The cold is brutal, completely sucks the life out of you. What I like about living in a rural area is living with the season. I dread Winter every year because it’s historically the hardest time of the year. If we didn’t want to celebrate birth days, counting the number of Winters a person has survived would be worth celebrating. People in the Army would often say, “This isn’t cold.” because every Winter in northern New York it’s certain to get past negative double digits, the coldest temperature I’ve been in was -40 which I believe is the same in fahrenheit and celsius. Even experiencing skin numbing cold, I’d still say cold is cold. When we lived in Texas, a 60 degree F winter felt cold. Living in a place for at least a year will acclimate the body. When we have sharp temperature differences there’s an attack on the body. The leaves have dried up on the trees, now a strong wind will knock them off. There has to be a similar effect on human’s, we’re also effected by our decrease in sunlight. The baby has been going to sleep around 6 pm for a couple weeks now and I’ve noticed the intensity of the sun at that time decreasing. Where I used to cover the cracks in the curtains, I now know the room will be dark. I’m no scientist, but I’m told humans don’t photosynthesize. Although I think I’m also told humans need sunlight to produce vitamin D which literally sounds like photosynthesis. At this point I’m done arguing with biologists, or anyone, I do wonder a lot about what’s going on with universities and what the best path of education will be for my child. It’s like anything else, no one is going to care about your job as much as you. I will know more, I will teach more.
1 November 2023
There was a freeze warning this morning, the temperature dropped around 40 degrees F in the last two days. My crops seem to be ok though I haven’t had time for a thorough investigation. We had some minimal halloween activities, only taking the baby to the cul de sac where my mother in law lives. We didn’t bother even getting dressed up its so cold, it’s good that we dressed up this weekend and got some nice pictures in the Summer temperatures. One of my big messages to people is to take things seriously, act as though your actions matter, move with a purpose as a drill sergeant would say. What that means for my Halloween was that we acted as if some zombie crawl on the weekend was our Halloween and we went all out. We never know if tomorrow will come and this year that was our holiday. The other thought I had of a practical example of moving with purpose is when we would do long road marches in the Army, anytime we would stop for what looked to be more than five minutes, I would drop my ruck. There’s no telling how long we’ll be stopped and I’d rather pack up repeatedly than debate back and forth for 20 minutes. When given an opportunity, take it. The larger reason I focus on the point of moving with a purpose is because that’s the only way you live for yourself, how will I get to my destination if I don’t know where I’m going? It’s easy to get swept away by the popular current, there was a poem I read on my old podcast Being Chris Cooper, that can be found on my website, the poem was about how a swimmer set off from land with a destination in mind. They were given sage advice and pointed in the opposite bank. Deeper into the stream the swimmer met others who had stopped struggling and embraced the flow. Convinced to stop for a time, the swimmer got back to work and began to make up lost ground.
31 October 2023
I had high hopes for malls being a future place that people can congregate in the post smartphone world. Those hope were destroyed today when I went to walk around the mall this morning with baby only to find out the mall doesn’t open until 11 AM. Back in my day I remember the mall being packed with people at 6 AM using it as an indoor track. Real world congregations, that’s what people need. People are quick to poke holes in any plan they didn’t create, when it comes time to create their own they’re out of ideas. To me that means I addressed a problem as lack of meeting places, I better get to work fixing it. Don’t worry, I am, it’s on my to do list. I have to fix a broken sliding door first. Not long ago I shot a rock from the lawn mower and broke the glass on a door, today I had someone come out for a quote to replace it. I’ll save your hearts the stress from what they’re charging, but it looks like I’m going to be learning how to replace the door. Another big item on my to do list is building a back yard privacy fence. Then there will be one continues fence around my house and I’ll be able to take down a lot of ugly fence in the middle of things. Today I also started reading Othello to the baby, we had just finished Much ado about Nothing. An interesting note about Othello is that on the first page of that play is the first writing of the phrase wearing one’s “heart on your sleeve”. Shakespeare is important because the language we speak today was in a large part written by him. There is depth to the human spirit that people are losing touch with because they’ve stopped reading the right words.
