Day Nine - Project 3

  I should say something negative about Roughing It.  I should say it is long-winded or some such.  I should say he runs off on tangents, flights of fancy.  I should say something that doesn't sound like the ninth day in a row where I sing the praises of an author who doesn't need me to do it.  To demonstrate my keen critical analysis skills, my ability to spot the tiny flaws that no one else has seen.

  Nope.  So far, so awesome.

  I love the stuff about Slade, I love the stuff about Salt Lake City, I love the sleeping on mail bags.  This is my favourite travelogue.  Hands down.

  One thing I have assessed is my basic overland reading speed.  Given the size of the pages of my hefty tome of Mark Twain (containing all the ones I've read so far, and some short stories), I'm hitting an average of 25 pages an hour.  Even if the pages were normal paperback size, it wouldn't show me in some speedy-read-y light.  I estimate at this point I would need about 8 hours tomorrow to finish the last 200 pages.  If I called in sick from work, and I am actually still sick, runny eyes, sore neck, nausea, I think it's smallpox or the plague or witches or something suitably Twain-esque, I'd have to call in sick from being a dad too, and nuts to both.  It's one a.m. now, and I might try to get in a whopping ten more pages, yeah, do the easy math there, but yes, there is no last minute miracle, lazy guy suddenly develops the ability to speed read, Ode to Joy plays in my montage as pages fly in a Once Upon a Time in China leaf-whirlwind around me.  I'm gonna start project four the day after tomorrow, but I know I'm going to keep on reading Twain.  Oh, and I've still been stretching so I can still touch my toes.  And there's this thing, the Bjournal.  I might have to face the fact that there's a lot of these things that I will really enjoy, and may try to continue post-project.  This actually worries me now, because at present I only sleep about six hours a night when I'm lucky.

  If I'm successful, my easily addictable nature and my hatred of breaking a habit could mean that my projects are going to sort of kill me.  Who would have guessed that I missed taking things into account before I did this?

  Twain would've.

-Mike

Day Eight - Project 3

  A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is done.  Stone me, but it's a corking good read.  Again, I've done my utmost lo these past eight days to have no cause to sound alarum that spoils are nigh, and shall endeavour to keep faith.  Without betraying any of the story, I'd have to say that reading this in the time of its original publication would make it the equivalent of reading "Steam-Punk" literature today.  What is fascinating to me is the way Twain critiques the unpleasantness of everyday life in the Middle Ages in an frankly imaginary setting as the England of King Arthur.  It's as if he wanted to tell a great adventure story in a fantastic setting, but still let a modern day American viewpoint into it.  I hate that in those biblical cast of thousands movies I like so un-ironically.

  I love it in Twain's writing.

  In case the subtext of the last eight days isn't coming through, I love Mark Twain.

  Two days left, and I need to try start and finish Roughing It.  I'll skim any short essay or short story whenever I can in the next forty-eight hours, but I know I won't come anywhere near to targeted objective on this project.  I'm pretty sure that I don't care.  In fact, I'm pretty sure that I will have read everything Twain has ever written eventually.

  I'm actually pretty flu-ish tonight, and I don't think I'll be reading till 2 am, but I got in 5 hours of reading, so I don't feel like I wussed out.  I may not be the world's fastest reader, but I get there in the end.

-Mike

Day Seven - Project 3

  I laid me down last night, and did not read "The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg".  I got a little tired, and read a graphic novel about Jack Johnson, the boxer, instead.  So I'm a little behind.  That is to say, I'm a little further behind than the incredibly behind I already was.

  So I started A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.  I'm only about 50 pages in, and have another 150 to go, and Roughing It looks about twice as big as any of the previous Twain novels I've read, and I've got tutoring after school on the morrow and I haven't played Skyrim on my Xbox in like a week and this is why I never attempted to better myself before now.

  Nine hundred, seventy three days and counting.

  I read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, the kiddie illustrated version, and it REALLY didn't do the story justice.  The way the Yankee goes on about the people of his 6th century is so comically disdainful, there's only one modern hero who can really give a similar perspective:

  Ash,  Housewares.  "Don't touch that please, your primitive intellect...wouldn't understand alloys, and compositions...and things with molecular structures in the...what are you doing here anyway?"  Army of Darkness is obviously a take on A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, with just enough shambling dead and demons added to make it more palatable to the modern moviegoer.  Both these guys are excellent examples of their eras, and what's right and wrong about them, respectively.

