Nutrition is Linked to Mental State

Don't eat potato chips for breakfast and expect to be productive.  

Not all calories are the same.

Thanks.

Lack Emotional Attachment -- Strategy 1

I think as a young person, it is very easy and natural to want work, that is, one's profession, to be emotionally fulfilling.  But let's face it: our professions are rarely that way.  Perhaps unfortunately.

But expecting them to be and having them NOT be makes them much less fulfilling than not expecting them to be fulfilling and having some tidbits of fulfillment, no?  In other words, we take ourselves too seriously.

Which is only to say that I've turned a bit of a corner and am not trying so hard to think that my profession matters.

What matters is what I do with myself outside of my profession.  At least for now.  That is, for me.

Liking Linked to Not Liking -

QUick, proffer a reason why you like something?

Is it coupled with exlusionary pathos?  I.e. do you like stuff because you don't like other stuff?  Or do you like stuff because you like that stuff, and not other stuff, inherently?

It strikes me that everyone comes to the same conclusion about what they like (that it is pure, authentic, and real) and what other people who disagree like (that it is crap, modern, fake, etc.).  Note how heavy purity plays a role

Also, a note about how this works with people.  Are people we don't like subject to fair treatment?  the answer to that question is at a host of a very messy policy and legal and gossip and human issues, and the answer is universally hypocritical (except, um, in the US Constitution, where due process was given status).   But I'm guessing that most of us are not fair to those with whom we disagree.

Why is it so easy to argue that certain people are evil, when we are, concurrently, treating those people the way we fault them for treating others? I don't know why we can't see our own hypocrisy, at least this kind of blatant stuff, more easily, except to say that from an evolutionary perspective, knowing who is on your side is more important than integrity.

Never Felt More Like A Drink

Than I do right now.

Can't explain the desolation of the moment.  It isn't frothy or exciting or in any way revelatory or artful.

I've just come to the rather prosaic conclusion that the celebratory capacity of my life has withered into countless days of repetition.

You'll say I should have hope.  I should have it.  You're right.  Go out and buy me some and keep the change.

Update:  Like this:

"As I get older I have a fundamental and bothersome itch.  Maybe I don’t realize it so much as live through it.  The fabric of magic, that rough and thick seam of ideals and hopes and, what would you say?,  bliss?: the bliss of possibility, even if wrong-headed, is gone, or at least vanishing into a bit of a thin not-quite-tattered rug that’s made for utility.  What is the line, “these boots were made for walking,”? and it is supposed to be empowering, this line.  But what I know is that it is not empowering; it is real.  There is design, and that design is practical.  And it breaks down and leads to problems.  My back’s been aching, for instance.  I no longer feel the headiness I used to feel.  It is thinner.  Thinner, but just as intense.  I’m not on the right plane to view it most days, but some days it comes through with breathtaking clarity, making the other days dull and vapid.  As if prior to these years I was held back, pulling through a webbing, and I’d been complaining about it, implicitly complaining, but then, once it vanishes, there is a clear nothing awaiting me, only shards of the leftover needle plunge of infinity and effortless energy in all directions."

Gettin' Late -

I have the idea that I've fucked up.  Don't you?  I fucking hate it.  I hate it worse that I can't rectify how I've fucked up.

I don't think I'm permanently broken, though, because I no longer hold the naive indicators of youth, as in, I no longer figure out how i'm feeling by my standing in a group, what permutations of facial expressions might land on me, or how much I might be able to brag.   I haven't lost my ego.  But I have changed, in a few sharp strokes, my tastes, what it is I consume, who it is I chose to associate, and where I feel comfortable.

That's okay.

I certainly don't have a cosmic structural understanding of events, and I don't think anyone does.  That's painful, too.  I could be further ahead than I am, but I'm doin' alright, and that's a lot better than where I could be, and I have to remember that everyday.  It isn't a joke.  That's doesn't mean I don't want or have a sense of humor, or a sharp tongue that's gotten me in trouble.  Or that I can't appreciate the soaking epic beauty of a sunny sunday in the mountains.  Or that the passing of time doesn't drive me insane in a way that I can't articulate or seem weird when I try in any manner less superficial than weather-speak.

I'm here.  Working on what I work on.  I like to paint, mostly, and I've picked up the guitar after not playing for about 3 years.  It feels good to play it.  For me.  And not think about all the other people. But boy have I gotten rusty!

Still, I've got a painting here that I'm almost proud of.  I don't have a picture of it, so instead I'll show a picture of a previous similar painting and post the new one in soon (which is pink and green, but same style).

I disavow . . .

All of the previous things I've loved.

Facing the Facts of Your Life -

My chronic problem (and I suspect many people are afflicted with this problem), is that I have failed to make decisions based on the facts of my life as they are, but instead chose to make decisions based on the facts as I would like them to be.  Pinning hopes against ideals and making real decisions pegged to false  dreams makes a life riddled with mistakes.

Out and Back

Well I've been on a bit of a real vacation folks, for 2.3 weeks, out to Barcelona, then driving the coast of Spain, France, and yes, even a bit of Italy.  The very small amount of French I picked up was really lovely, actually, and if you ever get a chance, go to Toulouse, and then drive through the fucking Pyrenees mountains.  I'll even post a pick from that leg in a few moments when I get the camera up and running and my brain sort of lingers into the reflection mode more fully (right now it is only in the sad disbelief mode).

I see a fair amount of comments have come in when I've been out (by that I mean 5 or 7 or so, which is a hell of a lot for me), and I'm glad that folks are out there reading.  It warms my heart to know that I could have helped someone in any positive way.

The truth is that not drinking can at times be terribly lonely, and without the perspective that a good hard drunk (i.e. the activity, not the person), can give, it is even potentially easy at times to get sucked down avenues of thought that are highly self-referential feedback loops of negativity and anxiety, which sort of compounds stress instead of relieving it, or creating clarity.  All of which is to say that not drinking still isn't easy, but it isn't not easy because drinking is so easy; instead it isn't easy because, for me at least, it forces me into a kind of Bayesian experimenter with my own life, trying hard to update my belief systems based on what is fact, sucking in data and filtering, filtering filtering.  But ultimately, that's not the only function of the human brain.  Part of the function is also to expand emotional satisfaction or payoff or whatever you want to say it is by explicating or grasping experience and hurtling oneself through it with other people who experience it similarly (i.e. shared).

Not that sharing experience precludes scientific living, just that scientific living can exclude shared experience with a fair degree of regularity.

 And what we sober alcoholics need, desperately, is a bit of shared experience.  Hence AA, or hence this blog, or hence whatever it is we want to convince ourselves of that gets us out of our heads and into the notion of meaningful interaction outside of hopefully permeable barriers.

I.e. the sin of aging is to be so rigid that one cannot update their structural diagnosis of how reality works, but instead only add new details to already understood categories.

I.e. this gets way too existential way too fast, and I mean it more of a blend of anecdote and discursive therapeutic exegesis.

I.e. I'm trying damn hard to maintain openness to new previously not-or-mis-understood categories that I can't just presume understanding of retroactively (which seems to be an all too human condition).