August 17, 2010-Feelin Good

    I realized the other day that I hadn’t blogged in a while.  Probably a pretty good thing, gave me a little break.  I’ve been doing well lately, very regular workouts, eating clean as always, and on a sleep schedule as promised.  10 o’clock, every night baby!  I’ve really been making a push towards more sustainable sources of comfort as of late, getting rid of all the normal things that don’t coincide with good health and forcing myself to find others.  It’s been tough but inspiring.  By not allowing myself any cheats with food(been about 6 mos since last cheat), tightening up on the daily lifestyle grind, making my workouts tighter and more solid, I am forced to find other things that make me feel good.  In the end, I’m hoping and kind of predicting that the things that I get for comfort are going to be very closely related to the things I do for personal development...work becoming play, in other words.  Pretty good idea, I think. 

  I have been working on the book quite a bit lately, and a lot is happening there.  Unfortuantely, it feels so daunting at times.  Even little things, in regards to the book, feel daunting.  It’s like the damn thing never comes together.  I hope to be done within 2mos, but I’ve said that before. 

  Last, I’d like to give a back update.  If anyone is a new reader, I’ve had severe back issues since I was 15 years old which have left me with loss of feeling(have back now) and minimal to slightly moderate function in one of my legs.  I have tightened up dramatically in regards to my rehab and even some in my reflection time(thinking about the issue at hand) and am now proud to say that for the first time since the initial back issue I have done both squats and deadlifts regularly(every week) for roughly 2 mos with greatly positive results and only minimally negative.  I love this.  I’m not pounding huge weights, but I am increasing with consistency and feeling progressively stronger and better on the whole.

July 31, 2010-A bit dead

    This week, I’m just listening to the advice of my peers.  They tell me to take a week off.  I take a week off.  That’s how I do it.  Whatever, they were right.  I slept 10 hours last night, I never do that.  I’m not going to work out today either, still feeling drained.  Not going to work for a week doesn’t actually feel particularly good, to be honest...which I take as a good sign.  I’m starting to accept more and more that this is a part of what I really want to do. The problem has always been that it isn’t the full picture. There are a couple more pieces that need to come into play before I really feel satisfied with what I am spending my days with.  Just writing that last sentence though, brings the thought to mind that I should actually also then feel satisfied with what I am doing right now because it is what will help bring the other things into fruition.  Knowing that will help.

  Back on track, it’s time for me to make another adjustment to the lifestyle.  It’s not the last one by far, but I’m assuming it will be one of the last in regards to fufilling all of my physical requirements for life.  I’ve got to tackle sleep.  Basically like I’ve tackled everything else, get on a schedule and work on holding that schedule.  I don’t have what most people would consider a sleep issue, but I’m not on my A-game.  I don’t have it down like I’ve got the other stuff down. 

    I’ve got to get more imformation.  I’m going to make that I goal for this weekend, look up circadian rythem, sleep patterns, and what causes people to fall in and out of sleep.  Half of the problem in regards to a lot of the subjects I think a lot of people have trouble with is simply that we don’t have enough information about them...I/we try and tackle them, but only by "trying," if you catch my drift.  A lot of the times, we don’t actually do the ground work.  Lately, my big passion has been collecting and interpreting information….but then also letting my mind wonder after that.

  My dear Lella and others, I’ve taken your advice and decided to fill in "fun" gap.  I’ve got to build the energy a bit more. If I keep pushing to get more information, getting a better understanding, more development...etc, I notice that my progress starts to slow almost to a halt after a while.  But then if I go out and have a good time or just chill and take it easy, when I come back my pace is right back up there again, which is nice.  Right where it should be.

  I feel like this blog is a little scattered, so I’m going to cut if off there.  Hope you have a nice weekend.

July 22, 2010-Save the Children!

...these are  the people I usually ignore.  But I’ve stopped doing that now.  I’ve found myself awlays very annoyed by them and also, I guess intimidated.  I’m talking about the people with the sashes on who come up to me on the street and try and get me to donate to their cause.  I don’t think I ever really sat down and explored my feelings in regards to this subject, but I know that I would have always rathered that they just weren’t there.  Maybe even that they weren’t allowed to be there.  And that’s when I saw my weak link. 

What’s really happening is that these people have a goal and they are acting freely, doing whatever they can to accomplish their goal.  I find myself uncomfortable as they this process ensues.  But does asking me to donate for a cause have some kind of inherent power to make me feel uncomfortable?  Or is it more likely my own lack of experience/understanding that is making me feel uncomfortable when these situations arise?  Of course it is the latter.  I cannot ask someone to not do something that is well within their right simply because it makes me uncomfortable.  I would like to say though that, on the other hand, certain things that people do, which they also regard as being within their right actually takes rights away from others, in my opinion.  We have to be progressively more and more open when the oppurtunity to be so presents itself, but also realistic when their are important barriers being un-necessarily crossed.   

Getting back to the real issue at hand, I’m really trying to work out these weak spots right now.  So what I’ve done, and what I’ve done in other situations that I’ve spoken of in prcertior blogs, is I am refusing to physically avoid the situation.  I don’t change my path, in other words, or I don’t change my plan so as I to avoid an uncomfortable confrontation.  That’s an ideal I’m really working towards right now.

July 19, 2010-Get the Deadly back.

    Lately, I’ve been kind of a numbers natzi with my clients.  It’s been necessary, but there seem to be quite a few that do not respond positively to it.  Thing is, I respect the grind so much more these days than the "bulldoze" mentality, maybe we could call it.  The bulldoze just reminds me of everything that is wrong with society. 

  The ability to sit and look at the numbers, the exercises and joint functions, and grind out a solution over time is something that really appeals to me, it’s…not just the discapline we need but also the objectivity and resolve to just get it right.  That’s not only not going away, it’s going to grow quite a bit, I can feel.  The numbers grind is so much more than it is given credit for…unfortuantely, it’s not everything and that is very clear by how some people are so averse to it.  Of course, there are some feelings there, but you have to do with what you have and I am not a psychologist. 

  So my new resolve is to do with what I have, to grind the numbers as much as possible right now with my clients and especially with myself(I’m much worse, of course, with myself than with my clients), but also to "get the deadly back" with clients that really feel motivated to come in and just bulldoze(while still number grinding in secret, of course)-something I’ve been basically incapable of doing with them the last half year or so.  I’ve got to let some fun back into training.  The fun, ultimately, has to come back to the result, but prior to that…I have to kind of build the love or the energy or whatever.  I can’t push everyone into the grind, rather let them ask for(in one way or another) more information and ways to measure their success. 

July 12, 2010-Lowdown

I did a bad thing tonight.  I no-showed a client.  For those of you who don’t know, I’m a personal trainer.  It’s happened quite a few times this year and last.  I’m searching myself to understand why.  The truth is, I feel real bad when I do it and this time the guy was, from what I heard, visibly upset.  Of course he was, he’s paying good money for this.  The worst thing in the world is when someone thinks/feels less of you for good reason. 

I’ve come up with a few reasons for this happening as of late.  I have come to the conclusion that I am on the right path in life, yet I am aware that the way I tread this path is unacceptable to me as an individual, which then translates into being unacceptable to my clients.  There really is correlation between how happy I am at work and how well I perform.  A couple of things that are making me un-happy are 1. the general environment in the gym: there’s no sunlight, the temperature is always wrong, and the music is killing me. This is physical irritation.  2, the clients and members are not all wonderful to be around.  This is mental irritation. I am not wonderful to be around either, but I need to set clear boundries between me and them at times…and I do not yet do this satisfactorily enough.  I also need to both put my foot down harder in regards to certain members and their behavior and put my foot down lighter in regards to others. 3:

I am not experienced enough.  I still have plenty of holes in my understanding of training and plenty of holes in my ability to get my clients to perform the task set before them-specifically lifesyle manipulation.  I often either give advice that I know they are not going to follow-ie: too complicated/advanced advice, or I do not give them any advice at all.  Which leads me to my next subject, as of late I have been getting much deeper with my clients so as to improve my success rate. This has proven to have both positive and negative consequences. 

One of the negatives though is that my clients are expecting me to give them more time than they have bought.  I have to be tougher in regards to that.  If they want nuritional advice or if they want programs for when they are on vacation, then they can sit there with me during our paid hour when I write them and explain them to them.  I have let that go for too long and now and, obviously and every naturally, I am being expected to do things which I do not like which then attaches a negative feeling to the job.

The last thing I want to say though is that these are just reasons for why these things are happening.  They are ways to keep them from happening again.  What keeps these things from happening again is my understanding of why they shouldn’t happen and my feeling attached to what happens when they do happen.  I don’t feel as though I ever want it to happen again, but it is causing me to go through a lot of introspection so it’s probably good if it does sometime in the future, just not anytime soon please. 

The goal: I really have to improve my acountability.  Things like tonight should not happen.  I have been awful at responding to emails, writing programs for clients, returning calls…etc.  I even lied straight to a client’s face the other day about having prepared a program for her while she was going to be gone on vacation.  Not good.  This is the next leak to plug.

For those who are interested, my workouts are going great.  I rowed a 1.25.8 500m the other day for a new personal record and I have begun back squatting and deadlifting with regularity again.  The rowing has really been great for me, it has somehow ignited a new flame for strength training in me, by way of kind of balancing everything.  For some reason, the moment I started pushing the cardio-respiratory stuff, started worrying about my numbers there…it became ok again to be a bodybuilder.  The taste in my mouth from having done something for an entirely physical or aesthetic reason wasn’t as bad, more like just neutral, which was nice. 

July 1, 2010-Went shopping today

Basically all of stockholm is on sale.  Literally everything.  So I figured I would do my once-twice a year shopping today.  I’m not much of a clothes shopper, more of spend a lot of money on the stuff that really has the potential to make me feel good kind of a guy.  But anyway, I figured I’d have a go at it.  Thing is, I went around and looked and looked and I just don’t care that much.  Having nice clothes is pretty cool, not trendy ones but nice ones, but lately I’ve been running across more and more organic clothing and today it just seemed so uncool to buy something that wasn’t organic.  It might be time for me to make another push in that direction.

  For the most part, for the last few years I have been more or less 100% organic in regards to food.  In the last couple of months, I’ve gone through some money troubles and have had to bend quite a bit there.  And it felt good to bend, I needed that.  Now, that might be out of my system though.  It might be time for another push towards 100% sustainability.  I like the way that feels. 

  In other news, my workouts are going very well.  My back is a little iffy but that is mostly because I’ve been pushing the hell out of it lately.  Lots of rowing, back squatting, and deadlifting.  Got to get those numbers up and down.  In addition to that, I’ve become a member of a site called trainingpeaks.com which is essentially a place for me to keep track of my own numbers, those of my clients, and plot my progress on various graphs and curves.  It also allows me to program people a lot more easily.  This is gonna be fun!

Last, I have managed to con some poor soul into being my girlfriend.  It was a sad sad day for her and her family, but I’m happy about it. 

June 29, 2010-Really into the workouts right now

   Especially the cardio.  Got to get my 500 and 1000m row times down. 1.26 and 3.12 are my personal bests and they’re not even all that great.  Really want to push those.

June 26, 2010-Eating personal development

    It almost feels like that.  My personal development and my fun are getting closer and closer.  It’s an ideal that I like to strive even harder to achieve over the long haul.  When you get your most sustainable personal development from your fun, you’re good for a whole lifetime, I figure. 

  I started off the morning by waking up at 5am and reading a bit for pleasure, and then editing a bit in my book.  Then I went back to sleep for a bit, had a couple of good dreams, woke up, and edited some more.  I have been very wearisome lately in regards to editing, but then I asked myself yesterday(as I was playing basketball) why I feel that and if that feeling is representative of a future that I’d like to live.  And it really wasn’t.  The future that I’d like to live relies heavily upon helping people get to the next level with their bodies and even their minds(if I’m qualified to say so) and that book needs to come out.  With the exception of a 3 week period once or twice, I haven’t stopped work on it since I started over a year ago now.  It’s come along real nicely and is near finished, but still not near enough to put out.  It needs to have a good feeling...and it’s started to give me a good feeling to give it a good feeling.  You feel me?

I’m also looking into a couple of other things that I’d like to start moving towards.  One of them is adventure racing.  That got me a little excited this morning.  I’ve had a lot of mornings like these lately, where I just sit in front of the computer and look up cool stuff that I want to do.  Most of it doesn’t make the cut, but adventure racing has come up several times now and I’ve found a race which looks real cool.  In addition to that, life seems to be moving me in that direction as well-those around me are all seemingly involved in the different discaplines of the race...uwhich solidifies my desire.  I’ll keep everyone updated. 

Last, I’m getting more and more into mental acuity.  I just recently finished this 5,000 piece expert level puzzle and am waiting for its return from the frame shop.  I’m just really into this kind of thing right now.  Getting real sharp.  I’m looking for another now.  I don’t have space for another 5k, but maybe a super hard 1k. 

June 13, 2010-Dates and Weights

   Literally pummeling weights these days.  I cheated a bit on the diet today, but I needed a break anyway.  I notice though that I really don’t need any breaks at all if I am good about getting everything I need in and nurturing myself as I should.  If I ignore something for too long though, that’s when the desire for a binge comes up.  Interesting. 

  I did deads AND squats the other day.  First time I’ve done squats in a loooooooong time.  They were sumos, but the bar was still on my back and that I am pround of.  I’ve said this before, I’ve come to the understanding that there is something to be said for pushing stimulus even when the body isn’t 100% ready for it.  I’ve gotten to the point where more time off does not do me any good and a little ‘bad’ pain from working out isn’t actually all that bad at all as long as I keep it in check-it’s what keeps me on my A-game.  My back therapy is relatively constant, but when I push the stimulus it’s near perfect.  Then I don’t screw around or miss days or any of that stuff. 

  I’ve gone on a date or two in the last couple of weeks.  I don’t know how I feel about that.  Actually I do, I notice that I am somewhat more sensitive for things than I have ever been before.  A little more intolerant.  Actually more fragile, I would say.  Right now I really need to get that ‘I like you a whole lot’ vibe from a girl.  Second to that, I need to get it in a natural and cool way, letting me breathe a bit when we’re apart.  Any kind of deviation from that mean, makes me go up on my toes a bit. 

A little confusion.

What’s really been on my mind lately is what I actually feel.  What is it that’s happening to me when I feel something.  People, more so than ever before, are having a huge effect on me.  I don’t know if I actually feel it from just being around them or if I feel the tension from my current understanding of who they are and what they are going to do and how that is going to effect my comfort. 

What I’m really interested in though is when people say things or do things that aren’t even physical but they effect me anyway. What happens when someone says something to me and it hurts?  What happens when someone does something and it hurts?  I just don’t get it.  I mean, I am close to getting it, but I just don’t have it yet.  What have they actually done; as far as my eyes and skin can tell, they haven’t done anything.  But I defintely feel their effect.  It doesn’t even have to be something intential.  Today, I felt as though a person got the upper hand on me and I felt ‘down’ or something like down/angry for several hours afterwards…more like just dark and heavy.  And I don’t know what the hell that is.  I’ve just got to know. 

I am pinpointing situations in which I tend to feel bad, I am defining them, but I am not sure what is actually happening.  It might have something to do with my belief system.  When there’s some kind of inconsistancy in the stimulus and what I believe or am comfortable with.  Now that first part sounds wrong.  I don’t know, I just have to work this out.  What exactly is happening to me when I feel bad after someone gets what I define as the ‘upper hand’ on me?  What happens when someone is really angry around me and I feel bad as a result of it?  Am I taking something on or am I, personally, changing?-like, for a short period of time I mean.  Am I being posessed in some way?  I don’t know, but something is happening that I don’t have a good explanation for and I don’t seem to find any good ones either. 

My social anxiety

...more like my social ineptitude.  I think I’ve talked about this before, but somewhere along the way I lost the ability to talk to people and be myself.  Now I have this kind of pressure upon myself to say and do the right thing more than I had before when I really didn’t care all that much. On the other hand, I always had people I basically couldn’t talk to at all before..and now I am working that out.  It has always seemed like life, naturally by way of grinding out comfort, intensifies these things for me until I just can’t take them anymore, at which point I begin picking away at them until I am happy with where I am again, but at a higher lever than i was before.  I guess that’s the way it works.

   It’s kind of doing that now in regards to certain uncomfortable situations at work and on the street and wherever else.  I find myself confronted with situations that don’t sit well me at the same time that I find myself searching for more strength in regards to my ability to contront and talk with people.  At the moment, I don’t know if I am on the winning end of this battle or not.  I still find myself in situations where I walk away making excuses for why I didn’t speak my mind or confront someone-or even ask a girl out.  Today for instance, that same guy that keeps using the emergency exit as a regular door happened to do it right in front of me again.  I told him before, but in kind of a weak manner which he brushed it off rather rudely, which really shook me.  Today I didn’t really have the oppurtunity, I was with a client...but I kind of let him know with my finger that that wasn’t ok, but he didn’t respond.  I felt as though he got the better of me again and it hurt. 

These kind of things don’t sit well any longer.  A whole lot doesn’t sit well any longer.  The truth is, I am aware that people do things out of their own self interest; I know they are not doing things to hurt others for the most part.  Sometimes they are, but that is still out of there own self interest-to feel better about themselves..to get the upper hand and steal their energy.  What I can’t live with is my current lackluster ability to speak my mind and stand my ground.  I am doing this, grinding this out, out of my own self interest. 

I’ve noticed that I have essentially ignored other people for so long and have been such a lone wolf in so many ways, that I am relatively incapable of dealing well in social situations-whether they be in fun or conflict.  This is something I don’t want in my life and it’s something I can’t have. What I’m going to do and what I’ve actually already started doing is simply stop avoiding the stimulus.  I’m going to let the nature of life and the nature of myself do their best.  It’s a lot like many things I’ve gone through in my life…ignorance creates more weakness, acceptence grinds in, builds, and sustains strength.

This became a much cheasier blog than I am comfortable with, so I write this last line to make up for it and for my insecurity with just putting it out there like that.  Mmmkay.

June 1, 2010-Girls and workouts

I really hope this all comes out right. I am still lacking high motivation to workout.  The desire to do something strictly physical is tough for me to accept…for me to allow into myself, if you catch my drift.  Given my upbringing and my relative success with weightlifting and bodybuilding, I think I’m nearing my physical limit, by which I mean the amount of things I want to do in my life that lean strongly over to the purely physical end.  At times, when I think about putting on more muscle and specifically getting bigger, my feeling could be best described as ugghh.  Other times, that’s not the case. 

The same is kind of true for girls right now.  My eyes see and my eyes want, but my mind does not.  My mind is, more and more often, just seeing flesh and bones and realizing that if I close my eyes, that girl could look however and I wouldn’t know much of a difference…and then my body does not want.  Right now, that feels pretty right, feels pretty comfortable.  I need to get away from the physical in regards to women.  My tastes/feelings are not in tune with what is going to make me happy in the long run.  I know, my last girlfriend Kristina…sometimes I could just fall in love with her brain.  It’s like I finally found someone that I could breath with.  That I would talk to and just let it all out and she was there with me.  There were problems there too, but that was something I really loved.  That feeling that I could breath again.  I think it has to do with energy. 

Going back to the workouts…the good thing about them is that they are definitely a part of the life’s plan.  The motivation is not burning like it once was, it’s more luke warm and almost constant.  By pushing and backing off, I’ve ground pretty far and I think there’s more to come.  I hope all is well with you, talk to you later.

May 23, 2010-Today's thoughts

 and probably some others as well.  I had a pretty easy workout yesterday and was a bit disappointed with it, so I went for another mini one today in park.  Thing was, it started to rain on the way there.  I decided to not care.  That was a particulurly good decision because as I was walking there, I was reminded that that is what life is really about-experiencing it.  I have a tendency only go out in fair weather and I realized that, it is the fact that I never go out in poor weather that makes me so intolerant of it...and I’m not that intolerant of it.  I remember reading in Weston Price’s book...I forget what it’s called now, about the Swiss children in the Alps, gliding around on the glaciers barefoot and lightly clothed and not being bothered. That really says something. 

I think one of the bigger reasons stress that some people feel so stressed all the time is because they are protecting themselves from it too much.  I can think of a couple of people in my past that, strictly objectively speaking, simply experience enough stress in their lives to have any potential to learn how to deal with it.  They live too sterile and too respectful of their comfort-which actually isn’t respectful at all because in the end, they are made uncomfortable by literally anything that comes their way.  We have to apply stress.  More stimulus.  It’s no surprise people have breakdowns if they are experiencing literally everything they come into contact with for the first time in who knows how long. 

Another thing I’ve been thinking about today is how to be happy.  I’ve said this before, I’m not unhappy with my life right now, but I’m not happy either.  I’m chasing happiness.  I feel as though I am always chasing it.  I’ve come to the conclusion that most of us can’t actually not do anything to be happy...meaning most of us have to do stuff to be happy.  But we can’t do everything so as to be happy either.  We have find the most energy giving, sustainable tools/paths we can, and follow them. 

I’m always finding myself feeling like I have to do stuff.  That if I don’t do stuff that not only will I not be happy, but I won’t somehow….be given happiness-like it’s a prize given by God after having earned it with stuff done.  The answer is somewhere in the middle there.  I know that I am unhappy when I ignore my life’s responsibilities/callings.  I also know that I am unhappy when I feel like I have to do a million different things to make myself happy.  I need to identify my greatest sources of happiness and my greatest sources of energy leakage.  I know that physical pain is an energy leak that I have, I also know that being around down people is an energy leak.  I also know that not having money or losing money(playing poker) is an energy leak..but this is an energy leak that can be worked out kind of the way I was speaking about above...I have had too much money my whole life, I need more experience being on the edge.  That’s what I was saying in a previous blog.  Right now I am spending it as I get it and keeping myself on the edge, keeping myself nervous...though I am not as nervous about it anymore.

I am plugging leaks and pushing the areas which have potential.

May 16, 2010-Whaaaaaaaa?!

   For the first time in the 5 or 6 years or whatever it’s been since I went raw, I am experiencing something that could be described as a cold.  Now, this happens basically every single time I eat any substantial amount of cooked food, but this is more so than usual.  Of course, I haven’t eated cooked junk like I did in Italy a couple of days ago for a loong time, and that’s probably why, but I am DEFINTELY feeling it full blown today.  Not fun.

   In other news, I did sometihng else yesterday that I haven’t done in 5 or 6…or maybe even 10 years as well.  I jogged.  My back has been such a catastrophe my entire adult life that I haven’t been able to do any kind of running or jumping or hopping without a lot of discomfort…and several times, a torn calf.  Well, I did it yesterday and it felt good.  I’m really into taking care of the things that need to be done right now, and it’s time to get my body in order.  My back and my gut flora issue are my two biggest problems. I’ve kept them at bay for several years, but I think the final steps need to start being taken.  Soon, in the future, it will be time to turn my back entirely on cooked and it’s time right this moment to get on my A-game with my workouts.  I still don’t really have a goal other than to feel whole again, but it’s time to at least start writing everything down like I do with my clients and plug the many leaks that I’m sure I have in my program.  Anyway, just thought I’d give everyone the head’s up on my physical life.  Hope all is well, love.

May 13, 2010-The Day of the Wolf

...I’ve got a new beard, kind of wolverine style.  Everyone says it looks awful.  Forget them.  It looks awesome. 

In other news, I went to Florence this weekend to see my brother defend his Phd thesis on intenational contract law.  I have to say, basically nothing is fun the way in the traditionally way for me right now.  My life hasnt been all about laughs and good times like that in a loooong time.  Right now, it’s personal development time.   I got a lot out of this trip by way of burning the tilt.  I’ve got a lot of weak links that need strengthening and that is that I am most focused on right now. 

The weakest of all my linnks is my simple lack what what many people might call faith...I think it could also be described as  not seeing the whole picture, rather just kind of animalistically reacting to the here and now.  Trips are full of stress for me, mainly because they cost money and money is a sensitive subject for me.  I overreact when it comes to money...I have a real fear of being poor.  The more I experience though, the more I really push those boundries and enjoy getting more dynamic…what some might call reckless with my money.  The problem is, right now I do delve into recklessness a little more than I should...not a ton, but my experiences haven’t led me to a real acute understanding just yet...I still have some blind spots.  What usually ends up happening is that I have to squeeze more than I am comfortable with or I have to loan a bit of money from one of my parents, which is embarassing.

Anywho, the trip ending up costing a lot more than I had originally planned and this got me angry from the get go-and anger is a sign of insecurity.  Already at the airport, I was angry/insecure.  Then I got...something else, not angry more quietly mad about having that reaction.  It’s been with me so long and is such a burden to my life.  Why am I getting angry and irritated as often as I am getting.  I have insecurity issues is why.  I need to be more comfortable in more situations and with less tools(money, for instance).  So at the airport, I got mad that I was angry-but again, a kind of quiet madI, not the same anger.  So I was like F it, I am burning this tilt.  I don’t have money for all the fees I have to pay, but I am going to pay them right now anyway and I am going to sit in that feeling for a while.  And it felt good.  The insecurity lasted for only a moment before I stated to realize the whole picture-that I have a lot of clients at work right now, that I have a couple of projects going, that if worst actually came to worst I could always loan some money, that I wouldn’t end up in debt to a credit card company( don’t even have a CC) or end up in dire straits...Everything was going to be ok.

That was lesson one for the wolf.  Lesson two had to do with energy or comfort or something.  I’ve always been interested in these guys that can seemingly eat little to nothing yet not suffer the consequences-not diet, not get sick, don’t even lose weight.  People who are in either an almost constant state of fasting and meditation, fasting without meditation, or just much lower calorie than everyone else yet remain strong and robust.  I’ve started to realize that we actually consume more than we eat...or something like that.   We absorb.  I think, I don’t know. 

For the last couple of months, my diet has been 95% fruit, 4% vegetables, and 1% raw meat.   I’m doing just fine for the most part, but the food doesn’t get me high at all.  It’s much more subtle.  Even a diet of primarily raw animal product got me higher than this.  A cooked diet got me really high-now when I eat cooked, I can literally think of nothing other than food during that period of time I am eating cooked-not just while I am eating, but that day or those days.  It almost doesn’t matter how uncomfortable I am, how much I am itching, how much dandruff I have, how bad my stomach feels, I am on a constant search for more cooked food.  Now, things are different. 

I’ve noticed that I am simply getting comfort from elsewhere.  I am still in need of comfort obviously, but I am not supplying it to myself with food.  In the last couple of months, I have been developing a new taste for art.  Now I can almost EAT art.  It’s like I love some of it so much, I can chew on the energy it gives me…or the energy between me and the painting or the sculpture or whatever.  I noticed though, that when I was in Italy this past weekend and eating cooked Italien food, my taste for art was dramtically diminished.  Which is unfortunate given how much was available to me while I was there.  I still liked it, but I couldn’t connect with it and love it like I usually do now...maybe I don’t love it now though, maybe I just kind of eat it now.  Consume it by buying it.  Another thing, and this could be total BS, was that my taste for women was changed as well.  i was more attracted to women that I am normally somewhat turned off by-the ones that wear a lot of makeup and have a tendency to look very fake.  I wasn’t attracted to the health/the shine that I normally like.  That’s an interesting lesson for me.  The subtler sources of energy/comfort just weren’t enough.  I wanted to dramtically physical stuff-the stuff I physically consumed and the stuff that looked In Your Face better. 

May 4, 2010-the inner battle/getting experience

I haven’t blogged in a while, we’ll see how this turns out.  My mom came and visited me this past week.  I hadn’t seen her in about six months.  I’ve kind of come to the conclusion that she is a lot more experienced than I am as a soul.  

So, I accidentally locked my mom out of my apartment the second day she was here.  I had even actually told her 2x that I would NOT lock the door after I left-she had gone shopping...but nonetheless, I did, and she was locked out for the afternoon.  This is something, were I her, I would naturally have been extremely irritated over. 

As luck would have it, she happened to run into my dad’s first wife(who also happens to be my neighbor) on the street and they spent the afternoon together.  Despite that, this wouldn’t have stopped me from being upset with her if she had done it to me.  When I went over there that evening(we had dinner plans with her and my brother), my mom greeted me at the door with a big smile and a huge laugh.  A genuine laugh.  She actually thought it was funny.  My reaction would not have been laughter.  At this stage of the game, it would not actually have been yelling at her either, but my feelings would not likely be hidden very well...I would still show some kind of light to medium irritation.  I know for a fact that she didn’t have that when I saw her than night.  And it’s probably the 10 millionth time I’ve done something like that.

What I percieve as an inner battle, she does not even think difficult...or even think of at all.  She so rarely punishes or uses agression, she never has.  99% of the time, that stuff is a direct and true sign of weakness.

This isn’t exactly applicable to the above example, but what I really respect most these days, is the ability to do what works and to do what’s right according to the situation-especially when what’s right make’s you look like a sucker, or a pushover, shy, is embarassing, or just makes you seem all around weak(to yourself or to others).  When you don’t have to think about it anymore, that’s real strength..when you don’t bother punishing anyone, when you just love them.  Even if they spit on you like they did Jesus and Gandhi, and MLK Jr and the rest of them, you love them.  That’s crazy strength.  And you tell them how you feel, you tell them that you still love them.  Just look like a sucker.  Push it.  I want so desperately to have that strength...and yet my body so desperately wants to experience the weakness. 

An associate of mine told a guy she was interested in that she was in love with him, knowing he would treat her poorly afterwards…I couldn’t have been more proud of her, I almost well up when I think about it.  That’s real strength.  The inner battle was won.  She went in low.  She openly admitted what is percieved as weakness...so she consciously opened up for great possibility of pain.  It doesn’t matter how he responded.  She won big. 

It’s this grind that I am working on the most lately.  I’m really trying to go in low, look like a sucker, like someone who wants to be disrespected-especially in places where I have gone in high before, making it embarassing for me.  This is my push right now...I’m only doing an ok job...maybe not even that, honestly.  This is a real grind. 

April 21, 2010-Burning the tilt pt. 2

    I’m really into personal development right now.  Grinding out the discomfort.  And the tilt-bahavior based on emotion instead of understanding.  Where there’s less discomfort, there’s less tilt.  I still have a bit of discomfort.  I wouldn’t really say that I’ve developed social anxiety somewhere along the way…I think it’s more accurate to say that I’ve always had it.  I’m not 100% Paul with nearly enough people.  I know this is the case for a lot of people and many would say that there are very few that you are actually 100% yourself with, but I really can’t accept that anymore.  I feel like I am not enough myself with far too many people.  In fact, I know that’s the case, and I know many others are far ahead of me in regards to this.  I’m not walking around nervous, I’m just not walking around confident.  I don’t feel really relaxed and always on the verge of a joke like I used to feel.  That’s a real shame, in my opinion. 

   I think a lot of things have to change…a lot of patterns.  I have to let more people in and I have to expose myself to many more potentially uncomfortable situations.  I’ve been doing that lately.  Especially with gym members-it irks me that some people don’t follow the rules, yet at the same time I am nervous about telling them to follow them.  Funny, my general mindset is that ‘the government that governs the least is the one that is best.’…but I am using these rules as a tool for my personal development.  There are a few people, groups of people, and situations that I often run into at the particular gym I am at that piss me right off(a sign of discomfort in and of itself): those that use the back door to the locker room despite the sign on it saying to not use it and those that do not put away their weights.  I have been making a point of putting myself near these people specifically to experience the discomfort of the situation in general as well the sink or swim feeling.  I’m at about 60-40 right now, leaning towards swim…maybe even 70-30, but I want to push that further. 

I also, as much as it hurts, want to continue honest about my insecurities and fears.  Maybe I shouldn’t be as honest as I’ve been lately-to whomever whenever, but I still have to keep that up.  I suppose I should reveal the whole story though as that is most honest..the honest truth is that I do not walk around aware of my discomfort all the time or feeling insecure constantly..but I do enough of the time to bring it to my attention and it is almost always around things having to do with confrontations which I am not experienced in.  I’ve found, almost too my surprise that I am quite experienced with certain kinds of confrontation and disagreement, but other situations are much less comfortable.  It seems to me, certain types of people really make me uncomfortable and I really have to see the truth in that…I have to find the kernal, if you know what I’m saying.  It could just be people that are reminiscent of others who have caused me discomfort in the past or whom I have little experience with or percieve to be smarter/better…etc than me.  Having written that, I think it’s likely that.  I really have to see a larger truth when it comes to people in general and I also have FEEL even more how people are doing things for their own self interest, rather than their interest in knocking you down…which is also their self interest-to make themselves feel better.

That’s how I see it today, yo.  I’m not gonna edit this one, so sorry for the mistakes.

April 18, 2010-One person CAN do a lot pt 2: the slightly illegal version

   It was a good weekend.  A client/friend came over today to share with me not only her expertise in web design(she is creating a new site for me and my book), but also her effacy in middle-eastern raw food making.  It was great success!  I ate till I about burst and then we went on a little walk/adventure. 

The day prior, as promised, I took a walk along the shoreline of a lake in a large park not far from my apartment and did a little cleanup along the coast there.  There wasn’t all that much in any one place so there are no dramatic before and after pictures, but I figured, in total, there was probably a lot-so I went with my garbage bags and picked up what was there as I walked along the shore. 

I can tell you one thing, the water is not uber warm this time of year.  It was not extremely cold either, but definitely not uber warm.  But I want to make something a little clear: when you’re doing something that needs to be done, try and do stuff that doesn’t get done by other people.  The parks and all that, they are good, but I really just did that so I could get some pics and show people that it makes a difference....what really needs to be done is that stuff that doesn’t get done by city workers or other do gooders.  Right now, the water is filled with trash.  Just junk that people throw in as they pass by.  City workers aren’t going to go in and get it.  We need to.  We have legs, we have arms, we have the will, and we have need. It’s time to get a little wet. 

So while I was out there, I noticed a very nice little thing.  Saplings have started to grow(this led into today's adventure).  I love my saplings.  They are my babies. You know, trees breath CO2.  They are not a permanant answer to our environmental problem, but CO2 is the largest contributer to the greenhouse effect and we have millions and millions, maybe even billions, of CO2 sinks sprouting out of the ground at this very moment.  And every last one of them is dirt cheap-that was almost a pun, I’m sorry.  The are totally free.  We can’t afford to not use them.  Dig those babes up!  Go into your parks, get down on your knees and open your eyes. They’re everywhere and every last one of them is going to die on the blades of a lawnmower.  Dig them up before they do.  I dug up 25 today-I found them all within 1 square foot of one another-that’s how close they grow.  These particular ones were maples.  But soon the oaks will come up.  Do you know how cool it is to have an oak Bonsai?  It’s like the coolest thing ever.  And they’re GREAT presents.  Everyone I know knows they are getting a tree for both their birthday and for Christmas.  It’s just how I do.  They might get something else, but they are getting a tree too.

Remember this: we cannot wait for or rely on the well educated minority to come up with costly and complicated answers to problems that the majority can solve with essentially no thought whatsoever, no money at all, and just a little elbow grease.  The answers are all right in front of us, or even very often inside of us.  The are free and they are easy.  The people that make the most difference with the fewest tools, win.

April 14, 2010-One person CAN do a lot.

...got a little project goin on, inspired primarily by a little lady named Johanna whom’s Facebook status gave me a good idea. I’ve talked about doing cleanups and what not before on this blog, but since I started this bad boy, I am ashamed to admit that they have been too few and far between.  There have defintely been some, maybe even quite a few, but not as many as I would have liked.  This is a problem.  Part of the problem has been that I haven’t really ackowledged to myself how much of a difference one person can make.  I mean, I’ve seen what I can do in an hour, but I’ve never actually payed attention to it..just kind of done the job and gotten the hell out of there-usually I pick kind of embarrassing locations to work on my comfort at the same time, so I’m almost always in a slight rush.  I haven’t done all that much, so far, but I did go out and take care of 1.25 parks here in town and it only took about 1.5 hours. 

  I’m not writing this post to fill my pride by any means.  I’m kind of embarrassed in fact that I have given it that name and delivered still so little but you have to start somewhere and plus that was what she wrote in her update and I want to give cred where cred is due.  What I have become acutely aware of though is the fact that one person can actually do a lot.  It’s very unfortunate, but right now society in general is waiting on the educated minority to come up with costly solutions to problems with cheap and easy answers.  Tax money is literally flying out the window for **** that people can more than easily do themselves, at the same time that tax money is desperately needed for things that the average joe cannot do himself-like engineer environmentally friendly machinery and machine systems for factories, come up with more advanced and cheaper alternatives to … you fill in the blank.  We as a society, run by a government of our own choosing, are leaking cash like water through a sieve.  In the very near future, I think we are going to need to and actually going to do a lot more ourselves and start living lives that a smarter on the whole so as to save us a lot of grief in the future.

I kind of lost some steam here, sorry for the boring-ness.  Anyway, here are some pics from the latest little outing.  Like I said, it’s been important for me to do this stuff out in the open, to help work on my personality as well…help make me more comfortable.  Next weekend, I’m planning on walking along the water and taking out what shouldn’t be there.  I did this last winter and raised a lot of eyebrows as I go knee deep in an almost frozen waterway…but for some reason, when I’m doing this stuff, I’m so pumped, I just don’t usually feel any of the physical discomfort that comes along with it. 

March 27, 2010- Burn the Tilt

   I realized it’s been a while since a post...I’ve got a couple of feelings to sort out, so I figure this is a great time.  I did a little seminar the other day and exercise and lifestyle.  I didn’t do too well.  I was shaking like a leaf just prior and tilting like a mofo in my preparation.  I’ve come to realize in the last couple of months that I am really a much weaker individual than most people take me for.  I think it’s healthy for me to admit this openly and for people to see it.  Not only do I do a lot of things for comfort, but I also find myself in a lot of situations that I am uncomfortable with, which is a pretty clear sign of lack of experience or maturity(understanding).  

   Right now life(or me) is taking care of a lot of these things.  Filling me up with uncomfortable moments.  And in life’s good graces, I am also being filled with the opposite-lots of love coming my way.  I’m happy about that, but still not very thankful-and that’s an indication of the fact that I have not had it that rough in life-that I feel something deserving or expectant of the love.  Those who have had very little feel much more thankful than I do. 

   I am very into burning this tilt right now-filling in my gaps in understanding-quitting going back to old acts for comfort(things that don’t actually have anything to do with the thing that is taking my comfort away) and going towards the actual solution ie: getting my comfort from solving the problem instead of something entirely otherwise.  I’ll give you a good example, I didn’t even realize I was doing it...when I started this post, I was uncomfortable as I became even more clear of my weak links that I have just this morning.  The blog was flowing like water from a faucet until just two seconds ago when I decided to eat a banana.  Because food has always been a source of comfort for me, I am no longer that uncomfortable and the emotion in this blog will have to come to an end.  I can fake it, but I have a hunch that faked emotions are almost never felt by the reader. 

  The seminar was about a 6.5 out of 10 I would say.  It became real clear to me though, that that is something I must now begin doing.  I am too uncomfortable around people.  This is a great way to plug that leak.  Right now, it seems like all I think about is trying to be as solid as possible, be able to stand on my own two feet in any situation: whether it’s in an argument with someone I’ve never even met before over, or approaching an alcoholic on the street.  I need to knock out this discomfort and I need to knock out these tilts-these deviations from what I would normally do were I 100% confident in every situation.  I don’t like this bullshit anymore.

  Here are a list of paths to comfort, please laugh, please look away:

1. I almost can’t believe this is still around from when I was a teenager.  When I am nervous, I have a tendency to flex an arm or stand in front of the mirror and check out my abs. 

2. Food.

3. Self promotion, this one REAAALLLY irks me.  This one’s gonna burn, that mother ****er.  Little comments here and there. 

4. Exaggerations.  This one, I’m burning pretty good.  I don’t do it too often anymore, and when I do, I basically always come back and bring it down by negating the thing I said just prior and making myself look like an idiot. 

 I’m sure I have more.  100% sure of it, but now I’ve released enough discomfort in this blog for my ideas not to be at the very forefront of my mind.  They will come up at the next junction of discomfort and blog.  I’ll try and force those two together a little bit. 

Last, what’s really helping me through this are the great masters.  The last I read about was St. Francis of Assissi.  Him and all the others, they are really the kings of comfort.  They give up everything they have(ie: they use no tools) and still they accomplish the absolute hardest of all tasks-they preach in front of people that hate them, they stop crimes in the process of being committed, they not only survive amidst extreme physical discomfort but they relish in it-that would seem like a disease to most people, but I tell you it is NOT.  I’ll not end up anywhere in the realm of the realm of these great men and women in this lifetime, but their examples are really good for me and give me both strength and insight. 

Last, I normally edit these posts and whilst doing so I find small things that I erase and change and whatnot.  This time I won’t do that, so everyone can see both my discomfort and other weak links come through in my writing.  It’s time to be even more honest, not just honest in speech, but also in how I speak.  Last, I don’t want to edit either, it takes too long; it is too uncomfortable to be dragged away from something else that I woud be doing now-that something being something I am not currently aware of. 

March 17, 2010-The Loving Hardcase

    That’s how I describe my God.  I don’t know how yours is, but that is how mine is.  I’ll tell you what, he takes care of me, that’s for sure, but let’s me know what’s up at the same time.  I’ve been letting go of a lot of fearful behavior lately-like profressionalism, keeping distance from certain people, avoiding certain subjects…etc and it’s really playing out kind of interesting.  As a person, I am a real amateur.  I don’t think I’m on the lowest rung, but I’m not real advanced.  Without fear being a driving factor, I notice that many of the things that were a staple in my behavior are definitely not a staple-which means they were never really a part of me, rather a result of a fear of mine.  A great example is work.  The truth is, I don’t really have to fear being fired if I don’t show up for a client or if I do a less than good job with someone.  I’ve done a great job with a lot of clients and am wholly appreciated-so that fear of being fired was too strong of a feeling and I have let it go, for the most part.  But in letting it go, I realize that I am not nearly as accountable as I have been essentially my entire career. 

   I no-showed a client on monday, double booked one on the same day and had to last minute panic re-schedule, and was considerably late for another also on the same day.  Similar things have been happening for the last few months now.  On the one hand, you might say, it’s not ok, but on the other it actually is ok in regards to the things that I fear, like my job security.  I’m still fine, my clients like me and are understanding, and everything is hunky dory.  On the other, I am not fine with it.  I have never felt more down in regards to these situations than I do now.  I really really want them to succeed.  It hurts to let them down.  I get really upset about it.  I really really want everything to go extremely smoothly and I want them to get their results.  I get very worked up nowadays when they do not.  Even if I have a person who is down 40lbs, if he/she doesn’t continue with their weightloss(if more is necessary), I get downright upset about it, mostly angry rather than sadness though-and for the time being, that’s a real amateur reaction.  Maybe in the future, it will be a kind of consciously brought on anger, like it should be, but right now it’s a knee jerk anger, and that’s amateur.

