Long Straight Highway - Latest Comments

Re: Very easy and very hard

Byron's Friend — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:12:18 -0000

We all face this problem bro, you are not alone. (Hence, I am here right now.)

A fews things that have helped me stay more on track:
- a passion/joy exists in the things you should be doing
- reminding yourself daily on where your focus should be (written out)
- work in short chucks of time (90-120 minutes) and focus (no distractions) on one task. Then take a short (deep breathing, exercise, eat, talk with someone, etc) break to mentally re-energize. Then start up another time segment of focused work.
- get enough sleep so that enough energy exists to do that which you desire. Without the energy, I don't care how much time I have. My output is poor, it takes longer, and I am more likely to participate in distraction. This is huge for me personally and probably overrides all other points above. The amount of time available is almost meaningless without the personal energy to go with it.

peace

Re: Very easy and very hard

janie — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:51:30 -0000

You know that I have nothing useful to say on this subject and that my solution is acceptance. Accept that you are going to do things half assed, you are never going to study as much or work as hard as you think you should, you are going to perform below your true capabilities, you are going to procrastinate on stupid things that somehow really screw you, you likely are going to waste time doing things that don't matter while you avoid doing things that do, you are never going to do things every day, even if you establish a pattern or a habit you are going to screw it up, you are going to knowingly not do things forever.
Stop thinking about it, stop trying to make it better and it will free up so much mental space you will end up doing more overall.

The best solution by far for me is to have something in my life that takes up so much of my time that when I do get time to work I am 800 times more productive in a short period of time than I ever was when I had tons of free time. A side benefit to super needy children. Work is my break now and it couldn't be sweeter even though I still don't get enough done now it really is because I don't have enough time.

Re: Very easy and very hard

deerslyr1 — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:45:31 -0000

You should really try it. Next time you have a bandage on your leg, or you can just decide to put one on now, try to remove it slowly taking care to preserve every hair. Focus on a little bit at once instead of ripping off the entire thing (like homework?). You'll feel 100% better than if you were to just rip it off and count the number of hairs lost.

Just remember to post the video of you trying the bandage thing.

Re: Very easy and very hard

shanusmagnus — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:53:54 -0000

It's weird how I have no trouble believing that you remove bandages slowly.
It seems right, somehow.

Re: Very easy and very hard

deerslyr1 — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:52:18 -0000

Homework is like removing band-aid stuck to a hairy leg. No one wants to drag out the removal process. Surprisingly, I have had good luck removing a bandage slowly from my leg. That could be what you are experiencing here. In the long run though, you are just too busy and don't want to waste time so you just rip the band-aid off.

Does that make you feel any better, hehe.

Re: Very easy and very hard

Eden — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 23:50:21 -0000

I don't have any words of wisdom, sadly, just observations. I've heard you talk about this many times before -- asking the same questions, coming to the same conclusions, comforting yourself with little "truisms" that you've concocted via equations. But despite saying this or that is "true", you're never fully satisfied that it is, in fact, true. So you ask the same questions again and inevitably come to the same conclusions, sometimes before you've even begun to act in the way that would bring about this conclusion. How does a person get into this kind of exhausting cyclical thinking, and how do they get out? Fuck if I know. I can't do it either. But I think there are clues to be found here, somewhere, in the thinking step.

Re: Very easy and very hard

mrfahrenheit — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:55:31 -0000

You don't have the required leverage on yourself. Reasons A, B, and C may sound good but subconsciously they might not be. So off you go to do Y. What pleasure do you get from doing Y? What pleasure do you get from not doing X? Is the pain of not doing X painful enough?

Re: Preventable death

Byron's Friend — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:56:53 -0000

I am all for school "clean-up". There definitely are some no-brainer issues. Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, McD, and others easily available within a school cafeteria. Phy ed classes and sports dropped from schools. I completely agree, things need to change. There have been various pilot programs that have ripped out most of the junk food and implemented healthy (some organic) menu items and guess what...less trouble in school, better grades, etc. I am definitely not against change.

I am not for no-government. I just feel it is wise to be careful with how much control a few dozen men/woman and their lobbyist are allowed to dictate the direction of our life experience. Are government official any more responsible/health minded than the average general public mofo. Who will they get their advice from? Hopefully not Coke.

I see the two approaches as bottom-up (individuals making better choices) and top-down (government making choices for you or influencing your choices). In the end both will probably be required on some level to get where we want to go as a general population.

From personal experience, I know where my family's health has gone due to taking personal responsibility and expanding our own awareness versus waiting for the government. The prior has made 100% impact, the later 0%. Seriously. That doesn't mean the government couldn't easily decide to leave special interests behind and have a truly positive impact on health.

I just don't accept the idea on a personal level to wait for the government to tell me what to do (or create the change) so I don't become one of those statistics above. You can make the personal/family decision today to do the best of your ability to not be on that list...and then when the government rolls out additional programs to support that all the better. You as an individual must be engaged in the process and the sooner the better.

In the end, people will live the way they want to live. Choose your own adventure. Remember those books.

