Exercise

Just wanted to give that link out, it’s a nice article.

I am displeased with myself because I seem to have hit a plateau, possibly getting worse even due to bad practice. Thanksgiving break is coming up, so I want to use it to rest. I am exercising, though, and doing my chart inside. I think I get something like 3/20 or so. I feel like I need to completely change it up, because it’s not going so well.
Best is to go outside, sunshine makes it rather easy, but it’s pretty cold for that.
Also am finding that palming is difficult on my shoulders.
Lots of old problems resurfacing it seems, things I thought I’d gotten over when I was just starting out. It’s been almost a year now, and I have had measured improvement, but I just wish I could relax more.
I think it’s school, makes it so hard because I’m always work, work, working, never time to rest. I did a good job this summer and the previous winter break. I wish that I could just take off for six months and just focus on myself–sleeping, eating, relaxing, exercising–until I get better. But, I don’t have that kind of time, and the issue is, even if I did, I wouldn’t have anywhere to go.

Stuff

Argh, I never post anymore…it’s gotten kind of boring to post, for me.
But I have been practicing a bit of chartwork, although I haven’t been doing great–too much work, I guess.
I do it from about 3 feet away and in indoor lighting, I can sometimes get the 20 or 15 line.

I think my neck has been doing a lot better though, it seems like the surface problems are mostly fixed, and the problems that remain are the deep muscles. I had a kinesthiologist work on it for a little bit.
I have also started working out. I remember I was known as “swing girl” in 5th grade because that’s what I would do all recess long. Sitting on the swings, kicking my legs to go up and down didn’t require any thought on my part, and I could totally zone out.
I never did any athletic type things as a child, mostly sat around, so I became weak. I couldn’t even sit up straight in my chair at school, it was too difficult for me.
Does anyone have any ideas for me? I mean, I am doing the usual principles–practicing my chart (which is imperative!), palming occasionally, and not wearing glasses as often as I can, but I feel like I need some new ideas in order to really engage my brain, so that the interest propels me forward.

Confidence

I have continued to do Snellen chart readings inside, and they seem to be going well, I feel more confident and it changes more between being blurry and getting darker and clearer (as versus before where it was mostly just a gray spot on the wall). Confidence seems to be helping, I turned off the ceiling light and used a lamp instead for lower light, because I was feeling pretty sure of myself. That was last night, I got about 10/50 with it–it’s not a perfect 10/50, but I’m proud of it. Also, my outside vision seems to have cleared up again, it was doing well, and then I sort of lost it, but it comes back. So strange how practicing inside helps with outside, and practicing outside helps with outside. It seems incongruous, especially since it didn’t seem to help my indoor vision so much.
I ordered some glasses yesterday. Right now the ones I’m wearing are about -3.25, or -3.5, but the PD is 66–I only have a PD of 60.5. I ordered them from Zenni, and I picked a PD of either 60 or 61 for each. Hopefully having the right PD will make it easier to see through them!
My neck and shoulders are pretty strained right now, it happens when I wake up a little late and have to rush off to school–I need some time to decompress after sleeping, because my neck gets so stiff. And my eyes have been hurting also. I try to use the Snellen and palming to help relax them so that they won’t hurt as much, but it doesn’t seem to help too much, or even make things worse for dryness.
Today is Friday, at least, so I don’t think I’ll do any work today. It might be a bad move, I haven’t started on some homework yet that’s due next Friday, but I really need the rest.
Also, in other news, I noticed yesterday that the horrible black stains on my teeth are looking better. I have lots of fillings, they caused stains (so I’m told, I thought the teeth were getting more cavities bu the dentist didn’t think so). I was really proud of that. I’ve been using tooth powder for over a year now, I think that’s really been helping. The happiness I got from that almost makes me want to stop eating flour products–they are so terrible for your teeth and digestive health, unless you’ve got sourdough. But it’s so hard to stop when every food is made with it. I know that my health will improve when I eliminate unfermented grain products, but it’s hard to do. It’s not true that starting a habit always makes it easier to keep up once you see results, especially when you’re always changing locations and living and food arrangements. Unless you have the leisure to make all the changes, and to make the changes effective and easy to put forth (by changing other habits as well, usually, and being more creative and fearless than I can often be), you can’t always keep it up. However, each effort and however long you keep it up is a good thing and has lasting benefits–multiple attempts can be depressing, but there’s no shame in having to try, try again. I’ll need to enlist some help and creative minds to help me out!

