Month: January 2021

Last night I came home from work and immediately went out running: 3.88 miles, according to The Machines. No music, just my head.

I am intrinsically lazy. (I sat on my ass all day at work). I shy away from cold. (I ran in shorts, shirt, and hoodie and was hot). I give myself permission to stop after a modest effort. (I ran one loop and would usually have quit, but I kept going and ran a second).

It’s important to tell the truth about yourself. Then you have a place to start: a foundation of reality. If I acknowledge that I’m lazy I then know what I must do. If I know that I use weather as an excuse, I know what to do.

Tell the truth about yourself, to yourself. Hold nothing back. From that starting point, glory is possible.

During the run, I formulated my life’s aim. Who am I striving to be? There is no finish line in life, so everything — EVERYTHING — is necessarily incomplete. Live with it. Yet everything, by understanding this, is necessarily always complete.

My aim? To be able to look at myself, inwardly, and know that I am a monster, a beast, a savage. Not in the moral sense, but in the sense of determination and action, whether I win or lose, succeed or fail.

Running the loops last night, I knew I was that beast. I gave double the effort, ending my night with wobbly legs and dizzy head. I had to walk around for a few minutes before going inside.

I am that beast. Right now. Some day instead of 3.88 miles it might be 38.8 miles. Will I attack that run with the same determination that I attacked 3.88? Fuck, yes. Giving it all I have, always, shows that I am a beast.

Acknowledging the truth about myself gave me all of that.

Seneca, letter 83, paragraph 2:

For this is what makes us wicked: that no one of us looks back over his own life. Our thoughts are devoted only to what we are about to do.

This is something to consider: a daily review.

Know who you are and tell yourself the truth about that. How else will you be able to progress?

Let’s talk about the physical. Exercise. I am a starter but not a follow-througher. I am a quitter in other words. I am a person who stops at the first sign of serious effort. If it’s hard I quit. I am a person who gives himself a ticket to not take action. I am someone who fears cold.

I do not want to be that man. I do not want the mental payoff of being that man, because that payoff is a constant whisper of “you’re a loser” in my head.

Acknowledge the current truth. That is the way to build a different truth. I can’t build based on a lie. If I pretend, if I build on a faulty foundation, then my house will crumble.

I have seen this before. I had a good run for a while of steady exercise and gained the benefit. Then I quit. Why? Because the easy path disappeared. The gym where we went closed. I had discipline as long as the path was laid in front of me but when challenged to be self-propelled I faltered and quit.

So let’s tell the truth to ourselves, shall we?

I stay the course and keep going as long as it is easy to go to the gym, to run. I don’t push myself hard, I go for the “barely adequate” weights, the barely adequate distance. And as soon as externals pop up, I take them as an excuse to not run, to not go to the gym.

I don’t run because it is a little bit cold. Or it’s raining. Or I’m tired. Or it gets dark this time of year. I’m not talking about legit physical ailments. And even with physical ailments I’m way, way, way soft. I’m talking about slight discomfort. This is the equivalent of tripping on a pebble. That’s what stops me.

That’s who I am.

Truth.

The way to stop being that man is to stop being that man.

A week of travel (that kicked my ass emotionally and spiritually) and I’m home again.

There will be no immediate geographic cure for the malaise. We are going to fight our battles (meaning mental, spiritual, etc.) here. Moving to another place won’t fix the inside man.

Yes, there is much to not like about this place. But there is much to like, too.

Remember Marcus Aurelius: it is possible to live a good life, even in the palace of the emperor. Even here, in this place full of folly, it is possible for us to live good lives. The Kingdom of God is within.

Don’t default to stagnant behavior or thinking. But don’t imagine that pulling up your roots and moving to a brand new place is going to make magic happen. Magic comes from within, no matter where you are.

Still, I’m going to do the footwork to move. Create options. It’s good to have options, rather than be dug in. Money-wise we would probably be better off. But pulling the trigger? Not in the next 24 months.

Transcribed written notes that I did at the kitchen table this morning.

Aim: happiness/peace.

