Things need to slow down so we can enjoy the holidays, my body is running on fumes and candy at this point. Yesterday was below freezing and I was outside trying to pull up fence poles, then went inside to work on the house and it seemed like nothing I did worked. Often I talk to my wife about the dangers of “tired brain”. The phrase first entered my vernacular when the baby was born and the first month is probably the most tired people ever get, remember I was a sergeant in the infantry, I know tired. At that level of tired the body is going to make mistakes like everything has been moved two inches to the left. The mind when tired tends to turn into a negative place. There’s a long list of things to do and when tired brain looks at it all seems hopeless. My wife and I have many conversations saying we need to do this, and that, and those, then we have to end the conversation with a reminder that everything is good. A to-do list can seem like a list of what’s wrong, the tired brain takes it personal, but there’s nothing wrong we’re just working down the list. It’ll be nice to get some recovery time, after the holidays things can go crazy again. Exercising has been suspended until a later date, there’s plenty of physical activity around the house. We got a second trash can to help clean up, when I was pushing them back from the curb, up hill, I could feel the workout. Exercise is good to stay healthy, but an active lifestyle is better. In the gym weight lifting is about maintaining good form, pretending the weights are on rails, real life is where free weights are found.
19 November 2023
I heard someone use the word “Gucci” to mean something like okay or good. The first time I heard this word/phrase combo was in college some fellows invited me to a type of bar, I wanted to verify if I needed to be of a certain persuasion to go. They asked if I was 21, producing my ID made me Gucci. Hearing the word in continued use after such a long time requires a longer look. 10 years is a fairly long time for a word to be in circulation by my estimates and it’s probably not fair to call it a word, but closer to slang. There are people who have degrees claiming their expertise to define “word” and “slang”, to which I would say the world is mind. There’s been plenty of slang I can remember not lasting a year such as “Wassup?” and I hardly ever hear the Fonz’ signature “ayy” anymore. Gucci is a fun word to say, if you’re only ever reading this in your head or speed reading, that would be losing the trees to the forest. Language uses senses beyond the consensus, beyond the five often listed. What sense is the voice in your head that reads silently? Words are seen, heard, said, and even felt. Movies, music, and theater intend for people to feel something. Another aspect can even be the shared experience, there’s a difference between being in the crowd at a Queen concert and listening to their recording. People are willing to make pilgrimage expecting it to be a lifetime event. Before the moment it’s known that the future will be changed by this, the present is true to form and afterwards it’s a fond memory. The answer I’m circling is the word we have for what sense words touch is “soul”. When one becomes Gucci their soul is changed.
18 December 2023
The future is me, I had to turn away from some current events to keep my self image pure. We went in search of houses last weekend, the travels went as well as we could hope with only one slight emergency. No one needed to go to the hospital and we found a house we liked, I’ll take it. There’s lots of land, at least three times as much as I’ve got now. There’s a pool, which I see pools completely different after my experiences with my current house. The name I’ve used for my current house was the Coop De Villa and the slated name for next place is Christopia. Pray all goes well, it will be an interesting shift from my current land holdings. Most of the new place is shaded and flat where as I have a big hill that’s mostly grass. There’s so much to juggle at once, this is the up rooting, the balance of dismembering our old life and assembling in a new city while living in the day to day with the baby. Writing this is a way for me to focus each morning on what I need to do that day. The difficulty is a lot of times I’ll be waiting for someone else before I can do a step, my waiting time tasks need to be packing everything I can get my hands on into boxes. I saved a lot of Amazon boxes in a shed that I will bring up for use. When I’m physically able to there are a number of chain link fence poles in concrete that need to be pulled up. If there’s an opportunity to asked the neighbor for his tractor, I’ll take it. He offered before and we’re bringing the baby over to see Christmas decorations, hopefully we’ll stay friends even though I’m leaving.
