Take time off till 10 hundred

Macro shot of my orchid

This morning felt like I was hit by allergies hard because after breakfast I had to go back to bed. I knew I needed good sleep too, because usually for a nap I don’t put my mask and nose plugs in, but this morning I did. Yesterday was a really good day for Chris, shoot I was probably on the verge of painting. I started the morning reading my house building book, had breakfast, went grocery shopping and transitioned into Tolstoy’s A Confession. That book has got some powerful ideas in it that I wish I was exposed to when I was younger. Some time after returning from Iraq, my friend’s suicide and divorcing my ex, I gave up on religion. There was a degree of feeling I’ve been tricked, like I was still believing in Santa Claus. The larger picture was probably I was beaten down by evil and accepted defeat. Naturally, I then became evil. Now, I’ve always aspired to be like King Author’s knights and I’ve been pretty successful, so I know when I’m bad it’s still good for most people, but it’s bad to me. While evil I destroyed everything around me because, why not, I was strong enough to do it, it’s fun to kick a sandcastle, and I didn’t care about repercussions. Part of destroying things was becoming a militant atheist that would try and convince people to abandon their religion. I can out argue most people, so I’m sorry for what I did to their perceptions. Tolstoy can out argue me, if I had read this book then maybe things would have been different. There were other good minds around at the time making arguments that would have dismantled mine that I didn’t expose myself to, now I think I didn’t want to find them; didn’t want to be proven wrong. Everyone should be on guard that there is information they avoid.

Mess up your makeup

Horseradish flowers

We’ve made it through another day. I was feeling pretty low yesterday and nothing really got accomplished. Maybe the days are feeling like they lag because we’re in the middle of the month. Right now an edge to grab onto is only getting further away. I’m going to put an effort into reading more. It doesn’t take the same sort of energy as going for a run or making a painting and it’s bettering myself. Less than a decade ago I had probably read between zero and four books over the course my life. I decided that I wanted to read more, so at a set time of the day I would sit in my chair and read. I’d read until I got a headache and around that time I started dating my wife. She told me the headaches could be cause by needing glasses. I got glasses, my headaches were gone, and I’ve since read a lot of heavy books. The point is I had to make it happen. The ability to read was a skill I had to work at, I even read a 1940’s book called, “How to Read a Book”. If I would like to read more now, it means I will have to go through a similar process of building myself up. As much as I wish I could, I can’t flip a switch to spend all my time on one activity and be great at it. Last night I was looking at myself thinking this isn’t like me. I don’t want to waste a second of life, there’s an endless list of books I want to read and now I have plenty of opportunity. The strange times make it hard to think about improvement, for weeks maybe even months now, I’ve only been concerned with getting through the days.

Mellow Monday Morning

This is the first thing I’m doing today, mostly because I don’t feel like doing anything else. At least if I write this, I’ve done something productive today. A struggle with dieting is with the weekend I want to relax a little because it’s the weekend, currently my best tactic to not over eat when not eating my scheduled foods is to under eat in general. That brings me to this morning where I’m probably calorically low, so I don’t do the things that are good for me. 

I was talking to Mary yesterday, she’s been going through a tough time for awhile, but finally opened up a little bit to me yesterday. It was needed because it felt like there was a wall in-between us and when she explained how she had been feeling, I felt like I unaware of what exactly she was feeling. I wish I could help her more, but the ideas that are bugging her are not of my world. Maybe she’ll talk to someone trained to handle those problems because the most I feel like the most I can do to help is be there for her, but realistically that’s not all a person needs. She means the world to me and I hate to see her suffer. I hope I’m doing the right thing. I guess that’s what I’ve been going through, walking around I can feel something is wrong, but having no idea what it is. There’s no challenge that can’t be overcome, if it’s faced head on. At the same time, problems are solved with tools designed for specific problems. I’m not going to hammer a nail with a pillow. Time heals all wounds, for now I guess I’ll just get through the day and see where that leads. A friend told me about his mother inlaw saying she’s in a job she hates, but she only has to put up with it for five years. I can’t imagine how it feels to intentionally write off five years of your life.

