From 4/1/2024 April Fools' Day
Weather for the day… overcast, starting out, 50°
Podcast Marc Maron, Episode 1526 - Alejandro Escovedo
Sitting at home, the next day, editing. Here's what I'm seeing when I look at my front window...
Happy April Fools' Day!
Regarding that for this year? I got nothing, not until Donald Trump is another election loser, and convict, so maybe next year there will be something to laugh about. Enough politics. Good fair article...
That being said… I went to my older sister's and her husband's for Easter dinner yesterday and our cousin was there, and my brother-in-law‘s sister was there and we had a great time. I hit my cousin up about our grandfather‘s historical information. I finally got to ask her if she’d be interested in helping me with the documentary I want to do about him. She'd worked for years, years ago, working writing grants for an educational institution, so she’s very good at this kind of stuff. I’ve tried writing FOIA requests but I didn’t get very far and I realized I’m not that good at it. She said she would be interested. Yay! But she said first come over to my house because she has a bunch of his papers and I can just have them. So I’ll have to do that.
That being said… I went to my older sister's and her husband's for Easter dinner yesterday and our cousin was there, and my brother-in-law‘s sister was there and we had a great time. I hit my cousin up about our grandfather‘s historical information. I finally got to ask her if she’d be interested in helping me with the documentary I want to do about him. She'd worked for years, years ago, working writing grants for an educational institution, so she’s very good at this kind of stuff. I’ve tried writing FOIA requests but I didn’t get very far and I realized I’m not that good at it. She said she would be interested. Yay! But she said first come over to my house because she has a bunch of his papers and I can just have them. So I’ll have to do that.
I have one copy left of my original publication of my book Suffering "Long Covid". Usually, if I want to get rid of a copy I’ll put it in a Little Free Library up the street. But there’s still one in there from last December (that's my book it in above in the pic). They've been going well in this way so far. So maybe that’s a good sign. Somebody had taken my last published fiction book I put in there ("The Unwritten") and brought it back, and then somebody else took it. So that’s a good sign. I really like that book. Fun story to write. And I think I’m gonna utilize part of it in my next movie. Which I still have to come up with at working title for.
So that’s all good news on the arts front and, the family front.
Have I said how much I hate long Covid? Well, oddly enough, today is its two year anniversary. Two years ago I caught Covid for the second time. I’ve covered this extensively on this blog. It was one of the worst nightmares of my life. My first infection was far worse in the initial Covid infection part. My second infection was far worse for long Covid. I think. I mean two years ago when I caught it again I had to call the paramedics twice within a week. The first time I ever ended me up in the ER wearing a heart monitor for a couple weeks. On the other hand the first Covid infection I had in February 2020, that was the week from hell. Breathing felt like I had inhaled acid and my veins felt like they had acid in THEM. But that was over in a few days, and about 6 months before my lungs felt mostly normal again.
I’ve been extensively tested by the Veterans Administration health and I seem to have gotten through all this unscathed, as far as we can tell anyway, though I still have some problems. But like no lung, brain or heart damage. Currently I'm going through some new long Covid things, this since the end of December 2023 that got really bad in January and then pretty much healed up from with some rough issues that don’t seem to wanna go away completely yet and are a real pain. Long covid is good for that, lingering forever. I have a new round of testing and doctor appointments now. I’m hoping the way long Covid works, as I’ve seen so far, is that at some point I’ll just get really sick and then it’ll just go BANG, and it's gone (finally). The first time I had it lasted about 18 months so maybe this one will be longer? I think I’d say tentatively six months from now maybe it’ll be gone, hopefully within another six months after that? Who knows. It's the crazy disease. Its like someone developed it to make it drive you nuts, or kill you. And no, it wasn't weaponized in a lab, whether it originally came out of one or not.
For those out there saying Covid is a lie or total nonsense. Fuck you.
Onward and upward…
I’ve had flat feet all my life and problems with my knee joints. After years of Karate and tournaments, I wanted to be on a team, a football team. SO when I got into junior high, it scared the crap out of my mom. She took me to a doctor who said I couldn't do it because of your knees. I suspected my mom got him to say that, but as it turns out, he was right and said as I get old, I'll have more problems. I've had 2 surgeries on them. I asked my mom why she didn't want me on a football team. She said because you'll get hurt. I replied, you sent me to Karate (it was originally her idea, but I loved it), where I had to fight 5 fights a night for years and was in tournaments against other dojos, but you don't want me on a football team where I actually have an entire team protecting one another?
So that’s all good news on the arts front and, the family front.
Have I said how much I hate long Covid? Well, oddly enough, today is its two year anniversary. Two years ago I caught Covid for the second time. I’ve covered this extensively on this blog. It was one of the worst nightmares of my life. My first infection was far worse in the initial Covid infection part. My second infection was far worse for long Covid. I think. I mean two years ago when I caught it again I had to call the paramedics twice within a week. The first time I ever ended me up in the ER wearing a heart monitor for a couple weeks. On the other hand the first Covid infection I had in February 2020, that was the week from hell. Breathing felt like I had inhaled acid and my veins felt like they had acid in THEM. But that was over in a few days, and about 6 months before my lungs felt mostly normal again.
