mathiverse's journal

[mountainFrugal]

If you get sick of chili after making a batch, you can add some macaroni noodles (or similar) and some melted shredded cheese to make the meal go further with a slightly different flavor (can also do boxed mac and cheese).

[guitarplayer]

Also, going WL6 (or is it 7?): chili activates brown fat that boosts metabolism and makes one warmer = lower energy bill = weight control.

[mathiverse]

@guitarplayer: Nice! It's snowing right now, so that'll come in handy!

@mountainFrugal: Thanks for the tip!

@avalok: Agreed.

[mathiverse]

This week's menu:
. Store bought salad kit (one per day)
. Rice and eggs for breakfast
. Black beans and garlic fried in olive oil (as once described by long lost deleted user bigato) and chicken thighs

This week, I'm going to cook everyday for the fried eggs (5 min). I will cook twice during the week for the rice and chicken. I wanted to try more variety in my dishes during the day hence the three meals a day change up. I predict the challenge this week will be the bland foods rather than anything else.

Last week, I didn't make enough chili for the whole week, so I ate out a few times. I also got tired of the taste after a few days anyway.

[mathiverse]

Pulling in some quotes.

Can a person change their regression floor? In other words, can someone get good enough at "higher level thinking/acting" that their lowest functioning state doesn't result in purchasing via money?

One can get to a point where "purchasing via money" is an entirely alien way of acting. Consider that the concept of "buying solutions" is actually a trained response that kids spend many years learning before it becomes so natural so as to become unconscious/unseen. This [paradigm] can be replaced and forgotten to the point where one has to relearn buying the solution. The paradigm of not buying stuff is not a higher version of the paradigm of buying stuff. It is a different one.

I'm going to say "Yes" and "No." OTOH, it is often the case that if you do regress under stress, it is because in the realms where you experience regression, you only had "scaffolding"* rather than "skillz." The skillz needed would be inclusive of maintenance of overall self-aware self-care, as in not ignoring your wardrobe until everything is ragged, not ignoring your social needs until you are a stranger in strange land, etc. The skillz needed would also be inclusive of planning for all the "knowns" and researching the "known unknowns" that might impact you in the future. For instance, I'm sure that Jacob has some kind of plan/"insurance" for keeping his spending very low even in the unlikelihood of a month where Mrs. Jacob leaves him to participate in Biosphere 8 project, he breaks his leg while bending over on icy patch to pick up quarter, and his kitchen is rendered useless when pressure cooker full of black beans explodes. But, there are always those "unknown, unknowns" that might creep up on you, and cause you to remember how to use money to solve a problem.

I think so, at least in theory. For example, when I think about other domains like diet or physical fitness, my "regression" floor is still what the average person would consider very healthy eating and high level fitness.

[mathiverse]

The beans really worked last week. I was even lazy about pre-cooking everything, but I was able and willing to cook everyday somehow. I didn't eat the salad kits, so those are out.

Anyway, this week:
* Black beans and garlic with eggs
* Chicken thighs

[mathiverse]

This is Water:
[https://fs.blog/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/]
I paraphrase:

> If all you care about is freedom, you will end up feeling trapped.

I've come across the idea expressed in this video several times over the last couple of years. To some extent it ties in with Stoicism, but to a greater extent it ties in with Buddhism. In order to live: kill yourself.

If you can't use your intellect to do so then use your education and develop some plasticity of thought.
Plasticity is paramount if you ever:

• want to get out of whatever hole you find yourself in.
• find yourself in the same situation over and over again, and you want that behavior to change.
• discover that certain fears are starting to take over your life.
• need a constructive outcome from an argument or negotiation.
• want to change as a person.
• want a fulfilling existence.

You have become your ego, and that needs to die in order to free up the rest of you.

Note: Link changed by me.

[OutOfTheBlue]

You are great at finding/resurfacing forum stuff. Thanks for that.

For what is worth, and I hope this is not inappropriate, but the above made me think of something Bill Plotkin writes:

In many spiritual circles, “the ego” is thought to be the primary problem, public enemy number one, something to rid oneself of. But without an Ego, we’re not human. The actual problem is not Egos but immature Egos (egocentric or self­centered Egos), by far the most common kind in the Western world today. The goal is not to get rid of the Ego but to mature it through wholing and Self-healing, and deepen it by rooting it in Soul (by way of the journey of soul initiation).