  I find it hilarious that the Yankee takes the time to quietly create Protestantism, as if he doesn't really know how to instill the "Protestant Work Ethic" without it.  It feels like he's playing a Civilizations video game.  Man, I'll say it again.  I love Twain.  He shows the effect of tampering with a less technologically developed culture, and does it from the perspective of the tamperer who doesn't really see anything wrong with it - Manifest Destiny through time, rather than across space.

  I'm gonna get back into it.  Hail to the King, Baby!

-Mike

Day Six - Project 3

  This is ridiculously slow-going.  I think there used to be a time in my life when I could read quickly.  It's day six, and I am not finished The Prince and the Pauper yet.  I know Magda had her dance and swim class (that's a consecutive set of activities, not concurrent) this morning, and we took a trip to the library in the afternoon, but I am just so slow now when I read.  Mary just walked in and told me she's almost finished Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors this evening.  Well, she started it this evening too.  I actually told her I would read along each week with her on her Spear-shaking.  I got through Tempest, Twelfth Night, A Winter's Tale, Macbeth, and Merchant of Racists Venice, and got really behind with Othello.  I just really REALLY hated Merchant of Venice.  I figured an English teacher should have, y'know, READ SHAKESPEARE a bit in his adult life, right?  But since I am a slow reader, and a slow reader who decided to challenge himself with Twain's bibliography, I'm falling behind not only on my project, but someone else's project, too.

  The Prince and the Pauper is pretty good.  Twain does a good job with the details of 16th century life.  I feel like the dialogue is a little over the top - like if Tom Sawyer and Joe Harper got a hold of a book of Tudor language and decided to change every word to Knightspeak, and so forsooth.  Really noticing how Twain's plot development seems to always have a series of mini-adventures that slowly bring you to the resolution.  I know people are going to say, "Wow, Mike, REAAAAAALLLLLY insightful!  That's what rising action is!"  But I mean he really tells each one as a short story with its own climax and conclusion.  Mark Twain novel's would be good for short series, like a tv mini-series or (and I don't know why I'm thinking this) a Saturday afternoon matinee serial.....Episode 12 - Tom and Huck and the mysteries of Jackson Island!  Maybe not the mid 19th century American ones, some Director would want to show how gritty and real they were by using the N-word the correct number of times based on the source material.  But I would enjoy a 2013 prince n' pauper attempt.

I found this in an article, but all her stuff is great.
http://www.jodiharvey-brown.com/book-sculptures.html

 

  Yeah, it's been a busy week.  I found a weirdly organized volume 1 of Twain's autobiography at the library (yayyy!  Using the trip as part of the time involvement in the project for today)  and "The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg", which I may read tonight as a break from his full-on novels for the rest of the night.  If I can get through Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and Roughing It, most of the other novels (of which I found a few on Project Guttenburg) seem to be long short stories.  Maybe I'll find a day and do two or three of them, and find some last ditch time to get some essays and short stories.  I may not get them all, but I ain't gonna be a slouch, neither, I reck'n.  Dagnabbit, I meant yea, verily.

  Twain is awesome.

-Mike

Day Five - Project 3

 I read and read and read.  I got to 10 pages left in Huckleberry Finn last night, and realized that 4 separate times with the book on my face.  I finished it today, and started The Prince and the Pauper.

  Huckleberry Finn was pretty awesome, gotta say.  Still a lot of dissonance from the word (you know the one).  Every time I read it, I cringed, and tried to buy into the "Commentary on the society from an author trying to provoke thoughts/raise consciousness."  Tom Sawyer's involvement is fantastic because of who and what he is - an unspeakable little example of how selfishness is hardwired into children, regardless of era.

  The Prince and the Pauper is fun for me, because I didn't remember from the abridged kiddie version that it was Prince Edward Tudor, with Henry VIII and the rest.  I got into Tudor era history a little while ago.  It was only because I watched an episode of The Tudors at my friends Gil and Megan's place,and love period dramas, even if they're a little ridiculous.  It's pretty ridiculous, but one great thing about watching any TV show or movie about this era is the amount of real history recorded during it.  The number of quotes I read in an Antonia Fraser book on the wives of Henry VIII that appear almost word for word in The Tudors, A Man for All Seasons, Anne of the Thousand Days, etc., is impressive.

