Month: July 2021

I’m currently in the ditch.

Proximate cause: a prior work decision may or may not be wrong.

Result: it might cost me some money, make me look bad in front of a friend. Or the decision might have been right and neither will happen.

But in the meantime, in the uncertainty, I am in the ditch.

How to get back on The Path?

First, don’t avoid the problem. It won’t go away by itself. Address the uncertainty about my prior decision.

That’s in progress.

Second, continue my daily program. Talk to God instead of yourself. Do the daily reading to maintain a spiritual connection. Luckily I had started rereading an old favorite book, one that I discovered 30 years ago.

This too shall pass.

Spirits depleted at the end of the day. Go for the second workout of the day anyway.

Marginally better at the end. Certainly better than sitting at home.

Set a goal. A tiny one: walk 45 minutes in the neighborhood at a slow pace. Finish. Do what you intended. Feels good.

That is the dominant feeling right now: overwhelmed. Immobilized by the thought of the day’s tasks. Feeling sad and inadequate.

I’m not really immobilized. I can move forward but with disinterest and dread. The day’s prospects are like a tasteless meal.

Source of this feeling: work (over commitment and deadlines and failure to deliver, which combines to make me feel like a failure, having let people down). But also: I have not been assiduous in filtering mental input, keeping the political shit away from my mind. I have been browsing Twitter. YouTube (“I’m using it for educational purposes!” Has been the gateway drug.

Freedom. Use it again. I’m on the 6 am to 11 pm blocking schedule.

The right books. Back to the spiritual books for me.

The gym. Due to travel and the long weekend my exercise routines consisted of walking and running. Get back to lifting.

I am putting this little confession here because I know I will be in better spirits soon, but I want to acknowledge that my spirits go up and down.

Actually. At this moment as I type with my thumbs I feel better. I realize I am on The Path. EGBOK. No everything is ok right now.

I also told my wife I am feeling down in the dumps. That helped, too.

https://youtu.be/TW7tN0IAI5o

Self, listen to this: do not dwell on the yesterdays, the yesteryears. They don’t matter.*

What am I doing today? What am I doing right now? As David Goggins says in the video, no one cares that you ran a sub 3 hour marathon Back In the Day. What are you doing now?

* Yesterday can and should be fuel, can and should be a source of insight and wisdom. Nothing else. Learn from events. Distill wisdom from your past. You’re the only one who has access to that specific wisdom, and you’re the one who will be best-served by that wisdom when you apply it to today’s actions.

The forces of tyranny expand inexorably to fill the space made available for their existence. People who refuse to muster appropriately self-protective territorial responses are laid open to exploitation as much as those who can’t stand up for their own rights because of a more essential inability or a true imbalance of power.

Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life, page 24.

This is easy to see in the currently fashionable conformist correct-think mentality surrounding politics. The importance of calling bullshit when you hear bullshit cannot be emphasized enough.

FFS I was at a party last night and an extremely well-educated, well-traveled, sophisticated man I have known for perhaps 20 years repeatedly made snide allusions to Trump. What a lost soul he is, obsessing on the latest activities of a generic Manhattan Real Estate Tycoon™️. (If you haven’t been exposed to these characters, they are unintelligible to you.) Trump’s actions today are not relevant to my acquaintance’s life, family, or future. Trump obsession is no different than Kardashian obsession. Get on with your life, friend! Think thoughts that matter!

But ignore that side rant. Strive to be White Pill Man. That is the only viable Path.

Imagine that you are a self-contained universe. (In fact, you are exactly that, among many other things.) What tyranny, in your thinking and mindset, do you allow to spread in your own head, unchecked and unchallenged?

Resist that.

Get your thinking straight, for your own sake. That’s first. Everything else is a consequence of that.

What’s a tyrannical thought? Probably one that contains ego-feeding quantities of righteousness, judgment, conviction. Ideas that give a neat “just so” explanation for complex problems. (Hint: all problems are complex. You’re not so fucking smart that you have all of the information or answers . . . to anything.) Ideas that point the finger—have their focus on the great unwashed “them” and rely on “If only they would . . .” as the obvious solution to the Ills That Beset Today’s Society.

Along that line, Paul Graham has useful essays worth re-reading:

• How to Think For Yourself
• What You Can’t Say
• Novelty and Heresy

And I keep coming back to Jordan Peterson’s Rule 8:

Tell the truth—or at least don’t lie.

Especially to yourself.

Here is something I do semi-frequently. It seems to help make me feel stronger and find direction.

I imagine myself as the hero of a story: the story of my life. I imagine the story of my life is a movie, a book. Someone else is watching the movie or reading the book.

“I wonder what the hero will do next?”

A long, hard journey to confront the dragon. Uncertainty and fear. Setbacks and adventures. Disappointment. Danger. Triumph and failure.

What is happening in my story, today? What will I do today?

The hero, on this day in his life and at this point in his Quest, would do X. That’s usually the kind of answer I get when I play this script in my imagination. I get refocused on the long game, the Quest. And I find the strength to continue the journey forward to confront the dragon.

Nothing new here. We are told all the time to imagine ourselves as the heroes of our own stories.

This is just a testament to the fact that it works for me.

Usually, the answer is a reminder of my personal mantra (“Trust God, clean house, and help someone else”) and the admonition to keep trudging. Nothing earthshaking, nothing magical—just enough to keep me going today.

I have been going 63 days straight on the 75 Hard challenge. This is my 30th day after blowing the picture on day 33 the first time I started.

Exercise every day. Water every day.

I just finished my first workout of the day: a run. Best performance for me yet: 4.19 miles, 45 min, average pace 10:45. Yeah you’re faster but that’s awesome for me. And I still have gas in the tank. I could have kept going.

Find one nail. Keep hammering that nail.

. . . what you can attribute to a situation.

JP 04-28-2019 approx 23:30

Useful rule of thumb similar to “never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence. It’s an extension. Don’t attribute to incompetence, either. Attribute to situation. Then work your way backwards when the facts tell you to.

In the cosmic sense, we are here to alleviate unavoidable suffering. JP podcast 04-28-2019. 18:55.

To set the suffering world right. That the phrase he uses.

JP in his 04-28-2019 podcast at the approx 18:00 time stamp.

He is talking about telling the truth.

This is the motto that Chris Williamson holds close to his heart.