30 October 2023
I had a good weekend, I hope everyone else did. We got to spend lots of family time together taking the baby downtown and dressing up as characters from Beauty and the Beast. I dressed up as Gaston and that’s a confusing character since he’s the bad guy in that film. There’s nothing wrong with dressing up as the bad guy on a night when some of the most infamous villains walk the streets, still I don’t like to imagine Gaston as a bad guy. Obviously I’ve spent a lot of time analyzing this character because I like him, I think he’s doing everything he’s supposed to. “No one shoots like Gaston. No one goes around tromping in boots like Gaston.” I once performed that song on stage in college as part of a male beauty pageant. His problem was that he couldn’t let go, his pride got the best of him. He was fighting a 10 ft tall, probably 800 lbs beast with a knife on a tile roof in the rain. At a certain point it’s necessary to pull back and regroup, gather resources, that’s what resting is because no one can run in the red all day. At least we can learn from his mistakes and successes, I myself am going to start eating more eggs to help me get large as a barge. That was a joke, I’m happy with my egg intake, I think my diet in general has been good. Staying busy is the best diet, idle hands are the devil’s play things. Currently I’m regrouping and positioning for a big attack I’m going to be launching with the podcast idea. I was sketching some logos and sending them to the other guys. I’m exciting for that new adventure and there is a lot to keep me busy.
27 October 2023
My wife and I watched Interstellar recently, it’s certainly an epic, there’s one idea that the families are sending video recordings and it’s like the astronauts receive a life time of recordings at once. I mentioned that I write these to my daughter, and in that way they’re like the stockpile of recordings. I don’t assume she’ll read any of it, I say a good deed should never assume a thank you. I have coins with Alexander the great’s face on them, it’s done in a style where he is wearing the Nemean Lion which was the first trial of Hercules. As long as I’m around, Alexander is still great. There are parts of the past that we can allow to fall to the waist side over time and other’s worth defending. I’m not going in the streets defending, but I keep things alive; a steward of the land. I got my life in order when I began to plan for the next year, things got really good when I started looking at the 10 and 20 year perspectives. I thought I was doing well with a 300 year plan, but I was listening to the Dune audiobooks while driving to Philadelphia and Leto the second stuck to a 3,000 year plan, his “golden path”. I’ve always been good at finding a path. Land navigation was probably my best skill and I equally enjoyed it. Walking in the woods always knowing where you are, what’s not to like? I even bothered to teach land nav to the baby already, she might need a refresher someday. Today is my last chance to go to the YMCA before the great equipment replacing, it’s also Friday which means I won’t be writing the next two days. There will be a full moon, I plan to start counting how many full moons I’ve seen, this is #1. I like patterns and paths.
26 October 2023
In problem solving, a lot of time can be spent figuring out the right question to ask. I have to spend time thinking how a sentence should be phrased because I don’t know who’s reading it and what their interpretation will be. It’s easiest to write to my daughter and live my life for her, that keeps things rated G. She’ll hear about my dark side, but the neighbor said it was hard to imagine me as the person that got shot at and it’s hard for me to imagine it as well. “Send me off to a foreign land.” Every part of my life has seemed unbelievable, it’s going to keep getting wilder; literally a goat. I’m having to learn discord and all sorts of new programs getting things ready for the podcast, the digital wild west. It’s important to play on the wild side occasionally, there’s no wildlife found in a cage. The dog, baby, and I were walking around the land and I tried to keep her to the areas where I’ve cut the grass short. Of course the baby immediately goes towards the pond area which is overgrown from the Summer. When she stopped at the edge of the overgrowth there were some unique flowers to examine that don’t grow anywhere else on the property. She wouldn’t know what those flowers look like up close without going to the edge of safety. Where’s my edge of safety? A baby has definitely put me outside of my comfort zone. I bench pressed 185 lbs for two reps today, that’s uncomfortable. I probably could have done three reps, but I have my sights set on 200 lbs. PS is also doing better in the child care area of the YMCA I work out in. They’ll be getting some new equipment next week and the gym will be closed for a few days.
25 October 2023
The rocks got moved, most of them at least, I made two trips with the wheelbarrow and that was enough for one day. There’s a reel on my Instagram drawingmylifeaway124 which got me discussing the Rocky IV vinyl. I was looking at the back cover with photos from the movie, I don’t know the last time I’ve watched it but was obsessed as a kid. I remember trying to do one armed push ups in front of the TV and jumping around the living room like a boxing ring mirroring the actors’ moves. The beauty of being a kid was I thought all that was real, not that Rocky was a real person though there is a statue of him in downtown Philadelphia, I didn’t know anything about movies or boxing to realize what was fake. For instance there’s a photo of Rocky that takes up half the cover where he’s starring intensely while looking calm and collected, except his body is oiled up and muscular. Now I know he’s flexing those muscles as hard as he can while pretending to be calm. I’ve also been a fan of actual combat sports for decades now and can safely say those guys in Rocky don’t know how to fight. When I’m doing heavy bag work, the thing I remember most is “keep your hands up”. Hands up are the last line of defense protecting the head and always keeping them up builds my endurance. They can’t keep their hands up in a movie because they’re paying to see the actor’s face. The movies don’t lose any love from me and I’d like to watch some of them soon, the connection is deeper. The begging trumpets in Gonna Fly Now could get me out of bed to do anything or get back up at the thought of Mick saying, “I didn’t hear no bell.”