What am I aiming for? A feeling. That’s what we are all searching for, I think. It is a hard target to hit because it isn’t concrete like a money or fitness goal. It’s ephemeral. Here, then gone. Yet it’s repeatable, and you can increase its duration. But, it’s never permanent.

I have some concrete goals. Money. Fitness. But really what I want is a feeling. And the feeling of peace is it.

There is something about Quantic’s “Walking in the Rain” lyrics that touches on where I find myself right now. Maybe that’s why I like the song. (Guard the mind, though. Music can transmit feelings, beliefs. It can persuade in hidden ways.)

So. What shall I do? Because life is doing. Action.

Three things. Read every day. Write every day. And start by attacking the biggest source of misery first: work.

One of the guests on the JRE broke down weight loss elegantly. The same approach holds true for work.

• You need to be clear in your thinking. Words reflect thinking.
• You don’t want to lose weight. You want to lose fat.
• There are two ways to lose fat: have fewer fat cells, or have the same number of fat cells but they are smaller.
• To have fewer fat cells, use liposuction. But he says that’s not a permanent solution.
• To have smaller fat cells (but the same number) there is biochemistry involved. His metaphor was a room with two entrances and one exit. Hormones and exotic (to me) biochemistry control the entrances and exits. Your job is to let fewer people, metaphorically speaking, into the room.

That’s how I’m going to attack the work side. I’m letting too many people into the room. And they aren’t leaving fast enough. And that means making fewer commitments, and chunking the ones I make into smaller deliverables so they can be delivered faster.

Looking at this journal, I note a pattern: I write when I’m sad, confused, frustrated. When times are good, I’m not in here, writing stuff down (as much).

Yes, it’s a reference to the song.

That’s from Seneca, letter 79, paragraph 17.

I don’t care about “them” and their facades, their pretense, their lies to me.

I care about me, pretending to a different audience: me.

Rigorous self-honesty. That’s the phrase to live by. Taleb says “If you see a fraud and do not say ‘fraud’, you are a fraud”.

Call out your own bullshit on yourself. It’s hard because self will not reveal self to self. But it can be done. It’s hard, not impossible.

Rigorous self-honesty.

In my binge of Rogan/Willink/Goggins on the plane yesterday, Rogan said write down your goals. This morning, I was cleaning a cupboard of stuff that hadn’t moved in a decade. There, in a pile of old paper, is a notebook.

Write it down. Be honest with yourself.

God gave me a tool with which to weed this garden.

The fuel that drives me . . . is insecurity.

It’s an infinite source of energy.

Don’t cap the well. That just lets pressure build up.

Discard the idea that I will somehow magically decide to not be insecure, and the burr under the saddle goes away.

Acknowledge the feeling of insecurity. Look at it. Live with it.

Then, with certainty, use that feeling as fuel to act. “Yeah, I’m alone, afraid, frustrated. Let’s do this anyway.”

A week traveling.

The routines I have embarked upon? Discarded. The self-imposed ban on distracting social media? Gone.

Hours of scrolling through Tik Tok, sleep patterns disrupted, no exercise, no reading and meditation. No writing here, to tease a thread of clarity from the confusion.

State of mind: depressed.

It’s time to reset. It’s to get simple.

New fuel, because I need to mix it up. Same message, different messengers.

They are not obscure, in fact they are pop stars: Rogan, Willink, Goggins. They say nothing new: focus, discipline.

Reading Seneca this morning about virtuous men who are mostly unknown during their lifetimes, I think: YouTube and Spotify bring me these messengers. In another time they might languish as local heroes, their wisdom available to only a few. Yet they are my friends, my guides, exhorting me to greatness.

Seneca reference: Letter 79, starting around paragraph 13.

It wasn’t one of them (I think) but somewhere on my searches I found a combat vet who was asked “what do you miss about combat?” He said “the simplicity.”

It’s time to reset. It’s time to get simple. Life is hand-to-hand combat with self.

Road trip.

Objective: relocate?

Conclusion: plausible.

Insomnia: confirmed.