Fiery Feast or Frozen Famine

Inside of a fire

There’s an Eminem song that starts with, “Let me explain, just how to make greatness”. About every morning when I open the file to write, my head says that quote. It’s a great line for the song and probably why I imagine it for this because you’re immediately pulled it, the song is well underway before the listener even realized. I watched an interview with Adam Curry last night, I had no idea who he was before hand and have little idea who he is now, but in short he invented the podcast. He also made something like $65 million from investing in Ask Jeeves. Listening to him speak, I knew my brain works similar to this guy. Maybe why humans need communities and to communicate is because when we’re inside our bodies, we know something is weird. That weird feeling is probably the root of all existentialism and philosophy, they’re saying, “I know something is up, let me think my way through it.” Then when we talk to other people who are like us or they get to know us and don’t attack us for being ourselves, then we feel better. This guy made me feel better about myself because in some way he provided a mirror to me and he’s doing quite well for himself, so I feel like I can be myself and still do quite well. I’m an extremist I think, so I’ll give an example how Adam lives by nuance that I probably wouldn’t. He eats meat, thinks it’s cruel to animals, but wouldn’t kill his own meat. He’s conscious of being tracked so he has a third party phone operating system, linux computer, but still owns an Iphone. There’s nothing wrong with all that, people have to decide where they are on every spectrum and even I’m somewhere on it, usually close to the edges though. As he explains himself, the best answer I think of is, “You gotta be providing for yourself.”

Cry baby will buy maybe

This morning I drove to a prospect for the farm. I wasn’t wowed. It would work and I would be happy if I got it, but I’m not being forced to make a decision. The place I went to today was partially cleared out in the front and it’s enough to build some stuff on, but I wouldn’t be able to start growing plants without chopping down a lot of tree. I would like my land to have trees because the past couple days when I’m bored I think about chopping wood for fun, but that’s just it; for fun. If I have to cut down hundreds of trees before I can get to work, I should have bought land without the trees. Because I maintain realistic sights, this parcel would be acceptable, but I doubt I’ll buy it. I’m about three weeks away from being able to take my land searching serious. I have to visit the one farm I wanted to buy and see if they plan to put it back on the market again because I haven’t seen anything on the same level as that. There was one place that was really nice, only problem was it was next to a highway. Without finding anything I’d be happy to commit to, I will probably start asking people around farming areas, but especially in farm supply stores if they know anyone that might be selling. I think that would probably be the best approach, except it’s the worst sort of work for me. I spend so much time daydreaming about what I’d do if I had land that I might jump on whatever I can get as quick as possible because I just want to work. That’s the problem with this world, so many middlemen that can’t do anything but shuffle papers get in the way of actual work getting done.

Pretty Pair of Peaches

This morning is feeling pretty good. I’ve been working with this anti snoring device I got, they’re tubes that go in my nostrils to allow for more air to pass. I don’t really snore, but I don’t get enough air by breathing through my nose so when I sleep my mouth opens up. The anti snoring tubes came in four different sizes/type, there’s large and small, ribbed and smooth. I’ve been trying to figure out the right one for me and maybe last night I got it right. Maybe it’s the placebo effect, but I feel like I wake up with more energy using the tubes. My energy had me reading my homebuilding book this morning for longer than I expected. That’s good because I want to finish that book asap. I’m beginning another attempt at three days in a row of dieting, given that those three days are Friday through Sunday, I don’t know how successful I’m going to be, but my diet is good for me so it’s always best to be trying at it. A similar situation is my book, I can’t expect to complete it in one sitting, but day by day I can work away at it.

It should be raining today, so I’m looking forward to that. The weather is super weird right now because at night it’s getting down to 36 F in the Southern part of Tennessee. I moved some of my weaker and more precious plants to cover for the weekend. I don’t think there will be real trouble though, that happens when the soil in the pot freezes. Right now the temp is dipping at night and getting up to around 80 F during the day, so there’s no freezing, but I’m sure the plants still don’t like being close to freezing temps.

Bubbling lo mein below me

Mustard greens beginning to bud flowers

I fell short of my first dieting challenge. I usually go to bed around 10 pm and at 9:30 pm I gave in to temptation and had something to eat. It was only a banana and some juice, but still it wasn’t in the diet, so three days of dieting was not accomplished. I’ll have to try again, in truth I had technically failed the challenge on the first day because I didn’t follow the diet foods, only stayed within calorie restrictions. I know there’s a big part of mental rewiring I have to go through and part of me may have wanted to screw up the challenge so I didn’t accomplish it first try then walk away undefeated. Another part could have been afraid of moving on to a harder challenge. I don’t know, it’s hard to know much these days, so I’m going to keep moving without knowing or caring. Not much has been going on because so much of yesterday I was saying, “Just get through the day.” and that was probably part of my slip. If I had been keeping myself busy, I wouldn’t have noticed my hunger as much. I’m trying to stay busy, but recent craziness has put me in a hole I’ve got to slowly work out of. I’m getting up, basically I had a month of sitting around doing nothing but over eating, so it’s going to take some time and a lot of work to break those habits. The comfier the habit the faster it sets in. For the record I’m going to call the recent craziness Vincent because I worry that some internet platforms have been throttled for using key words. I don’t really want to talk about Vincent, but his actions do have effects that lead me to use those key words.

