Seriously.
This guy is probably crazy, but check out this fucking cool poem I just got sent:
Bear in mind, he has sent me one message, and I him one, only to tell him thanks for the message but you are too young for me and you live in wellington. Then he sends this poem. I hope this doesn't seem disrespectful to him, i'm sharing it cause i think it's awesome.
Sorry no funny here.
Poem:
I arrived Auckland yesterday. I thought of you last night as this is what happened:
Yesterday it was the night of the full moon
The night was filled with your talks
Some said it was the moon while
Some said it was your face
I was also present there
Everyone asked me what I thought
I simply smiled, I simply kept quiet
I accepted the mask you have
In this city of yours who am I supposed to meet
From me the gathering left
Every person took your name
Every person is crazy over you
In this night of full moon
My heart was aching for you to at least come and wave to me
They are saying that this is a nice poem
Your admirer, your insult, your poet, your Will
Leaving your path
I may become an ascetic
Your jungles, your mountains, your villages, your deserts
If you have heard from the heartless then come and see me
!!!!
I mean, not the best poem ever written, but something cool about it no?
And what a nice thing, to write someone a poem.
It's amazing to me that this complete stranger is being so nice to me, while the person i really wanted wouldn't open his mouth to say a single word to make me happy.
My profile pic really must be CAPTIVATING. LIke the moon people! like the moon!
And clearly my real face, not worth poems!!!
I"m joking. I'm fucking awesome and we all know it.
That's all folks.
Sorry no funny.
Tomorrow i'll tell you about the witch and the christian.
Be good.
Santa is watching.
Friday, November 25, 2011
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
The Great Flood (of divine retribution)
There are so many messages in my collective dating website inboxes that I think I am going to have to take on staff.
I imagine this is how Obama's life is. Except with more hate mail. So far no hate mail for me.
All my messages are very nice. A recurrent theme is 'you have great energy'. Which I like. I've been told I come across intelligent (who me?!) and one nice man said mine was the standout profile in a hundred 'vanilla' profiles, that I clearly had a personality and what's more, a pulse. Bravo!
One man though drastically too young, said I had given him faith that the site wasn't filled with all robots, and 'who wants to date a robot, they are metal and have claws'. Despite unbroachable age gap I replied to him for the robot comment alone.
I have been invited on a killer sounding date off the bat with no chitchat! And been sent a poem!!! Written for me, about me!!! One kind messenger messaged simply to tell me I was a beautiful woman. Nothing more. No questions. No nothing. Just you are a beautiful woman. God bless you Dave.
I AM rather rolling around ungraciously like a pig in flattery mud, and it is likely to come biting me on the ass like a bed of humility flea's, vanity, the don't call it a deadly sin for nothing. But if I am it's because it's just what the doctor ordered for my little human ego after three months of date one taking me apart like I was a car for parts with comments like 'your skin looks old' and 'you have ugly hands'.
And most of these men sending messages are actually attractive, witty and CLEVER. Ooo do I love a clever, witty, attractive man.
There is the Good Doctor, who does peace and disarmament work (stop) and recently climbed Kilamajaro (no stop!), the very handsome american professor of education and politics.. no, not a yawn! very funny and astute. There's the handsome irish/italian/hawaiin (i'd go on a date with a man simply for that exquisit racial mix alone! And a quiet and thoughtful looking (but cute, with a mop of curly brown hair) student of contemporary music, who is taking me out for a cocktail to ask me about natural therapies and tell me about Jung (!)
Of course there are the forklift drivers who don't read books and main hobbie is that he likes animals...hmmm And the tall handsome builder types who make you want to straddle something, but misspell and don't have a volume of questions beyond 'what are you up to?'. And the obvious veto's such as the profile name hashcake, all those in the 42 and up age bracket, and the man who describes himself as 'you lonely, you meet me, 18-65 ladies'. Oh bless. There's someone for you! But I aint the icing on your hashcake honey.
So i better stop writing this blog and get writing clever, funny, intelligent and thoughtful replies!
