Copyright 2019 by Alan Carl Nicoll
All Rights Reserved
{11/15/19} Weight 220.0.
One advantage of owning a laptop is that, when your power goes out, you still have a computer. Though you won’t necessarily be able to read the keyboard. My power went out around midnight (an alarming knock at the front door from the hired help) and could be out most of the day due to an automobile accident that destroyed some equipment. Anyway, being unable to read conveniently this morning, at least I can write. And if the problem continues throughout the day, well, going to the Southwest Library also would make sense, since I learned yesterday that I have a book on hold there.
Long dream this morning of me in the neighborhood of my growing up, and indeed, returning to my home of 21 years. When I came in the door, expecting to see my mother, I found instead another relative, I think maybe an aunt. There was more earlier, but I don’t care to describe it.
Well, Ben (organizer of “Shut Up and Write”) had a copy of The Bullet Journal Method at our meeting yesterday, a book I had bought for Pablo about three months ago but disdained for myself. On giving it a brief look, I saw that there were things in the back that went beyond the immediate subject, in particular, a chapter titled “Inertia” caught my interest. We had a good conversation (Pablo and E also participating) until Pablo got to droning on about various things. So Pablo and I went to Barnes & Noble, where I obtained a copy and sat for a few minutes in the café, looking through it. I decided to buy it. I’m pretty sure that I won’t follow the “BuJo” system, but I thought it worth buying because if I get even one idea that I use from it, it’s worth the $26. (Annoyingly, I didn’t think to check for the current Videohound book.) I expressed, rather too strongly, my displeasure with his urging Ben to start a blog, since he is already doing something in that line and he works in a related area—as well as his [Pablo’s] generally boring conversation (gossip about some movie stars, mostly). He proved to be unable to change the subject, so in the end it amounted to letting him bore me by saying what he would say. At one point I felt it necessary to apologize for “being crabby,” though the criticism was well-deserved. But, seriously, these days I have rather less patience with him, perhaps exacerbated by my recent seeming rededication to “seriousness,” thus a reduced tolerance for nonsense and time-wasting. I think yesterday I lost ninety minutes, maybe more, to his chin-wagging. I’m too old to be squandering time on something I find unpleasant.
What the “Inertia” chapter advised was that, when facing a block like writer’s block or perhaps a willpower challenge, one should think about it in detail, examining the assumptions under the surface, more or less. This is of course what Fritz recommends when facing an unpleasant emotion—“Go deeper into it.” It seems I did that in the last paragraph.
My apartment is especially poor in outside light, so I may go to MacDonald’s for breakfast, if for no other reason than that eating in the dark is unappealing. That would also let me get in a little reading. Today threatens to be tedious.
I’m feeling twinges of hunger, but I’ve missed the 7:00 bus; so, 7:30. It’s actually light enough in here to eat breakfast, but of course I wouldn’t be able to watch TV, so I’m going.
Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, which I’ve read and appreciated at least four times (at least the second half), this time isn’t doing much for me—not because I remember it too well, just that I’m feeling unpersuaded. Also, Jourard’s The Transparent Self hasn’t caught my interest. And I’m feeling uninvolved in Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality—it’s slow starting (which, of course, is an emotion I “generate,” according to Fritz).
Okay, so it really is “all about me.”
{11/16/19} Weight 219.6 at 5:30 am. I got a thorough cleaning out yesterday, perhaps because of a burrito at El Pollo Loco. At 2:00 last night I had a granola bar.
1:00 am. I went to sleep at 7:00 last night because I was sick of reading in the “dark.” I’ve been more or less awake since midnight.
I got up, finally, because I wanted to record something: I once told Fabiola that “I’m the best-read person you’ve ever met or are ever likely to meet.” If she hasn’t met Harold Bloom, that may be an accurate statement; but it remains a stupid one.
Getting along without electricity is not much fun. When the power will return is unknown. Is this what the future of human civilization looks like? In part, no. If we are forced to get along with little electricity, the situation will be far more dire than mine is, by most counts. The one better aspect would be that people won’t be living alone—they won’t be able to afford it. My situation is fortunate in a number of respects: first, my landlord gave me access to a vacant apartment, where I can use the all-important refrigerator. Second, I already had four battery-powered sources of light and three battery-powered clocks. It’s little enough. I have a rechargeable MP3 player with radio that I wanted to use, but I couldn’t find my (broken) headphones, so I’m without any entertainment or news. My laptop and phone I had to recharge at the library; tomorrow I’ll be going to Dagny’s to charge the laptop and likely meet people. After that is Sunday, the Hemlock Club (so again Dagny’s), and one hopes that by Monday, at least, the power will be on.