The last, I don’t know why, but surprising effect of getting rid of the fear(professionalism/refusal to acknowledge the human status of both myself and my client) has been that I have come to terms with the fact that even the product I am offering is not up to par.  Not only is my service not up to par, but also the actual product I am offering-the training.  As is usually the case, fear has a way of covering up many things and not just those that it was originally used to cover.  I find that I have missed many things in my training with clients, way too many.  I have not been nearly as on my A-game as I have thought. 

Anyway, so this week, I messed up with 3 clients.  Despite that, the big guy upstairs hands me a gripload of new ones.  I’m getting what I need, I’ve been given so much and I’m feeling pretty thankful for it.  I’ve got more booked now than I’ve had in two years.  I’ve felt this coming.  I don’t think I’ll be doing my old numbers any time soon, but I’ve known for a while that the time has been coming where I have to step it up.  Thing is, like I said in the last blog, these new clients and even the old ones now that I have are almost exclusively not easy. 

Life is sending me some signals, and the big one is that it is time to become a more loving individual and a more confident individual-someone who can go in and do what needs to be done and give what needs to be given.  When it comes to people, I just don’t have that.  It’s coming, but I am scared of them and our interactions.  One of the things that I feel on a consistant basis is this sense of soul duty, of helping people who are really stuck-primarily the addicts, and also speaking out when something is happening that just shouldn’t happen any longer.  God is pushing me in that direction, he’s telling me I don’t have to do anything, but that I won’t be happy unless I start.  Some situations, especially on the street, seem too much for me to bear but I keep getting this feeling-"you don’t have to do it now, but you will sometime."

March 12, 2010-Nya uppgifter?

I’m kind of starting to wonder if life isn’t going to take another dramatic turn sometime in the near future.  Seems like everything has been so body focused for so long that it’s time that that chapter came to an end.  As I put the finishing touches on this book, I feel as though they really are the finishing touches.  Not as in, I am going to quit training, but more that I have come to a level which I am going to simply sustain for quite sometime while I move forward in other areas of life. 

Life itself seems to be steering me pretty heavily towards helping people in mental/emotional need right now.  As of right now though, I’d only give myself like a B in that area.  I’ve got clients, friends, members at the gym…etc coming at me left and right with…not just problems, but in several cases, actual crises.  And to be honest, it’s not too much.  I can handle this.  I’m not taking all their problem unto myself, I’m not blaming myself for them, and I’m not losing sleep over it.  

On the other hand, I am struggling a bit with the actual truth of the situation:

1. That i don’t know what to do in all of these situations.  I’ve got a lot of them covered, it seems like, but some(like the girl I talked about in the last blog), I’m not only clueless, but also scared. Really really anxious and nervous about it-so much so that when I do do the littlest little something I actually leave the gym, I leave the area right away-that’s how uncomfortable it is, I just run. 

2. The fact that though I am not the cause of these problems, if I don’t actually go through with that which I logically recognize I should do, then someone is hurting.  And in some cases, really hurting.  I can tell myself all day long that it’s not my fault that they are in this situation and I’ll be right everytime.  That doesn’t help a whole lot though, I and you and we all have, within us, the potential if not the actual goods required to dramatically help people in need and sometimes stop them dead in their tracks.  In the particular situation of the girl, I understand something needs to be done, but I don’t have what it takes to get it done yet.  And throwing myself in the situation is really hard for me.  I’ve developed a kind of social anxiety, I guess, over the last few years that is making things very difficult-it’s a good thing that life has back up plans and isn’t just relying on one person to make the difference(people come and help me, for instance, when it gets really tough-it happened today).  I don’t know exactly what I am anxious over, but I am definitely anxious over something.  It is simply my feeling that "This must be DONE" that gets me moving.  It’s not my experience….I don’t know how to approach anyone, I am barely, JUST BARELY able to tell people that I care about them.  The real reason is because I haven’t cared since I was a little kid.  I haven’t really had feelings for anyone else’s feelings for a long time, and that’s all coming back in waves here-way faster than my experience can keep up with.  It’s a little cool though, it’s coming back in a way that is combined with my more adult way of looking at the world-I feel people and care about them, but I also see the logical benefit for helping them…the why, I guess.  People have to start feeling better, not just so they feel better, but so society climbs out of the hole it’s dug itself into-so we see the weak links in the different ways we live life and we strengthen them.  Making people feel better is a way of improving everything.  Fixing, repairing, putting back together is a real thing that needs to be done and the way it gets done is by people seeing/feeling a need driven by both emotion and understanding.  I’ll tell you right now, I have never gotten teary eyed as often as I do now and I have never been so sure of what needs to be done. 

March 10, 2010-Intervention

I’m really not feeling good right now.  As I’ve spoken about on prior occassions, certain things have become unacceptable to me in the last few years and speaking up or attempting to do something about it has been the natural progression for me.  I’ve talked about the alcoholics on the street and now it’s anorexics in the gym.  We have a policy against letting people continue to workout when they are showing clear signs of anorexia or obsessively exercising, so lately I have been reporting these people.  My conscience basically won’t let me do otherwise anymore. 

But still, much like every other situation I have described, I find myself so scared to take action.  I don’t know exactly what I am scared of-it’s something different in every situation, but I’m real scared in these situations where my conscience will no longer allow me to be silent but yet my experience is so little that I gain no self confidence from it.  This keeps me from actually getting the job done.  So often I stop short of doing that which really assures that the job gets done…and that’s unacceptable. 

There’s been a girl at the gym(a formerly very attractive girl that I had my eye on) who has, as of late, essentially started to disappear.  She started off in exceptional shape, so when it first began I kind of thought she was just decided to get a bit leaner.  Then lean turned to real lean, and then she was showing real signs of atrophy.  Now she’s thin thin, really thin.  And now she’s pregnant.  To be honest with you, I’ve had some reseverations about reporting these people because what generally happens is that the person that speaks with them asks them to get a doctors note allowing them to continue working out and until then, their membership is on hold.  That of course, doesn’t solve the problem, it just keeps them from getting their comfort from the working out-which can be a good thing or a bad thing. 

This girl though, is pregnant and she’s going to harm the baby.  I reported her two nights ago and she slipped out without being spoken to.  Now I reported her again and I don’t know what will happen.  I do know though, that if I personally asked the receptionist to not let her out of the building until she is spoken to, it would have gotten the job done.  I didn’t do that.  At that point, after I had reported her, I was too nervous about the whole thing, I just wanted to get out of there.  I need to condition that out.  Thing is, I’ve become kind of a policeman.  I’m reporting people left and right and I am growing tiresome to some, I am sure.  If I had asked that of the receptionist, I am relatively sure I would have gotten a talking to by my boss, whom is responsible for taking care of the situation…I don’t know though. 

And then I thought about another thing on my way home. And it’s very typical.  None of this would be a problem if I just decided to take the ball into my own hands and go up and talk to them myself.  Of course, what would I say?  I don’t really know.  I do know this though, and I took this from a great Christian missionary Mark Cahill: it’s not a presentation, it’s a conversation.  That’s a great starting point.  I think this is really the only way out.  I don’t like feeling like a little tattle-tale and everything else in my life has only gotten worked out by me actually taking the bull by the horns and grinding it out.  i think it’s time I start doing that, but we’ll see.

March 6, 2010: A Mistake

     I let myself down the other day.  I didn’t find out about it until last night, but it happened on thursday.  A client came in who had lost her voice; she handed me a written slip telling me about it.  She had no fever, no sore throat, just lost her voice she said.  I saw very clearly though, that that was not the case.  Maybe no fever, but there was something going on other than just having lost her voice.  So, I was immediately skeptical but I had turned her away a couple times before for coming sick and I didn’t want to send her home again.  Alright fine, we’ll do the exact same program as last time and not a single rep more, I thought.  I knew it would be too much though.  I really did.  No excuses, I knew for certain that it was going to be too much.

Got an email last night, ‘hey, have been in the hospital, I have strep, have received antibiotics.’  Funny thing was, I really didn’t care at the time when I got the email.  My thought was more along the lines of ‘Yup, thought so.’  It wasn’t until his morning that the seriousness of this hit me.  I really shouldn’t have let her train on thursday, I knew it was too much.  I just did.  And I’ve got to condition myself out of that feeling I have to always want let people live the responses to their own actions: that might result in too much pain sometimes for the positive to outweigh the negative. 

I haven’t acknowledged the seriousness of my job before.  Part of that is because no one else does either.  You can actually really profoundly change people’s lives, for the better or the worse.  Now I have helped to change it for the worse-and profoundly.  She’s an overweight, middle-aged woman whom does not need to be taking antbiotics right now.  She might need it for the strep, but she definitely does not need it at this stage of her life, if you get my drift.  Everything is too hard for her as it is.   She’s been having a hell of a time losing more weight, she not healthy in general, her lifestyle is deep within the lines of unsustainability…this has the potential to make things exponentially harder for her.  What if she has a reaction to this course of antibiotics along the lines of mine(which is possible given her aforementioned qualities) and she essentially loses a great portion of her ability to digest food properly?  Then what?  Then it’s get real friggin perfect with your lifestyle or give up entirely, basically.  I think she has enough in her to step it up like 10 notches, but I don’t know.  She’s very uncomfortable and that’s a good sign, she’s got the why anyway, but I don’t know if she has the rest.  Maybe there isn’t a rest though, maybe the why is enough. 

I’ve got to get more serious about my job.  On the one hand, I’ve never been more serious.  On the other, it’s still not enough.  I need a much higher percentage of successes.

March 1, 2010-Utbildningen

  Today I went to a Cross-training educational seminar.  It was really just a class for us new group instructors to get better at our game.  My main focus though, these days, is staying humble in these situations.  I’ve been and still am way too cocky and arrogant and it so often keeps me from learning anything.  Even if I can teach someone something, I feel like I should just keep my mouth shut right now and let the others around me show me their thing.  I probably still didn’t do a very good job of that today; in fact, I know I could have done better, but I feel like I am getting better at it. 

   The fact of the matter is, arrogance so often blinds you to other people’s greatness.  And the only reason I am ever arrogant is if I find myself in the kind of situation where I know I am pretty good at something but also still know that others can be a lot better than me.  I have to grind that out.  I got a lot of good suggestions today simply by taking the back seat and listening to how other people conduct themselves.  In fact, I got a GREAT suggestion just the other day by a total newbie to the game simply because she had lived life and understood human interaction better than myself-she didn’t have to be a well respected and great trainer, rather just a wise person.  I really hope I can keep this up, because I have missed out on so much of life due to arrogance thus far.  I’ll keep trying my best. 

Feb 28, 2010-Waking up  

   I see this happening more and more everyday.  People are coming into themselves.  I am too.  I’m a little bit scared of it, but excited too.  For as long as I can remember, I’ve been pretty uncomfortable with confronting people and conflict in general.  This is starting to change.  I’ve come to the conclusion that conflict is something that is generally uncomfortable.  The trick is making it as least conflict like as possible.  I don’t know why I come get this earlier, but it’s part of the message of all the masters: they don’t just go around starting arguments with people, the express themselves lovingly and calmly.  When I’m scared, I’m most often angry as a result.  This is a way for me to get through the situation without someone stealing my energy.  As I realize the former, the ladder becomes less and less of a problem. 

   I’ve always been very scared of yet looked immensely up to these people who take on the world for what they know is right.  I’ve been scared because, of course, I have ideals too…and living them to their fullest puts me in situations where I am directly faced with conflict with other people-people who can make me feel stupid or less than I am.  I’ve kind of realized though, that that can only happen if you disagree with them…or if you fight with them, in other words.  It can’t happen if you go in below them, if you know what I mean.  If you start humble, real humble. 

  So the other day, I was walking around and some city workers were doing something that was unacceptable to me.  Instead of being the extremely abrasive, essentially useless, protestor that I have been in the past…I was less abrasive.  It still didn’t work, I still didn’t take it all the way, I was still too uncomfortable.  But it’s coming. 

   It’s funny how life works.  Up until this point, life has ‘feared me into things’…gotten me scared enough not to act, to act-if you catch my drift.  The thing is, after a while, after you’ve done it enough times, that fear starts to break down because you realize that there is so much you can do to make the whole situation more comfortable…so then, what you’re left with is the the act that is still there but love as your reason rather than fear.  Now you do it out of your feeling of duty-soul duty, I’ll call it. 

   There’s a guy named Daniel Rosenblit who died and was recussitated, and when he came back he realized he needed to change his life.  He talks a lot about humility and courage-a real unstoppable combo.  It’s always been him and his life that I am most scared of…of going all the way, because often I feel it.  He’s vigilante with love for God and his fellow man as his motivation.  That’s very difficult to overcome.  It’s implications are also very frightening.  There are a lot of innefficiences out there, especially in the city, that we all kind of let go that we probably wouldn’t had we the same motivation and convinction as him.  He doesn’t let them go. 

February 14, 2010-Stimulating

...So I’ve talked a lot about my heavy workouts as of late.  At some point, you have to look at your actions totally objectively and really find out if your feelings are representitive of the truth.  I find that mine aren’t.  It kind of came to me a while back that I could probably have equally as much or less back and shoulder pain doing 3x as much and as intense work as I am now.  I mean, I’ve done a lot of therapy on both bodyparts and I should be much better now than I was.  What’s happened, and I think it happens to a lot of people, is that I’ve avoided stimulus altogether to keep from being in pain instead of applying the right stimulus so can keep training and stay out of pain.  The problem is that the pain never ends…you keep lowering your standard and your level of functionality lowers along with it.

So the conclusion I’ve come to is that their is a point of diminishing returns in regards to rest time.  The workouts I do now sometimes leave my back a little weird feeling and the lateral head of my gastroc completely turned off, but more often than not, the general feeling back there is a better one than it was the day before and assuming I keep stretching my tight links and taking care to be very balanced in my training, I move steadily forward. When I say balanced, I speak in terms of where I’m at now.  For instance, I was a baseball player when I was younger.  I have done thousands upon thousands of trunk rotations towards the right(I’m left handed...left handed people are champions); my training today in regards to trunk rotations is relagated strictly to the left side-that’s balance for me. 

Last, despite my having done 32kg kettlebell swings last week, my back is still in working order(though still sore after 8 days!!) and not injured. I’m really happy about that.  I think my next step will be to jog 1 min at a time an incline on the treadmill.  I don’t think I’ll be going back to back squats anytime soon, but my front squats will keep getting heavier.  That’s a promise!

February 10, 2010-Still enormously sore

….that’s it, I’m wearing shorts from here on out.  My lower back and legs are weak weak weak.  Really a shame and embarassing too.  Crossfit kicked my bottom once again, this time harder than ever before.  It’s been 4 days and I am essentially incapable of flexing at the spine.  I am so swollen in the musculature surrounding the spine that my thoracic area looks like a butt.  On the other hand, I’m real happy that I am experiencing zero disc pain.   This makes essentially the whole thing worth it.  I was able to squat, deadlift, and swing without bulging.  GRRRRRRRREEEEAAAAT!

February 7, 2010-Crossfitta

   So, yesterday we had our annual "Inspiration’s Dag" for the gym chain that I work for.  It was a pretty good time.  The club rented out the biggest stadium in Stockholm for it-Globen.  I wish it was a really good time, but I still have a hard time having fun in social environments. 

  Nonethless and moving on, I decided to partake in a crossfit challenge.  I kind of knew I was not going to do well, but I did REALLY bad.  The exercises were squat/press with 40kg, and kettlebell swings with 32kg!!  Considering I’ve never formally done a kettbell swing before and I had to ask the instructor right before the workout how to do one, I was fighting an uphill battle.  Funny, I have never formally done a bb squat and press either…though I’ve obviously done the individual parts before, so it wasn’t such a big deal.  That swing killed me though.  I came in LAST place. 

   Beforehand, I kind of figured, "well, the best thing that can happen to you is that you get embarassed."  That’s kind of what happened.  Kind of not, because I really don’t get all that embarrassed any longer given that I usually don’t go into these kind of events with the kind of cockiness that was once a trademark in my earlier youth.  I finished the third round in 11:45-about 7 min worse than the winner, and 4 min worse than the average competitor.  It’s a number though, and that’s what I wanted.  I think it’s really really healthy to throw myself in and see where I stand. 

   I watched a couple of the other guys having a go at it and it became pretty clear to me that I might not do all that well, so I kept coming up with excuses to not do it-like ‘your back hasn’t been feeling all that good for the last couple of days…better hold off.’ …etc.  That kind of stuff.  But no, I needed to get a number and get some motivation.  I have to act.  Sitting around and waiting until I am good at something has a nasty tendency of keeping me from getting good at that thing. 

   So, now I’ve got a relatively rough plan action to get me to the cross fit SM this year, whereas before I had none.  Goal accomplished. Summed up, I’m going to kind of knock out my mid range reps for a while and cycle heavy IIB work with type I/cardiovascular work. 

  Last, it’s come to my attention that I seem to have exercised induced asthma.  I’ve had this for as long as I can remember, and as I recall, it has a tendency to get a lot better as my workouts become more and more cardiovascularly and respiratorily intense-which they’ve not been lately.  Nonetheless, I’ve gotten several comments and a physical therapists actually put a name to my symptoms.  You see, after I either put myself through an excruciating workout or someone else puts me through it, I wheeze, cough, become very hoarse, and even cough up blood for several days afterward.  You’d think that would get someone’s attention, but not me…it’s just part of the game, yo. 

January 31, 2010-Experiencing a problem with my groin

    I’m glad I’m at the stage in my life where I can have that as my title and not really mind if anyone takes it the wrong way.  Anyway, I was doing high step last week and noticed a bit of pain in my groin.  I finished the set and stopped.  Probably shouldn’t have even finished the set.  It was a bit sore through the week and I tried again yesterday. 

    It felt a lot better yesterday but I noticed it again on the 5th rep of my second set.  This time I put the weight down then and there and just moved on.  I don’t love giving out tips on this blog, but let me just tell you: if something has the potential to keep you out of the game for weeks or months, sacrifice the day.  I feel good about yesterday; that was a good fold. 

   In other news, I am pretty much officially training for competing in Crossfit now.  It really appeals to my physical ideals at the moment.  A buddy of mine kind of remarked to me the other day that I was doing Crossfit before it was even called Crossfit, and that’s true, but back then I called it resistance training in a cardio-like fashion.  Haha, doesn’t have the same ring to it. 

   Anyway, I did a 500m row the other day and it was a damn travesty.  1.37.4.  11 seconds worse than my best time.  At least I wasn’t dead afterwards…but that’s probably because I did it so much slower than I did it before.  I was really not happy about that, so I got to thinking about how I would get this baby in the teens, which is my goal.  So I’ve got a pretty good plan now and I started implementing it yesterday with two 250m rows, both of which I was relatively satisfied with 0.42.7 and 0.43.something. 

    I'll leave you with a pic from the last little photoshoot at the gym for the book.  It's not likely going to make the book but it's pretty good, nonetheless.

January 22, 2010-Giving up

I’m kind of into this progressive blogging thing right now, where each blog ties into one another.  Last time I talked a bit about fear and how it seems to be necessary in our lives.  I figured this time I would talk about my own.  At one point in my life I was pretty quiet about all this but I’ve been quiet enough and spent enough time alone, to not have to be any longer.  This truly feels like I’m talking about someone else’s life, in a sense.  I’m not going into a lot of detail here so I’m sure it will all sound so melodramatic, but such is the case right now, my goal isn’t to tell you about how bad I had it, rather something else…

When I was growing up, I had some problems with obcessive compulsive disorder.  Surprise surprise!! I’ve flipped a lot of light switches and locked a lot of doors in my day, folks.  Strangely, I never got into the obcessive hand washing or showering thing.  Big surprise there too, huh?  Anyway, it took a couple of years but the pain from that finally became too much and I had too stop.  I remember when I did too.  I just couldn’t flip another light switch.  It hurt too much...it was literally tiresome, it took so much out of me I just couldn’t go on any longer.  It felt like my brain just couldn’t count anymore or stand there any longer.   

In addition to the physical obcessions though, somewhere along the way I developed a kind of obcessive fear regarding God, hell, and religion general.  I began praying obecessively every night before I went to bed.  I would say the same prayer that a of us did "now I lay me down to sleep...etc" only if I messed it up or if I even thought I messed it up, I would start over.  There was a kind of a guilty feeling there mixed in with something else I really can’t put my finger on-almost like God wouldn’t hear me if I messed up, or pay attention or something like that. 

I would always say a few specific prayers every night after that main prayer-most specifically to keep the house from burning down-my 4th grade teacher’s apartment went up in flames and this spawned at least a year long constant night time fear, if not longer.  This list of post prayers, we’ll call them, grew longer and longer each night until I was almost praying myself to sleep every night-except that never happened because I was too scared to go to sleep if I had not done this right(the house would burn down or I would go to hell or etc), and I never did. 

Anyway, this praying started to...I don’t want to say ruin my life, but take over in a lot of ways.  I couldn’t go to sleep at night because I always thought I had messed up the prayer.  The worst part about this period of time in my life was when the door locking, the light switch flipping, and the praying all overlapped.  That was a tough time because I would run back and forth between the first two and pray that I did them right afterwards..and then get up and do it all over again. 

I don’t remember how the praying ended but one day it became too much and I decided I wanted nothing to do with God, religion, or any of it.  Every now and again my mom and I and my grandparents would go to church but I never listened and I never cared.  There was, surprisingly, no hard feelings when actually in church, but whenever I was out and about and thought about anything having to do with that stuff, I shivered at the thought of it.  I remember that. 

To be honest, now that I am dating myself, I remember now how it all ‘ended.’  Haha, oh man, this is rich.  I found bodybuilding.  Now I remember all of it.  I bought Arnold’s Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding and I had a new obcession.  Another real full blown obcession.  Something to think about all day long.  Except this time it was inordinately more pleasurable and healthy for me than the others.  The others hurt terribly and this was something I got great joy out of.  All of my problems, as I recall, could be solved through bodybuilding.  There was literally nothing bodybuilding would not solve.  And, to an extent, that was very true.  It was my savior at the time. It allowed me to breathe for about two years.

I remember when it stopped being my savior though.  When I met my first girlfriend.  I was 16 and she was 33.  I was a man-child and looked roughly the same as I do now.  She had a lot of problems and I ended up with a lot of problems afterward.  I started getting tested for HIV a little more than normal when I was about 18.  By the time I was 21, I had racked up too many HIV tests and an inumerable number of "scares"-which literally paralyzed me in fear.  These could be things ranging anywhere from having seen blood in the bathroom trash can to drinking out of the water fountain at the gym and suspecting that I touched the spout with a possible cut on my lip.  This was my worst obcession since praying as a kid.  This little sombitch still comes back every now and again too...but just ever so slightly and only when the conditions are jussst right(when there has been a happening and I’m feeling relatively low). 

Anyway, I couldn’t live with this and soon, of course, the constant praying returned.  There were a couple of major happenings at this time in my life-the most major of which was self caused, which really brought all of this to a point.  I literally couldn’t go on any longer.  My head had been swimming in obcession for so many years-essentially my entire late childhood and then 2x as bad from 18-22 that I needed to find a way out.  Killing myself was never really something that came up because I was too scared of going to hell for it.  Literally.   Getting help was never an option because that was too frail for my pride.  It was like life specfically set me up to have no way out. 


It was about then that I decided to just give up.  Give in to all of it, dive into it and let the fright consume me.  And that’s what I did and that’s what it did.  It was the only thing I could do.
It was then that I found raw food and holistic living and developed a new sense of understanding in regards to disease.  It was also then that I found near-death experiences, started reading the Bible, started reading other holy books…etc.  It was then that I began getting exposed to the whole picture. 

Giving up was the best thing I ever ever did.  I had finally listened to life.  Life didn’t want me wallowing in fear for years and years.  Life wanted me diving into fear.  Life wanted me to give up running, so I could find the truth behind my fear.  Running never ever worked.  Ignoring never ever worked.  The only thing that worked was not standing up, rather just laying down and letting the fear fill up to the point of bursting…to where I was spending all of my time and money searching for answers to my problems…which I found.

Now I’m able to recognize almost every life’s goal when it comes my way: where there is a lot of pain, or a lot of fear, I know that life is trying to get my attention.  My back, for instance, is what has made me a half way decent trainer.  My former obcessions are what give me the calm I have today and the ability to sit alone with my thoughts in darkness-it took many many many nights of silence to even broach this.  My calm calm finally came after several years of practicing silence-off and on, but a hell of a lot of on. 

Honestly, I see so many people with so many mental problems just suffocating in this terrible gray area of a lot of pain but not quite enough because they are putting all their energy into ignoring it via other things.  I think a lot people would benefit greatly if they just…gave in.  I know it’s hard, but at least entertain the idea of just letting it consume you. 

God doesn’t have any use for you dead, depressed, or paralyzed in fear.  God wants you alive, working for him, and able to stand on your own two feet in the face of hardship, and that kind of stability only comes from going through hardship.  The hardship, the fear, the pain…it’s there so you don’t feel it anymore.  You learn to never feel it again by climbing out of it one little step at a time.  I am still climbing, but I find the motivation to climb further somewhat lacking.  The discomfort is just not really there any longer.  There are a couple things left to grind out, but soon it will be time to live the understanding only rather than try and find the understanding. 

January 20, 2010-Fear

I’m starting to see, even more, how everything is just a tool to get us to where we need to be.  I was talking about it in the last post about religion, but I think I missed quite a bit.  I think, a lot of times, when we don’t have the experience to create a really positive feeling towards doing something(basically with every new thing to our life), we start in fear…in the negative.  This is life’s way of getting us off our butts. 

This got my attention a long time ago with religion and belief systems and God, but it really hit home the other day with a couple of clients of mine.  I’ve always been real on top of the ball when it comes being on time for my clients and showing up when we have bookings, though I’ve noticed that this year has been entirely otherwise.  I have no-showed more people in the last year than I have in my entire 8 year long career.  That’s real troubling to me.  There has to be a reason for it though.  This year, I’ve made a point of breaking the boundries of professionalism a bit and getting close with my clients-becoming friends with them.  I’ve hung out with them, done stuff, gone home to their place, talked about women in my life, talked about their relationships..etc. 

What I believe I’ve done is developed a sense of comfort with them.  I’ve taken a lot of the fear out of our relationships-whereas before, they were clients and their ability to fire me was much more often a conscious reality in my mind.  So, I’m out of the negative, so to say, but since we often only see one another once or twice a week and we’re still not exactly great friends, I’m not exactly in the positive either-I’m in this somewhat neutral gray area where my motivation to see them to experience a positive feeling is not high, but my motivation to not no-show them to avoid a negative feeling is not high either….I think this leads to the reality I am experiencing now.  I can’t and won’t go back-the postives really outweigh the negatives for everyone(the promotion of natural human soul behavior is almost always heavily positive for society, I think)-but this is really an eye opener.  I have to really push this a bit-use my logical recognition of the truth, that I need more positive experiences, to get me through this gray area.  I’m glad this is happening because it parallels a lot of things in life and confirms the answers to a lot of questions I’ve had in the past.  I think fear is God’s tool just like love. Ultimately, fear is a lack of understanding, but my fears seem to revolve around certain themes and I wonder if this isn’t the same for others as well.  I think this is life’s way of using fear to get our attention, to get us to dig into this thing and turn it into understanding. 

Love is infanitely more powerful, but fear has its place.  I think all things come from God.

January 18, 2010-The Masters

    It’s Martin Luther King day.  I don’t know a lot about Dr. King, but I do recognize a master when I see one, or something like it.  And he’s it.  When I saw his picture on msn today, I got a little choked up just looking at it.  I could just feel him coming out of it and if I’d let myself, I could have dropped a tear or two.  Probably should have let myself-like I’ve said before, I drop plenty of tears these days-almost always at love. 

   I want to just remind people of the immense power of this man and men like him.  Power and understanding that comes around so seldom that we recogonize these people’s lives with a holiday. This is a man who grew up in the racist south in the early 20th century in the States.  Racism still exists, but then it was on another level.  Lynchings, church burnings, home burnings, real torture ending in awful death…all of it.  This is relatively unimaginable to today’s member of society.  Despite these literal crimes against his own race, his own family and friends, and against all humanity, Dr. King’s "I have a dream," speech echoed ideals that were far removed from what most people might think would burgeon from a background such as his. "Let us not seek to rectify our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred," said Dr. King.  "We must not distrust whites," said Dr. King. 

I want to say a little something about the ideals of non-violence: It’s one thing to preach love in the face of hatred and to have a logical recognition of the truth of that path, but it is an entirely different thing to have that understanding, that logical recognition so conditioned in that you actually feel it and live it with zeal and joy.  That when someone does you harm, you actually strongly feel love for that person and a genuine desire to drop everything and help them, to hug them and hold them and do whatever you need to do.  Walk a mile, walk ten miles, whatever it takes.  Most people don’t feel that love for their own friends and family, and often not their soulmates either.  These people, the masters, feel it for all of their fellow men, they have conditioned it in.

   The master I spend most of my time thinking of is Gandhi.  He’s the one that resonates most with me.  Him and Jesus.  Their strength is outrageous, like a mountain of pure indomitable spirit and understanding. 

   I just want to take a moment to speak about non violence and other ideals.  I think there are a few misunderstanding surrounding about such things.  The first is that non-violence is relogated to physical violence.  That may be the lesser souls understanding, but it is not the understanding of the super souls.  Violence is just as easily emotional as it is physical.  There are many too many people taking their non-violent ideals and making a mockery of them and the whole concept by turning violent in speech or emotionally abuse others.  The lack of physical violence in the face of violence isn’t enough.  We have a tendency to forget, when we are angry, that hurting someones feelings, putting them down leads to physical violence in one way or another anyway…just not with that person.  They go out and they take those hurt feelings and try to get them back. 

   Non-violence is responding to violence and turmoil with either pure neutrality or positivity-with the master souls probably responding with something resonating real close with pure love.  Again, it’s one thing and hard enough to not respond to horrid violence….it’s a whole nother thing to respond with actual feelings of love and prayer for the good will of the sould pepretrating. 

   The second misunderstanding is the nature of these ideals.  Much of what is spoken of in the holy books are symptoms or summations of understanding, as I might call it.  These masters all know that they speak to primarily deaf ears.  They seek only to nudge you in the right direction, to plant the seed of understanding.  They want so desperately for you to go their way, but their way…the physical and emotional way they are, is a sign of extreme experience.  They expect you to improve and want you to do as they say, but not to deny yourself your whole life.  What they want is to shave the extremes, to get society out of the worst of the worst and nudge it further forward.  Their understanding is a result as are their words to you. 

You are good the way you are, but you will improve, and when you do, you will be like them.  You cannot be like them just by doing as they do.  Then you have missed a lot of what made them into them.  You must strive to be as those whom you feel inspired by are.  Just strive, and only as strong as you feel the need.  If you just do as they do, you have missed it.  What they do is outside of them, it is a sign of what is on the inside of them, and what is on the inside of them came from the combination of millions upon millions of mistakes and lots of positive experiences coupled with the understanding coming from making the mistakes.    

   It’s really a shame there is such a backlash against religion right now.  I am part of that backlash, but I have a logical rocognition of the truth and a budding conditioned feeling to accompany it and I’d like to talk about it.  Religion is what has brought us out of the swamps worshipping 10,000 different gods and doing strange and often excessively violent things to please all of them-it’s what has kept us relatively peaceful throughout the years.  Their have been religious wars, extremists, and all kinds of negativities stemming from the various different sects, but if you added up the violence perpetrated by those on a daily basis who are totally and completely free from belief or the feeling of responsibility brought on by religion, I think you’d find that the religious wars and killings pale in comparison. 

 I think many people forget or do not recognize that humans are souls inhabiting animal bodies.  The soul-less body or the mind that denies entirely what I call God is a killing…maybe not hateful, but loveless machine.  A good example of someone close, though still not there, is Hitler.  I’ve only read a few bits of Mein Kampf, but he is close to what I am talking about.  He looks at people and the human race with a near entire denial of love-speaking in terms of breeding out certain traits, pushing this trait, not allowing this to flourish…etc.  The thing about Hitler is that he still shared a love for his fellow similar man.  There are even worse out there than Hitler, people whom live in complete and total denial of love-the ones that come to mind right now are the some of the gorillas in the Congo and South Africa right now-actually killing and consuming people, thinking they will consume their strength.  This is a good example of why religion came into existance…because people without any kind of structured belief often wind up in very negative pattern.  Many Congolese even call themselves Christian, but that is of course far from the truth.  Those acts are far from Christianity and if real Christianity can come to that area of the world, it would be a blessing.

Religion is a tool for God to get people out of these patterns.  We still need it!  Many have gotten out of it and turned towards new agey spiritualism, such as myself…but often these people are the laziest of all of those in society.  They are the ones that say ‘Love Love’ but do nothing.  Religion is God’s tool to get people to DO things…and then come to an understanding. 

January 12, 2010-Finding the Calm

     So, I went out to the hut again this past weekend.  It was cold.  Not terrible but enough to, once again, make me contemplate leaving.  Seems like I always contemplate leaving when I get out there.  I don’t actually think it has that much to do with the physical discomfort to be honest.  It’s the mental.  I’m still very scared of being alone with my thoughts.  Thing is, I’ve put so much time into being alone with them, they’re really not much to be afraid of any longer.  For 3-4 years, I’ve been spending a lot of time in complete silence and often darkness as well, just thinking, on either a daily basis or a weekly basis or something along those lines.  I’ve got a lot of my thoughts straightened out.  These blips of time where I feel uncomfortable facing them are really more of a reflection of past associations than anything else.  Once I decided to stay, it was fine…almost boring. 

    I did learn one little lesson though.  I think it was more like a secondary objective(N64 Goldeneye).  Things are literally always going to come up.  I keep, and I think a lot of people keep, wanting just a moment of calm, where nothing happens.  Life wants something much bigger for us.  It wants months and years of calm, it wants a whole lifetime of calm-and that is simply not going to come by giving us too many moments of calm.  I wrote about this a little bit in the book, but I’ve come to the conclusion that often times we assume this kind of ’it life doesn’t want me to experience this it won’t expose me to it’ kind of attitude…if my life is any indicator of the truth, then that statement couldn’t be less true.  Life doesn’t want us to avoid experiences and thus make it through stress free.  Life wants us to live life with tons and TONS of theoretical bumps and even huge friggin mountains and canyons in the road and still make it through stress free. 

   If we don’t get the stimulus, even the littlest little hump in the road becomes a mountain.  It is has no intention of making these bumps smaller.  Alternatively, it has every intention of making them bigger and spikier and nastier.  It is making you into a master.  You’ve got to find the calm.  You’ve got to understand that everything is going to keep coming up and it is going to keep getting harder, worse and worse…and at the same time, life should get easier and easier-just like weightlifting.  You should move through it feeling challenged, but not panicked.  Filled with desire to succeed but not desperate.  With every new experience comes a greater ability to handle the next one, and soon it will take one hell of a bump in the road to disturb your calm.  I know OF a couple of people like this and they are really strong.  They are the ones that ignore nothing, ignore no pain.  They live with it, let tantalize, feel it, squeeze it until it drips little drops of the own souls, and them simply put away like it never meant a thing.  That’s real strength.  And I’m convinced that the majority of this strength comes from being almost ritualistic in behavior-apply stimulus, back off and contemplate in silence.  Most people have enough stimulus now to require months of total silence.   

   …so that turned out a bit longer than I had intended.  A piece of it was taken right out of my book almost…hope that wasn’t a mistake. In other news, the workouts lately have been sooo nice.  All I am doing is plugging leaks.  After I took the pictures for the book, I just decided ‘now that’s done and I have no reason to keep working out to uphold to any kind of aesthetic standard or even look good at all.  Now I can just do what I know I have to do.’  And that is plug leaks.  And that, my friends, feels so very liberating.  I already feel ready to go back to lifting as usual, but its really nice to 1. get all this stuff taken care of, but 2. grind out these last few silly feelings of necessity to uphold to a certain standard-it’s these feelings that I have so often written about in this blog, the ones that plague my ability to progress in the gym.  It’s nice to care much less.  Like I said, I already feel like going back, but that is how it is supposed to be.  This activity has been my meaning in life thus far and probably for a good long time in the future, the desire for it is not going to go away…what needs to go away a bit more is the feeling associated with a close symptom of the desire for it: the necessity to uphold to a societal standard.  It feels good to feel less of the ‘I have to always be Big Paul’ feeling. 

    I don’t talk much about work on here, but it’s kind of the same thing I’ve been doing at work.  I’ve dropped my hours dramatically in the last year.  It feels very good to not have this ‘I have to do more than everyone else’ feeling.  And last, it’s the same with anything else that it competitive.  It feels good to not have to win.  In fact, to try less than my best.  In the end, my best will be much better when I try for it just for me rather than for the admiration of others.  What do you think about THAT, blog world?????!

January 3, 2010-Pleasing the Gods

   Does anyone else feel like they have to do this so as to be able to do the other things you desire to in life?  Sometime I’m going to write a book with that as the title.  Maybe Appeasing the Gods is more appropriate.  Whatever.  The truth is that I feel there are certain things we set out to do in life and when we ignore them, everything else goes poorly.  I’m not saying life is awful right now, I’m just saying what I’m saying-that other things don’t seem to work too well when I ignore my reason for being here: living healthy, spreading it, and helping to get other people healthy.  By not doing it, I mean not working on the book or blogging.  I actually think this blog is a part of the thing; not a huge part, but it’s a part of the website and that is definitely a part of the thing. 

   I guess the funny thing is that I have always referred to this sense of duty, or whatever it is, as God being demanding with me, but I have a hunch that it is me being demanding with me.  My soul, knowing what’s right, what it came here for and saying ‘ok, this first bud, then that.  I’m not budging. Go **** yourself.’ 

   In regards to the book, I’m tying everything up now.  The content is basically all there and it reads pretty nicely now.  I’m sure I’ll read it a few more times over, but it’s pretty smooth right now.  At some point I’m going to have to have a "it’s good enough realization."  I don’t think I’ll have a problem with that-a lot of the changes I’m making now are ones that I’ve actually already made that I changed back, then changed back the other way and so on and so forth.  I recognize that.

  In other news, I am going to be instructing a class at the gym.  First time ever in 8 years as a PT.  I think this will be a real positive experience for me.  I need something to break up my day.  I really can’t keep going as I’ve been going in regards to personal training-and I haven’t been, really.  I’ve talked about this before, but the days of doing 35-45(and even booking close to 50) sessions a week are over for me.  I don’t deliver a good enough product, and people get me down too often.  I’ve come to understand that I haven’t developed a defense for people’s negative energy just yet.  Sometimes someone will come in, early in the day, with a bad attitude or just be too down for my taste and the rest of the day will be ruined because of it.  Afterwards I literally have to shake off that bad energy-as in, I literally shake it out and go ‘waaaaaa.’  Until I learn how to deal with that a bit better, I think I should lighten the load for now.  Not all the way, just to a more manageable level. 

   Last, I’m thinkin about testing my new sleeping bag mat in the hut I built a couple of weeks back.  It’s colder than a witches tit outside and I want to give it a run.  Of course, after having bragged on here about how friggin great it was, it turned out I bought the wrong thickness(this is very typical of me) and it is not meant for winter camping.  Of course, I can’t take it back and it was expensive as shiite.  I have a feeling that it might be ok, though.  We’ll just have to see, now won’t we?  You’all keep a tight ass outside, alright?

December 28, 2009-A news menagerie

    There’s quite a lot of other stuff going on in my life right now.  As you may or may not know, the book I’ve been writing is getting dangerously close to finished; I went to the gym with an amateur photographer yesterday and took pictures of the ’new exercise catalogue.’  Was pretty exciting.  I was slightly worried about how I would look in those pics given the dietary debauchery of the last couple of days-2 cooked meals including pure junk like chocolates and candy and what not-but nonetheless, they turned out fine and will make the book, I think.  Let’s get back to those two cooked meals though…they nearly killed me.  Headache, lethargy, candida breakout.  F that.  

   You know, I’ve done a real good job conditioning out certain desires, and one of them has been for cooked or junk food.  This Christmas, I ate primarily to be a part of the family and not stir things up too much.  I didn’t really have at desire to eat the actually food.  Although, I’m glad I did; now I have 2 more experiences to back up the understanding that I had already started developing.  The urge towards junk food is basically none nowadays, and that is such a life saver.  I really wish more people would come to the conclusion that maybe they don’t have to keep fighting.  Fighting all the time kills me.  You need to act and you need to assess that act-in silence.  The last couple of weeks have been real eye openers for me in regarding to my need for silence.  I think there’s just too much information out there for most of us to interpret.  We need to get away from as much information as possible(any kind of sensual stimulus) and just let our minds interpret for a while…we need to do this often, I think.  At least I do.

   In other news, I’m having a New Years Eve party at my place this year.  Should be a good time, but I started planning pretty late, so it’s been hard getting people to come.  I’ll get a few though and they WILL have fun.  I was thinking we would have a little put luck dinner, where everyone brings their own dish, and then play some good music and maybe dance a bit afterwards.  Maybe I’ll get a nice girl to dance with me.  It’ll be a good time.  And I think I’ll stay raw.  No need for more lethargy. 

   Last, I started buying stuff for me next adventure.  I LOVE doing that.  First thing on my list was a sleeping bag mattress. A good one.  Literally the worst night I have ever experienced was at survival school in the dead of winter in upstate New York where me and my cousin/friend, KG, slept in a tent on 3 ft of snow with nothing under our sleeping bags.  Quite possibly the fishiest thing you could ever do in a such a situation.  Even fishier was that we insisted on sleeping in the tent that night despite the fact that it was late as hell, cold as hell, and the fact that we didn’t even know how to set up a tent-all that on top of the other fact that it was brought up that we didn’t have mats for under our bags and we said we ‘would be fine.’  Anyway, I’ve had a mat on my trips since then, but nothing as good as this one; this baby is top of the line-super light, ultra compact, air mattress filled with down.  Svalbard or Sarek, whichever or both I go to will, at the very least, not freeze me from the ground up. I also got some wool long johns, a winter hat liner, and some winter shoes.  Next on the list is a bad ass tent, some water proof pants, maybe a watch…and probably a few other not completely necessary yet extremely cool items. 