I've been thinking how this blog frequently diverges from it's title, and how i hoped it might actually because i would like to have a whole long exhausting list of GOOD dates thank you very much! And so it should perhaps be re-titled Cinderella and The Great Quest For True Love Or Something Close To It: A girls expidenture into dating with a romantic, sometimes cycnical, perhaps irreparably broken but hopeful and optimistic heart.
If you are wondering about 'expidenture' it is a word i made up that is a cross between expenditure and adventure. Which is a bit what dating feels like.
Think about that.
I imagine this is how Obama's life is. Except with more hate mail. So far no hate mail for me.
All my messages are very nice. A recurrent theme is 'you have great energy'. Which I like. I've been told I come across intelligent (who me?!) and one nice man said mine was the standout profile in a hundred 'vanilla' profiles, that I clearly had a personality and what's more, a pulse. Bravo!
One man though drastically too young, said I had given him faith that the site wasn't filled with all robots, and 'who wants to date a robot, they are metal and have claws'. Despite unbroachable age gap I replied to him for the robot comment alone.
I have been invited on a killer sounding date off the bat with no chitchat! And been sent a poem!!! Written for me, about me!!! One kind messenger messaged simply to tell me I was a beautiful woman. Nothing more. No questions. No nothing. Just you are a beautiful woman. God bless you Dave.
I AM rather rolling around ungraciously like a pig in flattery mud, and it is likely to come biting me on the ass like a bed of humility flea's, vanity, the don't call it a deadly sin for nothing. But if I am it's because it's just what the doctor ordered for my little human ego after three months of date one taking me apart like I was a car for parts with comments like 'your skin looks old' and 'you have ugly hands'.
And most of these men sending messages are actually attractive, witty and CLEVER. Ooo do I love a clever, witty, attractive man.
There is the Good Doctor, who does peace and disarmament work (stop) and recently climbed Kilamajaro (no stop!), the very handsome american professor of education and politics.. no, not a yawn! very funny and astute. There's the handsome irish/italian/hawaiin (i'd go on a date with a man simply for that exquisit racial mix alone! And a quiet and thoughtful looking (but cute, with a mop of curly brown hair) student of contemporary music, who is taking me out for a cocktail to ask me about natural therapies and tell me about Jung (!)
Of course there are the forklift drivers who don't read books and main hobbie is that he likes animals...hmmm And the tall handsome builder types who make you want to straddle something, but misspell and don't have a volume of questions beyond 'what are you up to?'. And the obvious veto's such as the profile name hashcake, all those in the 42 and up age bracket, and the man who describes himself as 'you lonely, you meet me, 18-65 ladies'. Oh bless. There's someone for you! But I aint the icing on your hashcake honey.
So i better stop writing this blog and get writing clever, funny, intelligent and thoughtful replies!
I've been thinking how this blog frequently diverges from it's title, and how i hoped it might actually because i would like to have a whole long exhausting list of GOOD dates thank you very much! And so it should perhaps be re-titled Cinderella and The Great Quest For True Love Or Something Close To It: A girls expidenture into dating with a romantic, sometimes cycnical, perhaps irreparably broken but hopeful and optimistic heart.
If you are wondering about 'expidenture' it is a word i made up that is a cross between expenditure and adventure. Which is a bit what dating feels like.
Think about that.
Monday, November 21, 2011
Wheel of Fortune
Fear not! This is not going to be another long winded diatribe about my musings on the intangible! With no real dating, action or sex and nudity! Okay. it is actually void of dating, action, sex and nudity. But wait, wait, read on!
So it turns out... date one was kind of a really stink guy! And believe me that is the PG version of what I want to call him.
I'd love to write a long, and it would be long, list of incidences and qualities to justify this claim, but it would be only for my own sick satisfaction, as you couldn't possibly be interested.
However of note was how he liked to keep making me feel insecure and unwanted by constantly putting me down and putting down the things i was interested in, beleived in and liked, and by constantly reminding me on at least a weekly basis that he 'wasn't sure if he wanted me'.
