by j-a
Jan, 2002
|
|
1-12-02
|
|
1-13-02 My purpose in life seems to be to advance and develop via reading, studying, and writing. But why? I think about this now and then, when I am plodding along, making "progress." I'm continually learning, while everyone else I know seems to have stopped. Why? At a certain point in their lives most people seem to settle for what they know, until they come face to face with the inevitability of death, and then they begin to worry that they have been not so good or so smart, that they have wasted their lives when they should have been striving to further develop, and so they begin to pray and go to church more often and watch religious television. Occasionally, I think I may be wasting my own life. But then I look at others, even those who seem to be utilizing every single moment efficiently, and I have to think that I am far better off than most of them. They're making a lot of money (which they believe to be a valid and fulfilling life), or they're raising kids (a noble effort, and yet many of the kids are being psychologically abused as a result of the stress their parents experience), or they're...what? When it comes right down to it, they're not doing too much more than I am. And they don't meditate. They go to church and pray on Sunday. Does that count? Ineffectual, stereotyped prayers in ritualized services? Or is it, at best, superstition? [I should be careful here. I shouldn't judge how people pray? I just don't know what they experience when they are alone in their minds. Anyway, I'm sure there are others who might think my meditation is a waste of time.] To get back to the point: What was it now? Oh, yeah. My purpose in life. Hell, I don't know. Isn't that, after all, for a higher power to judge?
|
|
1-14-02 I haven't been outside, even to get my mail, since last Thursday. I've been, each day, working, then taking a hot bath (to warm up; I'm always cold in winter, despite the indoor temperature), then watching tv or tapes, then sleeping--a perfectly abnormal schedule beginning in the later afternoon and progressing until late morning. I've been getting a lot done, in a kind of regular, piecemeal way, but I'm starting to get bored. I think this may be because I've been phasing carbs back into my diet. I losing my energetic edge now that I've got my weight down to my first plateau. I'll have to make note of my energy level, to see if it picks up again, when I start the second phase, to lose the final five pounds.
|
|
1-15-02
I guess I've been beating myself up most of my life, and I certainly exist "in a vacuum surrounded by a sort of societal plague of comfort addiction." So, according to Sean's definition, I must be making some kind of sense. [I know it's bad logic.] This afternoon, I watched She's So Lovely with Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn. Wow! I had no idea it was that kind of film. I'm still reeling. Powerful stuff. Powerful acting. Travolta was great too, but I didn't like his caustic character.
|
|
1-16-02 Sometimes, when I'm very tired, before getting up, or more rarely, before falling asleep, since my bedroom windows have very heavy curtains that I keep drawn always, or when I am confused by dreams or altered states, I don't know what time of day it is. Even looking at the clock doesn't always help, because it could be morning or evening, afternoon or the middle of the night. Sometimes I shut off the light, if it happens to be on, to see if there is residual daylight seeping through the curtains that will give me a clue---if it's afternoon or night, but not if it's morning or evening because the light looks the same at those times and I don't want to wait so long to see if it's waxing or waning to make the determination, but would rather struggle to bring the conclusion into consciousness. But usually I just wait, foregoing the struggle, because this is the best way to do anything. The time of day or night will come to me, gradually, as will anything else I desire, if I will just wait long enough. The problem is, life is so much shorter than waiting is. But waiting is, the perfect way. Should I, then, when I (think I) want something, wait for it---or should I go out and get it? It's usually a relatively easy decision. It depends on what "it" is. If it's good for me, or neutral, I might go and get it--if it's not so far out of the way and if I have consolidated wishes to make the trip efficient (such as for shopping trips) and if I have waited long enough already to have satisfied my spartan soul. (Some things are not really