The best part about me is I am not you

El Jaleo painted by John Singer Sargent in 1882

I try to stay humble because there’s no room for growth when you think things are as good as they can get, but I watched Good Will Hunting again recently and there’s a part when Matt Damon’s character says to Ben Affleck’s that he wants to be doing the same thing in 20 years. Ben says if he’s still here in 20 years, he’s going to beat Matt. The reason being that they’re surrounded by guys who wish they could be in Matt’s position, to throw it away is an insult to them. I should acknowledge and be grateful for everything I have. I wasn’t given opportunities that aren’t available to other people. My dad was a truck driver for over 30 years, I dropped out of school at 17 to join the Army. Joining the military is available to nearly every American, especially the infantry that has the lowest requirements. I did my work and made smart decisions. I had a plan for what I wanted my life to look like and made that happen. In my eyes the only problem with that plan was I accomplished my dreams before I turned 30. I still have a lot of life to live, so I decided to set more goals. 

I compare myself to titans of humanity and that makes me think I’m worse than I am. I’m not as good of a thinker as Nietzsche. I don’t have a body like Arnold. I can’t paint like Sargent. These people reached peaks of what is possible for a human and I will continue to compare myself to them so that I never stop improving. When I compare myself to the average person, I’m insulting them to say we’re equal. I’m not equal to the average person. I’m good looking and smart. I work hard and commit to long term goals. 

Yesterday I was sitting in my outdoor greenhouse, in the middle of winter at a warm 80 degrees, enjoying a cigar while listening to Bach. The act of having a cigar suggests your life is so stable that you can walk away for a bit to enjoy yourself and things will be fine. I was thinking if I had a magical power to create my life exactly as I wanted it, I couldn’t think of anything I don’t already have. I enjoy every minute I get to spend with my amazing wife, she’s even taking me to dinner and the symphony tonight. I’ve never met a more loving or well behaved dog then my own. I left the back gate open recently and he got out, before I knew he was gone he was scratching on the front door to be let back in. My mother in law joked that I bought a truck to transport mulch and she’s not wrong. I had the urge to do some gardening and could buy a new car without it effecting my finances. My days are spent exactly how I want to, chasing my dreams without having to take orders from any boss. I’m going to keep saying I’m not good enough so I can be better, but boi am I happy to be me.

20 lbs of lobster meat can fill a 13 gallon trashcan

Someone once asked me something like what was my favorite cereal and I told them I like blue foods. Blue lobsters look really cool, though I don’t think the pigment changes the taste. They might even taste worse than a normal lobster for reason only the lobster psychologist can tell us. I do enjoy the taste of lobster, I had it a couple weeks ago to celebrate how successful my wife is at her job. Whenever I treat lobster as a luxury food I think about at one point in history a law had to be made that prisons in new england weren’t allowed to feed their prisoners lobster more than three times a week. Can you imagine the poor souls being locked up, having to eat lobster everyday. I suppose we don’t know the condition of the meal. Maybe they were just throwing a live lobster inside a cell and whoever survives in the new prisoner. Goes to show even something like our taste buds end up being culturally connected. Lobsters are the cockroaches of the ocean, so they say at least. Not sure what they mean exactly because I’ve see CRs before and there’s not a lot of meat on them. Though I’ve never tried them before. This next bit might be a little hard to read. Imagine coming and see a big pot simmering, “what’s for dinner honey?” Oh, I’m boiling us some CRs.  Maybe if they came in a range of colors, people would enjoy them as pets. A joke I’m sure I’ll make in the future when I see a blue lobster is to ask, “Do you think it tastes blueberry or raspberry?” Then there’s always the big debate of does cotton candy taste blue or pink. Maybe it’s the cotton is blue and the candy is pink.