Inside Snellen chart readings

So I’ve been trying to do the chart inside, I find it much more difficult than doing it outside in the sun. I really need to start doing it outside again, I think it helps me more (despite or because? it’s easier).
After spending some time, I find I top out at a poor quality 10/50.
Besides that, I am finding that running (to work up a sweat) and then lifting some weights helps release my neck a bit. However, I am getting some leg pains from running.
But there are just sometimes I have this “stress monster” who just takes over. I was working on my ML homework the other night and just got really frustrated because I didn’t understand why I was getting the errors I was getting. I started the homework early so that I wouldn’t do that, and it was supposed to be exploratory, just to see how the program worked, but I got really angry and frustrated anyway. It is just frustrating when things don’t work, even if you are going in without expectations that they will work.

How do I keep from getting frustrated over things, especially since I’ve arranged the situation to not be important? I purposely started the homework early to give myself time, and yet got just as frustrated as if the homework was due that night!

But I think I’m getting better at the ML syntax and I learned how to load files (instead of using the interpreter).
I still feel like I can’t find much resources of ML online, even on the ML website, the built-in functions and their types and descriptions are hard to find.

Visual Tracking

Curiosity, I wonder how well people do on this according to their visual acuity?
If anyone can, please play the game, and tell me what your acuity is and tell me how far you got (how many levels you unlocked or how many points you got). I didn’t see my score, but I unlocked the fourth pond and haven’t yet been able to unlock the fifth.
I’ll see if I can get some other people to play it, too.

And how well do folks do on memory matrix?

I noticed that when I started getting frustrated I started doing worse. I had trouble clicking where I wanted. I scored 1150.

Stress Affects Executive Decision Making

Beautiful article, thing that stands out to me is the effect on executive functions.
So, I think brain games (such as ones available on Lumosity and elsewhere) could be very powerful in reducing stress.
Actually, I’m going to play a couple of rounds of Diner Dash (computer game my sister bought), that helps executive functions.

Missing the Beach

I recently got back from my trip to California.
What I liked best was going to the beach, my eyes would get pretty clear, and it was fun to play in the waves, and lie around in the sand, and I even went running on the beach. It’s lovely and sunny there, and I didn’t even think LA was too terribly polluted, it was clean and shiny to me.
At the airport, I was wearing my cervical collar until I couldn’t stand it anymore. I took it off and I found I could crack my neck easily, this lasted for the last two days. I don’t like cracking my neck but it is true that it is a lot softer after doing so. I think if I can’t crack it, it is too tight for me to do so, so being able to crack it means it is a little bit more released.
Anyway, I think the walking and running on the beach really helped. Has anyone heard about MBTs, the “anti-shoe”? Supposedly these shoes make it so that you are walking more like you should, on soft surfaces like sand and moss, they tone and improve your posture.
The reason I would be willing to believe that their claims are true, is because of the results I got walking on the beach.
Unfortunately, I don’t live as near to a beach, and said beach isn’t so very clean (the Pacific is amazingly beautiful, so green and blue).

Of course, it is hard to say what exactly caused what, but previous wearings of my neck collar didn’t seem to help as much and the results didn’t last as long. I should experiment some more, although I am not entirely sure how (wear collar on beach?).
If anyone lives reasonably close to a beach (or just some non-trivial amount of sand), I’m interested in how it affects tenseness in the neck, headaches, etc.
In any case, it could just be that I love the beach so much that it helps relieve me, although being in other places I like doesn’t help me so much.

