We started going to the YMCA as a way to give the baby more socialization, plus I’ll be able to exercise at the same time. I stopped seriously working out shortly before I stopped writing my blog. In terms of weight lifting strength I have to get readjusted to the movements and repetitions. My raw strength feels as though it’s increased from farm life, I’ve watched my hands get thicker the past couple years and labor that used to take all day can now be done during a lunch break. Yesterday I had my first chance to test my strength in bench press. For the past couple weeks I’ve basically been warming up on the bench press and finally decided to see how some more weight felt. I only did one rep, as intended, but I benched 185 lbs. That’s nothing big in the weight lifting world, but for me it’s close to if not the most weight I’ve ever benched and I could have done multiple reps. Until recently I’ve been doing chest exercises wrong my entire life. I wanted to slim down before the wedding, so 100 days before the wedding I made a goal of doing 100 push ups in a day. I succeeded with 100 push ups in a day and now would like to be able to do 100 push ups continuous. Through that process I learned I’ve always had my hand and elbow positions wrong, being too high and basically turning it into a shoulder exercise. The new positioning was a game changer and obviously helped my bench press. Hopefully I’m already close to lifting 200 lbs which I’ve never done and might need a spotter in case I can’t lift that much. If things go well maybe someday I can get up to 225, which is two 45 lbs plates on each side and a 45 lbs bar.
18 October 2023
We should start a war says the hungry and well fed young man for different reasons. It’s my job to come up with a compelling story that redirects that energy for good. I have gotten a lot of religion since I last published my writings online, toiling the soil and having a kid will do that. I plan on getting even more religious moving forward. My philosophy is “read and write”, the next question might be, “read and write what?” well the singular answer here is the bible. The more complicated answer is that reading and writing only the bible is hard, to maintain that over time is holy. Part of me writing this blog and my online presence turning on is me trying to be a better person. I believe writing this is better than mindlessly consuming, ideally this branches out to consume all of my hours with constructive activities. What else could life be about? Spending it how you best see fit. I’m going to be reading a lot of religiously tied books, my goal is to seriously increase my reading. I’ve been practicing a speed reading technique that I’m going to commit to and starting a word a day on my instagram to strengthen my vocabulary. Of course Shakespeare will be here. Since the baby was born I’ve done my best to read a page of Shakespeare. We already went through Hamlet and Mid Summer Night’s Dream. Currently I’m Much Ado About Nothing and from the day she was born I’ve been saying a monologue from Romeo and Juliet. I had to read out loud for my sister’s wedding, that went well I’m sure with help from reading all of these books out loud. While my wife was pregnant I started reading Paradise Lost out loud at night one page a day, that was the hardest hump to get over but has granted articulate benefits.
17 October 2023
We made back home from the wedding. That was a whirlwind adventure. PS did fantastic with the car rides, rather than drive 12 hours straight we broke it up over two days. I have a lot of thought from the wedding that I’m having to parse through still. Mostly I’m now in position to start revving my engine. I need to get back to writing everyday as well as sharing it online. The impression I got while visiting family is that people like me and want to be around me. I was telling my wife the disconnect I feel between how I see myself and how others see me. I’ve had a lot of negative thoughts for a long time that kept me thinking I was not living up to the standard. What the standard is isn’t important because a sick mind can alway imagine a bar higher that can’t be reached. Then I felt like a failure even if I’ve already gone further than most. The position I find myself in now is trying to narrow the gap between my view and other’s. When I was depressed I needed lots of positive affirmation in the form of ideas like, “I deserve happiness.” To me that was a trip from negative to zero, now I’ll attempt to go positive, but not only that, I’ll attempt to be as positive as I can be. This trip will involve a lot of hyperbolic statements like, “I am the greatest!” I watched Ali v. Liston 1 last night for a little motivation. Ali was possibly my first hero, I think I learned of him before Achilles. I hadn’t watched much about Ali since I was younger and it wasn’t surprising to learn he was doing a pro wrestler style of hyping a fight, but it was something I had never considered as a kid. I didn’t think he was acting and in some way he wasn’t, I guess that’s what I’m talking about doing, going out and proving your greatness.