I’ve been extensively tested by the Veterans Administration health and I seem to have gotten through all this unscathed, as far as we can tell anyway, though I still have some problems. But like no lung, brain or heart damage. Currently I'm going through some new long Covid things, this since the end of December 2023 that got really bad in January and then pretty much healed up from with some rough issues that don’t seem to wanna go away completely yet and are a real pain. Long covid is good for that, lingering forever. I have a new round of testing and doctor appointments now. I’m hoping the way long Covid works, as I’ve seen so far, is that at some point I’ll just get really sick and then it’ll just go BANG, and it's gone (finally). The first time I had it lasted about 18 months so maybe this one will be longer? I think I’d say tentatively six months from now maybe it’ll be gone, hopefully within another six months after that? Who knows. It's the crazy disease. Its like someone developed it to make it drive you nuts, or kill you. And no, it wasn't weaponized in a lab, whether it originally came out of one or not.
For those out there saying Covid is a lie or total nonsense. Fuck you.
Onward and upward…
I’ve had flat feet all my life and problems with my knee joints. After years of Karate and tournaments, I wanted to be on a team, a football team. SO when I got into junior high, it scared the crap out of my mom. She took me to a doctor who said I couldn't do it because of your knees. I suspected my mom got him to say that, but as it turns out, he was right and said as I get old, I'll have more problems. I've had 2 surgeries on them. I asked my mom why she didn't want me on a football team. She said because you'll get hurt. I replied, you sent me to Karate (it was originally her idea, but I loved it), where I had to fight 5 fights a night for years and was in tournaments against other dojos, but you don't want me on a football team where I actually have an entire team protecting one another?
This was also from the woman who told me, when I later wanted to be a fighter pilot that I couldn’t, because I had fillings in my teeth. Which was bullshit. Whatever…
Anyway, I got these bubble insole things with fluid in them that you stick in your shoes, your feet riding on top of them. I got a pair from my son because he’s on his feet all day at work and I wanted him to try them. I have to say we both love them. I’d use these kinds of things before in the past, but these seem to be holding up really well. I figured they’d last a month, it’s probably been six months or a year now. Put a pair in my fuzzy suede slippers that I mostly wear around the house, too. Nice warm slippers but with good soles on the bottom.
I had a pair of those with slick bottoms years ago, and I slipped three times in a week on the stair landing, each time exactly on my right forearm in the same place. I’ve written about this before. The last time it happened I finally threw a perfectly good pair of slippers in the garbage and eventually got a pair with good non-slip soles which are so much nicer (and safer).
Anyway, I mention this because I’m walking and pushing my limits on these walkabouts and my feet kind of "giggle" with every step and feel so damn good. These are the same flat feet that in 10th grade I'd had surgery on the arch of my left foot and the surgeon had said he'd never seen such flat feet on his operating table. These are the same flat feet I got into the USAF with. I asked the doctor at the AFEES station, physical/ check in evaluation day. The physical that lets you into the service or not. I stood there in my underpants and socks and asked the doctor, "do you want me to take my socks off like everybody else?" He said, not even looking up from his desk where he was writing, "Not if you want to get into the Air Force."
I had a pair of those with slick bottoms years ago, and I slipped three times in a week on the stair landing, each time exactly on my right forearm in the same place. I’ve written about this before. The last time it happened I finally threw a perfectly good pair of slippers in the garbage and eventually got a pair with good non-slip soles which are so much nicer (and safer).
Anyway, I mention this because I’m walking and pushing my limits on these walkabouts and my feet kind of "giggle" with every step and feel so damn good. These are the same flat feet that in 10th grade I'd had surgery on the arch of my left foot and the surgeon had said he'd never seen such flat feet on his operating table. These are the same flat feet I got into the USAF with. I asked the doctor at the AFEES station, physical/ check in evaluation day. The physical that lets you into the service or not. I stood there in my underpants and socks and asked the doctor, "do you want me to take my socks off like everybody else?" He said, not even looking up from his desk where he was writing, "Not if you want to get into the Air Force."
When I told that to the foot doctor in basic training, he got really pissed off at that doctor and canceled me out of my guaranteed law-enforcement position. I picked a back up job as flight simulator technician. But everybody wanted that and I ended up with my back up of my back up, which was parachute rigger. Because I figured, what the hell, I’ve been skydiving before...as detailed in my screenplay about it that in my screenplay: ”The Teenage Bodyguard”. Which I’ve now won a bunch of awards for. Which was nearly made into a movie three times now, but I’m waiting for a director shares a similar vision for the movie that’s at least in the same ballpark as mine, as a drama. I worked with producer, Robert Midas on it, who works with Michael Douglas on films as producers. I worked on it with Jen Grisanti, who is a screenplay consultant. It’s an interesting screenplay, a true story, true crime about Tacoma, Washington’s mafia family, and a woman who was protected for a week from them because she witnessed them commit a murder of one of their own.
Earliest memory. 1956.
I was in my crib. Maybe 18 months old according to my mom.
All were asleep. I had played at Uncle Byron's the day before, who lived on the cross block at the end of our block, at the "T" intersection. I was bored waiting for mom and dad and my sister to get up.
I remember the feeling of crawling over my rail, out of my crib and falling to the floor.
