More Morning, Decluttering, Name-Dropping, Pics

I was a little bit startled to discover it was already the weekend again, but then I remembered I hadn't posted to this until Tuesday. Still, time is going way to quickly.

There were a few points I wanted to add to my walk-through of what a normal morning looks like for me. Mainly I was thinking if I'd given people enough information to replicate what I'd done, or if it would just lead to what happened with me so many times: I tried, failed, and then felt bad about myself.

So a few additional points I came up with that might help you out. First off, I made the decision with100% commitment, that I was not going to sleep in. So I'd better start going to bed early if I didn't want to be exhausted the next day. There is a huge difference between kinda sorta deciding to do something, but maybe you'll change your mind if you wake up and you're tired, and making a total commitment. Something like "OK, for the next X amount of time (say, a month) this is what I'm going to do, come hell or high water." Here's the quote about that:

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way."

And allow me to correctly attribute this quote, as it is one of those internet quotes that gets misattributed regularly: This is by William Hutchinson Murray (1913-1996), from "The Scottish Himalayan Expedition" right at the end of the book. Unless the internet source I got this from was also incorrect!

In any case, I decided, deep down, and with extreme commitment. But that's only half the story. There was something that felt like a force from outside. Some wisdom greater than this little mind, saying, "Now is the time to do this." And this was right after a powerful spiritual gathering. So maybe finding a special day to inaugurate it helps?

Also, I read the book called "The Miracle Morning" Which goes into all this in even finer grain detail, offering more stories and inspiration, and also going into each of what the author "Yo Pal Hal" lists as the most important elements to include in each morning. He has the Acronym SAVERS, standing for:

Silence
Affirmations
Visualizing
Excercise
Reading
Scribing (Journaling)

As you can tell from my morning in the previous post, I have a different format. I modified heavily, but it was a nice place to start. The book is not groundbreaking, but it was exactly what I needed when I needed it, and the goodness it helped catalyze in my life is enormous, enough to put it up in the list of top five most life-changing books, though oddly, it's not a great work of deep spiritual truth that I'll come back to again and again. It was just the right tool for the right job at the right time. The job being getting me into the habit of a life-changing morning routine.

I've met Hal, and he's a really genuine, passionate, humble guy. I think the purity and dedication and goodness inherant in him come through his book.

Anyhoo. That book is a resource. Don't get your hopes up that going to a weekend Miracle Morning workshop is going to give you anything more though. Unless you love Tony-Robbins style workshops, which many people do, in which case you'll probably love it. (I've never been to one and I never plan to go to one, but I've read some of his stuff, and seen some clips from his workshops. That was enough to determine it was not my thing.) That kind of marketing, hype-ish thing is for me like... Cilantro is for those people who taste soap when they eat Cilantro.

So make the routine your own, commit to doing it for a long enough period of time that it becomes a habit, and be super regular for that period of time, and then at the end decide if you want to keep doing it or not. Probably at least 3 months would be best, but even three weeks is probably enough to decide if it's worth it to you. At 3 days it's still going to be really hard and you might decide to quit if you've given yourself that out. Give it a chance to really become a habit. The "becoming a habit" part is the magic. Getting yourself to wake up early, meditate, exercise, do whatever other stuff: it's really hard to break yourself away from whatever you're doing during the day, to build up the momentum to do any of the self-improvement things we know make us happier and healthier. When its a new choice, each day, that's HARD. That takes willpower, every single time. But once it's a habit, it's like brushing your teeth. Its harder not do do it. Something feels wrong, incomplete. You don't have to remember to do it either. Once it's a habit, you just start doing it, without having to pause and think what to do.

This is true of our bad habits, but it can be true of good habits as well. Just imagine if working out wasn't something you had to carve out time for, or will yourself into, or try to remember. If it was just what your body started doing, on auto-pilot every day? Morning is great for these things, because it's the very first thing (for the love of all that is holy don't check your email or text messages until you've finished! Doom! It is doom to a good quick morning routine. If you need to use your phone for timing or such, keep it on airplane mode, and generally out of sight). In the Morning there is nothing you have to pull yourself away from. By the afternoon, we are often exhausted and/or running late.

Another benefit of the morning routine is you can plug in new mini-habits really easily, once you've got the base habit in place. It's a habit that supports other good habits!


In other news, I am trying with all my might to finish the Mari Kondo de-cluttering marathon. I've continued to get bogged down while doing this. In hindsight, I realize I've done some of the things Mari says specifically not to do, like going through pictures, picking up and reading books, asking myself "but maybe I'll need it some day..." And just in general, getting into a very over-thinking, paralyzed headspace. My new approach for today was to go right into the de-cluttering from my morning jog, while the sun was still just barely shining, and I had that wonderfully clear headspace of early morning. That seemed to do the trick. That pretty much carried through the day. I got way more done today than in two or three other days combined. Which is really good news, because time is ticking and I can't spend forever on this.

