Life Is Good

Well dear reader, I suppose I should really get round to posting another erratic update on my life. Things have been moving steadily along in my life and seem to be getting better and better. With the expenses of moving in and a period of unemployment for me, our funds became very tight. This state of affairs in now easing thanks to my new job.

I'm employed again!

I now have work again, and so far its been a job I really enjoy. In fact its a job I have had on my life's bucket list. I now work in a fetish clothing store. That's right, I get to work with rubber and leather all day with a great group of people, many of whom I am already friends with. It's one of these new-fangaled zero hour contract deals, but I don't mind as its such a nice team to work with. I really am surprised just how different it is from working in a large corporate company. Everyone knows each other and everyone pitches in to help. You don't get clueless managers going round with paperwork badgering you to work to an unrealistic standard set by head office. It's all people who work alongside you and know what needs to be done. The shop itself is in a very nice aria with a green across the road that's wonderful to sit and have my breakfast and lunches in. Yesterday as it was the boyfriends birthday, on my lunch hour we nipped round the corner to a lovely little Cuban restaurant which served awesome food for actuality decent prices. I'm even loving the fact that I now have a proper commute into work, although I'm sure that novelty will wear off soon. All this has now given me the realization that....

I'm now a Londoner

When the hell did that happen? I now live in London. Not student halls living, but proper contract rent living. I commute on the tube to work, the bf and i have an overpriced cramped house-share to live in. I go drink over priced drinks after work so I don't have to deal with the rush hour on the transport system. We are looking in the mid-term to moving to somewhere near Vauxhall if we are lucky or somewhere like Wimbledon if we are not so lucky. I have taken to city living like a duck to water, and find it suits me down to the ground, the best part is how social I can be with everyone now. Every weekend a fun time out with friends is only 15 minuets away, now if only I could plan my days out better so i could always make it to...

The Gym.

As my membership to the student gym ended with the the university semester, I thought it would be a good time to explore further afield. I chose my local branch of the 'The Gym'. You may have come across them, they are the extremely cheap gym chain that works on the Ryan air model. The monthly payment fee is minimal, but they charge whenever they can. I was shocked to find even the lockers were not coin operated models that are the standard in most gyms or swimming pools. No, you had to bring your own padlock, or purchase a 'The Gym' branded one from a nearby vending machine. Luckily next-door is one of those 99pence shops, the chain that have filled the corpses left by the demise of Woolworth, that sold a sturdier padlock for only a pound. If you are smart and prepare ahead of time to get the extras you will need cheaper elsewhere 'The Gyms' can be great value Now they gym itself isn't bad, however I find most of the gym is dedicated to cardio machines. Apart from dumbbells, the weights section is under supplied and over populated. I've given up on hoping to get the Olympic bar with so many other people prowling around waiting for it to become free. Also, as often as I griped about the disorderly nature of the patrons of my last gym, this gym is worse. I just don't get why it is so hard for people to put weights back in the correct order.

The eye candy here however is a counterweight to my frustration. I seem to have struck it lucky with a plethora of cute cubby boys getting all sweaty as they work hard.

My body is developing nicely, if slowly. Although that is my own lax attitude to the gym. The kind of gains I really would like to make can only be quickly achieved by not letting life get in the way and planing everything around gym visits and a strict eating schedule. The latter I have been improving upon with a much better diet, but meals as a social ritual for bonding and pleasure are too important to me to give up to a regime structured around only fueling the body.

My attitude about my body had been flailing wildly over the spectrum, at times I am fine with my body and like what I see, at others I feel like I have too much of a muffin top and belly and wish to downsize, and others I feel good about my belly but wish my arms and pectorals were better. It is my belief that everyone feels like this from time to time and we live in a day and age where people cannot have a constantly positive body image. I know many people that really hate their bodies all the time and I'm glad i can look at mine, when in a good state of mind, and appreciate what i see in the mirror for its good points. Over all I have become quite secure in my physical identity, lately however I have been thinking about the implications of my inability to find a clear sociological/mental identity.

Existential identity pondering

This deserves its own blog post to fully explain the thoughts and uncertainties I have on this subject, and I will produce one in time. The short explanation is that with few real troubles in my life now my brain has seen fit to find lesser troubles to bother me with. I have found myself mulling over my lack concerted identity that I could identify myself with. Many others in my social circle have this privilege; they are puppy boys, furies, muscle boys, cubs, bears, rubbermen, leathermen, slaves and owned boys. None of the commonly used identifers comfortably fit me. As I have explored these avenues I have found none are for me and I struggle to explain to people who I am and what I enjoy. This may sound silly, but in the kinky world having a pre-made role to use as a shorthand for what you want and will do is a common and useful tool that also helps foster a sense of belonging to a community. As I stated before, this will be its own post and will explain it fully then. Until then I will simply say that my life at the moment is going well and i hope it lasts for a good long while.

The gym thing: Ego tripping

The gym thing again.

Ego tripping

so now we will talk about my gym neurosis once again. Since starting at the gym I have found myself to be a lot happier with myself and my life. Whilst no where near as big as I was, I have kept my pot-belly, and intend to keep it that way, people now seem to be calling me an otter cub instead of a bearcub because of that. The biggest change is that I am gaining quite a lot of muscle mass. I have definition on my arms and legs and my frame is changing shape. I'm working hard to put on as much muscle mass as I can before my holiday in San Diego this June.