Opening the front door (I was wearing a onesie) snow was everywhere, in the middle of winter. I hesitated but thought, "It's only end of block." So I walked out into the snow, leaving the front door open. It was exciting. Maybe my first solo adventure. No one to tell me what to do.
I walked to the middle of the street and headed to my uncle's house.
Cut to mom waking up.
Something's not right. Why's is it cold? She gets up puts on her bathrobe, follows coldness into the living room.
Sees the open door, snow blown in onto the rug. She walks to the door and sees tiny footprints going toward the street. She steps into the doorway outside to see the footprints in a line toward the street until she sees me trudging through the snow.
She hustles out to get me, self-conscious she's outside where anyone can see her. She picks me up and hustles us both back inside.
"What were you going? You can't leave the house when everyone is asleep."
"To uncle Byron's. I had fun there, I wanted to play."
"But everyone's still asleep, there too."
"Oh.... but I want to go."
"We can go later if you want [we didn't], after everyone wakes up [again, we didn't that day]. But you can't be leaving the house like that ever again when everyone's still asleep. OK?"
"OK."
She secured the door for a few days after that so I couldn't get out.
My oldest memory.
I was in my crib. Maybe 18 months old according to my mom.
All were asleep. I had played at Uncle Byron's the day before, who lived on the cross block at the end of our block, at the "T" intersection. I was bored waiting for mom and dad and my sister to get up.
I remember the feeling of crawling over my rail, out of my crib and falling to the floor.
Opening the front door (I was wearing a onesie) snow was everywhere, in the middle of winter. I hesitated but thought, "It's only end of block." So I walked out into the snow, leaving the front door open. It was exciting. Maybe my first solo adventure. No one to tell me what to do.
I walked to the middle of the street and headed to my uncle's house.
Cut to mom waking up.
Something's not right. Why's is it cold? She gets up puts on her bathrobe, follows coldness into the living room.
Sees the open door, snow blown in onto the rug. She walks to the door and sees tiny footprints going toward the street. She steps into the doorway outside to see the footprints in a line toward the street until she sees me trudging through the snow.
She hustles out to get me, self-conscious she's outside where anyone can see her. She picks me up and hustles us both back inside.
"What were you going? You can't leave the house when everyone is asleep."
"To uncle Byron's. I had fun there, I wanted to play."
"But everyone's still asleep, there too."
"Oh.... but I want to go."
"We can go later if you want [we didn't], after everyone wakes up [again, we didn't that day]. But you can't be leaving the house like that ever again when everyone's still asleep. OK?"
"OK."
She secured the door for a few days after that so I couldn't get out.
My oldest memory.
I was wearing a pin my artist wife at the time had made and Clive liked it so much he wanted one. So she made him a duplicate of her "inside out face" pin out of Super Sculpy and I mailed it to him in London. I have no idea if he still has his, but I still have mine (while I also now have an extra ex-wife...3.5 of them to be exact, with no expectations of a future ex-wife ever again on the horizon, since as my divorces have progressed in escalatory fashion, I expect any future divorce to simply be a nuclear war...not from me, I couldn't be nicer in a divorce but my last ex was so unhinged, for no real good reason (long story, trust me), other than mental issues, that her own lawyer started understanding and feeling sorry for me, and actually protected me during arbitration a couple of times, which seldom happens).
That was interesting. I have my Apple Air Pods in, listening to the Marc Maron podcast and he’s just talking by himself about a live event he did with Larry David and how that developed. He couldn't understand why Larry didn't want it recorded for posterity. I just got a phone call from an 866 number. I hate that when it doesn’t say who it is because it's usually someone I would talk to if I had a choice. But I’m waiting for some doctor's appointments to be made and indeed, it was VA Triwest calling to make an appointment. It said if you don’t have any dates to avoid press one. So I did. It said, somebody will get back to you. So that was easy. Otherwise I’d be walking outside here with my calendar trying to set up a date. Which isn’t a big deal and I was hoping somebody would call soon, I just don't want to deal with it on a walk if I can avoid it. I got two phone calls from VA last week asking me to come to Seattle and I said no, can’t it be local? They said, we can set you up for that in your community. Cool. but then nothing for the entire week. So this week I thought I need to get a hold of somebody and get this sped up. So, that phone call made me feel a little better anyway. Just getting some check ups for long covid issues. I should have gone in last week for a blood test but was waiting on a call. Then I just now realized to call and ask and sure enough, there's an order just waiting for me to hit the VA clinic in Silverdale.
Just started my 2nd mile…
Just started my 2nd mile…
Hey, have you seen this video about the dad and his kid pulling his vehicle out of a ditch? Love it. I so would have done this with one of my kids had I thought of it. I loved doing things like that with them. I have video of my first born driving his little electric car and it's hilarious. Then he decided he wanted to drive onto the real (and busy) street with real cars and it took a bit to dissuade him.
Love this stuff. Here's a screen shot of the video on the internet (you get the idea)...
Here's my son as a kid in his car...
1989
Oh, I will say this about politics.
It was on the news today that a guy that knows all about Trump campaign was talking and said you know a lot of people now are sending Trump handwritten notes when he’s asking for money saying I’m sorry I’m giving you a lot of money over the years and I just don’t have anymore to give. That’s a good sign. So I sent that info to my son in a text and he just wrote back: "L O L".
