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I thought it was only an adenoid. I thought a lot of things. Why did I think it was worth thinking? If I don’t want to think or feel, I can just dig a hole and burrow into it.  No Becky. If I want to get fat, just go ahead and proceed as you were. That’s no problem. It’s lovely that they updated this, but now I feel like a fish out of water. Is that a way to feel? Seems not. Cody could attest to that.

There are a lot of things that I haven’t had a chance to write about since I haven’t written anything. I don’t know what difference it makes. Maybe my life has taken a turn for the better. That allows me to do things and to think things. Smart martyrs. Restart the matre di. I don’t know if Tony would mind if I tried to start our own club. I have these fleeting ideas I guess, and then I’m off to the next one. Maybe that epitomizes my dieting regimen. On again, off again.

Here’s a transcript from a chat room where I was the only one chatting.  Ha:

I’m going to write something, even if no one is here to read it or respond to it. I am here because I need to chat with someone, and at least there are seemingly some people here. Otherwise I can just write on my own blog, which is almost never responded to. I had a new approach to my eating. I decided to separate my physical self from the rest of what I consider myself. My mind, my ego, my spirit, my soul. Whatnot. I decided to treat my physical self the way I know it wants to be treated. And I can imagine anything I want in the persona that is the non-physical me. But I wasn’t going to confuse the 2. I decided that my physical self didn’t need to be subjected to the whims and cravings and neediness of my spiritual self. That was a few days ago. Unfortunately, I have lapsed in the last 24 hours. My approach has turned into dust in the wind, as they say. But I don’t want it to. I would like to hold on. That’s why I knew I should write. When I first came up with the idea, I told my significant other. I think announcing it helped give it more weight and permanence. I haven’t been announcing it anymore, because I already announced it. That would be silly. But maybe it’s not as silly as it seems. It can be a form of story telling. I can announce it to others. I can announce it here, for instance. I am. I can announce it to my 2 month old. It’s tricky to find someone to continually announce it to. People might think I’m just being silly. They don’t want to know. I’d like to reboot. I’d like to go back 3 days, to when this was working. I’d like to keep it going, not discard it. Not disband. I don’t need to balloon. Ballooning.

hypotheses and philosophies

Morphine

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The reason I randomly wake up and act on an impulse 180 degrees opposite to the way I was behaving for the previous many days is because the direction of my life is not so cut and dry. What seems to be the right choice or the sensible and sensitive routes to take are apparently sometimes completely wrong. And part of me knows this and is willing to reverse course at times. I try to improve myself with therapy. I try to eat right. I try to become a better cellist and musician. I try to learn to be a better husband or boyfriend. I strive to be a better father. I work towards being more sociable and personable. But sometimes all of these efforts are wasted and ill advised. Sometimes I’m really supposed to throw all of my wisdom to the wind and look for the folly of my purportedly altruistic ways.
As I write this, it occurs to me that being a better person may backfire if I am not a very good person. I am giving myself the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it intrudes on my ability to control my eating because I am unearthing things about myself that don’t exist, and in the meantime I have given myself carte blanche in the indulgence department. I am off kilter. My behaviors are simply reactions to erroneous thinking. They have no meaning in and of themselves. That’s why I don’t have binge eating disorder. I have Adam living disorder. I am out of order.

everyday observations

Jackpot

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Sitting with the complexity of your inner thoughts and firings. Observing your environment from the perspective of a mammal, a human being without philosophical or religious preconceptions. Resting in the wherewithal of having weeded out my brainwashing, of being able to simply trust my inherent, natural experience as a fortunate biological creature.
I don’t have to either impose my dogmas on others or on top of my own environmental observations. I can listen with a clear conscience. I don’t have to be phased by the ups and downs and machinations of my friends and family. I don’t have to live in constant fear that I can’t simply trust my natural experience.
I am fortunate to be here, to be a human, to be a mammal. I don’t have to take it further than that. Everyone has that in common, by the way. I have made a sufficient effort to weed out the other extraneous nonsense that clouds the inherent human experience. It took. Somehow it took. That also includes my sessions with Christopher. Taking that magnifying glass to my soul helped with that extraneous crap. Christopher helped hold the magnifying glass and describe what we uncovered in simple, intuitively positive terms. Now I’m out from under the magnifier and have a clearer way of proceeding in the world. He helped me develop a philosophy that I can live with. It just so happens to be fairly devoid of preconceived magical machinations. It allows me to be a fairly unfettered observer of the world. That has been one of my long term goals, I guess. I never swallowed the opinionated dogmas fed to me to much degree. I don’t really see how science can be easily pigeonholed as a put-upon dogma. It seems to me to be a simple response to our five (or more) senses. We use these senses to observe. I am no scientist. But I do need to feed my intellect one way or another. Science does that without striving to invent fairy tales or lie to me. I can rest as well as be stimulated in the extraordinary observable world.
I wouldn’t claim that I am perfect. However I feel hope in my newfound ability not to forever cloud my experience in dogma and doubts. I can tell I have an improved ability to learn and adjust to the world.
It’s the gift of life. The gift of humanness. The gift of existence. Nothing more. Nothing less.

