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.
19 October 2023
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.
Chris' Morning Pages 