July 2024
7/18
Subject: You think she’s an open book, but you don’t know which page to turn to, do you, do you, do you … do you?
I’ve been revisiting some classic Cake lately. Hyah!
Just checking in. How’s the Tour going? I’m only a couple chapters into Unbroken Brain, trying to take it slow so that I have something to read on those inevitably long plane rides in August.
We hosted our 2nd official Mario Kart tournament the first Sunday of June, and the Friday before I realized that since I had gotten a 2nd Switch we could probably have two stations going simultaneously, the 2nd one being on the back porch. Long story short, it worked out well, but for several weeks after I got obsessed with fine-tuning the structure and creating a Google spreadsheet that automatically generates matchups (one of my goals was to be able to enjoy it as a participant, i.e. make the tournament as self-running as possible-anarchy, baby!). If you’re interested, I’d be happy to show you the spreadsheet at our next meeting. I’m pretty proud of it, though I haven’t figured out how to work in a certain tiebreaker which only comes into play if certain circumstances are met; I figure it would take some serious scripting, which I don’t think is worth it for how rare the cases will be, when I could just take a couple minutes to type a work-around. Anyway, so that’s also impeded my reading, haha.
Our upstairs HVAC was starting to struggle in June (coils were leaking we found out), so we pulled the trigger and replaced the system. Thanks to Mr. Nash, we could pay “cash” and got a nice discount for it.
I’ve been watching some recorded streams of this YTer playing the Half-Life games for the first time. I find him very entertaining. He said he wasn’t born yet when the first Half-Life came out--d’oh.
I’m looking forward to catching up.
---
Emailed to Stu.
7/20
Haven’t journaled in a while. Where to start? I feel like journalling regularly might help me focus on my present life course. I feel stuck in an existential rut, wasting too much time in front of a computer clicking buttons and shifting a mouse appendage to and fro, busywork that doesn’t get us anywhere.
What is my work? For the most part, it’s part of a process of moving money, people trying to unlock equity in a property, and other people trying to make interest off that lent money. My understanding is that that money is not taken from somewhere else but is created, only to be extinguished when paid back. Temporary inflation, unless it defaults, and so it’s only the interest that is paid that changes hands. Ultimately, it gets things happening, but these happenings are, probably dictates, nothing new, just a persistence of common patterns of behavior.
Adjusting to 30+ hours a week has been trying, and I’ve been in quite a rut, not getting a lot of things done, around the house and in the yard, as I would like, and letting exercise slip. Not writing. The last couple weeks I’ve been getting more exercise in, and I can see a difference in my mood, especially getting back to 30 minutes of sprints, HIIT-type exercise to get me to my max heart rate. HIIT (sprints), anaerobic strength training to exhaustion (especially pull ups and getting that back elastic, sit-ups with the reach back), and long duration low intensity (runs).
The money (what is that?) has been helpful. The Alaska trip and recently dropping $15K on a new HVAC unit for the upstairs haven’t been as hard to absorb as I feared, although there are still more costs pending (rental car, for one). How long will the downstairs unit last? How about the roof? How about the trees? Car? Insurance as Grace starts to drive?
I guess I just see things differently. Musics-songs-doesn’t excite me like it used to. And I ask myself why, what was it that excited me before? As an artform, it’s been pretty exhausted. It’s not like any of the music that’s come out in the last couple decades has had anything new to say. People are just passing the time, finding things to do, trying establish their relevance and prove to themselves that they are worthy of something, to be productive. To me, art has its purpose in opening minds, finding an in, to awaken people to new ideas, to enable liberty. It’s a craft of white magic. But very few people understand liberty, and so no new ideas are being transmitted.
All I care about is waking people up to the sinister bedrock that our society is founded on, how it corrupts everything we try to do, how evil is built into the core. A simple switch in expectations, a lowering of the bureaucratic gun, would change our behavior profoundly. Nothing given that is not given freely, as a gift, not coerced. But how to get everyone else on the “leap of faith” train?