December 22, 2009-Pulling out the big guns

    Squats and deadlifts have now officially been added to my routine for the first time in many a year.  That’s a sign of back improvement.  Although, front squats are my hip extension of choice, I don’t think I’ll ever do back squats again.  Things are going real well in the gym right now.  I’m doing one heavy full body session with all the basics: front squats, deads, chins, rows(standing), chest press, shoulder press.  Then, one lighter more volminous session: Chins+plate push+dips, shoulder press+stiff legged deads+high rows, then some auxiliary shiite. In regards to how fast I am increasing my weights...2.5s, honey.  That's what I started with, I figured that's what I'll come back with.  And not even every session either, MAYBE every other.  Gonna grind it back up.  

  I guess it’s pretty obvious, but I am not finding the time to blog lately.  I’m just going to allow myself that.  In other news, I am planning 2 new adventures.  Colder and darker.  I’m also kicking ass on this book, pictures are scheduled to be taken next sunday. 

December 5, 2009-A little adventure

 Not too long ago I was feeling like my head was swimming with heavy emotion(brought on by a woman, of course).  I decided it was time to get away.  At the same time I decided that whatever I wanted to do was more important than what my friends wanted me to do.  Not that what my friends want isn’t important, more that I am awful at saying no and that had/has to change.  So I backed out of a wedding and thanksgiving day dinner(which I wouldn’t have eaten anyway), packed up some gear and headed to the woods.  I found a hole in the ground where a tree had uprooted itself long ago right infront of a beautiful lake and decided that was going to be home. 

There were some other small trees near by that had fallen down as well whose branches I used as the framework for the roof of my hut.  After about four hours and two very bloody hands from pulling up dead ferns for insulation, I had myself a nice home and just enough light left to gather a good amount of wood to make a fire. 

When it’s dark and it’s cold and silent and you’re alone, a lot of stuff that’s been pushed way down…comes up.  That’s exactly what I knew was going to happen and exactly what I wanted to happen.  I couldn’t take it to be honest, there were several breaks to talk on the phone with a buddy and sms the woman I was grieving over.  But there was enough silence to get a whole lotta **** sorted out and feel way better afterward-took about 4 hours.   Then, after that, all that was left was to grub a little bit, read a book, and go to sleep.  Slept well too.

   I’ve been practicing silence for about 2.5 years now.  I don’t think I can go back to ever living without it.  I don’t sleep as well and I get somewhat psychologically messed up.  There’s just too much information/stimulus in my daily life for my brain to sort out and store in nice little files if I keep living non stop.  I have to consciously stop and take time to do nothing but think-not eat, not listen to music, not read, not watch anything, just think.  Not even think really.  Just sit and stare and let my body do the rest.  Give everything some time to come up and get sorted out by my brain. 

   Here are some pics, training is going awesome by the way:  

November 1, 2009-Body Lowdown

So, for the last 2 or 3 weeks I’ve been doing a lot more volume work and relatively no heavy work.  This week I think I’ll start heavy again.  This constant cycling is what not only keeps it exciting but also primes you for development.  You’ve got to keep your numbers well in check though.  There’s a big lie going around weightlifting circles and, fortunately, its been somewhat exposed in the last couple of years: you have to change your routine everytime you go at it.  What you have to do is progress in one manner or another.  I prefer to keep my same exercises for a period of several weeks and use them as a control as I change the other variables related to the workout-weights, rest time, and reps.  With those three variables you can keep yourself going for a HECK of a long time on the same program.  I prefer to switch every few weeks or so, but those three variables are more than enough to provide you with progression material for months or years.  The fact of the matter is, we change exercises all the time, but often they boil down to the same joint functions-meaning they’re not all that different from one another.  You take out your barbell squat and put in a hack squat or a DB squat…or even a lunge.  Still a hip extension.  What you should really be changing is the overall stress you apply to your body, and that’s real hard to do if you don’t have any idea what your numbers are…and that’s real hard to have an idea of if you are changing exercises every two seconds.

   Didn’t start this blog thinking it was going to be a lecture, but lately my blogs have been rather free flowing and I think I’ll go with that for a while.  So this week, I’m thinking I’ll hit up 2 heavy workouts.  My elbow is still feeling a bit iffy, but much better than a couple of weeks ago and more or less totally painless during heavy compounds.  I so rarely do isolated arm work any longer that I don’t feel to ignorant going back to the heavy stuff while it’s still on the mend. 

   In other news, I’ve been ever vigilint in plugging leaks in my lifestyle.  The big ones have been dietary changes and sleep.  I pretty much never cheat with food-most who have read this know that-but I do vary a little too much in my opinion.  Basically, I’ve done the same thing with food as I’ve done with my workots.  I’ve chosen a control and I do it every single day.  If something doesn’t work, then I have a pretty good idea of what it is and I can make the necessary changes.  I am happy to report that my full body red blotches are essentially gone, with the exception of very light shadows here and there-and they were REALLY prominent a little while ago.  Funny, I am doing literally the exact opposite of what I ’should’ be doing in regards to getting my gut flora back in control and in good balance with candida, and am having great success.  Dinner is my only protein and fat meal.  The rest of the day is fruit and fermented vegetables(kimchi).  Lots of both…a heck of a lot.  The kimchi provides me with the good lacto bacteria and the sugar from the fruit puts it in overgrowth.  The key is to keep my fat and my carbs far away from one another.  My protein and fat meal is relatively low fat anyway, so it’s not such a big deal-and in regards to that, I am doing just as I said…the exact same meal day in and day out: 1kg raw ground beef, 4 egg yolks, 3 red beets, 2 onions, some capers, and some mustard for a little taste.  I am pretty proud of that mustard to be honest, I would never have allowed that before.  Now I’m getting crazy.  I’d like to make my own though.  I think I’m going to become a mustard connoisseur.  Last, sleep.  Too many people sending me texts and calling me too late or too early, and I’ve allowed it for too long.  Now the phone is being turned off at night and I’m using a regular alarm clock instead-I know it still goes off if the phone is off, but I wake up in the middle of the night and I’ve gotten to point where I have a real hard time going to sleep again without knowing what time it is-that’s the next leak that has to be plugged.  Alright, I’m out!

October 27, 2009-The Old Breed: Faith of the Fallen.

    I was watching the history channel the other day and a little clip popped up about Guadalcanal, otherwise known as "Green Hell" in the Pacific islands during WWII.  It sparked my interest because my grandfather was there in the 1st Marine division, along with in Peleliu, another Japanese Pacific island.  It might sound a little weird, but I didn’t really feel a strong connection with my grandfather until he past away, which was a few years back.  These past few years though, I’ve felt it real strong.  I get a little teary eyed here and there when I think of him and the things he did in his life.  I can almost feel the discomfort courage it took to get over.  The fact is, I get like that a lot though when people have gone through real hardship, in his case hardship in life in general and then pure unadulterated hell in the war, and come out a real hero in life.  That was my grandfather in a lot of ways. 

He was awarded the silver star for valor on Peleliu, several thought he should have been given the medal of honor.  He never ever talked about the war, almost real stereotypical WWII vet…just rarelv ever mentioned it and when he did, it was never one of these ’war stories,’ it was just a little blurb having to do with whatever else he was talking about.  He had to sleep with stories on tape in full blared earphones(volume ALL the way up) until the day he died.  Basically every single night.  I don’t know how my grandmother put up with it, you could actually follow to the stories he was listening to in his headphones in the other room-he had those big puffy ones, not the ones that go right in your ear.   

   Anyway, this documentary was pretty cool-the vets they interviewed described exactly what he described to me in detail the one and only time he ever talked about anything that happened in the war-I had a paper to write for school and I convinced him to open up a bit…he still didn’t get gory or anything, he just didn’t think it was was necessary or in good taste.  It was real clear to me though that Peleliu was hell on earth.  And now even more so.  He refused to watch war movies: "I have no desire to watch that or anything like it."

   What really touches me though is the sense of responsibility and pride that generation took in its country and fellow man.  Back then it was all about patriotism, but boiled down, it was still a feeling for the greater good.  My grandfather, much like many others of this day enlisted.  Didn’t wait to get called, and when he had done his year, he did another.  Guadalcanal and Peleliu killed a lot of his friends and left him considerably messed up for life, but I don’t think he ever regretted it.  When he got out, he worked his way up from a whole lot of nothing basically, to being the owner of a couple of banks and a microchip factory that actually supplied NASA with the first ever microchips in space.  He did real well for himself and continued helping his fellow man with whatever he could until the very end. 

On the other hand, from what I’ve heard from my mom and uncle, he was a…I hate to say it, oftentimes a real bastard of a father.  I think many from that generation were-just real hard "if you’re too stupid to understand, then I don’t have the time to show you" kind of stuff.  Fortunately, by the time I came along, all that was out of his system and he was the kind grandfather that I describe him as today.  When he died, people came out of the woodwork to pay their respects-they all remarked on his generosity and kindness…too bad he couldn’t show his own kids that.  I know they think highly of him but I can tell, at least in one of them, that the feelings are somewhat not 100% warm. 

   This blog kind of branched out in ways that I didn’t want it to, but I guess that’s alright.  Lately, I’ve really been working on just ‘letting go’ and not trying to control everything.  I’ll chalk this up to that.  The real point of this was to remark on how I would love to see people get get back to feeling something for one another and actually getting up and doing that something.  The truth is that people aren’t really going to ‘feel’ the need until they do a little bit of the deed, but I think plenty of people are getting to the point where their logical understanding is becoming such that it is bringing on feelings of its own.  These guys stared a gruesome death right in the face for one another and their country; and they did it voluntarily. 

October 18, 2009-Little bump in the road...

    After that migraine I got from the high blood sugar 2-3 weeks ago or whatever it was, I also got a hand sized red blotch on my thigh.  Still haven’t gone away.  Much to my dismay, I gave myself a look over the other day and saw that I had many more.  My tongue has also been totally coated for the last month or so.  I think that little incident was the straw that broke the camel’s back in some kind of way.  Anyway, so the conclusion is much like the conclusion I made in the last blog: I’ve got to actually do something about this. 

  I have a real easy time of just being pretty good.  This goes for many different areas of my life.  I sometimes then end up in the situation I’m in now though-one where the problem is bigger than ever because I never actually completely took care of it.  Right now my gut is not a happy pojke(boy).  And my skin looks as though I have some terrible disease.  I’m tempted to go to the doctor, but more tempted to work it out myself with diet.  I feel a real strong push of some sort towards working sorting things out on my own.  Even a guidance to the right answer. 

   One of the conclusions that I’ve come to in life is that a lot of people have a lot physical problems that I either have answers to or that I could have an answer to and it’s my responsibilty to take care of this stuff...like it’s one of my jobs, my Dharma, as I said.  I’m really thankful I’m developing a greater sense for this because it’s really enriching my life.  Work is a lot easier and I’m doing more freebies than ever...and it’s fun. 

   In addition to that, I made good on my decision to get off my butt and start doing some regular enviro-clean ups.  Went out last saturday and this saturday to the local park and picked up trash for about an hour or two.  It’s good to get it out of the forests so it doesn’t decay and poison the trees and plants, but what’s really necessary is to get it out of the water.  I think...actually I know, people look at me kind of funny when I’m doing this, but it has to be done and it’s just not getting done.  And it makes me feel good when it is done. 

   In other news, had a great workout today.  I’m still feeling some neck pain and a heck of a lot of elbow pain from that last workout I blogged about, so I had to change the program a bit, but no bigge...it was still good.  Hip adduction+hip abduction+single legged squat and dead combo.  Stiff arm pulldown+Standing cable row+shrugs.  Db fly+Db shoulder press.

October 10, 2009-This is a generalization:

The next generation becomes acutely aware of what the prior generation thought was nothing and this is based on the comfort of the generation which is often dictated by situations and events of the time.  This I know is true.  

We can make generalizations based on these events and their results.  I wonder if I am just seeing this in a few people an creating an explanation for it that I think fits, but I think I'm at least generally right here.  I'll give you an example:
 

Baby boomers and their adult children matured in a period of physical excess without perceived detrimental result.  HIV was not a scare, birth control pills were taken by everyone, no one thought about or was aware of the environmental result of their lifestyles, food was still relatively wholesome…etc.  You were having as much sex as you wanted and the worst thing you got was a prescription, eating as much as you wanted and the worst thing you got was a little chubby(manual laborers comprised a much greater percentage of the workforce), driving whichever car you wanted and could own a smog factory if you wanted and no one cared.  This generation or this group of people from this period of time, very naturally, are amongst the most physically life/health/eco retarded that have ever lived-none of them are ready to give up anything for something they’ve never first handedly experienced the detrimental results of, and getting them to change would require a period of strong discomfort-enough to erase the conditioning of essentially their entire lives.  On the other hand, because of their relatively great physical comfort, they are generally more forgiving, more understanding, kinder, and slower to anger than the young generation of today which is the exact opposite: literally bursting with anger and uncomfortable all the time. 
What’s funny is how cyclical it is.  Each generation gets a little bit more of the whole, but they always go back to the same equation: one is real uncomfortable, angry, and lives very physically efficient and frugal lives, and one is loving but relatively unaware of the results of their actions.  The generation just prior to the baby boomers, the WWII veterans and the survivors of the great depression, generally don’t have a huge problem with squeezing here and there and looking at the world from a wholistic perspective that needs to be taken care of but because of their physical discomfort and much harder lives due to social circumstances, they often practiced tough love and were relatively intolerant for anything they considered to be in excess or just ‘bull****.’

These are the results of the physical circumstances of a generation.  It’s a normal and very cyclical process that, after thousands and thousands of years, could theoretically result in a generation which is acutely aware of everything.  We’re not going to convince everyone of everything now, I think this point in time is a long way away for us Earthlings, but it’s cool to see it happening.  Convincing the slightly older population to change their physical lives is near impossible right now compared to convincing my generation and the next.  But convincing my generation to be more tolerant of one another and turn the other cheek is quite the task compared with the baby boomers.

Let me just end this with a prediction: not only will the next generation not think that living environmentally sound is weird, but they will think that the generation just prior was borderline stupid or psychotic, in a sense, for not having thought about it.  But they’ll be wrong.  Every generation is going to put its focus into that which gives them the most comfort based on what’s happening in the world at the time, and each following generation should, very simply, use each prior generation for that which they have to offer-either their information/physical life acuity or their love. 

October 9, 2009-I’m the only guy you know who can tear his soleus walking on the treadmill.

   I think this is my 6th muscle tear.  It’s not a big one, so no worries.  Bruise about the size of a small fist.  Don’t even really notice it.  You know, when one of your calves doesn’t really work, the other one has to do double duty.  Now, the real issue is some severe cramping I experienced in my neck and upper trap area today-haven’t been able to turn my head to either side all day.  Although, I got it checked out real quick by the napprapat and she said it was no bigge either, just some severe cramping that will go over-no bulge-I was happy about that.  It really sounds like I’m complaining here, I’m not, just giving the update. The workouts are goin great right now and up until my 2nd to last set, when the neck cramped, all of my lifts were improved with the exception of one.  I have to admit though, for the last month I’ve had something like a little voice in my ear at the end of every workout saying ‘train your neck!’ and I’ve totally ignored it.  I’ve trained it a lot this past year but never with the same regularity as the other stuff and in the last few months I’ve slacked completely.  Stupid move.  I can only assume this is another little push in the right direction for me from the universe.  Given the fact that I am such a slow ass, I need severe discomfort to get my butt moving.  The universe knows this. 

October 7, 2009-What’s happened to me?

Things are a changing, that’s for sure.  I reduced my work hours dramatically this past half year so I could have time to work on my other projects that I’ve spoken about and I’ve come to find that I’m not really cut out for a lot of down time.  I had a hard time focusing on my book, first of all.  Instead, I often found myself just doing nothing.  Second, I found that working on just one project became very monotonous…redundant, I know.  I don’t think I’m quite there yet in my development as a person.  I need more stimulus; and as is usually the case, life has provided me with plenty of interests to stimulate me…unfortunately, I’ve been ignoring them.  I have to admit I’ve been a lazy lately, a lot lazy. 

You know when you get used to doing very little, doing just a little more feels like a lot of work and is, of course, relatively uncomfortable.  And given that I am doing my best to make my life more and more comfortable these days, as it has been very uncomfortable in the past, I have been allowing myself to just kind of avoid any discomfort that comes my way.  I’m afraid, much like I tell others on a daily basis, this isn’t having the desired effect.  There is a point of diminishing returns and it sneaks up much quicker than one might suspect.  All I have now is a lighter work load and a strong sense of discomfort for anything above and beyond the norm.  I’m definitely not any happier than I was-I’m not sad, but taking a break didn’t deliver the improved life I thought it would.  What’s got to happen is that I’ve got to get more specific with what I’m willing to loosen up with and what I’m going to stay solid with.  Take a break from the stuff that sucks, and load up on the stuff that gives me energy…and that’s doing my ‘job.’

The truth of the matter is, I’m feeling a greater and greater sense of responsibility these days.  I guess it’s the one Hindus might describe as their Dharma-they’re job in life.  I’ve been ignoring my individual community service.  I have never gone out and done anything with true regularity, but I did do quite a bit with kind of off and on regularity before.  I still do little things here and there on a daily basis, but not like I used to and that’s becoming more and more unacceptable to me.  I see certain leaks that I know I can help plug and I’ve got to start doing it again for my own happiness.  It kind of feels like I’m ignoring my duty here.  That’s got to change.  The period of time I spent talking to the alcoholics on the street was a little too intense and, in the short term, had a kind of side effect on me in that it made me very uncomfortable doing anything more of the sort.  I still don’t know if I realistically have it in me to go back to that but I have to admit, it’s a very weak link and I see it very clearly.  I’m going to start with the environment. 

One thing is for sure, we have to make the weakest among us, strong.  Right now the weakest among us is the Earth, but of course, it is a symptom of the general discomfort of the human race right now along with our current understanding of life. 

So here’s what’s going to happen: I’m going to get off my butt. 

 ps. Workouts are goin killer.

October 2, 2009-Feeling much better now.

   Workouts back on track, food digesting well, kickin asses at the gym.  Life is good.  Gonna fast for the first half of today; I’ve really got to get back into that, I always feel so much better afterward.  24 hour fasts might not do, but 1/2 day and 3/4 days might just be perfect.  In other news, I got my birthday present from my mom; in addition to some dough, she gave me a shirt with a phrase you may or may not recognize on it: Who is John Galt?  I like this very much.  I will have it on me 3-5x weekly and not wash it like I don’t everything else.  Being clean’s overrated anyway. 

September 27, 2009-Missbruk.

    I’m seriously not putting myself in this situation again.  This morning, after 1 night with a migraine that made me want to cry, and 2 more days with a splitting headache, I finally woke up with dramatically less pain.  My tongue has been literally covered in thrush for 3 days and I have a big rash on my leg.  And it’s not because I’ve been slacking by any means, it’s the opposite.    I’ve, as you know, been getting progressively stricter and stricter...more animal like I guess you could say, eating the same exact thing every meal of the day-500grams berries, 500 grams meat.  And as you may well know yourself, the stricter you get, the less tolerant you become.  Then I went off it just slightly-not back to anything crazy just back to what I was doing prior eating the same thing every single meal of everyday-a few things I don’t normally eat daily, and boom!  Felt like I was run over by a truck. 

    On the one hand, it was much easier with a control that had so few variables to deal with, on the other, it doesn’t fit at all into my life or my current ability to maintain happiness.  I think this was the straw that broke the camel’s back.  From here on out, I’m going back to how I began raw: I am going to have planned cheat meals relatively often...maybe 1-4x a month, not just to keep from getting headaches, but to keep me a little more psychologically healthy.  I’ve been feeling this coming for a while now and I can’t stay this seperated from the rest of society.  I’ve got to integrate more and I think I can actually connect with way more people than I do if I just give in a little.  So that’s what I’m going to do.  100% raw when I’m on my own, then whatever on the few occassions when I go out.  Things seem to be coming full circle.

September 24, 2009-HOME.

    My head is killing me.  I know it was the ground beef yesterday.  I either need to chew it better or need to do it much less often than I do it now.  I was full all day long yesterday but kept eating nonetheless.  I was still full this morning when I woke up after a poor night’s sleep. My blood sugar is high, I can feel it.  I actually did the opposite of what I might normally do to see if I could work this out.  I ate just a few pieces of fruit here and there-1. Because of the fiber; I thought it might help get some things moving, and 2. Because of the insulin response.  I figured a bit of sugar wouldn’t do too much worse but it would get some more insulin pumping through my veins which might have a greater effect on getting sugar out of the bloodstream.  That actually worked pretty well to be honest with you.  For a while there, I was feeling relatively normal, assuming I didn’t shake my head around(am I the only one that uses that as a test to see whether or not I have a headache or to see how bad it is?).

Anyway, I grubbed a bit on some normal food tonight, hopefully it won’t kill me.  I’m a bit worried though that I’ll wake up in the middle of the night with a migraine.  For whatever reason they don’t hit me until the middle of the night.  Then they make me cry.

I’ve been thinking a lot today about everything I’ve been writing about as of late.  I think I may ease up just a bit on the strictness on the lifestyle to get a bit more joy out of it.  I have to figure out a good way to go about it though.  Nothing physical, or very little, seems to match up the feeling of connection with someone; and if my lifestyle keeps me from connecting with so many people, then I’ve got to make a change-either in how I present it or in how I am actually living it.  I’m sure the answer is both.  The truth is, I miss dinners with people and the comradery that comes along with sharing food with people.  I think that’s a pretty good sign that I need to let up a little bit.  To be honest, I’m only going to give if it actually works though, if the result is positive.  If having a bit more fun makes me a healthier person, then onward ho!  If not, then...you know. 

In other news, I was asked if I'd be interested in doing a dating snippet on tv-they're doing a little thing with single PTs.  I told them I'm interested; they haven't even seen yet(they just left a message at the gym), so we'll see if anything comes of it.  That would be interesting.

September 23, 2009-Great Workout Today.

Also still grubbin like it’s nobody’s business.  About 3.25lbs of raw beef today along with some quinoa and of course a good amount of fruit-been doing berries lately...about 3.25lbs of berries a day.  I buy them frozen because those are the only organic ones available.  I’ve got to tell you though, I don’t mind.  Let’em melt just a bit until they’re somewhat soft but still a little icey and they are great!  Anyway, I don’t remember if I wrote about it before but ground beef just doesn’t seem to sit with me all that well if it’s all I eat day in and day out.  Normally I can eat like that without a problem, but ground beef is a little problematic. I’ve been feeling like it’s just been sitting in my stomach all day.  My most recent thought is that it’s so soft that I don’t chew it well(which is true) and it takes a while longer to digest than normal meat would, which I basically never have a problem with. 

   Workout…workout was fast paced today: Inchworm+Kettlebell(nearest weight handy) Front Squat+Psoas Situp(my own invention).  3x around, no break inbetween exercises but a few minutes after each round.  Then I went into 3 sets of trunk rotations; GREAT for my back.  And last, 2 sets of hip abduction.  Done and done.  Hope all is well. 

September 22, 2009-Am grubbin like it’s nobody’s business.

   Puttin down 2.5-3.25lbs of raw meat a day here. I’ve more or less come to the decision that if I’m ever going to the things I want out of life(primarily relationships), I’ve really got to get to the top of my game here…I think things will be easier if people already know what they are getting into before they meet me.  I’ve been avoiding it for a while due to my distaste with bodybuilding and a lot of what goes along with it, but as you may or may not know, I’ve since broadened my horizons a bit and gotten much more interested in developing athleticism and strength vs big muscles, which doesn’t appeal to me all that much anymore.  It feels like what I really needed was a shift or a progression rather than something entirely new.  That’s usually how it is, I guess.  I never really saw myself leaving training altogether, but things were definitely shaky there for a while.  I think one of the developments I will definitely experience in the future is the ability to let it go completely when the time is not right-if I’m out on an adventure for example.  If I make it down to Antarctica or go back to Svalbard, I’m not going to be worried about getting the calories or eating raw or bla bla bla…a little more go with the flow.

  Anyway, here’s one of the two ‘control’ workouts I am going right now, 2x weekly.  I work to improve it every other week. 

    High Step+Deadlift+Chins+Seated Row+DB shoulder press or chest Press….2x around, no rest inbetween sets. 

September 19, 2009 Am now 27, Happy Birthday to Me!

...Feeling pretty good about it, to be honest.  I feel like I’ve got a lot figured out about myself thus far.  Ha! I feel like I got a lot of that lot figured out in just the last few days.  Been thinkin more than usual lately.  Not quite the same volume as was thought in the 2005-7 era, but quite a lot of thinking nonetheless.  On the one hand, I really can’t keep going as I’m going.  I’ve got to lighten up and not be quite so anal about the physical ‘leaks’ in society and human behavior.  On the other hand, I can’t deny my own mind and ability for happening upon them and doing something about it.  

   I keep thinking about what defines a person’s intelligence, and I think I may have been somewhat wrong up until now.  A person’s intelligence, in addition to having to do with mental acuity in regards to subjects one can observe, count, measure...etc, is invariably and much more heavily and intricately entwined with a person’s ability to recognize and be able do what works to get him/her the comfort/happiness he/she desires.  The truth of the matter is, a focus, especially and extreme focus, on the physical doesn’t have the potential to deliver happiness on the great scale...and if that is the goal, then a person desperately searching for happiness via that/those channels isn’t a real smart one.  (I’ve written a lot about this in the book, I’m trying not to actually say a whole lot that I do in there….I only have so many good points, you know). 

The person that is ‘dumber’ often ends up on top of the person that is ’smarter'...and I’ve kind of come to the conclusion that it is because they are not dumber at all, they are smarter in regards to the things that actually have the potential to deliver them happiness, which probably makes them smarter overall, in my book.  Instead of focusing on being a hotshot, getting to the top of his game, he’s focusing on being a good person that can often connect well with other people and promote a sense of well being and happiness so people can continue to improve and be happy.  In other words, he’s working on the foundation from which all other things come up, whereas the ’smarter’ person is often trying to improve society by promoting an ideal which is a result of the foundation-a symptom...he’s telling people to eat better, live more eco friendly, and he’s telling them exactly why....but he’s not promoting the things that actually help people come to those conclusions themselves: the comfort, the love, the joy in it all....That’s actually not smart.  That makes him the ‘dumb guy,’ because the original dumb guy was at least smart enough to see that human behavior isn’t driven by logic, rather comfort/love/happiness-or the avoidance of their counterparts.

    It’s not like this shit is new to me, to be honest, but it definitely hasn’t sunk in yet.  A big problem I consistently face is: how can I be the things that appeal to my spirit while achieving the ideals that appeal to my mind

ps. If you are a cute and nice girl and want to get in contact with me, please do.

September 17th, 2009-Been a little while....  

Someone signed my guestbook and that reminded me that I need to keep this thing going.  Actually, I think about it pretty often so it’s not really a chore by any means, and this one is going to be therapeautic.  I went out with my neighbor last night.  I’m telling you, every single day I believe more and more in this law of attraction thing.  We’re more similar than I could have imagined, even some very similar experiences.  It’s real unfortunate that they just don’t seem to jive all that well. 

It’s probably a pretty predictable predicament for me to be in, but it’s not that often I meet people I really connect with.  It’s hard for people to see past the lifestyle.  I left the bodybuilding lifestlye many years back and adopted the health for all lifestyle in its stead….the bbing lifestyle was hard enough.  Introducing myself to people is always kind of interesting; unforunately, I’ve developed anxiety over it.  I just wait for the uncomfortable so early in the conversation where our path go their seperate ways.  The fact of the matter is, I find myself very far from where I started and almost obscenely far from the majority of the people out there-not necessarily farther forward, just far.  I asked one of my former girlfriends what I should do about this problem and she said I should really try and kind of slowly let myself seep out rather than being open from the very beginning, which has always been a little more my taste…or maybe my way of avoiding future let down.  Letting myself ’seep’ out always feels like I should be ashamed of who I am, and I, of course, don’t like that. 

Anyway, I really did my best with this girl, but once it came out that I eat only raw organic food, I never drink, I pick up trash as I walk and try to live an environmentally conscious lifestyle, and dig up trees from parks and plant them elsewhere, and don’t like or often respect laws in general, all amongst ten million other stories of very unusual experiences I’ve had that few people share with me(some of which I’ve written about in this blog)….it’s just all too much.  And what’s really too much is that I’m just too damn arrogant about it.  I don’t come right out and tell people what to do, but I make it real clear that I think people don’t know what the hell they’re talking about or doing and that I do…that I always do.  I have to stop that if I’m going to get anywhere with people-I’m not going to get anywhere with my goddamn self.  People that think they know everything are amongst the least smart of them all.   

I told her a lot about my upbringing.  The fact is, I’ve always been somewhat isolated in one way or another-whether by family situation or physical problem(I had some physical issues as a kid that forced me to learn how to stand on my own two feet a little more than most I think).  This probably just sounded like some sob story, but I hope that people can see the truth in it…these things have molded me into the person I am today, and the person I am today seems to be very different from most other people so I try to explain it.  The person I am today is someone that has a very hard time doing something just to go with the flow.  I find myself almost always trying to find the ‘most right’ answer…or best way regardless of whether or not it is acceptable to society. 

But maybe the best way is also a way that includes the understanding of other people and acknowledges that being social and giving and receiving compassion and love and happiness to other people is also part of ‘what makes sense.’  I know that’s true.  I know that it is, but it’s not really coming out yet in my actions.  I still find myself feeling like an idiot when I do things that I know don’t make physical sense…but again, I find myself thinking, maybe they do make physical sense.  Maybe fun and socializing and etc actually has a greater positive health benefit to your body than the avoidance of whatever you were going to do and the ‘healthy’ thing you would have done in its place.  To be completely honest, the longest lived individuals are not the raw foodists, not the vegans or vegetarians, not the low carbers…they’re the ones that enjoy the hell out of life.  I just read an interview with some 110 year old guy and when they asked him what his secret was, he said, "whisky and wild women."  I might be going about this all wrong. 

…I was going to end it there on that strong point, but I’ve got some more to say.  What I’d really like to say is that I’ve noticed that the symptoms of my inner security or lack thereof are somewhat different from most people’s, but despite the fact that other people think they are so different from me, I see similarites to me, in them, everywhere.  In fact, I would almost venture to say that I’m not that far away from the pack.  What I think has happened is that I have found a lot of comfort in a very few things, a few outlets, whereas others not only have more outlets, but also more acceptable outlets.  My outlets seem to stand out more than others.  I think if people were to add up the amount of comfort they get from good food and drink, meaningless sex, music, socializing…etc and compare it to what I get from raw food, exercising, and my social/eco projects, I think we’d all be making up for a relatively equal amount of fear/discomfort/insecurity.  It would be neat to, for just a moment, strip everyone of all the things they love and see who is the most comfortable with just themselves.  I don’t know that I would be, by any means, but I’m getting the idea that I would not be alone.   

September 9, 2009-Goddamn, I would take it all back in a mother fuckin second.

  You learn from your mistakes; it’s hard to utter the words “I regret” simply because they don’t make that much sense-you wouldn’t have the understanding you have now if you took it all back and did it over, but maybe the fucking knowledge and understanding doesn’t mean as much as the experience you missed. 

I’m about to turn 27 and if I could go back and do it all over again, I would focus on relationships  and pure life enjoyment about 100x more than I have thus far.  Being dominant physically doesn’t make up for havin great friends, great memories, and a great girl.  There's just a whole lot more than the physical.

I was sitting around, outside on the table outside my apartment , playin guitar last night in the perfect autumn evening and just wishin this girl, my neighbor, would come out, so I could play for her a bit.  The whole time I was thinking to myself “why didn’t I do this like 10 fukin years ago when we were both kids when it would have been so perfect” 

This lifting shit, it’s all just been a mask for what I really wanted-which was a certain degree of comfort, acceptance, and even love.  I’m on the right path-I’m not going to get off by any means, but if I could do it all over again, I would do it differently, I really would.  Now this is my project and it helps me explore life and give something back to society, but it wasn’t then…and it’s probably still some of the former, if I am to be totally honest.  I’m actually happy that being big is relatively un-cool these days; it helps put things in perspective.    

September 6, 2009-CrossFit SM 

   Was at the Swedish CrossFit championships yesterday.  Really good time.  In fact, I think I may just take it upon myself to do it next year.  A lot of you know I’m really into HIT, and to be honest, it’s friggin harder than the limited Crossfit stuff that I’ve seen and done, but it doesn’t have the same appeal as CrossFit does.  In addition to that, I’m really having trouble with my social life, and would love to meet some people I can connect with on some level, so I think I may join CrossFit STHLM.  I feel like most people are so put off by the lifestyle that I live that they are kind of crossing me off their list before they really get a chance to know me, and that’s not so fun.  On the other hand, I’m very guilty of that myself, so I’m figuring there’s likely some kind of underlying give and take that has to happen here. 

   In other news…I might have blogged this already, but I filmed last weekend.  Had a pretty tough workout at the military base.  It was my second HIT session in a couple of months and it went alright.  Not a whole lot more than alright, but it went alright.  I started with some lunges and single legged deads which I loaded MUCH too light and ended up winding myself a lot more than I had planned.  That made it really tough to get through the rest of the exercises. 

   This past friday I had my 3rd HIT session of the last few months, this one a killer…I really pushed.  I had 5 buddies around me, egging me on, so I had to bump it up a notch.  Not too sore afterwards though, so that was nice.  Although, I was able to do deadlifts for the first time in a hell of a long time(YES!!!) and my hams are still bitchin at me. 

 The workout looked like this:

     Deads+Lunges+Plate Push+Stiff Arm Pulldown+Chins+Bent Over Laterals+Seated Row+DB Chest Press+Dips+DB Shoulder Press.

 All taken to failure or negative failure.  Just keepin it real, yo.

August 26, 2009-Thor and Odin

    My brother and I got in a long discussion the other night.  I told him about some awful news I read in the paper about a forest in the Yukon, 6.5 million acres, totally and completely destroyed by fires and a beetle that had previously not been able to make it through the low temps of the winter, wihch now, due to temperature increase, thrives.  It’s just really unforuntunate.  It’s upsetting to me how many people are still hiding behind their comfort, calling global warming a farce.  This is an exhibition of a high degree of ignorance.  The argument has never been whether or not the the weather is changing or that the average global temp is up a degree and a half or so; the argument has been whether or not people are the cause of it.  The fact that the global average temperature has increased isn’t arguable-it’s observable, measureable and agreed upon.  I can, at least, accept that people want to argue whether or not it’s their fault. 

    Anyway, a big part of the solution is finding as many simple infficiencies as possible that the average man can change.  Scientists, researchers, and engineers are going to have to take care of the tough stuff, making our factories, cars, power plants more environmentally friendly, but the public needs to pick up the slack in the daily grind.  I’ve got to be honest, it’s really not that hard, there are leaks literally everywhere.  Plug’em all and we can make a damn big difference.  The end product is the goal here, but to be honest, it’s pretty damn fun, if you ask me.

    I’ll give you a good example, my hobby: trees.  Trees, by nature, are not a good long term solution, but they do have the ability to buy us some time, which would be real nice, in my opinion.  Much like some baby animals in the wild, something like 9 out of 10 saplings die in the wild simply because they are choked out by others, or they’re not getting enough sun, or enough water, or etc…This is a source of giant potential here.  In one area we have a total surplus of trees, in other more urban areas, we have a total shortage.  If we know that a lot are being wasted when a lot are needed elsewhere, we have the most perfect situation ever to do something good!  Even more perfect is the situation in parks and even reserves where maintenance teams are cutting the grass.  Every year seeds fall, take root, and saplings grow.  Every late spring, early summer, they are cut down.  They are guaranteed to die.  Why not just move them?  All it takes is a little get’up and go!  When tree harvesting, you still have to think about preserving the forest, but you also have to accept the truth, and that is that most of these trees will die where they are and also that there are very many here whereas there are very few there.  This combination makes the solution real friggin simple.  You just have to do what works and forget about the fact that it’s illegal or against the rules of the park, or whatever it is.  Many hardcore environmentalists will be upset, and many law abiding tax payers will as well.  You just forget’em and do what’s right.  I’ve been doing this for a while now and I think it’s great.    

So here’s a pic of Thor and Odin. my two Oak saplings that I took from the miliary base because they cut grass. 

    There were many many growing, basically all destined to die for one reason or another.    These leaks are literally everywhere, in every walk of life; you’ve just got to think of them.  We’ve got use what we have in front of us and figure out how to make it better, more efficient.  And, again, sometimes, you’ve just got to think about doing what’s right, and what makes sense versus what is legal.  Sometimes you just don’t give a shit whether what you’re doing is legal or not; you know it’s the right thing to do, so you do it anyway. 

August 24, 2009-Startin to look like somethin

    I’ve been so sore from that crossfit session the other day that I’ve been crushing lb after lb of meat like its nobody’s business.  Just been craving it.  2lbs two days ago and 3lbs yesterday.  My triceps don’t even feel like they are a part of my body, rather some alien lifeform on the backs of my arms squeezing the shiit out of me, causing me pain.  Inglorious Bastards!

   Anywho, this is gonna be a short one.  I’m still hard at work on the project, it being my main motivation for the workouts right now.  That and, of course, the back-which I am happy to report has taken another leap forward due to another exercise I developed for a clear weak link in my body.  Its goin in the book.  As you can see, I’m actually startin to look like somethin here.  On the other hand, my legs are starting to lag again, which I suppose I could have predicted.  I’ve found good biomechanical substitutes for deeps squats, but load is a problem.  I think I might get a weight vest. 

August 22, 2009-Little get together last night.

    It was nice, but even more than that, it was productive aiiiii.  I’ve kind of unconsciously come to the conclusion that I need to be more open about my various weak spots.  The first being women.  The last couple of times I’ve talked about it, I’ve known that my feelings(not my opinions) weren’t going to be real popular, but I figure my actions will be even less popular if I keep having these…tendencies we’ll call them. 

    I find myself, as I’ve written about before, in the very stereotypical of being the kind of guy who is relatively, if not totally, uninterested in women who are my own age or a few years older, along with women in general that don’t match my definition of what "attractive" is.  So anyway, I might have gotten a few people perturbed last night, but hopefully they’re all my friends and they understand…even if it was the first time hanging out with a few of them.  Nonetheless, I got a lot of out it.  It seems like when you’re open about these things, you learn at a rate that must be 10x the rate learn at when you keep things inside. 

    So already today I started feeling a bit different, allowing myself to be attracted to women whom I knew my body was definitely attracted to-see that’s the thing, it’s not like I find them unattractive, it’s more that when I think about it, I find IT unattractive…the whole situation-’oh crap, be with them, they’re going to start looking old, I’m going to desperately want out…’  Yup, that’s how it goes in my head. 

    The one thing I don’t think I will ‘get over’ though is this idea that I’m not 100% sure there is a whole lot of reason to have to be with the same person forever.  That seems somewhat limiting to me.  I understand that to others, it’s the opposite of limiting, but as of yet it’s not that for me.  I’m not particularly attracted to meaningless sex and relationships, but being with one person forever might be letting the pendulum swing a little to far in the other direction. 

   In other news, I crushed some cross-fit yesterday.  We did some "Cindy," and I came in last place.  To my defense, that was because I was the only one using some semblance of good form, eller hur Matte, Joel?  Eller Eller??!!

August 19, 2009-It's been so long...

     It’s been so long since I blogged blogged that I thought I might as well get on the horse again; I’ve been meaning to anyway.  I’m grubbin on a little din din right now, so I apologize if this takes a while.  I’ve got about .5lb raw beef, some dill, some nuts, and some chopped onion in one of my two favorite bowls and I’m goin at it. 

   The book is on its way to being done here.  I’ve got basically all of the context done, with the exception of a few little parts.  I handed it over to a buddy today to see what he thinks…we’ll see if that turns out to be a good idea or not.  I was a little apprehensive letting my close friends read it given that I might not agree with what they are saying and it could turn out ugly-probably mostly on my end though, I’m the one who is notorious for not being able to take constructive criticism that well.  Honestly, you should just see me, it’s like watching a terrible accident happen.  I’m very insecure in that way-when people tell me I’m wrong about something.  Really wish I wasn’t, and would love be a WHOLE LOT more in control of my responses to people when they have a discussion with me of that sort.  So often it just ends up with me talking 95% of the time, pointing out step by step why they are, in fact, wrong, and not me while they get a word in maybe every 3rd paragraph or so.  It’s embarassing afterwords, I feel like such an idiot donk.  It’s weird how certain things can really press your buttons…but I’d bet my bottom dollar it has a whole lot to do with your past experiences.  That’s it for now, I’ve got some work to do.

August 18, 2009- I know, I know.

    It’s been too long-especially after I specifically said in my last blog how I was going to keep these pics coming on their scheduled days.  I apologize, I’ve got to become more reliable in regards to this.  Anyway, I’m home and got a new little pocket camera now so I don’t have to use my big one, which is nice-I’ve got a monster, Canon Mark III 1ds, for my trips...pics are just a bit too big for this medium.  These pics are a little bit blurry, I'll see what I can do about that for the next time around.  Anyway, workouts are going very well and I’m putting on quite a bit of size-hope it comes through in the pics.  In addition to that the book writing and editing is a rediculous thorn in my side, but it’s going well. 

August 8, 2009-Absolutely outrageous jet lag

    I’m home now, but I’ve never had jet lag like this.  I didn’t get to sleep until 3 last night.  The night before was almost 5am-I’ve never had to wait 7 hours to fall asleep.  I get nervous when I don’t sleep, something about it really freaks me out, like I’ll never be able to sleep again.  I’ve found that I can so easily fall into negative cycles, and when I see a potential one, I get really worked up about it….and then, of course, I’m not able to sleep.  As is usually the case though, there was a silver lining.  That anxiety has caused me enough problems over the years and I think life just decided to take over and teach me a lesson in relaxation.  So as I was laying, not sleeping, I kind of consciously went through my whole upper body and relaxed it bit by bit, calmed my breathing and said certain phrases, whichever ones felt right, over and over again.  And then after that, I was able to think a bit more clearly about how much the having anxiety over not sleeping would actually help my situation.  Not much, I figured.  It was really therapeautic.  The night before was just awful, I was nauseaus the whole next day. 

