I’m also meditating and doing chi-kung in the sunshine every morning. I’d gotten in the crazy habit of frequently orgasming, as well as getting very fat and out of shape and drinking too much.
It was an incredible slide, and now it’s zero to hero time.
I feel so much better! Fasting is having a very positive effect on my chronic stomach inflamation. I wake up in the morning with no stomach pain. Amazing. Haven’t felt this good in ages.
Another benefit of fasting is simply knowing that I can. And knowing that I can easily, with very little inconvenience.
I don’t want to be that guy who is too soft to go in the swimming pool because it’s cold at first. I want to be that guy who can handle a little bit of inconvenience from time to time. I’m not so much into being tough that I take cold showers though; I do when there is no hot water heater, which is common in low rent places locals use, and I can go a year without a hot water heater, but if it’s there, personally I use it for the intended purpose. Fine – I’m soft that way. That’s where I’m at in that balance. Comfort is good, but avoiding discomfort when it’s required is kinda pussy, and I don’t want to be on that side of the pussy curve.
Meditating at first is a bit uncomfortable. So is fasting, chi-kung, not coming, working out, not drinking. After it becomes routine it not only gets easier, but pleasure is found in it. And the rewards are slow and cumulative. Baseline wellness after the mildly annoying habits are routine and have been practiced for several months is far above baseline happiness when eating and drinking at will, and letting the mind do anything it pleases all the time.
I can’t much even feel the chi-kung unless I do it daily for a good few weeks, and if I don’t deepen the chi-kung with alternating with shamata vipassana, for one or three hours a day, I rarely feel it VERY strongly.
It’s the same for the sitting quietly. It can take a few weeks before I really quiet down. I don’t push myself or struggle about it; I’m not in a huge hurry to have a quiet mind. I don’t really try to meditate; not much. But after a few weeks, I’m meditating. It makes quite a difference to the morning, and eventually bleeds into dreams. Everything gets more colorful and panoramic.
And the chi-kung makes it so that I don’t have to come if I don’t want to. So I haven’t in two weeks. And not coming of course makes me not only have more stamina, but in the long run, combined with chi-kung and shamata-vipassana meditation, also means the base level of contentment, joy, and love increases.
J and I always role play – every day. Very often she’s a random neighbor from next door who wants to fuck me, as long as my wife isn’t too close by. Very often before blow jobs, she’ll sniff my dick and declare that she smells pussy. “Pussy! Hmmm. It smells like 14 year old.” We’re both jealous people – potentially crazy jealous – but not too triggered by a little role play. She knows how to make a man out of me, and we don’t risk any bed death.
I had really really fucked up, listening to her “I love you so much, marry me, never leave me” over and over day after day. I got soft.
You can’t do that. It’s got to be seducing the girl from day one, every day.
I’ve got to actually be worth it. Not just because we’re already together and inertia. I’ve got to be worth it compared to the next guy, if she were choosing for the first time.
xsplat said:
I had to do the one day eating, one day at the gym routine for 4 weeks to get the beginnings of a sixpack. It’s ineresting; on fasting days I often seem to have even more energy than eating days.
In other diary news that no one cares about, J told me yesterday that she isn’t 25 at all. She had lied about her age, as had N and S. Like them, she is actually younger than she originally said. She’s 21, not 25. I had a hard time believing her, even after she had showed me her papers and ID, but then realized that there was a long gap in her facebook history. Of course she couldn’t be 25!
It feels a better fit for me that way. I’m weird like that.
xsplat said:
More diary update:
My new saxaphone finally cleared customs. Corrupt bastards added an extra 50% to the product and shipping costs. But I’m still quite happy with it; it’s a thing of beauty and the company has a great craftsmanship reputation.
I’ve put up my old extra huge hand made heavy boxing bag, and use it without gloves or wrist wraps. When I first started using a heavy bag 6 years ago, it took about 3 months, using gloves and heavy wrist wrapping, for my wrists to stop getting constant micro-sprains, and for my pinky knuckles to stop feeling bruised. Remarkably my wrists are still strong, after two years of not using it, and I can hit full strenth with no discomfort. I’m working towards getting some calouses on the knuckles; I’d like to be able to actually hit someone with a fist if the need ever arose. In any case, as a pure sport, I quite enjoy punching – even if it were totally unrelated to self defence.
