My side of the mountain

[2Birds1Stone]

Lovely update.

Interesting practice with regards to not eating 5 hours before sleep. For me it's the opposite, if I consume too many calories early in the day and have even the slightest hunger in the evening it makes getting to sleep much harder. Strategy currently is to have ~30% of my intake for the day about 3 hours before bed time, go for a longer walk within 30-60 minutes of the meal to aid digestion. The caveat here is that I try to have that meal be one with a lower glycemic index.....lots of carbs/sugar at night = no bueno.

Really looking forward to checking out Kings County! We're still right on track to be in your neck of the woods in late August

[thef0x]

Extreme Experiments / Pendulum Swings / Nicomachean Ethics

Testing boundaries often helps me fast-track my skill development. Understanding extremes enables me to field-test a landscape of possible options quickly.

Extremes are often discarded quickly in turn, of course; they're extreme for a reason. But not always (heheheheh

It doesn't take a genius to understand why testing extremes is a good idea, but it does require resilience and dedication because extremes are rarely fun, even if highly instructive; as such it's fairly uncommon to witness folks out in the wild having "given it a shot". For folks seeking deep understanding, visiting extremes is just one more possible move to test.

Aristotle has a metaphor about the job of a philosopher: born on a raft whose logs are inherited beliefs, floating down the river of life, that journeyer's job is to test each timber to see if it keeps them afloat, or is dead weight. Mastery also often requires stepping on every possible log to see how it feels. "Why does this log feel unhelpful? How can I abstract that structure to sense other useless logs in the future?"

If deep understanding is the goal, visiting extremes is a useful tool.

The thing is, beyond being uncomfortable, most extremes are bad. Cold/heat, quiet/loud, hungry/stuffed, alone/crowded.

These poles teach us where to aim which might not be in the middle, but often is. The problem with people who never test extremes is they do not experience the possibility landscape enough to know where to settle. They might always need things to be cold because they've never tested how they feel being hot. These can be expensive mistakes. The person who has forgotten what life is like without constant consumption, instead of savoring ideas and friends and the outdoors, wastes life on earning more to buy more. They give up time, money, and the opportunity for experiencing life's richness outside of the box they've put themselves in. The stoics practice a routine return to living minimally to remind themselves what is important for this very reason.

But beyond finding the right balance, which is a core part of Artistotle's Nicomachean Ethics (I'd recommend it), we also need to traverse the landscape of possibility because we want to be versatile players in life.

We use dynamics in music for a reason. We want breadth in our possible expression. Sometimes it is right to be very quiet, very alone, very hungry, and very hot (sauna in the forest upon waking while fasting to promote apoptosis We just cannot sustain visiting these places indefinitely by their very nature.

How then?

Aristotle suggests, perhaps in a systematic way throughout his philosophy (thinking political as well*), to look around us for clues. Find the starving man and the gluttonous man. Find the coward and the foolhardy woman. Notice the shape of courage from the people in the environment around us.

Makes sense. The thing is, when I look around me, often times everyone I see looks a little bit crazy. Sure, I'm "the extreme" in this case, but this just means that my middle is shaped differently than others. I'm not as concerned with fitting in, I guess. Again, hello ERE forumites.

My method:

Structure: (1) time bracketed experimentation. (2) pendulum swinging between poles. (3) periodization. (4) deload / recovery / integration. (5) rebalance to new mean.

^^ Weird/cool to me how power-lifting programming seems to overlap with so many structures of human experimentation.

I've loved the thirty day challenge framework for these experiments because, ime, the last ~7 days of the challenge are really really hard, and I want to taste what it feels like to visit an extreme when motivation is null and void. Each experiment, however, warrants its own time frame.

I'll spare you my own personal history here but examples are plentiful; I'm sure you can think of accidental experiments that retrospectively fit this structure.

Kratky hydroponics is my most recent, answering the question "how can I grow produce with the least amount of attention possible?". Results were surprising and now I have more levers to adjust in that realm with a better understanding of the inputs (time) and outputs (lbs of delicious produce) of that system. Possibility landscape tested and the path has widened.

Firmware upgraded. That's a permanent(?) life win.

And I keep saying this but it's worth repeating: hard pursuits filter boring people.

I tend to think that folks with a mindset for mastery and tinkering are the most interesting of folks. I see a lot of you here. Maybe the name of the book, albeit slightly misleading, was a good idea after all

Hope this was a useful post to chew on.