All I carted across to the refrigerator was my frozen stuff, plus orange juice, salsa, and a couple of sodas. Eggs, ham, cheese, and other stuff I left here, anticipating no particular degradation overnight, but by tomorrow I may just start cooking over there.
I have $115, plus about $10 cash and a roll of quarters, to live on for eleven days. That’s thin, especially since the pressure to eat out is more than usually high. Pablo, who has lost his food stamps for the moment, will have to make do without relying on me. (He needs to find the paperwork but doesn’t bother looking very hard—my opinion, of course.) I spent $3.75 yesterday for two candles and a Bic lighter. I’m burning both candles; it looks like they’ll last maybe four hours total, if I’m lucky. I’m probably not that lucky, and three hours is more realistic. I have one scented candle in the bathroom that I’m not using yet.
I’ve been reading Ryder Carroll: The Bullet Journal Method pretty intensively (to page 156 over two days), but it looks to make little impact on my lifestyle. I use six notebooks currently, five small and one steno pad. This diary (276 pages this year) also is relevant. It might be of interest to record the purposes of the notebooks here:
- A general notebook for whatever doesn’t go in the others.
- A willpower notebook to record my wp challenges and rules for meeting them.
- “100 Ideas.”
- Words and Quotes: words that are important enough that I want to carry around definitions, plus Scrabble words, and a few short quotes that I might want to reference, e.g., in conversation, or to memorize.
- A special notebook for the Moleskine Writing System, so far only for cartooning, and little used.
- The steno notebook is mostly for book and movie titles, web sites, and things I want to research or buy on the Internet, so I only carry it with the laptop.
- In addition, I have a pocket-sized two-year calendar that I use virtually daily.
I find this system convenient and efficient (?), and so I have no room in my life for a Bullet Journal. The steno notebook could be handled like a BuJo, with an index and specialized numbered pages, but this seems hardly necessary. One of the features of the BuJo is to record tasks; I don’t actually have a system or to-do list for this. I tend to use post-it notes for tasks and shopping lists.
To my mind, one of the disadvantages of the BuJo is that it could not be as small as my little notebooks; one of the disadvantages of my system is that I sometimes have to add a new notebook (two in the last month). Of course, I don’t carry all six or seven with me at all times, only when carrying my tote bag. But if I thought the BuJo worth the effort, it would not be a great hardship to carry along, since about 98% of the time I go out I have at least a book with me, and probably 90% of the time I have my tote bag. The one attractive feature not covered by my present system is the “permanent record” aspect; my diary of course is a permanent record, but it lacks the structure of the BuJo. It is, however, electronically searchable. Combining the BuJo with the computer-pen would allow migrating the contents over to the computer, getting the best of both worlds. But the simple fact is that my life isn’t complicated or busy enough to warrant a Bullet Journal.
Neither is Pablo’s, which I suppose is why he hasn’t even read the whole book. He uses the Method intermittently at best.
I could add a feature to this diary to capture the kind of thing that BuJos would provide: an easy look-back to see what one has done. Clearly, I’m not often going to want to read 300 pages to find out “what did I do last year?” In other words, it wouldn’t be hard to make a monthly summary a feature of this diary. But I can imagine that I wouldn’t keep up with it, so, meh.
A siren at 1:50 in the night is surely unnecessary, yet that’s what’s happening.
The BuJo book has more than just the BuJo method, or I wouldn’t have bought it. It has considerations of meaning and goals and such, in addition to the chapter on “Inertia” that I wanted. But The Willpower Instinct does these things better and at much greater length. The two books are complementary and would seem to work well together; indeed, my WP notebook is almost a mini-BuJo, lacking primarily the calendar (and, of course, the system and the generality).