I love you man. :)

Re: Preventable death

shanusmagnus — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:33:52 -0000

Maybe this is a better way to think about it:

For the last umpteen years there's been a rash of vending machines and ice cream fountains in high schools and junior highs. The data says that schools that have this plethora of junk food have fatter kids. Now, while nobody would argue that those kids could simply choose to not eat that stuff, the point is that they _do_ eat that stuff. And we could soberly discuss how important it is for them to make good decisions, live mindfully, etc. etc. when the reality, when you zoom out, is very simple: take away the vending machines, the kids get thinner again. This is not a panacea, or a recipe for some newer, superior human being. It is a simple choice, with a consequence clear as clockwork: vending machines in, obesity up.

This is the crux of the point. We are talking statistical mechanics, not Newtonian mechanics. Large actions have effects on groups of people. We don't even need to talk about the individual in this analysis. It doesn't matter. The model of the individual at the center of the universe, the whole bundle of unique hopes and dreams and drives and whatever, it doesn't matter. What matters on the large scale is the law of large numbers. How do groups respond to stimuli. It might not be a comfortable way to think, but it's the rational way.

So, given that, which decisions do you want made? Because they will be made by somebody. This is what the 'small government' people can't seem to grasp and it annoys the shit out of me. If the government was eliminated entirely we wouldn't all join hands in a market-driven orgy of free consumer choice and clear thinking -- if the government was eliminated the same thing would happen every time the government is eliminated, which is that other entities would rise up and fill the power vaccuum. Big business; organized crime; corrupt officials; neighborhood tough guys; protection rackets.

We do not face the choice between government or not. We face the choice of what kind of government it is, and who it's accountable to, and what we call it. Whether it's "The Government" or "Biblical Scholar" or "IBM" is an issue of semantic pattycake that nobody with any sense will entertain. And it is in this light that the decisions of these remote, far-off bodies matter; though how precisely they matter, how exactly the consequences might manifest if nutritional health (in the scientific sense of the term, not sense advocated by the corn/wheat/junk food lobbies) were made a governmental priority the way that, for example, reducing tobacco consumption was a governmental priority (hint: it was an enormous, resounding success when measured any way you care to measure it) is the open question.

Re: Preventable death

Byron's Friend — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:55:25 -0000

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/coca-cola-partne...

Another reason why taking personal responsibility for your health is a pretty good hedge. As will all things in life, there are no guarantees. Sometimes you can do everything you believe is right and sh!t happens. Such is the life experience.

Re: Preventable death

Byron's Friend — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:28:09 -0000

Mindfulness is far from a trick. It is truly being alive. Without mindfulness being a part of someone's life, we are likely to change nothing.

I guess my personal concern is big government (very inefficient, corrupt on some levels) and the micro-managing of my life. Will the government really ever know what is best for me/you? This seems like a scary proposition in many ways.

Should the government stop manipulating and supporting manipulation of the "system" - yes. Should the government be pro-sh!t. Definitely not.

In my opinion there are very few factors larger than oneself that affects a person's individual choice. The buck (figuratively and literally) stops/starts with you. Who isn't surrounded by fast food these days? Yet, there are people that don't eat it or very little of it. Why is that?

You have two choices. Take personal responsibility for your life or give someone else that power. Most people have given it away and don't even realize it. Some don't want the responsibility. That doesn't mean you can't take it back, if you so choose.

If enough people stop buying "it", they will stop creating "it"...eventually. The market will change.

Obviously some kind of change is coming through the government pipe and I am hopeful that it will be a step in the right direction. Is everyone going to be forced to eat fruits and vegetables, exercise, meditate/relax daily, manage stress levels, sleep eight hours a day, limit sugar intake, limit process food consumption, stop smoking, blah, blah blah. Of course not. And would we want that kind of mandate within our country?

The current health care system's primary involvement is sick-care. Obviously the current paradigm isn't working, yet we hold so strongly to it. This paradigm isn't sustainable so it will be forced to change. Somewhat uncertain is whether this change is occurring because the well (money) is running dry or that the current fairly restrictive system isn't very good at actual "health"-care or "sick"-care in many areas. (or both) The belief on this issue will be very important in guiding the immediate future of our healthcare system.

Why wait for tomorrow, when you can change your life today. Btw, tomorrow never comes.

Re: Preventable death

shanusmagnus — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:01:34 -0000

Hey Dave, those are good points. And of course I don't mean to say that any agency, including the government, can fix everything for you. Obviously that's ludicrous. On the other hand, it's very clear that policy in the large influences decisions in the small; it's very clear that if you live somewhere surrounded by fast food outlets, and far away from a grocery store, you're more likely to eat bad stuff. This is where people get hung up, I think - you can look at somebody who habitually makes crappy decisions and say: nobody forced that Big Mac into his mouth three times a week. And of course that's literally true; but in the larger sense, it's not a very useful statement.

In other words: yes, people make choices. But the choices they make are heavily skewed by factors larger than themselves. You can do a few tricks to get around this - being mindful of actions, for instances - but the law of large numbers wins out in the end. People are like elementary particles in that way, which is why the group that exerts influence over the environment in the large can have a lot to say about life in the small, lived by people.