  I'm only a little ways into the The Prince and the Pauper, but I will say I like the way that the inciting incident is crafted.  I always thought it was a "I say, urchin, wouldst thou likest to take upon thyself mine own finery whilst I should adorn myself in yon rags?  Would it not be most excellent sport?  Murther.  Anon.  Verily."  For all the unlikelihood of the meeting and the boys' appearances, I appreciated the way Twain took it from there.

  The bell has tolled eleven, and I must away.  Exit, pursued by a crippling project workload.



  -Mike

 

Day Four - Project 3

  I have only read a few pages so far tonight, as this was a day off for students and substitutes without a current classroom of their own.  Casual Friday on the Island of Misfit Toys.  That doesn't even really apply.  Like I said, headache is still bumping around my brain, like a bullet of such low calibur that it managed to get into my skull, but can't smash its way out again.  I'm thinking of the anarcho-mystic comic book The Invisibles, when one of the main characters mentions in passing that a guy he knew made his brain tumour his totem spirit/familiar, whatever.  Named it and everything.  Maybe I should just let my headache run roughshod all over my conscience mind, see what its hooves turn up in the dust.

  Looking at the previous paragraph, probably not.

  I intend to finish Huckleberry Finn tonight, within the next hour in fact, and get underway with The Prince and the Pauper.  There is so much fun, silly hi-jink going its merry way in this book, that I want to mention the character of Jim again.  In some ways he's caricatured, but in other ways, he is only mostly decent guy in the book.  I'm not the first nor probably the millionth and first to say that.  But there is an anecdote he relates about one of his daughters that I have not been able to get out of my head.  I'm not going to spoil it or anything.  If you don't want to read the whole book, it's about the last page or so (depending on the typeset/pagesize/whatever) of Chapter XXIII.  It's flawed and it's sad and enraging and tragically comic or comically tragic and I don't know.  But I can not get the anecdote out of my head, and it makes me want to cry.

  'Nuff typed.  back to work, nose to the whetstone.*

  - Mike




*  I can't afford a grindstone.  Sand down your nose on whatever you have, really.  Save your money.

Day Three - Project 3

  Second late post in a week.  Already appearing like I'm trailing off.  When I tell you the reason for the lateness, maybe you'll forgive, or maybe you'll laugh.  Both is just jake with me.

  I played basketball yesterday.  It started harmlessly enough, with me taking shot after shot by my lonesome.  Playing basketball in a vacuum seems to be my strong suit.  You probably won't believe this, but I'm a pretty good shot - when I don't have to shoot around anyone, or, y'know, play basketball with people.  So I'm shooting hoops, and my much fitter, much stronger, much more successful baby brother sees this and says, "Stay there!  We'll get a two-on-two game going!"

  I can shoot.  That is all.  I can ride an exercise bike for hours.  My aim, and my lowest-possible-impact cardiovascular exercise do NOT make me able to duck and weave, pass and defend, or run around a court for more than 5 minutes without my lungs burning.  All I could think about was Demi Moore and Tom Cruise and Kevin Pollack trying to determine whether private Santiago's Lactic Acidosis was sped up by the involvement of others.  I remember a LOT from A Few Good Men.  Anyway, my throat was so hoarse and ragged from 10 minutes of basketball that I started coughing like I smoked two packs a day since childhood (never smoked - don't even have that for an excuse).  After three hours of this, I had coughed myself into the worst headache I've had in months. For twenty-four hours.

  My need for improvement is just glaring at times like these.  Part of me had almost said, "No, much more successful and still hair-headed little brother, I am saving basketball for a project in the summer, so obviously I can't play it now for fun."  But I can't think that way.  I had a professor in the nineties who told me a proverb from India (I can't remember from which language, but I'm pretty sure the man spoke at least four languages), and I'm probably paraphrasing, "Let knowledge come to you from all sides."  I never forgot it.  I wish I had internalized it when I was 20.  It's goodthink.  I want goodthink.

  I don't tell this non-Twain story to say why I didn't work on my project yesterday.  I tell it to say why the bjournal wasn't posted until tonight.  I laid there with a headache until 2 am, reading Huckleberry Finn.  I skipped my workout, because I had done a full extra workout a while back, and treated myself to a feet up night.  Still have the headache tonight.