Coming up with a way to hold my candles required some thought. At first I looked at candle holders at Target, of which I found one, and it seemed to me unsatisfactory at $3 (I was already wincing at the $3 for two candles). So I sought alternatives, thinking next of a paper cup with a thumbtack stuck through the bottom (and into the candle). But I have no thumbtacks, and the ones I found at Target were also $3, and I have no other use for thumbtacks at present. I thought for a while about the wooden desktop organizer they had, but it would otherwise be redundant, I didn’t like the style, and I think it was $8. Finally I hit on the small ceramic pencil cup I have; with the addition of some small pebbles, it’s working well to hold my two candles.
Now I seem to be out of things to write about, so I’m going back to bed to read for a while. My laptop battery is down to 76%; I have the screen dimmed.
Spent $29.23 of my dwindling money at Wal-Mart to get headphones, vitamins, and a mattress pad. When I got home I wanted to try the headphones, but the MP3 player was flashing “low battery.” After panicking that I would have to go out again, to a library or something, and thinking about eating at McDonald’s, I came to my senses and took it across to the vacant apartment and plugged it in, bringing back my frozen taquitos, the same thing I had last night. I fry them, though I’d nuke them if I could, despite the inferior results.
Received in the mail today 50 Self-Help Classics. It’s a pretty odd collection, and I accuse the author of saving labor by reusing books he’s covered in his other books. So we get Bertrand Russell’s The Conquest of Happiness in his philosophy classics as well as here. That’s all right, though—I got it [50 Classics] for ninety-nine cents (postage) as my “free book” from Thriftbooks.
Since I realized, finally, that I can charge batteries across the way, I can be profligate with my laptop battery.
I’m down to $66, plus cash of about $25. It’s bad enough that I’ve decided to stop giving Mr. Dalz his usual $2. I get paid in eleven days. This is about as low as I’ve gotten; from now on, all I can buy is food. Why, then, the headphones ($5)? Because I want some entertainment; although I didn’t know it before, the TV in the vacant apartment doesn’t seem to get but one channel. The mattress pad could have waited, and it was $15. I absolutely did not want to wait on the vitamins, since it’s been about a week that I’ve been out. Vitamins at my Food Maxx are quite outrageous, mostly because of the selection, I think.
I’ve come to a decision, prompted in part by The Bullet Journal Method, to no longer allow Pablo to bore me with his rambling, audience-inappropriate talk. I say “audience inappropriate” because I don’t want to hear it, and he knows it. Last time I just kept complaining, and he just kept talking. Next time I’m going to walk away—in a restaurant I’ll sit at another table, on the phone I’ll hang up. Actions speak louder than words: he’ll get the message next time.
{11/17/19} Weight 218.0! And I even broke one of my rules yesterday, an extra apple pie at lunch time (extra in addition to the permitted granola bar). My lowest weight this year (matched way back in January).
Dreams this morning; here are the highlights: A “Trump dozen” = 11. Also, “A Trump dozen: you’re lucky if you get ten.” I also had a waking dream of a curious insect, golden and very spiky, crawling up on a book.
I finished reading Ryder Carroll: The Bullet Journal Method: Track the Past, Order the Present, Design the Future, Portfolio/Penguin/Random House, New York, 2018, hc yesterday. See yesterday’s entry for a review. Quotes:
“How we synthesize our experiences shapes the way we perceive and interact with the world. This is why journaling has proven to be a powerful therapeutic tool in treating people who suffer from trauma or mental illness. Expressive writing, for example, helps us process painful experiences by externalizing them through long-form journaling. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) uses scripts to treat people obsessing over intrusive thoughts. A distressing thought is detailed in a short paragraph. This script is then written over and over again until the thought begins to lose its death grip on the person’s mind, granting some much-needed perspective and distance—something we all struggle to find when dealing with challenging situations.” p. 49.
Quoting Seth Godin: “You’re either the person who creates energy. Or you’re the one who destroys it.” p. 196, referenced to http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2018/02/ the-first-law-of-organization-thermodynamics.html.
Quoting Joshua Fields Millburn: “You can’t change the people around you, but you can change the people around you.” p. 200, referenced to https://www.theminimalists.com/ fake.
Quoting Marcus Aurelius: “What stands in the way becomes the way.” p. 209, no reference.