    Anyway, since I’m home I figure I’ll start writing a bit more.  I’ll keep updating with weekly pics too, time to get my butt back in shape, yo.  I decided to change the workouts a bit.  After that last HIT workout, I got a bit hooked again.  I’m gonna do a split for now, but still do it in high paced HIT fashion.  Today I busted some chest, front and medial delts, along with some tris.  Good times.

August 3, 2009-Week 4, up 5lbs, kind of fat/watery, look smaller in pics

    So here’s what’s happening: I’ve been eating a lot the last couple of days.  Being vegan for those few days and visibly losing muscle pissed me off a bit and I ending up going too far in the other direction.  That’s alright, it will come off when it is time for it to come off.  Right now I don’t mind too much though because the main goal is to pack on the lbs.  In other news, I have been filming a bit: filmed my first HIT workout in forever as dinner preperation.  It was fun.

Week 3:

I went totally vegan for about 4-5 days(the first two weeks were primarily fruit and lean chicken) and I saw a noticeable difference in muscle size…in that I was losing it.  Then I re-thought my whole process and just decided to go back to what has always worked best for me in the past-low carb, high protein and fat.  I made the change yesterday, that’s why I’m holding water today.  I was noticing a couple of things with the raw vegan/real high fruit that I wasn’t loving, the first being the state of my stomach-I don’t necessarily think it was the actual food I was eating, but rather the food in the amounts I was eating…although it was handling it much better than I ever thought it would, my stomach still wasn’t taking 50+pieces of fruit a day.  Having said all that though, 811 still makes a hell of a lot of sense to me and I will probably keep stabbing at it in the future until I either adopt it entirely and for good, or let it go for good.

July 21, 2009-2 weeks in, same weight, all measurements up dramatically

Legs, almost an inch.  Arms, quarter inch.  Chest .5 inch.  I don’t understand why the weight isn’t increasing though if all the measurements are-still at 190, just as lean.  Having a hard time getting calories in-4000 a day from fruit, vegetables, and a tiny bit of nuts is real tough.  I just switched over to totally vegan again.  The first week and a half was half fruit half meat(raw chicken).  Back needs a LOT of work, same with triceps.  Chest does too, but that won’t be a problem.  I don't know what the deal is, but the pics I took this week are loading up really weird on this site.  I'll see what I can do about it.  I'll definitely take more next week though and see how they go.

July 13, 2009- 1 week in, 2 workouts, same weight, some measurements up, strength up.

July 7, 2009-Colorado Experiment Revisited:

So, the time for the big revealing has come.  I’ve been hard at work writing this ebook/manual and I needed a marketing piece to go with it.  I figured since I have been out of the game for so long, I’d use myself as a guinea pig and do a month long experiment, somewhat resembling the Co. Experiment with Arthur Jones and Casey Viator, to build some interest in what I’m doing.  Today I took before pictures.  A month from now, I’ll take after pictures.  I’m sure the training won’t be done then, but I should have come a good long ways and have something to show for it.  But if I don’t, then we’ll know that I’m doing something wrong and that’s good too(although, I get the feeling that’s not going to be the case).  It’s all information we didn’t have before.  So, as I’ve said many times before, I’m not in the same kind of shape that I was in the pics you’ve all seen of me.  That was prior to the paralyzing portion of the back injury.  These are after, but on the mend.  I’m going to REALLY try to keep all stress on the back to an absolute minimum while I’m here(I’m on vacation in the States) so I don’t think I’ll be doing a ton of blogging.  More like little updates here and there.  But I’ve been thinking about a lot of stuff lately so I’m sure when I go back to Sweden, I’ll have a lot to write about.  Enough blabbing, here are the before’s, as you can see I've got very low bodyfat but considerable muscle loss:

June 28, 2009-I do not recommend eating 2 watermelons right before bed.

   I think I got up 9 times.  No sleep for the hungry.  Anyway, I’m crushin this raw vegan diet like it’s nobody’s business.  It’s costing me about $80 a day-but for learning purposes, I"m willing to accept that.  At the moment, I’m trying to develop a base program(a control, in other words), so I know, in the future, if throw something else in the mix(a variable), I’ll be able to pinpoint the cause of cause of the results. 

   I’m honestly feeling pretty good; my energy is through the roof and my skin looks absolutely flawless.  It’s the NOT being tired in the middle of the day though that I really really love-so much so that it would be really hard for me ever to go back to a diet that ever had that effect on me.  It’s a little hard to admit all that, eating raw meat has actually been a part of my persona for that last five years(it’s even harder admitting that!).  I just have to think about doing what’s best though and let my feelings for who I am and what defines me go by the wayside.  Maybe in the future those things will be more important but right now, this is what has to be done. 

   On the downside, I am losing quite a bit of weight.  I’m lean as all get out, but I think I’ve dropped some muscle too-I know that I am sore for WAY longer than usual on this diet-so it probably needs some fine tuning, probably should throw some nuts in the mix(as of yet it’s been 95% fruit, 5% leafy vegetables).  If that doesn’t work, I may go back to meat but I don’t think I’ll ever go back to the combinations I was doing before as they were causing me obvious blood sugar issues.

   In other news, I’ve become a nudist.  Not really, but I am tanning in the birthday suit wherever I can these days.  It’s pretty damn nice-just got to find a spot without a lot of trafic.  I usually climb to the top of some local…rock formations, for lack of a better word, and lay out there.  Yesterday, some old lady sat about 10m away from me and read her book.  She was cool with it and I decided I was too, so I didn’t get up. 

  Moving on, I’m coming back to the states for a month on the 4th of July.  The plan is to do some filming for the new site.  The back is feeling really improved and I think I’m ready to give a month of intense workouts a try.  It’s been basically 2 years since I worked out regularly and intensely, so this should be good.  My only qualm though is whether or not my diet is going to support it.  My knee jerk reaction is no, but I have a goofy kind of feeling that it has the potential with a little fine tuning, like I said.  There are some people out there that seem to have broken the mold when it comes to diet and it’s relation to muscle building-I’d like to see if I can get a little bit of what they’ve got goin on.  As I crush my second head of lettuce for the evening, I think I can. 

   Last, I want to apologize yet again for being so bad with the blog.  No good excuses, just been busy being excited and stressed at the same time about other stuff.  Hope you’re all well.

June 17, 2009-Not comfortable right now.

*I'd like to apologize for not updating often, but I've been having serious issues with my site host and haven't been able to get anything online.  Hopefully, they will have taken care of everything now.  I've also been slacking.

   I’ve made another push towards the raw vegan end.  The more I read, the more I write, the more convinced I am that, at the very least, our bodies are vegan or real close.  For some reason the idea that there is more to it than that, that our own development as a soul plays a role as well, comes up quite often though.  I get the idea, and have heard it spoken about, that what we really take from food is it’s energy…or it’s life.  I wonder if the more developed or advanced a soul gets, the less dense food it needs, or lower on the food chain kind of food it needs.  One thing I can’t deny is that basically almost every person I would call a real master or close to it, was vegetarian or I suspect was vegetarian despite what ancient texts might imply-few actually go right out and say. 

   Anyway, my gut is killin me right now.  I don’t have the flora for this yet.  There’s only one way to get though, so here I am.  Which brings up another interesting point-studies have shown that an animal’s gut flora is a reflection of its diet-I guess that almost goes without saying.  I wonder then, though, if most people’s problems like candida and IBS and what not wouldn’t clear up if they just kept eating the same raw foods over and over again like animals in the wild do, instead of eating an entire Earth’s worth of variety on a weekly basis.  I think if they’re eating cooked, it wouldn’t make too much of a difference given that the food is sterile, but I think this works, in theory, with raw.  Interesting idea, I think. 

   In other news, I am still not done with this puzzle I am doing.  I’m not even 1/10th done.  This is suckee suckee. 

   My back has been acting up a bit lately, mostly I think because of the excess sitting I am doing writing this manual.  Also suckee suckee.

   My shoulder has also been acting up.  This, too, is suckee suckee.  I don’t have a great reason for it either.  There are A LOT of nuances in anatomy and biomechanics that I’m not aware of that I know are affecting my structural health.  I have to study more.  All the external rotations, shoulder adductions, cervical retractions and extensions, and lumbar extensions in the world are not making too much of a difference right now in regards to my back and shoulders.  I know I’m missing a piece or two somewhere and I don’t have too much of a choice other than to find it.  Having said that, I’d like to point out: I think the motivation people have to do what they need to do often stems from the fact they they are, simply, very uncomfortable. 

May 31, 2009-Been a little disoriented lately.

    Everything has been going pretty well, but it’s been a bit much lately-and I think it’s showing in my blogs and even my personality.  I’ve been a little more aggressive than I feel like I really am lately.  That’s usually a sign of some kind of disomfort.  On the other hand, I’ve really been making a conscious effort to not ’put people in their place’ when a disagreement arises.  Lately, coming out a loser doesn’t bother me all that much.  In fact, it’s really what I’ve been longing for, for a while.  Throughout my life, I’ve put a lot of pressure on myself to win and be the best and to come out on top(especially in arguments) but even more than that, to impress people.  I need a break from that, at least from it’s intensity.  People don’t like it and I don’t either.  It’s a little difficult though to swallow your knee jerk reactions and do something that you think is theoretically better though.  Even more difficult is doing it if you are pretty sure that you are in the right, but think that in this situation what’s best is to just avoid the negativity of the argument.  I’ve been particularly bad at this my whole life.  Most of the time I’ve been in the wrong though-so that makes this quality of mine even worse.

   In other news, I was late to a client the other day and a ruined my whole 1 minute at a time running program.  I ran all the way to work which took roughly 10 min and my back was through for the rest of the week.  I’m still feelin it.  As is usually the case, it worked out for the best because I ended up finding a major leak as a result of it, but it was still damn uncomfortable.  You know, I always kind of thought these people were full of it, but I’ve had two dreams now that, upon awakening, immediately gave me the answer I was looking for in regards to my back.  I went right to the gym after waking up, did what I needed to do and it felt awesome afterwards and now I also have a fuller understanding of the problem.  Pretty cool.  Anyways, I’ll talk to you guys later, hope everyone is well.  My brother is living at my place for the next two weeks or so and I’d like to get some cuddling time in before we go to bed, you know how it is

May 25, 2009-Today’s accomplishment: A 1 minute run on the treadmill.

     Might not sound like anything to you, but to me it’s a lot.  I experienced only very minimal leg and calf pain afterwards and my back was basically fine.  That’s exciting to me!  I decided that there is a lot of potential in running in regards to therapeautic value for my back.  One the one hand, it’s a very intense hip extension which is gold for me.  On the other, it’s very many intense bounces for my discs to take and they almost always do not take them lightly.  I’m looking at that as a good thing though-specifically because of the discomfort it gives me.  It leaves me somewhat uncomfortable and sensitive in my lumbar spine which keeps my motivation to improve high, all the while being muscularly therapeautic…so it’s a win win situation here.

   In other news, I’m putting the finishing pieces of my book together now.  I can’t really say finishing touches yet, but I’m getting there.  Most of the rough draft, which isn’t that rough, is done.  Currently, I’m training both my best friend and my sister to see how big of a change we can induce between now and the release of the book.  I took the before pictures this past weekend and am going to do a full assessment on both tomorrow, hopefully. 

   In regards to diet, I’ve been crushing almost a whole jar of raw, unheated honey daily this past week.  It’s insane, but I’m craving it like mad.  This happens every now and again-I’ll crave something really intensely and eat it in inordinate amounts and feel pretty damn good afterwards, whereas I would normally feel like cow dung.  Anyway, a jar of honey daily and no candida breakouts.  Pretty damn good, yo. 

   Last on the bill for the evening is my secret hobby: puzzles. I’m working on one right now that’s 5k pieces and it’s crushing me.  It’s an old antique map from the 1600s, I believe, and for the first time ever while doing a puzzle, I feel pretty down and out.  I’m not going to quit, but this thing is hard.  Lots of pieces fit together perfectly but don’t belong together-I’ve never experienced that before.  It’s pretty sucky sucky, if you ask me.  I’ve had to take apart the border a friggin hundred times because I have extra pieces at the end or not enough or one side ended up longer than the other or bla bla bla…and it’s still not right!  Thing’s friggin impossible.   

May 17, 2009-Had a party last night.

     Went pretty well, about thirty people came, I’d say.  Ate some cooked food for the first time in quite a while and am not feeling excessively sluggish today.  I didn’t go overboard though, which is nice.  I’m actually taking it as a real good sign that I can eat cooked every once in a while now without going ass over ankles and binging on a whole bunch of other crap.  It’s still hard, I’m still a junk food junkie, but I’m winning this battle.  I think what’s helped the most is introduing carbs back into my diet.  Now I almost feel silly calling myself or anyone a sugar addict…that’s like calling them a human being.  Of course they are a sugar addict, take them away and they’re going to go overboard and do something stupid, keep’em in from the right sources and in the right amounts and life is easy peasy. 

   In other news, my back is being a real arsehole right now.  Probably because I’ve been a lazy bastard lately.  Really been enjoying having dramatically less back pain for so long now that I have been doing things that I still shouldn’t be doing-like excessive sitting and holding very heavy things on just one side.  Anywho, it’s alright because it’s just more stimulus for a push towards health.  Everytime this happens, as I think is the case with most people, I get a new fire in my butt to get in the gym and whoop up on some weak links. 

   Last, the IRS has contacted me and informed me that I owe them $8,445, and I can’t figure out why. 

May 13, 2009-Leak Finder

    What an incredibly healthy post that last one of mine was.  It really felt good to get all that out in the open actually-kind of like a deep breath out ’ahhhh, I’m shallow.’  And it was ok.  Felt nice, like it’s ok to be me and to be how I am even if it’s unlikely that I’m going to be happy being that way forever.  Right now, it’s ok and I’m cool with it. 

   In other news, Damn there are a lot of leaks in training today.  I’ve said this in past blogs but I want to see if I can say it more eleoquently now: Training in theory in generally well understood; training in practice, specifically for already well trained individuals, is so full of holes it doesn’t hold water any better than a goddamn sieve.  The understanding is up to date but the application is still based on exercises that were made when the understanding was much less advanced than it is now.  Worse is the fact that for the general public the old exercises and their application hold up just fine.  They’ve been tempered by the new better understanding enough that their are a good deal of results backing therapist’s attempts to improve their clients’ well being-making people think that they have hit the nail on the head. 

     Unfortunately, this isn’t the case and it becomes painfully apparent in the well trained individual such as myself and many of the people reading this.  It does so via the length tension relationship or the balance between the muscle groups.  A non-trained individual gets great results because he/she is almost always doing an exercise that puts him/her in postive balance again.  On the other hand, a well trained individual might be training the right muscle group but they are doing an exercise that doesn’t have the ability to deliver them the result they need-specifically because it was created by feel and not by thought.  Rotator cuff exercises are a great example, they often start in the completely wrong place to help anyone dramatically with major impingement issues from heavy pressing movements-big surprise there, there are 10 million huge powerlifters and bodybuilders out there not getting anything out of their countless external rotations, shoulder adducting movements, and retractions. 

   Again, the problem is usually not that the trainer or the therapist doesn’t know what needs to be worked on, the problem is that the trainer or therpist knows exactly what needs to be worked on and then chooses and exercise from the old catalogue of exercises that are already out there.  This is also why it often yields better results for a therapist to treat someone with an unusual injury-because they have to make up an exercise and in doing so they apply their good understanding to their creation; whereas they usually apply their good understanding to their diagnosis and their laziness when choosing an exercise.

    Another issue I can’t seem to get away from is this one of ‘changing it up.’  Seems like it could be bunk. If you have specific attachment sites, then you have specific functions as well within the confines of specific ranges of motion.  There don’t seem to be 20 different exercises for each muscle group like most bodybuilders and 15-25 yr old guys would have you believe.  There seem to be anwhere from 1-4, with four being on the real high end-muscles with unusually high number of different functions.  There might be a million different ways to load the movement and a million different apparati to do the movement with, but the movement should still be within the range of motion that is most applicable to it’s attachment sites-whereas most different exercises for the same muscle group definitely are not-what they are, are different exercises for different degrees of the same muscle group. 

     I’ll give you an example: An incline curl and a barbell curl.  The long head of the bicep attaches at the supraglenoid tubercle=up in your shoulder.  If you do a bicep curl on an incline bench and let your arm hang all the way back, you do the movement from the fully stetched position.  If you do a barbell curl, you can go all the way down until your arms are hyperextended if you want and the long head of the bicep still won’t be in it’s fully stretched position, which, in my mind, makes this an inferior movement.  Not only do you not get the development from going through a full range of motion, but you heavily load a movement that is destroying the length tension relationship between your bicep, forearm, and delt(along with the rest of the body to a lesser extent)-so you get a worse length tension relationship, faster!  Now all the hard core guys are whining that you can use much more weight and build more size with the BB curl, but to that I say grow some balls and get strong in the incline curl, or the drag curl, or any number of different ways you can do it. 

    In other news, I went to the physical therapist the other day and she kicked me back a few notches, which I desperately needed.  I went in kind of cocky about having found a lot of leaks and although I had, she found a lot more in my(surprise surprise) application.  It was good for me because it was embarassing and it gave me a couple more things to think about upon leaving.

May 6, 2009-My Admission:Dealing with Superficiality

   My whole life has been centered around superficiality; bodybuilding leading the way.  I don’t think I’m that far along in spirit to be honest with you.  I’ve come a ways in a couple of different areas of life but I’m still dependant on having money and an exceptionally hot girlfriend to make me happy.  The one thing that makes me think otherwise is that I’m not really on an endless search for these things, really just ‘need’ them to ground me so I feel like I can breath and go on with the rest of my life.  It’s like these are the things that allow me to feel ‘ok’ so I can move onto the things I feel like I really need to do.  I know it sounds rediculous but it’s the case and the denial path only gets me a certain degree of progress.  It has to be combined with acceptance as well so I can learn from my desires and subsequent actions. 

   You know, it’s kind of goofy in that saying what I just said(especially about women) would and will often knock me down a few points in quite a few people’s eyes but what they don’t realize is that where I am deep they are often shallow and vice versa as well.  These are my two things.  On the other hand, I do not worship certain physical senses and so called 'creature comforts' like most of my peers do.  I worship these two much more though, I would say-especially women.  It’s like I feel like my life will be a total bore if I am not with someone rediculously hot.  It’s likely because I don’t feel like I ever have been-although I think a lot of people would disagree…which is pretty damn rediculous on my part.  It’s actually a chore for me to go out with an 8, even if she has an awesome personality(which is the only reason I got out with her).  I actually told people at work the other day that I could see myself being one of those guys that leaves his wife and kids when he’s like 45-50 for a hot 24 year old with a smokin body and a great personality. 

    I don’t know how this will pan out but, the truth is, I’m not in a hurry to get rid of these superficialities, I want to play them out.  I’ve never had a girlfriend that’s been hot enough and I’ve never had a lot of money.  Right now, these are big motivators for me.  Part of the thing with the women, I think, is the fact that I’m so nervous around the ones I want.  Usually, if they are off the charts hot, I will force myself to approach, but otherwise I’m usually a pussy about it. 

   Another real goofy thing is that I just can’t seem let these two desires pan out in a way that a normal guy would let them pan out.  If I talk to anyone that is anything less charming, and fun, and smart…then I have a hard time standing her and almost immediately cross her off my list of possibilities.  I have a little bit more give when it comes to money but nonetheless I’m still very apprehensive of making it in a way that could harm the environment or society, or jeapordize the good direction that I see the world going in.  I am as I have been saying that I am…right in the middle, seeing truth in my mind but not yet feeling it to the extent that a more advanced soul would. 

    And the absolute goofiest thing of them all is that it all breaks down to experience and learning.  Everything is a symtpom of these two things.  Everyone is ****ing bitching and moaning about this being this and that being that and this meaning bla bla bla.  None of it is good or bad.  It’s doesn’t mean a goddamn thing other than it being a reflection of our development thus far.  So today, I’m going to feel good about my superficiality and maybe hit on some hot women if I see’em. 

April 28, 2009-The Cure for Candida

…is sugar.  Someday I’m going to take this blog down, put it into a short ebook and sell it but right now I feel like getting this off my chest.  Pretty early on in my candida problems after a 1.5x bout of antibiotics, I realized that there was something seriously wrong with the current candida diet paradigm.  I only realized this because I was, at the same time, making my own probiotic cultures from store bought probiotics.  The anti candida diet is just that-a diet focused on minimizing yeast in the blood and intestines.  The reason people have to stay on it for upwards of a year or even two years is because it’s totally worthless at repopulating your own intestinal flora.  Our own gut flora grows fastest on sugar as well.  If I fed my cultures fiber, like the establishment says you should do when you have candida, they would take forever to grow.  A candida overgrowth problem is first and foremost a gut flora undergrowth problem.  If you are on a diet that starves you of sugar, then you are on a diet that is also keeping your own gut flora from really flourishing like it should. 

    The problem probably isn’t that you’re eating sugar, it’s that you’re eating either way too much, the wrong kind, or it’s staying in your blood stream for way too long because you’ve been eating like most everyone else does-that being a combination of fats, carbs and protein, like you normally should-unfortunately, the fat blocks the sugar’s access to the cells it needs to get into, resulting in a blooming of yeast and possible diabetes in the long term. 

   Here’s what you do: You stay away from all white sugar and refined carbs.  You do not, on the other hand, stay away from fruit.  You also stay away from fats and anything but the leanest protein.  You start by eating a little bit of fruit, then wait.  You let it digest completely, wait maybe an hour or two hours.  Then you eat a little bit more.  You do the same.  So on and so forth.  There two problems with this though: 1st, your gut flora is not ready to digest it, so it might be uncomfortable or likely will be uncomfortable.  You know your gut isn’t ready to digest it because you are in the situation you are in.  2nd, your cells aren’t ready to assimilate such a high proportion of carbohydrate with nothing else.  You’re not going to function as well and that’s also going to make you feel uncomfortable.  It is for these two reasons that you then have to back off the sugar and go back to a typical ‘anti candida diet’ to get you back to default, giving your body what it currently needs to function properly and healthfully.  Then once you’ve done that, you go back to the slow sugar build.  And everytime you go back to default, you do so in exact accordance to how much you feel you need-protein and fat that is.  After several weeks, you should have an entirely new gut and cells ready to function on a high percentage of carbs. 

April 25, 2009-Still unilaterally sore

   I’m having a great time with these workouts.  My left glute, especially mede and min, are dying along with my left tricep and my right bicep.  I don’t know how I ignored all this for this long.  Anyway, the back is feeling much better as well.  I’ve come up with a couple of great exercises for the thoracic and cervical areas to help take some load of the lumbar, along with the extra glute work in the left to do the same. 

   In regards to the grub, I’m still bouncing back and forth between high fruit/very low fat and almost no carb, high protein/high fat.  I have to say, I am really leaning towards the high fruit nowadays.  Especially the acidic fruits-starchy ones, like bananas, don’t sit too well with me…thus far anyway. 

   In other news, I haven’t worked too much on the book this past week.  Been working on another project, one that will hopefully lessen the pressure of the book making process.  The only other news is that I went out to a club last night.  It was real good times.  I’d forgotten how much I like the release of partying and good music-and to be honest I didn’t really even let go.  I’ve been feeling for a while now that I’d like to mesh my old life with my new lifestyle and it seems like that’s happening more and more these days.  I’m not drinking, I’m not doing stupid shit, but I’m becoming progessively more social and more open to partying at the same time.  That paints a very cool future in my mind-one that's much more focused on the whole.  It allows me to have fun, while still being physically healthy-trying to eliminate the negative while maintaining the positive. 

     Another reason I’d really like to go out clubbing more often now is because I’m painfully aware of how uncomfortable I am in that environment.  That’s a big weak link in my chain.  I only talked to one girl last night and that was only because I recognized her from a, roughly, 3 minute conversation we had 8 years ago in LA, where I met her just the once and approached her on the grounds of my school.  Absolutely crazy to see her, and recognize and remember everything about her and our meeting, here in Stockholm.  Anyway, I have to iron out this wrinkle, if you will.  I simply can’t be as lacking as I was last night. 

April 16, 2009-Uni-lateral training

   In keeping with my decision to just hit my weak links until I have no pain any longer, I decided that I also have to even out a lot of muscle groups.  Today’s training was dedicated to just that.  I did single legged squats with my left leg, deadlifts bilaterally, unilateral stiff arm pulldowns with the left arm, external rotations with the right arm, bicep curls with the right arm, dumbell tricep extensions with the left arm, and then back to some glute work for just the paralyzed left glute.  Felt pretty great afterwards actually, got that kind of ’click’ that I get when I know something is right.  Not a strong one, but getting there.  What I really felt a click after was a conversation I had with my napprapat which resulted in me figuring out what the problem was.  Here I’ve been dilligently working on isolating one tiny ass square inch portion of my left lumbar spine, trying to stengthen it as it is my weak link and I’ve totally ignored my own advice-that the pain is the summation, the symptom of the underlying problem.  It’s the leg that’s the F-ing problem!  I’m blaming a tiny tiny tiny piece of body for something that only a much bigger muscle group could cause.  My left leg is dramatically smaller and weaker than the right-it’s been that way for as long as I can remember, I’ve always leaned on the right while squatting.  As the left leg get’s weaker, so does the left portion of the lumbar spine as it is forced to do more work than it should and then in the end, the opposite happens-the weakness of the left leg and the reliance on the right keeps it from ever getting strong again by way of ignorance.  Big click. 

   In other news, my goal is to do a one arm chin up.  I’ve done 2 workouts thus far including them.  The first consisting of only a 1 negative rep per side.  The second being a 1 rep neg for two sets.  So two reps total.  Now, three days later, I’m still sore.  I even think I am pushing the limit on the strength of my right pec-I feel like I’m close to a tear, like I did something extranormal that last rep-it’s the second time that’s happened and I’m not waiting for a third; I’m going to go to work on that as soon as I feel better.  It’s not that bad though, should be back in action in a few days.  

   In regards to diet, I am still leaning towards the vegetarian side.  Having whole days on lots of mono fruit meals, vegetables, and a bit of nuts.  Feels really good, but not perfect.  My skin is a whole lot better and I need roughly 2 hours less sleep at night, which is very cool.  I also don’t really feel the urge to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night as much either.  In fact, I think that might just be on it’s way out, which would be nice given that I have had to get up once a night every night for the last 8 years or so.  I’m almost positive that is going to boil down to a blood sugar issue and the fact that I’m eating so little fat is allowing the sugar into the cells as it should rather than being stuck in the bloodstream with oil coated cells not able to recieve it.  Very interesting, not perfect yet, but interesting.  I can’t say that I am particularly drawn towards becoming a raw vegan to be honest, but if it is the best path for me I’ll take it.    

April 13, 2009-Parks!!

    Second post for today, first time I have ever done that.  Forget harvesting forests, I can’t believe I ignored the truth so long right before my eyes-and it was me who proclaimed it no less.  When I first started waking up, about 5 years ago, I remember coming to a major conclusion(my first ever): that we would have a whole lot more trees and vegetation if we stopped cutting the grass.  I’ve had that in my head for a while and just ignored it basically.  Now I feel silly. 

   I felt a kind of weird draw today to go out of my way and walk through the park instead of the way I had planned on going.  As I’m doing so, this being spring, I see little baby maples popping up out of there helicopters.  Maples that will 100% guaranteed die because they will be mowed over.  Holy crap, get my shovel, Batman!  My balcony is going to be a friggin sweet forest with all kinds of livelyness, life giving oxygen, and hot as hell forest nypmhs.  We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of would be trees here within the confines of one large park dying for no good reason at all.  Talk about a waste!  This is really helping to open my eyes to how much more efficiently we can do things than we are now.  Go get yourself some trees, dude.   

April 13, 2009-Happy Easter!

   What did you do?  I had my family over to my new apartment, grubbed a bit with them(I had my own food) and chilled with my brother afterwards for a while.  Then when I woke up this morning, read some out of an old Bible that I bought at a second hand store and got some information to chew on.

    In other news, I’ve been bad.  I’ve been tree stealer.  But I remind you, one should do what is right and not what is legal.  I’ve been very in love with trees for a good long time now, sometimes I gasp when I see them.  What I’ve been doing is ordering tree seeds online for trees that can grow indoors-mainly different ficuses and growing them to my heart’s content, but I’ve always wanted some less normal kinds of trees to have at home like oaks and maples and forest trees like that.  Problem is that 1. I never had a balcony and 2. I didn’t know how to grow those kinds from seed.  Funny I refer to them as forest trees-if I went to India, the ficus is the forest tree, but you get the drift. 

    So anyway, I said to myself ‘now wait a second, I know for a fact that people are paying a lot of unnecessary money to buy trees have landscapers bring them in and plant them in their backyard.  I know this because probably 9 out of 10 or so trees in the forest die because they grow too close to one another.’  So with that, BAM "I’m gonna save some trees and get some for my balcony at the same time"…into the park/forest I went with two plastic bags and my gloves on.  First I found a small maple ’grove,’ we’ll call it, with ten billion frickin maple trees all growing within inches of eachother.  Dug up a sapling and told it that I loved it.  Took some soil, carefully mashed and wrapped it, along with some Maple scree, around the roots and went on my way.   

    I didn’t really care if people were watching, to be honest, as I consider what I am doing to be a good thing.  We are the care takers, the stewards of the earth(you can tell where my influence is coming from this morning), we are to ACT upon the Earth as best we can, not ignore the Earth and let it sit there doing as it did before we came along-it is partly for us as well, we too are animals and souls.  So I got me some oaks too.  These grew very close to one another as well, although there were less of them in general, as compared to the maples, and I questioned whether it was a good idea-but I came to the conclusion that it was, given how big they were going to get and how many were in such a small area.  Although, I will duly admit that there is a selfish desire that must be railed against when doing this.  I have given in at least one time and I am not so willing to do it again because of the shame I feel.  I also admit that I am an amateur here and I could definitely be mistaken in my estimations, as I am only going by what I see.  But nonethess less: the forest is number one.  My balcony is number 10 million, this must be kept in mind.  The growth of the forest comes first and I’ll do my best to make that happen-and part of making that happen is actually DOING…whether it’s right or wrong, ACTING, but with the right thought in mind, so as to come to what is ultimately right.  Having said that, I think I did pretty good anyway, this first time. 

   I knew before, but now I am keenly aware of just how many saplings we are trampling when we walk in the forest.  Look down!  They are often masked by leaves and look just like little sticks sticking up out of the ground-especially when they don’t have leaves yet.  Adult trees cast hundreds of thousands of seeds and lots of them take.  Tons of them take.  We’ve got to do as the natives Americans did and walk and hunt and gather with consciouness.  I have made a pact with myself to get better, it would be good if you did too.  Use the rocks, use the logs, be like the elves and the nymphs, light footed and bounding, floating almost.  Not the trolls and the giants whom stomp and trample and crush.

   Anyway, I’m moving closer and closer to being vegan or vegetarian.  I’ve still got tons of experimenting to do, but I’m noticing a lot of detoxing going on on these days when I don’t eat meat.  That’s usually a pretty strong signal.  Fits of sneezing and spitting out a bit as well-kind of like a mini version of what happened when I first switched over to raw.  We’ll see what happens, I’m bent on doing what’s right for me in this regard.  Hope you’re well and have had a nice long weekend.  I’m going to run an obstacle course today. 

      P.   

April 6, 2009-The Grind

   Seems like a lot of my ideas have been panning out lately, thank God.  As I said a couple of blogs back, I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I’ve tried to quit doing anything on sole ’will power’ instead of complete understanding.  I don’t actually think will power exists, to be honest.  I think it’s just a way to describe an understanding that is less than complete. 

    Anyway, I’ve been allowing myself cooked and even total junk food when my bodily feelings demand it, and I allow them to myself to my feeling’s content-meaning I do just as much as I desire.  Then I assess.  For at least a full 24 hours.  I’ve been doing this my whole life, of course, like we all have-it’s just another way of saying I’m learning-but now I’m doing it consciously and with purpose so it goes much faster.  As a result my feelings are getting much closer to being representative of my true thoughts-meaning they are lining up with that which I think is right, instead of just being representative of my past experiences and feelings associated with whatever it was that I was doing.  It’s pretty sweet.  Junk food scares me now.  It’s still attractive in the sense that alcohol is probably always going to be attractive to an alcoholic, but it’s much less now.  The truth is that none of these things are inherintly good or bad so they will always have both positive and negative draws, but the whole truth is that most of these acts will likely lean very heavily towards one side or the other, and that whole truth makes itself known very clearly through giving yourself experiences and assessing them. The thought of junk food now comes with all the feelings associated with the whole picture-the crap ass feelings afterwards.  It’s very cool how this all is playing out.

    The moral of this story is that I think that we learn our way out of and into things.  Discapline, will power…all that stuff are kind of illusionary.  They don’t often last and if they do, it would seem that that would be a very uncomfortable way to live.  Rather it would be better to sacrifice a little bit more of your immediate feelings and act out whatever it is you are trying get a better grip on and assess it so you can know why and actually feel why you shouldn’t do it or should or whatever…I love the perfection of life there.  We are what we have sewn.  We are the summation of that which we have experienced, and the more we experience, the more we assess, the happier and more loving a summation we become.  It’s a grind.  A narrowing.  A kind of wittling out of the inefficient and revealing the efficient. 

   Training: same old, same old.  Rehab, trying new things to gain a better understanding of the body and exercise theory.  I’m editing the book on exercise theory as we speak.  I had a damn good lower back workout today.  Came up with a couple of new exercises there that were pretty sweet. 

March 29, 2009-Hopefully a short one

   I don’t actually know how many people read these blogs anymore.  There’s so good for me personally, I guess I don’t care that much…but it would be nice to have a reader or two.  I’m making some kombucha right now and am going to grub a bit afterwards, so hopefully I’ll be able to keep this short.  Not a lot happening on my end anyway.

   Training is up and down.  I predicted a while back that a person’s program, whether it’s workout, diet or whatever should always be a rolling one.  One that evolves as the person evolves.  I think I was right there.  The moment I take care of one weak link in regards to the back, another one pops up.  I’m never doing the same thing as I did last time around.  As I’ve said before, I’ve had so many injuries over the years, and been so ignorant of them all, I’ve got a lot of back work to catch up on.  Right now my ham is the culprit.  The piriformis is almost always bad but that’s more because of the slight paralyzation I think-I try and work it and not a lot happens…something else takes over.  Anyway, I tore the ham a couple years back, it was a serious tear-I’ll see if I can get a pic up, the only one I have is a couple of weeks after the injury though.  I definitely did not see a doctor.  It took me until now to look up it’s attachment sites.  I don’t know why it never hit me to do that, but it didn’t.  Anyway, being connected at the pelvis, if it’s tight, it’s going to pull my pelvis in a direction I don’t want it going and since I am at basically zero tolerance when it comes to the back.  Stretching it and strengthening it makes a big difference, but it’s going to need a good bit more work.

    The same thing is happening with my diet.  I’ve been combining the high carb with the low carb/high fat.  It’s working well, but really only if I let it roll.  Doing the same thing day in and day out is what my sense of comfort is most tempted to do, but my head, candida, and my general understanding won’t allow it.  I don’t have good results-I’m often craving something that is not part of the program right then.  Got let it roll.

   What is cool though is that an idea I had quite some time back has really been showing itself to be true.  I had this notion that aging really isn’t aging, rather decomposing, or breaking down.  The reason it’s so strongly correlated with aging is because as we get older we have accumulated enough toxic waste and poor decisions to have visible results on the outside of our body, whereas they start on the inside.  I had some gray hairs a while back which I made careful note of and really disturbed me given my so called great lifestyle.  It got me a bit down.  Anyway, that was when I was living the all animal product diet.  The moment I started introducing fruits and vegetables again, they all went away and haven’t come back since-I know they haven’t because they were on my forearm, on my tattoo, and I made note of exactly where they were, the bastards.  Now that’s taken care of, thank God. 

That’s it for now, managed to keep it short, gonna grub a bit-raw beef, brazil nuts, raw cheese, parsely, chives, and olive oil.  Mix it up, grub it, good.

March 23, 2009-The Status Quo

    So the deal is that I am in this kind of middle period of my life, much like when one decides to grow their hair out long and realizes that the stage after short but before long is pretty unattractive.  I don’t really feel unattractive…more that the life I am living right now is unattractive-I’m just kind of waiting for the next step.

      I’m working daily but not loving it like I should be; I’m dying to get my projects off the ground.  I’m not working on them as much as I should be though, which is borderline idiotic given the above statement.  I could be working on the book right now, but I decided that I should blog instead because it’s been so long and I missed such a long period not too long ago.  So I don’t consider blogging right now borderline idiotic.  I could definitely use my time a bit better though, or a hell of a lot better.  I’m just juggling so many kind of esoteric goals right now that it’s hard for me to get it all to go together, and thus the ‘middleosity’ of this while time period.   I’m trying to be more lax in regards to my lifestyle so as to re-develop my personality and get a social life again while trying at the same time to be more strict in regards to getting things done that I need to get done.  Combining strict with lax is only going to work if I understand exactly what it is I should be strict with and what it is I should be lax with.  Just writing this is helping right now though.  It seems the mind really wants stuff filed nicely otherwise it can leave you with some pretty confused actions.  Thinking ’stict while lax’ gets more or less nowhere.  It has to be more like ’strict with work and chores, lax with diet and other people’s choice of lifestyle.’ 

   In other news, I’ve decided that I must be one blind son of a bitch to have missed such depth in life in general.  I went to a lecture at the the history museum here in Stockholm the other weekend and got so many great ideas for adventures.  Just the fact that I did something cool in my own city was the first step-the fact that I used what I had right in my own hometown instead of going way far away.  But anyway, I saw a bunch of cool pictures of underground caves and from arctic divers and I thought to myself ‘Jeez, I’ve been so focused on seeing everything topside, I’ve totally missed the underside, the air and all the things that happen in between.’  Totally rediculous, I almost feel like a damn moron for ever having been so ignorant of the truth which was right in front of me this whole time-that being that mere physical life is so full of depth that one lifetime isn’t anywhere in the realm of being long enough to experience it all.  If I want more experiences and adventures, which I do, I can’t just focus on traditional sight seeing and cool adventures topside in exotic lands, I have to also think about everything that life has to offer.  I’ve had so many ideas since then; but worse, I’ve had ideas before then that I ignored because they didn’t fit my exotic land, traditional sight seeing peramiters. 

    So, an idea I had quite some time ago that I’d like to go through with is being a storm chaser.  I’d love to take pictures of a tornado or something along the same lines; I’d love to be in that and chase and run away from that. 

    I’d also love to dive.  Most of the world is underwater for God’s sake!  What am I missing?!  I’ve never loved water and I’ve even had a bit of a panic attack here and there when it comes to being totally submerged, but I don’t think I care any longer.  This has got to happen and I’ve just got to suck it up. 

    Last, caves.  I’ve got to see these incredible caves and the rock formations underground, even if they are damn uncomfortable and claustrophobia inducing to get to.  Some of them are truly breathtaking.  The theme of this story is that I have to really enjoy the depth of what life has to offer, all the nuances, the life!-not just the most superficial-which in my case has been cool things to see on land. 

   In other news, I don’t seem to be meeting any girls that I really connect with.  On the one hand, it’s a shame because it doesn’t feel good to never really connect with the people you share physical playtime with.  On the other, it allows me the freedom that I feel I need right now to really experience life to the fullest, travel, get my projects off the ground, meet more than one girl…to squeeze it a bit more. 

March 15, 2009-“Tape? Where we’re going, we don’t need tape.”

    That’s what I said to myself prior to painting my hall about 24 hours ago.  Turned out it wasn't such a good idea.  On the other hand, I got some water based environmentally friendly paint, so everything I messed up was easy to fix-just a matter of rubbing it off with a wet rag.  Nice!  I love how everything is moving towards eco friendly.  We’ve got a looooong ways to go, but this ball is rolling.

   There’s basically no news in regards to working out.  I’ve been doing the same as I’ve been doin the last couple of months, back and shoulder rehab.  I guess the only news is the progressively increasing understanding I am getting of exercise theory and biomechanics.  I said this in the last blog but I think it’s worth repeating: the science is right, our diagnoses are right.  It’s our treatment that’s wrong.  It seems like these misunderstandings have invaded every branch of science and medicine right now.  Honestly, it looks like it’s on it’s way out, but for right now plenty of people are being treated in ways that are borderline idiotic.  Everything is based on the symptom, this tiny tiny piece of the whole, the summation of all the causes.  So anyway, I’ve had a lot to write about in my book.

   Speaking of the book, I was doing some editing today and I’ve found that, despite the fact that the information is all there, the book still doesn’t speak to me like it should.  My blogs haven’t even been speaking to me like they once did.  Now they are just lectures, jam packed with information that I doubt anyone really get’s anything out of because they are not resonating, like they once were, on the same level as the reader. 

   That’s been a common theme in my life-having the information I need right in front of me and yet still not catching on.  Plenty of times, I’ve come face to face with an answer to all of my problems only to ignore it completely…or at least, fail to grasp it.  I’ve come to the conclusion that basically all information will fall on deaf ears unless the person hearing it is in the right place, spiritually, to receive it.  That sounds kind of hokey, but what I’m talking about is energy.  That sounds even hokier. 

   Whatever, a certain amount of love, happiness, joy…etc has to precede truth when it comes to getting people to understand or even just getting them to resonate and connect with one another.  It’s funny that we don’t realize that, it’s literally everywhere in our customs.  We start conversations, lectures, letters, speeches…literally everything with a compliment.  It’s unfortunate that these compliments have become so stock that they no longer have the effect that they should.  Smart people come up with something better-a joke maybe, or just a goofy way of greeting someone, or a goofy way of talking.  The more uncomfortable the person(s) we are communicating with, the more energy building stuff has to be baked into the conversation speech, paper, whatever.  It’s kind of crazy how much has to be baked in these days.  That’s a part of what this whole PC craze is all about.  It’s an acknowledgement that understanding does not exist in a lack of love, or anger.  We’re keeping everything we say off everyone’s toes in an attempt to get to what we really want to say. 