  On to Huckleberry Finn.  It is good.  I don't know if I think it's not as good as Tom Sawyer, or better as yet.  I reckon I'll discover my leaning whichways or t'other, by and by (See? See the pretentious affectation?).  My real feeling is that this book is a weird (weird like how it was used in the 40s - uncanny and mysterious - BATMAN WEIRD) mirror to the movie Apocalypse Now.  Huck and Jim escaping from horror instead of travelling towards it.  All the bizzarre side adventures along the river, all the cast of strange characters sauntering in and out of the narrative aim of the protagonist (I keep imagining Robert Duvall as Lt. Col. Kilgore, but standing on the roof like Colonel Sherburn, shaming a mob into demonstrating their cowardice).

  I related this to the much smarter book reviewer who lives here, and she said, "Like Heart of Darkness."  I would like to have said, "Yeah.  Indubitably so."  Unfortunately. the three times I was supposed to read it (once in grade twelve, and twice in college) for classes I think I read about three pages in total.  Or the first page three times.  I can't remember.  And I know Apocalypse Now is based on the Conrad story.  I have a lot of surface level knowledge and pop-culture references wired in.

  But I'm sticking with my comparison.  If you like Apocalypse Now for the absurd river adventure vignettes, then you should read Huckleberry Finn.

  Stay tuned for the next expediting chapter of Vitruvian Manifesto, coming up after this.

  - Mike

Day Two - Project 3

  Tom Sawyer is done.  I mean the book is done.  The author assures me he's well and has a good job and all, but that was back in 1876, so I guess he's done, too.

  Yeah, so most of you who have read more than I have or looked up Twain's Bibliography can probably hazard a guess about the impossibility of Project 3.  My personal collection has about 6 novels, and a few short stories.  Here's just what I got from Wikipedia:

Novels

The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873)

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)

The Prince and the Pauper (1881)

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889)

The American Claimant (1892)

Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894)

Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894)

Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1896)

Tom Sawyer, Detective (1896)

A Double Barrelled Detective Story (1902)

A Horse's Tale (1907)

The Mysterious Stranger (1916, posthumous)

Short stories

"Advice to Little Girls" (1865)

"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" (1867)

"General Washington's Negro Body-Servant" (1868)

"My Late Senatorial Secretaryship" (1868)

"Some Learned Fables for Good Old Boys and Girls" (1875)

"A Literary Nightmare" (1876)

"A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage" (1876)

"The Invalid's Story" (1877)

"The Great Revolution in Pitcairn" (1879)

"1601: Conversation, as it was by the Social Fireside, in the Time of the Tudors" (1880)

"The Stolen White Elephant" (1882)

"Luck" (1891)

"Those Extraordinary Twins" (1892)

"The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg" (1900)

"A Dog's Tale" (1904)

"Extracts from Adam's Diary" (1904)

"The War Prayer" (1905)

"Eve's Diary" (1906)

"Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven" (1909)

"My Platonic Sweetheart" (1912, posthumous)

"The Private Life of Adam and Eve" (1931, posthumous)

Collections

Short story collections

Mark Twain's (Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance (1871), short story collection

Sketches New and Old (1875), short story collection

A True Story and the Recent Carnival of Crime (1877), short story collection

Punch, Brothers, Punch! and Other Sketches (1878), short story collection

Mark Twain's Library of Humor (1888), short story collection

Merry Tales (1892), short story collection

The £1,000,000 Bank Note and Other New Stories (1893), short story collection

The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories (1906), short story collection

The Curious Republic of Gondour and Other Whimsical Sketches (1919, posthumous), short story collection

The Washoe Giant in San Francisco (1938, posthumous), short story collection

Essay collections

Memoranda (1870-1871), essay collection from Galaxy

How to Tell a Story and other Essays (1897)

Europe and Elsewhere (1923, posthumous), edited by Albert Bigelow Paine

Letters from the Earth (1962, posthumous)

A Pen Warmed Up In Hell (1972, posthumous)[2]

The Bible According to Mark Twain (1996, posthumous)[3]

Essays

"The Awful German Language" (1880)

"Advice to Youth" (1882)

"Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" (1895)

"English As She Is Taught" (1887)

"Concerning the Jews" (1898)

"A Salutation Speech From the Nineteenth Century to the Twentieth" (1900)

"To the Person Sitting in Darkness" (1901)

"To My Missionary Critics" (1901)

"Edmund Burke on Croker and Tammany" (1901)

"What Is Man?" (1906)

