The stepping stones by my house, 6 months ago? 10 months ago? I couldn't run across them two at a time. Trying to do so hurt my knees and for that matter my back at times. Now I can easily. Today was jumping from two stones away up onto the deck, just while working around the yard. Just jumping because it felt good, felt so good to have back such agility, to be able to just take off and fly for a moment. As a child and young adult I was constantly taking off and jumping up stairs as far as I could and so on.

Have this back because I've been jogging at a 2% incline on the treadmill about 6 days a week. Have been doing so for maybe 3 weeks now?? Previously was slowly working into it except running less often and at a greater intensity. And that definitely did not work as well.

Have to get daily exericse, the key being to lessen the intensity so that I can manage to do so. It's especially difficult with the 14 hour night shifts, dealing endlessly with death, etc. So hard to exercise on top of that. The key now has been to keep it "comfortable" or I should say, on the edge of comfortable, where my breathing doesn't quite elevate. Still can carry on a conversation but maybe usually would rather not. Just running 0.5 to 1.5 miles followed by 10 to 20 minutes of "comfortable" weightlifting. For weightlifting to be "comfortable" and yet not useless, means there must be some volume, which so often has caused me insomnia in the past. But with blueberry smoothies I'm not having insomnia.

So health is good then.

Work is running me down lately. I think the main problem. (Of so many problems). Is that my empathy is waning. Feeling like most of these people are sick because they were mentally lazy and simply didn't do the things they needed to do to not get sick. Basically I'm thinking like a rightwinger about things. I need to remember that my own family members and myself also at times have done some of the same behaviors they've spent their life doing.

This lack of empathy is making the work unrewarding. Need to overcome it, stop demonizing... or "uglyizing"? my patients.

I could maybe think that my patients are:
1. Slowly committing suicide on a subconscious level and deserve empathy on that basis.
2. Live in a society where disgusting harmful food is usually the only choice. Even at the hospital cafeteria this is the case actually. When people are surrounded by such how can I hold it against them for eating it?
3. Fooled into thinking the doctors know what the hell they're about when they tell them to take all those pills.
4. Don't bother to get knowledgeable because when you get down to it, this life sucks so bad who really wants to live to be very old anyway?

Hmmmm, I'll have to work on it.

At the same time I simultaneously have the opposite problem, where I feel too much empathy for the pain and suffering of some of my patients. Such didn't used to weigh me down so much. I think it's my own inconsistency from patient to patient which is making it harder to deal with. To stop judging probably would be good. Yet I've been doing this long enough it's hard to not immediately categorize people. What are the categories?
Very generally:
1. Drug seekers.
2. Mentally lazy people who need to educate themselves about how to maintain good health.
3. People who actually deserve my empathy.

I usually have at least one drug seeker a shift. And the mentally lazy make up the majority of my patients. Really have to find some other way to think about it. Remember that I myself am far from being perfectly "mentally unlazy". And I could relate some of how I feel about food to how other people feel about drugs I supppose.

My past experiment with running a very long distance once a week may have been causing me to slowly run faster, but it seems to have been awful for my joints. Now I'm trying to run almost everyday. Mixing up my speed/intensity from day to day. Almost always on a sturdy treadmill with at least a 5% incline. When I go out on the concrete my right knee isn't liking it. I'm trying to strengthen my legs and work into this gradually. Hopefully my knee will strengthen up.

I need to aim for 45 minutes of aerobic exercise on average. Also need to get into more of a habit of drinking tea, wine, consistently getting adequate vitamin D, consistently getting enough omega 3's. And making more friends. Except for the omega 3's and perhaps the vitamin D, I can immediately notice feeling slightly better when I do these other things.

Otherwise I'm apparently a really healthy person without hardly trying to be.

The Heart of Stalking???

Trying to change you though (make you something other than indifferent) is I think the main question of humankind. So to sit and ponder and ponder and wonder what miracle it would take doesn't seem to be really that much of a waste of time.

Would be good if I had some idea what the particulars are here though.

Do you know what suffering you're causing and just not care?
Do you think I'm not actually suffering?
Do you think it's some kind of bizarre trick and that actually I'm some kind of evil person?
Do you think there's actually nothing at all you can do to stop my suffering? I'm just nuts (go see a 'professional', you just need a happy pill)? Or that it would take waaay too much on your part to stop it?

Which one of the above errors, or which combination, are you making?

There are types of people that think when they disagree with someone, the thing to do is simply say nothing and suddenly cut all ties with the person.