24 October 2023
Today I’m hoping to move a pile of rocks today. I’m going to try filming it while some music is playing because my brother had mentioned it would be good with Hearts on Fire. I happen to have the Rocky IV soundtrack on vinyl with that song and Eye of the Tiger on it. When David Goggins would make attempts at the world record for pull ups in a day there were times he would play a Rocky song on loop. I wonder what sort of impact that movie and it’s music made on physical fitness. As a kid one of my first fitness goals was running to the stop sign at the end of the street without stopping, back then I listened to Rocky music in my “walk man” on a burned CD. Kids today won’t know the pain of running with a CD and it skipping because of the movement. I don’t know how my body can do the things it does, outside of heavy manual labor, I take care with every twist or bend to prevent injury. When I’m focused it feels like I’m wearing a super suit making any thought a possibility. When the work is done, I stand back asking who did it, certainly couldn’t have been me. Perhaps that’s mental toughness, changing my feeling body into a machine. Yesterday I went over to the neighbors house to play with the kids, she was asking me about my time in the Army and if I was scared to death all the time. I told her my dad gave me a scapular, the idea being those who die wearing it go to heaven, that it was like a bulletproof vest. That’s part of the answer, other parts are that no one showed fear and if they did they’d be seen as unfit for duty, so fear wasn’t something going through my mind. I’m the greatest, how could I be the greatest if I die?
23 October 2023
With all of my new online presence activities, I want to completely stop it on the weekend so I can get used to the extra tasks. The reason I’ve brought myself back online was because at my sister’s wedding someone asked about the podcast I did three years ago and if I would want to do one with them. Social media is just another task like dishes, if I get myself used to it then it can be maintained without any effort, that takes time and rest. Often I’ll use the tag “self help” or “motivational” for these writings, I guess that is something I’m interested in, improving myself. I’ve never had much luck helping other, or helping them to help themselves, I think helping someone that doesn’t want to help themselves is usually a waste of energy. With my podcast the way I see it lasting is if it is helping me, so that anytime I wonder why I’m doing it I’ll be happy to answer that it improves my life. The other guys I’ll be hosting with may be after some help too, when I was visiting family at the wedding it opened my eyes to see other people as trapped inside their life like I’m trapped in mine. The difference may be that other people don’t have the fire inside them that keeps pushing forwards like I do, I hope that I can help them in some way. Blazing a trail in front can make travel easier behind, but I don’t think that’s what people want. There’s going to be some that are happy to follow and some that like to stay put, I try to talk to those blazing their own trail; the supermen and women as Nietzsche would say. Only he wouldn’t say women, the dude had some personal issue, that’s room for personal development.
20 October 2023
Feeling sore today, but it’s Friday so that’s okay. I’ve always said the body is sorest two days after a workout. Yesterday, my wife had a long day with some mandatory class after work, so she wasn’t home for bedtime. The baby went down well with a lot of squirming during her diaper changes. I think it may have been the first time I had to completely hold the baby in the air while putting the diaper on. I advocate for people to have kids now even though I never thought I’d have any before. Kids bring newness into life, like that diaper scenario, I would never do something like that unless the kid forced me to. Similar to that is the muscles and energy gain by the work a kid makes the parents do. First there’s the sleep deprivation, I suspect there will never be enough rest until they’re 18 and even then I’ll be worrying about what trouble a teenager is getting into. There have also been several instances where a muscle in my body, usually back or neck, will cramp up because I’ve been holding the baby one way for too long. Because the body is tired it wants to stay in a comfortable position, but we must keep moving. Eventually I think the human body acclimates to most anything, it gets used to nights of little sleep and days spent caring a 20 pound bundle of joy. She’s got to be getting closer to 30 now. That’s ok, there’s a strong man belief to raise a bull from birth and to pick it over your head everyday in the hopes that one day the bull with be full grown and the lifter won’t have noticed the extra weight. The one man I’ve heard about attempting this was kicked by a teenage bull and the bull ran off.
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