I classically stay in bad relationships with losers WAAAAAY Too long, Even my mum says it about me now like it's just a fact. When I say oh he yada yada and he yada yada and mum looks at me square in the face and without flinching says, yeah well love, you do stay in bad relationships too long, so maybe don't do it this time?
I do it anyway. And it was all getting to look a bit like the sixth instalment of a b grade movie in terms of BEEN HERE GET A NEW PLOT LINE when.... in a piece de resistance type of move, he lead me to believe that he might be chatting to women on line... on a dating website...flirting with them, and that this would be totally fine as long as he wasn't meeting with them, and besides i should understand because he isn't sure if he wants me and so wouldn't i RATHER he looked around and chose me because he wanted me and not just be stuck with me 'against his volition'(!?!?!)
WOW.
And then when i asked for clarity on whether we were exlusive or not, he just refused to answer, on some sort of sick and twisted 'principle' that i was being 'demanding' and 'a bitch' for asking. Wow. The depths to which people can plummet.
The depths to which you can NOT know a person! I feel like I've been sleeping with the devil and only just woke up to find that that pain in my side was the fucking sharp ends of his pitchfork.
Anyway, glad to be rid of him. It was a bit like when you have that piece of clothing, that favourite tshirt say, you know the one... didn't it start out as your favourite? mmm yes i can remember some good times, the day at the beach when it was just the right weight for the weather that day, wasn't that a good day, and you felt carefree and beautiful in that tshirt, you did! oh it did get a bit cold though, and the tshirt didn't do much to try and help.
Ahh but then you remember how it looked in the shop when you tried it on and you were having a skinny day... but humph, over time it's gotten sort of, pulled out of shape, the hem's come down on the sleeve and ... maybe there's a funny smell about it, something you should investigate but choose to overlook...
Oh but no yes! yes you do like it, you love it, the fabric is just your favourite, and the colour, you like that colour don't you? You used to... but now it's sort of making you look washed out. Oh no that's just your haircut, silly you for blaming perfect tshirt (you know tshirt is perfect because tshirt tells you it is perfect, yes, perfect, and never does anything wrong).
You put it on, you remember the good times you've had, there were good times weren't there? But you have to admit it just feels scratchy now. Hang on what DID you like about this tshirt in the first place?
Your friends, your dear friends, they've let you wear this bad tshirt around for a couple of months now you know, they wanted to like it, but they heard how it let you down, they couldn't justify away it's letting you down the way you could, until finally they've seen enough tears and look you in the eyes, with all that delicious and perfect best friend love and say: dude, i just, that tshirt is a DISASTER. (actual quote). You deserve ALOT better.
And finally, you look in the mirror and you see yourself standing in the ugliest fucking tshirt you have ever seen, and it dawns on you that you do NOT love this tshirt, this tshirt is oppressing you, it is making your life worse, and it is holding you back from being your true self and having real happiness with a really, REALLY good tshirt. And it has been left in the washing machine too long and it fucking stinks like vomit. And you feel like a sufragette, like joan of fucking arc, like Ripley in Aliens, tearing that motherfucking tshirt off and setting it on fire.
Sorry, where was I?
So the upside to that, well, the other upside, because it seems to have only upsides, is that I am officially back on the DWOF!!!
That's right: The Dating Wheel Of FORTUNE!!!!!!
I can feel the hot babes just waiting out there to be plucked
the hot, intelligent, emotionally grown up babes, who know how to treat a girl right... hanging from the ripe on the tree of singleness (in a nice, non scary-film sort of way)
I can see lana cocroft in her pretty shiny dress with her hair just so nice smiling at me as she spiiiiiiins the wheel for me, and that fated wheel spins, and those flacky flaps go flackety flack... and i wait to see what prize will be mine!
Wow that sounds like it needs a muahaha and a dracula. heh. heh.
So if any you'se fulla's gotta a sweet mate with most of his teef, can you flick him my celly digits cuz i'm keen for a root and a stubby ahy cuz.
Fuck. i'm kidding but i have to leave that line in cause i like to not really edit.
My Adonis awaits me...