Hey! On a personal note… This is the first walk I’ve done this year that within the first half mile my heart, my chest would be kind of hurting and I’d have to stop and could feel my heart pounding as if it took my body time to acclimate to the fact that I’m exercising because I’ve been so sedentary through the winter, even though I’ve done some walks over the past month or two. So, making some progress.
I’m really wanting to get to writing the screenplay for this new movie project I’ve thought up. I know, first I need to finish my "Pvt. Ravel's Bolero" film companion book. I fear that might be one of those books that takes forever to get finished. I need to finish processing my movie "Gumdrop" to get it up on Filmhub or some film distributor anyway. It failed once I have two more attempts before they’ll cut the movie off. But my friend and fellow Indie Director Kelly Hughes turned me onto two other sites so I could just stick it on one or both of those and screw Filmhub. Filmhub's come up with this new deal $600 and they’ll take your movie that they have online and turn into a DVD and sell it. Translation: Indie filmmakers spend $600 on a vanity purchase that may never sell except for what you personally sell or giveaway. You know some films might catch on and could make a few bucks, or a lot if it goes viral. But for most? Yeah...
So the last two weeks I did the Chinese "Three-Body" series on Amazon Prime, 30 episodes with the last half of that episode being a subtitle nightmare, and my just having learned about doing subtitles for my own movie in doing it myself, which also failed on Filmhub. I'd set it up for subtitles to show up in three different locations on screen to try and capture everything for the deaf, but Filmhub can't handle multi on screen locations, so instead I’m just gonna do it as just a dialogue only subtitle. I just wanna get this over with. Maybe I’ll put the fancy work on my DVD which I created a couple years ago for this movie (and one for my other movie). But in just about being done with the film festival circuit I’m going redo them because I received a lot more awards, I think "Pvt. Ravel's Bolero" documentary/filmic poem, won 60 awards internationally? See that’s a frustrating thing about being a technician, and a good one. I could pay someone to do it, but I know if I just take the time and effort, I can just do it myself. I do look forward one day to being that lazy and just having someone do it for me. Who would probably do a better job as they'd be doing it as a profession. Anyway...
It’s funny, and I know some others who go through this... I look back on books or stories I’ve written, or screenplays or films I’ve produced, and sometimes you think. “damn this is really good! Who wrote this? Who did this? How could it be me?“ This in it's being either really good or really complicated and I just wonder sometimes how did my brain ever achieve this? Your next thought then though is, how can I ever reproduce this or do it again? But my experience has shown me I don’t have to worry about that kind of stress/anxiety anymore. I just know if I do it, I can do it.
It’s kind of like "imposter syndrome" symptomology. For years, I would just write micro short stories. After I got out of the service, I made new friends and I would show those to them. They would always hand them back to me and say, this is really good! But put a fucking ending on it!
That was the problem. I saw so many options as an inexperienced writer, I couldn’t finish it, I couldn't accept the responsibility of an ending people would judge. Then I started college. This was between the USAF and college. By time I graduated college, by my senior year when I had moved into the arts, alongside my psych studies toward my degree, I got very good at writing endings. That helped towards becoming a tech writer in IT and to move into the top of my field there. That helped as Isaac Asimov said in his first autobiography “In Memory Yet Green“, in that tech writing is a good foundation for science fiction writers. It helps with writing on demand and being a professional writer in general. You’re not coddled as a tech writer in IT, trust me. I'd turn in something requested by a manager and there was no bullshit. They cut you to the quick and you’d walk away, dejected, and demoralized. I got into a pattern. I would turn in an initial (not first) draft and they'd comment, not like it. I'd turn in a succeeding draft, same thing, but I'd be closer. I'd finally turn in three versions of a final draft for them to choose from (few ever did that) and they'd almost always be amazed at how good it was, and how I'd gone from what they last had seen to the final version.
What was going on was that I would give them my best first shot, reorient and give them my second shot, both a bit wild, then from that I could hone in on what I thought they wanted, what I thought they needed and what I wanted them to have. Three versions. Wasn't hard once you had the initial one you thought they wanted, to alter two other versions. And it made me look pretty impressive. I'm not bragging here, just relaying what actually happened. It happened once and I thought, that's interesting and cool. But then I kept doing it, with that manager at US West Technologies and then with other managers elsewhere and it was consistent.
After a while tech writing toughens one up toward writing fiction. When you write fiction though it’s different. But if you already have that tech writing experience, it makes it much easier to bear the difficulties. In business you're dealing with other's expectations and needs. In fiction typically your own, unless you're writing for paid projects which I've done well at, but generally avoided.
You know it’s fun and cathartic to share things in this blog. But I really don’t like the editing part, even though I do it fast and once through and then post it. I tried using an AI. I've considered how helpful it would be to have an assistant, an intern maybe who did this for me and post it. But in editing it, I realized since this is special, since this is historical and mostly nonfiction, that it really takes the author to do the editing or edit with an editor (a person) as an author would normally do. But in this case, I think I’m gonna use it as a way to help me get back into the swing of working again.
You know it’s fun and cathartic to share things in this blog. But I really don’t like the editing part, even though I do it fast and once through and then post it. I tried using an AI. I've considered how helpful it would be to have an assistant, an intern maybe who did this for me and post it. But in editing it, I realized since this is special, since this is historical and mostly nonfiction, that it really takes the author to do the editing or edit with an editor (a person) as an author would normally do. But in this case, I think I’m gonna use it as a way to help me get back into the swing of working again.
