I’m going to run out of things to say in these posts real soon. Oh well. I’ll just keep typing boring things and basically no one will read them (hi there, exception to the rule you).

I am definitely through the mushy brain phase. I feel pretty normal now. Maybe a little bit more tired than before the diet. But things are going pretty well. I’m not getting hungry really, and even the bagels and donuts at work today weren’t a particularly strong temptation. I’m still 25 days away from the option of a cheat day, so things could change, but for now, I’m not feeling too much like I need it.

66% of what I eat is pretty much the same every day (eggs for breakfast, chicken for lunch). Weeknights I usually eat dinner at my parents’ following work when I come to pick up my dog, and so that is typically the “different” meal (the one night I ate at home this week I just had more chicken). So tonight it’s some fish! Which is different from chicken, so I’m on board.

Alright, that’s it from me tonight. See you on Day Six.

I’m posting this a little earlier today, during my lunch break at work rather than after getting home from work. In large part, that’s because I’m procrastinating forcing myself to eat this chicken breast.

I haven’t really felt hungry at all today, which is new. I ate my 3 hard boiled eggs for breakfast, but I felt like I could have easily skipped it. Still feeling kind of lightheaded from time to time. I need to sit down with a blood pressure monitor this evening and see what it’s saying.

My brain is also significantly less muddled today. I’m not back at 100% yet, but I feel a lot better as compared to the last couple days. That’s a good sign, let’s hope the trend continues!

I didn’t really do a weigh in when I started – the doctor did weigh me when I was there though. I believe I’m up roughly 10 pounds from a year ago – still about 20 below my highest ever – but I was a little above 200 a year ago, and I really should have forced myself to lose then – anything above 200 should really be unacceptable for me – In 2015 I had been down to 184 – I’d say that’s my target. That would be roughly 2 and a half pounds a week during this 90 day period – doable perhaps, but that’s a pretty high rate – I’ll say the 90 day goal is just.. under 200, which should be easily achieved.

But, as I said before, the REAL goal is to come off blood pressure meds – and I was still on them at 184, so my ultimate long term goal is something less than that. 175? 170? Maybe. Really, that’s what BMI says is the upper end of the recommended weight range for my height. I guess that doesn’t really mean anything in regard to me and my blood pressure, but it seems as good an arbitrary number to pick as any for the time being.

“and if the things we believed as kids were true
could you believe it all for me
’cause i would believe it all for you”
-Derek Webb

“Red and orange
Or red and yellow
In which of these do you believe?
If you’re not sure right now, please take a moment
Cause I’ll need your signature before you leave”
-David Bazan

“Seeking to know is only too often learning to doubt.”
–Antionette du Liger de la Garde Deshoulieres

Tomorrow I will be attending a church for the first time in a while.  It’s probably been… a year?  Or close to it.  I guess probably the last time I was in any church was when I went with Jon and Kim to their church in FL… but that was with no intention of possibly continuing to go to said church, since it wasn’t local to me.  Even so, that would have been in April (I think), a solid 6 months ago.

Aside from just specific people (all of whom I met through the church), more than anything I miss since leaving Burbank is the church I was attending there.  I get the sense that it’s changed a bit since I left, but I’m sure I’d still feel I belonged there.  I’ll get a chance to visit it before too long and know for sure.  I can’t wait for December!

In any case, the church I will be attending tomorrow sounds like it aspires to be something that Central Avenue Church was.  And that is the main reason why I loved Central (again, aside from people).  A place where you can belong and seek God no matter what you believe.  I don’t know if they’ll live up to it… From visiting their website and watching some youtube videos, a lot of their language still feels very churchy and evangelical to me.  But they also strike me as genuinely wanting to just love people and have community.  If they can live up to what they say, then I just might find a spiritual community in which I feel I belong again.

For me, it is all about being free to doubt.  It’s about being free to disbelieve in things that, if I had to believe them, would cause me to abandon any connection to Christianity whatsoever.  If this is a place I can hope that God is real, and that he loves us and suffers with us, then I’ll be right at home.

“To think in terms of either pessimism or optimism oversimplifies the truth. The problem is to see reality as it is.” – Thích Nhất Hạnh

“Wisdom says we are nothing. Love says we are everything. Between these two our life flows.” –
Jack Kornfield

“Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already.” –
Pema Chödrön

I’ve been realizing more and more recently the need for me to begin practicing mindfulness in my day to day life.  I feel like at some point in my journey through life I realized who I wasn’t, but forgot to figure out who I actually am.  And so I hold on to aspects of a person that I thought I was .  Perhaps it’s because I am afraid of who I might be.  Or perhaps it’s simply that I haven’t been willing to do the work until now.  I know there are things that I have long said I believe that I am afraid perhaps I don’t believe.

What I do know is that I can’t continue to walk through life with only part of an identity.  Perhaps the things that I don’t like about myself are the things that aren’t really me.  And I definitely have my fair share of moments of self-loathing.

The past couple of weeks I have had some pretty big swings in terms or happiness and sadness, depending on how I happen to feel about something in a given moment.  That seems to me to be very unhealthy, and I think the root cause of it is perhaps that I am not grounded in my own identity.

