into some Russian history and literature, although perhaps not how I was intending it to. :P Still, I'm enjoying their mother's 'fairy tale', even if the contrivance feels--well--contrived; how is it not plainly obvious to both of these women that this is their mother's life story, thinly veiled?

Ella Enchanted, by Gail Carson Levine. I've only read the first chapter or so, and I already like Ella - cursed with the 'virtue' of forced obedience, she develops a rebellious streak and finds creative ways to subvert it. I'm looking forward to this one, despite my general dislike of Clumsy Heroine Syndrome.

What I plan to read next

Might as well get a start on Yoga Sequencing, since I made it one of my New Year's goals. I haven't been journaling as much as I'd like to, either, so I think I'm going to go with the idea I had before - set aside the time to read a chapter each week, and journal about how I might apply it in my work.

Hello, book-folk! I seem to have started a Business Ladies Club. Yesterday, the delightful Erika Moen had a post up on her Patreon discussing how she and a few of her female colleagues regularly met to discuss their experiences in running a business, and it occurred to me that I knew a few self-employed women and that it might be super useful to have a monthly get-together to compare experiences and offer support. So I put up a Facebook post about the idea, got a couple of responses, thought "Sweet! Three people is a good start!", started a Facebook group, and went grocery shopping...and came back to find that one of them had added ten more people, several of whom were in the process of introducing themselves. Well! The first rule of improv (and God knows I'm improvising here) is "Yes, and...". And clearly there's a need here, heh. We'll see how the actual meetups go! (At the very least, thanks to one of my favorite local feminist artists, we have a name and badge already, haha.)

So, onto the books!


What I've just finished reading

She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders, by Jennifer Finney Boylan. Memoirs are tricky beasts. Humans are storytelling creatures, who recall episodes and fragments and improve the breadth and depth of those recollections by stringing them together into a narrative...and yet, those recollections are shaped by that narrative just as much as the narrative is shaped by our experiences, which makes it tricky to discern which came first.

Whether in service to the truth or to storytelling or both, Boylan takes the popular memoirist's tack of relating her memories in a series of vignettes, some comic, some tragic, many both (as her friend Richard Russo puts it, "You love that place between what's funny and what's terribly sad"). It's a tricky line to walk, keeping to the fundamental truth of events while also ensuring thematic coherence, but it's done admirably here, beautifully illustrating the evolution of Boylan's coming to terms with her gender dysphoria, as well as the rippling-outward effects her eventual transition had on her family. If I have any complaint, it's that the perspective occasionally feels more than a little emotionally removed; Boylan clearly (and for obvious reasons) has a strong ability to examine even extremely emotional events from a perspective of distance, and there are times when that works against the narrative's accessibility - she comes across as more calm and withdrawn than I suspect was actually the case in many of these situations. Still, as someone who deals with strong emotion through distance and analysis as well, it certainly felt familiar.

(This has little to do with the book, but deserves a link anyway: her solemnization of my friend's wedding was among the most heart-rendingly beautiful such pieces I've ever heard. I almost wish I could get married again just to have her do the service.)

Murder in Mesopotamia, by Agatha Christie. The Heisenbergian nature of my reading choices strikes again - I have a weakness for well-read paperbacks that are maybe a little worse for the wear, and my friend's Boston Airbnb had a copy of Poirot in the Orient, an omnibus edition of three Poirot mysteries. This first one I had incredibly mixed feelings about; I can see why Christie remains so popular - her plot-construction remains second to none in the mystery genre, and she has a keen if cynical eye for human nature. But man oh man, some of her attitudes have not aged well. (I particularly cringed at the narrator's description of the Arab workers as funny-looking, with "their heads all tied up as if they had toothache." Cripes.) Of course, it's not precisely a secret that Christie held Particular Views, and they weren't really out of line with the culture of the time, but still...reading her makes me wonder what will stand out as equally cringe-worthy in our current popular writing, eighty years from now.