Because, as I said in a previous blog recently, Filmhub rejecting my submitted movie due to technical issues, which are fixable, but is a real pain in the ass, and with long Covid having hit me really hard around that time, it completely stopped all of my work efforts. I just lost interest. Deflated. When you feel exhausted and not well and get bad news after a lot of work and a few years of thinking of doing it and then you fail...it sucks. So I'm trying to get back into the swing of working again. And on top of that I got this new movie project idea that I really want to start working on. I’ve also got my grandfather's documentary preproduction, research, and prep stuff on a back burner which I’d really like to get to. All this is just taking too long. Nothing out of the normal in that though, really.
So what does one do in that situation? One foot in front of the other. Start with anything and finish it and then move onto the next thing and don’t worry about time. It's nice since I have no contracts or deadlines right now. Other than I just want everything done yesterday as usual.
Those authors who just wanna be authors, who sit down to write America’s greatest novel and then three months later, they’re still staring at a blank sheet of paper? Look. Type some fucking letters! It’ll come to you. But you gotta start and do the work. You ahve to have work to work on. It seems at times impossible. But it's not. Just start typing crap, if necessary. Once you start? It only gets better. If you don't start? It never gets better. IF it gets worse? Practice, it gets better. If it never does? You're not a writer. Or whatever it is you're working on.
Which brings me around to something I’ve talked about before, which is how I write. I get a kernel of an idea. I notice it’s motivating me. Through phenomenology having studied it in college, I was able to dig into that consideration and process. I realized what that motivation or that energy was or what caused that excitement. When I have a kernel of an idea, it’s not the kernel that excites me. It’s the fact that it has tendrils going back deep inside of me. Into my history, my knowledge, my personality, my orientation, my expectations... whatever.
So what does one do in that situation? One foot in front of the other. Start with anything and finish it and then move onto the next thing and don’t worry about time. It's nice since I have no contracts or deadlines right now. Other than I just want everything done yesterday as usual.
Those authors who just wanna be authors, who sit down to write America’s greatest novel and then three months later, they’re still staring at a blank sheet of paper? Look. Type some fucking letters! It’ll come to you. But you gotta start and do the work. You ahve to have work to work on. It seems at times impossible. But it's not. Just start typing crap, if necessary. Once you start? It only gets better. If you don't start? It never gets better. IF it gets worse? Practice, it gets better. If it never does? You're not a writer. Or whatever it is you're working on.
Which brings me around to something I’ve talked about before, which is how I write. I get a kernel of an idea. I notice it’s motivating me. Through phenomenology having studied it in college, I was able to dig into that consideration and process. I realized what that motivation or that energy was or what caused that excitement. When I have a kernel of an idea, it’s not the kernel that excites me. It’s the fact that it has tendrils going back deep inside of me. Into my history, my knowledge, my personality, my orientation, my expectations... whatever.
When I have an idea, a good idea… and I’ve had so many people say, "Hey, I got a great idea, you gotta write it! Just give me 15%!" First off, fuck you. I have plenty of my own great ideas. You like it so much? You write it. And that’s kind of when I finally figured out what’s going on with me in this situation. That, "kernel". It doesn’t matter how great YOUR idea is, if I don't come up with the idea, I won't have that foundation within myself that means I’ll be able to finish that project. The experience and things to draw upon to make that seed of an idea grow into... whatever. If I don’t have that, yes, I CAN do it, in the professional or tech writer sense of things. If I want to, if say, I accept payment, or I simply accept the project to do it for you, or whatever… Yes I CAN do it. But that’s probably not going to be as inspired as if I came up with it myself. That’s not always true because I’ve done some really cool things off of people getting me to do them. But at this point my life, I just prefer to do what I want to do in what I come up with myself. I mean, come on... If somebody offers me 5 million bucks to write something? Yeah, I’m probably gonna do it and give it my best effort. But that’s a lot different than if I come up with my own idea. There's more to it than just taking an idea and running with it. I've avoided working for a studio or moving to Hollywood and working for a big production company. Sure, I'd have gotten further, made more money. And sometimes I do wish I'd done that when I was younger. But by the time I realized that, I wasn't so young anymore and I had a family and was making good money elsewhere. Every time I tried to do art for a living, yeah, it's hard. Few I knew ever made it. Jeff Ament. He made it. But he was one of the few I've known or worked with (Pearl Jam).