needed, and waiting long enough makes their lack of necessity obvious.) But what about that great gray area between these two modes of being, that area wherein you pretend to wait while all the while you are secretly going out to get what you want, but in a clever disguise. Sometimes I even fool myself, when I will go out (or stay in) to arrange the conditions for things to happen, thinking nevertheless that I am waiting out the dry period between occurring opportunities. A life well lived is a life that comes to you, where you respond to circumstance instead of creating it. (In creating circumstance, you create karma, and so you had better act perfectly correctly, lest you build up negative credits (debits). But in reacting to circumstance, you allow karma to act, thereby burning up bad karma and balancing the books.) Don't go chasing after tornados or eventually you're going to get blown away. Should I, then, enable circumstance? Or should I take things entirely as they come? (I already know I should not overtly go chasing after my desire, which always will remain elusively out ahead of me, a carrot on a stick.) Throughout my life I have been a great stager of circumstances, insinuating myself into situations where (it appears that) others bring to me the things I (seem not to, so much) want. But this isn't The Way---because I do want them. I orchestrate circumstances, and I get (sometimes) what I want. And I suffer the more for it. It's definitely a better strategy not to have a strategy, but to take the events of life as they come to you, not even waiting for them so much as simply acting in the moment. [But strategy is strategy, by whatever name--a very human trait.] Waiting itself is a difficult concept. Waiting implies expecting, which is a form of orchestration at the subconscious level. If you're going to "wait" for specific (planned) things to happen, you might as well overtly orchestrate them. (Well, maybe not, so much.) Unwaiting is a better way: imagine what you want (because, being human, you will always want, no matter how hard you try not to; in fact, trying is wanting), maybe even plan it out (which you may consider a moment of weakness, an indulgence), and then let it go. The planning exercise can be a step in the letting-go process, a catharsis similar to fantasy--except that with fantasy you indulge yourself to a point where you may actually program an expectation if you're not careful. So it's better to reserve fantasy for fantastic situations, ones that you are certain can never come true. Next, after planning and letting go, unwait. The plans, all but abandoned, will serve you when opportunities (circumstances) come around, from which you may then pick and choose, according to the wisdom you have developed over time--which is the real filter, after all. Unwaiting and circumstance are merely the tests. Wise choice is the critical component. And as to the question "Should I enable circumstance?" No. Not if I want to be perfectly correct. And I do want to be perfectly correct, which is a problem, because I want it. (But do I really? Maybe not. Maybe not quite yet. Maybe I can continue to orchestrate a bit longer. There is still time to be correct--on my deathbed.)
|
|
1-17-02
|
|
1-18-02 Joyce calls and asks, "What are you doing?" I tell her, "Nothing." So she asks me if I can pick up Jay at school in ten or fifteen minutes. (I wonder what she would have said if I said I had been doing something?) At the school, I have to go inside to get him. It's the first time I've been in the high school in many years. The place is like a prison now. I have to be greeted by an armed guard (a local policeman), sign in, and walk through a metal detector. At the office, I have to sign the pass that Jay needs to get out of the building. I'm glad I went to high school when I did, before 1984. I was already paranoid enough in high school as it were. I think the atmosphere I experienced today would have sent me over the top, although that was before I'd started smoking pot, so who knows?
|
|
1-19-02 Saturday morning used to mean something. I remember, as a child, awakening to a certain excitement at not having to go to school. I remember sunny mornings transitioning slowly into lazy afternoons. I guess there's not so much difference between the weekdays and weekends now. Now, it pretty much seems all the same anomalous mass of time, each day the same, working and watching tv, punctuated by the occasion holiday or outing to do some socially defined task. (Winter ennui is really beginning to set in now.)