   This bothers me a whole lot.  The fact that so many people are so uncomfortable.   Everyone is full of snide remarks and utterly rediculous blow ups.  Or on the other end of the spectrum, they’re running home in tears at the slightest little issue-that’s what bothers me the most.  People are more depressed than ever and they are exhibiting more extreme behaviors and reactions than ever.  That’s how this discomfort makes itself known: in people’s reactions to everyday situations.  The greater inroad we have to calm, the calmer we are when daily life doesn’t go as planned.  The closer people are to constant discomfort, the more blow ups, the more snide comments, the more reactions in general.  How many times has someone just stepped in front of you-literally placed his or her foot in a place that made you step in another place-and caused a slight or great anger in you?  It’s happened to me plenty of times and I see it all the time on the buss and trains and streets everyday. 

   So I came to a conclusion about comfort the other day.  There’s not enough stimulus.  Nothing’s going on.  Nothing bad can happen.  Nothing happens.  Because of fear, which has translated into a kind of obcessive sterilization of life in general, we’ve created an environment where only fear can thrive.  The exact opposite of what we want.  People’s lives are so safe right now, there’s an answer to literally everything, and when the slightest little thing happens that there isn’t an immediate escape from, all hell breaks loose.  Anyone with half a brain could have predicted this and seen it coming a mile away. 

   I’m so happy though, that all of these answers we have are caving in on us.  They’re not the right answers.  Almost none of them are based on nurturing us into greater physical and mental strength and greater understanding; and almost all of them are based on more sterilization; killing the last thing that touched us before we got sick, sad, or whatever.

    Luckily, things are happening again.  As I said, the sterility is causing it’s own stimulus.  The stimulus, instead of physical ailments, are people’s extreme reactions, their depression, their violence, their everything.  This will finally give people better understanding again.  It’s just more information where there was no information before.  More things happening=more long lasting comfort via understanding. 

    I don’t really have a segway here, but I wanted to talk about one more thing today.  You see it’s sunday, and saturday seems to be my think day, so I come to a lot of conclusions, let’em brew for a while, and then blog’em on sunday.  I was thinking about my own motivation to act.  I’m not at the stage in my life where I can rely on acting out of curiousity all the time.  More often than not, I act because of discomfort.  

     So I was thinking about the things that really get my butt moving.  I came up with a few but money topped the list.  Again, making a ton of money appeals to me but it actually doesn’t really motivate me all that much just yet.  What really motivates me is the fear of not having a lot of money.  I started noticing these last couple of years that the times I made the most money were all preceded by a time of great fear of having no money-which I equate to me being homeless, even though the reality of my life would basically never allow that to happen.  So this led me to believe that my feelings towards money stemmed from a fear of not having it.  I’ve come to understand though, that my extreme discomfort about being poor can’t stem from financial instability.  The fact is, I’ve never once actually been in a situation that anyone would really consider dire.  My feelings surrounding money must stem from something else.   I’ve come to the conclusion that it stems from me not understanding how to make it, when I clearly I need it to survive.  And the reason I don’t understand how to make it is because I’ve always had it.  Life isn’t going to give me more of it when I have it all the time.  What I need to do is get rid of it!  So that’s what I’ve done. 

    I want my daily life to evolve a bit, I need to earn money in a different way and I need to start living differently-more travelling, more adventures, more experiences in general.  This fact coupled with my ever increasing understanding of something/one always by my side, wanting me to succeed, led me to start getting rid of money…in an attempt to understand how to make more money.  I figured the best way for me to get my butt moving is to start spending most of my money, to get myself to that nice position teeter tottering below comfort and above extreme discomfort. 

    I figured since I’m still attracted to some physical things, some niceties, I’m just going to buy them with very little prejudice.  I’m not worried about becoming addicted to them because addiction is a lack of understanding and thus, not forever; and me being aware of their addicting reality makes them even less addicting.  With more acting, and more assessing of those acts, comes greater understanding.  And since happiness through physical items is likely not the true path, I don’t fear these acts at all.  I embrace them as a way for me to become less addicted to the physical and enjoy it at the same time!

    

    Hope this got through to a few people, send me a message sometime, if you’d like.

March 10, 2009-A million miles an hour 

   Feels like everything is moving really fast right now.  Between the book, a huge load of clients, Kombucha, and developing a social life, I’ve got a grip of stuff going on.  I don’t want it to slow down by any means, but I would like to be able to handle it a bit better than I am right now.  I just had a new guy at the gym whom I don’t think I impressed all that much, due to the fact that I’m feeling so rushed. The information he needed was given to him but not in the manner in which it should have been-a bit to scattered, like my brain. 

    Part of what is making me feel like I am going at a thousand miles an hour here is that I have sugar coursing through my veins like I’ve never had before.  And no candida flare ups.  I’ve been vegan for the last two weeks, high fruit, some tender leafy greens.  I’m pretty surprised at how easy this is going.  I’m mono-eating as well-one ingredient per meal.  That’s key.  I’ve been gravitating towards that for a couple of years now and it feels good to embrace it.  It’s what is allowing everything to ‘go in.’  If it doesn’t, you were better off not eating it. 

   I’m not hungry, my weight isn’t crashing, and candida isn’t flaring up.  I remember when I first read that interview with Dr. Graham about the importance of not combining anything more than very low fat with carbs that I felt a real strong ‘click’ or experienced a kind of Eureka! feeling.  I tend to follow those wherever they lead.  It’s lead here thus far and we’ll see how far it takes me.  I don’t have any problem being raw vegan if that’s the best path, but I’m going to stay objective and do what works.  One thing I can’t seem to work my way out of though is how, if I were to put animal products back in my diet, I would do that.  It’s become so very clear to me that sugar is not most people’s problem, it’s fat that’s not allowing sugar into the system, so everyone is desperately craving it.  This is why everyone is a sugar addict-our food choices are so wide and so variable that our palates have become acccustomed to terrible combinations(including all the macronutrients), in regards to health.  I could try lean meats, which is actually how most meats are if they are grass fed, but I actually wonder now if that’s part of man’s natural diet given the nature of the beast here.  We’ll see where this leads, it’s kind of exciting for me. 

   This idea with taste is kind of funny.  Everyone seems to be under the impression that these things they are eating taste so good and these 20 ingredient meals are like mouth orgasims, but the more I think about it, the more convinced I become that what they think is taste, is actually feeling.  I think many people have progressively conditioned themselves, via reaching for food everytime they get uncomfortable, to such a great extent that the comfort they recieve from food is basically instananeus-meaning after having comfort eaten so many times, they start feeling good the second the food gets in their mouth.  I know I’m that way. 

    Funny thing is though, now that I’ve taken my diet to yet another step, I find myself wittling that conditioned response out.  I feel the very subtle discomfort come on, I then feel the strong urge for food, and then I pause.  And do anything else that makes me feel good-which is usually just think and work out.  By thinking, I divert my conditioned responses to something else-I condition another response.  Instead of going towards food I go towards the thinking itself.  The act of figuring out, the understanding gives me the comfort.  I came to the very simple conclusion the other day that if you rely on a thing for comfort, you are only ever going to get as high as the nature of that thing will allow.  Sugar highs, which is just feeling normal for most people, might feel good, but they aren’t high at all if you compare them to what you can achieve with another person, for example.  Are sugar highs, higher than deep seeded love and connection with another soul?  Or with deep understanding of the nature of life, for example-another great high that I look forward to breaking wide open.  If you rely on something outside of you for comfort, it had better be bigger than you and more capable than you.  It had better be God, because that’s the only thing left.  Food, animals, even other people…they cannot get you as high as you without them. 

     Just to bring this full circle: often when I eat something cooked after not having had it for a long time, it takes a bite or two before it starts to taste good again.  Prior to that it tastes more like what it is, burnt ingredients.  I think if most people were pressed to just lick their food, have it in their mouth, and then spit it out, they might find that they are not satisfied with taste alone(which most claim they are)-rather the feeling the food gives them once it’s in their stomach.  Just a thought, although I’m pretty sure the answer is somewhere inbetween that thought and what most people perceive they are experiencing.

   In other news, my training is going well.  The back is better than it’s been in a long time due to me progressively figuring this shit out.  To be totally honest, nobody has given me the answers I really wanted.  I’ve seen tons of people and gotten tons of pieces of information, but never the whole picture.  It could also have to do with how open I am to receiving that information-in fact, now that I see that in writing, I’m sure that’s a big part of it, but I think part of my job in this lifetime is actually figuring it out.  Putting the pieces together(I’ve always loved puzzles-I covered my walls with them) and making it work.  That seems to be a theme in my life right now.  It’s like am the center and there’s all these different things that started way far away and are coming in closer and closer to me right now until they become like my own arms and legs- kind of like in that Da Vinci drawing of the man with his arms and legs outstretched kind of one top of one another. 

   I hope this blog doesn’t come off too cocky, but I’m figuring things out and I’m seeing where people go wrong-lots of them being fitness and health professionals.  Maybe my job in this life isn’t so much to figure it all out but to be able to deliver it to people, to be able to resonate with someone just perfect…to pick up on their energy and be able to mesh with it so I know just what to say to help them understand.  I know that’s been a big problem of mine.  I don’t know what I would call that character trait though.  I’m sure helping others is a part of it, but equally as sure as I am of that I am that this path was chosen for my own development first and foremost-which is what I think is the case for most people, unless they are really really evolved. 

   Anyway, I’m going to cut out now, trying not to ramble as much these days.  I’ve got a few things to do that I think could make me feel like I have a bit more structure in my life right now-one of which is clean up a bit.  So I’ll see ya next time.

March 2, 2009-New Year’s Evolutions Part Deux

   I’m happy to announce that I am now able to sit and blog rather than have to lay down and blog as I usually do.  I paid a pretty penny today for an erogonic office chair.  Really what I’m doing is kneeling with just ever so minimal butt support.  It’s better than laying because when I laid, I had to have my head supported and the constant cervical and upper thoracic flexion was giving me poor posture.  And that’s no good for nobody.  That’s a nice intro to the next bit of evolving I decided to do this year:

   I’ve decided that I can no longer train for bodybuilding purporses pretty much whatsoever until I take care of my back and shoulder problems completely-or at least damn close to completely.  It was time to stop kidding myself.  I know full well the importance of balance of the physique and maintaining proper length tension relationships(making sure everything is pulling on everything else just right) and continuing to train for hypertrophy, or even just increased strength, in muscle groups that are already way out of balance with others that are severely injured just doesn’t make sense.  So, having made that decision, I’m happy to announce that I have come a good long ways in just a matter of a few weeks.  I’m now able to sit on couches and even regular chairs for extended periods of time without a lot of pain and with much less radiation into my butt and calf-and I’ve even been able to maintain my neuromuscular connection to my calf pretty well despite all the sitting-something I was never able to do before(my calf would always ‘turn off’ after a lot of sitting before). 

    In rehabbing my back and whole core area, I’ve developed a real…well I wouldn’t say love, but interest in exercise and exercise theory again.  If you’ve read this blog before, you know there’s been a lot of ups and downs in regards to that.  The body is like a big puzzle and I love puzzles, I love seeing them come together, and I love figuring this out-that’s giving me a lot of strong positive connections to working out.  I’ve come to a lot of conclusions about not only myself but also about the way almost all of us train today that I’m including in the book that I mentioned a while back.  This is all very exciting for me.  I’ve found kind of a lot of chinks in the armour of applied exercise science and biomechanics-not in the science itself as that is pretty sound, but in the way professionals(and definitely amateurs) are practicing it in the gym.  I’m really looking forward to sharing it all. 

   The biggest problem I see thus far is the exercise selection as the result of a certain diagnosis.  For instance, if we find that a person has weak glute medes, we often tell that person to do a lateral walk because it’s a common glute mede exercise.  Unfortunately, despite that fact that we assessed and diagnosed the person, we’ve forgotten to assess the exercise.  A lateral walk is often good enough, but it’s also a shortened version of the glute mede’s full range of motion, which will, beyond a shadow of a doubt, lead to poor length tension relationships with the rest of the lumbo-pelvic hip complex.  So the science/the diagnosis is often correct but the exercise selection in relation to it is not, and that’s due to simple ignorance.  Professionals are saying ‘oh, glute mede issue and then just pointing to a glute mede exercise.’  A proper glute mede movement would start in a fully adducted or internally rotated position-which isn’t possible with two legs, you have to do it one leg at a time either laying on your side on a bench or attaching your ankle to a cable and brings the leg over the other to begin the movement.

    The second evolution, much like the very first from yesterday has to do with diet and me being on the outside what I am on the inside.  I’ve been raw for coming on 5 years now and I still have junk food cravings every now and again.  Not tons, but here and there.  I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not in my best interest to attempt to beat those cravings by abstinence alone-in fact, it’s consciously choosing the slow way of diong it. 

    As I said, we learn our way out of things and if we haven’t assessed the situation yet, it needs to come up again so we can assess it and break it down-so we can get a grip on it and understand it.  Otherwise, instead of learning our way out of the behavior so it’s taken care of for good, we attempt to avoid it for good…which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, given the great deal of time and effort that takes and the discomfort it causes.  I would much rather just have a better understanding of it and be done with it rather than have a poor understanding and fight it forever. 

   So what I’ve done now is what I’ve always told everyone else to do but never allowed myself(because of pride of who I was and the person I felt everyone thought and expected me to be) and that is act.  I am acting on the last couple of feelings, so as to grind them out, to wittle them out…to narrow my options for action.  If acting on one feeling produces an undesirable result and that result is clear and understood, the feeling is less likely to be used again as a way for the body to get itself out of discomfort. 

    It’s simply acting on old conditioning(I am a comfort eater you know) and then focusing on and picking apart and pedantically assessing the situation.  How does it make me feel right then?  How does it make me feel several minutes later?  What feelings do I have several hours later-do I just crave more and more(which I do)? How do I sleep that evening?  What do I notice in the morning and the next day on my skin?  Is it broken out?  Is it oily?  Am I craving the same thing even more than usual now?  Am I experiencing the sensation of hunger more or less intensely than usual? 

    And then I get information from the opposite stimulus.  I eat clean, I ask myself the same questions.  And everytime I do that, I get a better understanding, a better picture of the best path for me to take, and more conditioning towards that path.  This is controlled learning rather than uncontrolled.  Either way, you are going to learn your way, act your way to the best path.  One way is fast, one is slow.

    I’ve had some real good results from this.  I’ve also come to some great conclusions about life in general.  They go something like this:  What I really crave is the feeling that the food gives me.  The comfort.  I realized that it wasn’t the taste I was addicted to because if I kept on eating the item, I eventually tired of it despite the fact that the taste was constant throughout.  I also realized that it couldn’t be the food I was addicted to because the food actually isn’t good for me.  The nature of the food, candy or sweets or whatever, is well understood and these things shouldn’t actually cause an inherintely positive response.  If they do cause a positive response, it’s because of something else reacting to them-in this case, the brain releasing ‘feel good’ chemicals after having been slightly poisoned.  I also noticed that the same sense comfort I am recieving from the food is also achievable through numerous different non-food pathways.  This, too, led me to believe that it wasn’t the food at all that was giving me the comfort, rather the body that was giving me the comfort in response to the food that I ate. 

  Our senses and our whole bodies are information processors.  That’s what senses are for-they interpret information and our senses are our inlets to the physical world.  Everything in existance is information for them to process.  The things we see are not even solid, they’re atoms and electrons vibrating at a certain frequency to give us that which we see in front of our faces. Only not exactly, what we see in front of our faces is a combination of what is actually there and everything we have percieved in the past-meaning everything is filtered through our understanding of life, our beliefs our consciousness.

    Food is information which is assessed by our senses, taste and smell and sight specifically.  It’s niether positive or negative.  It goes in and is broken down, used, not used, it destroys, or nourishes, or both.  Certain foods, depending on their qualities ellicit more visible or ‘feelable’ effects than others-especially particularly toxic foods.  As I said, I noticed that numerous different foods can give me the same effect as well as numerous other things like doing something nice for someone or laughing long and hard for a while.  So I got the idea that it’s real possible that the food isn’t giving me the feeling at all, rather the body is giving me the feeling after I eat the food.  If I am ‘addicted to certain foods,’ it is not them that I am addicted to, it is the response they ellicit.  The comfort.  Certain foods give me a degree of comfort, sugar for example.  But the food can’t give me comfort, it can’t do anything, it’s just a piece of information that the body is processing just like everything else; it doesn’t have any comfort giving ability.  The body is what gives me the comfort after it realizes that this thing is good for me or bad or whatever.  It’s the effect the food has on the body that gives me comfort, which I am addicted to-the chemicals released in my brain within moments of taking the first bite.  Funny that these chemicals are released most intensely with the worst foods. 

   It’s a high level of comfort attained from one source that is the problem.  This understanding makes things a whole lot easier to deal with because then, to achieve that same high level of comfort, I know I can just substitute the food for something else the has the same effect, or numerous things that have the same effect. The point isn’t to be less comfortable all of the time, but to be equally as comfortable in a healthier manner.  Like I said, I noticed that I could achieve that effect with tons of things: talking to people, laughing really hard, doing something that was really difficult and uncomfortable to do, being of service to someone…etc.  These are all options for action.  And they are all better than junk food.  The problem has always been the conditioning.  When there was discomfort before there was a comfort via a path that was unsustainable.  Of course many years later when there is discomfort, there is still a strong neural highway to comfort via that same unsustainable path because the problem was never focused on, rather just irgnored and feebly abstained from. 

   You have to create a new path to comfort.  And that’s not nearly as hard as trying to go without comfort. 

March 1, 2009-New Year’s Evolutions…

  That was going to be the name of this blog when I decided to write it 3 months ago.  Unfortunately, it never happened.  As I said in the last one, a whole lot of stuff has been going on-moved, went on vacation, haven’t had internet…etc.  Anyway, I’m back now with…not a lot of updates, but, of course, a better understanding of myself than I had before and for me, that’s the biggest update. 

    I just got done talking to someone that thought I talked a lot…I guess I do.  I have a lot to say and if it wasn’t for this blog, it would just be a million different thoughts jammed up inside my brain, not really filed correctly and as a result not understood as they should be.  The problem now is that I have so many thoughts in my head that I’m going to have a hard time getting them all down on paper and I’ve been nervous about having to do so all weekend, thinking that this blog is going to let people down.-the mere fact that I made that comment is part of my forthcoming new year’s resolution.

    I came to a couple of conclusions at the turn of the year there.  First, I wasn’t and am still not enjoying life and other people nearly as much as I should be-as I did before I went raw.  I attribute much of that to the fact that the moment my eyes were opened to what I see as the truth, I found a great chasm between me and the rest of society.  Food was the pathway, but it opened the door to a new understanding of life in general and especially disease.  I realized that people were the cause of their own disease and that ‘germs’ are simply the last thing that touches them before they kick the bucket-like bullets fired from a gun.  When this understanding began to flourish in me, I felt as though my peers were doing everything ‘wrong’ and ruining the earth, making life very difficult for everyone else.  Despite the fact there may be some truth to this, my feelings were much too strong and too focused on one aspect of life for them to represent what anyone would call a good understanding of life. 

   Of course, after many years I’ve since come to a different understanding and have realized that the physical things people do are a representation of their understanding of life combined with their comfort level-people are going to do what makes them feel good and what makes them feel good is a representation of their past experiences and their understanding of them.  I also realized that the physical things that we do are important but still not as important as the love we share with one another.  It’s the love that nourishes each one of us, supports us, and allows each one of us to come to a better understanding of life and thus better physical choices-such as diet, lifestyle…etc.  The love is what get’s us vibrating, get’s us ready to recieve ever higher and higher understandings-without that, it’s almost totally useless to try to teach.

   Anyway, I realized that despite the fact that I had logically come to that good conclusion and have been acting thus on the outside, my feelings on the inside were not really lined up with my actions-meaning I don’t/didn’t really feel the conclusion that people are going to be as their understanding and their comfort allows them and that I should just be loving towards them.  When I see/saw people doing something that is not environmentally friendly for example, my initial reaction is/was a feeling that were I forced to put it in words I would have to describe it as something like ‘well that was lazy and worthless.’ –and that, of course, is not a loving feeling.  And I became less and less apt to be loving on the outside because my understanding was still slightly less than optimal-I didn’t have enough experiences.  I didn’t actually feel any reason to be loving, I just logically understood that I should be loving…that it was the path that made the most sense.  I’m afraid that wasn’t a life I could live for much longer; so my first new year’s resolution in a looooong time was:  To be on the outside as I am on the inside-and in this way, I will get my feelings in line with my logical understanding-assuming my logical understanding represents the truth. 

   Well it didn’t take long before that worked.  I decided to be on the outside how I was on the inside.  Cold, blunt, and abrupt most of the time and very loving and sweet at other times.  I’ve since realized something that I kind of half knew for a long time now and that is that abstaining from a behavior to stop behaving in that particular manner is often a particularly bad idea. 

   We learn our way out of behaviors via experiences and our assessments of those experiences.  Often it takes a really long time to learn our way out of one thing and into something else, but that is usually because we are not consciously focused on the one thing, rather we learn our way out of it very subtley via physical responses-ie: doing something until it makes us feel so physically bad that we can’t continue.  The reason it takes so long is because often the act isn’t ‘bad’ enough to evoke a blatant physical response-eating food that clogs your arteries for instance…most people don’t even notice it until the problem is a huge one.  The problem is that they are not consciously focused on the issue and rather learn via natural physical progression of constantly seeking out the things that feel physically good.     

      Anyway, I’m afraid it hasn’t taken me that long to get a better grip on my understanding here.  That’s probably because I was half way there to begin with though.  I allowed myself to just be the way I felt like being, kind of harsh most of the time, acting as if people were idiots most of the time.  It felt good to allow myself that, but pretty much immediately bad when I saw the results-which, the vast majority of the time, were very subtle, but since I was focused on the problem, I was able to note them.  People didn’t respond well was all and sometimes I noticed that they got a little put off or slightly sad-maybe so slightly that they didn’t even notice, but enough for me to tell that they were vibrating just a little slower…that they were dampened a bit. 

    So the plan was working pretty well, but as is usually the case, I got kind of comfortable being that way and kind of stopped paying attention to the results.  Isn’t that so often the case?  But then I made an old lady cry.  I honestly barely know what I did, but she came in my office two days later and told me that I had had been very un-pleasant to her and that she had been upset all weekend long and then she got a bit teary eyed.  Funny thing was, I didn’t say a word to her.  It was just in the way I was to her when she asked me to move my things so she could use the piece of equipment they were laying on.  Apparently I very brusquely and brashly moved them off and looked annoyed.  Anyway, this really bothered me and I felt terrible that she was sad all weekend long on account of me. 

     Now, I acknowledge that there has to be something more behind those feelings of hers; obviously she was real uncomfortable to begin with to be that sensitive, but that’s the reality of life-there are people of all comfort levels out there and we need to accept that.  We done have to cater to them if we don’t want to, but then we should be prepared to deal with it if they are upset and we are a part of the equation(although I wouldn’t say the cause).  I am apparently not prepared because I felt awful about it.  I apologized many times and found her a couple days later and apologized again because I didn’t feel as though my first apologies were sincere enough. 

   So that was…not the end of that little experiment, but a high point in it.  I don’t know if I’ll have any more like that, but now I have more input, more information and my feelings on the inside are reflecting that input and understanding that came along with it. 

   Another thing I’ve realized is that people can only suck up so much information at one time, so I’m going to finish this blog tomorrow or the next day or the day after that with some more new year’s evolutions, of which there are several.  Have a great night. 

February 26, 2009-Back online!

    It’s been so long, I know!  I’m sorry, I’ve missed blogging so much!  I’ve moved and I’ve been on vacation and those two things combined have equated to no blogs for a couple of months.  I’ve got a heck of a lot to talk about, lot of things going on in my head, as usual, but it’s not going to happen tonight, unfortunately.  You like commas?  I’ll update in the next couple of days when I’m a bit more centered and less distracted.  Real quickly though, I haven’t done very much training at all in the last couple of months, been totally focused on getting the back and shoulders back into the game.  In doing so, I’ve really found a love for exercise science and theory that I definitely did not have before.  Ok, that’s all for now.  Hope everyone is doing well, send me a line and introduce yourself if you feel like it. 

December 28, 2008-Development

    I’m developing patience.  For most of my life I didn’t quite understand how change came about, now I have a better understanding.  There has to be some kind of stimulus; in most cases regarding living things, that stimulus is in the form of discomfort.  On Christmas eve, while demonstrating for my cousins exaclty how it was that I lost feeling and function in one of my legs, I lost more function in that leg.  I know, smart.  I still have feeling, but I can tell the left glute is kind of slack whereas it was firm like the other side.  Anyway, it’s not major and I’m pretty sure it will come back but it’s going to require more time.  Funny this happened just now when I feel like I’ve developed such a good understanding of what I need to do to get everything in working order back there.  I’m not real down about it-I’m getting something good out of it, patience.  I can’t tack my back with me when I die, but I believe I can take patience with me.  I have been dying to get this issue taken care of, it’s still going to get taken care of, that I’ve come to understand, it’s just going to take more time and probably an even better understanding of anatomy than I have now-and that could be another reason that this incident came about(to educate me). 

    This is very similar to what is going on with candida.  Now that I feel like I’ve developed such a good understanding of what I have to do to get my digestive track back in working order(after being bombarded by excess antibiotic use), I actually have to wait several weeks until the probiotic I can make for it will be ready for consumption-and even then, I’m not sure if this exact blend will be the right one or not…but I do know I’m on the right track.  That’s what gives me a sense of calm-this ever deepening understanding that I am on the right track and that it’s going to be ok in the end.  Not only that, if I keep walking this path, it’s going to be better and better everyday as I collect more and more information. 

    I, just like most everyone else, experiment pretty often with my own body and lifestyle.  Sometimes it turns out well, sometimes not but one thing is for sure: experiments with your own lifestyle may sometimes seem like they knock you back a few notches, but the truth is that you can almost always make up those notches and more real quick with the information you gained from the experiment.  All you need to do is separate yourself from your feelings a little bit, calm down, look at what you’ve learned and apply it to the big picture.  It’s objectivity combined with an understanding of life as you know it thus far…it’s drawing a temporary conclusion that’s a little further ahead in understanding than you were before.

December 27, 2008=Damage Control

   Christmas is over.  I’m catching up on sleep and recovering from the good but cooked meals I had.  First ones since last spring.  First bite since last summer.  I did come to a bit of a better understanding after this weekend though, one having to do with comfort.  It seems that I’ve been devaluing comfort a bit too much in comparison to how much I’ve been valuing it’s counterpart, discomfort.  I’d been feeling the craving for cooked for a month or so and denying myself and it grew progressively.  So at Christmas I decided to quiet it down and give in to it.  Turned out to be a good decision because it led me to understand, via experience, a lot of what I was saying in the last blog about comfort.  The further from my normal comfort zone I got, the further I went to get back, meaning I binged on candy and chocolates and what not. 

   This led me to another conclusion: that a person would do very well trying trying to align their comfort directly with their discomfort, ie: a junk food addicted person desperately trying to eat normal because of how their malnourished and out of shape body makes him/her feel would do very well trying to make healthy food his/her comfort and lousy food further discomfort.  Life has a way of making this happen automatically, it’s called learning or associating one thing with another-eventually it happens on it’s own, but with an awareness of it, the process is sped up a whole bunch.  Part of the awareness comes from experiencing both sides of the equation and assessing how you honestly feel with the immediate and long term effects of both of those sides-ie: the junk food addicted person eats crap and then sits down and makes and honest assessment of how he feels right after, how he thinks he will feel if he keeps doing this, and where life will take him if he keeps doing this.  Then after a period of calm and separation from the last act, he eats clean and goes through the same drill.  As I’ve said before, the truth or the best path has a way of making itself known, there’s no real denying it because it just keeps coming, experience after experience, conscious self assessment or not.

   In other news, I am moving in just a few days.  Nice!  Great Success.  Bigger apartment and more central.  Everyone’s dream!  Mine too, but not really anymore to be totally honest.  I’m going to love it, that’s for sure, but it’s time for me to get a place near the woods and the water.  I need the fresh air and the energy.  City life is taking it’s toll on me and I don’t plan on living it for too much longer.  Another thing I don’t plan on living much longer is the one location life.  It’s time for me to bounce back and forth a bit more, especially during Sweden’s winter darkness-not good for Paul, not one bit.  That’s always been the live I’ve lived and I find that I miss it.  I miss my family and friends in the States and I want to have more adventures in far out locations.  I want to take some awesome pictures for my walls and get a few more great stories to tell.  Story telling is amongst my favorite things to do.  Maybe I’ll tell a story in one of these blogs sometime.

 

                      
                                              Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Gott Nytt Ar! 

December 21, 2008-The Wrap Up 

     It has been a very spiritually productive Saturday morning. Everything, as it has been for the last few weeks, came together for me this morning. I woke up, took a walk, and cranked out a whole lot of conclusions. The motivation started this past week with a series of events that left me kind of low in energy-the most intense of which was a prolonged focus on things that are more superficial than I actually am(I’ll explain that later). That then resulted in a feeling I’ve grown very familiar with over the past year: an uncomfortably strong sense of obligation to get the lowest in society up and on their feet-this feeling came in the form that it usually does: helping the alcoholics on the street along with a few others like kids in Africa for example. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that this has been a reoccurring theme in my life for the last year(read ‘the lesson’ and ‘the gift’). It’s a very uncomfortable theme for obvious reasons: it brings you face to face with a lot of negative energy(confronting the alcoholics) and in my case it makes me feel as though I’m being forced to do something that I’m not actually drawn towards doing on a full time basis.

    So, my neighbors painted their apartment and lacquered their floors this past week-they were actually wearing big black masks while they were doing so(not just the little white ones that go over your nose and mouth) and of course they didn’t live there while they did this. I, of course, don’t have a big black mask and I do, of course, live here; and I don’t know what it is with my building but the chemicals from the lacquer seeped into my apartment and stunk it up to high hell-it actually stung my eyes and blurred my vision after several hours in the apt. This made me borderline real angry. I had to crash at a friends house for two nights where I didn’t sleep all that well(not because of your place Robster, but because it’s not my own place). The strong anger towards my neighbor, the lack of sleep for several nights, and then the subsequent subdued mood at work left me a bit lower than I normally am or should be, we’ll say-it kept me from giving a whole lot in my daily life.

   In response to my low energy(my discomfort), I started thinking of business ideas which, in my mind, translates to me getting out of this whole situation and into a newer, more comfortable one where I won’t have to deal with the daily grind. I was thinking of new business ideas all day long and getting myself worked up into a kind of fervor about how many great trips I would be able to take and how much cool stuff I would be able to get for my apartment and how many great stories I would be able to tell to the millions of people that would love me for them-haha. So there’s the prolonged focus on things that are more superficial than I actually am. This left me kind of physically high but spiritually low-not really buzzing with real energy that comes from deep within…anything heavier/lower than you really are is going to have this response I believe.

    Later, basically right after that bout of superficiality, I started reliving that very uncomfortable obligation to go out and save the world one alcoholic at a time, and then one hungry child at a time-also a feeling that doesn’t really describe the whole me; as far as I can tell, I’m not that far yet, it’s above me. I fought the feeling, as I have been doing the past couple months, and instead went and talked with a buddy at the gym while waiting for my massage.

   It was during my massage, as I was just laying there, that the obligation hit a new high-I think it was my physical situation that made it come on so strongly-being stuck on the table, looking straight down, not having a bunch of other stimuli around; in other words: alone with my thoughts. Again, very uncomfortable, it’s a trapped kind of feeling; kind of like ‘I have to do this, it doesn’t matter if I don’t like it, it has to be done.’ An extreme feeling that gets you hot and makes you break out into a sweat-at least it does me. I should know by now to be wary of extreme feelings, and I was, but the truth didn’t sink in until I said a little prayer for myself-Give me some comfort.

   My request was granted the moment I asked for it and then information started trickling in. Today, it flooded in. Here is conclusion number 1:

-We’re all vibrating at a certain frequency on a kind of ‘love/bliss/enlightenment/nirvana spectrum’-that is actually what we are, that level of love/bliss/enlightenment/nirvana. When we reflect on the outside what we are or want to be on the inside, ie: the amount of love/bliss/enlightenment that we are, then our actions will all be relatively normal and acceptable to us as, assuming we are like most everyone else out there and not on the extremes of soul development. If we are extremely developed or a total newbie, our actions will be seen as less than normal. One thing is for sure though, it’s the actions that are on the same level as the soul that we really are or the soul we want to be that we are most comfortable with, the ones that feel most right to us-meaning, the actions that most closely reflect the amount of love/bliss/enlightenment that we are or want to be as souls(inside) are the ones that we as people(outside) feel most comfortable with. The problem is when we do things that represent an energy level less than the one we’re actually at. When we are less on the outside than what we are or want to be on the inside, when we act in a way that doesn’t represent our true selves or goals up to this point, we find ourselves having to play catch up because of the negativity we have become.

    So anyway, I hadn’t slept well all week long which caused me to be more negative than I usually am, then I went on my superficial binge all day long yesterday which had a similar effect-by this time, I was kind of physically/bodily high but low as a soul. I felt like I had to play catch up. This idea led me to conclusion number 2:

-We strive to get back to where we should be-magnetically, physically, spiritually, we are strongly attracted that which will get us there, we strongly desire that which will get us there. We are attracted to the things that we need and the things that need us are attracted to us. Anyway, I had to play catch up and the easiest fastest way for me to get back to me was by representing/becoming a higher level of love than I really am, or becoming a higher energetic level than I can sustain. After a week of being something that was lower than I normally am, I had to do something higher than I normally am to get back to feeling like I’m in the green again. Ultimately, I think it works to just start being who you really are, but it takes longer because you have built up some heavy negativity/some dark energy that brings you and the people around you down. I mentioned that in my other blogs, that I felt like the things I was doing for the alcoholics were more for me than they were for them. They were helping me get back to where/what I should be spiritually after living a rather angry life. This led me to conclusion number 3(which I had already come to but this was a better understanding):

-Comfort is a strong driving force in our lives. The desire for comfort is what pulls us away from discomfort; it’s the fuel for evolution. Curiosity and excitement and quite a few other things are other driving forces but they all seem to be a part of comfort, so I don’t know if they actually count. Anyway, the extent to which a person evolves is directly related to the amount of discomfort in their lives or how much comfort they seek in their lives(these two aren’t the same but they are real close). It’s also based on support/love but they play a different role-without the support, the love, the nourishing comfort, the discomfort(any discomfort) would be too much. The discomfort in one area of life makes us search for a way into comfort; the comfort in other areas of life(our friends, family, work, could be anything)is that which allows us to deal with the discomfort in the other, get a break from it and understand it.

    I then came to the mini conclusion that everyone can’t be entirely uncomfortable all the time-we wouldn’t evolve, reality would be too heavy, too overbearing. So my next mini conclusion is that we all play different roles in each other’s lives so as the evolution of a soul can be attained most efficiently. My last mini conclusion is that those roles are always changing.

   We all search but at different intensities dependant on how uncomfortable we are or how much we desire comfort(not quite sure if those two are the same thing). We are all searching(because we desire comfort) but we are also all acting as comforters to others-we are part of the support group as well as being the seekers. It’s very important that the stimulus(the discomfort) is broken up, it can’t be overbearing for too long.

    Some people are very comfortable in life and play primarily the support/comforter role, some people play that role as part of their search for comfort. Some people are desperately desiring comfort and do not play the comforter role as much as others, rather they are focused on their own evolution. The amount to which we play these roles is always changing, and it’s changing in direct relation to how close we come to understanding that which we set out to do before birth; or that which is making us uncomfortable/curious.

    With that in mind, I applied it to my life and the people whom I believe are my soul mates and I saw the roles we’ve played for each other thus far. I then tempered that information with what I knew was happening in all of our lives and how we have lived our lives up until this point and that then led me to be able to make predictions about what’s going to happen with us and to us in the future. Not psychic like predictions but predictions about when our roles are going to change and who will be doing what and roughly when they will be doing it. As I’ve said before, I feel like my major evolution is coming to a halt here, at least my major search for answers. I can actually feel everything coming together now. The future seems to be my time to live the life that I’ve been figuring out for the past 26 years. The discomfort I’ve felt my whole life is fading dramatically, so much so that it seems like it’s going to be basically gone soon. I also see this in one other person I feel very spiritually connected to.

    All of these things led me to understand other things. I understand now why things didn’t work out with a certain someone that I thought it should have worked out with: because the level of comfort required by that certain someone was more than I was comfortable catering to and me being required to cater to it left me very drained(which, in my body appears angry).  That someone will be attracted to other people who can cater to her level of required comfort, which will likely be someone who is closer to her energy level.  So it works out for everyone involved!
   It also helped me understand why I don’t have to be constantly anxious about talking to the alcoholics anymore: because I am not a master, I’m not what most of them need which is a more love than I am. What I represent is a good understanding of certain subject matters, one of them being why we do what we do and what we have to do to not do it anymore. It’s people like the alcoholic pilot I found on the street that day(in ‘the gift’) that need me. It wasn’t just the love I was able to show him(which was hard for me) it was the understanding that I was able to give him and the way that I was able to give it to him-he really cherished that and actually interpreted it as love, but really it was just what he needed-I gave him what he really needed and it felt very good to him so he interpreted it as me giving him love-I guess that is what it was but it wasn’t intense love like that a master would reflect.

    I also understand how it is that people can see the answer, that is seemingly exactly what they need. right in front of them and totally ignore it: because it’s only the answer that they need when they are uncomfortable enough to need it or when they are curious enough to want to explore it. I think most of us have been in situations where we inform someone about their discomfort and what to do about it and they subsequently embrace us warmly and accept what we are telling them and wholly ignore it until they are uncomfortable or curious enough to think back to it.

    I came to a few conclusions about training as well, but this blog is already very long so I’m going to cover those in the next one. Have a wonderful day folks.

December 18, 2008-Doing very well.

   I don’t actually think that I have ever felt as on top of my game as I do now.  It’s like all the different bits of information I’ve collected over the years are interlacing and connecting with other bits-like having done a chunk of the middle of the puzzle and then working in from the frame of the puzzle…now the pieces are coming together  It’s such a great feeling!

  As you know, I’ve been doing the raw vegan thing for about a week now.  Getting a good grip on that as well, but it’s time to incorporate meat and fat back into the diet.  I’m so glad I did this though because I’ve gained such a better understanding of the different diets out there and whys and hows. 

   The low carb approach actually isn’t any better than the low fat approach in my opinion-the problem is the both at the same time approach or the niether approach.  As I mentioned in the last blog, Dr. Doug Graham has been very outspoken about his high carb, low fat, low protein approach and while I’m not there in my understanding, what I have come to understand is that those two are a poor combination.  High fat diets combined with even moderate carb intake is the perfect equation for insulin resistance, which isn’t so much insulin resistance as it is insulin failure in that the insulin is not capable of eschewing the sugar out of the blood stream and into the cells because they are coated in oil-the insulin itself is insulated with oil.  This seems to be why so many people do better on very low or no carb/high fat diets.  This is also seems to be why people do well on regular carb, no fat diets-though not as well because ‘regular carb’ for most people is still too high and too refined.  Competitive bodybuilders in the 80s were all about the no fat diets, and they of course worked assuming they used all the energy from the sugar they consumed.  People who live in the tropics, plent of carbs, very low fat.  It all works!  It’s our desire to have it all at the same time that doesn’t work.

    On very high carb, via fruits and vegetables and no fat, I was almost just fine and I have candida.  That says something.  I had some very slight symptoms but nothing crazy like what would have been the case had I eaten that much fruit while eating high fat at the same time.  Eating too much fruit at one sitting was a bit of a problem but if I split up the same amount of fruit into a couple of meals I was pretty much fine.  So now the plan is to see if I can cycle the two approaches-high carb, no fat, low protein and no carb, high fat, high protein.  I might have to include a half day or a day of fasting in between the two, but that’s no bigge.  The only question I have left is if bodyfat has the same effect on insulin and cellular uptake of sugar.  If so, it makes sense then that a certain level of leaness is required to really make Dr. Graham’s approach a true winner.  I think I’ll order his book-the 80/10/10 diet.

   In other news, the gym is going real well as well.  My antagonist stretching approach has now broadened to an antagonist and synergist stretching approach.  Yielding great results, I must say.  Something my physical therapist, Dave Buchannen, told me when I was 16 was that a muscle will only get as large and as strong as it’s ‘opposing will allow.’  I’ve since expanded on that by saying a muscle will only be as flexible, as strong, and as large as it’s support will allow.  This is pretty obvious, it seems, but still there are too many trainers and therapists out there stretching muscles that are tight as the result of another tightness.  They’re just treating the symptoms.  Sound familiar? 

   So, in the last two weeks or so, I have gone from having a lot of constant back pain to much less back pain; I have gotten a great new understanding in regards to nutrition and I have interwoven a ton of old and new information in regards to training to give me a better understanding and new perspective there.  Things are going well.  Over and out, good night. 

December 14, 2008-The latest…

    So, things are moving along nicely.  I did as I said I would since we’ve spoken last; I’ve put all my focus into my weak links.  Excellent, excellent decision.  The supposed negative is that I lose even more of that which has always defined who I was-my muscularity.  Of course, that is only a positive and now I’m really into it like I thought I would be.  It’s really good for my character to get out of that trip-it’s a trip that I’ve put on myself as well as has been perpetuated by others.  This is the new project now though.  The workouts are centered around stability and balance, by which I mean strengthening my weakest links(not doing exercises with one foot on a ball, one in a sandbox, with my tongue stuck out and my eyes closed) and the diet is based around building a solid base of intestinal flora. 

   In regards to the diet, I’ve been doing mostly fruit and some vegetables.  No animal products and no fatty vegetation.  Not because I think that stuff is bad, but because I’ve learned that fat(an oil) has a way of interfering with insulin and it’s ability to eschew sugar out of the blood stream by way of coating the surfaces it comes in contact with and keeping things from entering or exciting them-fat is our insulater from the cellular level all the way up.  So instead of avoiding the sugar to try and kill candida, I went the other direction(which is the only thing that has ever worked for me in my life).  As expected, symptoms are no worse than usual, but totally gone just yet-still have some changes to make.   