I'd ask you, reader, and I'm wondering about this myself: what is the right rhythm to revisit experiments to "maintain" balance? How does that relate to competence, conscious and unconscious? How does the frequency of review scale against the mastery of said study? Is each thing particular or can I abstract a structure? Can we "learn the balance" permanently or must we always revisit? What does the answer to these questions say about the structure of mastery itself?



* Aristotle's political conservatism is just the idea that we look to history (aka the environment) to make decisions about the future. Contrast this with liberalism which is the idea of rewriting history/politics anew / from scratch. Maybe .. hear me out .. the right balance is to take the good from both; a reverent study of history coupled with a Rawlsian look at how to build the future.

[thef0x]

Interesting practice with regards to not eating 5 hours before sleep. For me it's the opposite, if I consume too many calories early in the day and have even the slightest hunger in the evening it makes getting to sleep much harder. Strategy currently is to have ~30% of my intake for the day about 3 hours before bed time, go for a longer walk within 30-60 minutes of the meal to aid digestion. The caveat here is that I try to have that meal be one with a lower glycemic index.....lots of carbs/sugar at night = no bueno.

Cheers dude! Excited to meet up.

I totally agree re going to bed hungry, it's nearly impossible for me. I'm trying to thread the needle here a bit in that regard and so far it looks like:

Super high protein, low fat/carb meal before noon. A complex carb-focused light lunch pre workout. A protein heavy post workout meal. And finally dinner where I bias fats to increase persistent satiety into bed.

Your strategy of the post diner walk is super smart, I might try that out coupled with extending my eating window to a bit farther along before bed; the goal is to go to bed without too much ongoing digestion and an evening walk definitely could help. Knowing myself, my motivation diminishes heavily after my large-ish dinner, so I'll have to build in compliance somehow. OTOH, even just a quick stroll down the block with my kiddo will probably have a noticeable impact, so I might move that around to 2birds1stone it

[thef0x]

Disjointed mess of an update

Pausing the hydroponic gardening because it's road trip season.

Helping fam w financial planning stuff, mostly just taking notes in meetings so my mom can rely on me to reiterate concepts, status update, etc. Torn here, as it's limiting freedom-to slightly but we've been able to accommodate my off-work-weeks (every other 2 weeks) which has been generous.

Strength training consistency is 100%, frankly to the point where I'm *barely* recovered for hitting that same bodypart 6 days later, so I might add another active rest day. This will also enable each lift to be on the same day per week, so I can probably better schedule weekend events with friends without interrupting my flow.

Split: Back, Chest, HIIT, Cardio, Legs, Arms, Cardio.

Programming is astonishingly simple: ~6-9 sets / body part (e.g. arms = bi/tri = 12 sets, legs = hamstrings/quads = 14 sets), 2-3 movements, focus on time under tension instead of maximum loads, mind-muscle connection, squeezing, slow eccentric movement, explosive concentric, big stretches, perfect form. Taking a massive ego check on pressing movements and squats to exclusively focus on form and mind-muscle connection. Using maybe a third of my 1RM per movement but causing intense DOMS just the same without all the joint damage and CNS fatigue. Feels great.

HIIT has been weighted stairs, either with a vest or my kid on my back. If I'm extremely pinched on time, I'll do kettle bell swings.

Hosted friends yesterday and had a huge carb up, planned, which felt great knowing the scale would be going up. Today's workout was gnarly, I felt powerful and extremely connected with my whole body; hard to explain why this feels so good but it was awesome, everything in sync.

Just got back from doing stairs with the kiddo and the feeling persisted -- carb up success -- cardio is really improving with the weight loss and having the intramuscular glycogen reserve felt awesome as I've been depleted for a long time now. We also hit the big kid swing at the adjacent park, which he ejected himself from; he said "all done" and immediately let go three feet from the ground. Is there a lesson in that? A man of action. He was a champ about it, dusted off the woodchips and we were back at it. Much "wa wa" was chugged, a solid state change / recovery.

Thinking about hitting a maintenance period, with the +1-2% accompanying weight gain, to continue the carbed up workouts and establish my new baseline. OTOH, I'm ~3lbs shy of a round number. I may just try to get smarter about carb timing, even though I prefer eating them in my last meal, and push down. It feels a little arbitrary but I'm not above that. Strategic potatoes may be implemented soon, especially on leg days.

Been writing more on the guitar, lullaby-y in nature. No goals or outcomes here, just enjoying the sounds.