What I'm currently reading

Death on the Nile, by Agatha Christie. I...may have slipped the paperback into my backpack to read on the plane. *shifty eyes* (Dear Boston Airbnb friend - if you read this, I promise to mail it back to you when I'm done.) I'm only a little way through this, and so far all the action's been in England so there's been a minimum of racism, but whoo boy is the cultural sexism in full force. It's sort of a shame, because the rich charming fashionable heiress who's ambivalent about getting married for fear of giving up her independence is a far more interesting and sympathetic character to me than any of the others, but it seems pretty clear she's only being set up to be murdered. Now that I think about it, Murder in Mesopotamia also was about the murder of a powerful and independent-minded woman, although her power mostly came about in a covert and manipulative way...sigh. Still, these wouldn't be bad studies in the toxicity of gender dynamics in 1930s England.


What I plan to read next

I need to finish Blood of Ambrose and Come As You Are, plus I've recently acquired a couple of yoga books in preparation for learning to teach C2 classes. Unfortunately, buying them and letting them sit on your coffee table doesn't really do a lot to help you absorb the information...maybe if I strap them to my skin and let them absorb through osmosis while I work today...?

I was reflecting just now that lately I've been both hyper-aware of what day of the week it is, and completely unaware of how the days are passing. The former because it's the basis for my entire schedule, and the latter because my commitments vary so much week to week that it's hard to get any sense of cycle or rhythm. I'm not overextended, precisely; I've been doing better about keeping my pace sustainable, and taking days off when I need them. But I feel like lately all I've written about here is either the books I'm reading or how tired I am; this seems to be an indicator of the thoughts that occupy my downtime.

Which is not to say I haven't been doing fun things - this summer has been full of them! I went to a storytelling event with my friend Andrea just before leaving for Washington; Brian and I went to the Welcome to Night Vale live show; we took Jamila to see Aladdin and Jamila and her mother to see Hamilton on Broadway, we went to see a local production of Three Days of Rain solely on the strength of the company's previous performances (a gamble that paid off; it was an excellent show), we've been rock climbing with our friend Erin a couple of times, as well as the various just-hanging-out events like movie nights and festivals that summer here is full of. To paraphrase Alice Isn't Dead, Chicago in the summer is happy in a way few other cities seem to be. So it's not that I've been doing nothing other than work. It's just...I don't have a lot of downtime, and a lot of days I fall into bed exhausted. Maybe that's why we all curl up into our hermit-shells come fall and winter - we're so tired from running around so manically for months.

Still. Perhaps I'll block tomorrow off for a rest - no plans to go out, just take a yoga class and some much-needed downtime. (Now that I've said this, I'm almost guaranteed to get a text from someone hoping for a last-minute massage booking, haha.) Saturday is my birthday; Brian and I are getting massages and then going to check out some open houses for a couple of condos in the neighborhood that look promising. Onward and forward.

...I wonder if that isn't actually the fundamental source of my difficulty achieving balance - that need, a la Miles Vorkosigan, to keep the forward momentum going, lest I fall into another rut, leading to a depressive episode. That might explain a little about that sense of almost-fear that feels like it's driving me sometimes.

Hello, book friends! As I posted on Facebook, coming back from vacation is almost as much work as getting ready to go. Since returning on Sunday I've dyed my hair blue, bought groceries, made a playlist, taught two classes (with two more upcoming), run numerous errands, sent a nastygram to Hertz over being charged half again what Expedia promised, hosted two private massage clients, had Dominika and her husband over for dinner, and (according to Strava) biked nearly 20 miles all over Chicago. Still to do: mail presents to my mum, finish unpacking, clean out the fridge and microwave (seriously, it's been like two years and they're getting disgusting), create a Facebook page/website to connect with more potential massage/yoga clients, prepare for teaching my first yin yoga class on Sunday, winnow out my clothing/shoes/movies/general possessions, catch up on spring cleaning that I missed because my massage bookings went through the roof in May...and that's not even half of it. Augh! One step at a time.