  In regards to training, honestly I feel more on top of my game now than I’ve ever been.  The fact that every single one of my major joints causes me discomfort at least sometimes if not most of the time, that I’ve had four muscle tears(highly irregular for a non drug using athlete), that only one of my calves is fully functional, and that basically my whole body is inflexible has been the driving force.  And the fact that those are all due to seperate injuries is quite a feat in and of itself I must say.  I just got off the phone with my mom explaining this to her.  I’ve been very forced into finding information; otherwise my life would be a whole lot more uncomfortable than it is.  My back is doing awesome, I’ve come up with some great ideas there.  My shoulders are doing less than awesome, but I believe they are on their way up.  And my all around flexibility has improved dramatically just by making a few changes; the primary one being antagonist stretching.  I’ve come to understand that a big reason people don’t get any results from stretching is that they are stretching the wrong muscle groups.  They are stretching the ones that are tight and painful as a result of a tight antagonist.  First they have to stretch the support, the one that allows the opposing muscle the ability to flex.  Then, if need be, they can go ahead and do the muscle in question itself. 

   There’s a lot of chicken and egg stuff in anatomy but it’s not to difficult spotting the problem if you look into your past history-ie, finding your pattern overload.  I have to admit, I’m REALLY into this right now.  Definitely not into the bbing side of fitness at the moment, really into the functionality and well being stuff.  Anyone who’s been reading this blog knows that’s been going on for a while now. 

   In other news, I’ve taken on a couple of projects, one of which is an ebook.  We’ll see if I can bang this thing out.  Stay tuned. 

December 6, 2008-Blocket is my new best friend.

    Move over Robin and Richy, move over Chip and Matt, www.blocket.se has taken over the best friend position.  I’m moving in a month, I need to furnish a whole apartment, I don’t have a ton of money, I don’t have a huge desire for a dormish home.  Solution: buy used.  I feel slightly rediculous having lived my whole life with my nose so far up in the air that I never realized how much I could better my standard of living simply by re-using instead of insisting on always having new things.  Of course, I’ve been recycling forever but my pride and desire to impress my peers has always kept me from buying the big stuff used.  Not anymore! I love this idea, I really do.  I’m going to see if I can furnish basically my whole place with used stuff-even some of the decorations.  When you buy used you can get a much higher quality piece of whatever it is you are buying than if you were to buy new, the only catch being that you have to inspect it to make sure it is still what you want-but in this case with furniture, we’re not even talking about something mechanical, it basically just has to look nice and be able support whatever it is is going to be sitting on it.  Nice!  I’m pumped about this.  I’m buying a very nice table on sunday, assuming it’s in good working order.  Looking for a bed now.  Since I’m looking for higher end stuff, I pretty much skip over all the cheapest stuff and go right to the expensive, but the cool part about the expensive is that it’s still not that expensive.  If it’s expensive used, that means it was reall expensive new and if it’s still in good shape, that means it’s a great buy for someone like me.  Maybe you too?

   In that same vein, my good buddy Todd found a great website the other month: www.thestoryofstuff.com -check it out, very eye opening, very good message.

   I guess the theme of this blog is going to be ’back to basics’ only now I’m going to pull a fast switch on you and turn things over to training and health.  The constant step forward step backward approach I’ve been taking with my body is getting a bit tiresome-meaning, trying to get the back in working order, and the shoulders in working order, and the knees in working order, and the calf in working order all the while trying to achieve a better physique is not working as basically anyone might have guessed.  Well, it’s working, but not at a rate at which I can accept.  Like I said last time around, my program resembles a push/pull split right now and I might even knock that down to a very simple bring up lagging muscle groups split-teres major, infraspinatus, lateral gastroc, multifidi, erector spinae, transverse abdominus.  Given that I haven’t been all that attracted to bbing the last few years I think it’s time I did this for myself-put the other on the back burner and take care of some long overdue business.   

    I might also take this time to get my digestive system in order.  This candida issue is a bit annoying, although not more than that.  My heart really goes out to all the people out there having a nightmare of a time with it; I just wish I could convince everyone to go raw, get their carb intake in order, and slip all that.  I’ve been experimenting quite a bit with my own probiotics lately and having some success.  The key is volume.  Store bought probiotics seem all but totally useless to me as their quantities are so low-even 30billion live units per serving(capsule, most often) is a drop in the hat in regards to gut flora-I actually wonder if it makes any significant difference whatsoever.  Another key is type(s) of bacteria used; if you want to re-populate a specific area of the body with flora, you’ll want to find out what type of flora naturally exist in that specific area.  

   I’m going to go ahead and make a prediction here: probiotics are the new antibiotics.  The idea in the future is going to be helping the body help itself.  Excessive antibiotic use over the years, especially my teenage years has left me with a challenge to deal with in my adulthood; hopefully I can come up with something to help myself as well as my peers experiencing the same thing-one of my desires though is that my peers actually realize that what they are experiencing is the same thing. 

   I’m going to use that as a segway into my next topic, results. Results are supposed to be fast and noticeable from session to session, especially when it comes to fat loss.  Were talking about energy consumption.  Energy is something that is in constant flux; it’s a matter of consistantly putting out more than you put in.  If you are having trouble putting out more than you put in but find that you are working out a lot and not putting all that much in, then it’s likely you are having an issue mobilizing the fat that is currently on your body.  This is the biggest issue, I’ve found.  People aren’t stupid, they’re doing their workouts, they’re doing their diets…the fat’s still not coming off.  The problem is mobilization.  The problem is insulin sensitivity, the problem is subtle hypothyroidism, the problem is nutrient sparse bio-unavailable ’food.’  The answer is changing to something that works in the immediate short term and consistantly over the long term.  This is always the answer, and the people that have found the answer are very obvious about it; in fact, they stick out like sore thumbs.  If you ran into them you’d know it right away.  If they are still getting colds and flus, they’re not their yet.  If they are getting skin outbreaks, they’re not there yet.  If they’re tired all the time and have bags under their eyes, they’re not there yet.  If they have dandruff, foul smelling gas and body odor, they’re just not their yet.  I’m not there yet either, but I’ve managed to knock out quite a few uncomfortable things that I thought were a normal part of being a human being-and I’m definitely not the only one.

   None of those things are in the game plan but they’ve all snuck up on us very steathfully by way of mass attack…that sounds weird but if everyone is experiencing the same thing then it’s the ‘way we’re made.’  But everyone’s not experiencing the same thing and now we have a greater ability than ever to hear what they have to say, we just have to search the slightest little bit.

   The point, the ideal, imo, is to be constantly bouncing back and force between loving and learning.  Sometimes learning requires discomfort but then when we learn we bounce right back into love.  The things we love are malleable, the things we enjoy physically are malleable.  Try not to get stuck on the things but rather get stuck on seeking the love and lesson.  The love is the enjoyment, the lesson is the result of our pursuit in life.  When the pizza stops doing it’s thing for you, move on.  When the wine stops doing it’s thing for you, move on.  When everything stops serving it’s purpose, time to move on.  When something stops being good for you in the short term and the long term, when it starts taking you away from love and enlightenment…or keeps you from moving towards them, then that thing has served it’s purpose and it’s time to move on.  In the end, we have to do what works, what get’s us closer to love and enlightenment as constant states of being.  Food is great and makes us feel good, but what we want is to feel good…let’s not get stuck on the particular food item.  We all want to enjoy eating and living the lives we live-the point is to enjoy, not to get stuck enjoying this one thing or this type of thing.  If it brings us closer to love and enlightenment, we can enjoy it, relish in it. 

December 4, 2008=Back online

    I have so much to blog about and I can’t remember any of it.  Was having some computer issues for a couple of days there along with some personal issues with guess who and those things added up to no blog for me and no blog for you.  Anyway, I’m home and it’s "fredag’s fika’ tomorrow at work-in other words, I am going to bring in some nice snack or treat of some sort and everyone is supposed to partake in it’s consumption whilst chatting and giggling amongst themselves in a friendly manner-given that it’s me though and that I’m going to bake or buy anything, we’ll see just how many partake in my fredag’s fika. I’m going to make some raw chocolate, I have not been very successful thus far. 

   Training is going real well. The back is better than it’s been in a long time.  I’ve said this before: if you let the answers to your problems come to you, they will.  They are waiting to come to you, they are begging!  They came to me in two parts in regards to my back just recently.  As hard as it is for me to do it, some kind of meditative focus is what it takes for me to open up-this focus is usually achieved in either total silence whereby I start by letting my mind wander where it may and let the doors gradually open that way or by doing something very repetitive.  I don’t run, but you might have heard plenty of runners say that that is there time to think.  Well, I think what really happens is that we all get into these mini-trances at times, or self hypnotize, and open ourselves up to a new level of understanding that is not particularly available to us on our regular wavelength-the running is very similar to several religion’s chanting rituals-it’s repititive and mind numbing, leaving you open to an answer outside of what you. I know that I often fall into brief(maybe 5-10min)trances when I’m very uncomfortable, when I’m at the ‘I can take anymore point.’-this is actually when it happens most often-I go into a very heightened focus and all of the sudden, the answers to my problems start hitting me on the side of the head as if they have been waiting months to get in there…they probably have. 

   Anyway, what I figured out with the back is that a big chink is my armour is the neck.  Although I’ve rarely had any neck pain, I often(for the last several years) lay with my head propped up against the wall for several hours a day.  I do this because I can’t sit.  This puts my spine in a flexed position for much longer than it should be-no muscle should be stretched or contracted for hours on end, day after day-that’s called pattern overload.  Then to top it off, I’ve got what exercise physiologists would call forward head as well-again flexion.  So I started doing some cervical extension movements.  Huge change, almost immediate.  Second big revelation was that the majority of the discomfort I experience on a daily basis isn’t from a constantly buldging disc that slips in and out of position like it’s nobody’s business, but from muscular adhesions-specifically in the multifidi which kind of weave their way in and out of the vertebral column.  So, I reached back there, while laying on my stomach, and started kneading those babies out and before you knew it, I was temporarily out of pain.  Of course, the adhesions are there because of soft tissue damage due to an imbalance+excessive load+poor training technique, but that can be worked out now that I am more aware of what’s going on.  I’ve even been sitting a lot lately without extreme discomfort-though it’s not exactly a day in the park. 

    Time for me to study a bit and then catch some Zsss.  Talk to you soon.

November 19, 2008-And the grand total is… 

 anywhere from 10-12,000 SEK per month on food.  That’s 1,300-1800$ per month on food.  That’s what it costs me to eat organic and raw and still put on size.  I need about 4k calories per day just to sustain my weight; so that’s a bit of food.  I could take the cut costs approach, but I’d rather take the make more money approach.  This is something that’s important to me and I’d like to be able to keep doing it. 

   In other news, I think it’s this parasite cleanse from humaworm that’s giving me the upset stomach.  Infact, I’m pretty sure it is.  I don’t know why I didn’t think of that earlier when I had the obstruction-at least, what I thought was an obstruction.  For the time being though, I’m going to keep doing it as planned as I feel like I’ve gotten some good results, but it’s starting to get real uncomfortable to be honest.  I don’t know if I’ll keep doing it-at this time in my life I need a little bit less discomfort.  It’s keeping me from sleeping as well, which is something I really don’t love.  We’ll see though. I just read a bunch of testimonials from people experiencing the same thing, so maybe I’ll just tough this one out.  Funny thing though, I feel like I am always toughing things out.  I’m starting to wonder how productive that is.  In fact, I got the idea today that it could very well be counter productive.  I’m going to let that idea marinate for a bit and we’ll see what comes of it.  Could turn out that I change my approach to life a little bit here.  I think the huge changes are behind me for the most part, but you never know…

  That’s alright, moving on:  workouts are still going great.  Been doing a lot of workouts with friends lately, which is always fun.  Today’s going to be back.  Don’t know what we’ll do, but I’m sure it will be pretty fast paced-that’s how the last few workouts have been with this particular buddy I’ve been working out with.  He goes, I go.  Then a break after 2 or 3 sets. 

  I’m going to drink a nice big fat shake right now and do some reading on exercise science.  Got to stay on top of my game, you know. 

November 16, 2008-Been a whole lot a goin on. 

     Well, I apologize for the long wait inbetween blogs.  I’m afraid I’ve been a busy pojke.  I actually did a short stint in the hospital a couple days back.  Chew your food, guys.  I got a slightly less than complete intestinal blockage due to fast, mindless eating.  Almost as funny is that it’s actually happened to me two times now.  This time is was almonds and raisins that did the trick.  I had a bad feeling even before I bought them that I shouldn’t get them.  Didn’t listen to it.  Had a bad feeling at work when I was rushed and had little time to eat that I shouldn’t eat them.  Didn’t listen.  Hurried through them, barely chewed then swallowed.  Little later that evening, drinking my smoothie, I realize something is very wrong.  I start experiencing some very bad pain.  I assumed it was gas actually and just kept drinking my 8 egg, 2 boxes of frozen berries, 1/8lb raw butter smoothie.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t just gas.  I went to bed after I drank the smoothie and woke up 2 hours later with an awful pain which I recognized almost immediately-knew I had an obstruction.  The first time it happened to me was back in the days of cooked food, protein shakes, and prohormones in highschool.  Anyway, about 12 hours later, I made myself throw-up and the entire smoothie was still in my stomach.  Generally intestinal obstructions occur right at the beginning of the small intestine-so the food doesn’t have anywhere to go really.  So, given my doctors instructions the last time I around, I waited.  Waited another 12 hours and no go.  Had to go to the hospital.  The first obstruction went over in about 5 hours, now it had been 24.  Anyway, I was REALLY not looking forward to going to the hospital, I’d been talking myself out of going all day.  Getting that thing surgically removed was not what I had in mind for that evening; but Kristina(she’s back!) insisted and she was probably right.  Anyway, we went to the doc and he said that although intestinal sounds were sparse, they were still there and the intestines would likely clear the obstruction themselves.  Which they did, thankfully, after about 40hrs.  No big loss, I had meant to do a fast anyway.  So I threw in an extra day for good measure.

    I am still kickin ass in the gym.  Got a lot of my old size back.  What I really love about being raw is my not so new found density(it’s been 4yrs now).  No one would ever be able to tell I’m am a serious trainee in clothes.  I basically look totally normal in clothes, but when it comes time to pump up, then it comes out.  It’s pretty nice, it’s another way to keep me part of the crowd.  I have so many things that set me apart already, I can do without too many more.   

   I had hamstring/core workout today with a buddy, Richy.  The most fun part was getting together with an old friend again, but the workout was great as well.  We crushed some deads-if you can call the weight that I use ‘crushing them’.  Then hit some Yo Yo leg curls and some swiss ball leg curls.  Then we moved onto the core, did some planks, a Bosu sit, some hip rolls, a cable crunch on the swiss ball, some side planks, and some trunk rotations.  Gonna have some mean soreness tomorrow.  That’ll be nice.  Anyway, Richy’s an engineer; he thinks very practically, very logically and systematically-those are the perfect traits for a great trainee.  That last one especially is good, it’s something I’ve found irreplaceable in the gym.  Everywhere and everywhen actually, but in the gym it works particularly well.  Do this, do it well, and move onto that.  I think people really have to start trying to connect the process with the results-which is what they ultimately want.  If the results make them feel really good, the process should also make them feel really good.  Every burning muscle fiber…feels good.  Every gasp for breath…feels good.  Every ounce of energy spent…feels good.  All of it feels good because it’s all giving you what you want, which is good, which feels good.  The pain is still just a sensation, and that can be reprogrammed.  I think we all do this without knowing it in regards to ordinary things pretty often.  We create associations, we condition ourselves, and we experience life in the way in which we have conditioned ourselves to experience it.  It’s a never ending, constantly evolving process.

   In other news, I’ve got to get off my butt and order some trees for new apartment.  I’m moving on Jan 1st and I want it to be a high energy heaven.  Lots of trees, organic everything(especially bed sheets and mattress), recycling bins, full spectrum lighting, compost, nice pictures, maybe a painting or two(I’ve come to the conclusion that the best paintings are the ones that you or your friends do)..etc.  I still have the one remaining stoic sequoia tree.  He’s about an inch and a half tall and already has slightly brown tipped needles.  Not so good.  They just don’t like Sweden so much.  Going to have to keep going with the Buddha trees, the Ficus Religiosas.  Good stuff.  I actually had a lot more to say in this blog; I’ve been thinking about it for days, but as is usually the case, I digress.  I am at a loss for words.  Well, one last thing…been doing a lot of mackerel lately-north atlantic mackerel, VERY high in powerhouse immune system building omega 3s, low in ocean pollution-only the north atlantic kind. 

November 5, 2008-Still lovin it!

   Hello, here’s the update: I’m still crushin weights.  I’m still pounding calories.  I’m putting on size again.  It’s pretty fun.   It’s been so long, it’s been so arduous!  Before he died, Mike Mentzer talked about having all kinds of psychological issues and depression and what not and said he remembered that when he was happiest in life was when he was bodybuilding; so, very simply, he went back to it.  Of course, he died shortly after-although, for an entirely unrelated reason. 

   Well, I’ve done about the same thing.  For so long I’ve been battling this bodybuilding thing. I’ve been going back and forth about whether it’s good for society, whether it can be environmentally friendly, whether it’s this, whether it’s that…bla bla bla-you can check my first blog post if you are interested.  What I’ve totally ignored, or what my lower self has not let me accept is that what I am most drawn to, what’s in my life’s plan, is most likely the thing that is best for society, best for the environment, and best for everything else.  Long term.  I’ve started look at the whole picture a little bit better and realized that one thing is not the whole thing-meaning that I don’t just do bodybuilding.  In my particular lifestyle, I offset a lot of the heavy consumption of food with dramatically less than normal consumption of other things in addition to actual work done to better the environmental situation rather than just not doing things to keep it from getting worse. 

   More than that though, I want to stress what I think the extreme importance of the life’s plan holds.  The things we are most drawn towards in life, the ones that we feel are really ‘for us’ are the ones that I think we should pay most attention to.  I think I’ve come to a pretty good understanding of how things seem to work around here and there definitely seems to be someone else behind an invisible curtain somewhere making sure everything goes roughly according to plan-not pulling too many strings, but definitely pulling the necessary ones.  Stay on track.  Do your duty, do it with love and courage. 

   That last part is the one that I find the most difficult.  I’ve been somewhat antisocial now for so long that I find it difficult, even anxiety causing to talk to people.  Even people in the gym, to tell them that what they are doing is incorrect and may hurt them.  I find myself in a constant battle, one that I sometimes win and sometimes lose in regards to that.  I have a very strong aversion to be yelled at, stood up to, or confronted.  I’ve had that for several years now.  It was what was necessary given that I had very little before and said things I should not have and did things I am embarassed to talk about now.  It has given me a better understanding of how to talk to people and how to approach various different situations, but now it needs to start being put into action.  It already has actually.  I talk to many more people now than before-I think that all started on the bridge that night-but I still get nervous about it, I still have a very noticable aversion to it. 

   In other news, I did a deadlift the other day and the back felt the best it’s felt in months for days afterwards.  Could be a one time thing, could be the real deal.  Has a lot to do with the set up prior to.  I’m out.

November 1, 2008-Loving the volume and the split

   Had another great workout yesterday, arms and shoulders.  Did overhead BB preses, lateral raises, and external cable rotations for the delts.  I was pretty hesitant about the overhead presses, thinking they were going to harm the back but I kept the abs tight and all was well.  Then I crushed some bis and tris with EZ bar curls supersetted with skullcrushers and some reverse cable curls supersetted with pressdowns.  I can’t tell you how fun it is for me, even just to write about it, just using the old language.  It’s been so long since I did.  It’s so easy to get stuck in a line of thinking, dogma, or a rut, if you will, and breaking free is a wonderfully liberating feeling.  I’m real sore though, real sore all over.  I’m not sure if I’ll be able to keep this up for long, but I do think I’ll incorporate it a bit more often than I have been doing.  I really think it’s fun to just relax a bit and pump iron like I did in the old days instead of absolutely demolish and destroy the iron like I’ve been doing the last few years….although, that’s definitely fun too when I’m in the mood. 

   I’m spending this morning going over the things that are really important in my life, the ones I don’t want to live without and the ones that I can do without.  This morning we’re just talking about physical things and their costs.  My nutrition costs are through the roof, but I’m not willing to give them up or even skimp really.  My physical therapy costs are also quite high.  Especially high considering I’m living in a semi-socialist country where this stuff is all supposed to be free and yet I pay for it out of pocket anyway given that the government hasn’t accepted my various forms of therapy as such and refuses to cover them.  That’s alright, I can take care of it just fine.  I think I’m being well looked after and have faith that everything’s gonna be alright.  I’m running low on money now, but I’ve come to a pretty good understanding that if I keep spending liberally on the things that I need to spend on and converservatively on the things that I don’t need to spend on, that life will take care of the rest.  I’ve already put it out there that I’m going to need some help, so I feel good about that.

   I’m happy to report that my single surviving sequoia tree has now been accompanied by another in a pot section on the other side of planter.  This guy is quite a bit taller but not nearly as bushy.  We’ll see if they live.  I’m just going by the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it principle’-basically not doing anything at all to them except watering when dry. 

   Today is going to be a high calorie day.  Actually I started the day with my 2 parasite cleansing pills that I got from humaworm.com, then I made a 8 egg fat shake, which I, as I write this, am just now remembering that I didn’t put any butter in!!!  I knew that thing felt unfilling.  That really aggrivates me! Anyway, about to have some sailors beef in a couple of minutes; then I’ll go to the gym and hit up some hams and do some core work. 

  The back is about as usual.  Not real bad and hasn’t really been on the verge of majorly bulging for a while now, but it’s still uncomfortable almost all the time.  I got a massage last night and this morning it feels great.  I’m going to keep that up for sure.  I’m also going to see if I can get an MRI done; that would hopefully shed some more light on this situation and if it comes down to it that I need to have surgery, then I’ll do it.  I really don’t want to though.  Anyway, gonna get a move on now.  Hope all is well with you, feel free to drop me a line whenever you want.

October 29, 2008-Been absolutely crushing weights lately 

    Title says it all I guess. Been doing a bodypart split and volume!  Holy old school Batman!  Anyway, I was talking to a friend last night, telling her that it’s easy to get stuck not liking exercising when it always causes you pain.  Sometimes, in fact, most of the time, the opposite should be true.  I haven’t really believed in that line of thinking for most of my weightlifting career, if we can call it that, but now I’m rethinking.  It seems that, to continue moving forward, I have to derive a certain amount of immediate satisfaction from what I’m doing on a pretty regular basis.  Right now the great pumps and soreness are doin it for me.  Won’t always be the case, but right now it’s what works.

   I continue to ponder my next move.   I’ve got a Kombucha project going right now, I think online PT could be a good idea, and I’d like to get my own gym up and running.  Of course, that last one might only be possible if the first two are big successes.  When it comes to gyms themselves, Sweden is pretty far behind the rest of the modern world, as far as I can tell.  I know that even on the Faroes, in Torshavn, they had a much better gym than anything I’ve found here-and I’ve been around.  I think I could do well by putting together a holistic living fitness center here.  So well in fact, that I am hesitant to even write this publicly.  On the other hand, when things are spoken, they are put in motion.  That’s one of the very first steps, you see.

    In other news, I have but one living sequoia tree left!  Seems they don’t like Sweden.  I’d really like to start doing more local trees but I’m not advanced yet to the point where I have any success in just going out, getting some seeds directly from the tree, and growing them at home.  I’ve tried but no workie workie. 

   Haven’t been playing the guitar too much lately; would love to but the back keeps me from being able to sit for long periods of time.  I can lay down and play but that’s not quite as enjoyable(or as cool).  Someday I’m going to find the perfect balance between all of my interests.  I can feel things getting more balanced on a daily basis, but there is still some grinding going on-certain things getting pushed out of the way by certain other things.  I think the important thing is that I act.  If I keep acting, I will keep learning as the truth makes itself known.  What say you?

October 25, 2008-On the up and up

   Training has been going well lately.  This past week especially.  I decided to go back to a bodypart split for a while and do some of whatever the hell I want.  It’s been great.  The more I think about it, the more I live it, the more importance I see in actually liking what I’m doing rather than always contemplating first about whether or not the following decision is a good one.  So anyway, have done a bit more volume lately and even did one ‘back to the old days’ high volume workout with a buddy. I might do a few more of those.  The thing is, I’m so sold on lower volume with higher intensity that I’m not really worried about ever getting stuck in high volume again.  I know it’s not right for me in the long term, but for now it’s fun and it’s what I’m going to do.  The same is true for diet, if I eat some food combination or too much fruit or whatever that isn’t the absolute ideal, the fact of the matter is that I’m so sold on the simple and the ideal that I’m not too worried about getting hooked or stuck in the old patterns because I just don’t like them as much.  For a while they’re ok, but what keeps you coming back is results that you love and respect and I love and respect results that make me healthier, feel better, and look better-not just ones that make me feel better that moment-sometimes that’s ok, but it won’t be forever or even that long, it’s just good to let the mind relax a bit.

   In other news, I spent one whole night puking my brains out about a week ago.  First time since before raw that I would say that I actually got food poisoning.  Funny thing is, both times I’ve had it now(before raw and last week) have been from vegetables rather than meat.  In fact, I was getting a bit tired of meat there last week so I took a break for a while and just ate vegetables and fruit for a couple days; bought some funky looking lettuce but thought nothing of it, as usual, and then BAM!  Puking my brains out all night long.  Kinda sucked really.  You know that feeling that you kind of expect while you’re puking to get right after you’re done puking?  That sense of relief, the "AHHHH, it’s over, I feel much better now," feeling. Well I’ll be damned if it didn’t ever come.  I kept waiting and waiting for it and I just felt like puking again after I got done puking.  Was pretty much 100% again after a couple days though.  That’s alright, everyone needs a fast and I hadn’t done one for a while. 

   In other news, I’m having women issues.  The same ones as I’ve always had.  I get together with someone, or hell I almost get together with someone and even before we can really call ourselves a couple, I start picking her apart, find all sorts of various imperfections from physical to mental to spiritual, and then stop wanting to be around her.  Ha! It’s no wonder I don’t want them after a while-after having listed out everything that I find unattractive about them, I guess that’s pretty normal.  Maybe I ought not do that.  I swear, the moment I get together with a girl, I immediately feel caged in, like I’ve been captured and my life is over.  I wonder if I don’t need a period of time kind of like I am doing with training right now where I just go out and have some fun.  I’ve really never done that.  I’ve never just dated a bunch of women and had a good time.  Probably because I find myself constantly bouncing back and forth between being too nervous to talk to them and then incredibly irritated at all times when I do talk to them.  I know, what a jerk.  But honestly, I never learn.  I can be in love with like 3 or 4 different girls in the time span of one day.  I think it’s fun.  Now if only I could only be myself around them.  Something about a really attractive girl that can turn a guy into a damn idiot.  I’m almost always that guy.  I just want to say ‘hey wait, hey wait, watch me when I’m around these other people, that’s who I really am, I’m really that cool funny guy.’  But no, around them, I’m the guy that has nothing to say. 

  In regards to the back.  Things are up and down, but I am more positive about the whole thing.  Doing a lot of different types of therapy.  Thinking about trying something called the Rosen Method, will have to look into that a bit more though.  I got a massage last night and I think I’ll try and keep doing that maybe once a week or so.  It was really good and since I told her to use the extra virgin coconut oil instead of regular massage oil, it was even better.  So thanks to Jessica for that. 

   Last, a raw friend of mine passed a 5 ft long parasite the other day.  I still can’t keep myself from laughing about it everytime I think about it, but I figured I would get a parasite cleanse and see what kind of stuff comes out of me, given that I’ve been raw for much longer than he has.  I’ll keep you updated.  I’ve got a date today, wish me luck.

                      
                            P.

October 9, 2008-Mistake+diet changes.

   Mistake first: I’m pretty sure that I kind of let life down yesterday. I booked a client the day before for 3pm, she came in at 10am. I had a feeling something was up and that I should have taken her right then and there , but instead I decided to be selfish and have my own workout and told her to come back at 3.  She does, I workout, no big deal.  Get an sms a bit later saying that she has hurt herself, rather severly from moving furniture.  I know that’s not my fault, but she came in early for a reason and I’m pretty sure that reason was to keep that from happening-because she was on the verge.  Damnit.  That was really disappointing.  I’m decently sure that even a little pump,a little cushioning, would have kept that from happening, or the fact that we worked out would have kept her from moving furniture at all.  Well, there’s not much I can do now but hope and pray for the best, but life did send me a signal yesterday; that is that I can’t just sit back on my laurels now that I don’t feel a burning to desire to talk to the alcoholics and the homeless any longer.  Still have to participate. 

   In other news, I have been experimenting a lot with nutrition lately.  For a while there, in an attempt to decrease even further my candida symptoms(which are very few to begin with), I was eating almost all animal products all the time with the exception of one piece of fruit a day, most days.  Well, I stopped feeling so good on that.  In fact, I felt pretty crappy as well as…now this could be bs, but I felt like I was aging faster all of the sudden-a gray hair popped up here and there, and my sleep was awful.  So anyway, I went in search of more info and I came across a guy named Dr. Doug Graham who has a totally different perspective on candida overgrowth.  Well not totally different, but different enough to get my attention.  He said that sugar is an issue, but more so, sugar combined with fat is the real issue.  He said that fat has a way of slowing the absoption of sugar(which I already knew) via coating the insulin that the pancreas secretes in an attempt to eschew the sugar out of the bloodstream.  Now I didn’t think of that.  His suggestion to his cients is that they drastically reduce their protein and fat intake, and increase their carb intake to 80%.  That’s basically candida blasphemy, so of course it piqued my interest.  I took his advice. 

   Now going into this I realized that I wasn’t going to do well on the new diet as is.  I would have to modify it.  I need 4K calories per day just to maintain my bodyweight.  That’s a hell of a lot of fruits and vegetables.  But to get a good base understanding, I didn’t change anything and just ate fruits all day(this wasn’t exactly his suggestion, he advices many more vegetables, but I don’t do whole vegetables).  Surprisingly to me, although I don’t know why, things worked as he said they would, for the most part.  By the end of the day I was noticing the candida symptoms coming up again, but that was after a whole ton of fruit, not spaced far apart either.  For the most part, it was ok, and had I eaten all that fruit plus the fat I normally eat, it would have been bad news-I know because I’ve experienced it.  So that’s another piece of information I didn’t have before that I can now use to my advantage. 

   So bottom line, I’m still experimenting, but I’m getting more info with every new day.  Animal products are still in the diet but they are kept far apart from fruits nowadays.  That's been a great change.  In addition to that, I’ve further solidified my belief in the perfection of life and that the point really isn’t to try and sterilyze the things around you so you can live happily, but rather to try and live symbiotically with them-candida included.  I’ll tell you one thing, one of the best and worst things I ever did for myself was subject myself to numerous rounds of antibiotics(over the course of my whole life). 

September 28, 2008-The Gift

    Last time it was the Lesson, this time it’s the Gift.  Last time was about learning, this time it’s about receiving.  And receive I did, but only with a lot of fighting, nervousness, and anxiety on my part.  Funny how we often fight the things that are best for us. 

   I remember Mellen-Thomas Benedict saying something on the radio that really stuck with me.  It was something like "in the future, people aren’t going to be capable any longer of watching human suffering and not doing anything about it."  I mentioned it in my last post, and I’ve come to find that I believe it whole heartedly.  The lesson on the bridge was the first of many lessons for me; which, as I said, I accepted very reluctantly and only with the worst of all attitudes.  I want to make that very clear.  By no means, did any of this happen because of my incredible desire to do good in the following ways-because I had none.  In fact, I have basically had no human compassion whatsoever in my life; instead I relegated it all to the environment-I could hug trees and even very upset over the destruction of the environment, but couldn’t find it it me to give a shit about another person.  True story.

   So enter Nils Jerker(Mörk?)  That is his real name, I don’t see any reason to change it.  Nils is a homeless alcoholic.  I ran across him one day after walking home from work.  He was laying on a bench looking awful, real awful.  To me, it looked like he wasn’t going to live for much longer.  Sores everywhere, totally vacant and out of it stare, bandaged arm.  Just real terrible.  Just so happened that earlier that week I had picked up a copy of the local homeless magazine here in Stockholm and in it was advertised a phone number to call should you run across something that looks to be in need of help.  I took it down when I saw it, thinking I could maybe use it sometime to ease my guilt at not doing anything(after the bridge incident, my guilt over not doing anything for the homeless and the alcoholics surged). 

   So anyway, I call the homeless police on Nils. I wait, they come and pick him up, I talk to them, they leave, done deal.  Nope, he’s back the next night.  ****, I say.  More guilt.  I feel like I should invite him into my house but I desperately don’t want to-if I did, it would be guilt making me do it, definitely not love.  I call the number instead.  Same thing happens as the first night, they come and pick him up, done deal.  Nope.  Comes back again.  And then maybe a fourth time, I don’t remember.  But on the third or the fourth time, I grow tired of feeling guilty all the time and I understand that I am to do something more here.  So I talk to Nils.  His Swedish is drunken, slurred and barely understandable.  Mine is childish and hard to understand because of my weird accent…so we are on about the same level. 

  Nils talks about a lot of stuff that I don’t understand, but I perk up when I hear him mention his kids and family whom he hasn’t seen forever.  He mentions their names and funnily enough, when they were born.  It’s like he is waiting for me to get the hint, which I do actually get.  So I take out my phone and I’m like "Really?  That’s interesting…what were their names again?"  He tells me and I punch them into my phone.  Then I call the homeless police again and they come and pick him up.  They tell him this time though, that they won’t be able to take care of him much longer because he is not a Stockholm resident.  If he wants, he can get free care in Hälsingborg where he is a resident, but not here. 

   Anyway, I go home thinking I’ve already done a good thing-I’ve got the names of his kids and I can call them and tell them what’s up and they will surely be glad and all will be taken care of.  So I live off that feeling for a couple of days.  Monday rolls around or maybe even later in the week, I don’t know, and I decide to look up his son and give him a call.  I am nervous as hell about this and I definitely DO NOT want to…but again, I am driven by guilt or fear.  First number I call, I reach his son. I quickly realize that his son is well aware of everything happening and that does doesn’t want a damn thing to do with his dad.  I understand this, I say, but his mistakes were made long ago, I say-we have to try and look at the situation at present, and at present your dad doesn’t know the difference between right and wrong(he’s mentally retarded, to be honest).  Son isn’t having it.  I’m polite though and we hang up as strange as the strangers we were to begin with.  I’m kind of skipping little parts of the story here-mainly they just encompass how friggin nervous I was calling this dude whom I don’t know and trying to convince him to come get his dad off the street. 

   Funny thing happens after we hang up.  About ten minutes later, son calls me back and says that Nils has a brother who he hasn’t seen for 20 years and who is under the impression that Nils is long dead.  He also says that the brother would like to get in contact with Nils.  Great success!  He gives me the number, I call, we chat.  The brother, I can tell is not in the greatest of shape either, to be honest.  But nonetheless, he is a contact and he wants to see Nils.  He tells me to take his phone number and give it to Nils the next time I see him.  I say sure. 

   I never see Nils again.

   Betch’ya didn’t see that coming.  I honestly don’t remember if I saw Nils one more time after he told me his kids’ names or not, but I do know that that little success made me hesitate for several days and kind of bask in the comfort and then when I actually got uncomfortable enough again to make the phone calls I had not seen Nils for several days and never saw him again(at least I haven’t yet).  I’ve made several attempts through the homeless and social system, and I’ve spoken with his brother again, but nothing.   

   I’ve spoken with quite a few alcoholics on the street since then.  And a few others as well.  It’s always uncomfortable and I can’t stand every second.  I don’t know why exactly, I just can’t.  It always stems from guilt from not doing more.  It started out as always being scared that I would be guilted into inviting them into my house and that was what scared me, but now it is something else.  Still uncomfortable, but not as much.  One was sitting outside my apartment building.  I passed him up thinking I could fight the guilt.  I couldn’t.  I realized I had to go back down and talk to him.  I didn’t know how to strike up a conversation, so I brought my dinner down with me.  He saw me eating raw meat and thought that was kind of funny.  Then we talked, talked about where he came from, what he had done with his life and why he does what he does.  Then I gave him a piece of raw meat.  He laughed his ass off and took two pieces actually and gobbled them down.  I’m not ashamed to admit that the real reason I gave them to him was in hopes that his internal environment was basically the perfect breeding ground for parasitic growth and maybe I could give him a tape worm or something.  I've come to understand that poor health and seemingly ‘bad’ events are often life’s only way of getting your enough of your attention to turn things around.  So I didn’t feel bad about that at all.

   I’m going to end with one more story.  Probably the biggest success of all of these strange happenings.  Kurt.  I woke up one saturday morning with that very familiar feeling-I’m going to meet someone.  Immediately I became uncomfortable.  But to be honest, I was so damn tired of being uncomfortable all the time that I just refused.  Today I was going to go out, meet this guy and I was going to take it with a grain of salt.  I was going to do it with a smile and I was going to be nice to everyone on my way there.  That was that.  No more avoiding anyone, no more walking down different streets so as not to meet any alcoholics on the way there.  I was going to do this right. 

   So I did.  I smiled at everyone I passed, I might have even said hello once or twice.  And my energy soured.  It really did.  I was flying high when I met him.  And he recognized me before I recognized him.  I saw this guy in a yellow shirt and grey sweatpants stumbling along looking confused and I knew it was him.  ‘Oh, there he is,’ I said to myself.  And, of course, I got nervous again, but I tried to fight it.  He talked to me before I talked to him. ‘Do you know where the Maria Clinic is?’  Nope, I didn’t, of course.  But I’ll help you find it.  Good samaritan idea popped into my head again.  This is what I have to do and today I’m at least going to try to like it, or at least not hate it.  So, a woman with a cross around her neck walks around the corner and stops, strangely right in front of us.  Of course, I don’t ask her.  I look for other people to ask, look around the corner, wander aimlessly for a bit and then just look confused.  Then I ask her.  Quickly she turns around and says "oh sure, it’s right over there, around the corner, take a left at that street…etc.’  Then she takes Kurt’s hand and very kindly and intimately wishes him well.  Then I say ’cmon, I’ll take you,’ and he thanks me very graciously and we go on our way.  Kurt is the real deal.  He’s not homeless, he’s got plenty of money, he looks like absolute garbage, and he totally trashed.  So trashed that as we stand in the clinic, getting medicine to treat his alcoholism, he pops open a brewski and sips away.  These alcoholics don’t chug, I don’t think they’re in the kind of shape to be able to chug.  They of course, kick him out and we leave. 

   Anyway, there’s not a ton to this story.  We spent the whole afternoon together.  He told me everything.  He was a retired pilot, addicted to pain killers and alcohol-like 30% of all pilots are, he says.  He hasn’t talked to his kids in years and he hit his wife for the first time yesterday when she took away his wallet and keys.  She wants a divorce.  One thing I’ve come to understand is that things are both more and less our own faults than we really understand.  I try to purvey this message to them and I think I got it across with Kurt.  For the most part, these people I talked to love blaming other people for their various problems.  Since I don’t have any past experiences with them and thus no feelings attached to my relationship with them, I don’t have such a problem telling them that they are in the position they are in because of their own actions and the things they are bitching and moaning about are usually other people’s REactions to their obvious life abuse. 

   On the other hand, I stress to them a kind of self forgiveness.  I told him that despite the fact the he got himself into this mess, he and his wife are going to come to the conclusion(hopefully b4 she leaves him) that the mistakes he made were, for the most part, many many years ago and the life he is living now is just a kind mindless result of them-they can’t be called mistakes anymore, in my opinion…now they are something else, something very natural that most of us would do, I believe.  I told him that basically the only reason any of us do anything is to satisfy our desire to become less uncomfortable and to be more comfortable.  I then told him(in a way that he could understand) that whereas most of us other people have many different outlets to find comfort in, he has created an instantaneous neural superhighway to comfort via alcohol and painkillers, and nothing else.  Not tv, not food(some of these guys don’t eat for days), not friends, not sex, not reading.  Alcohol and painkillers.  He felt uncomfortable when he was 18 maybe being social or whatever it was and started drinking.  A slow evolution began and 40 years later, he feels uncomfortable just being in his own skin and drugs and alcohol are the now knee-jerk, totally and completely thoughtless answer to solving that problem.  I assured him that his wife would have to soon come to the conclusion that he has never chosen the drugs and alcohol over her as a whole.  He chose his immediate comfort over her immediate discomfort.  Not until her actually leaving him becomes a reality in his own mind(which is hard in his mentally retarded state) does that situation even come into play.  So far, it’s always been his immediate comfort or lack there-of over how it’s going to make her feel when he drinks……not her presence in his life.  Threatening divorce is still not the same, it’s still just a threat.  Although it’s closer. 

   I told him that he got himself into this situation, that it was all his own doing, but then I tried to comfort him.  Truth and love.  I told him also that that is true for all of us in every situation and that anyone could find themselves in his, given the right circumstances.  Constantly seeking comfort where you find it most readily available is about as natural as natural gets.  He told me that he was a Christian and went to church 2x weekly.  I told him that he needs to turn the other cheek.  When he goes home he needs to be totally honest with his wife; which means telling her exactly why he does what he does, about comfort and his lack of it, and that he hasn’t chosen it over her.  I told him that she is going to be mad and is going to yell and that that is her way of taking something back from him which she thinks he took from her.  Energy, we’ll call it, the upperhand, the win.  I told him that he has to fight his knee jerk reaction to do whatever and just turn the other cheek.  Tell her that he is done and that maybe he can’t offer her anything inherintly positive now but he can at least offer her nothing negative-as in no abuse, verbal or physical-he can be quiet.  I told him to tell her how hard it is for him and then I told him to go to church, even more often, go everyday.  Read the Bible everyday.  This is his saviour.

    I don’t know what happened to him.  I do know what happened to me.  My energy levels have risen somewhat.  I’m vibrating just a bit faster these days.  I feel like I’ve paid back some karma from being such an angry human being for most of my life.  I talked to one guy on the Faroes for a while, but other than that I haven’t had any more experiences with the alcoholics or homeless.  The guilt isn’t nearly as strong, I’m very thankful for that.  I came to understand that people have to be in the right place spiritually to get help and the one helping has to be too.  Lots of people I talked to probably didn’t budge an inch after we talked.  Kurt, I think, probably did.  I came to a lot of conclusions actually and I think I’ll end with one of the more important ones and that is to not be judgemental and not think too much of ourselves-as I often did and still do.  It is our past experiences which create our belief systems and determine our course of action in future situations.  I’ve come to find that, no matter how many people look down on these people for living the way they do, very few have actually had to live they did.  Meaning, very few have actually had to go through most of what almost all of these people have.  If you think your story is bad, theirs, I can assure you, is likely worse.  We do what we do to get comfortable and some are so uncomfortable that being comfortable over the long term isn’t something that even crosses their mind.  Addiction to a substance is very in your face and it’s clearly, visibly wrong to us.  But there are many of us who have lived these hard lives that have equally as large problems that aren’t nearly as visible that go under the radar of everyone else-that are much more acceptable to everyone else, like anger, or rudeness, or arrogance…these are all, I’ve come to understand, just as bad.  I’m guilty of them all and these lessons were, I think, just as much for me as they were for the people I talked to…and given that I think I only REALLY got through to one of them, they were probably more for me than for the people I talked to.  Thank you and good night.