|
|
1-20-02
Some days crawl along uneventfully; some days are filled with excitement. Today was one of the latter. Early this morning I went shopping. Ames was having a sale on bed sheets, which I desperately need, having only two sets, which I rotate, making laundry more of a necessity than it should be. But, as usual, when I got to the store, there were no sheets left. I'm wondering if they get sold out in the first few hours of the sale every time I go there or if they just never keep that many in stock. I'll have to take a look one day when they're not having a sale to see if the shelves are full. At Giant Eagle, I got a great deal on fat-reduced peanut butter, $1/jar. (I bought six jars.) And on cereal, $1/box. (I bought eight boxes.) Stocking up on the non-perishable carbs. The peanut butter is my treat for having lost three more pounds. (Two to go.) Usually, when I buy peanut butter (always in quantity, because I always wait for deep sales), I end up eating nothing but peanut butter toast for several weeks until it's all gone. Either I have a deficiency in some essential nutrient that is contained in peanut butter, or I have a serious addiction. Probably the latter. But this time, I just know I'm going to apportion the stuff out, using it as a reward for losing and maintaining weight. I feel empowered by my new sense of control. Knowing you can actually lose weight relatively painlessly (i.e., without starving yourself) makes you want to maintain control. Back at home, faced with a choice as to how to spend my time, not feeling tired since I had a full night's sleep for a change, I decide to cart down to the basement some of the stuff that's been sitting by the front door for weeks, waiting for me to become motivated enough to leave the house. (My basement has no access from the house. You have to go outside to get to into it.) Some of the stuff that needed to be taken downstairs was twenty bottles of various types of alcoholic beverages that I got from my mother's house when she died. I didn't want to take it, since I no longer drink--at all. But my sister made me, so that my brother wouldn't be tempted to finish it off. The booze had been sitting for years under a table beside my washing machine, and I decided to clean it out to make room for all the extra boxes of cereal so that the tabletop wouldn't look cluttered. The day has been fraught with the kind of false starts that often seem to demotivate me, but today the false starts seem to be false fronts. First the sheets, now the booze. The bottles will not stand upright on the shelves I intended to put them on, a set of heavy-duty shelving that my ex-wife was throwing out when she was remodeling her convenience store shortly after our divorce. In an uncharacteristic fit of production [I never seem to want to do anything any more if I run into obstacles; I leave the stubborn project until another day when, I theorize, the "stars" will be more propitious. I never used to be this way; in fact, I used to be quite the opposite, obstinately banging my head against the proverbial wall until I made happen what I wanted to happen, in one way or another. But either I am maturing, or I am being defeated by life's motives. (Maybe they're both the same thing.)], I set about to lower the top shelve two notches to accommodate the bottles. This will be no easy task. The shelves are bolted in place, with the braces on the back bolted on in exactly the same place where I want to rebolt the shelves, so that I'd have to bolt the braces to the shelves as well as to the uprights. And the shelving unit I want to work on is bolted to the unit next to it, a narrower unit, so that the narrower shelf is bolted to the wider one at its center. And, of course, I remove only the absolute bare minimum of shelved contents from the shelves. No sense in doing any extra work. The bolts were stubborn, and my ratchet was acting up, not wanting to engage fully. But, playing with it, I managed, with a bit of stubborn effort, to loosen all of the bolts. Slowly, corner by corner, I managed to lower the shelves about two inches and reinstall the bolts. Several times, the contents (old fishing gear) threatened to come crashing to the floor, but through sheer physical effort, I managed to keep everything in place, holding the shelf up with my shoulder as I continued reinstalling bolts. When I was done, I shelved the booze neatly and began to put away the tools. (Every time I finish a project, I put away a few more tools and supplies than I used, hoping one day to finally have everything organized. But I've been doing this for years and I don't seem to be making any progress.) Then, as I'm about to go upstairs, I hear Steve, my neighbor across the street, screaming out in front of his house. I'm about to go outside to see what's up, when I think better of it and peek out the basement window instead. (My basement is at street level and the house is up above.) Steve is halfway into his wife's car, shouting at his next door neighbor and best friend, Terry. He's screaming at the top of his voice something about Terry having abandoned him on a job in Shadyside. Steve is very obviously drunk. His speech is seriously slurred. Terry keeps repeating that he didn't abandon him, that he went back to try to find him and Steve keeps repeating that he had to walk all the way from Shadyside. The story unfolds as a repetition of this same theme, each rendition imparting a bit more information. It seems that Steve, probably drunk on the job (he's an independent landscaper), told Terry to leave if he wanted to leave, whereupon Terry, apparently after a number of repetitions of this same message, decided to unload some tools and go ahead and leave. Steve accuses Terry of causing him to lose a $10,000 per year contract. (Reading between the lines, I