"Christian Science" (1907)

"Queen Victoria's Jubilee" (1910)

"The United States of Lyncherdom" (1923, posthumous)

Non-fiction

The Innocents Abroad (1869), travel

Roughing It (1872), travel

Old Times on the Mississippi (1876), travel

A Tramp Abroad (1880), travel

Life on the Mississippi (1883), travel

Following the Equator (1897), travel

Is Shakespeare Dead? (1909)

Moments with Mark Twain (1920, posthumous)

Mark Twain's Notebook (1935, posthumous)

Other writings

Is He Dead? (1898), play

"The Battle Hymn of the Republic, Updated" (1901), satirical lyric

"King Leopold's Soliloquy" (1905), satire

"Little Bessie Would Assist Providence" (1908), poem

Slovenly Peter (1935, posthumous), children's book

Autobiography and letters

Mark Twain's Autobiography

Chapters from My Autobiography published by North American Review (1906–1907)

Posthumous edition compiled and edited by Albert Bigelow Paine (1924)

Posthumous edition named Mark Twain in Eruption compiled and edited by Bernard DeVoto (1940)

Posthumous edition compiled and edited by Charles Neider

Posthumous edition compiled and edited by Harriet Elinor Smith and the Mark Twain Project: Volume 1 (2010)

Mark Twain's Letters, 1853–1880 (2010, posthumous)

   Tom Sawyer's done, and I've got three pages of Huckleberry Finn under my belt.  So another 5-6 months worth of reading in 8 days, and I should be set to rights.

  Okay, I'm licked. 

  I'm gonna take a trip to the library tomorrow, see what they've got of this list.

  On a happier note, I loved Tom Sawyer as much this time as the times I started it.  It's hard to explain why I like it.  The dialogue is great and there're lots of little adventures.  The ending was a little pat for me, but nothing to really complain about.  What I like about the book is what I like about HBO.  My favourite HBO series (Sopranos, Deadwood, Rome, Big Love) all had an unapologetic internal morality that was not really the modern day western world progressive sensibility.  A lot of the old cast-of-thousands toga movies I like shove a lot of 1950s American ideals about freedom and liberty into stories and places and time periods that had nothing to do with them.  The HBO shows don't.  The morality of the show Rome is horrible, horrible Roman morality.  Watch Deadwood, and see how romantic and noble the Wild West was.

  What I like about Tom Sawyer is the story's internal morality and worldview is that of a little boy, of the 19th century.  Twain's depiction of Tom's reasoning and logic is so much fun.

  I've got to get back to Huckleberry Finn, because, you know, no due diligence and all that. 

-Mike

Day One - Prjoect 3 (Read the Complete Works of Mark Twain)

  I have started Tom Sawyer at least 4 times in my adolescent and adult life.  I have LOVED it every time.  I read the whole (abridged) Illustrated Classics of Tom Sawyer, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and others (I think)  when I was little.  Comic reading got me kind of lazy about literature.  This is not a comment on comic books.  I keep graphic novels in my classroom, I think many comic writers are better writers and artists than many novel writers and poets.  My comic reading got me lazy.  I didn't go looking for engaging novels when comics were such an awesome combination of writing and drawing.

  This project isn't because I'm a teacher now.  I'm pretty sure I can't teach Huckleberry Finn to junior high students in this age, and I'm not sure I would want to.  There are some words I don't ever want to have to say, and I don't care if you think they're just words and only have power if we ascribe them thus, but I'm a white, clawing-desperately-for-middle-class, straight guy, and using words like that is not right.  Rant over.

  Anywhen, I can still appreciate something written by someone commenting on the foibles and prejudices of his own day.  Mark Twain is pretty cool.  I chose this Project off the cuff, when I looked at my bookshelf, and saw the book my dear and snarky departed grandmother gave me.  It's got five of his books in it, and some short stories.  I know he has a lot more, and I'm going to be kicking myself for diving in without knowing what's what or how many's how many, but Grammy gave me that book in 1986, so I really should read it or bury it in ruins for archaeologists to dig up in a few years.

  I have started Tom Sawyer at least 5 in my adult and adolescent life now.  I am LOVING it this time.  I will be done tomorrow and share my views.  I will also find a list of everything else he wrote, so we can all have a laugh at hubris.