Noodling more on self-hosted server projects, always fun.. somehow I actually enjoy just updating and optimizing the software regularly, it's odd.

Road trip to the John Day Fossil Beds here soon.

Feeling overwhelmed by all the excess junk in our house but totally unmotivated to start up my ebay habit again. The tendency to compare the income/effort ratio of that work vs a few more sales calls is off-base as one has a fairly meaningless impact on my wellbeing now (the sales calls, as I don't feel my SWR in any sense) whereas I know I'll feel calmer without all the the junk yelling at me each time I walk by.

Fixed / debugged a bunch of household problems, including a leaking fridge, faucet, overflowing rain gutters, and basement bathroom grout. Tested our exterior house paint for lead (none, thankfully) so I'll get that large project started end of summer when all the wood has really dried out. Bit the bullet and after my dishwasher's controller failed again, we replaced it with one with a great warranty, using credits from our local hardware store that we got as gifts from our wedding, so out of pocket for under $150. No idea what to do with the old one.

My FIL is gifting me his broken pressure washer to see if I can breathe life back into it. He thinks it's just a faulty gasket or two so I'm hoping I can get it working for under $20 in parts. It's gas powered which sucks. I might just sell it.

Looking back, nothing feels "monumental" in life these days and I'm good with it. I'm happy to have life stress look like a leaky fridge, given the last 2 years I've had.

[2Birds1Stone]

I would definitely take one full day off per week to avoid building up too much systemic fatigue.

Our resistance training is very similar. This is my first time dabbling with higher rep, lighter loads with slow eccentrics and man do I wish I learned about this stuff sooner. The biggest variance is that I split arms into push/pull and hit every body part 2X every 8 days or so.

For performance, peri-workout nutrition definitely matters, especially in a caloric deficit. Have some fast digesting carbs an hour before your workout and some afterwards with a faster digesting protein and you'll improve performance while maintaining your deficit. The longer you've been in the deficit, the more impact it will have.

How fast are you losing weight as a % of your bodyweight?

[AxelHeyst]

Your programming reminds me of a Mentzer style HIT routine I did in my early 20s which was the most fun I've ever had in the gym. Three lifting days/wk, longest workout was 23min, leg day took ~7min to complete but I seriously considered purchasing a cane to deal with the DOMS.

Feeling overwhelmed by all the excess junk in our house but totally unmotivated to start up my ebay habit again. The tendency to compare the income/effort ratio of that work vs a few more sales calls is off-base as one has a fairly meaningless impact on my wellbeing now (the sales calls, as I don't feel my SWR in any sense) whereas I know I'll feel calmer without all the the junk yelling at me each time I walk by.

My struggle right now is the comparative advantage thinking that is yelling at me to just take one trip to the thrift store and be done with it "for good, this time." instead of ebaying it all.

[mathiverse]

My struggle right now is the comparative advantage thinking that is yelling at me to just take one trip to the thrift store and be done with it "for good, this time." instead of ebaying it all.

I have this struggle too... The question I ask myself is whether I'll learn my lesson if I don't suffer the consequences by selling everything rather than dumping it on a thrift store (likely for them to toss quite a bit...).

[grundomatic]

The struggle is real. Which resource shall I waste, and which will be conserved?

[thef0x]

Late and fast update to ensure I'm keeping up with this journal!!

John Day Fossil Bed Nat Monument was very cool and oh so hot. Borrowed my mom's diesel van camper and enjoyed the fridge but otherwise could care less about all the bells and whistles. Was nice to be able to stand up inside of it but, without trashing it, I'm shocked at how much I'd change from the default (overly stuffed) configuration of these vans. Cut: A/c, shower, microwave, TV, dvd player, and a bit of the storage (laughing at how silly this list is -- my mom's late husband wanted this stuff).







Spent the trip on BLM land camped at various spots along the John Day River and spent the mornings doing light hiking. Was lovely to cool off in the river daily -- I felt the cleanest on this trip than I ever have while car camping. Did a couple of solar showers too.



Kid fell in love with sticks on this trip. We now have a pile of sticks in the front of the house. His version of a gear shed.



Speaking of which, sewed together a new pair of modular vest straps for backpacking. Light, stretchy, with big pockets for my water filter and food up front.




^^ new modular pack design intended for short trips, worked great although I think I'd still prefer the bigger back pocket instead of the bungie cord.