15 December 2023
I need to channel strength of a nation that will conquer for 1,000 ages, Leto’s peace. The worm. I’m thinking now of the fourth book in the Dune series. The whole reason I wanted to consume the material was that the ideas were so outlandish that it would expand my consciousness, and there’s no way to know what’s in them without experiencing them. The next Dune movie is likely to make a cultural splash. My speculation on the West’s future is a return to religion. There was some wild stuff that happened when people divided themselves into countless groups and I think people are looking to sit out from that. Roots for a new generation are being planted. There’s pain associated with moving as it is a literal uprooting. In my experience it takes three years before a replanted tree starts to really grow. When I lived in Texas about 10 years ago I wrote a bucket list and one item was to keep a plant alive for 5 years. That plant was a pecan tree I started from seed, there was a Texas tree seed pack with maybe 100 seeds for $10. Trees are exponentially more expensive and cheaper on the extremes of age. With the pecan seed it has to be roughed up to trigger the growth process, that comes in the form of boiling the seed a short time or scratching with sandpaper. Then the seed must be overwintered as a critter might do, I put the abrasive seeds in a ziplock bag filled with moist soil. Those bags sat in my refrigerator for a couple months, then I planted the new saplings in pots. One of those pecan trees was planted at my current house and another at my last place. There’s nothing left in pots for me to take, I’m starting fresh.
14 December 2023
We had a realtor visit our house yesterday and things are speeding up. They want to list our house at the beginning of next month, with the holidays it’s more realistic to push that back a week or two. There isn’t much work in the house that needs to be done, we’ll start packing person items into boxes right away so the house can be as empty as possible for staging photos. This weekend we’re going to visit our new location to look at properties over there. Leaving tomorrow for an impromptu trip. My brain has to section off different ways of living to stay sane, like this morning I have to get the baby to daycare which requires a tight schedule when she wakes up. Then tomorrow I’ll have to switch to travel mode, packing the car and unpacking to set up a temporary base camp. After we’ve landed my mind will be house hunting and land surveying. I think we’re only looking at houses with over five acres, so I will likely be doing a lot of walking through various terrains; better bring boots. After an exhausting day of looking at houses we’ll do it all in reverse, get back home, back to work preparing and packing. Whenever I begin to layout the individual steps they all seem small enough, I try to avoid letting myself see the big picture because that’s when it feels overwhelming. By selling in the Winter I don’t have to worry about mowing my lawn through this process. The flip side of that is whatever place we land on will look peaceful now, but will turn into a jungle during the Summer. That’s alright, I suspect I’m going to have to miss this first year’s growing season, maybe I can get some trees planted next Fall. After a year of settling I might have a tractor that will make short work of whatever brush begins to grow.
13 December 2023
While running at the gym this week, I had to stop to catch my breath. Ok, I probably didn’t “have to”, but I was feeling sluggish and it’s better to be healthy with slow improvements than attempt a big feat and be on the disabled list for a couple days. After my breather, I got back on the treadmill to continue running, then towards the end of my workout one of the children care givers found me because the baby had a potty, so it may have been for the best. Who knows what condition I would have been in when I needed to switch back to dad mode if I hadn’t taken a breather. All of that combined to feel like an underwhelming work out, everyday can’t be better than the last, these challenges are part of the journey. The master has failed more times than the apprentice has tried. Avoiding failure means never trying again and that is a worse fate. While running I’ve been listening to 50 Cent’s audiobook Hustle Harder Hustle Smarter, I started listening to audiobooks a couple years ago while I was mowing the lawn, during the Summer I mow a couple hours a week. Then when the baby was born there were endless nights of rocking her to sleep, it was nice to have a story going in one ear as I sat in a dark room. I don’t know much about 50 Cent, there’s a couple radio hits I’m familiar with and I know he’s created a persona on Instagram. I’ve mostly followed him from a businessman perspective, over the years interviews with 50 have come across my way, especially when Eminem is in them. The personality I connect with is the one trying to improve, even if he finds success in one area then he’s going to branch into something new. There’s always more to be found if we keep going.
12 December 2023
We’re now less than two weeks away from Christmas. My plan for the end of the year is coming along, yesterday I finished a how to book on podcasting that my brother gave me. He’s going to be a cohost when we start the show next year. The next book I’m reading is Mark Twain’s Joan of Arc. I’ve always been interested in Joan, maybe because her and archangel Micheal, another favorite, are the primary artistic figures in Christianity depicted in suits of armor waging war. An issue I take with the book I’ve got is on the back cover it says Twain’s real name and to me that’s wrong, if he wanted to be known by that name he would have used it. Twain is a writer, making a living with words and he penned “Mark Twain” for the character he played, so changing that name is to make his story worse. It’s been awhile since I’ve read any Twain, of course I’ve read the adventures of Tom and Huck along with a couple shorter stories. Reading an english writer is always a pleasure as they are the high bar I reach for. Starting Joan of Arc I felt Twain was using a lot of flowery language to the point that the book would probably be a third of the length without it. As I thought on the language used, I succumb to it’s beauty, the reason english writers are special is that it’s my native tongue and only through reading experts on that language will my vocabulary and prose expand. There’s a lot to analyze and I’m only in the first few pages, but I take comfort knowing I’m in Mark Twain’s hands. The other American author that comes to mind in comparison is Ernest Hemingway, his style is more of a blunt blast while Twain is akin to flowing down the lazy river.