A rolling stone gathers no moss
This is my last morning pages, I don’t know if it’s my last forever, but I have no plans to use my website again after I post this. I did want to say Thanks to the people that came by regularly. This was an activity for me to get energy out because I couldn’t do anything else. Now I’ve got what I’ve been waiting for, it’s time for me to focus on what I always told myself I would do if given the chance. As I said before, writing is still important to me, so I plan to keep doing the 300 words a day. I’m going to focus my writing on one project or story. Maybe write some short stories and see if one day I could have enough for a book. I’m gonna go where the wind takes me, but I’m not going to be spending time on the computer uploading it. I have nothing to prove to anyone, I’m gonna enjoy my life. I dug up a raspberry bush today, changed a toilet bob, and have been resetting the pool. The world around me is only limited by what I’m willing to do, so no more time is going to be spent waiting for webpages to load. I think I’m still going to keep my instagram @drawingmylifeaway124 going because I’ve got a back log of photos I want to get out. The good photos haven’t even started hitting the streets yet. I tried to dump all the photos at once but because they’re on the cloud, it’s half a dozen clicks to upload one picture. That’s annoying enough, but it takes about two minutes twice a day and there’s at least one sunflower seed photo that the world needs to see. I saw a completely new creation to my eyes today, some sort of caterpillar rat king.
Deep Sea Diving
I was swinging the pickaxe around today. As a tool I believe it’s all called a mattock, but I’ve always liked pickaxe better. I actually got my start with the pickaxe. I was really into the Rocky series as a kid, only the first four though, and in the forth movie Rocky is chopping wood as part of his training. I was hooked and I wanted to chop wood just like that, my time came when my family had a big tree cut down in the front yard. The tree produced a lot of big wood that needed to be made smaller. I don’t know if it needed to be made smaller, or we kept the wood because I wanted to chop it, but either way I had the first ingredient in chopped wood. The problem was I didn’t have a proper chopper. The only thing we had was the pickaxe, but that was ok because I could barely hit the target anyway. My first swings were in the front yard poking holes into the wood while people driving by would shout things. Eventually I got a decent set up in the back and we got an axe, or maybe my dad needed to sharpen the axe we had. I got to work chopping, but still had no idea how to wield the tool. Unless the wood is hit by the axe perfectly straight, the piece of wood goes flying; I had many cuts on my shins from rouge logs. I was always trying to split the log, but I saw one of my brothers lay the log on its side and cut it with a V shape. This technique allowed room for error, so I switched, chopping and chopping to improve my skill with an axe. I wanted to split logs like Rocky though, so I kept swinging. I’d go in the back yard and spend my time chopping wood until I could start splitting them. Well that was coolest thing I’ve ever done and I kept doing it. Now I can swing the axe all day long and it allows me to shape the world to my desires.
ClickClack PickThat SilkHat
Part of me still doesn’t know why I sit down to write this. The part of me that says I have to write it, because it keeps my mind and writing ability sharp, has also been wondering if instead I should put this energy in to writing stories or something with a purpose. Sure, I’d love to, but it’s not like flicking a switch. I want to get back into shape, but if I go run five miles, then I’m I won’t exercise for the rest of the week and that’s not going to make me any stronger. To work on getting back in shape, I start with stretching, that’s it. It’s not like I don’t use my body, but rather I haven’t been taking care of it. After a couple of sessions of only stretching, I’ll slowly add in resistance exercises until that becomes my routine. The way to get better is to continue to come back, right now I’m writing this daily to stretch my brain. Maybe once I’ve recovered from this year I can take on more difficult writing, but I need to at least maintain where I’m at while I settle a bunch of different real life things.
We’re supposed to have someone come to mow the lawn today. It’s been getting a bit shaggy, so I’ll be happy once it’s done. I ordered a new mower, but it’ll be a couple weeks before it arrives and you’re right, I do already have a lawn mower. The only problem is it’s a push electric mower, so it has to be plugged in and I’ve got more than an acre that needs mowing. Hopefully this’ll be the only time I need someone else to mow, but it’s nice to have the option available. It’ll be nicer after I do it myself.
Forgone or forgotten
I didn’t write yesterday. Maybe I needed time to recover, or I was busy doing other stuff around the house, but I’m also thinking a lot about why do I write this and why post stuff online. Finishing the podcast got me thinking about this stuff, it’s all for fun and to work on my creative skills, but they’re questions of do I want to put work into this. The conclusion I came to is that I do want to put work into writing everyday. Writing is a valuable skill that I don’t want to stop doing. The other place I’m active is Instagram, that came about because I was taking pictures of my garden and sharing them with friends. Eventually I felt weird constantly showing them pictures, so I share them in an appropriate space now. I’m going to continue taking pictures of my garden and pictures in general, so it’s not like managing my Instagram account is extra work. I’m also grateful that I have been practicing photography because we got this Google hub that displays the photos on my phone and 95% of the photos it shows are pretty regardless of the subject because I now make an effort to take good photos. I’m thinking about framing, lighting, and clutter in the shot even if I’m only sending the photo to one person. My plan is to continue writing and taking pictures regardless. I’d rather share this stuff than have no chance of anyone seeing it, so for now I’ll keep posting online. If it gets annoying to where I’m asking myself why, I’ll reevaluate things. “Read and write”, is a philosophy I live by, for me that means that we should be taking in information and produce something with it. Until next time.
