January 20 - Fast Day

Post 717, Day 20 of 2013
 - and 751 days since I started this blog.-

Daily Comment

What drives people to make change is dissatisfaction. 

Dissatisfaction comes from not living in the present - it comes from comparing your present to something that doesn't exist: Past or future situations. While it is obvious that future situations don't exist (their lack of existence is their main property), the trap of the past is less obvious to me.

But, of course, the trap is simple: I think I know about things that have happened, things that are now historical, especially when they happened to me.

Who am I kidding? Well, myself. I fool myself into believing that by participating in an event, I understand what happened then. This is a laughable conceit. 

First, I can't even recall everything that ever happened to me, so there is the idea of selection, of recalling those things I want to remember. Not only do I select to recall the particular memories that validate my idea of reality, within those memories I select the perceptions that give me a best fit.

So, I also remember things the way that I want to, if not on a conscious, then on a deeper unconscious level. It is commonly acknowledged that memory is unreliable, especially when there is a large subjective, emotional element. Even as we experience something, when we are emotionally involved, we are 'editing' what we is happening to us, almost real-time. The ability to recall sensory data (which is already being interpreted by the brain, coming to us as vibrations of one kind or another) accurately is unknown to me among humans. Like everything else, there are degrees, but that is irrelevant, isn't it?

When we are dissatisfied because we remember a better time and want to regain that (in the future), or dissatisfied because we compare our 'present' with an imagined future (nobody knows the future), we are participating in a compounded illusion.

Not that that's a bad thing - not every plan disappoints, although I agree with Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. on the several levels he meant when he said, "Nothing succeeds as planned." And you can, in the present, set a direction.

This is what I'm doing with all my ideas about expatriating in three years. I feel certain I have no idea what I am getting myself into - I won't until I actually do it (in the present). I am enamored of the idea, but know that all I can do is visualize an end result and make small (microscopic) moves in that direction. I  try to do something every day that is a step in that direction. Most days, I succeed, but not all.

It is a long way out. I may still be thinking that when it is imminent. A lot of things can happen in the next three years to influence my course, change the path I'm on. I don't spend much time thinking about that.

  

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 Food and Diet Section

First-half year 2013 daily weight

Today's Weight:       208.2 lbs 

Yesterday's Weight:   206.0 lbs

Day Net Loss/Gain:    + 2.2 lbs

Diet Comment

My highest weight of the year. Ugh. I didn't eat at all today. I stayed out late playing, and finally broke fast at two in the morning. Totally on-plan.

Food Log

Breakfast

Skipped.

Lunch
Skipped.


Dinner

Skipped.

2am Break-fast

Three medium hard-boiled eggs and baby carrots with home-made mayonnaise.

Liquid Intake   

   Coffee:  30 oz,  Water:  80+ oz.

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