Starting my 3rd mile…
^
Here’s a long Covid comment. I discovered when I started walking for long Covid that walking decreases long Covid symptoms. The problem with that is long Covid makes you sick and you don’t feel like walking, but to get the sickness to go away you have to walk, but if you walk too much, it makes you sick and can make you really sick. So you've got to balance that, wait till you feel good enough, walk a little, acclimate to it, build up to get to that point where your body responds best. For me, that seems to be 5 miles every other day. I’d like to do it every day. I wonder if I did maybe 3 miles every day that would equal 5 miles every other day? Anyway you've got work stuff like that out for yourself. When I went into the last winter at the end of 2023 I wondered, knowing how I am in the winter… I used to say I’m part bear, I just wanna hibernate in the cold, I’m much more of a summer person… so it occurred to me going into this winter not to let myself become sedentary. I kept walking on nice days. Tried using my elliptical, but I inevitably slid into not getting enough exercise, and didn’t feel good all winter. Then after a winter of not feeling great, and not exercising, I’m wondering if end of December long Covid said "party time!", and attacked me? So that in January when I got hit really hard with this thing, was it something new/ different? I thought overly hopeful, it might be long Covid getting really bad and then going away completely. Which has happened before and not just with long Covid. It happens with some other things too. Or was it because it wasn’t enough exercise and that’s how this is until long Covid goes away? If that’s the case, if that’s the logic that is. Long Covid does everything it can to trip you up on logic or diagnosing the condition. It always seems like you’ve got some other thing, but then you track it back to long Covid. Or is it triggering something in you, which comes down again along Covid lines. So I’ve got these doctors appointments and blood test coming up. I’m wondering if I get this exercise in, would it all just stop? Well, even if that’s the case, I’d like to get a new round of tests and finally see a specialist. It's only been 3 years now wishing to see a long covid specialist (are there any yet?), or something. Maybe we’ll come up with something my primary care VA doctor even admitted on our last TeleMed appointment, that he knows there’s things going on that are out of his purview/experience, and I need to see a specialist.
Good Fucking times.
Instagram: If you go back into these walk about thoughts blogs, you’ll notice I always included an Instagram post. Usually one that I took on the walk. Then Instagram instituted some changes I found really annoying and it got a bit too convoluted. I liked its ease of use before. So I stopped doing it. What I find interesting is some of the simplest posts get the most hits. One of my last walks a few times ago I took a picture of a rock on the ground close up and then I backed up from it. Threw in some music and... it got like 20 views within a day. I looked at it yesterday, it now has as of today 6478 views. If you look at my Instagram account, you’ll notice that the ones that seem to get the most views are the ones that I was messing with visual perspective on. Zooming in or out on something and it gives you a weird visual effect. While some of what I thought were my more interesting posts only got 6 or 20 views. Go figure…
Yes, I realize anyone who read every one of these walkabout thoughts blogs would notice I'm sometimes repeating things, or sometimes I'll say that I’ve talked about something or other more extensively elsewhere, previously, and sometimes I’ll even add the link to that previous blog. But I figure there’s a good chance too no one has ever read two of these. And if so, hi! Thanks! Nice to see you! If not? Nevermind...
I just had an interesting thought about one of my stories. In my first book ever Anthology of Evil, a collection of my first ever short stories, of my first published short story from 1990, I have a story called "The Mea Culpa Document of London" (which is an ebook and an audiobook). it’s about a witch hunter in I think 1299 England. I wrote it for my senior year university fiction writing 101 intro to fiction or whatever it was. With the help of one of my theater professors, Perry Mills as he’s a student of medieval literature and we got to be friends. I was in his office between classes a lot, or waiting on my next theatre class after coming over from the Miller Hall, the psych building. If I remember correctly, there’s a blurb about how that story was discovered in an old church. Which was odd in it being wrapped in a very Jewish item. So I took that story and wrote it in British English vernacular as best I could do. I later wrote a newer, much longer story which I think is the longest story in my Death of heaven book. That’s a complicated story, that entire book. I got a book review on that book not long ago by entering a book contest (didn't win, but more to come this year) and the reviewer said I had a lot of spelling errors in the book. I released the book in 2012 and revised it in 2014. I had worked hard on it with an editor and we went over it with a fine tooth comb. There weren’t any spelling errors. But I double checked and I found, I think nine errors, and some of them kind of weren’t errors. Most of the errors you might call errors we’re in that story Vaughn’s Theorem. which was written in British style. So yes, in American English it has misspelled words, but not in British English, no misspelled words. So I shared that with the reviewer and they kindly updated the online review and now we’re both happy. But it occurred to me. What if I got a British editor to help me make it seriously British style? And update not just any potential grammatical errors but British lifestyle errors there might be in the story? Which made me think I could then make a new book by taking that story and the original and put them together in a new revision, releasing it as, I don’t know, the whole story though in one e-book about the witch hunter, the document and all that comes from it.
On that note there’s a similar issue with the whole book of Death of heaven. Which apparently some people think is a religious book due to the title, which makes me laugh because... it’s so not. Death of heaven is a phrase I got from my son who did a CD in high school in music lab. One of the songs on it was called Death of Heaven. When I was writing that book, I asked him, hey, can I use that as a title for my book? And he said, sure. To me, the phrase I used for the book title is the whole thing Neitzsche said in "The Gay Science" (German: Die fröhliche Wissenschaft), that “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”. The title of my book refers to a realization that we’ve misperceived in every religion on the face of the Earth. And here’s why, as told in my story.
The catch in that book is, the overall story comes from the novella at the end of Anthology of Evil titled, “Andrew“. Which is another story I wrote for that fiction 101 class. I could say that story blew the entire class away. Except for my professor, who hated the story.