:D
So it turns out... date one was kind of a really stink guy! And believe me that is the PG version of what I want to call him.
I'd love to write a long, and it would be long, list of incidences and qualities to justify this claim, but it would be only for my own sick satisfaction, as you couldn't possibly be interested.
However of note was how he liked to keep making me feel insecure and unwanted by constantly putting me down and putting down the things i was interested in, beleived in and liked, and by constantly reminding me on at least a weekly basis that he 'wasn't sure if he wanted me'.
I classically stay in bad relationships with losers WAAAAAY Too long, Even my mum says it about me now like it's just a fact. When I say oh he yada yada and he yada yada and mum looks at me square in the face and without flinching says, yeah well love, you do stay in bad relationships too long, so maybe don't do it this time?
I do it anyway. And it was all getting to look a bit like the sixth instalment of a b grade movie in terms of BEEN HERE GET A NEW PLOT LINE when.... in a piece de resistance type of move, he lead me to believe that he might be chatting to women on line... on a dating website...flirting with them, and that this would be totally fine as long as he wasn't meeting with them, and besides i should understand because he isn't sure if he wants me and so wouldn't i RATHER he looked around and chose me because he wanted me and not just be stuck with me 'against his volition'(!?!?!)
WOW.
And then when i asked for clarity on whether we were exlusive or not, he just refused to answer, on some sort of sick and twisted 'principle' that i was being 'demanding' and 'a bitch' for asking. Wow. The depths to which people can plummet.
The depths to which you can NOT know a person! I feel like I've been sleeping with the devil and only just woke up to find that that pain in my side was the fucking sharp ends of his pitchfork.
Anyway, glad to be rid of him. It was a bit like when you have that piece of clothing, that favourite tshirt say, you know the one... didn't it start out as your favourite? mmm yes i can remember some good times, the day at the beach when it was just the right weight for the weather that day, wasn't that a good day, and you felt carefree and beautiful in that tshirt, you did! oh it did get a bit cold though, and the tshirt didn't do much to try and help.
Ahh but then you remember how it looked in the shop when you tried it on and you were having a skinny day... but humph, over time it's gotten sort of, pulled out of shape, the hem's come down on the sleeve and ... maybe there's a funny smell about it, something you should investigate but choose to overlook...
Oh but no yes! yes you do like it, you love it, the fabric is just your favourite, and the colour, you like that colour don't you? You used to... but now it's sort of making you look washed out. Oh no that's just your haircut, silly you for blaming perfect tshirt (you know tshirt is perfect because tshirt tells you it is perfect, yes, perfect, and never does anything wrong).
You put it on, you remember the good times you've had, there were good times weren't there? But you have to admit it just feels scratchy now. Hang on what DID you like about this tshirt in the first place?
Your friends, your dear friends, they've let you wear this bad tshirt around for a couple of months now you know, they wanted to like it, but they heard how it let you down, they couldn't justify away it's letting you down the way you could, until finally they've seen enough tears and look you in the eyes, with all that delicious and perfect best friend love and say: dude, i just, that tshirt is a DISASTER. (actual quote). You deserve ALOT better.
And finally, you look in the mirror and you see yourself standing in the ugliest fucking tshirt you have ever seen, and it dawns on you that you do NOT love this tshirt, this tshirt is oppressing you, it is making your life worse, and it is holding you back from being your true self and having real happiness with a really, REALLY good tshirt. And it has been left in the washing machine too long and it fucking stinks like vomit. And you feel like a sufragette, like joan of fucking arc, like Ripley in Aliens, tearing that motherfucking tshirt off and setting it on fire.
Sorry, where was I?
So the upside to that, well, the other upside, because it seems to have only upsides, is that I am officially back on the DWOF!!!
That's right: The Dating Wheel Of FORTUNE!!!!!!
I can feel the hot babes just waiting out there to be plucked
the hot, intelligent, emotionally grown up babes, who know how to treat a girl right... hanging from the ripe on the tree of singleness (in a nice, non scary-film sort of way)
I can see lana cocroft in her pretty shiny dress with her hair just so nice smiling at me as she spiiiiiiins the wheel for me, and that fated wheel spins, and those flacky flaps go flackety flack... and i wait to see what prize will be mine!