Re: Preventable death

Byron's Friend — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:37:58 -0000

Oops. I meant to say - Don't expect the government to save us.

Re: Preventable death

Byron's Friend — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:36:12 -0000

I have all kinds of thoughts swirling around in my head on this but I will share a thought.

You can't control (or at least not very well) how others live their lives but we can control our own. We can directly influence the direction of health in this country by how we live our own lives and where we spend our own money. What is the majority of your money supporting? Health or disease?

For those that have some understanding of what health means to them at this point in time - live it. Lip service only goes so far. Stop complaining about someone else to save you. Take some responsibility. Keep things simple, it really isn't all that complicated. No formulas or degrees are required. Sometimes we don't want to hear that. We like complexity...or the opportunity to feel helpless.

If you don't know what health is, start educating yourself. Find the most vibrant and healthy person you know and learn what they are doing. That is a great start. A hint: the person on a handful of pharmaceutical drugs is probably not the person to talk to.

Then ACT.

Listen. Observe. Grow (not around your waist).

Do this at a rate that is sustainable for you.

Health is extremely dynamic and involves much more than exercise and the food we eat. Think of your entire being. One part of self is not separated from the other.

I am also not even talking about being a "health saint" but putting what you do 'most of the time' in the direction of health. You can change your life.

But how many people really want to change their life? Be healthy? Or even be in control of it?

Trying to live a healthy lifestyle in this country is not easy or convenient...but can be done and is worth it.

Do expect the government to save us. It starts from within. Be it.

Re: Preventable death

mrfahrenheit — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:15:40 -0000

I believe that government isn't going to change. They'll talk a good talk like they always do, but the lobbyists will continue to whisper sweet nothings and provide the cash to gain the support for whatever they want. Just look at corn for example. The corn that is grown isn't even edible until it is processed. Check out the documentary "King Corn" and you'll get more than you ever wanted to know. Follow the money and take a look at the government food pyramid. Eat those grains that we were never designed to eat in the first place.

Re: Excerpt from best LSH post ever

shanusmagnus — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 17:46:13 -0000

The other awesome thing is that Tim took me to task, saying that a misbehaving cock was not evidence for or against right living. Ahhhh Tim. I miss him.

Re: Excerpt from best LSH post ever

mrfahrenheit — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 17:20:18 -0000

The cock can be a traitorous bastard. One must be good to their cock or face its wrath.

Re: Excerpt from best LSH post ever

houlios — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 15:43:06 -0000

I have a theory are why cocks occasionally behave in this traitorous fashion but I will keep it private until I see you next.

Re: The King

janie — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 21:47:06 -0000

I thought the chicken shaking was in the middle of the room?

Re: A global perspective on stupidity

mrfahrenheit — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 21:12:35 -0000

What makes it worse is that our dumbasses and their dumbasses cannot relate, therefore never ending conflict results.

Although I would imagine that the percentages would probably be similar at my workplace...

Re: Bits

janie — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 23:14:55 -0000

damn it why doesn't this blog have a theme? God I love it when you post things like this, it almost makes life worth living. (and that's not sarcasm)

Re: Bits

Mr. Fahrenheit — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 20:15:20 -0000

You're having pizza in Maple Grove every Sunday? Dude...

Re: Bits

Kira — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:56:40 -0000

Somewhere in Minneapolis, there's a red-haired guy named Ken is probably thinking to himself about routines and that book-reading guy who didn't remember about the bits after fifteen years.

Maybe not though. I think some people are the type who realize they're on an island, and some people are the type who could be knee deep in water and no other land in sight and think they've got their entire world all figured out and connected and never give it another moment's thought.

Incidentally (or not) my Dad used to go to a pizza place near our house called Victors and he always ordered a veggie delight with whole-wheat crust. One time, he went in and made his usual order and the cook came out and apologized and said they didn't have the whole-wheat crust anymore because my Dad and "some other old guy" were the only ones who ever ordered it.

Re: Bits

leafmuncher — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:04:47 -0000

Funny you mention that as Anna and I have discussed that very point, and she claims that I used to be an anti-social fuckwad on the mainland, but somehow out here have blossomed into being more social than she is (which is not true, but I have become much more social).

I used to be the guy who didn't even look at the wait person when ordering food, and certainly didn't initiate conversations with random strangers. Maui has definitely seared something into my flesh.

Is it the place or what the place does, and can the two really be separated? I chalk it up to north-shore zeitgeist. Go to the always sunny (like LA, *cough*) south side of the island and it's totally different universe.

Re: Bits

shanusmagnus — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:57:47 -0000

It's interesting that you make that point, since I've been thinking about Hawaii recently in light of some things you've said. I have no trouble believing the attitude is as you say, but here's a question: you're married to one of the top five most socially gifted people I've ever met; do you think your experience would be the same were that not so?

I ask because I wonder if these phenomena are less about the place than about what the place does, like searing a permanent flavor into my flesh. Which is a weird metaphor, isn't it? Oh well.