11 December 2023
I spoke to my cousin yesterday, it may be the first time ever we’ve had an adult conversation. Age is tough to understand, everyone is constantly an age they’ve never been, constantly becoming someone they weren’t before. An expression I like is that a person can’t be a prophet in their hometown, the reason being because those that grew up around that person see them as their younger self and not who they’ve become. What was nice about my conversation was we were getting to know each other’s grown selves, putting aside the past. It doesn’t matter if someone used to fill their mouth with hotwheels, hopefully they’ve stopped before turning 18 and if they’ve stopped it doesn’t happen anymore so it isn’t accurate to pair a personality with what they used to do. Another expression my wife shared recently was if your local mall is still trying, then so should you. Now the mall near you may not actually being trying, but the sentiment is the same and I didn’t want to name my local mall. The idea is that malls had a pivotal part in culture, if nothing was happening on a Friday or Saturday night, we could always go to the mall and it would be packed with excitement. Malls started to disappear possibly as all brick and mortar stores disappeared. The homogenous nature of super stores such as Walmart and Amazon took away the burden of shopping, with it went the excitement and discovery in walking through a store. Pretty frequently I see people online asking for book recommendations, there used to be stores that only sold books, a person would curate what books go on display then anyone walking into the store would see a list of book recommendations then could actually look inside the book before buying, and look at more than a couple pages too!
8 December 2023
This was a good week, lots was accomplished from fence building to fence deconstructing. The struggle has been baby had a bit of a fever, she’s been in good spirits the whole time though yesterday it was a hard to get her to eat anything. By the time dinner rolled around she hadn’t eaten a proper meal, so I had to bring out my secret technique of hand feeding the baby. This technique also saved my dog when the baby was first born. When we brought the baby home, our dog was upset to not be the center of our attention anymore and he went on a hunger strike. After a couple days we took him to the vet and he was cleared of any sickness, they gave him an IV and it was up to me to restart his belly. I had put chicken, rice and broth in a blender turning it into a nutritious mush. While both the dog and baby would turn their heads at food, when I’d get some food in their mouths they were quite agreeable. Hopefully last night’s dinner will be enough to get the baby’s appetite going and we can have a normal breakfast. It’s been a long week with the baby feeling under the weather, we chose to keep her home from daycare though she was still allowed to get some Christmas photos there. Despite normal life issues I’d been able to make progress on my goals. Deciding to change our moving plans earlier flipped a switch in my head, I know how much work there is to do to get to that point and that it must be chipped away at regularly if we’re to do it on time. The good news is the harder I work the stronger I become, in theory at least, I pray it continues.
7 December 2023
Accompany alchemy how can we in the attack committee seek blasphemy. Fire, water, and air are the elements, right? Maybe earth, 3+4=7 nothing looks as sturdy as the house; a triangle on a square. There has to be a tip of the triangle and majority base to the square. Where are we in the hierarchy, the human wants to know. Every piece is beautiful because together they make the whole, the big doesn’t exist without the small. I say we must run towards the light. If “to be or not to be” is the question, then be. Everyday be. Here Shakespeare said it best as he said everything best as he invented our language. Tis nobler to suffer the slings and arrows than to sleep. One day I will be broken, but it is not this day so I must rage on. I did 50 pull ups yesterday, that was my 100 push up equivalent, I’m pleased that it went according to plan and see a bright future for my lats. Not too long ago I found my self always feeling exhausted at 5 consecutive pull ups. Frustrated at hitting a ceiling I told myself that 5 was no longer an acceptable number, that if I were to stop then I would have to pay a toll, in more pull ups, either as negatives or by taking a breather and continuing. The result was four sets of 10 repetitions, but 50 consecutive is the mountain I seek. Never tell me the odds, all work towards that goal makes a positive impact on my health, discouragement is equal to physical harm. I don’t mean to mince words unless I mean minced words like see at in the ha t. This has been good, the mind needs to stretch in different ways at times. There’s been talk about fast/slow twitch muscles and different muscle groups representing how our physical body moves. What are the ways of thinking that characterize how a human brain moves?
Chris' Morning Pages 