Why I’m bringing this up here and now is because I’ve also considered doing a revised edition of Death of heaven, as a second revision after the first and after the initial publication. I could then add "Andrew" in Death of heaven and yet there’s one other story called "Perception" that I wrote one night, working on my greatest nonfiction psychology paper on synesthesia and schizophrenia. I typed it single space on one page and gave it to my prof the next morning, just on a lark. The next day I went to class, and he’s handing copies of it to everyone of his students. Hey, high praise. But anyway, I could then include that story, too. That story is about when humankind could first y think and thought to look up to the heavens, and consider something bigger than themselves... other than carnivores. They immediately misperceived the universe and centered it around themselves. And then we got somebody in the middle ages saying, Hey, I think the earth revolves around the sun instead of the sun and stars around the earth. And of course, the church then immediately put him to death.
And that is the premise for Death of heaven. But it's much, much bigger than just that and extends to the creation of earth and nearly, or perhaps, its end. The other story about Andrew is another interesting story which goes into before (after) how the earth was evolved, as well as humankind and religion. So that by the end of Death of heaven, you have a very different perspective on our world.
Beginning my 4th mile…
Thought I’d take a photo of my book in a little free library. That’s been there for months now. It’s a book about long Covid and I say a pretty good book from what I hear. I think it helped a few people who’ve read it. Or so they’ve said. It occurred to me when I noticed it was still there, after I started walking again this year...there's probably not a lot of long Covid sufferers out walking. Just because I talk about it in the book, one way to help get over long Covid is to get exercise. I mean, it’s a lot of other things, but this is very helpful. The problem is what I detailed above. You have to get well enough to walk and then push yourself, but don’t, because if you overdo it you’ll get really sick and it’ll take longer to get over. So take your time.
Starting my 3rd mile…
^
Here’s a long Covid comment. I discovered when I started walking for long Covid that walking decreases long Covid symptoms. The problem with that is long Covid makes you sick and you don’t feel like walking, but to get the sickness to go away you have to walk, but if you walk too much, it makes you sick and can make you really sick. So you've got to balance that, wait till you feel good enough, walk a little, acclimate to it, build up to get to that point where your body responds best. For me, that seems to be 5 miles every other day. I’d like to do it every day. I wonder if I did maybe 3 miles every day that would equal 5 miles every other day? Anyway you've got work stuff like that out for yourself. When I went into the last winter at the end of 2023 I wondered, knowing how I am in the winter… I used to say I’m part bear, I just wanna hibernate in the cold, I’m much more of a summer person… so it occurred to me going into this winter not to let myself become sedentary. I kept walking on nice days. Tried using my elliptical, but I inevitably slid into not getting enough exercise, and didn’t feel good all winter. Then after a winter of not feeling great, and not exercising, I’m wondering if end of December long Covid said "party time!", and attacked me? So that in January when I got hit really hard with this thing, was it something new/ different? I thought overly hopeful, it might be long Covid getting really bad and then going away completely. Which has happened before and not just with long Covid. It happens with some other things too. Or was it because it wasn’t enough exercise and that’s how this is until long Covid goes away? If that’s the case, if that’s the logic that is. Long Covid does everything it can to trip you up on logic or diagnosing the condition. It always seems like you’ve got some other thing, but then you track it back to long Covid. Or is it triggering something in you, which comes down again along Covid lines. So I’ve got these doctors appointments and blood test coming up. I’m wondering if I get this exercise in, would it all just stop? Well, even if that’s the case, I’d like to get a new round of tests and finally see a specialist. It's only been 3 years now wishing to see a long covid specialist (are there any yet?), or something. Maybe we’ll come up with something my primary care VA doctor even admitted on our last TeleMed appointment, that he knows there’s things going on that are out of his purview/experience, and I need to see a specialist.
Good Fucking times.
Instagram: If you go back into these walk about thoughts blogs, you’ll notice I always included an Instagram post. Usually one that I took on the walk. Then Instagram instituted some changes I found really annoying and it got a bit too convoluted. I liked its ease of use before. So I stopped doing it. What I find interesting is some of the simplest posts get the most hits. One of my last walks a few times ago I took a picture of a rock on the ground close up and then I backed up from it. Threw in some music and... it got like 20 views within a day. I looked at it yesterday, it now has as of today 6478 views. If you look at my Instagram account, you’ll notice that the ones that seem to get the most views are the ones that I was messing with visual perspective on. Zooming in or out on something and it gives you a weird visual effect. While some of what I thought were my more interesting posts only got 6 or 20 views. Go figure…
Yes, I realize anyone who read every one of these walkabout thoughts blogs would notice I'm sometimes repeating things, or sometimes I'll say that I’ve talked about something or other more extensively elsewhere, previously, and sometimes I’ll even add the link to that previous blog. But I figure there’s a good chance too no one has ever read two of these. And if so, hi! Thanks! Nice to see you! If not? Nevermind...