Decidedly Delicious Dedication

This is the 2nd time I’ve gotten an orchid to bloom

I started restricting my calories this week, so I feel low energy. My goal is to follow my diet for three days in a row, which I can accomplish today. With how I’m feeling now, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to stick to my diet, but I’m trying. My success over the last two days means I’m more likely to accomplish three days in a row next time if I don’t get it today. Even if I do get it today, I’ve got a long future of dieting ahead of me and need to get accustomed to restricting myself. If I keep pushing to diet even after I fail, eventually something will click and I won’t feel as low energy. Cravings also go away with time. On Monday I ate the right number of calories, but still had sugary foods. Yesterday I don’t think I ate anything with added sugar, so that could be one reason I feel the way I do. I don’t feel bad, but mostly I’ll be worried I won’t have the energy required to make my food and then I’m more likely to microwave something. After that my might taste buds adjust and I’ll be more likely to eat junk food for awhile. I already did my reading, and writing this will probably require the most brain power of anything today. I have to cook my healthy breakfast instead of reaching for the cereal, because man do I want to eat some cereal right now. Cereal would be comforting, but it’d be gone in a minute. The energy I gain from cereal doesn’t last very long either. I’ve still got about 40 minutes till breakfast, lets hope I’ll remain strong when the time comes. Bit by bit I hope to improve, I know it’s tough now, but it gets easier the longer you stick with it.

For Fast Freddy

Climbing the rope

I’ve got a new routine I’ve been trying out. After I make breakfast for my wife, I do a little reading. Then I want to watch an educational video and write my morning pages. I don’t know if I want to watch the video first, but I think writing requires more energy and should be done first. All that excitement is hopefully done before 8 AM and that’s when I’ll have breakfast. Yesterday, I saw a scary number on the scale and am trying to be better about what I eat. Self control is hard though, my wife caught me last night trying to sneak in a bowl of cereal after I had already eaten. There’s an attitude of “screw it, the world’s coming to an end” that’s hard to shake and it talks me into letting my impulse drive the machine. The world isn’t coming to an end though and I should be working on improving myself and situation for the future. I have to take care of my body just like I have to take care of anything else and in fact it’s the most important thing. 

I went to Home Depot yesterday mostly because I could, our city has lifted the shelter in place restrictions, but I also need to feel more comfortable there and with what they have so I can think better. The other part of thinking better is reading this book on home building, and eating healthy. Two small projects I might do to build my comfort is turn one cinder block into a stand for my pitcher plant and the other is to build a wooden cube. The cube can be used for anything, but it’s about buying the material and building something, I’ve got to warm up. A bigger project that combines these skills is to build a pull up/dips stand, so I can get some more casual exercising in. By that I mean exercise I can do when I’m in the back yard because the equipment is right there, like my climbing rope.

Broad shoulders catch more rain

Sleepy pup

I wasn’t here yesterday, but sometimes I need to take a day off if only to take a day off. I think yesterday was a good day. It’s hard to tell what days are anymore, everything blends together. Let’s see, yesterday I repotted my autumn fern. That’s a fern the grown new fronds in orange and red colors. I decided yesterday that I lied the leaf structure on the autumn fern than the boston fern, which I think is the only other kind of fern I have, so I put the autumn fern into a bigger pot. I had set up a tent in the yard last night and was going to sleep in it until Mary told me a storm was coming in, so I took down my tent. The storm sounded and looked scary, but we didn’t get more than a couple drops of rain. 

I reached a new level of boredom yesterday by basically hitting a dead-end with the videos Youtube was recommending me. I was reloading pages multiple times to try and find a new video. I don’t like algorithm recommendations because it’s going to show me what it thinks I’m interested in, then I’m going to watch more videos on the topic. The company providing the algo likes this because I’m consuming lots of content, but I reach a point like I did yesterday where all the content that’s being recommended to me falls into about three niche subjects that I’ve been watching for a couple months. I need to explore new ideas, and problems happen when companies like Youtube filter their trending page. That is made to appeal to the largest group of people, well I’m an outlier so it doesn’t serve me. I ended up thinking of new, random ideas to search for to add more variety to my algo