-Mike

Day Ten - Project 2 - Complete

  This is a day late.   I have many excuses but, the truth is I probably could've rattled something off last night. It was however, a snow day in my district, so there you have it.  I tried to do my bjournal, but the school bus couldn't drive to the internet in this weather.

  There is this pain.  I noticed it every time I stretched in the last....three and a half decades.  I would reach for my toes or try to do some other basic flex-ability (copyright pending), but there was that pain.  I never liked pain when I was little.  I mis-liked it more than most.  I think the term should be Pre-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder.  You know, that sounds better than cowardice.  As I got older, My fear of pain made me angry, yadda yadda yadda, Yoda, Yoda, Yoda, and I started standing up for myself.  I even took Kung Fu for a couple years.  Not that I became a good fighter, but I learned to take physical punishment.  Had no problem with it.

  On the outside.  This isn't some emotional metaphor nonsense.  I can take a punch, but  I HATE having blood drawn, or a sore back, or a sinus headache.  I hate pain on the inside.  Back in that Kung Fu class, I could take way more hits than I could hold a stretch...see?  Inside pain.

  During the many brief spikes in my life when I lived a more active lifestyle (Fencing, Kung Fu, going to the gym 3 times a week), I never got further with flexibility.

  What I learned this project?  Pain is pain is pain.  I say, if you're like me and in terrible shape, just see it as a thing to get used to.  That's your first.....milestone.....hurdle....no, need it in proper couch potato terms....

  The pain of stretching is your first End Boss.  It may take a couple times to beat it, but maybe just see what kind of attacks work on it and what doesn't.  If it's too easy, there're probably harder levels.  And if you get a workout partner to help you stretch, that's like co-op play, and downloadable content is...metaphor has lost structural integrity.

  Don't mind the pain so much.  No more metaphors.  Partially because I'm tired, and partially because it might start to sound like BDSM advice.  I said, DON'T MIND IT, that's it.

See you in a few minutes for Day One, Project 3.

-Mike

Day Nine - Project 2

  Okay, my extremities are no longer tingling.  I didn't push it again tonight, just held lots of only mildly uncomfortable stretches for the 30 second count.  I'm really starting to suspect that I won't be able to do the splits by tomorrow.  I have, however briefly, touched my toes, which I couldn't even do as a kid, so at least I can say that I have indeed Improved my Flexibility.  

  A friend has suggested I try Yoga.  I think that is a hilariously obvious progression from this project.  I do still think I will need a non-physical project next, but yes, I'm adding it to The List.  That, and Start a Band.  It's been more than twenty years since Fetal Pig played in my friend's basement, but I'm gonna make it, man.  Rock and/or Roll!

  I'll tell you what or if I learned during this project.  Spoiler alert - I learned about stretching.

-Mike

  

Day Eight - Project 2

  I didn't stretch that much today.  I did a little tiny but.  Just enough to keep my foot in.  Which would have been a violation of project guidelines if I hadn't spent the rest of the two hours engining searches with endless combinations of the words Stretch, Overstretching, Circulation, Numbness, and Nerve Damage.  The prevailing opinion of many people in the know, near the know, and having once known someone who professed to have seen the know, seems to be that I may, yes, have been overstretching and I should cool it for a couple days.  Which I have done.  Mostly.  As I said, I still did a little, so I didn't lose ground.

  I'm definitely learning a lot with this project.  But it does feel like I am due for a slightly-less-hard-on-the-joints learning activity in a few days.  Maybe getting better at juggling or learning how to knit.

  Everyone in the house is still sick so let's all pretend I said something witty and profound simultaneously (or at least alternately) and call it a night.  You'll be happier this way.  I know I will.

-Mike

Day Seven - Project 2

  I can't feel my toes.

  I am now able to touch my toes in a standing posture.  In order to do this, I stretched and stretched and held position and stretched and breathed and stretched and hurt and stretched.  I felt my feet falling asleep at the end.  I wasn't sitting on them in some difficult meditative posture or anything. I can touch my toes.  I just can't feel them.

  Is this some kind of cosmic lesson, or just painful (and worrying to a diabetic) irony?  And the worst thing, the WORST thing, is knowing that when I wake up tomorrow, I'll have to do it all over again just to keep at this level, this takes-nearly-thirty-seconds-to-slowly-agonizingly-slowly-touch-my-toes-for-like-five-seconds level of almost flexibility.  I dunno.