Overnight on July 3rd to test them out and given the light load, they were brilliant. We were smart about picking trailheads and managed to not see a soul until the next day as we hiked out. Brought an insanely light fishing kit (bought license) and enjoyed my hand line adventure (link: https://ultralightinsights.blogspot.com ... light.html). Met a new FIREd dude who was great and definitely a possible week-night hiking buddy. Talked with both dudes about the plot of my sci fi novel and had a multi-hour rousing discussion, exactly what I'd hope for in general. Funny to be in the most natural of environments talking about the leasts natural of worlds.

#weekday-privledge is a thing, btw, esp for an introvert like me.









More solo-parenting time spent with my dad at his place which has been really fun.. "Bro time!!" was the chant/bellow on the drive over. I've drawn inspiration from my trips to visit botanical gardens and fallen in love with Bonsai and then Suiseki (beautiful stones). In that spirit for my birthday this year I asked if anyone wanted to go stone-hunting with me (weirdos unite) and then did so with my pops on beaches in the Puget Sound. Found a couple of remarkable rocks but the real treasure was two beautiful pieces of driftwood. Love this style of "art" as it's found, free, active, and encourages me to pay even more attention when I'm out in nature studying the form of things. Definitely a cool memory with my dad and kid and one I get to remember via a beautiful thing in my home.





Got my global entry pass so that'll save a bunch of time this year while traveling -- crazy that I was able to apply and get an interview within 6 days, so I was approved in one week. Next interview is 6 months out.

My wife has planned Southern France for us so I'm planning Japan. My first pass was overwhelming so I'm reminding myself that Japan isn't going anywhere. Going to keep it slower paced and I've built in a lot of ideas without a lot of strict plans. The pulse of the trip feels solid so I'll begin booking accomodations soon.

Filmed the 500th episode of a youtube series I've been doing for 10+ years and damn that's crazy! This aligns with a recent idea / phrase I had which is "casual, messy art". I like this idea a lot. It's okay to have a casual, semi-DGAF relationship to things (this is something I struggle with I guess). A good reminder. I'm glad to have spent the time on this project, it's been awesome, and because I've had a loose grip on it, I've actually kept it up.

My kid got a handmedown push bike and that's been fun / adorable. Many bumps and bruises and skinned kneeds. He mostly likes paddleboarding and hasn't seen a beach shovel he didn't want to "borrow" (we have been bringing a garden trowel to the lake now).

Thoughts:

I've realized recently that I'm doing "full time dad" as my primary job and basically giving no mind to my business whatsoever. It feels so damn great. The perfect way to spend these years with my son and wife. I feel so lucky.

Tracking stuff: fell off hard recently on this -- not tracking every expense or any food -- but feeling pretty okay about it having built up some good habits / strategies that are easy to replicate.

Spend was high(!) at ~7k for housing in France + quarterly estimated taxes, which has now made me realize I need a better way to account for all my tax burdens. I think I'll continue the normal method of deducting taxes from income instead of accounting for them as a liability / expense, but this means I need to clean up my accounting a bit. My SWR is still the same but the absolute income values need to be shifted down. Doing it this way makes sense as my income changes over time due to business variance and market effects but expenses can be considered a bit less dynamic / more controllable.

More realizations about how I got here: 4HWW --> business systems + don't-wait-to-retire values. Then MMM --> investment income retirement + resourcefulness. Finally ERE --> generalized systems thinking + resilience (income:biz+investments, future: skills + structural analogies* + experience).

Money is cool in that it lets me do stuff like spent a night in a thatch hut in Japan in November with my wife and baby. Not sure how a future Utopian points system would work but hard to imagine one that doesn't have something that looks like money. Maybe the points won't be spent in the future but kept as trophies. A post trade world. Fun to noodle on.

* more on this later I think

[Cam]

Beautiful photos, thank you for sharing!

When did you start DIYing your travel packs instead of purchasing? I am thoroughly impressed with what you build now - to me they look like what I'd see in an outdoor store - except fully customized!

[thef0x]

Thanks Cam!

I think I spent ~$200 on new backpacking packs before seeing someone post their MYOG pack on reddit.com/r/myog and realized, hey, I can probably do that?!

That was 7 years ago! Crazy.

My stuff is absolutely NOT production quality and I can't be bothered to make it so. I wear my mistakes quite literally. Function vs form. As you get deeper, form follows function it seems, but I'm not wasting time on every perfect detail.

It's a really fun tool to have in the metaphorical skill shed. It also saves a lot of time, ime, because repairing everyday wear takes seconds of time (esp if the item is black/matches your default thread color).