And his definition of Ego from the online glossary:
Ego: The conscious self; the locus, or seat, of conscious self-awareness within the human psyche, the “I”; a fragment of the psyche observing the rest of itself from a psychological distance.

[Ego]

A problem inherent in the transition to autonomous vehicles is that human drivers can push around autonomous vehicles, knowing they are programmed to yield. There is a similar problem with killing the ego.

[mathiverse]

Okay, I'm ready to stop being so aimless. It looks like I'm finally over the decompression hump and that I want to get back into actively moving forward. I'm surprised it took me so long to want to do something since I left in October given the fact I had only been back at my job for four months. I wonder if I have whatever dustBowl has...

I think I need to add more structure to my projects and life (*). I've got some good things going on like cooking regularly, exercising daily, going outside for a walk daily, and reading in the evenings. However, I've been spending too much time on tv and the internet.

So, I blocked the internet and streaming sites I've been wasting time on (except this one, love y'all).

My next step is to regularly work hard on something. The highest impact thing I can work on is, as f**king always, my cooking skills (**). The more fun and interesting things I want to work on are French language skills and decluttering my house. I'll let y'all know how it goes.

(*) I came to this conclusion because I've been looking at JOB ADS in my free time. I better harness my life energy myself before I let some job sweet talk me back into the office.
(**) I f**king hate cooking right now. It's been a grind to get my sh**ty cooking skills to their current mediocre level and it's still not enough. Anyway, I will continue working on them.

[avalok]

I f**king hate cooking right now. It's been a grind to get my sh**ty cooking skills to their current mediocre level and it's still not enough. Anyway, I will continue working on them.

As you're hating it currently, I'm wondering if it'd help to gameify cooking a bit, in an attempt to build a reward mechanism. For example, if the issue is that it feels like it is a waste of time, challenge yourself to still cook a "proper" meal, but in less time than you'd otherwise take. Naturally this may not speak to you at all.

[mathiverse]

Meal prep didn't work as well as I'd like. I did eat out less due to prepping, but my satisfaction with the food was low, my progress in cooking improvement was slow (due to only cooking once a week), and I still *did* eat out because either I was tired of the food I had cooked or I planned poorly and didn't cook enough for the whole week. It was also harder than I thought to cook the same day every week because my schedule and energy fluctuates so much day to day and week to week.

So the new tactic I'll try: I'm going to get my food for the day sorted every morning right after I wake up.

That may mean cooking a few dishes (like today), it may mean getting clear on what I already have made that I will eat, and it may include prep for tomorrow's cooking (like today when I put some meat in a marinade for tomorrow and made a grocery list that I'll handle tonight).

Tomorrow I suspect it'll look like: cook the meat from today, put more meat in a different marinade, chop some fruit for later, and cook another dish. But if I don't have much energy tomorrow, then I may only cook the marinated meat and use leftovers from today for the rest.

I want to cook more than once a week to speed up my cooking improvement, but I want some days off cooking, so I'll continue to cook batches of food each time I make something without limiting cooking days to once a week. Hopefully this increased flexibility combined with using my best, most energetic hours of each day to cook and plan meals will be an improvement. Since I'll still be cooking batches of food each day, I will have some leftovers available most days, so if I have a morning of low energy, then I can skip cooking and merely plan to use those leftovers.

[mathiverse]

Interesting idea. It might be motivating to keep track of a few metrics each time a make a recipe and see how that evolves as I make the recipes more and more. I'll think more about it. I could likely benefit from tracking what I cook and how I cook it more systematically.

[7Wannabe5]

One thing I added to my morning routine many years ago was simply to ask myself "What's for dinner?" Trying to rigidly plan ahead for the whole week may fail if you don't otherwise have a very rigid lifestyle, and asking yourself the question only when it's already 6 pm and you are hungry is a known fail. Asking yourself the question in the morning as you move through your other auto-pilot morning habits with fresh brain energy available might work better.