“In Japan, there is the term wabi-sabi. Wabi-sabi posits that the beauty of an object is found in its imperfection. In direct contrast to the Western perspective, which tends to conflate perfection with beauty, wabi-sabi celebrates transience, individuality, and the flawed nature of a thing. These are the qualities that make it unique, genuine, and beautiful. The cracks in the pot, the warp in the wood, the leaves on the stone, the spatter of the ink. It mirrors the Buddhist philosophies, in which wisdom comes from making peace with our fallible natures.” p. 214-215. Although I’ve heard similar things from Alan Watts (“the art of the controlled accident”), reading this somewhat diminished my pleasure in my “perfect” drawing of three chess pawns. Shall I consider its seeming-perfection as its imperfection? This also brings to mind Junichiro Tanizaki: The Makioka Sisters, where much is made of a bride’s large mole—clearly a symbol, but I never really thought much about it, and so, didn’t understand it. I remember the novel as good and low-key, but otherwise it’s a complete blank.
Now I need to get breakfast started, both because I’m hungry and because I have to leave in 75 minutes for the Hemlock Club. I’ll be very interested to see if they did their “homework” on The Willpower Instinct, as well as asking N about the inspiration for his Thoreauvian lifestyle.
The HC today was exceptionally good, primarily because two new persons showed up, Scout [a pseudonym] and T. Scout said she found us through Meetup.com, which is pretty amazing because I had just pulled the plug on my organizer duties. Now, the bad news is that the notes I wrote with my “smart writing system” are completely useless—only three words of a full page in the large notebook transferred over. Rats. I do have the written record, of course, which I will copy here—the original notes will be in italics.
Scout Tim J N (and me, of course)
Bhagavad Gita—Hanuman The book N brought, plus a monkey character in the painting on the cover, which N briefly talked about. I mentioned that the BG was listed in the 50 Self-Help Classics book.
Walden—I asked N what had inspired him to adopt his lifestyle; I don’t recall what he said, but Walden, which he read in high school, was apparently not a factor.
T a punster
Willpower Instinct & mission statement—The main book I brought, and another thing; N, interestingly, was able to quote my mission statement: “To make the world a better place through my writing.” The WI was the basis of the “homework” that I had “assigned” at the previous meeting. J had lost his copy; N had worked on his, and said that his willpower challenge was to make money to pay the rent (on his mother and sister’s house). I talked a bit about willpower challenges in general. The book and the challenges were largely the focus of the whole meeting, which lasted 3½ hours.
Dirty dishes, psych books—I told the story of my struggle with dd and that the WI book had changed my life. I mentioned that I was also reading psych books, with a brief mention of Jourard’s The Transparent Self.
Meetup.com—I briefly described my experiences with the web site and Scout mentioned that that was how she found us. I understood that T and Scout were friends with N, but apparently he had not brought them to the group, though they arrived together.
Moleskine pen—the “intelligent writing system,” which I briefly described.
Veganism—N is a vegan (apologies if I have the wrong term), also Scout. Brief discussion.
Call from Pablo—he said he would not be coming.
Grace Fellowship—J, “It’s liberal.”—J told us about the Grace Fellowship, and we also briefly touched on my plans to visit the Unitarian-Universalist meeting last week, which I did not do.
“No perfect people allowed”—I think J mentioned this in conjunction with the GF; some discussion followed. See below.
Making money to pay rent—N—flypaper—N’s wp challenge. I don’t know what “flypaper” means.
Vow of poverty—J—I don’t know, sorry.
2nd law of thermodynamics, chaos, get off the planet—T—T spoke about the heat death of the universe, and how we need to get off the planet so we can…bring it about faster? Save ourselves? I don’t know.
Third world—selfishness vs. motherhood—J said that “we’re all selfish,” I disputed this, saying that parents can’t be selfish or we wouldn’t be here; we finally came to a middle position, that the mother has to save herself in preference to her children, because without her the children are dead anyway. Compared to oxygen masks on planes. How the 3rd world fits in, I don’t know.
Evil genius—J—What if nonconformity is evil?—J brought up the idea of the evil genius, I asked the question, but I don’t know what the point was.
Gender dysmorphia—something T said, as a joke. I asked what it was.
Group dynamics, sexual bias, bias is unconscious—General discussion about the presence of Scout and (perhaps later) a group of young women at another table. I said that bias is unconscious and we must fight it with our conscious mind. I hope it sounded smarter at the time.