assume that, if a contract was lost, it was Steve's drinking that caused it. I don't know if this is true, but it feels right. I recognize a parallel between Steve and my brother here, but that's another story.) Steve continues on, revealing that he had to walk twenty miles with two shovels on his shoulders. (It's really only about ten miles.) This "conversation" goes on, the same things repeated over and over again, with an occasional punctuation from Steve's wife from their front door, which Steve answers by screaming at the top of his voice, "Shut up, you bitch!" Steve accuses Terry of not being his friend, originally voiced because Terry stood in the way of the car when Steve first tried to pull out of the parking space, to prevent him from driving while drunk. Meanwhile, apparently, Marsha, Steve's wife (or someone, one of the neighbors, this part isn't too clear) goes to call the cops. I can't see Marsha from the basement, I can only hear her voice, and I wish I were upstairs so that I could have a better field of view. But I'm not about to walk out now and risk becoming involved in the fracas, because Steve has gotten out of the car and is making threats that he's going to "kill" Terry. He pushes him violently several times by forcing his hands against Terry's chest, knocking him backward across the street with several rushes at him. Now they stand almost in my driveway. I think that I might have to go outside and intervene, and I regret the possibility, but Terry doesn't react. He remains his same passive, mature self. He calmly talks to Steve as Steve continues to push at him. When Steve sees that his attempts to start a fight are not working, he changes his tactics and turns to verbal abuse, continuing his repetitious tirade with even more vehemence. Through it all, the one shouted phrase predominates: "I had to walk all the way from Shadyside." Occasionally, voices are lowered as Terry tries to console Steve by telling him he cares about him, which only prompts Steve to start up again, to attempt to prove him wrong. Then, Steve eventually goes down onto the porch and, as Terry is pulling the car back into the parking space, finally [ta da], the cops arrive. Actually, only one cop. Terry tries to explain what has happened to the cop. Steve returns to the street. His entire demeanor has changed as he talks to the cop. He admits that he was the one causing the disturbance. Apparently, since the cop saw Terry in the car, he assumed that Terry was the perpetrator. They both talk to the cop for a few minutes, convincing him that everything is okay. I try to see who the cop is. I think that, if it is the one local cop whom I know well, I will go outside. But I can't see his face from my (disad)vantage point. Then, Terry and Steve go inside and the cop leaves, and I scurry out and back upstairs before they can come back out again. I avoid these kinds of domestic situations as much as I can. It's enough that I have to see this kind of occasional behavior in my brother, although, to be fair, I've never seen him this bad. (Although I know he has been. I have heard the stories.) I turn on the tv. Ghandi is on AMC. I sit down to watch the end of it. I can't help but draw parallels with Terry, how he faced up to Steve, did not back away, took his abuse without reacting, behaving as a true friend in the face of Steve's rejection and projected accusations. Steve is the "time bomb" ticking, ready to go off, but no one knows what time the mechanism is set for. And Terry is the Bomb Disposal Expert. I wish I were as patient, understanding, and self-effacing as he is. I tend to react in kind, so I have to try to stay away from these kinds of situations in order to avoid acting out someone else's aggressions as they evoke a similar response in me. This is the reason, I am told, why my former boss thought I would end up one day being one of those guys who show up at work armed with an arsenal of rifles and handguns and start blowing people away, bosses in particular. I was hurt when I heard that, that he could have had that opinion of me. I react in kind, not precipitously. Maybe, if someone were going to blow me away, I'd proact, to try to get him first. Maybe. But I could never start it. My boss was incapable of seeing how it was that others set me off with their (often hidden) hostile reactions. And especially, he didn't see his own hostility, so severely repressed that it turned him into a milquetoast. But that's all in the distant past, now. Or I hope it is. I am so much more in control of my emotions now, now that the stress of that terrible workplace is behind me. (I'll bet, though, that he's still an inveterate milquetoast, denying his unconscious nature and projecting it onto his employees.) The turmoil over, I spend the rest of the afternoon cleaning up my kitchen. It's nice to have it back in some semblance of order. This is the first time it's been uncluttered since the reorganization when some of the stuff from the dining room got put there. See? See how much in control I am? I cleaned up my entire kitchen.
|
|
1-21-02 Monday morning. Six A.M. Snowing heavily. Marsha's car has not been in front of the house across the street since four, when I got up. I wonder if she left Steve. If I were her, I would have, especially after he'd called me a bitch in a violent tone of voice so many times for the whole neighborhood to hear. It's too bad if she has left. I'll miss her. A lot. I look forward to seeing her leaving for work every morning. I should have become a friend to her, but I didn't want to become involved in that domestic arrangement. I've been there before. Besides, she smokes, and I can't afford that kind of stimulation. It affects my all-but-irregular heartbeat and I don't want to have to go back to taking medicine again to control it.