Is it songwriting? Could I find my creativity there again? Compiling a ‘zine? With social media presence? I need income in whatever I do. Patreon, donations? Selling the products of creativity? I need help of some kind, can’t do it alone. How to find like-minded folks? Time is running out, with each heartbeat.
Getting back into Unbroken Brain, re-reading the opening chapters that I had read previously. Understanding addiction as a coping mechanism, as a learned behaviors to get us through trying times, that in most cases we should be able to grow out of, like a stuffed animal, or thumbsucking, that served a purpose, but that purpose has passed and now the behavior becomes negative in its consequences and becomes an obstacle; but in a situation, or a society, that enables to behavior to continue, and if the behavior is so ingrained, it becomes difficult to shake. Like hiccups, that shock our newborn bodies as a reminder to keep breathing, the mechanism never goes away completely, but in its rare appearances should only serve to remind us of how far we’ve come.
7/22
Is this a post-tournament spreadsheet let down? That’s a lols. I’ve felt down the last couple days, unmotivated, even unmotivated to do my usual time-wasting activities. It may be not getting enough sleep, and that I just can’t handle inconsistent sleep at this age. Grace is turning 16 in a week, and I don’t know what to do about that. We’re going to Alaska in less than 3 weeks and I don’t know what to do about that. I can’t stay on top of the wave; it keeps leaving me behind, and I’m sprinting just to keep up.
Let me cook, chat.
If you try the best you can, the best you can is good enough.
Consistency, says Tom Brady. There’s nothing special about the successful. Do I care about being successful? I care about my time, my finite time, ever-dwindling, to learn and experience new things. For what? I don’t understand gratitude, happiness, contentment. Something broke inside me, or sloughed off, and now I stand in debilitating inertia. My life is a list of motions to go through, meeting the expectations of others, so as not to reveal myself as a poser who might be just as at home lying in the gutter allowing myself to starve to death.
Am I entering new territory, or revisiting someone else’s? We’re all blind sheep, and I’m as blind as any. Should I try meditating again?
Subject: You think she’s an open book, but you don’t know which page to turn to, do you, do you, do you … do you?
I’ve been revisiting some classic Cake lately. Hyah!
Just checking in. How’s the Tour going? I’m only a couple chapters into Unbroken Brain, trying to take it slow so that I have something to read on those inevitably long plane rides in August.
We hosted our 2nd official Mario Kart tournament the first Sunday of June, and the Friday before I realized that since I had gotten a 2nd Switch we could probably have two stations going simultaneously, the 2nd one being on the back porch. Long story short, it worked out well, but for several weeks after I got obsessed with fine-tuning the structure and creating a Google spreadsheet that automatically generates matchups (one of my goals was to be able to enjoy it as a participant, i.e. make the tournament as self-running as possible-anarchy, baby!). If you’re interested, I’d be happy to show you the spreadsheet at our next meeting. I’m pretty proud of it, though I haven’t figured out how to work in a certain tiebreaker which only comes into play if certain circumstances are met; I figure it would take some serious scripting, which I don’t think is worth it for how rare the cases will be, when I could just take a couple minutes to type a work-around. Anyway, so that’s also impeded my reading, haha.
Our upstairs HVAC was starting to struggle in June (coils were leaking we found out), so we pulled the trigger and replaced the system. Thanks to Mr. Nash, we could pay “cash” and got a nice discount for it.
I’ve been watching some recorded streams of this YTer playing the Half-Life games for the first time. I find him very entertaining. He said he wasn’t born yet when the first Half-Life came out--d’oh.
I’m looking forward to catching up.
---
Emailed to Stu.
7/20
Haven’t journaled in a while. Where to start? I feel like journalling regularly might help me focus on my present life course. I feel stuck in an existential rut, wasting too much time in front of a computer clicking buttons and shifting a mouse appendage to and fro, busywork that doesn’t get us anywhere.
