12 December 2025

In the continuing saga of trying to overhead press my 140 pound grappling dummy, I was able to get it over my head, but not lock out my arms. That’s ok, I’m still figuring out hand placement and weight distribution. The danger happens after the weight has reached it’s peak height, I’ve got no grip and it’s falling towards my head. I’ve gotta protect myself and the dummy, if it fell from that height, it could bust a seam and make a mess. Moving on from weights, this will be my last writing for awhile, I thought about musing on the meaning of Christmas. It’s certainly been done to death, and I’ve probably done it before. Christ is King, simple enough. The only way to the Father is through Jesus. Now it’s time to move forward, not now, right now we’ll enjoy the holiday. Afterwards, onto new ventures, my show should be starting then and that brings a lot of momentum. The desire not to embarrass myself by recording and having nothing to say pushes me to continue learning. This week I got a new bookshelf for the set and yesterday I was filling it with book. Organizing book is always fun, being refreshed with the ideas inside and putting them together. When we moved I threw away all the book shelves I had at the time, since they’ve been falling apart, a move wouldn’t have been good. Currently, my library is piled on the floor. Now is the time to rebuild the kingdom.

11 December 2025

The big news today is I was able to overhead press 155 pounds. Yesterday, I was talking about increasing the weight on my straight barbell to 155, mostly to look nice and even. A 45 pound plate then a 2.5 pound plate looks a little silly. The fear for me was if I could do it, I don’t think I’ve ever tried press more than 135 lbs before and before this year I rarely did clean & jerk. It has been my belief that currently I’m the strongest I’ve ever been. With my personal exercise the goal has always been aesthetic, to build well defined muscles and lose fat. I’m much happier having a belly and being strong than only looking good. Now that I know the weight of lifting my grappling dummy isn’t a problem, I’m motivated to figure it out. The struggle is weight distribution, the chest is filled with gravel while the legs are something closer to foam, so the majority of the weight is in one hand and the other is trying to figure out how to handle long legs. It’s fun though, I enjoy picking up heavy things, partly it’s the simplicity of the goal, but theirs a special kind of exhaustion with heavy weights. It could be exhausting to run a fast mile, that takes at least four minutes and requires time to catch my breath. Lifting the heaviest I can means every muscle needs to get on board right now, when the weight is released, everything relaxing and I can fall down. Laying on my back after working out has the best and worst feeling, I’m too tired to move and I don’t want to because those endorphins are hitting different.

10 December 2025

Does time even exist between Thanksgiving and Christmas? This will probably be the last week I write of the year and it seems like nothing is going on. I’m going to talk about my gym as I recently increased my weights. In the gym there is a straight barbell that stays on the squat rack and a EZ curl bar on a preacher curl rack. The weights stay on so I don’t have to spend time putting them on whenever I want to lift something heavy, sometimes I only have 30 seconds in passing. The 45 pound plates are on the straight bar and my 25 pound ones are on the curl bar. Recently I put more weight on both as it was time, the old weights have normalized, but I added 5 lbs to each side on the curl bar and 2.5 to the straight bar. My initial reasoning was to bring the heavy bar up to a total weight of 140 lbs as I use that bar for squats and clean & jerk. My goal is to be able to press this grappling dummy I have that is 140 lbs, so my thinking was to match that. Last night, I was staring at the tiny 2.5 pound plates on that big bar and thought it was ridiculous, soon I’ll swap it for the 10 pounders. 160 lbs is still an easy squat though I will see if I can still press that much, if not adjustments will continue. Yesterday I did get a heater to put in the garage that worked nicely. In the Summer it’s 100 degrees in the garage and 40 in the Winter. Mentally it’s exciting to face those conditions, in reality it means I use the garage less at those times. Everything in time, we’ve come a long way and this gym makes me happy.