As far as I can tell I have 5 more categories to go. Kitchen (which should be very small for me, since I don't have my own kitchen. Just a few travelings spices and such.) Bathroom (which is a big one), miscellaneous (another big one), my alter stuff (incense and candles and such), and then the last big one, memento's. Today I did... Tracker/primitive skills stuff (a really big one), teaching supplies, gaming supplies, drawings/paintings (maybe should have saved for memento's, but it went fairly quickly. This was kind of an extra pocket of specific "papers" that were hiding in a folio behind by dresser), backpacking stuff, recreational supplies, linen and bedding, towels, cleaning supplies, laundry supplies, and probably one or two others that I'm forgetting right now. I have not showered.

Oh, also I've cleaned up my computer, one of the accidental and bad-idea side-tracks, but very nice to have done. I haven't gone through everything, like all the pictures or all the songs, but I did a quick pass getting rid of all the obvious stuff. This was because I had to re-format my whole computer, because it was getting quite buggy, and I didn't want to just re-load it up with all the digital junk I've accumulated. Mostly it was just dumping things into a more sensible, universal filing system so I can actually use what I have, and in so doing I was able to re-partition my removable hard-drives in a way that should cause less freezes and glitches. I'm not doing anything more on those though, as I could spend days on it and it's digital so I can do that after I've moved, it won't result in me having to lug more physical stuff.

Once I've finished the decluttering phase, then finally, FINALLY I get the candy treat at the end of the rainbow: I get to finish organizing everything into sensible collections, all categories of stuff together in one place, all neatly arranged to use space efficiently and beautifully. And all that I should have left, are the things I really love, or that are truly useful to me.

Finally, the unsightly piles of stuff will be ordered, condensed, simplified. And because everything is in its right place, and everything has a place, it will be easy to put things away and keep my living space relatively clean, and, if I need to re-do a category for some reason, I won't have to spend the hours and hours I've had to spend this time, just moving from room to room like an restless spirit, picking things out of drawers and boxes just so I've got them all in one spot. That will already be done! Though really, I shouldn't have to do that very much, since I should be staying at a pretty stable level of stuff. Once everything of each category is together, there will be no more "oh, I'm out of CD cases! I'll go buy some" and then finding a whole stash of CD cases a day later, squirreled away in some arcane corner of my closet.

Also, and here's the big thing: moving becomes much simpler. Since everything should have it's place, and mostly that is in drawers or boxes, it becomes a simpler matter to just place the small boxes in bigger boxes. And an equally simple matter to remove the boxes and place them somewhere when I arrive. That's all just beautiful theory though, since it has never, ever been the case. Moving has always been a sisyphean affair, with me gradually picking up speed and reducing order as moving deadlines approach until I am throwing everything within hands reach into the nearest box and then having to check through half the boxes every time I need something once I arrive, since I never have time to unpack everything, since that would require dumping every box out onto the floor and then sifting them into sensible catagories and back into more ordered collections of boxes.

In that disordered moving process useless stuff gets taken along for the ride, because I have no time to think about weather this random large piece of plastic should come with me or stay at my old apartment so I just chuck it in the box with everything else that I then have to carry around and load into trucks and dig through to find the few useful things I have amidst the garbage dump of obsoleteness. I'm like some giant sticky ball that just keeps on picking up junk as it roles along, getting bigger and bigger.

https://youtu.be/s2SwFyEiZzI?t=2m33s


Well, I'm not finishing tomorrow, since I have a class to teach. But there really isn't that much left to go. And once I'm in organizing mode, I can do it whenever, because that is not a high difficulty task. Choosing what to keep and what to get rid off, especially when leaning into keeping only the essential, is a really challenging task. It's very much like a highly focused meditation. When I'm in the right state of mind, it feels effortless, but it's like walking a tightrope: as long as I'm on that tightrope, it's effortless. If I loose balence though (and eventually I always loose balance) it is a struggle to get back up onto the rope and regain balance. And in the meantime, minutes and hours have passed.

Anyways, I shall end here: I'd promised pictures and pictures you shall have:

Behold what some of my mornings have looked like:

That's the our house in the background. Started going deeper into the woods for my morning sit-spot

My Morning Routine

I thought I'd share my morning routine with you. It's perhaps the single smartest, most joy-producing, productivity-enhancing, personal-growth fueling thing that I do, and it's one area where I am truly walking my talk, and it's always best to teach what you actually know from long practice. Even if you intellectually know it and can talk eloquently, there is a certain vital energy missing, I find, in people who are talking the talk but not walking the walk. I think it has a very large effect on whether people actually transform after listening to them, or just have a temporary new-years resolution type thing, and then go back to what they were doing. That's just a theory so far, no strong evidence to support it, but I'll likely start getting some more evidence one way or another as I keep teaching.

In any case, I'm always fascinated by that: what is it that makes us sometimes transform deeply and permanently, and other times makes just go off in a direction for a bit, and then bounce back, like a bungee jumper.