Still, I've managed to carve out some time for reading, albeit less than I'd like since returning from vacation...


What I've just finished reading

Notes of a Native Son, by James Baldwin. I finally gave up on finding the time to read the paper copy of this I'd bought, and listened to the rest of the audiobook. It's good stuff, and thought-provoking, but I really don't think the format was right for me for this work; I've always been a faster and more thorough reader than listener (much to the frustration of my schoolteachers, heh), and audiobooks are frustratingly ephemeral when it comes to volumes that traffic in ideas - it's hard to consider and write about related experiences when the person just keeps talking. I do hope to reread on paper and consider more thoroughly, but as an overview of the ideas discussed it was definitely a good introduction.


What I'm currently reading

Come As You Are, by Emily Nagoski, Ph.D. This continues to be one of the most fascinating and (to borrow a term from the tech sector) disruptive books I've read on the subject of sexuality. The framework Nagoski presents is far more sexuality-positive, and particularly female-sexuality-positive, than the overall cultural narrative we all grew up with; I've noticed that Nagoski shares my fascination with personal and cultural storytelling, how it assigns meaning to our world, and how that meaning can be either beneficial or harmful to our sense of well-being. For instance, the hymen, possibly one of the most frequently misunderstood parts of feminine physiology, came to that point of misunderstanding largely due to patriarchal concerns over paternity, which led to a cultural narrative of female "purity" being perceived as desirable - despite the fact that the organ itself has little to do with a woman's sexual state.

I also particularly enjoyed the chapter on arousal nonconcordance, describing exactly what's going on when someone's genital behavior demonstrates arousal even when their brain is not sexually aroused. I was particularly interested in the correlation statistics; unsurprisingly, it's higher for men than for women. But even in men, it's only a 50% correlation; contrary to our cultural narrative, it's perfectly normal and in fact common for men to sport an erection without actually desiring sex. (This seems particularly significant given how often female-on-male rape is culturally dismissed, and likely hugely underreported, due to the supposed impossibility of it.) In women, nonconcordance is even higher - only about 10% of the time does increased bloodflow and lubrication correlate with actual sexual desire. Newsflash: our genitals are excellent at indicating sexually relevant scenarios (those where we perceive or expect to perceive sexual stimuli), but our brains are much, much pickier in terms of what actually turn us on.

As with the best sociological research, all of this seems fairly obvious in retrospect; the fact that few of us could have articulated it speaks to the power of cultural narrative (and the power of research to create better, more accurate narratives to displace them).

The Wicked and the Divine vol. 5: Imperial Phase Part I, by Kieron Gillen. The initial conspiracy arc having been (bloodily) resolved, the question for our various god-teenagers appears to now be, "What's next?" And, in the tradition of humans realizing sudden apparently-limitless power, the answer appears to be disturbingly close to, "Anything we want." For those of us familiar with the way such arcs usually go, the shape of the rest of the story is starting to be indicated; the hard limits may have been removed, but that seems most likely to have sealed our characters' fate. It's not difficult to imagine a bunch of teenagers given godlike powers self-destructing spectacularly, and well within the dictated two years' deadline; Baal in specific seems determined to avert that outcome, but it remains to be seen how successful he is. (The title indicates a couple of possibilities, neither of which bode well for regular humans.)

This collection begins with an award-winning issue, written in the style of a gossip magazine, where the authors had real-world writers "interview" the various gods (via chat roleplay) and write articles on them. It's a neat trick, adding surprising verisimilitude; the illustrations are spot-on for a fashion/gossip rag, and the writers add their own voices and reactions in a truly impressive way. For all that Satan remains the best character, and her interview is entertaining to say the least, my favorite is almost certainly feminist writer Laurie Penny going up against racist sexist man-child and self-proclaimed "shithead god" Woden. "And here the self-pity. It all comes out in a slosh of self-justifying red-pill logic that you really don't need me to describe. The biggest issue of all is Woden's specific limitation: unlike the other gods, he can only make magic for other people, which must be a bummer for a misanthrope." Reader, I about died laughing.


