Tyler Weaver's Blog, page 42

All Sales Finally

Yesterday, a trek to a(nother) greenhouse going out of business, deals on pots, plantings, etc etc, to spruce up the recently-revealed and cleaned front porch yielded not only weariness but a business idea: open a store designed to go out of of business at its grand opening since the only way for businesses to make money in Ohio these days is to go out of business.

(Well, they tried.)

Further: construct a history around said business, decades in the family, yadda yadda yadda: in the inevitable local newspaper article / Facebook post, say how much the community has meant to you over the years and wait for the locals to deliver comments of “such a wonderful place, so many good memories, thoughts and prayers, such a shame, I wish I’d gone there more, etc etc” to pour in before they raid your grand opening for all the great deals and you close the doors forever.

Just Another Morning in the Diabetes Industrial Complex

Reached the end of another little blood-stained notebook, three sets of numbers – blood sugar, carb intake, insulin dosage – and decided it was time to decide whether to continue on with the handwritten version, to seek out new little notebooks to besmirch, or whether it was time to go digital.

One app looked promising: they’ve even got a bundle, a subscription that includes that holy grail of T1D fingerpricking, unlimited test strips. Oh, how wonderful… salvation, at last.

But the price – beyond the monthly $49.00 fee – for this ninth wonder of the world, these unlimited test strips (an essential part of life with T1D that is NOT covered by my insurance here in the land of the American Diabetes Industrial Complex) – in privacy for a superfluous “diabetes coach” and those glorious unlimited test strips is too high: turning my lifeblood into the lifeblood of an app company – data, sweet, precious data – is a step too far outside my comfort zone… nevermind the sacrifice of control in placing my testing needs in the hands of some faceless entity who will utilize the sacrificed blood-data to make a determination as to said testing needs.

I’ll stick with my little blood-stained notebooks, thank you.

Your Weekly Dog Picture for Sunday, 23 June 2019

The week’s newsletter is on its way; regular ramblings return tomorrow.

Dear Abandoned Read, It’s You and It’s Me

200 pages in: I love the voice, the style, the rhythm – but the characters, the story, no: I just don’t care.

And lo the record stands: though I’ve read all of this particular author’s work, the first book remains the only book in their oeuvre that I’ve read to completion.

It’s never an easy decision, abandoning a read – especially if the problem isn’t that the book is terrible but rather that it just doesn’t harmonize with the song in my head. Does it make me a quitter? Is there something I’m just not seeing? Perhaps my taste is off? Maybe if I kept going, everything would come together and the genius praised across countless reviews and articles and panegyrics would stand revealed?

I’ll have to live with letting those questions linger as the book in frustration joins its brethren in the box destined for the used bookstore and hope that someone somewhere will find the joy in the work that so eludes me.

Onward, then, into the next word-world that waits upon the great pile.

Present / Practice / Legends

Continuing from yesterday’s ruminations on balance (whether I like it or not), the symptoms of an unbalancing: gaining ideas coupled with a waning ability to stay present:

“When you are tired of sitting, or when you are disgusted with your practice, you should recognize this as a warning signal. You become discouraged with your practice when your practice has been idealistic. You have some gaining idea in your practice, and it is not pure enough. It is when your practice is rather greedy that you become discouraged with it. “

Shunryu Suzuki, ZEN MIND, BEGINNER’S MIND, p. 72

True of meditation, true of writing, true of life: believed this for 15 years and am only now recognizing the truth of it on a visceral, instinctual level.

Fortunately, Suzuki offers this:

“Even in wrong practice, when you realize it and continue, there is right practice. Our practice cannot be perfect, but without being discouraged by this, we should continue it.”

Ibid, p.73.

Then again, there’s always the perfect encapsulation of the restorative powers of The Work from Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance.”

There might be a conclusion to this ramble somewhere but I don’t know what it is so I’ll just say that the season three finale of LEGENDS OF TOMORROW was pure batshit-crazy brilliance.