I've noticed that when you're working to production standards, keeping records of time spent in various tasks, and you are ahead of your set goals, you breeze along, striving only to stay ahead, without too much concern for how much work you're doing, while remaining happy at your work. But when you fall behind, the production goals are a burden and a source of guilt, and you don't seem to want to work any more. This is why production goals are bad, because they demotivate you. Sure, they seem great when you are ahead of them, but even then you don't work to your full potential, knowing you are ahead. ("Work expands to fill the time necessary for it's completion.") And when you are behind, they're demoralizing. I'm very far ahead of my goals right now, and so I am content. But when I am behind, look out. The real motivation is to stay ahead (and not to revise the goals upward in an attempt to get even more done. This is real culprit--greed).
Eleven A.M. Marsha's car is back. They must have been out somewhere (at four A.M.?) I forgot that today was a holiday, so she doesn't have to go to work. |
|
New research indicates that even short term stress causes brain damage. Recent research indicates that brain and heart can repair themselves. I'm doing so much better each and every year since my "retirement." Conclusion: I'm healing. The bad effects of severe stress are in the past. I've all but forgotten about how I used to feel, exhausted all the time. I feel just fine now, relaxed, non-anxious, even in the middle of winter.
|
|
1-23-02
I'm thinking about the cold, about how I've been tolerating it much better this winter. I'm thinking about winter in general. This one's not so bad, even though it's not really been any different than all the other ones. Not as much snow, but who cares about snow when you stay inside most of the time. In fact, snow can be quite nice when you're inside a warm house looking out. It must be me, my personal reaction, that's determining my perception of the winter. Well, of course it is. Whose would it be? I think I programmed myself ahead of time this year. I decided last fall that winter was a time to accept the fact that it would get cold and that I would be cold, so I shouldn't fight it, but allow myself to be cold and wait it out. I'm still waiting. I even decided to keep the house temperature (most of the time) abnormally low. I do this every fall, refusing to turn on the heat until well past the time I should have, not so much to conserve energy/money as to keep in touch with "nature," to feel more profoundly the seasonal change. But this year I left the heat off past Nov 1st. And then, I kept it low most of the time, 65 or lower, especially when I'm in bed at night. (I have a heating pad that heats my bed.) I've relented a bit as the winter has deepened, turning up the heat to 68 or 70 when I'm up and working, but I've been conditioned, I think, by that early season exercise. Slightly cold seems not so cold now.
Having watched (only) the beginning (on tape; I fell asleep) of The Thin Red Line, I'm thinking now about death. I've come to the conclusion that it's not so bad really. I'm not afraid to die. (I say that now, while I'm alive and well.) But I'm incredibly saddened by the knowledge that one day I will have to die. You see, not believing in life after death is a freeing experience. There's nothing to be afraid of--except the present world (and that is more than enough for me). On the other hand, if you do believe in life after death, then you must fear what might happen to you then. And it takes even more faith to believe (maybe erroneously) that you are "saved" to overcome the fear. But, if you know there's nothing "out there" except more of the same old stuff you already know (of), then you want to live on so as not to be annihilated. It's sad, to think, you might at some future point not exist. This is the problem, thinking. Animals live and die without the sadness. [People who believe, or who have an intuitive sense, usually since very early in life, that there is nothing more, are much more careful, timid people. They understand, at least unconsciously, that this is the only life they will ever have and so they act to take care of it and to live it as fully in the moment as they are capable of. People who go willingly to war, for example, or who place themselves in dangerous situations, are those who believe or intuit that they are acting toward a higher purpose that will be rewarded in another life. Society uses delusion (because whether it's true or not, no one really knows, and so it's delusional thinking to believe in an afterlife--or, at best, it's faith, which is another word for the same thing) to "convince" (influence, manipulate, delude) people into carrying out a social agenda while minimizing concern for their own personal safety.] The sadness I've been feeling that I want to attribute to my coming (a long time from now, I hope) death is, really, the winter affect, nothing more. It's