I'd encourage you to give it a shot. Someone you know has a sewing machine gathering dust.

@AH - Mentzer's stuff is so good. I think the key focus from his work that's resonating with me right now is getting to true failure at the end of my workout.

@ Others re getting rid of stuff: I've still made no progress but have managed to clean up and create space for the things that I don't need, arguably a worse outcome. Maybe it's better for it to be staring at me in the face, ugly, like the reverse Marie Kondo.

[thef0x]

July 2024

Tracking:
Job 1 Income: ~3-4x expenses
IR: 2
Annualized SWR: 4.56%
Actual, amortized (includes multiple already-paid annual expenses): 4.19%

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So apparently the stock market has come off its peak, thankfully. Like crypto, while promising, the productization(wc) of AI has me scratching my head in terms of real revenues. Eventually LLMs will have an important impact, but I think this recent froth in tech and hardware has been mostly speculation with bored money**.

Fortunately for me, I had no idea the above happened until I went into my dashboard to check stuff for this post. Nice! I can't really feel the negative impact of something I don't know about; a good lesson -- important to apply wisely lol! I need to check it *enough* to know I'm in the green, but given my income already covers 3-4x expenses per month, I've become increasingly agnostic about portfolio performance / optimization. I might just buy total market and chill forever. Less is more when investing into something I don't have control over, I think.

\\

I purchased an electric guitar, my first. Bought a USB audio interface to connect it to my computer. Bought a very cheap bluetooth MIDI pedal controller. After way too much time switching my arch install from pipewire to pulseaudio to enable the highest fidelity JACK service settings my computer could muster, I'm making loops and music.

I'm using Ardour as my DAW, Guitarx and "Neural Amp Modeler" lv2 plugins.

All of this is totally new to me. How electric guitars work (magnets how do they work?), racks, amps, effects, pickups, techniques, my goodness there is so much to enjoy discovering here. I'm having a blast.

I'd never been interested in lead guitar or frankly to do much more than strum chord progressions that I love until this year. For some reason, probably having my little kid, I got hooked on a melody on my classical guitar, very lullaby-y, and ended up learning enough finger dexterity on both hands to play it better and better. It was satisfying, enough so that I thought I'd noodle around more on the instrument as a secondary project for next year then take the audio (alongside other audio I've recorded of my kid) and video I've shot and put together a "music video" of my guy's second year of life, all recorded and edited by me (perhaps ambitious for a secondary project)*.

\\

Took my kid backpacking for the first time and tried for a second time as well but had to bow out early -- as I told my wife, just being able to even try to go backpacking mid week with our sub 2 year old is completely nuts and such a victory. What a privilege.





Soft movement: https://i.imgur.com/7Sbv8j1.mp4



^^ Modest loadout for a short overnighter. Props to @theanimal and his fam for doing this for flipping 2600 miles.

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Lots of time with cousins, siblings and my mom in July. Lovely, chaotic, great food.

Perfecting a new salsa / hot sauce this summer and it's food-snob approved:

thef0x's Green Goodness:

3 avocados
6 tomatillos
4-6 jalapenos, deseeded
2 large cloves of garlic
1/2 red onion
bunch of cilantro
2 tbsp avocado oil (neutral taste oil)
1.5 lime juice
2 glugs white vinegar
salt

Blend: red onion, tomatillo, jalapeno, garlic, oil, vinegar, lime juice until finely diced. Add the remaining ingredients and lightly blend until incorporated. Taste, re-season with salt and lime/vinegar as desired, stirring them in.

Use seeded jalapenos for a spicier but bitterer flavor, supplementing with honey if required. I prefer adding 2 more deseeded jalapenos or a single very hot pepper (let it sit for the capsaicin to incorporate).

Best eaten a day later, cold. A+ on a veggie omelette. Great for a party dip. A less spicy version is baby approved.

Fruity, tart, spicy, luscious, and bright.



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Stuff's growing outside! Hey! Nice!

Productivity wise, maybe 20% of the yield as previous, paying attention years. Maybe next year I'll figure out something automated.

Blueberries and strawberries have been most productive for us. They are now netted or caged to keep the baby out. 100% not kidding, 100% eats green fruit (anything he can get his hands on) and after spitting it out, insists on making eye contact to tell me "tart".

We will direct sow some seeds soon.