Why?

Because they believe the way everyone acts is set in stone?
Because they project their own incredible closemindedness on everyone else?
Or because they don't understand what the heck is going on in their own head well enough to explain what it is they aren't liking/disagree about?
Because there's so many millions of people living in close proximity and yet at the same time conveniently shut off from one another that we can let a few float in and then pass on by and it really doesn't even matter? They're interchangeable? Concepts like community and friendship are so 16th century?
Because actually, other than a spouse, 'friends' today are just the people you work with for a year or so till one of you moves to a new job?
Because we really don't have any meaningful concrete connection? There aren't any crops we're growing together; no village we're defending?
Because they're evil?

All it would take is appearing to give a shit about the lives of your fellow human beings. Just attempting to explain whatever in the world you're thinking.

And what would it take for that to happen?

The assumption of good on my part. Not perfect. Making mistakes. But not meaning anything bad. Not trying at all to cause harm. The assumption that of course there is a worthwhile human being here.

With that assumption, then just simply having explained yourself in the first place, instead of what you did.

But that's not what you are, that's not what the world is. (You = World, symbolic. Like it or not, you've represented it perfectly). You and everyone else doesn't make that assumption. You and everyone else errs on the side of not getting taken advantage of. And the weaker and stupider people are, the farther they err in that direction. They find ways to suspect, to believe, the other is evil.

Or they find no way to not be indifferent.

And thus the world is a sort of dystopia.
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And then there is punishment of the evildoer, etc, in a great big neverending circle.
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My gawd my music kicks ass.
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I went to work the other night despite my back being so messed up I could hardly stand erect. The first 8 hours were hell. Of course I got pulled to another unit for the very first time. I knew the evil god who's (or I'm Job) torturing me would make sure on this night when my back hurt so bad I'd get pulled and have a difficult assignment. Possible dilantin infiltrations, endless people with so many tubes coming out of them it was very difficult to keep it all straight. And I'm hobbling around like Igor. Perfect.

Then I drank a bottle of OJ. Regretably I don't hardly ever eat fruit or even drink fruit juice. I drank the bottle of OJ and within an hour I was walking normally without any pain. This after my back being so messed up for the previous 5 days. Hmpf.

Surely there was more to it than the OJ but it reminds me (yet again) that I really ought to make sure to consume a little fruit each day.
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What was it? ? ? ? ? ? Ghost idealism

Imagine a large tribe of elves in the woods (by elves I mean 'good humans') that are defeated by an army of orcs (bad humans)(notice 'good' was in quotes but not 'bad', as it's maybe not actually possible for anyone to be good but bad is easy enough).

The elves are defeated and made slaves (because they're not as aggressive and being aggressive more than makes up for stupidity). The pretty elven women that survive exist as sex things. The people who survive in general are slaves.

But the orces are way too crude to not have a meritocracy. If you embrace their ways you can move up and someday be a powerful man amongst them.

Three elves. One on seeing the women raped attacks the orcs, knowing full well he'll be killed and indeed he is killed.

He's an idealist.

The second one sees it and is sickened but does nothing to stop it. He does as he's told and spends his life as a slave. Never attempting to effect any change.

He's a ghost idealist.

The third elf embraces their ways. He seemingly learns to think a bit of rape is all in good fun. Slavery's just how life is, etc. He becomes a powerful man and enacts some few rules regulating slavery.

One could say the first man was a coward; that he couldn't bear to continue living. One could say the second man, the ghost idealist, is another type of coward; by being an idealist he is making himself partially not really here at all. He's making sure he'll never accomplish anything and actually need not even ever really try. One could say the third man is the one responding the best.

One could look at it all another way whereby this makes no sense.

One could instead make the pragmatist spend his life in a most awful way where every moment is horror just to in the end see himself and his race die out.

It's a question of degree but humans don't really do degrees well. Should be some kind of way to take questions of degrees and respin them so that we can consistently hold on to highly nuanced positions over the long term and even in our 'reflex' thinking.
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What was that? ? Ghost Idealism and what was the other? ? I imagine it was some really amazing thing. But I remember that it wasn't actually. It's really just I have nothing to say and I'm saying it (the entire blog). But this one bit that was forgotten has such mystery now. I can put it on a pedestal as a great thought to worship. To love.

I read Guy Gavriel Kay's viking fantasy, something about Light of the Sun... title made no sense relative to the book that I could see. I've read half of another titled Prospero's Children. And part of that Gene Wolfe ancient Greece book.

None of these people know how to properly tell a story. OTOH Robin Hobb is king. I shall attempt to start putting together a story/ies keeping Hobb's expert writing in mind.

I've spent the last 4 days laid up with I guess back spasms. Not too painful but I can't stand up straight and can hardly walk (not too painful unless I try to stand up straight). The worst part is just watching the time pass by, praying I'll have healed enough to go work for 14 hours (on my feet probably a good 5) on Monday night. I already called off for Friday night. If I call off Monday night that will be two call offs. We get 5 for an entire year. At which point we receive a written infraction (whatever that means). Fired at 11.

Which is absurd. It's a hospital by the way. This means people routinely come to work sick and spread their diseases to their patients. It should be against the law to have such a policy about sick days at a hospital. It is a threat to the public's health.

It's not as big a deal for me as I usually go years at a time without catching colds or flus. But the back thing worries me. It seems to be an increasingly chronic problem. Will have to start taking additional steps to try to fix this problem. But it seems to follow no rhyme or reason...

I don't think sitting in a chair is really a good idea so for now I lay in bed praying I'll heal enough to handle work Monday night. It's not looking like I'll quite be better enough that I should attempt such a thing. I suppose I could get out my old laptop and try to outline some kind of template while I lay in bed...

At some point I need to actually truly begin the writing. I hold back almost as if I think my real life hasn't yet started.
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I think Michael Harrison's justly toned piano is beautiful by the way. There is perhaps something positive to be said for the extra dissonance along with the extra consonance.

Despite going off into dissonance there still seems to be something limited about the songs he's written with it though. (Also the pounding repetitive dissonant tone clouds of song 4 and 10 are kind of awful.) If one stayed in consonance, just intonation IS limited. With Harrison, I think he's still staying enough within it (it still sounds like music) that it is limited. I want though to experiment with the same tuning next and see if it is indeed limited. Probably so.

Limited or not, when working instead with VST technology it might make more sense to add many additional tones to the standard 12 to potentially remove dissonance from the just intonation (so you had a choice). So for example, having a second D note that was tuned to be consonant (1.5/1) with the originally justly tuned A note, etc. Although this concept taken all the way could mean a huge scale. One could instead limit this scale somewhat, maybe just tripling it for example to add more possibility, if indeed the justly toned 12 is as limited (although beautiful) as it appears in Harrison's work.

This does appear to come back somewhat to the justonic concept. Although is a combination of the two and was thinking might be easier or lazier to not actually bother with justonic and instead just make a separate scala file that added additional... secondary D, E notes, etc.

But there are all kinds of additional issues. Does one retune the additional notes based on the triad or the fifth, etc? There is no answer really. Would depend on each individual song. Would be very complicated.

About the justonic: I don't even think the justonic really makes all that much sense either. You play for example a C/E/G chord, then a D/F/A followed by a E/G/B chord in succession. In just intonation the first is perfect consonance, the following two are dissonant. But using the justonic, say where it used the lowest note as the root, all would be consonant, but the last G would be a different G than the first.

What this is to say, is that the step up by the middle note would be different than the step up by the bottom note... I think this in and of itself is similar to the issue of dissonance. I need to hear extended music written with justonic. I think it would have a vertigo-like effect.

Once every 6 days a set of 3 chinups followed by a single attempt at a one arm chinup. Also same idea with presses with elbows all the way in. Elbows in means less chest development but far more all around development. More traps, shoulders and even triceps. In the past I did this for chinups and got to bodyweight plus 105 pounds for 3 reps (when I weighed 220 pounds). But then for at least 4 workouts in a row I couldn't quite get the 4th repetition. I was getting closer though. And probably I should have been thinking in terms of improving by a milimeter each workout (on average), most certainly not by entire reps.

Interestingly only attempting one arm chinups where I could not even get halfway up for at least the last six weeks did not hurt my ability to perform a full range of motion chinup. Actually during this time I've gotten much stronger at the full range of motion.

For yesterday, my most recent attempt at a one arm chinup, I got halfway up although with the considerable assist of pinching part of the doorframe between the fingertips of my off hand. Which I think I'll do no assist at all now. Also the Coc #3 immediately after.

And a bit of jogging for my back.

And, I dislike how I've lost the spring in my step. So although I don't play basketball anymore, (so so so sick of the fighting and lack of time, etc) adding leaping lenas of old no matter how ridiculous such may appear.

And I went jogging yesterday and immediately my back feels better after having hurt (sciatica pain into my right leg) for the last 5 days.