9 December 2025

Lots of repetitive tasks, and it’s literally freezing out, it’s the final stretch of the year. What is life? We’re born, live, then die. Who’s to say which step is the most important, we spend the most time living, so we assume that means something. Death will be the beginning of eternity, in that way it comes before birth. If we go to the eternal, then all the time we spend on Earth will be insignificant compared to infinity. Still it isn’t good to ignore this body because of something that happens in another time. The best way to live would glory God and he said to be fruitful and multiply, I think I’m doing that. The problem is raising a child is neither exciting or glorious, but perhaps that’s the point. The fire inside me has to be contained for good. When I said kids aren’t glorious, I’m thinking of stories where the hero holds up his sword and the crowd cheers, that’s not my kind of glorious. When I imagine glory it is the hero completing his mission, reporting back, and being dismissed. It is in that walk home, knowing the deed is done, that glory lies in. Serving God through raising children can have that same glory, visually, these are different trenches. I wrote before about a big hill called the stairway to heaven in Fort Benning, I get the same feeling looking up a hill as when I think about the lifetime of caring for these kids. This is what I wanted, the adventure of a lifetime that never lets up. Thank God. Now I have to go back to writing Christmas cards and assembling toys.

8 December 2025

There’s so much to do before the end of the year and even day by day. There’s still a doll house that needs assembling and we’ll be traveling before Christmas with the dog and cats. I’d like to start recording my show again with the beginning of the year and need to do a recording before then. The neighborhood we live has a luminary night where we’ll have to fill 100 bags with sand a teacandle, then place them all along the road. We’re happy to live where people have community activities, it likely continues the reputation of being the best neighborhood in town. On the other side of town is trailer parks, no disrespect, it’s a striking contrast to our daily life. The reason we were at the trailers recently was trying to meet the piano teacher. It didn’t work out as we had previously scheduled to meet on Sunday, then she messaged on Friday that we could come that afternoon. We arrived when we said we would and a second after us a family walked in. The teacher took them to another room to practice and said she’d come back. We waited long enough, with two kids, we left before she came back and won’t be working with someone that creates conflicts like that. Now I have to be the piano teacher, so I’ve been increasing my play time. Of course I’ll be headed for a crash with all of these ambitions, but I have no choice than to do it myself. With that I’m putting an effort into making beats/rap as the videos showing a new counting technique has got me motivated.

4 December 2025

Earlier this week I was talking about how improving everyday items improves life on the whole, things like dishes, towels, and a nice mattress. After decorating I thought about our stocking, how 10 years ago they were solid red and white dollar store stocking that I wrote our names on with puffy paint. When the elder princess was born I upgraded to these matching stockings with embroidered names. The downside was I bought three and we had one more on the way, thankfully I was able to get another that’s almost an exact match. The new plaid style was on my mind this morning as I drove by a tire shop, usually they have tires stacked and painted yellow to look like a Minion. Today I noticed they had stacked smaller tires and painted green to look like a Christmas tree. Those are pleasing decorations in a small town, but not for the world’s stage to last for years; that’s real art. A person can still make good art without being exposed to great techniques and styles. Having learned the techniques give a sort of shortcut, less work creating better results. Of course everyone thinks they know what good is, it’s what they like, without the world stage those ideas haven’t been tested and the individual is usually delusional. Some examples are how yesterday I found a channel that explains Rap on the beats, I listen to a lot of rap and have never understood it like that. Or when I learned how to paint, I’ve been seeing in color my whole life, but painting taught me to see differently, that I can control my eyes to change the colors I see.

3 December 2025

Last night I hit a wall, metaphorically. I had a mental break, but am alright now. In the American South we’ve got freezing temperatures and I’m a fire sign. First call yesterday was some screams at 6 AM and at 6:30 the little princess was crying too. The extra holiday activities like decorating and assembling presents has me drained. By 7 PM I was in the middle of the elder princess’ bedtime routine and crashed. As I laid in bed I thought, “This is hard.” Raising kids being hard is a statement I don’t think people will argue with, though I bet some would argue because dad is saying it. Another activity no one argues is hard is war, been there done that, so I feel justified listening to my gut on this. This reminds me of when my queen was in residency and I had a similar feeling of, “this is hard”, so I went online to look for advice to spouses during residency. Basically everyone was saying to suck it up, not acknowledging the difficulties at all. It’s possible to admit one is having a difficult time and still suck it because acting like nothing is wrong leads people to then think the problem is inside; like I’m the only person to ever have this problem and I’m wrong for thinking it. At that time I thought I have experience doing hard things and these people aren’t being honest. That brings my list of hard activities to war, becoming a doctor, and raising kids. If anyone has done all three without breaking a sweat, they are the superior being, or probably lying. On the bright side my Christmas trees have been getting bigger and have felt lighter.