There has probably never been a human as brilliant as I

I’m writing this with music in my ears, so I thought my train of thought might be a bit sporadic. I then realized, that’s every time I write. The music is Bach’s mass in B minor. It’s honestly wild that this sort of stuff exists and that it’s no longer the height of culture. I had this idea that instead of watching YouTube videos, sometimes I should just write, that’s what would make me a good writer and more of a philosopher. Well maybe I’ll give it a try, but it’s energy and that was what I wanted to talk about. I’m tired. I hate that I’m tired, but there’s also nothing I can do about it now that I am tired. It means I need to rest, but if I want to be less tired in the future I have to willfully go running back to work as soon as I can. I already did my drawing today, so that’s good. I also wanted to talk about this idea that seems to be referred to as post-modernists. I’m imagining modern refers to the age of science and post-modernists would refer to life that has been transformed by its luxuries. We’re obviously living in a land of milk and honey, well at least if you’re in America, but I think every country in the world has a higher quality of life than it did 50 years ago. 

There’s also this tendency to only think in extremes these days, of course I’m a product of this, I just take everything to its extremes. That ends up turning myself into a mirror that I point at society. I think people need to move away from any debate where only two views are offered as possible solutions. Someone might use as an argument against me, that there are still people suffering in the world, so things aren’t better. Maybe people don’t have water in Flint, MI still, but you’re crazy if you think Americans aren’t practically on life support with the number of machines they rely on compared to 50 years ago. 

Lifestyles are more comfortable than they were in the past, but that doesn’t mean life is better. The idea is sold as progress means improvement and I’m not saying life isn’t better, I’m saying the ideas are not related. There’s an argument to be made that the machines create a disconnect between individuals and our sense of community is weaker, that a quality of life is better judged by an individual’s community. We’re sold the idea that things keep improving though, that’s the collective narrative and my connection to my definition of post-modernists is things keep getting better because of science. Science will not save our souls, people feel this, so they know there’s a lie in what they’re being sold. Some people will go on accepting the life is good script, they will probably live good enough lives with little meaning. I would relate that life to what Nietzsche called moral cowardice. What I think happens to a lot of people and what leads to the shaky times it feels like we’re living in are is they stop buying the script and when they look around they see things aren’t always good. They turn on their parents then, whether literal or generational, because they feel lied to. It’s similar to a child being told Santa doesn’t exist. No one wanted to tell the child when they were too young because childhood should be enjoyed, but we don’t need lies to enjoy our lives. Humans are incredibly resilient and can handle hardship. What people struggle with is when they find out the entire community has been lying to them, possibly laughing behind their back. It sends my post-modernist into a frenzy that wants to destroy everything, where if we played the kid Bach as a baby, they would have already known.

Why was sending monkeys into space ok

The peace lily has a flower

Hey today is 1/20/2020, if only we had 20 months in a year, I’d finally get around to finishing my memoirs. I’ll tell you a little about my day, I went to the grocery store and then drove through downtown and felt ancient. There were kids everywhere, I couldn’t figure out what was happening and then I remembered today was a holiday. I also made a joke that I’m not really comfortable publicly telling, but I have to say screw it because if I don’t write this as if it’s only to myself, then there’s no point. I did some work for this artist friend Lee today and he paid me for it, the joke was I haven’t been paid for my labor in 7 year. It makes me feel bad because I’ve been thinking a lot lately about respecting myself, part of that would be accepting money for my work. I kept trying to tell him he doesn’t need to pay me, but I’m trying to rejoin society I think working is probably part of society. Actually I still don’t know if I want to join society because here is the trade off, the more one fits in to societal norms, the more of their personal originality has to be given up. I think I can join society to a larger extent because the opposite argument is that you can’t do anything if you’re wanting complete freedom. In order to make the types of paintings that I want to, I am restricted by techniques, colors, and subjects. That complete freedom crap is just a backdoor into nihilism and that’s what I’m running from. It’s like a bad relationship because nihilism keeps hurting me and I still like it and think it’s cool. I want to embrace the infinite, but I know it destroys me. Another parallel to dating a bad person is that I think I can tame it. Other people just haven’t been strong enough to stare into the infinite long enough to see its secrets. I don’t think there are secrets though, just nothingness and that’s what you become when you have too much freedom.