July 26

I wanted to post since I haven’t in a while. I really haven’t been feeling great this past month. I think mathematics research and classes is taking more out of me than I’d like to admit. It’s really unfortunate because I love it so much.
I think what’s important is to learn how to take things that you really love and learn how to do them in a relaxed manner, I haven’t had that much luck with this. It’s not having a corporate job or computer usage or anything like that that wrecks you.
I want to learn how to do math more relaxed. And I think I do want to get a Ph.D, either in math or computer science (still a few years away).
Oh, and I also started taking this strange Chinese herbal medicine for my neck pain and it caused me to go somewhat crazy, I don’t know what that was all about.
I am working on the chart again, seem to be getting about 10/50 inside, quality isn’t great.
And walking outside at night, and during the day.

June 21

Today I did chart work with my left eye, and I read 3/15, and also was able to read eight of out 10 letters on the 10 line (just barely).  THe quality is very, very poor.although sometimes I am surprised by how I’m able to space off letters.  I think by the time I start being able to read the 7 or 4 line, the quality will have much improved.  It’s weird how I can read these lower lines, and yet the high 60 and 70 line are still so blurry.

I started writing a journal today.  I intend to write twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening.  I wrote about some things which pained me and I started to cry while writing, which was really good.  The important thing is to make sure I don’t go around in circles and actually solve my problems–ie, not let sadness turn into depression.  I’m definitely going to enjoy the rest of the time I have left in California, and it’s beautiful here.

The journal writing I think has really helped me today, by being cathartic.  I’ve been treating my physical pain for a long time, and this was a smart move–the emotional pain did not want to be treated.  However, by doing Bates method, I was able to decrease my emotional pain,by treating physical ills.

I am thinkking it might be okay o journal and talk about emotional troubles again since I’m a little stuck on being able to treat my physical symptoms.  I will do the Bates method, and the various neck stretches I have, and use what little I know about Eyebody and Alexander techniques, of course  But I have no recourse otherwise at this point in my life, and it does seem to be a powerful technique.

Crying does seem powerful in letting a lot of strain go, and I need to be able to cry it all out.  Physical pain tears come only when I have had an accident, or if my neck is hurting so much that I cry, but generally it is not enough physical pain to make me cry.  Physical pain tears have a different chemical make-up than emotional tears, though, getting rid of stress within the body.  Interestingly, emotional tears gotten through experimental means don’t have the same effect.  So watching sad movies isn’t quite the same as letting things go.

The article linked here that I just read gives me contradictory advice from what I have experienced. Psychology does trouble me so, with its soft nature.
Nevertheless, I will keep on it, as more experiments will always give more information. I really need an assistant to check my neck tension before and after crying, at various times of the day.

Goals for tomorrow:
-More journal writing, inducing tears
-More palming ( am doing a good job at this, I just have to keep it up)
-More swinging (same)
-Chartwork left eye with patch
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June 19

Chart work, Left eye alone: 3/30 maybe 3/20.  It’s pretty dim in the room when I do this (early in the morning, and I don’t open the blinds) so it is encouraging.

Hopefully doing the left eye alone is accelerating its progress, it’s a science experiment, or I wish it would be.  Too bad I don’t have a control group or a good-sized test population.

Also, I have been working at crying and looking at sad things.  Sad Asian commercials can usually make me cry.  I wish there was a real cognitive science experiment on the effects of eliciting emotional tears versus amount of pain.  A few nights ago, I watched some sad commercials and cried a great deal, and I think I found that my neck hurt less in the morning.  I haven’t been able to elicit tears very well since (I wanted to cry every night, but it’s too forced).  I cried today, having found some more sad commercials.

I think I’m going to imagine blood flowing to my neck; positive visualization will be good.  I often try to imagine my neck muscles relaxing.

I read today that just doing this sort of mental treatment is enough, for my neck is too straight.  But I do not believe this, and I want the curve in my neck to be right again.  There are only so many sensible things I can do anymore, the physical therapist was good but I’m out of insurance.  I guess that leaves exercise, heat (usually from showers), and massage (when I can afford it).  I really wonder what my neck looks like now, I wonder if anyone can tell me just by touch (or I could get X-rays again).  I think I feel pretty much the same since before I began treatment, pain-wise, although I believe my motion has increased. My turn left motion isn’t great, though.

Tomorrow:

more Chart work, plus stretches