In any case, my routine (with some pictures that are actually my own, rather than ruthlessly stealing from google image search.)

First: the night before. This part I'm not as good at. Currently I'm trying to turn off and put away my computer around 7pm. Obviously that has not happened tonight, but not for lack of trying. I am desperately trying to finish the few things that seem actually important. In fact, as soon as I finish this post I have one more must-do computer thing, and then I'm turning it off! Though that still might not get me to bed by 9, which is my general goal. (my stretch goal being 8:30, at which point I think I can start waking up at 4 am and have an extra 45 minutes to work on top priority things)

Sleep.

My alarm goes off at 4:45 am every morning, regardless of when I go to sleep, unless it's really late, like midnight, which does happen occasionally. Then I allow myself to sleep enough that I can get 7-8 hours of sleep. Sometimes.

My alarm is a custom ring tone that I made from a recording of birdsong. I do this for several reasons: one, I always place my alarm far enough away from my bed that I have to actually stumble out of bed to turn it off. This is ESSENTIAL to me actually getting up. Without that one smart pre-planned bit of environmental assisted willpower, I'd never have made it past the first day or two of my early wake-up.

So, because it takes me a few moments to wake up enough to stumble out of bed and fumble the alarm to the off position, I chose birdsong, so that other people in the house won't hear an annoying alarm going off, they may just think it's some birds outside. It being loud and in my room, it's generally incongruous enough that it does in fact wake me up. Though I have occasionally woken up very confused while I was out camping, hearing the loud sound of birdsong and wondering for a moment if it was time for me to get up, before I recognized the fact that it was different birdsong and went back to sleep.

Second, I have bird song because it's something beautiful and pleasant to wake up to. A nice way to start my day. I had previously tried some Tibetan singing bowls as a wake-up ring-tone, but they were too mellow and didn't end up waking me up on nights when I hadn't gotten a full 7-8 hours of sleep (which is a lot of nights. As I said, still not so great about the night before thing.)

OK, so I've stumbled to my phone and turned it off. Next, and also highly important:

I turn on the lights.

This is super helpful in leaning me away from that precipitous edge that exists for the first few minutes of waking up early, where it is super, duper easy to just fall back into bed and go to sleep. Some other steps I do that help push me onwards rather than bedwards: I put on my clothes. Activity plus not being cold help a lot in convincing me this is a good idea. Brushing my teeth: it's simple enough that I can do it with only two brain-cells firing, and it gets me moving and feeling a bit fresher. Glass of water. I sometimes forget this one, but it does help get me feeling more human when I do it.

OK, now I'm pretty awake (or else I splash some cold water on my face too.

Now I sit down in front of the little sacred area I've created for myself, and pray, and meditate. Here is the part where the early wake-up time starts paying for itself in gold. There is not better time in the day for me to meditate. Everything is quiet, still. My mind is clear and fresh and not filled with the clutter of the day. I have much better meditations, much more frequently, when I do it at this time of day. Also prayer. Just generally connecting to spirit and practicing/working out those non-physical muscles. A good time is had by all.

Next, a rather new addition to my routine (I'm always experimenting and tweaking, removing things that aren't as useful and trying out new things that sound promising) is a glass of warm diluted milk (about half milk half water. easier to digest) followed by a morning walk while I sing devotional songs. This is a keeper. Especially anywhere with respectable nature around, as this is perhaps the most beautiful time of day. The early morning hours. Sun is rising, perhaps stars are still twinkling, and the energy, the feeling, the smell of the air, the quietness. It is absolutely magnificent. No better setting to praise the creator of it all and feel humble and grateful and vast.

Next, an even new thing, and also definitely a keeper, is a Jog. This is absolutely fantastic. Any remaining logy-ness is gone by the first few minutes, the nature is still beautiful, and once I'm done, I've already gotten in at least one good bout of exercises for the day. I cannot have a truly horrible day now. I have at least done two or three really awesome things. Even if the rest of the day is a wash, I've got that.

And the rest of the day is way less likely to be a wash, because I always feel lighter, bouncy-er, more sparky, after a little bit of good physical activity. So I'm set up for good things now.

I take a few minutes at my sit spot to revel in nature, practice a Tom Brown Jr. Skill or two, and re-connect with my purpose, my vision, what I want to do with my life. In a word, the things that motivate and inspire me. And then I have a chat with God for a little bit. Call it my Higher Self if that sounds less alien to you. I mainly take some time to be quiet and listen, for if that quiet voice within has something to tell me, for the coming day.

Then I'm back inside. I do some sun salutes as I watch the sun rise, (I've recently added in listening to the surya namaskar mantra/song while I do it, which is also definitely a keeper, and at some point I want to be singing it myself.) And then it's time for a shower.