Praise Gilgamesh
Today was the death of my podcast. There has been a problem with the last two episodes I’ve tried to record and the files disappear. That’s enough of a sign for me to be done with it. The podcast worked out to provide us with Christfest IV, so it served its purposed. I’ve got so much other stuff going on that would better serve my time and energy. The ball is starting to get rolling with settling into the new house, I’ve set up a hose for the plants and this evening we put away all the kitchen accessories. There was even a bird outside of my window as I write this, it couldn’t have been more than eight feet away from me, sitting on a branch high above the sky. I’ve also started uprooting plants I don’t like. The mattock has been moved over and is getting put to work. There are stubbing weedesq trees growing all around the property, no matter how much they get cut back they won’t die unless the roots are dug up. I was fantasizing about going to the neighbors to discuss what they consider the property line. It doesn’t matter where the line is, there’s more than enough land, but I’d like to know basically every tree I own that’s older than 10 years. Then I’m can play connect the dots and clean out all the brush. The permanent battle is against things that grow uncontrollably fast, and things that have pointy parts, this goes for plants, insects and animals. I probably want to keep all insects away. I’m gonna want to cover every piece of earth around the house with stones or something devoid of life. Then I’ll plant some delicious plants to attract them away. This is my fool proof plan.
Lies in Weight
The month has come to an end and today I’m walking through the old house with the landlord for a final inspection. I will be so happy after all this is done. Someone is also coming to mow the lawn today, which isn’t a big deal, but it’s another appointment to juggle and the days of me juggle appointments are about to be over. I’m going to start saying to people, “No, I already have something scheduled that day.” because it never works out. I will inevitably need to be in two places at once, it’s a tale as old as the Flintstones. Along with getting back to normal life, now that my birthday is over I really need to start watching what I eat. Being locked up in the house for close to five months has not been good for my physic. There’s also been a lot of stress eating this last month. A note on staying home for months, it’s been five months and people are still saying, “A little longer and then it will be over” or, “If everyone did it right, it wouldn’t last this long.” If you think the easiest solution to a problem is to get 300 million Americans to do the same thing, you must not be from here. In a Phillies baseball game the crowd will boo a dog if it drops the frisbee; people push back. There’s a reason Microsoft bailed out Apple in the 90’s and why Coke needs Pepsi, it’s impossible to get everyone to do the same thing since some people want to do “the other” simple because people aren’t doing it. Microsoft wasn’t helping Apple, they were hedging their bets. If people don’t go to option 1, they go to option 2. That might be an important idea to remember around election time.
Climb to Glory
Whew wei, Christfest was a good one. When I was a kid, I would like to plan a day of my Summer vacation to walk to the park and spend the whole day there without saying a single word. Those were the types of experiments I ran with my mind and what I enjoy. I couldn’t have asked for a better birthday. I own acres of land where I can shout at the top of my lungs and I can completely unplug. It’s a strange techno-natural balance I’m trying to work with. I’m plugging so much of my life into smart devices and wanting to live in the woods. That’s where I fall back on being able to defend myself. If someone wants to take this hill, they better bring an army and I pay my taxes to keep that from happening. It was even raining all day; that’s my favorite weather. I’ve always thought about moving to Portland or Seattle to be somewhere with a ton of rain, but I’ve been quite pleased with how much rain I’ve been seeing at the new place. Being out of the city makes the rain feel fresher, it doesn’t travel through a layer of smog to get to me.
My wife is planning on bringing me Hibachi for dinner. The first time I ate Hibachi was when I was taken to dinner by my brother and his now wife. It’s one of the few meals I remember as a kid, so I guess it’s important to try and make those special memories. I was wondering why they would take me out to dinner, I’m not their kid. I thought maybe it’s a test couples do to rent someone else’s kid. That way they know how each other performs. That does make me want to do special things for my nephews every chance I get.
Chris' Morning Pages 