Wow that sounds like it needs a muahaha and a dracula. heh. heh.
So if any you'se fulla's gotta a sweet mate with most of his teef, can you flick him my celly digits cuz i'm keen for a root and a stubby ahy cuz.
Fuck. i'm kidding but i have to leave that line in cause i like to not really edit.
My Adonis awaits me...
:D
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
A Great Love?
Ahh so you see....
I keep wanting to write another dating blog entry, but i just can't tell y'all what's been going on!
For one because, what's going on keeps changing. And for two because, I came here to laugh at my dating foibles, not divulge the really personal dirt on me, and certainly not on someone else, who didn't sign up for this.
As date one said to me yesterday, to misquote: "it's better if people like you and me don't have the internet, to show everyone how crazy we are".
It is tricky. In this age of exposure we have to be constantly asking ourselves, what to keep secret, what to reveal.
So instead I want to tell you that I am thinking about love lately.
Just that little topic, that is all.
Right now, my cat is sitting in my lap, she will climb any body and surmount any obstacle to be in my lap, or as close to me as possible. She is sitting in my lap purring her heart out, and periodically cranes her neck and tips her head right back so she can look at me, eyes squinted into a smile, and the look, I tell you, it is the look of love.
Pet love. It's so mutual. Me and moosh... we gotta good thing going on (not in a weird, beastiality, jazz song sort of way!) I believe in it, it's predictable and entirely untroubling. We are happy together. I supply the biscuits, she supplies the cuteness and softness. Last night she woke me up at 4.30am meowing outside the window, this i dont' love. She's getting into the habit of it so I have to figure out how to stop her doing it, I am a BAD bad personwhen i'm sleep deprived. So last night i opened the door, grabbed her, smacked her bum :( and growled STOP MEOWING. oh my moosh. i hate doing it. i really hate it, i think it will be the last time. Well... today i got home and lo, there was the tiny little body of a dead, entirely beheaded mouse on my doormat! I opened the door and moosh rushed in purring and saying did you see? I swoop her little rag doll soft purring body into my arms, press her fur to my face and say yes, i saw moosh, thank you for the mouse! And we are friends again. A simple love. A love I can understand.
But the other kinds of love? I'm just not sure...
Primarily because people get married, AND divorced.
I am the first person to say people are complicated... but seriously...
You love someone and you say get everyone you know together and spend $30,000 on one day just to say you PROMISE you will stay with them forever! You buy lots of things together, big things like houses, you have children together! Holy shit! What is there left to give to a relationship!?
And then two, five, twenty years go by and here you are and you hate them, the ways you hate them are twisted like twine into a rope as thick as the arms of gods down into the furnace in the centre of the eart. You cheat on them. And you leave them. This probably happens a million times a second world over or some impressive statistic.
So WTF happened??? What is love, that it can completely perish, completely.
When I hear about middle aged or old couples who are still together after all the years, i admire their tenacity. When i hear of middle aged or old couples who are still IN LOVE, I MARVEL. I AWE. They are a strange, freaky, mystical thing, like fairies.
If most relationships transpire into ... a rotten mess... isn't it then more accurate to think of 'love' as a fleeting, albeit mentally and physically overwhelming bout of passion, like hunger, or lust?
Why do we make so much more of it then than these simple cravings? Do we just so badly need something to believe in, in this dry, often bleak, predictable and short life?
Isn't love to people, what god is to the religious: just a very comforting thought?
So to add to that sentiment.. why do people, with few exceptions, want so badly to be IN LOVE? They do don't they? Don't you? When it seems to me, that being in love, is like being very hungry, and someone else holding the kai.
It reminds me of that saying: no news is good news. The blandest way of being happy about your circumstances, just acknowledging that it could be worse.
Do we just send ourselves out to find love, and form relationships, because the alternative is mildly less appealing?
Sigh.