here, and it's deepening. But I have a good handle on it this year. Of course, the early spring is yet to come, and that's the worst time of the year for me, affect-wise. I'll just have to wait and see if there has been any semi-permanent change this year. I don't know which choice I believe, life or no life after death. I believe both, at different times, and sometimes at the same time. (And sometimes, I don't believe either. It's such a difficult subject that a lot of the time I refuse to believe anything. I try to reserve belief for subjects that I have at least an inkling into.) One answer to this riddle is in the text of The Thin Red Line, at the beginning, in the voice-over of the guy who is contemplating death. But I wasn't paying close enough attention. I'll have to rewind it and copy it down and include it as an epigraph to this entry. [Okay. That's done. See the epigraph.] A few days before I saw the film or even knew what it was about [I knew it was about war and about the psychological crossing over into a state of uncaring about living or dying; but that was all I knew], I wrote this line, which I find now in my notes: "So this is the way it's going to happen." I didn't include it in my journal because I had no context for it. It just popped into my head, along with the brief fantasy that one day I might be involved in an incident that will result in my death, even in a mere deathbed incident, and this is what I will say: "So this is the way it's going to happen." Nothing more. (Hopefully, by that time, I will have said it all already, through my writing. If not, that will have been a tragedy.) This could be mere coincidence, but this same sort of "psychic" thing has been happening a lot lately. [I go through periods of this kind of stuff, and then through dry periods where I never notice it at all. But probably, the dry periods are just me not paying attention. Probably it's either happening continually or it's nothing but coincidence.] I'll think of a movie, and it'll be on tv within the next few days. Or I'll think of a subject, and it'll come up in conversation, or on a news program. For example, I thought of Max Headroom yesterday while writing 'max' on my schedule to indicate that the run time of a movie I wanted to record was not it's actual length, but a maximum possible figure, and today I get an e-mail that mentions Max Headroom. This could be all coincidence, but when it happens, in spurts, it sometimes gets a little bit scary, like I'm predicting (or feeling) the future. Presque vu. I've noticed that when you awaken out of sleep and immediately begin to meditate, it's very easy to disappear into a world of simple being, your environment, if you don't fall back into sleep (but even if you do, that's disappearing too.) When you awaken, you awaken to self, which quickly disintegrates into ego. But if you catch it soon enough, in meditation, you can stay there for awhile, complete. Could this be what death is like? Oh, I hope so.
|
I could find my camera so I could document all the stupid stuff I have found. Bit by bit it's sort of funny, but put together it forms a very convincing body of evidence that I should be in some sort of institution where people cook for me and I can concentrate on important things like staring at the wall all day. I totally am not cut out for living, here are examples: I bought shot glasses from all over the country about 9 years ago, which I have never ever used. I have a box sitting on my floor right now which contains mail that I've received in the past 5 years. ATM receipts, white paper and matching envelopes (dust covered) and every ID I ever owned. I am sure I had more stuff to add here, but it's probably pretty embarassing and I really have to get this done and I am all sort of out of it from sneezing at the dust that's all over and blah blah blah.
The Jokemaster, Joke-Of-The Day newsletter
|
|
Ditto. Me too. I guess single men are the same all over the world. My father used to collect shot glasses; I collected other stuff. And the institution, and the box of papers and IDs, and the dust. All of that is stuff I understand. But this really is just a coincidence. There's room for all kinds of philosophies in this complex world.
|
|
1-24-02 Getting lots of things done. Sleeping nights and working days, as if I were a normal person. Taking melatonin to maintain this schedule. (But it always backfires if I take it for too long, causing me to become non-productive as I violate my biorhythms. At least, that's my theory for what happens. The roof leaked a little bit this afternoon. Not much. A few minor drips. But enough to let me know that it needs a lot of attention. My attitude seems to rise and fall according to whether or not I've managed to successfully patch the roof. Or rather, that's one of the controlling factors. There are probably a lot of them. I should isolate them and strive to keep them under control, but that would be so much work, and anyway, it's too anal a way for me to live.