2 December 2025

We switched our dishes yesterday. The old ones were nice, but they belonged to my queen’s grandmother and we’ve been using them for at least 10 years. There were some chips in the dishes and a couple plates have fallen on the ground over the years. Now we’re part of the blue and white club, the pattern is supposedly called Chinoiserie, but that might only refer to a specific style from Europe mimicking Chinese art. Chinoiserie might only be if the plate art is of a building and bridge, our’s have flowers. Over the years we’ve been good about slowly updating our lives. Maybe five years ago I got my queen a birthday present of copper pots as she’s always wanted that, also like her grandmother had. With the pots, dishes, and earlier in the year we got new silverware, we’ve pretty much got our dream kitchen. All we’re waiting for now is to slowly remove the bottles and kiddy utensils. Our upgrades make life more comfortable, the downside of that is making me softer and the struggles of life feel more harsh Or maybe they don’t, I’m trying to figure out the best way. This year we’ve been through so much and to keep everything we have feels like we had to get stronger. There were more stressors than we ever had before, including two young kids, and nothing was broken. Maybe making little details of my life better helps me to do more, that it’s one less thing to worry about or as I go through my day the objects give me a boost of positivity. 

1 December 2025

Finally finished a long Thanksgiving weekend, everything went well, just tired. The elder princess is full of energy and never stops moving, it made me realize she’s probably more tired at home and school makes them sit still for parts of the day. By the end of the day or even by lunch some days she would run out of fuel and seem like a drunk toddler; running in circles babbling to herself. We made it through without any issues and also got a Christmas tree. The tree is about eight and a half feet tall, nine with the start. At the tree farm we decided on a shorter tree because the lesson learned lasted year was the trees don’t look as big in an open field as when indoors. The size we got is perfect for the space and for the decorations we have, any bigger and we’d have to get more. I was trying to remember what we did on break and remember there was no daycare all week, we’re preparing for future Winter and Summer breaks for the kids to have something. Last monday we went to kid’s museum that put up their decorations. We had a lot of painting this week, other than that just staying above water. Recently, I found there’s a piano teacher in my town that I’ll have to contact about lessons for the girls. I’m still working on getting my life back together, but I know big efforts won’t start until next year and subsequent years. As the kids grow, I will get more freedom, I need to be patient and maintain my health.

25 November 2025

Daycare is closed this week, so I’ve got the girls at home. There won’t be much writing this week and even dieting will be difficult. In my personal life I’ve been trying to figure out the best course of action with the ongoing genocide and the media being controlled on the topic, essentially all mainstream information has been corrupted in America for at least 50 years and around the world for hundreds. At that point it becomes the eternal battle between good and evil, it’s not my fight to win, but I am on the winning side. Different groups calling themselves or others woke lately, and this is my moment of Neo waking up from the Matrix. Of course all the stories are made up, like how Marie Antoinette never said, “Let them eat cake.” This is different, it’s more like what we’ve been told is right is wrong and what is wrong we’ve been told is right. We’ve always been told history is written by the victors, but that’s not exactly true. It’s more like history is written by the scribes and when most of the world is illiterate, there needs to be a special sect to read the history; that’s controlled production and distribution. So many ideas that seemed like natural ideas because of the belief that history unfolds, but it was manufactured and the rough edges get smoothed over the years that follow. I’ve now seen it enough in my lifetime to know it’s true. Still trying to figure out what to do now, for the time I live my life and ignore the digital.