Two things I’ve been listening to lately are Jordan Peterson and Eminem

I like this logo

I love you morning pages, but you are an illusive beast. Everyday I have to pray the muses are gracious enough to visit me so I’m not left empty handed. I don’t really ever plan on looking back at my morning pages, though I do like the concept of seeing what I was thinking this time a year ago. I’ve done it once or twice before and actually use the hashtag for books whenever I want to separate writing to be reviewed some day. I think I will look at last year to see what I wrote on this day. I was still fairly new to the morning pages at that point and would sometimes go up to five days without writing, so it’s possible I didn’t write anything exactly a year ago. I’ll report back in the next paragraph.

That was a lot of fun, so to sum up the writing my wife and I had recently got back from our vacation in Jamaica. We thought we’d be smart and escape to a warm place during the winter, but we came back and got sick from the temperature shifts. This time last year I was feeling better and had done the first day of a painting workshop about painting the outdoors. I painted some trees that turned out alright, but noticed that I take on challenges that are too big. The next day I remembered doing a painting that was much simpler, but I’m really happy with how it came out. Let’s hope that lesson is learned. Also this time last year my wife was on call, I feel like that’s a little joke between us.Today I primed some panels for a painting class I’ll have in February. Some things never change, at least I didn’t get sick. Fingers crossed. During this time last year I was writing mantras to myself. There are three that I had written five times each.

  • I am who I want to be
  • I have decided that I’m good enough
  • If I fail, I fail forward

To the dreams you’ve been waiting for

Would AI want to live forever?

Welcome back Chris, we’ve been waiting for you. Tell us more of your secrets. I need a compelling story and the only way you’ll be a good character is to have more depth. Then you’ll be replaced with a robot version… nah this whole line of thought is trash. I liked the idea of my morning pages welcoming me, but what could be the motivation of them, they’re a machine and if they did want to clone me, it’d be a waste of time because they’ll only have data of my past. People could say, “That’s how deep learning works” and sure for simple things, but real AI would need an introspection. I wonder if giving a program a death date could cause sentience to emerge. I can’t decide if the robots would have a known assigned date or it would be random. If it is random, then then it’s a bit like real life, they wouldn’t know they’re going to die. Here’s the thing in the end that a clone can only be like me until that moment they were cloned, once we separate, they’ll be thinking about my memories through the lens of the life they go on to live and my lens will continue to be reforged by my future. This is why I say every night I die when I go to sleep, every morning a new person is born. They may have one more memory than I had and they may have one less, but I simple woke up and have to choose what to do with the time. It’s a miracle that we can do any planning for a future self that we’ll never get to be instead of rotting away by instinctual actions. Sheesh that was a lot deeper than I thought I was gonna get having a conversation with my journal. This is why I can’t have simple things.

Day of Recognizing

One of my drawings from last night

What a whirlwind of a day. I met up with Lee today to see if I would like to do some work for him and it went well. I talked to one of the guys from woodworking that was a philosophy major, and I reached out to him! Had a good drawing day, did dinner with my wife(the title was something she said), and Eminem released a new album!!! I guess now I should go more in depth on those subjects, that’s how I was taught to write my five paragraph essay. What a stupid concept, lets teach you the only way to make an argument, everyone structure your writing to be the same, it’s not a creative art. For anyone that was taught differently, I was taught your essay should be 5 paragraphs, in the first paragraph first sentence you state your stance on an issue. The rest of the paragraph is used to provide three supporting arguments. The next three paragraph will be about their corresponding argument in paragraph one. In the end, paragraph five is essentially a rewording of every sentence in paragraph one. I think there is some good to the five paragraph essay format as a building block and I’m not perfectly portraying it, but it felt to me that I went from writing a five paragraph essay in high school to writing a 10 page paper in college without anyone explaining how to make that jump. I supposedly went to a good school too, but I dropped out my junior year because I thought some teachers were idiots, so who knows. There was also talk that one teacher had my older brother two years before and she was acting out frustration for him on me. Well hopefully in the future I’ll be able to tell you about my three arguments, but I’m really happy with how these seas are looking.