S—BS in biochem, MS in geology (in progress)—Scout’s education.
“He’s with perfect.”—N had been called perfect by J, T made a joke, calling himself perfect, I tried to turn it into a tee shirt.
“She blinded me with science.”—I think a joke by T about Scout.
Homework again—back to The Willpower Instinct.
Walking on grass, barefoot, broken glass—N talked about preferring to walk on grass, since he’s barefoot; he discussed removing broken glass with a toothpick.
Bakersfield air—T said it was the worst in the country.
Autopilot—More about The WP book.
“The harder thing”—The WP book says that the function of the prefrontal cortex is to bias us towards doing the harder of two choices, which I mentioned.
The Bullet Journal—I had this book with me, and either here or later urged Scout to take my copy, but she doubted that she would read it, says she can remember things.
WP instinct quotes—We ended up reading all three pages aloud.
At this point, perhaps halfway through the meeting, I stopped taking notes because I had filled the page and thought we might be close to done. We weren’t. It’s clear from the above that I need to take fuller notes, or perhaps briefer ones, since the note taking seems to have interfered with my ability to pay attention. [More likely, I just can’t remember the things I wasn’t interested in.] Voice recording would be best.
I mentioned my dream of the “Trump dozen,” and got a good laugh from all. N read aloud, slowly, a piece at a time with discussion of each, the three pages of quotes from the WP book, and this largely occupied the rest of the time, since it was rather a lot. That, or I just can’t remember anything else. There was some discussion by N and J about various persons, primarily me, but also Pablo.
N wanted each of us to respond to the WP challenge homework, which he did, and I did, discussing my weight loss efforts and rules, then Scout talked about being pulled in two directions by her education and her need to care for people she loves. We talked some about disclosure and I thanked Scout for participating fully. I gave her some unsolicited advice. I don’t recall what J said about his WP challenge, but T basically avoided the question by again claiming to be perfect.
T was from Oregon and will be returning there, so this is likely the last time we’ll see him.
And that was that. Scout said something about likely coming again—since she made the choice initially and apparently was pleased with the result, I think this might have been more than mere politeness.
The failure of the pen system may be operator error in part, but clearly not all of it, because Scout’s name came through, but not the other names that I wrote at the same time. The pen shuts off after twenty minutes, and that could have happened while N was talking about the Gita. I’ll set the shutoff time to sixty minutes, I guess…some experimentation is in order, it seems.
Now I’m going to bed to read for a while.
{11/18/19} Weight 218.2 at 3:50 am. 217.4 at 7:15. Yay!
So here I am again, with another failure of melatonin.
I couldn’t stop thinking about this pretty young woman with a nose ring, Scout, and her—seemingly to me—terribly misguided choices. She should be studying the human condition, not rocks, I would think. She doesn’t read! I mean, she wanted to know how the earth works—one book would be enough to answer that question, surely. She doesn’t follow politics (or news, apparently)! She’s torn between continuing her education, which seems to lead nowhere, and helping people she loves. I suggested a therapist; she has one, and they chat pleasantly. This outraged me, what good is such a therapist? It’s paid for by her insurance, and her schooling is paid for by her job at the university.
I actually had the gall to tell her that she needed career guidance. She took it well, though. She willingly answered questions, but did not elaborate her answers. I told her that I saw her as a pile of gold covered up by fool’s gold, which seemed to please her. But she has some real digging to do if she’s not to waste her life. It seems that she’s questioning her future—good! Maybe I can straighten her out. Maybe she can straighten me out! Maybe she should move to Tuscany, like Diane Lane in that movie. Or spend seven years in Tibet, like that guy who wrote a book. Or, at least, hike the Pacific Crest Trail.
Of course, I attended Northrop for 2½ years, and later, when I had the opportunity of free classes at USC, I took chemistry and biology. Where, then, was my heart? I need to avoid making choices for her (if she would even permit that).
It’s rare in my experience that I had a conversation at some length with a pretty young (mid-twenties to thirtyish, I guess) woman, with the exception of Pastafazool (who is probably close to 40 and was just doing her job). Perfect teeth, too. But, rudderless?
I think that the HC meeting could have been a game-changer for her, because, underneath, it was all about “know thyself,” advice that she very much needs to follow. It’s not improbable that I completely misunderstand her.