I’ve also begun having trouble sleeping again, something that seemed like it was behind me for awhile.  The last time I was struggling with it, it seemed that taking 5-HTP helped, which may indicate the problem is a lack of serotonin, and well, that may contribute to my negative moods as well.

I’ve decided to take a break from the world… at least as much as is possible, to center in on my self and do some hard work on me.  I again deactivated Facebook – along with all my social media accounts – this time with no announcement to anyone beforehand.  I’m not only not looking for attention, but this time I am trying to actively avoid it as much as is possible.

Earlier tonight I listened through a guided meditation on mindfulness, and it’s rather amazing how much peace that 15 minutes brought me.  I plan on making that a big part of the forseeable future.

I don’t know how long I will continue with this withdrawing to look inward, but I can already feel some value coming from it, so I will continue for as long as I believe it to be a benefit.

One of the downsides of working the job I was (not that I’m not grateful for my time there) was that it seemed to sap me of all inspiration of creativity.  For the past several months my imagination was so paralyzed I couldn’t even find the willpower to push out the occasional blog post.  And, as I have said here before, if I’m not posting blogs, then I’m not writing.  It’s not that I haven’t had the desire to write, it’s just that I’ve not felt able to write.  So the well has been dry for the last little while.  But you’re reading this now, and that means that I’m coming out of it.

Part of taking this trip back to Maryland was to try to recapture that.  I knew I needed a break if I was going to rekindle it.  Simply finding another job as fast as possible wasn’t going to fix anything.  After a week or so of just relaxing and meeting up with friends whenever they were available, I started doing some reading, and also watching some of my favorite movies, as well as some that I’ve been meaning to watch forever.  It’s amazing how much watching a really great movie makes one want to write.  Like many writers, I tend to be extremely critical of the things I write, but somehow despite that I still believe that somewhere inside me are great stories that people should hear.  Perhaps I believe they are there, I merely doubt my ability to convey them in a manner that anyone would be able to tolerate.  The one exception to that is with blogging.  Right or wrong, I consider blogging to be garbage writing, so I don’t really care what comes out except insofar as I’d like it to be understandable.  I mean, sure, I want you to like it… but it’s not like, some compulsive need.

I have a few ideas of writing projects and I’m going to start working on one of them today.  Since coming out to Los Angeles, I’ve been a bit lost and without direction.  It’s nice to have some direction again, and I’m going to be a bit more focused on the end goal this time around.  Part of the problem may have been that my goal at some point changed, and I don’t think I updated the plan to go along with it… simply “having a job” vs. “Not having a job” wasn’t enough.  That goal is to be a staff writer for a serialized show.  Since most of my writing projects have been features or shorts, it’s pretty important that I spend some time working on some good specs.  I still need to pick a few shows to do specs for, but a friend and I are planning on working on a spec for the renewed X-Files.  So I’ll be watching a lot of that in the very near future.

I’m glad I still have a week here to continue along in a pressure-less environment for just a bit longer, but I also feel like I’m ready to go back.

I think the thing I miss the most about being married (or I guess any serious romantic relationship really) is always having a person to talk to when you’re feeling shitty, for whatever reasons you have or don’t have.  I mean, obviously one could talk to close friends and the like, but it’s not really the same.  There isn’t a substitute for that sort of relationship.  Actually, it’s not the thing that I miss the most, it’s the only thing that I miss.  There are other reasons that I would like to be at that stage of life again, but they aren’t things that I “miss”.

That said, today is one of those days that I find myself missing it.  Which is to say, I’m not quite feeling at my happiest.  I could write about things that relate to why, though I’m not sure I could quite explain why fully…  And I will write about those things, but I won’t write about them here, because they are things that I’m not really comfortable writing about on a public blog.  I’d probably be ok with a few of you reading, but not everyone who could potentially find their way here.  Ha, actually there’s a few people who could find their way here potentially that I’m not comfortable with reading the things I post here…

So instead of talking about why, I will instead lament about the predicament I find myself in and reflect upon it.  I haven’t really had a proper girlfriend since then, though yes, I have gone on dates and the like.  I usually disqualify people pretty quickly.  I’m not sure whether or not I’m always being fair when I do so.  I want to have that sort of relationship again, but I think there is also some part of me that doesn’t.  I think I know the reason why…

When I could talk to her about the sorts of things I have on my mind right now, it involved a great deal of trust and openness and sort of laying out everything bare.  Now, she had never betrayed my confidence in anything I told her (to my knowledge), but, in regard to how everything went down there was a pretty big sense of rejection there, and it’s impossible to separate those things.  While I certainly don’t consciously avoid finding that sort of relationship again, I think that’s the lasting damage…  that I don’t want to put that kind of trust in anyone again.  Or rather, despite wanting to, I won’t allow myself to because of what I feel it implies.

And so instead on a night like this one, I have conflicting emotions.  On the one hand I wish I had that sort of relationship again, on the other hand I don’t.  On the one hand, I would like to be with a friend to maybe talk a little bit about this stuff with, on the other hand, I’m glad I’m sitting here alone.  On the one hand I’m posting this blog for you guys to read, on the other hand maybe I shouldn’t.

But I am.  And now I’m going to go write down some things that I can’t write here.