I also keep a list on my fridge with the columns EAT/COOK/SHOP/IDEAS. Anything that is already prepared (soup) and/or ready to eat (peaches), especially if it is perishable goes on EAT. COOK is list of perishable items that are not ready to eat as is (cabbage, eggs) . SHOP is as-I-run-low list of staples or frequently used items, sometimes I might just add a vaguer category need for relatively more "protein" or "produce" on hand. IDEAS is short list of meals or simpler items I could cook with what I already have on hand. When I shop, I bring my SHOP list, but I also look for good deals and pick up other needed items to make use of the good deals. Garden produce, a gift from a friend, and other more random food items that come my way can be easily incorporated into this system. On a rushed or brain dead morning, the question "What's for dinner?" can be answered by just consulting the IDEAS list jotted down after shopping, with maybe taking a step or two to facilitate the process, such as taking something out of the freezer to defrost.

However, I will admit that I was much more motivated to make full use of this system when I was feeding a family of four.

[mathiverse]

@7Wannabe5: I really like the EAT/COOK/SHOP/IDEAS system! Thank you for sharing! I may try it out in a later iteration of my plan. I won't implement it right away since I want to limit the changes I make for now.

Yeah, I'm hoping that asking myself "What's for dinner (and lunch)?" in the morning will work better than my previous plans. It's nice to hear it has worked well for you in the past!

[mathiverse]

@7W5: I ended up doing a partial implementation right away. I have an EAT list on my refrigerator which has come in handy.

Asking myself "What's for dinner and lunch?" in the morning has been working fairly well. One thing I didn't realize is that I would have two mornings of cooking, then three days where I had no time to cook in the mornings. Fortunately, the plan worked. I had bunch of chicken leftovers and some soup from the first two mornings which fed me on those three days along with the EAT list foods which require little to no preparation.

I feel like the man who saved tens of thousands of dollars just by thinking given that a little forethought each day at the right time *may* have gone such a long way toward solving my food expense problem. I should probably think more and harder.

Also looking back at prior comments, I may be landing on a similar system to the one that WRC and others suggested in the first place given my desire for a variety of food stuffs each week. I appreciate all the great advice, everyone! (Even if it takes me a while to land on how to use it. )

[7Wannabe5]

I’m glad it helped. I think I picked up that tip from the Flylady. I trained myself through her program for S.H.E.s (scattered household executives) at least 25 years ago. Some humans are well able to simply Plan Ahead! Some of us are better suited to Plan Ahead to Plan Ahead. I think this may be due to temperamental perspective on how often things change so how often plans need updating.

[mathiverse]

This morning plan doesn't work well if my mornings aren't clear enough. For example, if I wake up late and scramble out the door for whatever reason. So I'm going to clear some space in the freezer and store some soups and other dishes a bit more purposefully so that if I have a week where I only cook once, then I'm all set. I cooked two dishes today (cranberry sauce and baked beans) and I also prepared vegetables and meat to cook tomorrow. I also made a smoothie that tasted like a strawberry milkshake due to adding cream and milk. That's not something I want to eat everyday, but it was nice knowing that, if I ever want a milkshake, I don't need ice cream.

[mathiverse]

I have lunch and dinner cooked and portioned into small containers for the next five weekdays since I'll be in a class all day for the next two weeks. Next weekend, I'll meal prep again. Hopefully the meal prep works better this time around due to the fact that I do have a rigid schedule during the week.

[mathiverse]

For the first time, I did my taxes and submitted them myself this year. It took 5 - 6 sessions of 2 - 3 hour length, so 10 - 18 hours in total. I spent a lot of time reading the instructions and rechecking everything because I kept finding mistakes and redoing forms as a result. Next time it'll take less time. I'd guess 2 - 3 hours total since I'd want to double check it a few times given my tendency to miss things.

Last year I paid $200 on TurboTax, so based on that price, this year I made $20 - $11 per hour depending on how much time it actually took me in the above range. Next year, I'll make $100 - $66.67 per hour to do my taxes based on what I used to pay for TurboTax. Of course it's not that simple because my taxes have gotten simpler since I left my job (therefore, TT would be cheaper) and I also know there are other prices people pay (for example, a tax preparer I know mentioned he could do my taxes for $100 this year or I could file on a cheaper paid service), but those are the numbers to compare to what I actually did last year.