I've completely dispensed with shampoo. Shampoo has sodium laurel sulfate, which is super caustic and destroys your hair, to the point where you need conditioner just for it to not be super weird. It also has all sorts of other weird chemicals in it. I just use a bar of truly natural soap, something like dr. bronners. Rub it up in my cranial zone, lather, rinse. This only works if your water isn't hard, otherwise the soap doesn't fully wash out unless you add something that's a little acidic. At some point I may switch to just having a bottle of water with a few drops of lemon juice in it, but for now I'm just using a bit of conditioner. Which maybe defeats the purpose a bit, but it doesn't' have SLS in it, at least, and I'm saving a bunch of money on not buying shampoo. And using less plastic bottles. And less chemicals in general. Also, I've got less things to in the shower. Soap for hair, soap for body.

Most weird, cheap, soaps are not even real soaps, by the way, so if you try to do this with them, you'll get a similar result to shampoo. Often even the soaps have sodium laurel sulfate in them. Weird stuff.

The last bit of my shower, which I've grown quite fond of, is the cold immersion. Right at the end, before I have time to think myself out of it, I switch on the cold water. My rule is at least a few seconds front back and top, but sometimes I go for a bit longer. I use a Tom Brown Jr. method of body control that he supposedly . used (or something similar) for entering freezing water and sweating. I don't know if I could do that, but I am getting more tolerant of the cold, and better at maintaining my focus and calm even under the duress of the cold temperature.

This has several purposes. A minor one is I heard that doing something like this is good for you. Apparently cold showers are good for getting rid of depression (though I see a catch 22 there, as someone who is depressed is gonna have a real hard time motivating themselves to actually do it) and boosting cold resistance in general, and improving the immune system. Moreso than all of those, I'm doing it to practice the cold-training and body control, and also because I've read about willpower, and how one practises and gets more willpower. You get more willpower by practicing on small things, regularly. Something as simple as continually reminding yourself to stand up straight ( and actually standing up straight, then.) or squeezing a hand grip exercises thing until you can't anymore, not only improve your willpower about doing that specific action, as you continue to plow through the mild discomfort and do it anyways, day after day, but that willpower seems to start leaching into the rest of peoples lives. They start exercising more, eating better, etc. So I am practicing willpower.

That is kind of the end. Breakfast is next, and then sometimes I will do a bit of journaling, but that takes a long time and I'm not sure how useful it is. I do it when I have time but when I've got a lot to do during the day, or if I"m getting a late start, I may skip it.

If I don't skip it, I have a few different journals: One is just what I call my Laax Log. "Laax" stands for "Life As An Experiment" And it's basically just my reflections on anything I tried the last day, things that went well, things that went poorly and I need to figure out a solution to in the future, things I'm planning on doing in the future. I'm experimenting with my life constantly, and I can quickly glance back over the last few days and be reminded of the highlights of those experiments.

Then there is my calendar. When I do that, I check off all the steps of my routien using a handy, funny acronym I came up with: AMPS, Bam! XL PC. I check off all the things that I've done, and sometimes give myself a little smily face or just a cheer for myself, doing all this good stuff. Trying to use positive reinforcement on myself :D . It is very satisfying to be able to check all those things off. Then I look at my schedule, write out the most important goals I have for the day and check if there are any appointments or what-not, and then get started on work. OH, I almost forgot. In the front page of my Calendar book is a little drawing that I sometimes re-draw, other times just look at, that has all my most important learnings and reminders for myself. The phrases and attitudes and ways of being and acting that make the most positive difference in my life, when I'm living with them in mind. That's my Priming journal, I call it. It doesn't take very long, but it does remind me of the best possible things I could be reminded of. It reminds me of what I value, it reminds me of what works for me.

And that's my morning routine! If I don't get distracted part-way through (often happens around breakfast time) I can easily start the day by 8-8:30 am. And I am coming into whatever I'm doing, turbocharged for focus, happiness, determination, creativity.

Now you know my secret! But I think it will remain a secret, eh? which of you dares to take up the Miracle Morning challenge? Hm?! Come forth if you can! Show me! (said in a gladiatorial, deep, booming voice)

Seriously, I wish you all could experience how awesome it is to do something like this, but I don't think I know one person who's picked it up after I explained it. Which seems crazy to me. After the first morning, when I had just read "The Miracle Morning" and done it, I was feeling so good, it became an easy choice. It was so, so worth it, of course I'd get up a bit early for it. It had nothing to do with teeth gritted painful determination. It was all about how enjoyable it was.

As I was getting bedtime routine a bit better, there were several days that I had to take short naps to wake up for the afternoon though. I suppose that's one of the biggest barriers. But what ended up working for me was just deciding firmly that I was going to get up at the same time every day. After a few days of getting up early and going to bed late, you couldn't pay me to go to bed late, I was so tired and ready for sleep by 9 pm.

Careful if you take an afternoon nap: set a loud timer on your phone for 30-45 minutes and put it way out of reach like you have to do in the morning, so you have to stand up and walk over to turn it off, or you may end up sleeping through the whole afternoon and then not being able to go to sleep until midnight and then your routine will be getting worse rather than better.