Never Dare Sit Bare in a Leather Chair

I’ve got my live drawing class today, it starts at 6pm. I hate having obligations later in the day because it feels like a weight I have to drag around all day. I keep going, “Ok, this many more hours till I have to leave for that.” A place I would like to get to is that I’m so into the tasks I’m doing that day that I don’t think about what’s happening later. Right now it’s more like I do less in a day because I have this idea that I have to save my energy up for tonight. Maybe it’s because the live drawing sessions are still pretty new to me. I’ve only gone to three so far. I’m historically very bad at giving myself enough time to get used to a situation. When I think about that it does calm me down.

It’s funny, my head will get into a loop like thinking about having something to do tonight and that looping starts to build anxiety, but I don’t usually say to myself, “This is a new activity, it’s ok to feel out of place there, you have to give yourself time to get comfortable.” It’s a sentence that if I was talking to another person they’d probably come to right away, but it’s taken me years to figure out. It’s great that I ever got here at all, not that I’ll always be able to intervene like that, but I have to take time to congratulate myself when I’m acting mentally stable and be proud of my healthy brain. This is also why I have to keep writing my morning pages, maybe I wouldn’t of come to that conclusion without this time of introspection. It’s all about knowing myself and the more I do this, the better I’ll know me. There’s also some add benefit of writing everyday, I swear one day these morning pages are gonna write my book

Kierkegaard is an Absolute Unit

Doggy Donute

I was doing my mindfulness and wanted to think more on the experience. The idea of mindfulness is something taught during the group therapy, so I haven’t done it since we last met in November. What I do is sit still for five minutes a day and try to keep my mind quiet. It’s the activity of keeping my mind quiet I want to explore because it’s so difficult. You’d think that if I was in control of my own thoughts, I’d be able to turn them off for a measly five minutes. I doubt I can go five seconds without some words popping in. It sounds similar to a scratched CD, is that an experience people can still relate to. Oh, when you’re trying to listen to Spotify, but your signal is spotty. It’s like there’s a hole in my head that words are constantly pouring out of and even when I try to cover it, the thoughts are a liquid that seeps through. I get to the point where I’m saying in my head, “In” and “Out” along with my breathing. It’s not complete silence, but if my mind has a little bit of focus, it’s more controlled.


I like doing the mindfulness/meditation though I’m not good at remembering to do it daily. I get a certain rush of energy afterwards. Almost as if having that quiet time gave my brain a chance to catch its breath. Maybe that’s the theory behind those people who only sleep in 20 minute intervals. I hear Da Vinci was like that. He also put his pants on backwards and cross legged. He has a very strange legacy, like what is he famous for? I know he worked like mad, I have a book of his writings and it’s thousands of pages. Then there’s the paintings and inventions, but in his time he was criticized for not painting more. Which, yeah, who doesn’t wish he did more painting? Who doesn’t wish they do more painting?

Ozymandias

Had some warm days lately to sit on the porch with the pup

Today was my first day back at group therapy, it’s oddly satisfying to see those people again and sad that some are gone. It’s sold as a three module course that each consist of meeting once a week for 8 weeks. I think there’s a bond between people because you’re talking about a part of you that people don’t normally talk about. No one is complaining or putting their problems on anyone else, but in a normal life setting I feel like we would at least be afraid that’s how it comes off. This module is about interpersonal communication. They divide it into three parts where the themes relate to respecting yourself, respecting other, and trying get what you want. I don’t have too much trouble with the latter two, but I know I don’t respect myself. 

I had a moment yesterday while drawing, I was listening to a conversation on youtube and the topic of trying to be good even if you’re in a pathetic position came up. It really got to me, I feel that’s where I’m at and what I’m doing. The initial reaction I want to have is I’m too brilliant to do anything beneath me, but that thinking really spun me out of control. Now I look around and think, “smartest man on the cinder.” I had to start from a low position if I ever wanted to do anything of meaning again in my life, but I’ve been gaining some steam after only a couple month. There’s nothing more important to me right now, so odds are good I can keep it going. Anyway I guess it was a realization that I wasn’t alone in that experience that brought me to tears. The reason I’m telling this story is that while crying my inner voice was comforting me and telling me how good I’ve been doing. That’s huge for me because as I said I have a problem with self respect, that inner voice is usually the nastiest person I’ve never met. Things are improving though.