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Post 1858, Day 143 of 2017
- 2,335 days since I started this blog -
- 2,335 days since I started this blog -
My friend Jerry is closing up his house in Pittsboro, North Carolina and moving to Cary. He will separate from his wife and get an apartment.
He says it's because the seeds he planted over thirty years there, from which he hoped to create a community of creative people, never bore fruit. His efforts were never reciprocated.
I think I understand why he feels the way he does. But I think his effort was doomed, and not just because he was the fields he was seeding were fallow.
For one thing, he needed to attract people to his vision, but his view compared various past environments that he had found in the past, with one he was trying to create. Those scenes happened in a different time, one where social priorities didn't include, for one thing, personal computers or digital music. They also happened in a different place: urban cultural centers, not the rural or suburban places he inhabited. He never took into account his own age difference, or the differences in the environment between his ideals and where he was.
And his view was rigid. And he was, and is, very judgmental. He has a low capacity for empathy, and a high belief in his own point of view and the validity of his judgment.
I think if he had put himself out more, and been more accepting of the good parts of what he found, he might have been much more successful.
He believes the problem was where he lived; that people there are (my words) inferior to the kind of people he needs to thrive in. I think the problem was his own, by the nature of how he defined how people should respond to him.
Me? I try to find the attractive elements of where I am, and put my energy at maximizing the good in what is there, instead of trying to transform the scene to what I idealize. I'm grateful that that is working for me.
He says it's because the seeds he planted over thirty years there, from which he hoped to create a community of creative people, never bore fruit. His efforts were never reciprocated.
I think I understand why he feels the way he does. But I think his effort was doomed, and not just because he was the fields he was seeding were fallow.
For one thing, he needed to attract people to his vision, but his view compared various past environments that he had found in the past, with one he was trying to create. Those scenes happened in a different time, one where social priorities didn't include, for one thing, personal computers or digital music. They also happened in a different place: urban cultural centers, not the rural or suburban places he inhabited. He never took into account his own age difference, or the differences in the environment between his ideals and where he was.
And his view was rigid. And he was, and is, very judgmental. He has a low capacity for empathy, and a high belief in his own point of view and the validity of his judgment.
I think if he had put himself out more, and been more accepting of the good parts of what he found, he might have been much more successful.
He believes the problem was where he lived; that people there are (my words) inferior to the kind of people he needs to thrive in. I think the problem was his own, by the nature of how he defined how people should respond to him.
Me? I try to find the attractive elements of where I am, and put my energy at maximizing the good in what is there, instead of trying to transform the scene to what I idealize. I'm grateful that that is working for me.
Food and Diet
Today's Weight: 203.7 lbs.
Today's Weight: 203.7 lbs.
Previous Weight (5/22/17): 203.6 lbs.
Net Loss/Gain: + 0.1 lbs.
Diet Comment
Not much change - given the diet-busting food I had yesterday, no complaint from me.
Food Log
Breakfast
2:45pm: Roasted turkey breast chopped salad (roasted turkey breast, shaved parmesan cheese, chard, kale, spinach, red cabbage, balsamic vinaigrette).
Lunch
5:15pm: A Quest bar and cottage cheese.
Dinner
12:55am: Grass-fed burger on Ezekiel 4:9 Flax sprouted grain bread with guacamole, cole slaw and a Quest bar.
Liquid Intake
2:45pm: Roasted turkey breast chopped salad (roasted turkey breast, shaved parmesan cheese, chard, kale, spinach, red cabbage, balsamic vinaigrette).
Lunch
5:15pm: A Quest bar and cottage cheese.
Dinner
12:55am: Grass-fed burger on Ezekiel 4:9 Flax sprouted grain bread with guacamole, cole slaw and a Quest bar.
Liquid Intake
Espressos: 1; Coffee: 0 oz.; Tea: 0 oz.; Water: 74+ oz.
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