OK, that's it. That's the keys to the kingdom. Obviously your results may vary, but seriously, if you like yourself, you aught to design a super awesome morning routine that gets you excited, and get up super early, and try it out, and see if I'm not right about this. I'm pretty sure I'm right about this. As I said, this is far and away the #1 thing I'm doing consistently in my life, in terms of making my life awesome.

Now to work on the evenings... (he says, looking at the 9:26 pm clock.)

Good night!
;-)
Isaac

P.S. I said picture and I'll have pictures but not tonight! I will post them... I guess in another post? I'd rather put them in this post though. So if you want pictures, you'll have to come back in a day or so and check this post out again after I've added pictures. But I wanted to get something out, since it's already past my usual Sunday output date.

Parting with Journals, Taking Journals Apart

It is already past my bed time, and I have at least two more things to write, so this will probably actually be a short post. Spend aaaaallll day decluttering in the "paper's" category. The KonMari method has you sort things by category, to make it go quicker. I definitely recommend her way of doing things. It's about 10 times less stressful and more productive and less liable to get sidetracked.)

The first leg of it was quite easy, though still time consuming. But the second part was the killer. I have a lot of journals. Some are personal, some are notes from various classes that I've taken. Most of the personal journals were really more about me writing to think, and are not worth a second look. But every now and then, there is a powerful dream, or big life event, that I definitely want to be able to refer back to. And it's nice having at least a smattering of journal entries, so I can go back and have my memory refreshed, if I'm thinking about a certain time in my life.

On the other hand... I can't remember the last time I've actually done that. The bottom line is, I thought letting go of my books was difficult, but letting go of my journals is ten times worse. Books can be replaced, if it turns out I do need them. Journals are irreplaceable. So I saved them for last, and I'm still not through all of them. It's giving me new perspectives on what I want to be journaling, now. Rather than having to go back through my journals and rip out the few entries that I want to keep, I wonder if I can separate them out into two different journals. A thinking journal, and a remembering journal.

It feels so good to be getting rid of all the excess though, I worked basically straight through the day, morning till night, with total focus. The challenge is actually just ripping myself away long enough to take care of my other priorities, which currently feel like flies that are just distracting me from my work. Oh how I love having long, uninterrupted stretches to focus on completing one thing at a time.

Welp, time for sleep, so I can get up and start again tomorrow bright and early...

Jump into life, Nadi shmadi, Way of the drunken master

I should probably save this for a later time, when I have more leasure to write a long post, but I don't see myself having that time until close to the end of the week, so this is likely another short post.

I'm not sure I so much write "shorter" posts, as simply less polished ones. Less pictures, less things covered, less thought into what is most interesting in my life, and more of a straight-up stream of consciousness (edited slightly since this is directly linked with me and possibly subject to potential employer's google searches, though that's very definitely not who it's for. Perhaps they won't see it if I make a separate Facebook page for my professional profile.)

I got my Nadi leaf read! It's a longer story, for now, to quickly sum up my impressions... well, certainly nothing definitive, one way or another. But possible both ways. It really comes down to, do I believe this person, telling me that my name and my parent's name are written in these leaves? I myself and pretty skeptical, but until I learn whatever language the leaf is written in and demand to see the page that supposedly has my name, I'll never know. The best I can do is basically use my life to determine its accuracy. There are plenty of definitive statements about my future, and I just have to write them down, along with the years, and then, at the appropriate time, retrospect and see how accurate it was. But if you were hoping for something definitive and miraculous, I'm afraid you will leave the story disappointed. While everything seemed fairly accurate or plausible, unlike many of my non-nadi-leaf Jyotish readings, (which I've come to accept as totally unreliable for any kind of useful predictive information.) I am well aware that in the process of going through the leaves, by the final time I was just fed up with the process, and started giving him more than a yes/no response, and then, surprise surprise, he came up with my leaf very quickly.

I'd be disappointed, but I've been disappointed so much on this ill-fated quest that I'm over it. I'm just glad to be done with the 5:30 am sessions of being delayed for hours and then going through a bunch of leaves and not finding anything. On the other hand, it's not impossible that it is the real deal. I continue to maintain both perspectives and nothing has happened to definitively collapse the probability wave. There were several accurate things that I did not mention to him at all. A few of which were personal and not something he could have found out even with some kind of identity information snooping service. As I said, I'll let the predictions vindicate or damn the reading, as well as my more careful analysis of the predictions etc. (I didn't record it, as I promised the universe I wouldn't, but he recorded it for me.) but I certainly won't be making my life decisions based off of it. Until and unless I become much more satisfied as to its predictive accuracy. I'm still about at a coin toss as to which I think it is, just because I don't really have much concrete to modify it one way or the other.