This change has brought about a flurry of compliments my way. People have really noticed how my body has evolved and I often hear how much thinner I am. The best point was when I was cuddling with my boyfriend and after shifting the get comfortable he looked up at me and asked me to tense my muscles again. After flexing my biceps he looked at me with a huge grin and spent the time checking out how much firmer my body had become.

So the gym is working for me this time. I am getting a body I enjoy and people are complimenting me. So where is the neurosis you may ask? What is wrong now?

The answer is that I am worried about the ego it is giving me. For a long time now the men who regularly go to the gym I always assume are egotistical narcissistic body fascists. You know them, the clique that stand in the corner of a club posing while looking disapprovingly at those who are not. I now worry in a big way that I will become like those people. Its like the moment in mean girls where the main character realises she is talking about herself so much people are board by it but she finds she can't stop.

This is a worry to me as I have noticed myself becoming more egotistical about my appearance. Though I stop and wonder why that is worse than disliking my appearance? Are we as a culture so programmed to seek improvement on ourselves from products and surgeries and diets that when we do get to a state we can be happy with ourselves we are told to then feel guilty about it?

This worry over my ego has lead me to wonder about my own prejudices. The fact that my first assumption about people that go to the gym are probably stuck up, cliquey people says more about me than it does about them.

Recently one of the new people I have been getting to know since new years is an armature body-builder with the physique of a Greek god and the strength to throw me around like a rag doll. He is not humble about his body. He himself stated he is an extremely vain child, and also a huge exhibitionist. I suspect the latter is a large part of his motivation to work for such a big body. What has stood out about him is that he seems like a great guy. He is cheerful and nice and the opposite of what gym bunnies were supposed to be in my world view.

I guess what this boils down to at the very heart of the matter is I am not worried about becoming vain or egotistical but not being a nice person any-more. Its not the idea of liking my own body so much as judging other people for theirs. To a lesser extent it's also the worry if I achieve the physique I want then people will make the same assumptions about me that I have made about others.

These worries I know will stay with me for a long time, but in a way that is a good thing. They will act as a safeguard preventing my fears coming to pass. I just have to keep reminding myself that so long as I keep an open mind and don’t look down on others for being who and what they are then I wont become a douchbag. I know myself who I am, a person who loves a wide rainbow of body types and someone who enjoys getting to know new people and new experiences. I just have to be reminded of that sometimes.

p.s. In case you are wondering, dear reader, the muscle god has promised to throw me about a wrestling mat and do all sorts of nasty things to me. When it happens in shall be sending you a full report ;-).

Christmas is done with. for good.

Its over, finally over. for three long months now i have been enduring the consumerist bacchanal that is known to the world a Christmas. i say three months because i work in retail, meaning the Christmas decorations and promotions have been going since before we even took down the Halloween decorations. This section of the year is never pleasant. It is full of people becoming increasingly stressed from the societal demand on them to do ever increasing present shopping for more expensive gifts and the increased workload at there jobs for this time of year. From this stress they become unpleasant, taking it out on each other and the staff in shops.
This is not the season of good will. This is the season of stress, desperation and over consumption and this year i have had enough.
This has been my last Christmas.
Next year i will not be doing Christmas, next year i will be truly celebrating what i feel should be held in ones heart this time of year. Despite not classing myself as neopagan i have been, in the recent years of my life, celebrating and marking midwinter solstice. I do so by going in turn and visiting all my friends, giving them something homemade in turn. Marking the deepest and darkest time of year by seeing the ones i love has given me great fulfillment, much more than traipsing round shops to buy things. And so i have decided to give up the hollow event Christmas has become and I'm going to go for its primal cousin midwinter, marking the worlds journey from the darkest point to the lightest.
no shopping required.

picture by mordachai71 on deviantart

where have i been this time

OK, so I've been a bad, bad bloggist. I've not kept up with regular posts on this blog and shamefully let it slip by the wayside whilst i have been doing my open university coarse in the evenings and filming for my other blog on the weekends. the whole thing would be rather embarrassing if I didn't know this blog had a rather low visit number.
As it is I have had a rather busy this last year in love and trying to make a go of a relationship. It didn't work out. From the moment I saw him across the courtyard on that warm spring night he felt like the one and it started off so well. For a long while it worked and then, and then?
I dunno, all the little problems started mounting up, and bunching together to make big problems, and after a long struggle to keep it working we both bowed to the fact we wanted two very different kind lives. It ended amicably. Maybe a little too amicably.
A person with more life experience than I once said to me that its a good thing that when breaking up, you have something to be angry at your ex for. Anger is a coping mechanism, when your feeling down or sad or vulnerable, most people swamp that with anger, it keeps you strong and able to fight when you shouldn't. it also gives you an opening to separate yourself from someone your in love with. As things are it has been hard for the both of us as we keep slipping back in boyfriend behaviour and struggling to move on.
but move on we must. i have a new chapter of my life to get on with.
As things are I've also had little time for working at my sketches and this will be remedied, as will a few other things that have been lacking in my life.