Month: August 2022

298.3 lbs Really? Not Good Dude, Not Good.

Insight, introspection, and accountability? Maybe.

That was the number on the electronic scale when I foolishly thought to step onto it this morning out of curiosity.

First, I need to start journaling again, daily probably, and living an intentional life, rather than crashing, sleeping, and binge my way through everything, and I mean everything.

Second I have to outline this post before I get to writing it, or it’ll read like a daytime soap, unreal and improbable.

There, done, now let’s flesh out the talking points shall we?

I looked in the mirror this morning, I realized that I have the hair and beard of a Scottish Harlequin novel cover, and the body of a university comp-Sci dropout who plays video games and cheats the social security net for a living.

This needs to change. I am a mess mentally and physically of late, and as much as I goof along with my boys, they deserve a better dad than that. My wife deserves a better husband in her house. And we all deserve a better house, so …

Where to go from here?

I measured myself again just now, twelve hours later, and it reads 291.8 so yeah, weight fluctuates during the day, I am usually a +/- five pounds kinda guy, so no worries there, but still at six foot, bordering 300 is not a good place to be.

Life’s a mess, need to intentionally focus and clean it up, that starts with taking care of myself and paying attention to what goes into my body and mind, and what comes out of it…

Step one: Diet control

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/diary/DanielOCasey Try to keep it under 2000 Cal. Now this one is tricky. My metabolism (and indeed my whole body-ism) is insanely adaptable, if I only drop the calories to lose weight, then within a week I’ll adapt to only needing that much to maintain rather than losing. Thus there’s a second part to this, which is covered off in the next step. What is more, I can eat 2000 Cal easily within a four-hour time frame, hell I can probably eat that much within a one-hour time frame, thanks to growing up working for a living, you had short lunches and dinners, then back to work for the entire productive season while it wasn’t snowing. So I need to take a 24 approach to things, and intermittent fasting, while a godsend for some, just means I could eat it all in a burst and spend the rest of the day grumpy and cranky.

Step two: Get off my Ass

Https://www.fitbit.com Good, as I have a Charge4 on my wrist right now, and it helps me to keep aware (not track, but aware) of what’s going on with my body, heart rate, activity levels, even sleep things.

https://www.mapmyrun.com/activity_feed
Good app for tracking when I can actually get out the door, usually pushing a stroller these days, but whatever.

I have to get back to the baselines I was at five years ago, it’s going to be one hell of a long grind to be able to jog 5 km without pausing again (I can walk it today, but jogging is down to several hundred meters then I collapse). Bench-press of 200lbs (I’m @ 100×5), deadlift of 400lbs (250@5) and squats of 320 (back down to 120 because I can’t get it up)b about were where I dropped off the wagon to take care of my kids and my wife, and forgot entirely about taking care of myself. Now I’m at the nervous breakdown and self-doubt/depression stage of that where I have to do something to take care of me before it all goes toes up on me. I don’t want to be body-builder material, more like a daunting draft-horse build, big, solid and powerful.

While doing this, I need to take care of my own emotional being, so I don’t unload and download on those around me. That means journaling and AL-ANON or self-care practice more, as well as carving out ‘me’ time and activities into the day. I need to spend time being dad, not cook, housekeeper, referee etc extraordinaire.

So, Step Three: Writing time, journaling time, and general mental health time…

I do not trust online journaling programs, so that leaves me with hardcopy (pen and paper) or coded files on my laptop here, which is the most likely.

Finally, I am a licensed CPA in BC (accountant for clarification) and I’m only doing the bare minimums on that, I need to follow up and push that aspect of myself to excel, as that’s how we are going to live and survive for the next little while. But more on that later. Wish me luck. I need to go check out the coffee pot…. I’ve a plan in mind…

Duke.

Hunting Sane, or Losing my All

TL:DR – There’s a lot of shit that shouldn’t be posted, even if I need to write it. This is probably one of them.

Angry guy pointing a banana gun

Let’s start out by talking about the taboo topic. Never, ever, is a blogger supposed to take his personal blog on a tear like this and just doing an emotional brain dump, after all most people only come to these things through search engines, looking for specific topic or perspective, not looking for all the rest of the crap that is going to come out of my head in something like this post. I started typing the darned thing because I am losing my mind and trying to hunt my sanity.


SEO be damned, I tried to make that first paragraph fit the formulas, but yeah, not happening and it’s not worth compromising my feelings and delivery just to appease some stupid algorithms of the search engine gods.

That’s another thing, why the fuck are we bowing down to these megalithic corporations when in the very words of our lord, clear in black and white the first three of the ten commandments are

1- You shall have no other gods before me.

