No, not the readable sort.  

Flashing is the act of exposing onesself in public.  I’ve an hour in a bar with Jarvis in front of me and no company while the wife is being therapeutically tortured.  I intend to write, but it will be no trouble at all to dodge out and twiddle the hour away.  The best remedy for that behavior is self-discipline, but, lacking that, I’ll use the prospect of embarassment instead.  I’ll check in, update this post with my wordcount, and live with the remorse or exultion that results.

Which, now I’m thinking of it, is a kind of self-discipline.  Well, then.

• Beginning Count:  30,001
• Ending Count:  30,929

I was nurtured in a tolerant, accepting environment.  One didn’t, for instance, point a finger and say that this person or that was horrid, ugly, unpleasant, foul, evil, or wrong.  Instead, it would be noted that “I think…” or “I feel…”, with the implication that there are other ways to think and feel without the expressed or implied indication that some of those ways to think and feel are utterly stupid and destructive.

The result, over the years, has been that even if someone takes advantage of a soft spot in my head for years, using me as a tool and intentionally hurting me so that they can feel better, I was still very reluctant to say “that was wrong.”

In fact, the only person that I express explicit judgement on is me.  I am wrong, I am destructive, I am a burden, I am slow, stupid, ugly, or the wrong shade of puce. (more…)

I’m intending to match Lisa in her New Year Teeth-gritting.  I’ve suggested (as she hates exercise and will likely need cardio for her plan) that she follow in Catie’s fine footsteps and do something like this.

I will not be doing cardio except as part of my life; I get plenty of walkabout without trying, miles daily.  I’m going to return some of the lean muscle mass that I had a few months ago, so, rather than walk to Minis Tirith or some such, I thought (initially) that I’d lift the Pyramid of Cheops.  Then I learned that that pyramid is estimated to weigh in at 6 million tons.

Okay, even one or two hundred pounds at a time, that’s a bit much.

I’ve a Gravity Force, which one sits on and then lifts — oneself.  The body moves about a foot.  It’s a lovely machine, has variable resistance and all that, and a variety of weight-machine simulations.  

It also is a fair simulation for lifting oneself by one’s bootstraps.

Oh, I like it.

I will lift myself by my bootstraps until I have gone from the base of Kilimanjaro to the peak; 15,100 feet.  Physical analogy, literary references, the mystery of the dead cheetah (I may have misremembered this) that was found at the top; physical, emotional, spiritual, all in one.  

I shall bootstrap myself to Kilimanjaro.

Shannon, for her part, will be bootstrapping herself (or stair-stepping) to Machu Picchu.  Much more picturesque, but you can’t take a Hemingway sort of image to heart and then shift whimsically a moment later.  Where is the macho stoicism in that?  No, I’ll go to the roof of the world in Africa, Shannon can have her lost Incans, and we’ll meet Lisa, all of us svelt and comely.