And it's not like I need proof that miracles exist. I've gone on that quest and, after long searching, been satisfied to the highest degree, even from the part of me that is sharp, skeptical, rational, and vehemently opposed to blind faith and believing things just because I want them to be true.


In other news, I'm quite happy with my personal development at the moment. I think I would call this: "being balanced in imbalance."

You see, I'm moved out of my old apartment, but not staying long at my parents. My stuff is exploded all over the place, I'm constantly having to move boxes and my workspace around for various reasons, I've currently got a whole bunch of important things due in the next two to three days, and I'm working on my teaching, including all the parts I'm least comfortable with, like calling up parents and enforcing discipline.

In order to do this well, I need extreme powers of focus to not be constantly distracted, and the willpower or grace to decide to do the things that are most important, and not do them for too long either, as I have a tendency to spend longer than necessary on them, due to my perfectionist streak. And to let go of the less important things for the time being, though they itch at the back of my mind.

It's terribly challenging, and I'm not particularly good at it, but what I'm pleased with is my new and improved approach, which is to fail often and with abandon. And to leave the day in the past, when it's done, and start over, give it my best effort again, the next day, and the next. Or even the next hour, and the next. This is SO much more efficient and fast as a way of learning. Previously it would be a cycle of try, fail, pout for a good long while, then finally try again, succeed a bit, then fail, pout for even longer. Try again, fail again, give up. Let a bunch of time pass, try again... you get the idea. Now it's just try-fail-try-fail-try-succeed a bit-try-fail-try-succeed a bit more-try...  All over a few days rather than months and years. It's much much better.

I learned at some point vaugly recently that when you scan the brain of a procrastinator procrastinating, that is, avoiding doing something they need to do, the pain centers are all lit up. But as soon as they actually start doing the thing they were procrastinating about, the pain centers stop firing. This is exactly how it works, subjectively, though for some crazy reason we keep forgetting that fact. The pain is in the putting it off. If you don't want to feel bad, then just do it. No, just start doing it. We think the pain is just a faint shadow of how painful it will be when we actually do the thing, but that's not the case. Even when it really is bad, it's still better, because after the discomfort of, say, an unpleasant conversation, then it's done. Over.

I've been reading and thinking about another related phenomena, in regards to stressful situations, apparently, how you interpret the stressful situation can result in it being healthy for the body, or deeply unhealthy. If you are met with a challenging situation, like, say, you need to give a presentation in front of a group of people, and you start feeling your heart beat quicker and the energy start to buzz, you can take the perspective (I don't thing this generally happens consciously) "Oh no, this is horrible, I want to hide, this is going to be awful, I'm gonna fail, I just want to run away and hide." OR "Alright, I can feel myself getting excited about this challenge, ramping itself up to make sure I can give it my all. Bring It On!"

The first way leads to unhealthy responses that age your body prematurely. The latter lead to general health and well-being, and additional energy and motivation.

I just glanced at this research today, so I could be missing some of the finer nuances. The point being, and all of this just to say, I am more and more turning towards the intimidating things that I have to do standing between me and my dreams and goals, and saying "BRING IT ON!" And it is a glorious thing to do. I wish I'd known to start sooner. So much wasted time, but then, the past is past. I'm learning to let it go and just ask what I can be doing, now, that will make my life and time well spent, now. I should be very clear: I'm failing all. the. time. with this stuff. I'm not good at it yet, at all. But I'm learning quickly, and every time I slip and fall, I quickly get back up and go back at it.

Leap into it,
-Isaac

Fahrenheit 451. Russian Chest Hair. After Enlightenment, the Dishes.

Aaaand the voting results are... nothing. Nobody voted. not once. Yay! I don't have to do any of the topics! which is good for me, because I've already forgotten them, and that would be extra work, and I'm running very low on time.

Yesterday, and today, I tried to KonMari my books. It was both phyisically exausting, moving all that paper pulp around, and mentally exausting, as I have an undue fondness for books, so letting go of them, even books I will likely never read, is like waxing chest hairs. Maybe some people have wimpy and easy to excorscise chest hairs, but I have manly, Russain bear-man chest hair, and waxing that would be liable to simply skin me down the front. But it's not quite as serious as pulling teeth. Or maybe I just don't like cliched phrases. Also, I made the dire mistake of skimming through some of the books. Occasionally, this  is fine. Usually, it's not that much time. But it adds up, and every now and then a book sucks me in and I loose my momentum and objectivity and have to reset, which takes time and energy.

This kind of purging is not something I can just relax while doing at the end of the day. It pulls at my fears, my attachments: well sure, I've never read it in the year or two or three I've had it, but what if I want it down the line? And it has so much good info in it! And it's about my favorit saint! No matter that I haven't looked at it ever and the only reason I would do so in the forseeable future would be to justify not throwing it out/giving it away. Or that I have several redundant sets of most of that information, in various configurations. There is a part of my brain, perhaps a part shared with pack rats and chipmunks, that needs to hoard precious things. The more precious, the more intense is the need.