What is my work? For the most part, it’s part of a process of moving money, people trying to unlock equity in a property, and other people trying to make interest off that lent money. My understanding is that that money is not taken from somewhere else but is created, only to be extinguished when paid back. Temporary inflation, unless it defaults, and so it’s only the interest that is paid that changes hands. Ultimately, it gets things happening, but these happenings are, probably dictates, nothing new, just a persistence of common patterns of behavior.
Adjusting to 30+ hours a week has been trying, and I’ve been in quite a rut, not getting a lot of things done, around the house and in the yard, as I would like, and letting exercise slip. Not writing. The last couple weeks I’ve been getting more exercise in, and I can see a difference in my mood, especially getting back to 30 minutes of sprints, HIIT-type exercise to get me to my max heart rate. HIIT (sprints), anaerobic strength training to exhaustion (especially pull ups and getting that back elastic, sit-ups with the reach back), and long duration low intensity (runs).
The money (what is that?) has been helpful. The Alaska trip and recently dropping $15K on a new HVAC unit for the upstairs haven’t been as hard to absorb as I feared, although there are still more costs pending (rental car, for one). How long will the downstairs unit last? How about the roof? How about the trees? Car? Insurance as Grace starts to drive?
I guess I just see things differently. Musics-songs-doesn’t excite me like it used to. And I ask myself why, what was it that excited me before? As an artform, it’s been pretty exhausted. It’s not like any of the music that’s come out in the last couple decades has had anything new to say. People are just passing the time, finding things to do, trying establish their relevance and prove to themselves that they are worthy of something, to be productive. To me, art has its purpose in opening minds, finding an in, to awaken people to new ideas, to enable liberty. It’s a craft of white magic. But very few people understand liberty, and so no new ideas are being transmitted.
All I care about is waking people up to the sinister bedrock that our society is founded on, how it corrupts everything we try to do, how evil is built into the core. A simple switch in expectations, a lowering of the bureaucratic gun, would change our behavior profoundly. Nothing given that is not given freely, as a gift, not coerced. But how to get everyone else on the “leap of faith” train?
Is it songwriting? Could I find my creativity there again? Compiling a ‘zine? With social media presence? I need income in whatever I do. Patreon, donations? Selling the products of creativity? I need help of some kind, can’t do it alone. How to find like-minded folks? Time is running out, with each heartbeat.
Getting back into Unbroken Brain, re-reading the opening chapters that I had read previously. Understanding addiction as a coping mechanism, as a learned behaviors to get us through trying times, that in most cases we should be able to grow out of, like a stuffed animal, or thumbsucking, that served a purpose, but that purpose has passed and now the behavior becomes negative in its consequences and becomes an obstacle; but in a situation, or a society, that enables to behavior to continue, and if the behavior is so ingrained, it becomes difficult to shake. Like hiccups, that shock our newborn bodies as a reminder to keep breathing, the mechanism never goes away completely, but in its rare appearances should only serve to remind us of how far we’ve come.
7/22
Is this a post-tournament spreadsheet let down? That’s a lols. I’ve felt down the last couple days, unmotivated, even unmotivated to do my usual time-wasting activities. It may be not getting enough sleep, and that I just can’t handle inconsistent sleep at this age. Grace is turning 16 in a week, and I don’t know what to do about that. We’re going to Alaska in less than 3 weeks and I don’t know what to do about that. I can’t stay on top of the wave; it keeps leaving me behind, and I’m sprinting just to keep up.
Let me cook, chat.
If you try the best you can, the best you can is good enough.
Consistency, says Tom Brady. There’s nothing special about the successful. Do I care about being successful? I care about my time, my finite time, ever-dwindling, to learn and experience new things. For what? I don’t understand gratitude, happiness, contentment. Something broke inside me, or sloughed off, and now I stand in debilitating inertia. My life is a list of motions to go through, meeting the expectations of others, so as not to reveal myself as a poser who might be just as at home lying in the gutter allowing myself to starve to death.
Am I entering new territory, or revisiting someone else’s? We’re all blind sheep, and I’m as blind as any. Should I try meditating again?