|
|
1-25-02 Bright and sunny this morning, for a change. Brilliant blue sky in the east. I wonder what the west looks like. I can't see it from this vantage point, which is on the east end of the house, unless I sit on the other side of the house, away from the computers, and look out the picture window toward the back, an (in)activity that I used to like to do a lot, when I was still recovering from the effects of chronic stress. I haven't done it in years. My attitude in recent weeks (since the holidays) leads me to wonder how I managed to get through the preceding month of ennui. I am so productive, so "up" now. I'm falling back into habits that I'd forgotten for so long, like getting things done, organizing, even pulling my thoughts, plans, and goals back together into an organized, divided binder. This is the way I am (supposed to be). I feel so...good. I'm guessing it's all the protein I'm eating that's responsible for this change of attitude. We're told that eating too much red meat is bad for the digestion and might even cause cancer. Well, maybe so. But not eating it may cause an even worse fate--feeling depressed. [I guess that's what it is, depression, though I don't feel depressed, i.e., sad. But I would, if I had to participate in a(n overly) full social schedule for very long.] I guess I could eat alternate forms of protein, but how much chicken, cheese, and tofu could I tolerate? (Actually, I could eat cheese three times a day, year after year, but that's not supposed to be good for you either.) I should experiment with alternate proteins, though--to see if it's the red meat that's causing this reversal of affect. It could be the higher levels of B-vitamins in the red meat that're responsible. |
|
1-26-02
Another bright and sunny morning. But this time, I've been up since four after only four hours of sleep. (Didn't take the melatonin last night.) I've been on the net the whole time. As soon as I log off, the phone rings. I take great pleasure at not answering, when whoever is calling just has to know I'm home. Well, so much for the "normal" sleep cycle. I slept from five this afternoon until ten-thirty and am now wide-awake (but physically tired.) It's definitely a combination of lack of protein and an irregular sleep schedule that causes me to become unproductive. When I've had a full night's sleep and get up in the morning, I feel like working. Of course, there's a lot to be said for the odd-hour method too. I get a lot of insights that I wouldn't get if I were a completely regular person. And I get to catch up on my Internet work too, as I feel "freed" from a regular schedule that ranks the Internet too low on the list to be gotten to soon enough to get anything substantial done.
|
|
1-27-02 This is the third year in a row we've had summer in January. And this is the second time this month. I want to sit here and get some work in before the Steeler game. (I very seldom watch sports, especially football, but today's the play-off for the Superbowl. For some reason I just can't resist the occasion. I'd say I was a fair-weather fan, but I'm not that enthusiastic.) But, not only do I feel like working, I also want to get out of my lounging clothes and go outside and sit in the warm sun. This is the dilemma I face all summer long. I need a laptop. This morning I dreamed a huge tree falling through the roof of my house awakened me. If I hadn't been napping instead of sitting at my computer working, I'd have been crushed. The wood fell into the dining room and kitchen in the form of huge cut and seasoned logs, only cracking the roof and windows, so that it seemed impossible that they could have gotten in. But they did. The people (professionals) who cut the giant tree down two houses away came to the house to try to negotiate with me, to reduce their liability. At the same time, I'm trying to figure out how I can get them to pay for the roof damage that already existed before they felled the tree. This dream means something important (don't they all?), but I feel this strong urge not to try to interpret it. |
|
1-28-02
Yet another bright, warm, sunny summer morning.
I fully realized for the first time this morning that I'm no longer drinking coffee. It's a fact that I've had to repress for fear of desiring it too much. For a long time I was severely addicted to it, and I'm still in love with the idea of drinking it. I want that rush I no longer feel, and haven't felt for quite a number of years now. For several years, I had only been chipping it (one half teaspoon per day boiled in half a cup of water with half a cup of skim milk added; only a token homage to former times providing too little caffeine to even catch a minor buzz), but when I learned that caffeine inhibited weight loss on a protein diet, I stopped drinking coffee altogether. Previously, because of my heart problem, I'd stopped ingesting all other products and foodstuffs containing caffeine. The daily coffee wake-up was the last residue of a multiple drug habit (some legal, some not) extending way back to adolescence. One by one, I have been stripping away years of accumulated bad habits, as I become aware of how they have been affecting my physiology/psychology. We spend our teenage and young adult years acquiring bad habits, and the rest of our lives, if we're smart, getting rid of them. Meditation and contemplation has been a major aid in helping me locate these substances/practices. In a meditative state, I can (begin to) reverse the effects, and in a contemplative state, I can trace and come to know how they affect me. As a consequence of this (heretofore mostly unintentional) program, I have been slowly limiting the kinds of substances I ingest, and the kinds of activities I engage in.