September 19, 2008-The Lesson

   Well, it's my 26th birthday today and as good of a day as ever to talk about my life, I suppose.  Sorry it's been a while in between blogs, haven't really gotten back into the swing of everthing yet after the trip.  I'll start with the bbing news: not much.  I minorly tore my soleus the other day, but other than that training is going good. The bruising is basically gone and it's only sore to the touch-my functionality is fine.  I have torn a muscle 4 times in my life and haven't been to see a doctor for once.  What do you think, bra eller anus?

    I was born in Sweden and lived there until I was five; then moved away under somewhat questionable circumstances.  I only say questionable because my two parents have two totally different stories and I can't tell you for sure which one is true.  They split when I was 2 and I don't remember a whole lot more.  My mom and I moved to my grandparents house in a suberb of Chicago where we lived for 2 or 3 years before getting our own house. 

   Most people would probably have described me a pretty happy kid and adolescent.  This is kind of true, but I think the real truth is that I was, for the most part, when in the company of others, just very happy to see them and when not, a generally angry kid.  Looking back on it, I think it's kind of rediculous and I get upset at how angry I was all the time and how poorly I treated my mom.  Never did anything outrageous-just constantly angry, not often being nice to be around. 

   I would say that that trend continued up until roughly last year.  Not with quite the same intensity, but roughly the same nonetheless.  Nice, patient, kind and loving with strangers; arrogant, full of pride, incredibly impatient and intolerant with those nearest and dearest.  This has played out especially much with girlfriends.  Up until recently, and actually still but not as much as before, nothing could irritate me more than my girlfriend-whoever it was at the time.  Funny how that works.  I always considered myself such a good guy too.  Anyway, as of yet my relationships have been pretty much marred by girls pressing my buttons(which are not hard to find) and me flying off the handle in a kind of subtle way, if that makes sense.  Just like with my mother, not freaking out, not yelling and screaming all the time, just me being visibly angry and clearly disappointed in what I was convinced was sheer and utter stupidity.  I've since come to understand that the moment anyone finds themselves in the situation that I find and have found myself in so many times in which extreme anger arises from a misunderstanding, that we have then also found yet another person who doesn't understand.

   Life has a way of helping everyone out and evening out the the score at the same time, wouldn't you say.  I would.  At least that's what I've been experiencing for the last half year or so.  Probably much longer than that, actually garunteed much longer than that, but the last half year has been obvious and here' how it started:

   Since I was a little kid, I've had a kind of religious obcession that soon developed into a kind of phobia, specifically focused in and around the subject of hell.  It sounds kind of weird, but a lot of people have this problem actually and it's one that's not easily dealt with because there are, obviously, not too many ways to clearly prove or disprove anything in regards to it-and obcessive minds aren't usually particularly prone to just accepting things because they make sense or don't.  So anyway, this has been a kind of gift for me in my life, really.  It has been very hard but it, I believe, has been life's way of getting me to search for a deeper answer into spirituality.  There have been lots of these things in my life-for example: one day I found out that by using English gematria(a new system revised from the traditional one using multiples of 6) the letters in my first and middle name add up to 666-that struck me so hard at the time that it made me search for a deeper meaning-it was so uncomfortable that I just had to keep searching for answers-I literally could not let it just stand at that...and I think life knew that.  Even if other people wouldn't think twice about it, the obcessive person thinks way more than twice about it. 

   So anyway, I was reading up on one of my favorite subjects about 6-9mos ago-NDEs.  I've read a ton of these over the years and I was always kind of scared and perplexed by the hellish type ones.  And that day, probably that whole month as I recall, life was pushing me hard in that direction-that's when I found out about the above.  In other words, I was worked up-constantly reading about it, constantly thinking about it, constantly looking for some kind of answer, constantly not wanting to go to hell.  Since going raw, I almost haven't been physically able to get this obcessed about anything-my mind just isn't that cloudy any longer, but this time around it really hit me and I needed an answer.  So I turned to where I've always turned, prayer.  This has always had a calming effect on me and this time I prayed over and over again for the truth.  I need to see the truth, show me the truth.  I prayed it silently, audibly, and even very loudly. 

   I walked over to a friends house that night, over a long bridge called Västerbron.  We had a great time, I don't remember barely any of it, but it calmed me down some and that was nice.  But the moment I left and started walking home, the nagging came back.  I needed, very badly, to see the truth in this; and again, I asked for it.  Very loudly.  

    And then the truth began unravelling itself...something very special happened.  I'm standing on the bridge again, it takes about 10 minutes to walk across, and see a kind of ethereal glowing white vertical stick of sorts-way in the distance.  Very luminous, very noticeable, and far away as I recall.  I knew, I absolutely knew something was up.  As I walk nearer, I realize that this kind f glowing stick is actually the white cane of a blind woman.  I walk right up to her, right beside her, and realize something is very wrong.  It becomes very clear to me that this woman is about to jump off the bridge.  A lot of people commit suicide here in Stockholm this way.  So I get immediately very nervous, but realize that I can't just walk away, and talk to her.  She's going to commit suicide.  She's crying, she's amongst the most physically unnatractive people I've ever seen, she has one totally dead eye, and in all honesty, resembles what you might think a troll would look like.  I can see that this person has had a hard life and now I'm really anxious beyond basically anything I've experienced before-very scared would be a good way to describe it.  Anyway, we're going back and forth and in the state I'm in, I'm trying, even though I don't actually believe or perscribe to any of this, to help her with kind of religious talk.  And it does nothing.  As I recall, she insulted it.  This struck a chord with me. 

   What did seem to work though was connecting with her, and trying to connect with her lighter side-the happier side of her personality-trying to make her laugh.  She told me that everyone has a right to do whatever they want with their own body and that it was her body and she wanted to jump off the bridge.  I promptly told her that I agreed and that this was my body and I wanted my body to keep her body from jumping off that bridge.  I also reminded her that I was much stronger than she was and that it just wasn't going to happen.  She didn't really laugh at this but it was a start for me, it sparked a small understanding. 

    I pretty quickly got the attention of a woman over the highway and she came over and helped a lot.  She, of course, worked in the same building as the mental institution this woman was just released from-despite the fact that he told them she was just going to go back and commit suicide.  Coincidence?  This woman was my savior because she made us laugh, and then that helped me make them laugh and that created a situation in which suicide became much less of a reality.  Once the first joke came in, it was like everything was going to be ok-once our deay lady smiled.  I knew the lady wouldn't be dying tonight, but I wasn't totally calm. 

   It was around that time that I was mentally confronted by a scipture that I had read earlier that day about the Good Samaritan.  It's funny how it all played out, because that woman that I hailed over was one of the two that stopped out of several more than just walked or rode their bikes right by, not even acknowledging the situation.  It has become pretty clear to me that the truth that I was praying for was in that lesson-dropping everything and doing everything I could to help this person.  Even though, to be honest, I was crap at it-it wasn't until that other woman came over that the situation really calmed down-she called the police as well.  When the police came and took her away, I asked where they were taking her.  I called my girlfriend at the time and told her everything and told her that I wanted to go to the hospital to make sure she was alright and to see if we could helpme-then my girlfriend actually asked to talk to the girl because she, too, had been suicidal and thought she could help.  In the end, the police took our woman away and my girlfriend came and we went right to the hospital. I went with a Bible in hand as well as a Bhagavad Gita.  Haha, that must have looked funny.  Haha, nutjob?

   The attendant wouldn't let us see her, so we gave him our phone numbers and emails to give her if she ever needed someone to talk to.  We then left and that was the end of that.  I saw my dear lady a couple of months later walking with someone here in my neck of the woods and that made me feel real good.  I don't know how she is doing now, but I know she made it past those couple of months and it felt nice. 

   Since that night I have had many such occurances-which I have referred to for the last half year as my 'secret life.'  I've come to understand that even though it may seem as though I am helping other people, these things that I have been doing have been life's way of helping me.  Helping me understand and helping me to physically raise my energy level and turn me into a better person after having spent so many years as an angry one-while at the same time doing some penance and helping others.  I'll go into them in more detail in another blog, but it's become real clear to me that in the future people are going to become much less able to just stand by as others suffer.  The people I have come into contact with and helped, I have not helped because I am a particularly good person, but because I could physically NOT not help.  A deep hot anger would rise up inside of me if I didn't, and I was scared of it.  I'm going to have to finish this later so it doesn't all get jumbled up so I'll talk to you soon. 

September 3, 2008-Update from Les Etats    

    Grandma passed over yesterday, calmly and peacefully.  The funeral’s next monday morning and I’m leaving that afternoon.  Kinda of funny about Grandma that all of my best memories of her seem to be when I am getting in trouble of some sort.  I don’t know why I laugh at those memories but I do.  I remember when I was 9 or 10 or so, I told one of my friends that she hated(a word she would never ever use) him and when she caught word of that she dragged me over to him by the ear and gave us both a talking to-I don’t remember exactly what she said.  I remember getting swatted on the butt for being a jackass when she asked me to slice a roast and I ruined it.  I remember getting reprimanded after asking my Aunt May how old she was.  I remember getting easily the most sarcastic intro speech ever by her after I didn’t clean the car to her liking after she had lent it to me-"Paul, didn’t you like that car??" she said.  I’m smiling right now thinking about all of these things.  I think that’s good, because in the past they were kind of embarassing memories and now I just think they’re charming.  The truth is that every other time I was around her, all she ever did was help me and care for me.  In fact, she used to let me into my house on a friggin regular basis after I locked myself out it-a tradition I have kept alive to this very day.  I remember a lecture she gave me about hate one time-about what a strong word that is and that ‘you(as in we) don’t hate anything.’  That sums up her attitute basically and I have a feeling that people are going to be coming out of the woodwork to pay their respects because of that attitude of hers and how it affected everyone she came into contact with.  Just a real nice old lady. 

   All of this flying and driving is killing my back. But I am responding with love.  Ha!  I just felt like writing that.  Seriously though, I am doing more Mckenzie exercises and back strengthening movements than I have ever done-feels like I’m doing something to counteract the pain almost constantly.  That in and of itself is a pain.  But you know what?  Fugettaboutit.  What I really need is a month where I don’t do anything that irritates it.  I’ve noticed that it takes about 2 seconds to knock it out of whack and about 2 days to get it back into whack.  If I get on a roll of a couple of days without pain, then it’s really a whole lot better and harder to dislodge.  That’s what I need, a roll.

   In other news, I keep experimenting with this candida issue.  Again, I don’t have it real bad, it’s really more of an annoyance.  Despite that though, it’s been one of the best things to ever happen to me-and kind of weird how it happened-with me doing something totally uncharacteristic of myself-taking antibiotics.  Anyway, my diet has changed so much and I have such a better feel for it now that I’m actually very thankful.  Not that I want this forever, but I’m thankful for the lesson it has taught me in finding truth-finding the best path through trial and error.  Obviously I haven’t found the very best path yet or my stomach wouldn’t be making the crazy sounds that it often does but I’m getting there and I’m much farther along than I’ve ever been. 

    You know, had it not been for this, I think I would have lived a much less healthy life than I ever thought possible on a raw diet.  I think most raw foodists are of the opinion that as long as they are raw they are healthy; I’ve found this not to be the case.  I was eating fruit like candy.  Huge amounts of sugar.  That was the wrong path.  I should have known-the signs were there: bad dandruff, bad body odor, and a general feeling of unease, anxiousness.  That last one is the big one.  I’m convinced that there is a big group of people out there experiencing what they think is the fault of a genetic chemical imbalance causing them to be depressed, angry, and anxious all the time when it’s really the result of a learned chemical imbalance via constant self imposed sugar highs and lows-which, I might add are much like real drug addictions in that you don’t actually feel the high, you just feel like you are back at default, back to where you need to be to function. 

    I guess I’ll leave you with that. I do have a big update to do pretty soon on what I call my secret life.  For the last couple of months I have been having some unusual experiences that I kind of felt like keeping private, but I don’t feel like it anymore.  So stay tuned.

August 30, 2008-Here’s the Dilly

   I’m heading back to the States for a week.  My grandmother is on her last days-she’s the last of my grandparents and she’s actually pretty ready to go.  At least, she’s told us as much over the last year or so.  Real special lady, basically lived for her husband, real old school.  And she loved it, that was her life and it was the way it was supposed to be.  He died 4 years ago after 50 years of marraige, 8 of her 9 siblings are gone, and many of her friends are gone.  I’m trying to see this as a good thing.  She’s going home and I'm pretty cool with that.  So I should be on a plane within the next day or two back to Chicago.  -while I’m there, I think I’ll HIT it up as I haven’t done in quite some time.

   I’ve been working out regularly, enjoying it somewhat, and making some good progress. Haven’t had a real HIT workout in a while though.  Miss it.  Last time I did one, I was on high for days.  Miss that.  The back thing is what’s really been on my mind in regards to working out.  Actually, just being a fully functional human being again.  You all know that by now I guess.  My adventure was somewhat tough on the back, way too much sitting on busses and planes, so I had some catch up work to do when I got back.  Although, I have to admit, it’s still better than when I left. I definitely worked out while I was there and did a lot of stretching.  Stretching and deep tissue are the only things that can really get me out of immediate pain.  I have had all sorts of ideas on how to expediate the process and, for the most part, they have failed miserably(this is usually the case)-including my last one that I should get an adjustment from my napprapat, Frida, right before my workout in an attempt to strengthen the musculature while it was sitting pretty, everything in the right place.  I was actually warned not to do that by my last chiro and I have had no success with it in the past but, as usual, I figured I would try it again and it just made things worse-had to do a lot of Inrgid exercises to work out those kinks.  Good thing I didn’t lose any money on it though; Frida dear gave me that one on the house.  Great Success! 

    In other news, as I’ve already mentioned, I think experimenting on myself is always the best way to figure life out.  The state my stomach is in right now is a clear indication that drinking 6-8 week old homemade kombucha with your own homemade bacterial culture is not a good idea.  I had this cool idea, which I still think is a cool idea, that instead of paying a grip on probiotics I could actually make my own awesome super probiotic for almost no money if I took a great store bought probiotic, dumped it in some kombucha minus the kombucha culture and fed it sugar.  Of course, I got a fermented probiotic drink.  Although, I don’t really have a good way of finding out if my finished product is just an amplified version of my initial ingredient or some mutant killing me from the inside out.  Let’s hope not because I’ve been drinking it for months.  No blindness or hair growing on my palms yet.

   Last, I added a ton of adventure pics to my site, so give’em a look if you feel like it.

August 24, 2008-The Faroes, Iceland, and Les Etats Unis.

    Well, I’m back from my much needed vacation.  Was on the Faroes for 9 days, Iceland for 6, and in the States for 12 or so, and now I’m back in Sweden and starting work again tomorrow.  The Faroes were exceptional, really breathtaking. They were so green, so wet and lush, and so dramatic I couldn’t help but be knocked out by them. In fact, I was a bit disappointed with Iceland after having been on the Faroes for the last week.  Although, I only saw 3 days worth of nature there and I don’t think I went to the coolest spot. 

    As usual, I left on my vacation wanting a great adventure and I got one.  And again, as usual, it didn’t happen when I went out looking for it, it happened accidentally like all the rest of my adventures-in an attempt to get myself out of a situation that was the result of a garunteed stupid decision.  It went a little something like this:

   I spent my last day on the Faroes on the westernmost island called Mykenes.  They call it the pearl of the Faroes, really beautiful, really dramatic, huge rocky cliffs that are probably 40 or 50 meters in some places, and maybe even more, above jagged rocks and ocean below.  Anyway, one of the biggest reasons I like these trips is the cool pictures I come home with.  While looking at two utterly incredible separate monolithic rock columns just jutting out of the ocean literally covered in birds, I decided that I absolutely needed a pic of that.  I´m standing actually about a meter away from the edge of a real big cliff, the wind is blowing like I’ve very seldomly felt before, and the ocean breeze is filling my nose with one of the most enlivening drafts I´ve ever smelled.  I grab my camera from around my neck.   As I do so, it fastens on the strap of my binoculars, also around my neck, and they slip over my head, fall on the ground, and roll over the edge of the cliff.   First I say ****, then I wait patiently for the sound of the binoculars hitting the water….but it never comes!  Success!  I look over the edge and **** again because they are on another ledge several meters down.  And these ledges, my dear folks, are not fricken big-they’re not tiny but not friggin big.  My first thought…haha, as usual is that I CANNOT litter this pristine environment with trash.  My second is that I friggin lose everything in my life, I honestly don´t go a single week without losing my keys and I already lost that lumbar support pillow that I bought from Ingrid, my physical therapist.  It friggin irritates me.  **** again.  I make my way, very carefully over the edge of the cliff on loose soil that is crumbling under my feet.  The wind is blowing in my face and the waves are breaking hard 30 meters down.  This is just the first meter…the rest is pretty much straight down.  As I´m making my way down my heart is literally pounding out of my chest.  It started pounding the moment I made the decision to go down-instantly, like a light switch.  Once again, there are jagged rocks like 30 meters beneath me being beaten by heavy ocean waves and I am standing on the side of a cliff on crumbling soil that is on an unstable ledge with rocks that fall away when I step on them.  This sucks.     I make my way down over the binoculars, they are roughly 1.5 meters beneath me and below them, straight down, are the breaking waves and big jagged rocks.  I can’t make it down the binoculars from here.  I don´t want to jump and there is no other way down. Damnit.  So I look around and see if there is another way.  There is!  Success!  But I have to go back up another way and then come back down a different path.  It´s kind of far and it involves more ledges with more crumbling rocks and more loose soil.  I can´t stand that and my heart is frickin racing like you wouldn´t believe standing out there on the side of that huge cliff in the crazy(and I mean CRAZY) wind.  So I make my way around and now I am finally on the same level as the binoculars, although 4 or 5 meters away.  My heart is beating OUT OF MY CHEST at the wind and the view right below me and…..the sounds.  The sound of wind is howling, and the waves are making their crashing sounds, but there is something else.  Sounds like birds very close by.  I look over and there is this big, chicken sized fuzzy bird squaking it´s ass off at me.  I see there are several of them.  I notice that as I creep closer, kind of hugging the wall, it´s gets more and more aggrivated.  And when I get really close, something crazy happens.  It´s starts making this crazy heaving motion and noise.  Like a dog when it´s about to puke.  I´m almost having a panic attack at this-it’s everything: the wind, the waves on the rocks, the birds…I had some bad experiences with birds literally attacking me on Svalbard-they drew blood!  Anyway, I creep closer and closer and the bird projectile vomits, literally cocks and releases, this acidic red bile at me-and a lot of it!  I dodge!  I duck, and I swerve.  I get past the first bird unscathed.  But there are more.  I walk again, creeping by.  Nevertheless, I am puked at again.  It´s rapid fire.  They are like machine gun red bile puking machines. And you wouldn´t believe how far they can spit this crap. I later found out that that stuff burns on contact! Anyway, I am literally running on this ledge now(not tiny but far from friggin big!), jumping from rock to rock, Indiana Jones’n it, part to part to get away from these birds while still trying to keep my ass alive and on the side of the mountain.     Finally I get to my binoculars and take a deep breath out.  But it doesn´t last long because I know I have to get back.  I have to run the gauntlet again.  The whole situation was so nuts you had to be there to believe it.  So I make my way back and this time I think one of them hits me.  In the leg, on my jeans(when I get through it all, I don’t think I was hit).  No big deal.  I keep my pace up, I keep hopping here and there.  I take pauses inbetween birds in spots that I can rest safely.  The wind is going nuts in my ears and my heart is beating faster than anytime I can remember.  Finally, I make it back and attempt to climb up, which, of course, is harder than getting down because I had to jump down a bit.  Now I have to climb on those loose rocks.  One actually fell beneath me.  That was not funny, as Swedes would say.  Anyway, I got up, binoculars in hand and kissed the ground, literally.  So that was my most exciting moment on the Faroes.  I had a few other minor adventures, but I’ll keep those to myself for now.   Iceland was alright, much more cultural.  I hitched around for a while with a woman I met on the Faroes and did the nature thing for 3 days or so, but it really wasn’t what I wanted to do at that time so I caught a bus into Reykjavik and did the cultural thing for a few days.  That was really nice.  They have a Reykjavik pass there that you can buy for pretty cheap for a certain number of hours and it gets you into basically every museum and every culturual site in the city.  In addition to that, I met some cool Icelandic guys on the Faroes and one of them was nice enough to show me around Iceland for basically two whole days.  Icelandic people really turned out to be the nicest I have ever met as a group.  I really mean that.  And then, back to the States.  It was such an incredible time.  I absolutely loved seeing my old friends again.  My clients, who are my friends, were the most fun-I could have spent days with them.  I found though, that by the end of the trip, I was ready to go home.  I loved seeing everyone, but I am in the right place for me right now and I wanted to get back here and get moving.   The big lesson I learned on this trip was that life isn’t always going to take care of everything.  It might keep me alive, but if I want an enjoyable life I have to do a bit of work to make it that way.  I have a way of assuming that it’s all just always going to go my way.  The truth is that there are certain chinks in my armour that are going to need my focus to get pounded out.  I took mindlessness to a new level this time around-I lost keys(what else is new?), I missed my plane, I spent TONS of money I didn’t have to, I lost money, I lost clothes…basically I have to be mindful of daily life as well as the big picture.  Too often, I find myself up in the clouds, just thinking about the major lessons in life and the big things that society has to work out…and then I’m locked out of my house or I’ve lost my wallet.

July 19, 2008-180-188 for 20 straight?  

     Sounds a bit hard to believe to me.  I was using a Precor elliptical type machine(a newer model, bit different) which gave me an HR reading of 180-188 for a full 20 minutes straight yesterday.  That seems a little unlikely to me.  Nonetheless, I had a great time doing it.  My feet fell asleep for the last ten minutes or so, but the rest of me was lovin it.  I don’t often do cardio although I’ve said on at least one occassion before that I am going to start doing it regularly.  Now I think I will.  Much like my new dedication to stretching(which I have kept up), cardio appeals to my sense of being a more well rounded athlete-which is pretty much the only thing that makes me work out these days.  As I’ve said on numerous occassions before, I’ve lost almost all drive to get bigger.  That’s become very unappealing to me; and part of that is due to a kind of obcessive thought or feeling I keep getting that my head will look to small for my body.  I see this all the time on guys, I wonder if I’m the only one. 

    Another reason is that I’ve become somehow very turned off by the whole ideal.  I haven’t actually thought that bigger is better for several years now…I don’t know why I should be striving for it.  My new idea as of late is to start doing things that I really think are fun and what I’ve always thought of as fun are puzzles(I did a TON of puzzles as a kid).  Right now, figuring out how to make my body work correctly and better than it has before fufills that desire.  Maybe when I get that straightened out, I’ll be turned on to competitive bodybuilding again as a means to create something visibly artistic out of something fully functional.  That’s an idea. 

   In other news, I am going on vacation this thursday.  It will be a week on the Faroe Islands, just under a week in Iceland, and then just under two weeks in the States.  I haven’t packed yet and I don’t know what I will be bringing.  I keep toying with the idea of not bringing anything, of just going and seeing what happens.  I don’t have enough money to stay anywhere, so the plan is the sleep outside.  That’s always been the plan; but I was originally planning on bringing a tent. The tent is out though.  It’s going to weigh too much and I don’t want anything that weighs a lot putting pressure on my spine.  They do have ultra light weight tents but they were out of my price range.  So we’ll see where I end up sleeping.  The thing about the Faroes and Iceland, I’ve heard, is that they are windy.  And rainy.  I do have a poncho.  In one way or another, it will get sorted out and I’ll have a great time. 

July 17, 2008 - The Rem-back attack

    I can’t even begin to express to you how more than happy I am with private Swedish health care.  The physical therapist I’ve been seeing has put me through the ringer with these new back movements.  They’re a combination of stretching and strenthening, both of which I am at a severe loss for in regards to my back.  Some of them are so friggin hard yet so almost astoundingly easy looking that I almost can’t believe it-and those around me probably can’t believe their ears when they hear the loud grunting noises I’m making either, given the seemingly apparent easiness of these ’supercises’.  In addition to loud grunting noises, I swear a lot.  This helps get me through my set.  If I blame the pain on something other than myself-usually the piece of equipment or some part of my body(which I consider outside of myself). 

   My shoulders, my dear Ingrid, are also friggin wrecked.  Wrecked in a good way, but wrecked.  Some of these movements require me to hold a broomstick of sorts behind my back with good posture(something entirely foreign to me) and keep it there for up to several minutes at a time while I labor laboriously bending and contorting myself into positions remarkably reminiscent of highschool cheerleading.  This is what I always wanted. 

   But the back, my friends, is feeling much better.  It really is.  All complaining aside, I am so thankful to have been given the motivation to actually do something about this problem once and for all and then to encounter such great people in the process who are all more than capable of helping me.  And by the way, the motivation was me hurting it again, this time bad enough to really get my attention.  Surprise suprise, a negative becomes a positive.

  I did a minor crushing of the legs yesterday.  Two sets of plate runs(which, once agin, if you haven’t tried, you are missing out), a set of YoYo leg curls, a set of lateral walks, and some abductor/adductor work.  They’ve been minorly sore all day.  Might be getting a little worse as I write this.  For those who don’t know, which is probably most of you, there is a new technology in town.  It’s called YoYo technology.  To be honest, we only have two pieces of that kind of equipment at our gym and one of the two is pretty damn shakey, but the other is up there in the excellent category.  It works like this: there’s a resistance wheel which is attached to a belt which is attached to the lever.  As you pull on the lever, the belt spins the resistance wheel with however much force you applied.  As the belt reaches it’s limit(at the very top of the movement), it yanks the wheel back in the other direction with that same amount of resistance.  Like a YoYo.  Very good if you want to concentrate on the eccentric portion of the movement.  Also a very cool feel.   

   Tomorrow I’m gonna crush some upper body.  Tonight, in about two minutes I’m gonna crush some raw sailor’s beef, some chopped onions, some watercres, some parsley, some olive oil and some raw butter.  For the time being, I’ve taken any kind of ground meat out of the nutritional plan.  It just wasn’t sitting that well.  Chopped up meat, on the other hand, sits real well. 

July 12, 2008- Carpe Diem Baby.  

    Haven’t heard that song in a looooong time.  Haven’t heard that band in a long time.  Live win, dare fail, eat the dirt and bite the nail-I like that.  Funny people moaning about post Black album Metallica not being very heavy. Post black album was when that band got heavy. They slowed down a whole lot, but they they were crushin the scales with lyrical weight and new found base lines.  My opinion anyway.  Don’t believe me?, compare Until it Sleeps or King Nothing with any of their speed metal tunes from back in the day.  Way heavier.  I like it all though…kind of.  These days I find myself pretty sensitive to negativity in music.  Haha, I find myself at the front desk of my gym A LOT more often than before asking to change the music.   

   The last week has been focused on back rehab, and all, I must say, is lookin up.  I’m actually really impressed with Swedish physical therapists.  I had my first official visit to one yesterday for my back(DEFINITELY not my first visit to a physical therapist) and I left feeling damn good.  Damn good.  Really positive experience.  Thank you Ingrid.  Thank you Frida for referring me.  Couple of highlights:using deadlifts and even running(haven’t been able to run in forever) as therapeutic exercises and getting a new Mckenzie adjustment exercise-actually the missing link I’ve been looking for for a couple of years now.  Thank God.  And I do.  Funny that it came in the package it did-as a ’set up’ to the other exercise…this is something that has a lot of meaning to me because lately I have been learning a lot of lessons having to do with just that-making things work by setting them up correctly and then doing whatever it is I have to do.  Candida is a perfect example, prebiotics then probiotics. 

   In other news, I did only a minor crushing of the legs yesterday, given that I was being careful in regards to the back.  I’ve pretty much made the decision to live and train for physical health first and goals/accomplishments second.  In the back of my mind, I feel like the latter are still important to me, but they’re just not going to be achieved if I don’t get this body in working order.  I mean, I was thinking about it yesterday and I have pain in pretty much all my bodyparts.  A lot of us experienced trainees do. 

    I did a 473.25 deadlift when I was 15 and tore ligaments in my lower back, now have problems with herniating discs.  Before that I had shoulder impingements and still do.  During that same time I started developing forearm and bicep problems that I still have and still haven’t gotten diagnosed.  I have periodic elbow pain.  I just started getting occassional pec pain.  One of my calves is half the size of the other and cramps roughly half the time I try to flex it.  I’ve torn my hamstring once and my gastroc twice. Tears are no joke, bud.  I think that just about covers it, but shit, that’s a lot.  I’m actually glad I listed it all out just now.  I’m just 25.  That’s a lot.  I need to take care of this body!  People wonder why I live the way I do…I have to! 

   Last, I found myself in two somewhat heavy conversations yesterday and the day before, I believe it was.  Yesterday’s was really heavy.  Funny thing though, for one of the very first time’s in my life I left the conversation with a point to drive down people’s throats still in my throat.  I said something that might have made me seem less positive in the eyes of others regarding something that was said at the very end of the discussion and after a moment, I decided to just let it rest.  I think the others are more than capable of putting two and two together given everything else I said in the same conversation and given my energy.  That was a bit of a test for me…to just be quiet.  I need to do a lot more of that.  Life is probably helping me by putting me in a country in which the language is still difficult for me. 

   The other conversation was about bodybuilding.  Funny, for the second time in a couple of months I found myself quietly defending the very people I tend to dislike more than others-bodybuilders.  It started with me saying my usual schpeal about how I tend to see bbers today and immediately think ‘what are you doing, why are you wearing what you are wearing, why are you acting the way you are acting, why have you decided to de-masculinize your own body and then try to pass it off for the exact opposite…what are you compensating for?’ 

    So I got all that out of my system and then, surprisingly, I found myself thinking ‘wait a second, why does anyone do anything?’ ’what motivates anyone to do anything?’  Well the answer I’ve come up with is curiousity coupled with some kind of want, or in other words, lack.  I think the reason most everyone does everything can be boiled down to trying to compensate for some kind of lack…the most enlightened of all people only lacking a sense of satisfaction or maybe even just fun-doing things just because they are bored…but the vast majority seem to do things because we are in some kind of significant discomfort based in fear and separation from what I would call the source, or God.  Most people have spread out their compensation over a wide variety of acts and avenues to feeling good, but some have put all the compensation into just one or two things-which sets them apart from the rest, maybe making them stand out as weird or even dysfunction in a way…but I think all boiled down, they are not that different at all from anyone else in regards to their need to compensate.  I think you’ll find that most of the people we consider to be the best of the best in anything share this single avenue quality.  From music to sports, maybe even to charity. 

  Just some thoughts…

July 6, 2008- Fail!

    That’s alright, a lot of good comes out of failure.  So I went to the wedding the other day, fasted all day till about 7, which started feeling pretty dang good right about then.  Then we went in for the banquet and I quickly realized that instead of it being a serve yourself kind of deal, it was a sit down and get served three proper courses type of meal with arranged seating and everything, which then made it harder for me to continue my fast given that it was going to draw attention to myself and seem somewhat rude, imo.  Of course, I could have done it, but at that particular moment, doing that was out of my comfort zone.  Kind of embarassing after everything that I wrote in my last entry, but I’m manning up now to clear the air and get back on track officially.

   Otherwise, of course, everything’s been good.  I ate great yesterday-had some raw lamb filet and that was surprisingly good.  I’m going to eat that more often, lots of fat on it.  Anyone who eats the way I do knows that fat is a most prized possession.  Everything is so anti-fat today that getting meat, organic meat, that hasn’t been stripped of it is like finding a goldmine.  These butchers and grocery stores don’t know what they’re throwing away when they callously trash pounds and pounds of organ meat and fat.  I would gladly pay for just the fat and the organs.  In fact, lately, at least one if not two of my daily meals consist of only fat. 

   In other news, I had a phenomenal time yesterday with my friends from work doing a physical/mental team challenge at the castle in Vaxholm.  Really fun challenges, specifically one where you had to make your way across a dark stone room, swinging on chains, to retrieve a key and put it back in it’s rightful place.  Part of the difficulty there was not just getting across the room but also getting back because by then your other teammates occupied most of the chains behind you that you needed to get back on while you were using the ones they needed to get there on.  Interestingly, my back does not feel nearly as permanently damaged as I thought it was going to feel today.  In fact, I dare say that it feels better than it did the day before!  I was relatively sure that all the running and wild movements were going to leave me with a blog that went something like this: ‘Hi guys, I’m quittting bodybuilding as I can no longer feel my legs.  Tack och hej, leverpastej."  Although, this idea that every new moment is just another oppurtunity to create whatever you want was one that was running through my mind right before we got started so I thought that if I stretched really well before the day’s activities maybe that would re-align me to an extent, which it did, and also free up some formerly paralyzed muscle tissue surrounding the disc to be used and strengthened with these very likely wild and flailing movements, thus making the situation even better, which it did!  Great Success!  In all seriousness, I was really apprehensive yesterday.  I was 100% sure that I was going to do serious damage.  Running+Paul does not usually=Great Success.

   Another great success for the day was eating with the team.  I don’t know how much everyone enjoyed watching me eat my raw lamb filet, but I enjoyed feeling somewhat comfortable eating it with them as they ate their food.  It has been too long since I did that.  Whereas before I was always eating the raw meat in public places to get the attention of others, lately I have been only eating it at home specfically to avoid the attention of others.  The first two stages served their purpose but now it’s time to start bringing everything back into reality, to start diffusing back into society and giving people the oppurtunity to accept me for me.  Nice feeling, new feeling. 

July 4, 2008-Hello Hello Hello!

    Good morning, good morning, good morning!  Nice to see you, thank you for coming.  I’ve realized something in the last few days.  Something that I’ve, of course, known logically for quite some time but hadn’t actually REAL-ized, that hadn’t actually diffused into my whole body just yet.  That is that many of the ‘mental’ problems people are suffering from, are actually physical problems resulting from poor nutrition and lack of sleep.  And I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that chronic anger is the biggest one and depression is the next biggest, often being a result of the anger.  I think, though, that a lot of people’s mental issues are the braindead child of chronic self inflicted physical abuse-not just depression and anger, but a whole slew of things that plenty of people take plenty of perscription drugs for, which, by the way, happen to end up in our waterways leaving us with toxic fish and dead plantlife.  

   With the exception of last night, because of an awesome conversation I had with my now ex Kristina, I have decided that for the time being it’s best that I start getting ready for bed at 8 and try and close my eyes by 9.15-9.30 or so.  I’m doing this, not because I particularly like it, but because roughly twice a week I have to wake up at 6 to train someone at 7 and if I were to only try and go to bed early on those nights, I would never be able to fall asleep.  Hence, the early bedtime every night.  I’ve also been eating great lately.  I mean really great, and I’m enjoying it.  In fact, a couple of times, I’ve walked by people eating junk and I’ve actually been very thankful that I ‘don’t have to do that.’  That I have come to the point in my life where I can actually turn my back for good or close to good if I want.  That I don’t have to be driven by that urge to act and kill myself slowly.  Now THAT, my friends, is a nice feeling.  The whole goal right now is to get inspiringly healthy; and, as I said in my last post, if I have to miss out on a couple of things because of it, then that’s what’s going to have to happen right now.  You make sacrifices in life for the greater good.

    I’ve noticed in these last couple of days, as my energy levels have been steadily increasing along with my dislike for low energy that I am actually in control over how I feel.  That even when falling into the old patterns of anger and resentment, I can say to myself ‘I don’t actually have to feel this way right now’ and then, seemingly magically to me, stop feeling that way.  This has never happened to me before.  In fact, I’ve always been a kind of slave to certain emotions-anger and frustration being the big ones.  Maybe because they’ve been the driving force in my life for so long.  They’ve been very useful, those two emotions, but I think it’s time to go.  It’s time for me to start doing things because I want to do things rather than doing things because I desperately don’t want the negation of those things.  There’s a damn big difference between those two motivating factors.  

   In other news, the workouts have been pretty stellar.  Did upperbody/lowerbody sessions this week and I’ll probably continue doing that for a few weeks.  It seems to me that one of the main issues with fullbody sessions and taking so many days off is that the growth hormonal effect on the body is not as great as with the daily sessions. I’m not just talking GH here, I’m talking testosterone as well.  I notice that when I do at least something daily, I’m a bit more like the person I’ve always identified with and when I train just 2x weekly, I’m a bit more subdued.  Having said that, it counts even if it’s just stretching, some cardio, and just a bit of strength training for a smaller muscle groups like forearms or neck or calves. 

    Anyway, I have a wedding to go to and I have a wrinkly suit that needs ironing.  I’m fasting today…we’ll see how that goes over at the banquet. Ha!

June 29, 2008-I’m evolving.   

   Thing’s are going well on my end.  Have had quite a few great workouts in a row, have slept enough or close to enough every night for the last week, been eating real well, been spending time in the sun and in the fresh air of the forests every single day…I’m living the life! 

   I’ve come to the conclusion that this idea I have been brooding on and about for the last I don’t know how many years, that I need to always get to the rock bottom of what’s wrong to get to what’s right is a kind of faulty one.  In fact, it’s one that was probably born out of my own desire to always live a comfy life-never really doing anything to change, rather just waiting for it to magically happen as I allowed myself to compound negatively reinforcing behaviors on top of negatively reinforcing behaviors.  This whole time I’ve totally ignored the fact that doing what’s wrong still only helps you understand what not to do.  It’s the accumulation of doing the right things that leads to significant change, along with maybe a few negative reinforcements(for reminder). 

    As I said in my last post, for several years I have been battling this idea that you really can’t eat and live the way I do and still have a social life.  I was battling that even before I went raw-because I didn’t drink.  It’s terrible question to have to ask yourself-’do I want to be healthy or do I want to enjoy my life?’  Not only is it terrible, it’s a bit ignorant-in the end, you won't, very likely, enjoy your life if you are not living a healthy life. 

    The problem is one that boils down to conditioning.  I, and many others, have been conditioned to believe and actually physically feel un-social when not partaking in the consumption of something-which usually happens to be something I don’t want in me.  I’ve always had a hard time, and still do, at parties where I don’t eat or where I don’t drink.  This idea is something that has been irking me forever, something I can’t seem to shake: a person’s confidence, a person’s feeling of self worth, a person’s comfort should not be based on whether or not they are partaking in that which the rest of the crowd is partaking in.  In other words, a person’s confidence should be based on qualities and things that go with them at all times rather than things that they have to do or consume. 

     I’ve been talking about this for years, but I’ve actually put my foot down to an extent now.  I still always want to be an open person, so the door will never slam shut, but it feels good to just turn my back on crap living and tell people that they can do as they wish but I will not partake even more than I wasn’t partaking in it before.  Even better, a certain sense of confidence-or really just a continuation of the confidence I always have-seems to get instilled in me when I realize that this is a concious decision and I am proud of it and like where it leads.  With every passing day of simply making good decisions like eating the way I like eating(raw and organic), taking time to get outside in the sun and fresh air, and going to bed early so I get enough sleep; my head get’s clearer, I become a less angry person, an even less confused person, and my energy levels rise enough to give me insight into new things that I hadn’t thought of before.  It’s really an awesome experience. 

    This whole time I’ve been trying to beat myself into the strict adherance of this lifestyle by giving myself all kinds of F’ups in hopes that they will negatively reinforce me enough to never eat junk food again and the answer was right in front of me: just make the decision and start living it-you might have F’ups, but get back on track, live it and before long the F’ups will be a thing of the past. 

   Now, the ego in me wants to remind my readers that over the years I have still been something like 98% raw with somewheat regular social cheats, but those last 2% really make a difference to me.  Not just in wanting to always be 100%, but there’s a real, profound physical difference between 100% and 98.  There really is.  98 never seems to let me get to really great feeling.  100 puts me there almost instantly but with the social dilemma.  And as I said, I am now leaving it up to my peers to comform to me rather than the other way around in regards to this.  I’m pulling a kind of John Galt on them.  Nobody has to adopt my lifestyle, but if people are going to be around me then they should get real comfortable with their own lifestyle’s because mine isn’t going to be changing for the worse anytime soon just to suit a group of partygoers.  

    I remember a conversation I had with my ex girlfriend several years back about me being so extreme and her not being able to connect to that, and I told her that I would probably just get more extreme, that my lifestyle would probably be even more outlandish in a couple of years.  Maybe it is, but I don’t think it’s negative by any means.  In fact, I think it’s really cool and I love living it.  I eat raw, I grow trees, I pick up a lot of trash, I make my own probiotics, I’m enthralled by the spirit world, I actually believe in elves(so does almost all of Iceland, just ask them), and I bodybuild but I prefer not to shave my body…all this stuff is very hard for a lot of people to swallow, but at some point you just have to say ‘hey, this is me and this is what I’ve come to understand is best for me so it’s up to you to accept it and even learn to like it if you’re going to be around me.  Like it because it’s what’s best for me and what’s best for me is what’s best for you.’  Done.

June 25, 2008-A short one

     So, I was on my way home yesterday for a four hour break in the middle of my work day.  It’s not that often one of those comes along.  I was tired from not sleeping the best the night before and really looking forward to just chilling and surfing some internet at home.  Funny, one of the things I’ve been telling myself for weeks now is that I am so sick of sitting at home surfing the internet and I even feel like the computer is making me sick to an extent.  Anyway, I’m in the elevator and I reach into my pocket to, once again, NOT find my house key.  Literally the ten millionth time I’ve been locked out of my house.  This has been happening since I was a little boy-I’m talking constantly.  It’s like I am genetically wired to lose my friggin keys.  But alas, after a brief moment of intense anger(as is usually the case with me when basically anything perceivably negative happens in my life), I realized that this is just another situation.  Neither good nor bad.  Make it what you want it to be.  That, to me, felt much better than being intensely angry-I’m getting real tired of that emotion.  So I thought to myself, ‘you know, just yesterday you blogged about how you are going to try to spend some time outdoors and in the sun everyday.  Now’s your chance-life’s just nudging you a bit.’