reflections within

Foremost

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What if I do the right things (eating, behavior, relationships) for the wrong reasons. Or at least not very good reasons. And what if I do the wrong things for the right reasons. The question is, does it matter why. Or is the what the point. I don’t think I’ve analyzed the why to a great degree. Although this blog belies that point of view. But that is my gut reaction. I look for ways to address the what, and the why trails behind somewhere. Is it a guy thing? Why. It’s a question of depth of understanding. Why. I feel good when I do the right thing. But what if I’m doing it without understanding or reason. In that case, is it better to just go ahead and do the wrong thing, but at least understand why and live with it.

What if you do the right things for the wrong reasons? What happens? They become fleeting. They are indefensible. You even doubt yourself. I imagine some people are better at the what and some the why. It depends on the type of person you are.
I’m not supposed to feel guilty, am I? I’m not supposed to feel inadequate, am I? Because I feel that creeping up. How am I supposed to feel about doing the right things for the wrong reasons. What if I figured out the actual reasons? What if I do have reasons, right or not, and I just can’t figure them out. But that gets back to the question of whether I’ve tried to figure them out. I think I have. And at this moment, I seem to have concluded that there is a right and wrong about them.
The problem with the wrong reasons is they don’t jive with the right actions. So it is unsustainable. It is untenable.

everyday observations

Gaunt

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Either I’m hard wired to abuse myself or the outside stimuli are truly addictive, overpowering my better nature. I may be able to change, but at any given moment I feel stuck. I guess that’s the nature of moments. That’s how you categorize or define them as moments.
I’ve thrown down the gauntlet.
All things bad throw down their gauntlet. They set up their challenge. The question becomes will I take it lying down, or respond in kind with my own gauntlet, my own glove? When I go to Publix there are many bad choices making themselves known and available. That is their version of a gauntlet. Like a temptation. But they are much more do or die, life or death. Like the challenge a gauntlet represents. It’s the other kind of challenge. A duel. All these inanimate objects are speaking to me of duels.
Good things are more quietly offering up their own un-knobby gauntlets. They whisper, Do you want to write? Take a walk? Do some yoga? Clean? Cook? Meditate? Be in a quiet space? So how will I respond to them? They pose the opposite challenge. They’re challenging me to pass them by, to ignore them. I often feel I can’t distinguish between the good and bad. But maybe I’m just temporarily blindsided. The bad things like to pretend they aren’t bad. They like to dress themselves up.

reflections within

Smarmy

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Anger. Anger. But to what end. I’ve always had anger, but I’ve never found much use for it. I end up stuffing it. What does a peacenik do with his anger? I guess I can be a jerk. I can be cold. I can be adrift. My unused anger clouds my brain. Maybe I have a particularly large amount of anger. And that really doesn’t jive with my assuaging ways. Quite the extremist.

So instead, what do I do? I let it out in tiny portions. Or I let it in. I turn my anger inwards on myself. Or I let it out on those closest to me. I have used this blog and therapy sessions as a way to more safely and effectively deal with my bottled up anger. Something made me angry today. Something probably makes me angry every day. Maybe the same thing. Is resentment the same as anger? I can’t distinguish.

Why do I let other people do the angriness for me? I love angry people. Literally. Angry, angry, angry. Angry. Angry. Hungry. Angry. Am I hungry or angry. One book I read proposed that words that sound similar can get intertwined in your subconscious. So if I’m angry, I might decide that I’m hungry instead. I wouldn’t be surprised if I overate out of anger. Since I don’t really have any better ideas. On the subject. Maybe I should ask Percy Grainger. It’s too bad I don’t have more time to figure these things out. Life is fleeting, isn’t it. I’m breathing. I’m angry. It matters. It matters. It matters how I feel. It matters that I feel. It matters that I was born. It matters.

I do like writing. I like talking too. There are those that like neither. No common ground. I wish my anger could wipe away annoying people. I wish I could act on my anger and everything would be perfect, would be wiped clean. I’m waiting for that to happen. Suddenly. I’ve always hoped it would be sudden.

I like to say to Cody, “I have a secret. I love you.” I like to be sneaky. I like to be surreptitious. I like to live in the dark. Too bad it’s a scary place. A place of sorrow. But it’s protected. You’re relatively safe. Some people keep their joys a secret. Maybe I do. Otherwise they are open to mockery and accusation. They can be challenged, debunked. There was a time, before certain things happened, that I was willing to shout my joys to all the world. A time where I knew of safety. A good time. A childlike time. A child doesn’t need to be demure, or shy. Adults suck. Adulthood is hell. Hell is where you can’t shout out. You’re muzzled. You’re muffled. Hell. Hell. Oh, hell. Why do we have to grow up? Why? Why is it necessary? Who invented adulthood? Who came up with the idea? Someone who was robbed of their childhood?

everyday observations

Hornet

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I am writing this to clarify thoughts I have been having, primarily about eating. I have had instances where I thought I was clear in my mind about something, but time ended up causing a fading effect to my ideas, to the point where I could barely remember what I was thinking.