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I've definitely been off of the forum for a few months, ahhh, the summer air. I expect this fall I'll be back here more. I think this might be a good natural rhythm to things as well for my life in general. Winter for introspecting and consolidating, summer for expression and expansion.




* For his first year, I did a photobook because .. sleep.

** I really do enjoy using chatGPT, though; I use it ~every two days. Recently: planning travel, linux-y stuff (JACK server), music, book recommendations, movie recommendations.

[Western Red Cedar]

Love the photos of John Day. A coworker went there for the eclipse and always raved about the stargazing there due to the lack of light pollution. It has been on my list for a while but I still haven't made it.

Congrats on taking the youngin' out to the backcountry. Sounds like an amazing experience.

You've officially inspired me to get into more DIY gear. I've never approached it, but DW is a solid seamstress who makes and designs some of her own outfits. An ultralight quilt should be a fairly simple project, and a perfect Christmas or birthday present for me.

[thef0x]

An ultralight quilt should be a fairly simple project, and a perfect Christmas or birthday present for me.

I'll say this! The only project I've done where I shed a tear of frustration, exhaustion, and giving-up was the fancy down quilt I made.

But!! Alternatively, the synthetic quilts I've made have been some of the easiest and most satisfying projects I've done.

I still think the most satisfying singular experience while making gear is finishing a pack and pulling the fabric right-side out (you sew with the bag inside out as you want seams on the inside). That feeling of being done, seeing sleek, clean lines. Oof.

Like construction skills, learning a language, or more recently for me, practicing guitar, it feels like a superpower to have the ability to seamlessly create/cause subjective ideas into real world things, esp when they sound good or keep you alive

Even my kiddo loves the experience scribbling madness on butcher paper. It just feels good to create. Mind into matter.

Cheers to all of the DIY gear to come!

[thef0x]

Plans change

Got hurt on my big hike for this summer. Mile 24 of 60 and all the sudden my inner knee cap went from nothing to sore to shooting pain. Hobbled 4 more miles to camp, knew in the morning my knee was toast, found my exit and a phone 2 miles from there. First time I've had to bail while hiking.

Hoping that the sports medicine specialist I saw is right and it's a rough MCL sprain instead of something deeper and more cartilagey. Swelling/inflammation inside of the knee cap is minimal and based on the ultrasound, my meniscus triangle looks very healthy. Xrays showed nothing broken and no arthritis in my knee.

Given how rough I've felt (day 10 now), I'm surprised to hear this (good as can be) news.

This has been a thought-provoking injury.

Some other much bigger stuff has been weighing on me recently as well. I've been in a slump, esp with some less than ideal weather / early fall here in the PNW. I thought I was going to have to cancel going to France and Japan -- we'll have to see, but I'm optimistic I'll be able to carefully walk in France / baby it to heal it enough for all-day walking in Japan.

Then I get the news that it's an MCL sprain and may heal in 6 weeks and the weather turns nice and I'm like, how the hell was I feeling so down?

\\

How do you mindfuck yourself into positivity when life really is punching you in the face?

A few real options I have available to me:

1) change my environment. this just costs money and some time, but not endless amounts. i can get to sunshine with less than 12 hours notice via last minute flight planning, airbnb/hotels, etc, "wfh" if you can call it that. it's never been easier to change my environment.

2) talk out the worries with someone who cares. therapist, friends, family, significant other, doggo. this turns the emotional volume down for me.

3) get hyper proactive. this is handling anxiety 101: do something about it right now. getting doc visits, specialist, xrays day of, etc. i waited a week to see if i would feel better (i didnt), when i would've had less sadness had i got in four days after the injury. same deal with preparing for anything: get started on it early.

4) get space. i literally need to take time to heal. instead of thinking i can rush through the required process, i ought to better accept where i am, the limits of what else i can do, and make friends with waiting. i can't rush a system i don't control.

5) retrospective journaling. this is writing 9/10ths-truths to myself about what happened and where i'm headed. i mean writing 9 of the good things and skipping the 1 bad thing that's true, but isn't worth indulging beyond acknowledgement. sure some stuff can be shit, but actually, genuinely, most stuff is good, in fact a really massive percentage of things. it's gonna work out.

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Randomest thought of this post:

The reason turning the water temperature down in my shower helps me hear the podcast I'm listening to better is probably because of epinephrine and norepinephrine being released as a stress response to the temp change, whereas when the water is cozy warm, I'm relaxed and cannot hear the content as well. There's my science fair project for this entry.

A journal article: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10565728/