I carried a half-eaten bag of rice with me, that wasn't even mine, from one apartment to the next, just because I didn't want it to go to waste. I didn't even like the rice, as it was old and non-organic. It took me... a year and a half, to discard a free, half-eaten bag of poor quality rice. I made some rice pudding with it, but there was just too much. And part of me didn't want to use potentialy arsinic-sprayed ingrediants. So imagine the dire, brainstem urgest I must quell to let go of a good book that I just really am never going to use.

Knowledge is precious to me. I used to have a belife that if I just owned the knowledge I wanted to aquire, it would somehow magically make me read it and then implement it. But this is not so. In fact, it seems like the opposite is true, if I have something that I was already ambivilant about reading/doing, then having it seems to release some of the pressure to do something about that urge to, say, learn Russian, or learn to draw. I do much better if I make myself struggle a bit, make do with what I have, and then, once it get's just too irritating to deal with as I constantly have to contend with sub-par tools or lack of technique, then I get the whatever it is. More often, I simply don't do the thing in the first place, and then I'm glad I didn't get whatever book or tool or what-have you.

I've also found that having lots of information decreases the power of all of the information. Determining the importaint one for any task is effortful, so more often, I'll just settle for the first one that comes to hand. And there is kind of a limited amount of stuff that I can be acutly aware of. If I have one bookshelf of super high quality books, I can glance at it often, and quickly pick out one that is appropriate for my need, or be reminded of one that I want to read or re-read. But if I have a while bookshelf full, I kind of go numb to all of them. The good one's get lost in the shuffle, and the whole thing becomes a piece of furnature rather than a series of tools.

I guess the bottom line is, I have a very limited amount of time. That limits the amount of attention I can pay to anything. It limites the amount of time I can spend reading. Time becomes super valuble, when you really stop to think about it. Why in the world would you waste your time reading or doing something that was only ok? Except that's exactly what I'm thinking, as I keep all these "ok" books. I'm thinking, some day I'll have time, and then I'll get to them, and then I'll read them and have in my brain and level up. Except it doesn't work that way. the new information pushes out old information and the actual development of skill is less about trying on new skills every week and more about sticking with a few good one's until they become great.

This is what has been branded into my brain recently as I think about simplifying my life and removing clutter. Life is bounded and limited sevearly by time. Time is precious, non-renewable, inflexible. You cannot get more time by managing it. You can only use what you have better. And to do that, one of the main things you need to do is very simple: stop doing the things that don't matter. Stop doing the things that kind of matter, stop doing the things that definitly matter, and focuse as exclusivly as you can on doing the things that are wildly importaint. There will be some things that you have to do for phyisical upkeep, that really do not seem wildly importaint. Laundry comes to mind. But you can't go starving nakid and unwashed for very long before it starts to get pretty importaint, so I guess we should figure out a way to do the seemingly unimportaint things, in a way befitting the precious rescource they are using.

For me that means trying to turn every activity into a form of spiritual practice or devotion.

I feel like this is a quote from a poetry collection or something: "After enlightenment: the dishes."





A MORNING PRAYER WRITTEN BY ST. THERESE
(this went along with the above image I found)

O my God! I offer Thee all my actions of this day for the intentions and for the glory of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. I desire to sanctify every beat of my heart, my every thought, my simplest works, by uniting them to Its infinite merits; and I wish to make reparation for my sins by casting them into the furnace of Its Merciful Love.

O my God! I ask of Thee for myself and for those whom I hold dear, the grace to fulfill perfectly Thy Holy Will, to accept for love of Thee the joys and sorrows of this passing life, so that we may one day be united together in heaven for all Eternity.
Amen.
---

Oh, here's the name of that poetry collection: "After the Ecstasy, the Laundry" I have some qualms with the writer's assertion that he is enlightened (I could do a whoooole blog post on that one. Not the first guy like that I've run into. He's had a profound spiritual experience, likely permanently life-changing, but he is to enlightenment as a zygote is to a full-grown adult. Except the zygote doesn't claim it's a full grown adult and stop growing, whereas these jokers tend to do just that.)

I’m off to see the wizard. Nadi leaf chronicals climax coming...soon. Voting results... not yet tabulated. Ellipses...excellent.

Well, I’m off to a Tom Brown Jr. course for the week. This is kind of the last chance to write one of these, and it’s really going to be short because I’m literally taking my last few bags out to the car, locking up, and driving away after this post.

I’ve been packing like crazy, and then cleaning up my boxes and such so my parents can use the basement. I got one day of KonMari tidying in, went through the whole category of clothes, and it was glorious, and didn’t really take that long. I am so looking forward to finishing that up with all the categories, now that I finally have just about all my stuff in one place. Well, except for all the books in Fairfield. Maybe I can do something about that when I get there...