Just call me a besotted old fool, like that’s anything new.
If I could get her to read one book, what would it be? The Grapes of Wrath? Tolstoy’s Confession? Walden? Kick Me? Something by a woman, perhaps. The Teenage Liberation Handbook could be the one best calculated to shake her up. The best thing she could do, probably, is to challenge her therapist or change therapists; apparently, all she’s getting there is soothing. Not what she needs at all, says Doctor Mockrates.
Weight of 217.4 today. I guess I know how to lose weight without starving. My goal is 215 by the end of the year.
I copied all the “songs” on my MP3 player, having just discovered today, by trying a second time, to read it via my laptop. 663 files, apparently not quite 600 playable files. After copying the files over, I went into File Manager and double-clicked on one, and was surprised when the music app examined all the files and compiled a database which is much easier to access than the files on the player itself. I then copied all the files over to the thumb drive. This is great because now, whatever happens to the MP3 player, I’ll still have the music, much of which is not duplicated in my CD collection. There’s actually a lot, though much less than I have on CD.
Used the pen today to try to copy the “robot ants” that Pablo wants. I thought at first that the pen had again failed me, but when I moved the cursor onto the page, the missing lines popped into view—the data had been there, but not put on the screen. The result was crude—drawing with a ballpoint pen is not exactly ideal, nor calculated to allow anything but drawing with a “short pull of the fingers,” in the words of Philip Rawson. Not that I have ever used any other methods. Anyway, two or three minutes and the job was done. Badly.
{11/19/19} Weight 217.6.
I gave Pablo quite a talking-to yesterday, telling him that he was manipulating me, that I felt like a sucker, that he wasn’t acting like an adult, and actually saying something that shocks me in retrospect, “You should just kill yourself.” I know that in context it was not as bad as it sounds, but I can’t remember the context, so I guess it will stay here, “as bad as it sounds.” I’m not going to apologize to him, however.
What got me so riled up was his telling me about his plans to ask this church that he’s newly involved with, to buy him a new guitar. He said he would first ask for new guitar strings, then a new guitar. When I expressed astonishment, he said he was “working them up to that.” He also said that if the church gets sold off (as is threatened), he could get a piece of the hundred grand. It was then that I laid into him, having seen him nakedly gloating over these dreamed-of riches, having seen him as the very thing he so bitterly criticizes others for being: a hypocrite. Perhaps I understand that bitterness now; it’s as Fritz and many others have said, when he criticizes others, he’s really criticizing a projection of himself. I wish I had seen that in the heat of the moment.
All this seems rather clear this early morning. What is not clear is, whither this relationship? In fact, I have no special plans regarding it, except that I will continue to provide bus passes, and what I’ve already talked about here, and indeed, told him about: not to tolerate him boring me and wasting my time by unwanted rambling talk. I also said “I’m not going to argue with you any more,” but clearly that isn’t accurate; what I’m not going to do (I hope) is to continue rising to the bait of old, settled arguments, and new trivial arguments that go on way too long. The way I’ve handled this in the past is to mock-reverse position and just agree to whatever nonsense he insists is correct. Frequently, as happened yesterday, his argument is a mock-argument to begin with.
At 9:00 last night, shortly after turning off my light, my phone rang one and a fraction times, then said “Missed call.” It was Pablo, possibly an accidental dialing that he interrupted, possibly some glitch in the glitchy system I have here. I didn’t want to talk to him, so I turned off the phone. But enough about this person who has been important to me in the past, but is increasingly less important now. (“Increasingly less”? Okay.)
But it is “about me,” so: Still no power this morning; it’s 6:13, my laptop battery is down to 38%, and I’m pondering going to Macdonald’s for breakfast. I have $49 available in the bank, and $22 in cash. I’ll need to get groceries one more time, and I get paid in eight days. So I can afford breakfast out, but not much more than that indulgence.
Listening to Copland’s third symphony last night I thought, “Copland’s the best!” But the last movement was quite overblown—was it satire or a lapse in taste? Respecting him as I do, I have to say satire. I wish I’d had the thought last night.
Bought eleven books at the Beale Library for $6. The “important” one is Richardson’s Thoreau (biography), which I’ve read before but wanted anyway.
Copyright 2019 by Alan Carl Nicoll
All Rights Reserved
The World Needs You 