One Per Sin Perspective

Rose

We made an offer on a house today! What an exciting time to be alive. I also went to a Target today and I felt sick the moment I walked into the store. The first thing I sea is a flood of people. I know I want no part of them, then I hear someone shouting out where a “clean” cart can be obtained. I didn’t need a cart and I’m not going to wait in line to be allowed to go shopping. Let me tell you something folks, say goodbye to brick and mortar stores now, they are officially dead. Not only is their reputation tarnished by being a public gathering place, but the experience of being in one is like the crowds of Disney World with the excitement of the DMV. Amazon’s got the game on lock with shipping everything to the home. I remember seeing something come across my desk mentioning a billion dollar deal Jeff Bezos did with the CIA. I didn’t read the article because it’s probably 90% garbage to begin with and the writer of the article probably doesn’t even know what 10% of their own writing is true. There’s another thing sailing away with physical stores: quality writing. Twitter brings about an age where people communicate in, originally, 140 characters. Sentence structure can’t remain the same as it was before, so we have journalists who get their jobs on the fact that they’re good at communicating through social media and the rest of printed word has suffered because of it. I’m not saying I’m the greatest writer, or even a good one. I’m just a guy at home, but I try. I like to sneak in clever bits with my double entendres like “see” and “sea” above. Any time lately I go to read an article, it’s like they’re not even trying and no one is proof reading it, that’s why ideas spread like wildfire.

P.S. Bezos would be stupid not to sign a deal with the CIA. I’d love to work with the CIA.

Hear Clear Space

We just returned from another visit to the house we’re interested in. It still looks pretty good, we only saw the outside I feel better about it now that we’ve taken time to slowly walk around and look. Our vision leaves out so much information that our brains normally think isn’t important, like an electrical box on the side of the house is painted the same color as the house. If I were a guest visiting the house, I probably wouldn’t know that electrical box is there, but as an owner it’s important to take a minute looking at the box in case anything is wrong with it. It’s a very exciting time, things are looking good and we’ll continue gathering information. House stuff is probably the only big thing going on in my life. The garden projects I started in the last couple of months are moving along nicely, but I don’t spend much brain power on them. The work is more like everyday I have to walk through the gardens, I do this for pleasure, but while there I’ll notice weeds that have to be pulled. At this point the best strategy is to pull weeds everyday until the roots from the plants I want form a web to choke out the wounded weeds. I was going to say, “It’s easy work though.” Then I thought, I do have to get dirty to do it and I’m hunched over to pull weeds, so I realized pulling weeds is not easy work I just enjoy doing it. Every time I pull a weed it makes my garden look better and strengthens something I’m building, so I get an internal satisfaction from doing it. Not to mention the location, where else would I rather work than a garden next to my house?

Beware of Bugs Below

I think they look cool

I’m going to check out another house today. I don’t think there’s much chance of us wanting it because it is squeezed between a church and train tracks. We’re going anyway because it doesn’t hurt and we have to be active if we want to get things done. No body is going to serve the world to you; it’s worked for. I liked both the places we went to yesterday, there was one place that was built in the 50’s the is pretty wonky. I think they added an expansion and the center of the house became a cross roads. If not for that busy center, it would probably be higher on the list. The other house has some cosmetics we’d change, but it’s move in ready and I don’t know if I’ve ever been in a house that I wouldn’t want to make some tweaks to. Making changes is the fun part of the whole operation, only right now as a renter I don’t want to invest time and money into anything that I won’t get to keep, or worse the landlord could dislike the changes and I’ll have to undo my work. Owning a house is about that area being mine and if I know how to build a house from the ground up, I can do anything I want with it. 

I didn’t eat much yesterday, I’m sure part of it was nerves from doing a new thing, but there’s another idea I had in mind. I had been telling myself part of not eating and house “hunting” is to maintain focus. I don’t eat unless I get a kill. I can extend that further to other aspects of life, but it should seem pretty obvious. It would be the same as fighters not having sex before a fight and the Shakespeare quote I like about the lean man. The comfortable person is not as dangerous as the one backed into a corner.

Stay away stagnation

At some point in the afternoon yesterday I started to think how it would make sense to find a house with the same quality of the place I live at now, but with two or more acres. I don’t know what spurred on the tangent, maybe thoughts that I would be happy owning the property we’re currently renting and doing it my way. I was also thinking about how I wished I had my own room. Technically the place we’re in has enough rooms that one could be mine, but it’s more like shared living space and shared office space; like I said to Mary, “I want to have desks cluttered with stuff, each for their own hobby.” On of the biggest hurdles I try to smooth out in life is set up/take down times, for example I’m less likely to drive 20 minutes to the gym than I am to step out my door and go for a 12 minute run. Set up/take down times get in the way of doing the activity that I want to be doing. I’ll say something like, “I want to work out, but I’d have to drive to the gym first.” Having the activity ready when I am is ideal. Along those lines, I’d get more work done on the land if I could walk out my door and be there than if I had to drive 20 minutes to the farm. After all those thoughts and many more, I pulled up the real estate website and the first house I saw was perfect. It turned out that house was in a different location, but it’s still good. This morning Mary and I went to check out the first house I found and another one, they looked great and we’re actually going to go with an agent to see the inside of the houses in two hours!  

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.