   So I’m walkin down the street and probably not more than 20 meters from my apartment building I run across a big beach blanket folded and sitting nicely on some meter device on the sidewalk.  Not even thinking twice, I grab it up and keep walking.  That’s very unusual for me.  Afterwards, I of course, worried that I was stealing someone’s blanket but I reasoned it away given the flow of events.  Funny thing though, I automatically assumed the blanket was for me to give to this homeless guy I have been watching for the last two days in the park 5 minutes from my house.  He has been spending his nights there on a bench or under a tree if it rains.  He actually looks pretty well equipped but when I saw him the other night, I thought that he could definitely use one more blanket.  And, of course, lo and behold, there was one more blanket.  It wasn’t until I went to the park and couldn’t find that homeless guy that it dawned on me’…Oh…this is for me.’   Haha, so I turned around after a little more searching and went to this old folk’s home, outside of which I like to lay and sunbathe. 

    It wasn’t the greatest day in the whole wide world for sunbathing, but it did the trick.  I rolled out the blanket and basked for a while.  The sun gave me some of her energy, as is evidenced by the tan, and I felt better afterwards.   I did the same today, although with a buddy-went on a walk through the forest and chilled in the sun for a while, while we talked life.  I noticed something the other day though.  Something that I couldn’t quite ever grasp before.  I realized that I always do like ten things at once.  If I’m doing one thing, I’m thinking about another as well.  Right now, in fact, I have two windows open as I write this.  Usually, I have like five.  It dawned on me that it might be smarter to just be in the moment.  Do this now, or in other words, be here now.  I could never grasp that phrase before-be here now-it always seemed too far out for me.  But I think I get it now.  I think it’s a lot more logical and practical than I might have thought before.  It might just mean ‘do this now, so you can do that then; that way you can do them both well.’  It’s something I’ve been telling people forever-work on you now so you can actually help people properly in the future.  Strange to think I hadn’t really understood it before.  It seems to me that I might not be in such a rush as I have always felt that I’m in.  Death could come knocking tomorrow, but it probably won’t.  I don’t necessarily have to take care of everything now-espcially given the fact that I’m able to!  If we concentrate on doing one thing, even though it may not immediately provide us or anyone else a measurably great service, maybe we can provide ourselves and everyone else a much greater service in the future, given that we won’t have this old thing nagging us and taking up our thoughts.  What do you think about that internet world!?

   In other news, my triceps are destroyed from my workout the other day.  Same with my glutes.  I started doing 45 degree leg presses again for the first time in forever, basically just because I can’t squat with the back issue.  You know what a pain in the arse those are!  Literally.  Quads and hams barely even feel it.  Lookin forward to a new day tomorrow.  Take it easy.

                Love, Paul

ps. I put the blanket back where I found it when I was done with it. 

June 23, 2008-Well…   

     As is usually the case…things haven’t gone as planned.  Now, I consider that a good thing for the most part.  My whole idea of balancing a kind of healthfully lax social life with a very clean daily life hasn’t really panned out.  My original thought, right after I started raw, was that the people around me should accept me and my lifestyle as such and be able to enjoy themselves regardless of what I am doing.  I later, after seeing what a big failure that was, adopted the ‘well, maybe I’ll just join’em’-if you can’t beat, join’em kind a thing.  You see, much like being the only sober guy at the party, being the only person at the party not eating junk food makes other people uncomfortable.  Arguably worse, if I decided to actually be myself and eat the food that I want to eat; I then usually find myself surrounded by onlookers and explaining my whole nutrition and life philosophy and telling the same stories that I have already told 1000x pretty much all night long-this happens almost without fail-go ahead and try it, start eating raw chicken in front of a bunch of people eating normal food at a party.  

     Unfortunately, the ‘if you can’t beat’em, join’em’ philosophy has also proved itself more than unworthy of my time and effort.  The biggest reason being that I never really feel good like I used to.  I never have enough time to detox from the weekends and catch up on sleep(when I eat junk I sleep REALLY poorly).  I still never drink, but it’s always been hard for me to not eat with my friends-I really feel the social pressure, and I can percieve their disappointment when I decline their offer to eat with them but offer my company in return.  Maybe I am imagining it, but I really don’t think I am-really, I would probably be the same way and very likely am the same way in any number of different situations.  In fact, I know I am.  There is plenty of stuff I really love doing that I would love my friends to do with me that is often met with polite rejection.  That’s ok, that’s how life works I guess; I just wish we didn’t all take it quite so hard.  Not that we get up and cry, but there’s always that moment of disappointment. 

     And it’s that moment that defines my next approach: going back to my orginal line of thought, but with a sexier attitude.  My whole issue before was that I was always either downplaying what I was doing, trying to fit in so as to not draw too much attention to what I was eating/doing or I was overdoing it specifically to draw attention to myself.  And my issue afterwards was that I was becoming a person I didn’t want to be: one that worships balance so much that he doesn’t see the truth right in front of his eyes-that this kind of balance is making him sicker than the fun he’s having is making him healthier.  So it’s not balance I want either-well at least not 50-50 balance, or even 90-10.  I want something more like 99-1.  Or, for the time being, 100-0(I don’t know if that counts).  Right now I feel like I have to be proud of the lifestlyle I live and allow myself to live it in public again like I did when I first started.  Although this time, live it for it, rather than for any and all attention it get’s me-which was very easy to get caught up in at first. 

     I still remember when I met my ex-girlfriend’s mom for the first time.  I was driving her in my car, with one hand on the wheel and the other feeding myself with a bleeding steak, dripping down my arm and onto the car seat.  She laughed and was shocked, as I’m sure a lot of people would have been, but that’s not really what I’m looking for these days.  Now, given that I’m so convinced that this lifestyle is such a good one, I’d like people to be turned on by it, not just shocked by it.  I’d like people to see it as I see it and I see it as the healthiest, greatest thing I have ever done for myself. 

   For the time being, maybe forever-who knows, my plan is to just stick to living as I know best and let the people around me know that they have to step it up too if they want to feel good about themselves.  They have to understand that just because I am not engaging in the same activity as they are doesn’t mean they are less of a person or lazy or whatever.  Instead of making them feel really terrible for their lives, I’d like to help make people feel real good, excited, about starting something new and healthy with their lives.  There’s a difference between the two.  I think, given the right circumstance, they both yield good results; but the latter might work for a larger number of people.  It seems to me that it’s usually only the people who are REALLY stuck in a rut, a devastating kind of pattern, that need to get scared straight-that need to feel really bad about what they are doing right this instant so as to change.  The others, which accounts for most of us, might be enticed better with honey than with vinager. 

    This, what I just said, represents a big change for me.  Me being the person I am-kind of half angry almost all the time and really angry the rest of the time, has always sought to put people in their place and force change by way of showing people exactly how stupid I really think they are.  Of course, that’s at odds with my thoughts that people do the best they can with what they’ve learned and when they have had the experiences they’ve needed to grow, they grow.  So I know my attitude is some kind of backlash.  Some kind of fear driven backlash.  I think I’ve almost always taken the negative reinforcement route and I’m glad I did because now I see what an inredible failure rate it has.  It seems that negative reinforcement is great at getting someone out of a the worst of the worst, but after that it’s always positive reinforcement that is responsible for their further growth-the pain of the negative doesn’t seem to last longer than it takes to get out of the terrible situation,  This is not an incredibly new realization for me, but it’s application really is.  I have been talking for so long about this but not acting.  And all talk and no action makes Paul go crazy. 

   So here’s the plan: Eat raw, all raw for a good long time-at least until I’m feeling really healthy and vibrant on a more consistant basis.  Also, I think I’ll incorporate regular 2x weekly fasts.  Maybe just 3/4 day fasts, or at most 24 hours.  They’ll be dry or juice, whatever I that day.  I’d also like to get into the habit of going out to my dad’s place more often-to see him and also take more walks in the clean air of the forests.  I think the regular energy boost will do me good.  And last, I’d like to make time for getting some sun on a daily basis.  Again, the energy boost from that will do me real good.  And last, I’d like to start living externally like I either feel internally or want to feel internally-and want everyone else to feel internally, so instead of people feeling bad about being around someone who lives as I do, they feel excited about maybe changing themselves into something more sustainable than they currently are. 

June 13, 2008-9.39, friday night in Stockholm. I am at home blogging.

   Today’s blog, unlike pretty much all the rest, is being started with no direction.  I have no ideas, so I’m just going to see where that takes me. 

   I had a great workout yesterday.  Full body mix of HIT and volume(2 sets instead of one). I still struggle with motivation to get in any better shape than I’m already in.  I realize that must sound so cocky to some people, and undeservedly so(I’m not in the same shape now as I am in the pics), but I’m already in real good shape…I keep asking myself ‘what’s next?’ and ‘what’s the point of getting any stronger or any bigger?’  I’ve already determined that it’s the type of person I basically don’t want to be that uses size and strength to fill a confidence void in their lives.  But I’ve also nearly determined that literally every single act in life is to fill a void of some sort, and ultimately they all boil down to being some kind of confidence/comfort/happiness void.  In addition to that, I’ve nearly determined that that is precisely the reason I am here on earth-so as to go through the actions to fill those voids(which I think I willingly accepted upon birth) and thus reap the benefits of the lessons learned in the process.  Maybe it’s just that the lessons that have to do with traditional Bbing have been pretty much learned now.  I know that I am still motivated to being a fully functional great athlete, I know that I’m still motivated to rehabilitate my back.  Maybe that’s because there are still lessons to be learned there, or maybe lessons to be learned in future activities and situations that I will need a fully functional body for. 

   For the time being, and I’m sure you can tell, I kind of look down on people who do these things to be better than the next guy, to be this and that…to be anything freaky or outrageous.  I can assure you, this is a very clear reflection of a clear lack of understanding and experience in me.  Looking down on anyone, even if it’s a knee jerk reaction like it is in me, is just a sign that you have a ways to go.  I still get angry with people all the time.  Probably because I feel threatened by them-most of the time it has something to do with people being what I initially percieve as lazy which I then immediately feel is a threat to my happiness-maybe because I am too lazy to make myself happy!  Give you a great example, I’ll bet you know few people who get as angry as I do at people who don’t put away their weights-who actually relate this to their freedom being stripped from them.  You see how knee jerk that is?-I can almost feel it right now.  It’s not my thoughts, it’s my feelings.  And my feelings have not been tempered enough by my thoughts just yet.  I still have a lot of these knee jerk reactions to sort out, a lot of feeling like most people just constantly screw everything up to work out.  

    My thoughts tell me the truth, my feelings betray me.  My thoughts are based on experiences I’ve had along with those I’ve not yet had; my feelings are based, seemingly, only on past experiences.  Feelings are really, I would say are focused on a bit too much-most of them are very base in nature and, on top of that, they’re all passing, it seems.  The real goal is to get your feelings in line with your thoughts and make both of those ideal; make them virbrate wildly with excitement.   Then feelings and thoughts beceome something entirely different, something that can’t be emphasized enough.  But for the time being, there’s too much ’I feel this way and that way’ stuff going around.  To be honest, we all feel this way and that way and we’re all likely way off from the ideal.  Why not temper our feelings with our thoughts?  Feelings shouldn’t be ignored, but in an attempt to not ignore them…we have ignored our thoughts!  I have too.  Everytime I feel someone is acting worthlessly for doing this and that and I react immediately with some rediculous comment inside my head, I prove beyond a shadow of a doubt, my immaturity.  On the one hand, we have to allow ourselves to be our curent feelings and thoughts so as to learn from them; on the other hand we have to also allow ourselves to be the people we want to be at times rather than just the people we are. 

June 9, 2008-The latest…

     Not too much to offer, haven’t been up to a whole lot but laying in the sun, working out a bit, and a bit of tree planting.  The norms. I don’t know how many people still visit my site from way back when I first launched it, but if there are any still around, they might recall that one of my hobbies is growing trees from seed.  I feel so incredibly connected with trees, almost in love with them, actually.  Some literally make me talk to them, they make me tell them how beautiful they are.  I really do, I can’t help it; think what you will. 

    Anyway, easily the coolest place I’ve ever been to in my life is Giant Sequoia National Park.  The energy there is something you can’t imagine.  It’s like walking back in time.  All the way back to prehistoric ages.  Just an incredible incredible feeling-in your lungs, on your skin, in your eyes, in your nose…everywhere.  You know you are alive in that place.  I have been planting giant sequoia seeds ever since my trip there.  I’ve had plenty of failures and a bit of success, as is usually the case.  Right now, I’ve got just under a thousand or so seeds going, along with some Ficus Religiosa and Ficus Bengalensis.  Those last two are both incredible incredible trees from India: enormous, roots everywhere, gigantic canopy, very flowing look…etc.  I’ve got quite a few of those growing as well.  Something really turns me on about creating like this, watching them grow and breathing them in.  I can almost feel it.  I’m really hoping that these sequoias turn out this time around-I am growing them outside, which I have had basically no success with in the past…but let’s see what happens. 

   In other news, I’ve been doing a lot of life planning lately.  Thinking about businesses, making money, thinking about bodybuilding, thinking about spirituality and religion, thinking about spirituality vs. religion…etc.  I grew up with a kind of praying obcession, a kind of real terrible fear of hell and God.  I got out of that and left organized religion in the dust until I was 22 or so.  Then after a couple of very strange occurances drawing me back to spirituality and religion both, I found myself very obcessed again.  As I’ve said before though, obcession seems to be life’s way of getting people to figure something out.  It’s like life telling us that there is something there that needs to be figured out.  The greatest things in my life, the ones I cherish the most are all the result of obcession.  Now they are normal beliefs or lifestlye choices, but they started as something that most people would call totally un-normal and something that should have been run away from.  I’m glad I didn’t go that route, I don’t think I would have managed it to be honest…I don’t actually think that anybody manages it. When life wants to get your attention, it has a way of doing so. 

   On the bodybuilding front, I’ve come to a few conclusions.  First, I really need to be more than just a regular bber.  I can’t do this just putting on muscle thing any longer.  It’s too ignorant of the rest of fitness and life, for my taste.  I’m really enjoying stretching and rolling lately.  I’m enjoying doing my back therapy-because it’s a kind of creation, a building of something.  What I’d really like to do is be a damn good athlete.  Fit, strong, very flexible, and painfree.  I know this is just my lack of understanding, but I still have a strong distaste built up towards just bodybuilding to get bigger.  This seems quite the opposite of what most of these guys claim to be or want to be:hyper-manly…this seems kind of hypo-manly…the same with chains, the same with tattoos, the same with everything else excessively macho.  None of this stuff represents testerone or masculinity-it all represents the lack of, imo.  I know, I’m making judgements….but just call them generalizations, I know there are exceptions.  If I were really forced to define it, I would say that masculinity is defined, not by the spirit, but by the animal; and it looks much like these things that a lot of guys make themselves into(that’s why they do it, that’s why I’ve done it), but it seems to come from a totally different place and manifest itself more subtley: it’s the difference between silent agression and a rage-aholic. 

   I went to see a very cool thing this weekend: an exact replica of a 1700s merchant ship called the Götheborg.  What was interesting was that it took them 9 years to build this thing, starting in 1995.  In the 1700s, the original Götheborg was built in 9 months.  I was talking with a client about this, about the fact that we don’t really have real craftsmen any longer.  The talent seems to have disappeared when it comes to physical work pertaining to arts or crafts.  I almost decided right then that that is a good way of describing what I want to be when it comes to be body-a kind of body craftsman.  One that works to truly perfect and creates a real piece of art-not just a big piece of art.  This piece of art is least 3 dimensional, so it has to be perfected from many angles.  It can’t just be big.  It can’t just be good looking through the eyes of a bodybuilder.  It has to be appealing to the athlete, the artist, and the layman alike.  And it has to actually work.  It has to be a holy creation, a temple. 

May 31, 2008-The Dry Fast

   Another series of events seems to be taking place, moving me in a certain direction.  I have become more and more conscious of these series’ of events lately…and for the time being that makes them challenging-the fact that I sense them/see then unfolding coupled with my, I would say, very human reaction to want to forcefully direct them rather than let them unfold with subtle, almost unconscious direction.  Anyway, one of the things I seem to be moving toward is dry fasting. I’ve been doing intermittent fasting for one or two years now and it seems it’s time to move onto the next step.  Most of my fasts have been 12-24 hours, but I did do a 3 day and a 6 day, and maybe a 2 day somewhere in there.  They have all been hydrated fasts, either with water or vegetable juices. 

    For the last couple months, though, I’ve been noticing that liquid, usually water, doesn’t always have the great effect on my body that everyone else seems to be talking about.  For the most part, I feel like this is because I am gulping it down by the cup rather than just slowly and carefully drinking what I need and moving on.  I haven’t pretty much ever drank as much water as the average bber out there and, despite that, I still feel like I am drinking more than I need to because it just doesn’t sit quite right.  A sip or a gulp or three sits very well, but more than a cup usually doesn’t.  After this feeling kind of solidified in me, after lots of experiences, I started running into articles about how drinking tons of water actually doesn’t have this great cleansing effect on the body and even that the body cleans itself best when it is completely at rest-not consuming anything: in other words, dry fasting.  The first little article I read that got me thinking was this one, it’s just a little blip: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89323934

   Anyway, this isn’t all that new to me.  Actually this was one of the first things I learned when I got into raw eating-that you should try to get your water from water rich foods rather than drowning yourself in it and flushing out a lot of healthy things that you want to stay in your body by drinking it.  The fact of the matter is though, that I wasn’t ready for that really.  I went full force into it and that probably had a certain good effect in that it got me started and pushed me along, but it was never something I was able to quite get into really.  Now, after close to four years, it is something that I am really ready or getting really ready to get into.  Now I’ve had the experiences that have led me into the place I need to be to do this: to reduce my drinking water intake, to increase my food water intake, and to do intermittent dry fasting-although, I think the end result will be more like fasting dry until I come to a point of diminishing returns, taking a sip or two, and then continuing to fast dry-and this could all take place within the time frame of just a day.  I really like that idea of doing what works to get the job done with the thought in mind that the point is to evolve into a more efficient, joyful, loving, happy person.  See, without that last little part there, just doing what needs to be done to get the job done can, think, have less than desirable effects.

   In other news, I’m becoming a bigger and bigger fan of the middle ground; and much of that stems from me being weary of things that I have to chase after, things that I have to constantly strive to become so as to attain happiness-for example, a non-materialist.  I guess a materialist, in my eyes, is someone who worships or lives for the physical, who holds that above all else.  I don’t want to be that person.  Someone who strives to become as least materialistic as humanly possible-who lives for this ideal-seems, in my opinion, to be equally as confused as the first person.  I don’t want to be that person either.  That person seems to display a kind of fear, derived from a strong sense of discomfort, which could evolve into-I really don’t like using this word-a hate for the physical.  The way of love and creation doesn’t seem have a whole lot of room for eternal hate and fear-which is, essentially, how I would describe the attitude towards the physical of a person who is on a constant quest to deny it, to minimize it into nothingness and stamp it out. 

    The person I want to be loves the physical, but loves the spiritual more.  A person who worships things that do no rot, but respects and admires things that do-because they are a part of creation, they are the result of thought, they are not just a piece of the whole but an extremely important piece!  The problem is, most people have worshipping the physical down to such an art that the people that I call the masters have to continually remind us and stress to us the importance of the spiritual, the everlasting.

    So, I’d like to conclude this blog with a bit from a sermon made by the 16 year old ‘Buddha boy,’ Ram Bahadur Bomjon: “But though it is easy to lead this ignorant existence, human beings don’t understand that one day we must leave this uncertain world and go with the Lord of Death. Our long attachments with friends and family will dissolve into nothingness. We have to leave behind the wealth and property we have accumulated. What’s the use of my happiness, when those who have loved me from the beginning, my mother, father, brothers, relatives are all unhappy?”

May 24, 2008-Not a mistake…

    a great lesson.  I had a cheat meal last night, went out for Indian with some friends.  It was not only the first bite of cooked food I’ve had in about a month and a half but also the first substantial amount of sugar I’ve had in a month and a half.  I’ve never felt sicker from cooked food.  Almost immediately I noticed that I developed a kind of drunken feeling and it seemed to just skip over the happy, pleasant drunk feeling though and go straight to the end of a long night of heavy drinking drunk feeling-head swimming, body slow to respond type of feeling compounded with the I have a boulder in my stomach kind of feeling that I always get from eating cooked food.  Anyway, that’s over and has provided me some good neuro-conditioning.  It took a couple hours before I was feeling good again, and now this morning I am feeling slightly hungover, as is usually the case.  With raw, it really seems that I have to have either one cooked meal every couple weeks or basically never eat cooked if I don’t want to feel this way.  Once every couple of months is torture.  It has to be done, but it’s torture.  But I know two things: I learn best from action and the truth makes itself known.  These once every now and again cooked meals give not only my mind a better understanding but also my body.  The lesson diffuses into my whole being-and that is what I want.  The goal is not to only eat healthy food, the goal is to only want healthy food; and I don’t think the strict denial path is going to lead me there…nor will the path of indulgence.  The best way is one that is best-that’s kind of a weird way of saying it but that is exactly how I mean it: The narrowest path, the way, is the one that is best.

     Chemical addiction, I can already tell you, is the scourge of our generation.  I’m making you a promise right now, not because I am a prophet or have had any kind of vision, but because it’s plain as day, that liver cancer, chemical induced hepatitis, and what would seem to be HIV-less AIDS are going to shoot sky high before our time is up here on Earth.  I’ve never ever seen so many unhealthy people in my life.  I’ve never seen so many alcoholics almost unconscious on the streets and on the trains in my life-I mean, they actually litter the streets on some days.  I’m telling you, people are waiting for these world ending disasters, waiting for WWIII, waiting for something outside of themselves to come and destroy them and the Earth in a big way…all the while, the real disaster is happening right under their noses.  I’ve been one of those aforementioned people as well, but i learned quick: we reap what we sow and what we are sowing right now is disease.  The real disaster, once again, is happening right under our noses while we are busy looking everywhere but here, while we are guarding ourselves from everyone but ourselves. 

    Healthy food is getting real expensive, so cheap food, which people are already addicted to, looks even better.  Drinking is an absolute must for socializing now, an absolute must, and quantities are going up-there was an article in the paper, just recently actually, about how bars are buying bigger mugs because of increased demand. I really don’t think it’s just a new perspective telling me this, I really think that I’ve not seen this many alcoholics here in Sweden, EVER.  And I know the world has never has so many well fed yet under nourished people before.  Now that’s a concept: lots of full stomachs, very little nourishment. 

    I see a shift, I know it’s happening, I feel real strongly that it’s going to end up alright, but I also see that there is going to be some discomfort along the way.  Of course, the discomfort is necessary for us to develop a new way of living-the adversity, as usual, promotes creation and understanding.  And the easiest way to get through it all is the best way.  Probably a very compassionate way mixed in with a few hard thumps.  My way has always been the anger way, brow beat’em and hard thump’em all way.  Life has made it clear to me that that is unacceptable.  The way for me right now seems to involve lots more compassion to build up people’s spirits, lots of denying myself by turning the other cheek-lots of denying my immediate responses and feelings of anger and swollen pride which are mostly just the summation of my past experiences and replacing them with doing what is actually going to get people back on track.  This is hard for me.   

     I’m telling you, for a while there, life was all anger all the time.  It doesn’t work, I promise it doesn’t work.  It’s a reflection of what I said earlier, the plague of this generation is addiction-a lot of people are stuck in very hard cycle: bouncing back and forth between feeling uncomfortable and handling it with the same negative response over and over again-well, seeing these things, seeing injustice and getting spitting mad everytime you/I see it is the EXACT SAME THING: addiction.  When will you turn the other cheek?  When will I?  I have a feeling the answer to those two questions are very related. 

   Just a couple of thoughts for the day.  It’s time for me to get up and get moving.  I had a workout planned today, but given the situation, I’m going to push it to tomorrow.  I went kayaking yesterday, for about 3 hours, and my abs are so friggin sore I can barely sit up in bed…a day off isn’t a bad idea. 

May 21, 2008-Body is feeling like a million bucks.

    The mind is contemplative.  And usually when it’s contemplative, it’s because it’s not feeling like a million bucks.  I’ve come to a point in my life where I am starting to experience what I think is a rather common problem.  Guilt.  Not guilt for actually doing something negative to someone or something; rather, guilt for not doing all I can to remedy the problems that most need remedying.  Right now, the one that seems to be on my mind the most is the homeless.  I’ve been talking to them lately and helping as I see fit, but there is still more to be done.  Stockholm has a number you can call actually, which connects you to a group of people that go and pick up homeless people and offers them all the help the city offer them(from programs to shelters…etc).  I called that number yesterday after I ran across a homeless man, seemingly very confused outside the subway station.  They were thankful and sent someone over there.  Whether they found him or not, I don’t know.  Immediately after that though, I already started getting this anxious feeling that I could get out of control with this whole thing if I didn’t figure something out-meaning, I would be calling them every two seconds, whenever I saw a homeless person, in need or not.  Later in the day, I saw another.  This one just from the window of the subway on my way home.  I thought to myself that I didn’t need to call seeing as how I didn’t know if he was in any kind of trouble or not, given that I couldn’t talk to him.  That decision was quickly over-ruled.  I called and attempted to describe to them exactly where he was and after a while I think they finally understood me(my Swedish is still not the best) and went and did what they do.  Again, I don’t know if they got to him or not-I was tempted to go back to where he was(it was a very short walk) and wait until they got there, to keep him busy if I had to…but I didn’t, I felt like it was more for obsessive reasons than good ones.      This has been on my mind a little too much lately.  Before this, it was these alcoholics that you see everywhere here, whom are publicly drunken and in visibly very bad physical shape-sores everywhere, awful awful looking skin..etc.  I had the feeling I should stop wasting my time doing whatever it was I was doing(usually just being lazy) and go talk to them about their problems, try and get them to step up and turn their life around. 

   One thing I know is that the truth makes itself known.  Seek and you shall find, ask and you shall receive.  So I talked to them, not about about their issues per se, but just about everyday stuff and tried a get a good feel for what I should do; and I started to get a feeling…a feeling that I have felt many times before in other situations…that one event usually doesn’t turn anything or anyone around.  Even if it’s a huge event.  There’s still build up-there’s still the events that led up the The Event that gave us the mindset to interpret said Event as a life changing one.  There’s still positive and negative reinforcement afterwards that keeps us on the path we’re on-or pushes us off. (Now I’m going to go off topic for a second)-It seems to me that there is no such thing as instant change…with the exception of creation, with the exception of the initial thought that started all of this, that created all that we see here.  Beliefs, or focus seem to create our reality…but the ones we have now seem to be based on an infinite amount of past experiences, situations, other beliefs…etc.  The initial belief, I believe, was much less of a belief than it was a thought.  A very simple thought, a curiosity. 

   Getting back on track: I get the feeling(and as of yet, this is still just a hunch) that the best thing I can do for most of these people is not so much to try and save them at every opportunity I get by calling the homeless police or preaching to them about alcoholism, but rather to build their energy, to raise their spirits.  To get them feeling better so they can come to the point in time, all the sooner, at which they will be ready to make a decision that will turn out to be a life long major one, a life changing event-this requires many experiences and the right mindset to actually work…I don’t think it often happens too early-rather more likely, later than necessary.  What I just said though, must also be tempered with the fact that there are those out there right now who do actually need and are quite ready to be ’saved’ by the above treatment-the homeless police, the preaching…etc.  What comes above everything, above every ideal, in my opinion, is doing what works when it works.  Not too much, not too little, and hopefully something that will set us all up for a brighter easier future.  And what works for the vast majority, in my opinion, is not a scramble to get them out of trouble, but rather a dose of truth mixed in with love/compassion. 

   I still have a very strong suspicion that many of these things we do for others, for charity, we do not for them, but actually for ourselves.  We do it for our personal development.  Usually not conciously, but I think it’s the case nonetheless.  Few times have I learned better lessons than from what I have learned from doing something philanthropic.  But to be totally honest, I don’t even know if you can call most of what I’ve done philanthropic.  Most of it was not because I am such a good person and bla bla bla, most was because of guilt.  Because I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t do anything.  That’s not very charitable at all.  And yet I learned much.  The first thing being that much wisdom stems from fear.  Fear is the beginning point, it’s the lowest and wisdom is the highest.  One of the most important lessons I’m learning is how to be a bit more gentile.  How to help someone find their place rather than just picking them up and putting them in their place-which works at times, but at times doesn’t…I know one girl in particular who would probably say I’m still pretty bad at that, maybe even downright lousy.    

   The last lesson I’m going to write about, one of the most important next to the two aforementioned, is that of seeing it through.  Now, on the street it plays out more like helping a person until they truly don’t need help any longer.  But on the person, on and in me, it plays out a bit more like a lesson in persistence.  This lesson is no surprise, it’s one that my grandfather told his children and grandchildren-one of his most highly cherished character traits-persistence.  Doing until it’s done.  Going all the way-even long after it stopped being comfortable if necessary.  This is a lesson that plays out in my life all the time.  I have a tendency to do until my sense of comfort is appeased enough that it no longer needs any more work to stay quiet and not bother me.  What an incredible misunderstanding, right?!  All that usually ends up doing is continually raising your level of comfort and decreasing your threshhold for discomfort.  I guess in some cases that’s good, but it’s also a real easy way to literally paralyze yourself in inactivity!  I’ve been looking at my apartment for the last couple of weeks, thinking to myself ‘jeez this place is messy, why don’t you just clean it up?’ And sometimes I do.  I clean until my sense of comfort is appeased.  Of course, my sense of comfort is low as hell!  The place is almost always still a mess!  Well, it’s not such a mess anymore.  This has been the world’s longest blog for me because I’ve been doing so many thing inbetween paragraphs-one of which being giving this apartment a real do-over. 

   This is something that rolls over into all areas of life.  Appeasing myself and my sense of comfort, appeasing ourselves and our senses of comfort has kept me and almost everyone else from actually doing anything of any worth.  From actually getting anything done.  This isn’t because something is inherently wrong with us.  It’s because something is very right with us, in fact.  This is a survival trait.  But we have been given free will and have come to a point in time where this trait doesn’t serve us in the same way that it once did.  Now it is time to use our free will to mold our present and future more consciously than we have in the past. 

    I understand that the goal is the journey, but the journey can’t be cut short by miles and miles just because we feel like the goal is too far away.  The goal has to be pursued at least a little bit more, with at least a little more creative thought, with at least a little more awareness. 

    Now, if I could give you just one little tip in pursuing your journey, one that I find hard to do myself but I know is very important nonetheless: Be quiet. 

  Stop doing everything, don’t listen to anything, don’t read anything, don’t eat anything.  Just sit there and think.  The biggest reason people are so confused is that they can’t think with so much stuff going on.  Don’t just try it, get it done, do it for a good long while; and if it doesn’t work, modify it, and then get it done.

May 20, 2008-Oh Yea, Oh Yea.  

    First fullbody HIT workout for almost a year and it went off without a hitch.  I’m talking great workout.  Leg extensions into leg curls into uni leg presses into plate pullovers into negative chins into inverted rows into barbell curls into dips into pushups into handstand pushups into shoulder presses(because the handstand pushups went pretty much no where after everything else).  11 exercises, all taken to failure+forced reps, no rest inbetween.  I loved it.  I’m going to eat, sleep, and breath that session until the next one, which I can’t wait for.  On top of that, I did it at a great bodybuilding gym here in Stockholm called Pro Gym.  Really great place, great energy, lots of light, good equipment, everything was on point.  I’ll be going there again.  And maybe if I’m real nice they’ll let me film a session there, or at least take some pics. 

    Speaking of pics, how is it that I keep seeing the same people on the “new profile pic” section on the homepage of this website?  They can’t be changing their profile pics 10x daily like it seems they are.  Someone, inform me. 

    Back to bodybuilding: I’ve put the raw butter back in the diet for the time being.  We’ll see how I respond to it.  For right now, it feels good, and I’m eating a lot, to be honest.  In fact, right now I am consuming a bit more than 1lb of raw ground lamb, a whole hell of a lot of butter, quite a bit of olive oil, and quite a bit of dill, green onion, and ’timjan’(don’t know what it is in english) all mixed together to make a great muscle building meal.  I have been eating that 3x daily for the last two days. And after the meal, for desert, I think I’ll go with some flaxseed oil.  Got to eat up though, it’s pretty late and if I eat too close to bed I dream like crazy….or I dream crazy.  So give me a minute.

   Alright I’m done.  Anyway, I trained with a new guy today, Robert-and old collegue of mine.  Good guy, pushed hard and pushed me hard.  I put him through something that Tom Platz put me through when I was working with him-static holds at the end of a set of squats. I pushed him to the brink of failure and then on the last rep I had him count out 10 seconds at the very bottom of the squat-actually about 1 inch out of the pocket, so he was still pressing against the weight.  I remember Tom did this to me on the 20th or maybe even the 30th rep of 300 something.  I was shaking like a leaf but not ready to disappoint him.  I don’t think I did.  We got along very well actually, there was a good deal of respect there.  And there were a couple of very intense sets done during those few months-I remember curling one time until I was seriously swinging so much that I was more lying down than I was sitting towards the end.

    Strangely, letting go of that intensity, the brutal intensity, almost panics me.  I feel so defined by it that letting go would feel like I am letting go of my masculinity.  Maybe that’s a good reason to let it go.  It probably is(I’ve got to separate myself as much as possible from things flimsy reasons for being).  And I’ve thought about it and actually done it before.  But something draws me back.  And I think it’s the fun.  It’s the fact, that I really love the experience, and the memory of the experience.  And I love perfecting it.  I love making it better, making it tougher, pushing harder tomorrow where I didn’t push quite as hard today.  For example, I crushed legs today, but back got off slightly easy because I set up one of the stations incorrectly.  I didn’t want to interrupt the tempo so I just went with it, but it got under my skin a little bit.  And at the end, I didn’t have a tricep exercise handy, so I just skipped it thinking they got enough work already-this was easy to accept at the time as I was heaving for air and my whole body was shaking-more like vibrating. 

    Anyway, gonna have some flaxseed oil now and chat a while online with the former first lady.  Take it easy.

May 16, 2008-Can you smell me now?

    I just got done consuming quite a bit of my new favorite sugar free dish-garlic and onions topped with a bit of ground lamb, parsley, and olive oil.  Ha, more like the other way around, but seriously I put in so much garlic my mouth is still numb.  I had to take breaks while eating it just to shake off the burn in my mouth.  The reason I’m doing the garlic and onions is to take care of a pesky candida issue I have been experiencing for the past 6 months or so after very stupidly taking antibiotics for something I really shouldn’t have.  My symptoms are really mild in comparison to a lot of the people you read about with candida, but nonetheless I want them gone.  I am tired of hearing my stomach grumbling all the time, that’s for sure!  The basic idea is that you try to eliminate or kill of the fungal candida while at the same time repopulating your intestinal flora with probiotics or probiotic foods.

   Funny how things work out though: despite the discomfort, this has been one of the best things that has ever happened to me.  I realize now how addicted I have always been to sugar; how I’ve always self medicated with it in one capacity or another.  I also now realize that it’s real likely that I’ve had candida overgrowth for years without recognizing it simply because my symptoms, prior to the bout of antibiotics, were never anything thought of as out of the ordinary.  In addition to that, I’ve also come to realize that I am not, or I was not, the only one in that boat.  Now, listening to the things that people tell me about themselves and just generally observing people, I’ve come to feel as though quite a number of people have this same problem and don’t even know it.  Dandruff, bad breath, rashes, yellow toe nails, gas, body odor-these are all sign of excess bacterial growth of some kind.  Look into it.  I never did, now I have. 

   Because of the candida, because of the nutritional changes I’ve made, I am mentally clearer and, I believe, physically healthier than I’ve ever been.  This makes me believe that this was all in the cards.  Strangely, in addition to that, I started making my own probiotics-Kombucha at the exact same time I got candida-it was like life gave me the problem and the solution right then and there.  I think it was definitely in the cards. 

      Moving on though, the only other time I felt this drastic of a change in my mental clarity in such a short period of time was when I went raw-it was like the flood gates of free thought opened.  Thought free from obcession; much calmer, more reasonable thinking.  To this day, I still seem actually almost physically incapable of getting as obsessed over anything as I did when I was younger.  There is a kind of multi-faceted marriage between the physical, mental, and spiritual that should not be ignored-when one get’s healthier, the other’s respond.  Anyway needless to say, cutting sugar out of my diet has opened the floodgates again-even though the only sugars I was eating were fruits and un-heated honey.  I am thinking clearer and I am feeling cleaner-literally, I feel lighter and as though everything is running much smoother on the inside.  It’s a great feeling.  Just thought I’d give everyone a bit more personal of an update.

    In other news, I HIT the legs today.  First I did a lateral walk, directly into a plate run, right into the adductor machine, right into single legged ATG ball squats.  Huge pump, lungs burned, heart pounded out of the chest.  Loved every second. And what I loved most was the challenge of getting through it.

    You should give the plate run a try-put a plate on the floor and, with a body low to the ground and taking long strides, push it as far and as fast as you can.  Really tough!  I knew I couldn’t leave HIT for too long.  HIT is my baby and I love her. 

May 13, 2008-A couple of things, really.

     I love the intensity.  Since just a couple years after I first began weight training, the idea of intensity over volume intrigued me-at the beginning, just as a way to shorten my workouts to spend some more time with my girlfriend…but that’s often how things start.  I don’t usually like speaking for others, but I think it’s pretty common that most people start most things for the ‘wrong’ reasons.  And I think that’s ok.  I think the right reasons make themselves real clear after a while, likely when you are ready for them.  The powers that be had to get you started somehow, and they weren’t waiting around until the reason that will keep you doing it for the rest of your life became appealing to you; they did what worked right then and there to get you going right then and there.  At the time, improving workout efficiency was much less important to me than increasing the volume of the time I spent with my girlfriend.  Call me what you will.

    Anyway, now workout efficiency is real important to me.  It’s on my mind a lot.  Even after accepting that there is merit to volume training, I still consider doing more than two sets of any exercise pretty high volume, and more than that…well too much for my body anyway.  These HIT workouts, the ones that make my lungs burn, the ones that make me heave with every breath are such an incredible challenge.  I actually get scared before the full body ones, especially if I have a training parter like my cousin KG or my buddy Chris there. I know they won’t accept any less than basically more than I feel like I can already give them.  There’s just something very appealing to me about giving everything I have, about pushing until I really can’t push anymore.  I think I do it more for the experience than I do the results.  I really do.  I do it for the memory, for the story I can tell about that one time when I pushed to the outer limits of sanity.  Something about that really jives with me. 

     And to be honest, something about that turns me off.  Something about it makes me feel as though it’s just about machismo trying to prove myself to be the bigger man.  And maybe that’s the case, I don’t know.  I do know, though, that I still feel drawn towards it so I’m going to continue doing it until that feeling passes via another feeling or idea overcoming it. 

   Speaking of machismo though, I’d like to talk about something that I’m very tired of.  It’s machismo.  I’m tired of this tough guy attitude.  I’m tired of grunts for hellos.  I’m tired of the skulls.  I’m tired of most of everything that has anything to do with wearing things having to do with death and dying, looking tough, shadow boxing(haha!), all the tattoos, all of it!  I’m tired of it all because I’ve done it all.  I have the tattoos, I’ve worn the clothes, I even have vague, VAGUE memories of shadow boxing in the gym as a young guy.  The only thing keeping me back from calling it rediculous is the fact that it was what I needed at the time, it got me to the next step.  And anything that does that, in my opinion, is not rediculous.  But now, older and wiser(but not real wise yet as evidenced by the rest of this sentence), I am very tired of it.  I would much rather just F the chirade and be a cheerful, fun loving, well built because I think it looks artful and nice not because it looks tough, guy.  I still have a problem getting out of this tough guy role though-this not so happy all the time kind of role-and it might be because I seem to be naturally be a kind of tough guy. 

     On a deeper level, I really don’t connect with the ultra-sensitive and I find them hard to be around. Maybe that’s just because I am afraid of it.  Could be.  I think there is a big difference between fragile and sensitive though, and I think what I find very hard to be around is the very fragile.  Sensitive is actually a word that I often use to describe myself in that I notice things, I feel subtle differences.  It’s a quality I want to develop even more.  Fragility, on the other hand, is very hard for me to deal with.  Being able to not just deal with it though, but actually handle it with ease is something that is surely in my future(maybe everyone’s).  I seem to be around a lot of fragile people right now and it’s pretty clear to me that this is a trait of mine that needs development; I can really be very hard, very un-caring for people’s immediate feelings, and very militant in some ways.  Those kind of traits don’t have to go, per se…but they have to be tempered with the fragility and feelings of others. 

     I, too, am fragile in some ways; it seems, though, that my fragility has more to do with things that don’t come up as often as do those having to do with the fragility of others.  Or maybe, I’ve just figured out some of my issues a little more so than most…I don’t know, I think we are all on a very close to perfect path.  I do have some tender spots, but they aren’t as tender any longer.  That’s nice, and I think it’s only become that way because they were so tender in the past.  So much so that running away only made them more and more tender.  It wasn’t until I dove in, until I jumped into my problems and gave way to my obcessions, let them run at will, that I finally was able to deal with many of the problems that left me immobalized physically, mentally, and spiritually.  I suggest you try it sometime.  Just stop running away from the pain and anguish and let it in(assuming you’re not contemplating suicide or anything).  Let the obcession take you where it will and see if there’s an answer for you there.  I’ve found that my obcessions often held the keys to the things I hold nearest and dearest to me now…or still hold them.  

May 9, 2008-HITTIN it up

   Been having pretty good workouts lately, HIT workouts.  I really missed them.  For whatever reason, I keep being brought back to them.  I’m pretty accepting now of the idea that it can’t just be momentary muscular failure that stimulates growth, but I’m also very accepting of the fact that it can stimulate growth and that training to MMF is one of the easiest ways for me to gauge my progress. 

     I’d actually love to start getting into fullbody HIT again. That was such an incredible rush.  The problem is always getting past the first few weeks where the cardiovascular and respiratory system really keep you from being able to push the muscular system as hard as it needs to be pushed to grow.  Even just writing about it though get’s me excited-thinking about pushing that hard, breathing that deeply and desperately.  The only thing really keeping me from doing it is the back.  When it comes to legs, I real