I stopped the intermittent fasting for a week or maybe two, and got lax on the gym – all possibly related to testing out if I could drink moderately. As usual, I can drink moderately – until I can’t. If I can, it means I’ll continue to, which means that I’ll overdue it, and then have to manage rough withdrawl symptoms. Never pretty. Such a shame, as if I could stay just perfectly drunk and stimmed up all the time I’d be overall much more successful at life in so many ways.
It’s amazing how fast the belly bloated up, and how I didn’t really notice it until all at once.
So it’s back to intermittent fasting, and regular gym, and working towards the regular meditation regimen. Overall day by day I’m feeling better in so many ways – and of course this helps me not only be less cranky (alcohol withdrawls really mess with brain chemistry), but move me towards feeling loving and warm. Better for everyone. It’s just a matter of habits. Amazing how my alter egos are able to push aside such knowledge, so regularly.
But they have their place too, and I don’t want to kill them. I like my drunken self, and he’s much more popular, socially, than my sober self. At least at his best, which means him making an appearance after long abstinence and a good lifestyle. I really don’t want to kill my alcohol-ego, but it’s just so damn difficult to keep him on life support. Maybe I could not lose it if I stuck to a calendar and max intake per night limit.
The sax seems not too difficult to play. I’m getting better at the guitar. I tune it to an open G# with a dropped bass string, and prefer finger picking to strumming. But as usual I’m still mostly being undisciplined and improvising in most of my musical play. However I do keep in the back of my mind a long term goal of being able to play composed music in bands, and imagine that this is a great plan for being social as I move more into retirement age and cognitive decline. Music is the last ability to go. More and more I just want to play music.
***
Update October 27: I’m still eating food only every second day, for the most part, and going to the gym on food days. The stomach is much firmer, and the six pack is visisble if I lean back and flex. I’ve gone from downright unattractive with my shirt off, to not offensive, to normal, to toned, and now am bordering on obviously muscular and fit. I’m going to continue with eating every second day, and expect to wind up with a more visible six pack. I also still have room for improvement for growing my muscles, but from past experience I know that even simple maintenance at this point requires strict scheduled lifting, and growth for me is nothing like on big guys. Still, physically it feels and looks so much better. A visitor thought I looked 14 years younger than I am.
It’s two and a half months since I started this upgrade project. I relapsed into drinking a few times, and that slowed it down or caused some brief reversals, but it’s been mostly on track. I like the system, and it’s become easier to do.
xsplat said:
This comment is just for me. Probably boring as fuck to anyone else. I suspect some therapeutic value to public self examination. It’s one thing to ruminate and have personal insights, but another to expose them, and then be able to come back to them years later.
I’ve written a lot about my ex GF V, a girl who I lived with for roughly the last 6 months of our three year long on and off again romance. She was different than most of my other partners, in that I liked and respected her as a person and friend more than perhaps any of them.
People have conflicting emotions, and relationships all have their good and bad qualities. I could list some of the negatives, but she was the type of person who was self aware enough to try to be good, in a way in line with what I value as good. She had self respect and boundaries and demanded and gave the best treatment she was able. So in that light it seems disrespectful to list what rubbed me the wrong way about her.
But for some reason, at the end, I felt trapped and on edge. I felt that she was asking too much out of me. She was clearly pushing towards marriage and babies, and on the last day gave me that ultimatum. I declined it, and can’t even wonder what would have happened if I did not, because I HAD to decline it. I would have married her on my terms; if she could have turned a blind eye to discreet affairs. But she was hyper vigilant and could not stop picking up on my body language cues and I could not lie to her convincingly.
It was certainly selfish to get my needs met from a woman who had passed the point of dating and was only interested in continuing to deepen our bonds within the context of moving towards monogamous marriage with children.
I was not honest with her about what I would and would not do, was and wasn’t interested in, until just before she broke up with me.
I feel a lot of guilt, sometimes. And yet I’m also selfish, and don’t regret all the lies and manipulations that allowed me to spend more time with her. That’s called cognitive dissonance, I suppose. Two incompatible thoughts, inside me, at the same time.
She still refuses to talk to me. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and she went from offering me marriage and babies one day to having thoughts about fucking up my life a few days later, after the same night she broke with me I was in the bed of an ex – and what’s far worse, took that ex to often visit in the place we V and I had been living together – for all her close friends my neighbours to see. And hear – we fuck loud.