Do I sound like a woman burnt? Scorned? A jilted lover?
It's true, I am.
I need to hear some good news.
I would like to believe in love, to be comforted, and I am struggling.
I facestalked a person I met recently to discover they and their fiance entered a competition to win the wedding of their dreams so they could bring the brides family to NZ from Brazil for the wedding, which they otherwise could never afford. The facebook profile called x and y's wedding wish outlines the events of their meeting, the dogged determination with which they maintained a long distance relationship, the age gap the traversed, the romantic proposal, dotted with photo's of the truely happy looking couple... and i got tears in my eyes.
Why tears?
It was like seeing a fairy.
No, I don't believe in fairies, but when you get a glimpse of something you think might be one, you look, and let yourself beleive in them just for a moment, because deep down inside we alll do want just to believe.
I keep wanting to write another dating blog entry, but i just can't tell y'all what's been going on!
For one because, what's going on keeps changing. And for two because, I came here to laugh at my dating foibles, not divulge the really personal dirt on me, and certainly not on someone else, who didn't sign up for this.
As date one said to me yesterday, to misquote: "it's better if people like you and me don't have the internet, to show everyone how crazy we are".
It is tricky. In this age of exposure we have to be constantly asking ourselves, what to keep secret, what to reveal.
So instead I want to tell you that I am thinking about love lately.
Just that little topic, that is all.
Right now, my cat is sitting in my lap, she will climb any body and surmount any obstacle to be in my lap, or as close to me as possible. She is sitting in my lap purring her heart out, and periodically cranes her neck and tips her head right back so she can look at me, eyes squinted into a smile, and the look, I tell you, it is the look of love.
Pet love. It's so mutual. Me and moosh... we gotta good thing going on (not in a weird, beastiality, jazz song sort of way!) I believe in it, it's predictable and entirely untroubling. We are happy together. I supply the biscuits, she supplies the cuteness and softness. Last night she woke me up at 4.30am meowing outside the window, this i dont' love. She's getting into the habit of it so I have to figure out how to stop her doing it, I am a BAD bad personwhen i'm sleep deprived. So last night i opened the door, grabbed her, smacked her bum :( and growled STOP MEOWING. oh my moosh. i hate doing it. i really hate it, i think it will be the last time. Well... today i got home and lo, there was the tiny little body of a dead, entirely beheaded mouse on my doormat! I opened the door and moosh rushed in purring and saying did you see? I swoop her little rag doll soft purring body into my arms, press her fur to my face and say yes, i saw moosh, thank you for the mouse! And we are friends again. A simple love. A love I can understand.
But the other kinds of love? I'm just not sure...
Primarily because people get married, AND divorced.
I am the first person to say people are complicated... but seriously...
You love someone and you say get everyone you know together and spend $30,000 on one day just to say you PROMISE you will stay with them forever! You buy lots of things together, big things like houses, you have children together! Holy shit! What is there left to give to a relationship!?
And then two, five, twenty years go by and here you are and you hate them, the ways you hate them are twisted like twine into a rope as thick as the arms of gods down into the furnace in the centre of the eart. You cheat on them. And you leave them. This probably happens a million times a second world over or some impressive statistic.
So WTF happened??? What is love, that it can completely perish, completely.
When I hear about middle aged or old couples who are still together after all the years, i admire their tenacity. When i hear of middle aged or old couples who are still IN LOVE, I MARVEL. I AWE. They are a strange, freaky, mystical thing, like fairies.
If most relationships transpire into ... a rotten mess... isn't it then more accurate to think of 'love' as a fleeting, albeit mentally and physically overwhelming bout of passion, like hunger, or lust?
Why do we make so much more of it then than these simple cravings? Do we just so badly need something to believe in, in this dry, often bleak, predictable and short life?
Isn't love to people, what god is to the religious: just a very comforting thought?
So to add to that sentiment.. why do people, with few exceptions, want so badly to be IN LOVE? They do don't they? Don't you? When it seems to me, that being in love, is like being very hungry, and someone else holding the kai.