2- You shall not make idols

3- You shall not take the name of the LORD your god in vain

It goes on from there, but when you search up ‘ten commandments’ from one of the big five search engines, guess what? You get pointed to Zazzle,ca, Wayfair Canada, Amazon.ca and Amazon.us, respectively. Literally a subversion of the whole concept isn’t it?

What the actual chaos happened to our world, that it has become the literal anti-thesis of the ten commandments, killing, lust, stealing by any other name, and to speak the name of the LORD is to start a religious pogrom (not aimed at Jew’s this time however), but triggering a persecution of any form of religious observances as oppression of someone else’s religious freedoms. How the fuck did we get it all so assed backwards? I mean, yeah, ok, you can worship as you see fit, and so can I, in this country at least (Canada, in case you missed it), but that’s not how it’s all working out. It’s all fucked up. It really is. I am supposed to accept that the two gender’s I was born knowing existed, are not accurate, and that there are more than two, heck, more than ten different sexual orientations or genders? Men should be allowed to go to the ladies’s room because they’re identifying as women? Women should be ok going to the men’s room because they were born with wrong plumbing but still feeling masculine? I get it. I do. Everybody is different, and we all have our own hang-ups and quirks and nuances as individuals. Yep, to quote John Green, we wouldn’t be “Fully Realized Complex and Unique Individuals” if we didn’t. BUT! feeling unique and not the same as all the other guys, doesn’t entitle you to another complete gender specification. Like who and what you like, and make your own peace with it. Nobody else is required to conform to your standards, just as you aren’t required to conform to theirs. I can respect your need to not worship as I do, to not feel as I do about men, and women, but at the same time, while I will not force my religion or sexual orientation on you, I demand you not push yours down my throat either, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

I’ll be back, I need to finish ranting here, but I have to take a young man to work (he’s not old enough to drive, but found a job, that he’s trying to up grade and bring some semblance of honour and decency back to retail, I pray for his success and commend his zeal and drive, but worry about the backlash).

Ok, it’s been a couple of hours, and I’m not quite as vitriolic as I was earlier. I was ready to take on the whole of society because I was so incensed and upset. I will still take on society (as a whole, let’s be honest, our society is fucked up in lots of ways), but maybe not with quite so many profanities or so much aggression.

Look man, I get it. Social Media, marketing tricks, your buddy with that rocking new ride, it all conspires to keep you beaten down, feeling like you ain’t worth anything let alone God’s grace or your wife’s good intentions. You start to question your own worth in this shitty fallen world.

That’s what they want, that’s what he wants. If that twisted old serpent can get you to question your own God given grace, to cast it aside in favor of this world’s lures and deceits, then he is one step closer to winning over your soul.

But I gotta ask you, is it worth it? Forego that quick fix, take a deep breath and just look at what is handed to you on a divine platter here. We live in paradise, (for humans), and the old snake is trying to get us to spread his poison throughout Eden so that it becomes unlivable and corrupted.

So far, as near as I can tell, he’s doing a pretty good job of convincing us to damn ourselves, since he has new power on this plane that we do not give to him. His only authority is to speak to our free will and baser natures, to convince us we’re not worth God’s grace and Jesus’ redemption. AND SO MANY OF US BELIEVE HIM! We destroy ourselves because he says it’s the better path.

But I watch my friends race to oblivion, my children’s friends get addicted to endorphin hits before they can even drive (or really function as individuals themselves), I watch my wife’s family perpetuate the patterns they picked up decades ago, not aware of the toxins they spread as they live a repetitive life that they assumed only because they never learned to think before acting (to live from reaction and emotion only, rarely in faith with calm and considered heads), heck I stopped talking to an entire half of my family because of this exact issue, and only new, decades later am I able to approach that side of the family hesitantly and with trepidation, lest I get drawn back into the mess. Luckily my generation of the family tree seems to be intent on at least starting to fix the generational issues we were born with.

What is the answer? Short and simple, it’s God and Faith; He’s laid it all out, how to live right in this life, to not lose it all to hedonism and debauchery, there are so many things I want to talk about but I find myself worn thin and out of passion for this topic at the moment. I’m sure I’ll be back, and if you don’t agree with me, then maybe you won’t, but that’s ok, it’s your life to choose. I just can’t abide the insanity anymore. The world is wrong, and getting more wrong, I can’t take it anymore, and it’s time to be true to my own self, try to raise my kids right and steer them clear of the cesspools of wrongness that is infiltrating our once blessed and graceful world.

In Exhaustion and Despair

Duke.