My way of keeping my dignity. Probably not my best moment.
I found out today that she likely is seriously partnered with another foreigner, and has been for some time. More mixed and conflicting emotions. There is some relief. I’ll talk about that first.
I remember the pressure building during our last weeks. When she’d come to visit, she’d be glowing and bouncy and so very happy to see me, but I, every single time, acted a bit annoyed and aloof and asked her “who are you?”
To me those moments with her at the door were “This is not my beautiful wife, this is not my beautiful house” moments. Then 3 minutes later I’d have warmed to her, and we were both very happy together and great to each other.
After she broke with me, when I would go to the beach, I’d feel this incredible relief – like a big weight had been lifted from me. She was so hyper vigilant about where my eyes were looking every time we went to the beach, and it felt like I was being treated like a child and a prisoner. I don’t get anything like that at all with my new girl. Thank god. I can’t explain how much I hated that, and yet somehow could not stop internalizing the shame and self control she was trying to impose to safeguard our bonds. What a fucking relief to be free of that impossible constraint.
I could not have married her, because we could not meet each others terms.
But what she gave me caused one-itis; an excessive romantic focus on one individual that is unhealthy because it is no longer returned.
I’m very happy with my new girl. She’s more compatible for me in many ways. But V had qualities that were rare for me to have with a woman. Qualities I probably need, psychologically, in my life. I’m not sure if I need them from my mate, or from a 2nd lover, or if I can get them from male friends. Perhaps if I grow my friends and family, I won’t feel that one-itis type loss so much.
It’s also been about a year now. Time eases even the worst of grief. One more year might do the trick.
When we broke she was waffling about if to keep meeting. I wanted to keep meeting as lovers, and she knew that was a big risk that she would have sex if we did meet. I’m kind of like alcohol to an alcoholic. You don’t want to put me in a glass in your hand, because chances are you’re going to drink it, and then you’ll remain trapped in a cycle, with free will just an abstract concept.
She had to use anger and a very strict no contact rule to make the inner changes she needed to have the life she wanted. She’s smart and wise. Different than me, and makes choices that I never would, but smart and wise none the less.
Actually I consider it small and mean spiritied to make someone fall in love with you and then to create distance. It’s cruel. But I can’t point fingers of blame, because I was also cruel to her, by not being able to keep my 3rd promise to really truly be failthful. I meant that promise when I made it, that third time. She kept telling me she was terrified that I would break that promise, and that just irritated me and made me feel even more trapped. The situation put her in heaven/hell. We were in love and very happy and best friends, but in the end she was tortured also.
I think about relationship dynamics a lot, and keep trying to make sense of things. Ours was a matter of competing agendas, and some other incompatabilities.
I still miss her like hell, and still feel heartbreak, in waves, at times. I respect that girl and it’s quite rare to meet anyone like her. She was a good one. Is a good one. I may never really “make sense” of what happened, if making sense demands peace of mind. Cognitive dissonance and conflicting agendas were built right into us from day one.
****
J21 is very sensitive, and when she heard me talk briefly on the phone to V for 1 minute strictly about a misdirected package, it threw her into a deep energy draining sadness. She told me that she saw that I was trying to hide my emotions, and smile, but she could see my heartbreak. And even today she can see in me some sadness. She’s been a bit insecure and mopy these last few days, saying things like that she thinks she’s not good enough for me, not smart enough.
I don’t want to hear her talk like that and outright forbid it – it’s an insult to me personally. I wouldn’t live with a woman I didn’t consider good enough for me. Her sensitivity is good, in a way. We’re quite sensitive to each other and bonded, and mean a lot to each other, and work happily to foster and nurture our happiness. Great sex last night, so we’re still in good shape.
JakeS said:
It’s a privilege to read an open-hearted post like this. Grief takes its own time; two years sounds about right.
One of the shocking things I learned from my very long, strongly-bonded relationship, was that love, even the deepest from of it, is not enough. You can’t save someone from themself. And you can’t have a long relationship with any comfort if there’s a practical incompatibility of character and/or life goals. Either you’ll gradually get distorted out of your ‘natural’ shape, or she will. Sometimes being selfish is the most loving thing you can do, because it forces the other to decide what they value more – the relationship or their core identity.