I realized a few weeks ago that everything I’ve been trying to do with eating may very well be biting me in the ass. I was going with the assumption that the basic philosophy of Overeaters Anonymous is probably a good rule of thumb – that being that the closer you can get to abstinence the better.

I just watched an episode of House. It delved into his psyche by way of a therapy session. I do like the question of the search for one’s truth. At first, I got a hankering for the way he was obliged to verbalize his life and the meaning thereof. It’s certainly cathartic. Why can’t things be that easy, that simple? Why can’t life be that straightforward? Are other people’s lives simple like that? I feel they might be. I feel my life is too multi-faceted. I can’t really keep things straight like I’d like to. And it’s not because of what you think. It’s not externally overwhelming. My worst falls into oblivion come when I’m bereft of activities and distractions, obligations.

As I was previously saying (and hopefully to some useful end), I had an epiphany about my eating. Something about what Khwan likes to say just clicked. The answer isn’t to overpower the cravings, it’s to incorporate them into my life. They are natural. Fighting with them is like fighting anything that’s innate. They eventually will get the upper hand.

So from that point on, I have been incorporating my cravings and temptations into my daily food consumption, without nearly as much of a fight. I’ve been trying to view them as a proportion of what I require gastronomically. It seems to have helped. I’m a little more even keeled. Less of the see-saw effect, where I deny and then binge.

Unfortunately, I am not seeing an improvement in the slimming down department. This morning I decided I would try to tweak my system. I’m not sure it was a success. I thought I would spread out the satisfying of my cravings or temptations. I even thought I could separate cravings and temptations into different categories, cravings being the real, biochemical versions of the fake temptations. So that way I could really wait until the craving kicked in before I’d give in to it. But it turns out that the psychological temptations are nearly as powerful as the physiological cravings. Hmmm.

everyday observations

Pamali

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The tapestry. The birth and death of a great multitude of humans, right? And all the in between phases of a life. How rich it is. You think your own personal experience is sufficiently rich. But there is always someone either one step ahead or one step behind. Since that is a fascinating way of looking at one’s own life. What about the overlap? We talk about eyesight, the phases of deterioration. We compare. You can think about someone born 5 seconds after you, or 5 minutes, or 5 days, etc. On and on. And likewise before.

I guess my point is partly that you don’t have to worry that life is empty. It is anything but. And you don’t have to worry that no one understands you. The guy born 20 seconds before you will soon most likely experience many things you could share. And those born 20 years before you are your windows into a possible future for you.

Again, you don’t need stories of invisible deities to enrich the potential for wisdom that is ingrained into the tapestry of our human interweavings. Wisdom needn’t be exclusive. That’s so unhuman. Wisdom is supposed to be an unalienable right, really. There’s almost a stigma about it these days. Ha ha. Is it really just these days?

everyday observations

glug

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So if I have this eating disorder where I binge, isn’t it an interesting question to know what sets me off? My triggers, as they’re somewhat annoyingly called. I thought I had figured out a big one – exercise. I thought I had found a perfect correlation between the two. No good deed goes unpunished, so to speak. But doesn’t that also expand out to any spat of healthfulness? Like do I reach a point if I’m attempting to eat healthily and/or lightly, where I suddenly decide I now deserve to pour hot coffee all over my clean newspaper. It’s really quite dangerous. That’s what makes it a perfect fit for the term eating disorder. It’s utterly toxic.

Essentially you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. And that is certainly an interesting part of what seems to be NEDA’s philosophy. Become an expert on your disease, but don’t think there’s a magic bullet other than what may or may not be illuminated over the course of the journey.

You’re damned if you eat poorly, which seems obvious from the outside, but it’s far from it from here. And you’re damned if you eat well or exercise, because you’re inevitably setting yourself up for the next round of crapping all over yourself. It feels right to eat poorly because 95% or so of you is pleading with you to do it. How can you coldly ignore that voice forever?

I used to think it was about hunger. Like the feeling of hunger. But I don’t mind hunger, really. It’s anything healthy. Health. Organic health. It is unsustainable. Insupportable. Hunger is an aspect of good health. But it isn’t the whole picture.

hypotheses and philosophies

Highly

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I can look at life in a small snapshot or in a long telephoto lens. But I have to know that I am looking. I am looking wistfully. Lovingly. Appreciatively. The circumstances will dictate which vantage point I take.

If I don’t view life this way, life has a tendency to steamroller you, to crush you under its immense weight. You’re barely there. You’re barely enjoying the ride. As they say. Really, you have no choice but to view life in these terms, so it seems. It’s the range from the very small to the very big, and anywhere in between, I guess.