It reminds me of that saying: no news is good news. The blandest way of being happy about your circumstances, just acknowledging that it could be worse.
Do we just send ourselves out to find love, and form relationships, because the alternative is mildly less appealing?
Sigh.
Do I sound like a woman burnt? Scorned? A jilted lover?
It's true, I am.
I need to hear some good news.
I would like to believe in love, to be comforted, and I am struggling.
I facestalked a person I met recently to discover they and their fiance entered a competition to win the wedding of their dreams so they could bring the brides family to NZ from Brazil for the wedding, which they otherwise could never afford. The facebook profile called x and y's wedding wish outlines the events of their meeting, the dogged determination with which they maintained a long distance relationship, the age gap the traversed, the romantic proposal, dotted with photo's of the truely happy looking couple... and i got tears in my eyes.
Why tears?
It was like seeing a fairy.
No, I don't believe in fairies, but when you get a glimpse of something you think might be one, you look, and let yourself beleive in them just for a moment, because deep down inside we alll do want just to believe.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Hangriness
Hello. Two blogs in rapid succession, due to the fact that I have just read the most interesting thing I have read in ages. And that is saying something because I read alot of things.
Have you heard the term 'hangry'? This term was coined, as far as i am aware, by the increasingly fabulous Amber Harrow nee Connolly and her substantially awesome husband Mr Pete Harrow (www.cockneytokiwi.blogspot.com/)
Hangry describes, as you can garner from the term, the intense, unpleasant emotional and physical sensations that one experiences when subject to a lack of, well, food.
The kind of feelings that can make you snap at your boyfriend, snap a blunt pencil, or just plain SNAP.
Titchy, short, snappy, angry, flustered, unable to think, moody, depressed even... when was the last time you ate?
I have been a sufferer of hangriness for as long as I can remember. I have also been a sufferer of poorly regulated blood sugars, for as long as I knew about human physiology and just what my symptoms (brain fog, irritability, heart palpitations, weakness, breathlessness) could mean.
I can recall hundreds of instances of losing my shit, due to hunger. One small instance: I remember coming home from a lengthy gym session and feeling sure I would hit my flatmate hard with the metal spatula she had left dripping grease on the bench with a wildlife of other dirty dishes, should she walk in the room. However post consumption of dinner, felt entirely more relaxed about the matter and able to smile blandly at her as she passed.
WELL! This article:
http://carlo-hamalainen.net/stuff/Gailliot%20Baumeister%20-%20The%20physiology%20of%20willpower:%20linking%20blood%20glucose%20to%20self-control.pdf
is the first scientific mention I have read of the underlying physiolgical explanation for HANGER.
Psychologists, including Freud, have known that self control, or the ability to override one's impulses, such as controlling attention, resisting impulsitivity, regulating emotions and refraining from criminal and AGGRESSIVE behaviour, relies on some sort of interal energy source. Previously, this energy source has been described by the 'folk notion' of 'will power'.
It is now becoming increasing clear (currently 50 studies) that the brain activity required for self control requires not just a 'metaphorical' well of energy, but hard core, physiologicaly, chemical energy in the form of GLUCOSE.
For those with little nutritional knowledge, glucose is the smallest chain of carbon and oxygen molecules that can be taken up by the cell and used for fuel in energy production. Most will know, glucose = energy. And the body needs energy to run every organ and system, and to no small degree the brain. Whilst only consisting 2% of body mass, the brain consumes a whopping 20% of your calorific intake. Hungry, hungry brain.
Today I Learned that whilst most pyschological process have relatively low energy requirements, self control is unusual in that it depends on relatively HIGH demands for energy, i.e.: glucose!
A further fascinating point is that acts of self control leave the body energy (glucose) deplete, and this impacts later acts of self control (for some reason I am seeing strung out parents refraining from yelling at/smacking their petulant children)...
The forms of behaviour that deplete and rely on this same pool of energy include emotion regulation, attention control, impulse control and performance optimsation (like telling a good joke well).