What I plan to read next

Still working on the currently-reading pile, heh. Seven books is a bit much, even for someone with my voracious appetites...

On the more liberal side of the current tug-of-war over basic workers' rights, one concept that's seen some experimentation is the idea of the six-hour workday, wherein the traditional workday time is cut by a quarter. The idea is that, especially in white-collar brain-intensive jobs, studies have shown that six hours gives you the best ratio between availability and reasonable productivity, before fatigue sets in and workers start making more mistakes and/or seeing deleterious long-term health effects - so we should take advantage of that and hopefully reap savings in terms of less stressed-out workers.

Interestingly, however, over the past few weeks I've been having almost the reverse issue. Most of my workdays over that time have been only a couple of hours at most - a massage appointment here, a yoga class there, a shift at the spa a couple days a week. And yet I've been discovering the hidden cost to going for weeks without a break, even when the bulk of any given day seems like it should be fine for relaxing.

For one thing, a massage appointment isn't just a massage appointment, especially working out of my home. If someone's coming over, I need to make sure the living room, kitchen, bathroom, and hallway are clean; the furniture is moved; and the table is set up. Depending on how messy the house was before and whether Brian helps (which, dear man, he often makes himself available to do), that's often a two-to-three hour job before I even get to the appointment itself. (Although, on the upside, the house stays a lot cleaner when I have regular clients than it does otherwise.)

For another, although yoga teaching doesn't require any cleaning, there's the transportation time to consider. When I'm teaching at Uptown or Lincoln Square that's maybe ten or fifteen minutes each way on my bike or the bus; however, my regular class is at Sauganash, which is either a 35-minute bike ride or a 45-minute transit ride away, depending on my energy and the weather. For an eight- (or even six-) hour workday, an hour and a half round trip isn't a huge deal, but the proportion compared to a single two-hour shift is, unsurprisingly, much higher.

And that's not even taking into account the mental effects of going weeks without a proper day off. I constantly remind my clients that relaxation isn't what happens in between everything else you do; it's a conscious choice that requires active practice. Needless to say, it's much easier to make that choice when you're not likely to have to suddenly get up and dash - i.e. when you've got that full day off.

I'm not complaining, exactly - I made the choice to take on the workload I did, for various reasons. (Income is helpful! Practice at my trades are good. Feeling useful and productive is nice, too.) And in a lot of ways, I'm privileged - I don't have to take on less-than-ideal schedules if I don't want to, for fear of not making rent or running out of grocery money. But I cannot even articulate how relieved I am to have a couple of full, real, genuine days off on my schedule tomorrow and Wednesday. And while I understood intellectually why a yoga teacher friend of mine would occasionally cancel plans with "I'm sorry, I need to stay home and eat cheese," I grok that mindset in a much more real and immediate way now.

Almost exactly six months after I began teacher training, I have completed my first day of paid teaching. It's official - I'm a professional yoga teacher now!

It's been a long journey, filled with a lot of work, a lot of anxiety, a lot of learning about community, a lot of growth, and a lot of realizing exactly how much I have grown but hadn't discovered it yet. And now I'm here. Which is really only a brief stopping point - I have so much yet to learn. But it's still a point worth celebrating, I think.

I got this card to send to a dear friend, but hopefully he won't mind me using a picture of it here, as it's perfect to the moment:



Here's to learning, and growing, and doing difficult things we want to do in spite of our anxiety about them.

On the one hand, going two-weeks-plus without a day off from physical activity (power yoga or massaging or both) was probably not the greatest idea that I've had. It would certainly explain why my quick nap a few days ago turned into a four-hour rest, as well as why, come Saturday, I woke up after a full night's sleep and an hour later wanted desperately to go back to bed. (I cancelled my yoga plans and instead booked myself a massage, and am consequently feeling much better today.)

On the other hand, just now I took a moment to really look at my arms in the mirror, and...damn. Maybe I should go on workout benders more often.