In any case, lots to talk about, and I have time for none of it in detail. In brief: I’ve been tracking where I spend my time, and that has been fun, and somewhat informative, though I need to go over my time logs in more depth. I’ve been really rocking it with my morning routine, added one or two things, and it’s fantastic. Makes me feel like an absolute champ. And I’m slowly working through all my papers on extension. I’ve got one more and then I can get my teacher certification, and then at any point I can send in another teeny one that does nothing for my grades or anything else, but I will certainly do it, because I said I would. But it’s not urgent. And it will take two mornings, tops, likely only one morning.

I finally found my Nadi Leaf. Maybe. I’ve written an entire unpublished blog post about that, and the Gray zone uncertainty abut it. Again long story short: in a few weeks, the guy is going to read the translation he got from the leaf to me. It is still possible that it is real, and that it is somewhat of a cold read. We will see how he does with the family particulars, but frankly at this point I’m not expecting miracles. From him, at least. I certainly have come to understand miracles are a very real thing. Oh my yes.

OK, I’ll see you in a week likely. I didn’t receive any emails informing me that people had cast votes for the next blog post subject, but perhaps those notifications have just been turned off. If I got greater than zero votes, I will at some point soon do a blog post expanding on whatever got the most votes, but it will have to wait till I have time to do that. As it is, I’m running a half-hour past when I planned to leave.

Good luck, good love, safe travels if your on the move, and stay safe, moving or no.
Love,
I

The Logarithmic functions of despair. Voting options.

Wow, it's already Tuesday! I feel like I've been super productive the last few days, but apparently, that didn't include posting to my blog. I guess I always know I have to do this, but now I'm gathering all the other things I didn't really know about, because they are one-off things, and so my days are full of that stuff. There is so much I could talk about. I want to talk about logarithmic utility curves for working on "good day building blocks." I want to talk about Faustian deals made apprehensively with apple watches, I want to talk about the power of priming willpower with little wins. I want to talk about how awesome getting back to my original miracle morning has been, I want to talk about the valentines day experience I'm shipping to my new squeeze.

But I've got a lot of other things I need to do tonight as well, and it's already almost the time where I'm trying to turn off work and start winding down. Like, two minutes away. Tell you what, I'll just pick one, and if I missed your favorite option, send me an email or a comment and I'll elaborate on that one next post.

So, logarithmic utility curves: when I say "good day building blocks" what I mean is, there are a few things that we can do, that, if done, make a big difference in the quality of our days. Usually they are some or all of the following: exercise, enough sleep, good diet, spiritual practice. There are plenty of less common ones, and the spiritual practice is maybe a smaller category than the sleep, exercise, and diet, in terms of number of people who it's important to.

Anyway, here's my point, or theory (based on personal experience and observation): there is an initial point, where time invested, say, into the first 15 minutes of exercise, yields HUGE rewards. I feel so much better when I've gotten even just a little exercise, vs. none, that it is absolutely ridiculous not to do it. It's not extra time in my schedule, if I look at the rest of the day, because I get probably twice as much important stuff done. That is a good time investment. people are happy if they get a 10% return on stocks, and we are talking a 100%+ return.

However, there are people who get really excited about one of those categories, say exercise, since we are using that, and they want to get that double return on more time. But it's not a straight line, it's an inverse logarithmic line (like my cookie tastiness over time graph) that quickly levels off, giving negligible gains for increased time in after a certain point.

People tend to get focus locked on one thing, like sleep, or diet, or exercise, or spiritual practice, or any number of other little side avenues, and end up putting tremendous effort and time in, achieving only minimal additional benefits for their hard work and extensive time. My suggestion then, based on this theory, is, once you've reached the basic level of good returns on one of these Good Day Building Blocks (GDBB or God-bubba) you then shift your attention to getting another one up to that basic level of maximum returns on investment.

Say you're getting a nice walk for 20 minutes a day, but you're eating white bread covered in corn syrup: leave the exercise as is for a bit until you've gotten yourself onto more fruits and vegetables and whole foods. And maybe all of those are on lock, so you download f.lux to your computer and get off the phone and computer entirely an hour before you go to bed. And then maybe you add in a few minutes every day taking a walk in nature, or chatting with close friends, or dancing, or meditating. Whatever fills you up. Not all of those, just the things that make the biggest difference to you. Maybe the next thing to do is just sit down with a piece of paper and brainstorm all the things that fill you up and are GDBB's for you, and then try them out to see which ones make the biggest difference. Then, once you've got your building blocks all at basic levels, you can take your favorite and keep pushing it as much as you want.

But if you're missing one of the holy trinity: Food, Sleep, and Excercise, then you probably need to get on that. I would personally also add Silence (meditation, for me) to that list of essentials, but I don't want to be prescriptive, just encouraging: go find your GDBB's, and get yourself doing even 5 minutes of each of them. If they really are your biggest GDBB's, the results will be sufficient reason to expend the energy to keep them up and expand them to the point of diminishing returns.

Graphs!









This last one is where I got the title of this blog post from: