This Joseph Greenstein strength training experiment isn't working out so well. At first I felt great but now my body seems to have crashed and burned. I've been feeling increasingly fatigued the last week or two now. Today my head hurts, my body's overheated, I've no energy at all, I feel kind of nauseous and... I'm worried about the occasional pains in the general area of my gall bladder...

Then I wonder if feeling this way is unrelated to trying to exercise as I think Greenstein did... Possibly but I won't chance it. I really feel bad. Particularly worried about the pain in my stomach. Both my sister and my mother have had their gall bladders removed. That's something I'd like to avoid having done. That of course though, should really be a matter of diet and not exercise...

Anyway, I'm on fire. Which is the problem with exercise. I've this strange body where I get to feeling this way if I'm not careful. What it is about me that makes me this way I don't know. Again, it seems generally that if I manage to be very consistent then I'm fine. But if I miss too many days, this happens. I maybe missed too many days. But what I was trying to do started becoming too taxing and I really needed to rest a bit here and there.

I'm a fool for trying such experiments. I should really just do sensible exercise. The Greenstein experiment was nice though in that I slept great... And the first three weeks were great all around.

Honest!

This isn't a new song. I wrote it about a year ago but at the time I was really questioning just what the hell was I doing exactly with this whole writing music thing, much more so than now, although still am. Anyway both liked it then and thought it embarrassingly awful. Listened to it just now and thought it perfect and wonderful.

Look at the big braying fool. He's honest. Laugh at what a bizarre specimen he is. What a masochist. The definition of insanity is repeating the same actions over and over again and expecting a different result. He must be a masochist. He's honest and honest and honest and honest. The same word repeated hundreds of times.

..makes for a wincingly repetitive awful song? Or no. Only slightly repetitive all and all.

Let's start from the beginning. Reality is twisted. It must be. How else to explain this unconformed honesty? Some great and fabulous prize looms off in the distance in his mind and he seeks the truth and tries to draw others on along on the journey with him. Honest! Honest! Screaming it with your dying breath, again and again.

Wait. What are you doing? This is strange behavior on your part. This is a bit unreal. And causing negative results...

Still onwards! Reality twists and you journey on and on and on. Here and there coming to close to the edge.

Rarely: an oasis of healing. A moment of clarity. And rest.

Then, again, the ideal looms above. Shining, beautiful, awful, glorious. Onwards and onwards he strives towards it.

This is so strange. What are we doing? Where are we going exactly....?
--
...but I listen to it the next day and I wonder what in the world I was thinking. It's awful!

This is a test.

If it had been a real life, you would have received a cookie.

--

Finished Robin Hobb's Farseer Trilogy. The final book had an annoying couple hundred page stretch and then a let down as the hero is reduced to having no purpose in life anymore and living in some cottage doing not much.

Otherwise what I found most interesting was how especially in the first two books such awful things happen to the hero, yet it's still something to escape to. How can this be? Because despite all the awful things which happen, all the injustice, and despite all the insights about human behavior that Hobb shows (in an unpreachy way) it's still essentially completely dishonest. If all the rest were filled in that made it like real life with respect to how the characters thought and acted, it wouldn't be any kind of thing to escape to at all.

But it's essentially such lies. Such pretty lies... To write such a book, a book people could actually enjoy reading, it really seems a person would have to value fun/a good time so so much more than the truth.

Same song as before but fixed up.

I was kaput yesterday.

I wonder if my not wanting to spend multiple days writing a song is from a fear of failure? I have a book lying somewhere in this house by a psychiatrist who specializes in creativity and he's primarily all about fear of failure. I think he even went so far as to divide things up into 7 different kinds of fear of failure that you have to try to constantly overcome. I do try to write music, so in a way I've overcome fear of failure. But perhaps not trying too hard is fear of failure rearing it's head in the distance yet again. A foe like a necromanisized(sp) zombie that you keep killing and killing and it just keeps coming back to life.

Probably the name I gave the song (Once built, forever destroyed) game me the impetus to go back and fix it up. There was a part in the middle where I actually wasn't even on the beat! Plus the ending wasn't any good. Added some notes and put in a trumpet. Still the nuance of the trumpet isn't so great. But I can stand this version. It's now not quite such a testament to what a failure I forever am.

Now I've two other creative mediums I haven't really started in because of fear of failure. And, it's not so simple as saying, "Oh, I just fear failure. Well then, I'll quit doing that and get along with things!" It's not so simple in that we do have to try to assess whether or not we'll be successful at something to determine what's the best direction to take...

I have the idea stuck in my head that coffee isn't really good for me. Yet, it seems that in ways it really is. I am a better person if I have a cup of coffee in the morning. Just one cup of coffee changes the way I go about my entire day. The change is somewhat subtle. There aren't quite words to explain what happens in my mind. It's not simply that I have more energy. Not at all. In fact last night proves that. On my days off I don't do a good job of having that one cup of coffee. Now that I have a lot more days off I've been drinking less coffee with the end result that I'm ...sort of dragging through my days but it's not quite correct to define it as if it's a lack of energy.

Coffee is a real bonafide drug that keeps my mind just turning away from negative stuff. I literally take a few gulps and my mind feels like it's in a swirl of enporphins. And I feel as if it helps me ignore some essentially negative aspect of reality. An aspect that facing isn't doing any good whatsoever. Just grinding the life out of me.

I've drank a cup a day maybe on average for a couple years now... And I feel as if in a sense I dragged through years of my life before coffee.

It tastes like chocolate to me. This I guess because my sense of taste doesn't quite work correctly. I once made a pie and accidentally used salt instead of sugar. Perhaps a person with a normal sense of taste would notice their mistake on the first... possibly second bite. I ate two large pieces and just noticed I felt a bit sick to my stomach.

Not much sense of smell, I can barely smell a 'code brown' at the hospital or a colostomy bag. Otherwise I usually just imagine I smell things that aren't actually there. And the sense of taste I guess is somehow connected to smell.

Anyway yesterday, I went without my coffee and just felt out of sorts. Again I only drink maybe a cup a day on average. That's not much. I don't think it's withdrawal. As it's an 'out of sorts' feeling that I recall having continously when younger before I ever touched coffee.

Of course right after the post about sleeping so good, my sleep hadn't been quite as good. So then I drink half a cup of coffee and I feel like a weight has been lifted off of me. I almost immediately feel better. And then I fall asleep for 5 hours. Coffee as a sleep aid? (Sigh) My body is too weird. Too impossible to figure out.

I have to get more of into a habit of drinking coffee. Though I hate to be dependent on any kind of drug. The truth is though I just do better, so much better. I defeat the existential nihilism in me when I drink a bit of coffee. Not by thinking more clearly. The opposite. My mind becomes distracted by minutae(sp). Lots of things pop into it which I focus solely upon instead of having a part of me standing back and holding on to the bigger picture in all it's awful glory.

But I have this idea that coffee surely can't be good for my health. And so I hold back. I might not even average a single cup a day.

And, one thing I've noticed is that the quality of my fingernails has changed. They seem a tad bit brittle. I think it's most likely a lack of calcium. Maybe in part because I've been eating a lot of spinach instead of broccoli lately. (The acid in spinach counteracts it's calcium). But maybe the coffee also plays a role...

I think I need to make sure to have one, maybe even two cups of coffee a day. Right now I've just woken up (5AM). Hmmm, but I had half a cup at 9:30pm last night and I am still feeling it. I'm very definitely blocking out the existentialism (the big picture). I'm not thinking about my place in the universe. Not thinking about what my existence is. What I have to show for my life. What few real friends I have. How I'm a lemming holed up in a shack. Not thinking of the truth of what 99.9% of interactions are. Etc. Yeck. Just thinking all about coffee. Now off to eat some broccoli and read a book. In a few hours the existentialism will creep in and I'll have some coffee.

Hopefully better understanding how the coffee achieves it's positive effect won't cause me to overcome it.

Beginning part was the first 'original' thing I played on the piano 20+ years ago.

I think it's not very good though. But I wandered off into trying to take that bit and make a complete 'song' from it. Not an easy task. Also I was getting bored. In fact I'd suggest no one actually listen to it. Just marking my musical 'progression' here in my blog.

Sleeping incredibly good for the last month or so now. During that time I've started exercising differently and started working as an RN. And started working night shifts. And have generally less stress I guess. I guess.

I think it's the exercise though. Started exercising as I think Joseph Greenstein essentially did. As an experiment. Greenstein was a professional strongman noted among other things for his exceptional longevity. Into his 70's he could still rip horseshoes in half. Also he only weighed about 150 pounds. Also instead of being a protein stuffer he was a near vegetarian.

As best I can tell he got that way simply by routinely attempting to bend a horseshoe. Although along with the strength in his hands he developed the ability to bite through metal, etc.

Anyway, intrigued by that idea for strength training. So, once a day I've been trying a single time to do a one arm chinup. Which at my weight only 3 people in history have ever even allegedly done. Also then I do a single set of one arm pushups with form that makes them as hard as possible.

It's a combination of scientific curiousity along with wanting to be in a decent shape. I still weigh 242 pounds. Although I look a bit better.

I had almost reached the point of a one arm chinup a few years back following a very slightly more orthodox training regimen and being 20+ pounds lighter.

Anyway, sleeping incredibly well now. Never have insomnia. Sleeping through the day deeply. Able to sleep whenever I think I ought. Then feeling very good while awake.