I just had an interesting thought about one of my stories. In my first book ever Anthology of Evil, a collection of my first ever short stories, of my first published short story from 1990, I have a story called "The Mea Culpa Document of London" (which is an ebook and an audiobook). it’s about a witch hunter in I think 1299 England. I wrote it for my senior year university fiction writing 101 intro to fiction or whatever it was. With the help of one of my theater professors, Perry Mills as he’s a student of medieval literature and we got to be friends. I was in his office between classes a lot, or waiting on my next theatre class after coming over from the Miller Hall, the psych building. If I remember correctly, there’s a blurb about how that story was discovered in an old church. Which was odd in it being wrapped in a very Jewish item. So I took that story and wrote it in British English vernacular as best I could do. I later wrote a newer, much longer story which I think is the longest story in my Death of heaven book. That’s a complicated story, that entire book. I got a book review on that book not long ago by entering a book contest (didn't win, but more to come this year) and the reviewer said I had a lot of spelling errors in the book. I released the book in 2012 and revised it in 2014. I had worked hard on it with an editor and we went over it with a fine tooth comb. There weren’t any spelling errors. But I double checked and I found, I think nine errors, and some of them kind of weren’t errors. Most of the errors you might call errors we’re in that story Vaughn’s Theorem. which was written in British style. So yes, in American English it has misspelled words, but not in British English, no misspelled words. So I shared that with the reviewer and they kindly updated the online review and now we’re both happy. But it occurred to me. What if I got a British editor to help me make it seriously British style? And update not just any potential grammatical errors but British lifestyle errors there might be in the story? Which made me think I could then make a new book by taking that story and the original and put them together in a new revision, releasing it as, I don’t know, the whole story though in one e-book about the witch hunter, the document and all that comes from it.
On that note there’s a similar issue with the whole book of Death of heaven. Which apparently some people think is a religious book due to the title, which makes me laugh because... it’s so not. Death of heaven is a phrase I got from my son who did a CD in high school in music lab. One of the songs on it was called Death of Heaven. When I was writing that book, I asked him, hey, can I use that as a title for my book? And he said, sure. To me, the phrase I used for the book title is the whole thing Neitzsche said in "The Gay Science" (German: Die fröhliche Wissenschaft), that “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”. The title of my book refers to a realization that we’ve misperceived in every religion on the face of the Earth. And here’s why, as told in my story.
The catch in that book is, the overall story comes from the novella at the end of Anthology of Evil titled, “Andrew“. Which is another story I wrote for that fiction 101 class. I could say that story blew the entire class away. Except for my professor, who hated the story.
Why I’m bringing this up here and now is because I’ve also considered doing a revised edition of Death of heaven, as a second revision after the first and after the initial publication. I could then add "Andrew" in Death of heaven and yet there’s one other story called "Perception" that I wrote one night, working on my greatest nonfiction psychology paper on synesthesia and schizophrenia. I typed it single space on one page and gave it to my prof the next morning, just on a lark. The next day I went to class, and he’s handing copies of it to everyone of his students. Hey, high praise. But anyway, I could then include that story, too. That story is about when humankind could first y think and thought to look up to the heavens, and consider something bigger than themselves... other than carnivores. They immediately misperceived the universe and centered it around themselves. And then we got somebody in the middle ages saying, Hey, I think the earth revolves around the sun instead of the sun and stars around the earth. And of course, the church then immediately put him to death.
And that is the premise for Death of heaven. But it's much, much bigger than just that and extends to the creation of earth and nearly, or perhaps, its end. The other story about Andrew is another interesting story which goes into before (after) how the earth was evolved, as well as humankind and religion. So that by the end of Death of heaven, you have a very different perspective on our world.
Beginning my 4th mile…
Thought I’d take a photo of my book in a little free library. That’s been there for months now. It’s a book about long Covid and I say a pretty good book from what I hear. I think it helped a few people who’ve read it. Or so they’ve said. It occurred to me when I noticed it was still there, after I started walking again this year...there's probably not a lot of long Covid sufferers out walking. Just because I talk about it in the book, one way to help get over long Covid is to get exercise. I mean, it’s a lot of other things, but this is very helpful. The problem is what I detailed above. You have to get well enough to walk and then push yourself, but don’t, because if you overdo it you’ll get really sick and it’ll take longer to get over. So take your time.
I started martial arts in 1965 and I fought two major tournaments those next two years. And a bunch a little tournaments around the Pacific Northwest. So all my life it was, whether punching a bag or lifting weights or whatever, you push yourself. So with long Covid, yes, push yourself. But it’s a whole other kind of "push". It’s a very gentle and very slow incremental push. It’s the kind of push of... get out of your chair and go walk to the mailbox, and back. Don’t overdo it. And I’m not joking. Whatever you’re doing every day, double that. And what I mean by that is… If all you do every day sit in your recliner, like I did for eight months that first year of 2020...I would try to go downstairs to do laundry, come upstairs and sit, try and calm my breathing for 15 minutes. Or I'd take a shower and would take 20 minutes to calm my heart down afterwards, just from washing myself. So if that’s all you do, walk to your mailbox (somebody’s gotta do it unless it’s on your door and mines down on the street), next day walk to the end of the block, or a couple neighbors houses down, and come back. The next day double and just whatever works for you.
Damn! Approaching 3 1/2 miles one block away one short block. Starting to wonder if I should do 5 miles. Then my left foot tweaked with pain. Maybe this will be enough at 4 miles.
55° when I got home. Yep, it's a 4 mile day.
Damn! Approaching 3 1/2 miles one block away one short block. Starting to wonder if I should do 5 miles. Then my left foot tweaked with pain. Maybe this will be enough at 4 miles.
55° when I got home. Yep, it's a 4 mile day.
I’ll leave you with that. It’s noon and time for lunch.
I wish you all great success and health! Until next time!
Cheers! Sláinte!
Cheers! Sláinte!