One last point that goes straight to the marrow for me is that one of the self-regulatory behaviours that has been studied and shown to be impacted by low glucose levels is accomodating behaviour in romantic relationships.
Re: my 'turn's out i'm crazy' post... I can think of more than a few occasions where the statement 'you're being crazy' could have been replaced with 'you're acting hungry'.
The paper itself goes into so much interesting detail, if you have an hour or so to digest it, you will have the joy of seeing the word 'parsimonious' used, probably for the first time.
To conclude, my word to the wise, get your blood sugars in control, and conquer your dreams, save you relationships, quit those bad habits, and refrain from criminal, amoral behaviour.
Banana anyone?
Have you heard the term 'hangry'? This term was coined, as far as i am aware, by the increasingly fabulous Amber Harrow nee Connolly and her substantially awesome husband Mr Pete Harrow (www.cockneytokiwi.blogspot.com/)
Hangry describes, as you can garner from the term, the intense, unpleasant emotional and physical sensations that one experiences when subject to a lack of, well, food.
The kind of feelings that can make you snap at your boyfriend, snap a blunt pencil, or just plain SNAP.
Titchy, short, snappy, angry, flustered, unable to think, moody, depressed even... when was the last time you ate?
I have been a sufferer of hangriness for as long as I can remember. I have also been a sufferer of poorly regulated blood sugars, for as long as I knew about human physiology and just what my symptoms (brain fog, irritability, heart palpitations, weakness, breathlessness) could mean.
I can recall hundreds of instances of losing my shit, due to hunger. One small instance: I remember coming home from a lengthy gym session and feeling sure I would hit my flatmate hard with the metal spatula she had left dripping grease on the bench with a wildlife of other dirty dishes, should she walk in the room. However post consumption of dinner, felt entirely more relaxed about the matter and able to smile blandly at her as she passed.
WELL! This article:
http://carlo-hamalainen.net/stuff/Gailliot%20Baumeister%20-%20The%20physiology%20of%20willpower:%20linking%20blood%20glucose%20to%20self-control.pdf
is the first scientific mention I have read of the underlying physiolgical explanation for HANGER.
Psychologists, including Freud, have known that self control, or the ability to override one's impulses, such as controlling attention, resisting impulsitivity, regulating emotions and refraining from criminal and AGGRESSIVE behaviour, relies on some sort of interal energy source. Previously, this energy source has been described by the 'folk notion' of 'will power'.
It is now becoming increasing clear (currently 50 studies) that the brain activity required for self control requires not just a 'metaphorical' well of energy, but hard core, physiologicaly, chemical energy in the form of GLUCOSE.
For those with little nutritional knowledge, glucose is the smallest chain of carbon and oxygen molecules that can be taken up by the cell and used for fuel in energy production. Most will know, glucose = energy. And the body needs energy to run every organ and system, and to no small degree the brain. Whilst only consisting 2% of body mass, the brain consumes a whopping 20% of your calorific intake. Hungry, hungry brain.
Today I Learned that whilst most pyschological process have relatively low energy requirements, self control is unusual in that it depends on relatively HIGH demands for energy, i.e.: glucose!
A further fascinating point is that acts of self control leave the body energy (glucose) deplete, and this impacts later acts of self control (for some reason I am seeing strung out parents refraining from yelling at/smacking their petulant children)...
The forms of behaviour that deplete and rely on this same pool of energy include emotion regulation, attention control, impulse control and performance optimsation (like telling a good joke well).
One last point that goes straight to the marrow for me is that one of the self-regulatory behaviours that has been studied and shown to be impacted by low glucose levels is accomodating behaviour in romantic relationships.
Re: my 'turn's out i'm crazy' post... I can think of more than a few occasions where the statement 'you're being crazy' could have been replaced with 'you're acting hungry'.
The paper itself goes into so much interesting detail, if you have an hour or so to digest it, you will have the joy of seeing the word 'parsimonious' used, probably for the first time.
To conclude, my word to the wise, get your blood sugars in control, and conquer your dreams, save you relationships, quit those bad habits, and refrain from criminal, amoral behaviour.
Banana anyone?
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