Chandelier Balancing Act

Over the last year or so, life and I have reached something of an understanding: it is composed of systems – some of which are of my choosing and some of which, many of which, are not – that must be kept in balance. In the event that balance is not kept – that I abdicate my role in to keeping it and myself centered – life rebalances itself, without my help, to varying degrees of comfort and discomfort.

Though nothing shockingly terrible is happening, I’m aware of a rebalancing in progress, again, as though life’s saying, “I’m doing this with or without you”; at least it, life, is giving me fair warning.

My therapist described life as a chandelier: when one globe gets broken, the chandelier tilts. The only way to restore the balance is to remove another globe – or to replace the broken one.

An aside: switching the time of writing and posting these to after breakfast. Need the pre-breakfast hours for The Work; a functional shift, then: to bring me back to Kaijudesk for the remainder of the morning and the needs and whims of The Work – balance, balance.

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(In addition to these daily ramblings, I also send out a weekly newsletter on Sunday mornings. You can sign up here, if so inclined.)

I Survived Ikea Again

One more set of bookshelves assembled and, though I mourn the original cube shelf line, the replacement (Kallax? Parallax? something like that) is serviceable: only a slight difference in height between the two sets of shelves rectified by the strategic placement of Funko Pops and/or antique typewriters that I don’t yet own.

All books now in their new home – alphabetized again, of course –, the final ichspürgendurgen or whatever in the writing cavern of hermitage and escape and toil.

Awoke this morning possessed of the intention to regale you with a list of observations and amusements about the experience but I think I’m still in a post-assembly, allen wrench-infused stupor; ichspürgendurgen.

(Gesundheit.)

Forgetting About Time by Remembering Time

And the rain, it continues: flooding around the area – though it seems we were fortunate enough to miss out on that particular adventure.

I’ve written before about my desire to forget about time, of my envy for those who can simply – sans chemical enhancement – “turn off their mind, relax, and float downstream,” as John Lennon says, losing themselves in the work before them, losing a day, a night, in its thrall.

Revisiting that still-unsourced though really real, I’m really sure, remark by Fay Wray about Erich Von Stroheim:

“Time was his, he owned it…He used it as it should be used by an artist: He ignored it.”

Finding that the best way – for me – to ignore it, time, is by the use of timers (currently using MultiTimer): let the timers keep track of time (though that I feel a need to keep track of it is, perhaps, a subject for further examination) so that I might choose one bit to focus on (Lamott’s “short assignments”) for one of six-to-eight 30-minute daily work sessions in a variant on the Pomodoro technique, modified to an internal clock set by my meditation practice.

Been utilizing this method for a couple of weeks now and, though modifications and tweaks continue, I’ve found it to be the most promising means of focus-wrangling (not strangling) for me.

To work.

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(In addition to these daily ramblings, I also send out a weekly newsletter on Sunday mornings. You can sign up here, if so inclined.)

(And Lo) I Did Not Turn to Ash

Yesterday, a Father’s Day tradition, for my grandfather: entered, endured, and escaped a church service. At least I managed to get some work done on the blank side of the prayer list – though the value of said work is TBD and they misspelled my wife’s last name.

True to form past, the longwinded preacher managed to obliterate his message (I think it may have been about Jesus; he may have also mentioned pancakes) by prattling on; could’ve done with the exorcism of 20-25 minutes of his 30-minute excuse to hear himself talk.

The only thing worth watching was the clock – and the straw hats flanking the big on the wall behind the Prattler: some sort of sacred hunting trophy, like a deer head?

(I repeat, I did not turn to ash.)

At least my grandfather was thrilled to have us there; lunch, too, was tasty, even if blood sugar (one of those days where the appropriateness of the BS initialism is legion) refused and still refuses to cooperate. Thinking about fleeing to Canada.

Your Weekly Dog Picture for Sunday, 16 June 2019

The week’s newsletter is on its way; regular ramblings return tomorrow.