|
|
1-29-02 Nothing happening again. Life proceeds, slowly. Back to sleeping days. I can't resist it. It's so...peaceful and relaxing, so decadent. Dreamed I traveled down to my old workplace in the city to see an old girlfriend. I met her, and she was as attractive and mysterious as ever. But, unencumbered by my former obsession, I saw her more for what she really was. Everyone was just getting out of work, and they all took off, leaving me in the parking lot with only a few cars remaining, none of which was mine. I looked around, but I couldn't find it. I felt stranded. I was stranded. I began to walk around, thinking, almost lucidly, that I could take any car that suited me. I think of taking a few expensive sports cars--long, sleek, two-seater jobs. But I don't.[¥] This is a recurring dream. The details change, but the impact, that of being stranded in the city with no way to get home, and to a lesser extent, of stealing a car, remains the same. I think it means that I'm lost, and that I must appropriate someone else's sense of direction. But I don't feel lost. I've never felt so found. Maybe, though, that feeling like I have a sense of direction is really an overwhelming concept. When I feel most "found," I feel most desperate to express myself, most backed-up with ideas and projects never to be expressed or completed. This is a schizoid state, lost/found. Jean Cocteau, in Le Testement D'Orphée, said, "Having to wait so long, we become waiting rooms." Well, having been in and out of this state so often for so long, I become a lost and found department. I've developed an expertise in the art of this schizoid state. Living life, some of us eventually become expert at it, and then no one wants to know what we have to say, not because we are not getting wiser as we age, but because they are not. If we listen to our elders, we must, by definition, be unwise. And who wants to prove that, especially to oneself. |
|
1-30-02 I can't believe how much I'm getting done! I'm working ten to twelve hours a day. Where does all this motivation come from? The only problem is, no matter how much I get done, I want to do more. I have to force myself to eat and go to bed. As it is, I'm only sleeping five to six hours a night, sometimes less. I got all these ideas I want to work on, but there's not enough time. And all these downloads I want to get and try out. This is the manic phase, I guess, of a bipolar adaptation. It just has to be more than mere protein that's responsible. (I could channel it better if I could just get some more sleep. Even melatonin won't keep me out for very long, not even the time-release stuff. All it does is keep me groggy longer after I get up.
|
|
1-31-02 My nephew called this afternoon and asked me to help him try to fix his computer. We spent an hour and a half on the phone trying various things that I had gleaned from previous postings I'd made to technical newsletters, until I concluded that nothing more could be done. (He wanted to press on, desperate for information, but I had nothing more to offer.) The re-installation of Windows that he'd made a month ago had eventually failed and their computer was back to doing the same thing it had been doing previously. When this kind of thing happens, I feel like such a failure. We made no progress at all. I really want to help him out, but I don't know what more to do. If it were my computer, I would eventually figure out the problem by sitting down at it for hour upon hour, trying this and that, eliminating options, until eventually I'd hit upon a solution. But I can't do it over the phone, and I can't do it at their house either, because every time I go over there, I become lost amid their multiple personalities, as the household shenanigans (what a perfect word) plays on my nerves. Even over the phone, I felt the same effect, as I overheard Joyce yelling at Jay to give up one of the phone lines (we were on the phone and the Internet at the same time) so that she could make a call--a reasonable request, except that when she got on the other line, I could hear her irritating voice, as Jay kept saying to her, "Mom. Lower your voice!" and his disturbance at her filtered into my psychology. Add to that, Danny, wanting to call his friend, intentionally interrupting us by picking up an extention and acting as if it were an accident, and Jimmie kibitzing, and we have a sample of what it's like to work in a very distracting environment. I'd say I'm getting old and unable to tolerate disruption to my thought processes, but I've been like this for a very long time. When I was young, I could shut it all out, but I lost that ability early in adulthood when I had to begin considering the world as a valid form of input. |