  Still worth it.  I have to say, this project isn't really for me.  That is to say, 37 year old me.  This one is for 6 year old me, who desperately wanted to do gymnastics and didn't have the guts to say it out loud to my parents.  Parents who TOTALLY would have supported me in it.  I just couldn't shake that stupid, outdated, suburban-wasteland of gender stratification that surrounded and permeated my childhood.

  I just wanted to be able to do a backflip, get noticed by some wise avuncular neighbour from a distant land who would then proceed to train me to be a ninja.  Oh, heck, I just wanted to DO A BACKFLIP.

  I know that is probably impossible at this point.  But there have to be a number of things that aren't, even for a guy like me.  So, yes, still worth it.  And for 6 year old me, I just want to say, "Okay, here are the winning lottery numbers for 2013.  Be patient.  And would you toughen up and take gymnastics?  Jeez kid, you're not even gonna remember the bullies' names in 20 years."

-Mike

Day Six - Project 2 (And Also Valentine's, People)

  Okay, the two people I love most are not feeling great, and it's also Valentine's, so I did my stretches, and shock of shock, not much improvement in the numbers, but the improvement is in my mindset by doing regular stretches, and isn't it really about the journey not the destination anyway?  I'm gonna go make sure everyone in the household is feeling as least cold-and-flu-ey as possible.  Go tell the people you love that you love them.  I should do that as a project.  No, I shouldn't.  I should just go do it.  

  Thanks for reading.  I love you for it.

-Mike

Day Five - Project 2

  Okay, not in as much pain today.  I think about the phrase "feeling my age", and I think, "YEAH!  I would LOVE to only feel my age!"  I'm feeling my age, and the ages of an indeterminate number of septuagenarians who haven't been out dancing in awhile.

  Like I said yesterday, I'm making a short list of what to do for a stretching regimen, and what I've been doing wrong.  I've been reading little blurbs on the aptly named www.improveflexibility.net, and I realized I never did things properly.  I would bounce during my stretches, trying to use forward momentum to get a little closer, I would hold my breath, and I wouldn't hold a stretch for a long enough time.  So, as of this project, I:

• Hold a stretch for about 30 seconds
• Remember to breathe
• Hold steady instead of bouncing forward/backward

  I am not warming up enough before my earlier stretching in the late afternoon, but I do my later stretches after my exercise bike workout, which does seem to give me a little better results.  I touched my toes for two  full breaths in a standing position tonight, and hit 70 inches for the distance between my feet in an attempt to do the splits.

  I don't really know about the splits now.  I don't think I'm getting any closer to the ground.  That said, while it might be outside the range of my body's ability, the whole stretching routine is becoming a welcome addition to my otherwise lazy evening.  I think this project's a keeper.

-Mike

Day Four - Project 2

  Yesterday I believe I made some delightfully optimistic comment about hitting my stride with the project.  I do believe that.  I hit my stride full on while my stride wasn't watching where he was going and my stride is like this HUGE GUY and he didn't see me and I fell and I dropped my grocery bag and  my eggs were in one of the bags and the eggs broke and it was a reusable grocery bag with the logo from my favourite comic book convention and so that's ruined and my stride was all like flexing and he said "Hey there" - and I can't remember if it was "Little guy" or "Old timer" but my stride was totally demeaning me and even though he helped me up he wrenched my shoulder doing it.

  I'm sore today, is what I'm saying.

  I have almost no new statistical data to report.  I feel proud to have simply stayed the same given how my back, legs, arms, and shoulders feel.  Most everything is the same except my attempt to do the splits, which has a span between feet of 69 and 1/2 inches.  I thought this was nifty because that's my height. Any better and I can at least say to people who think my projects are a waste of time, "Hey pal, I can spread my feet apart to a distance that is equal to or greater than my height."  By can I mean I will have the ability to say this.  It seems like a lot of dialog to memorize and with projects taking up most of my spare time I don't want to lose any more sleep for one boring factoid.

  And my standing toe touch is now 3 and 1/4 inches from the floor.  

  I am going to engage now in one of my less favourite activities.  Soaking in a hot bath.  I prefer showers, but I reallyreallyreally want to soak my old  previously enjoyed bones and muscles.

  I'm going to speak to a gym teacher I know for some stretching advice.  I know he's older than me by a few years, but if scientists autopsied us, they'd probably determine his age as 28 and me at Late Pleistocene epoch.  Maybe I can score a few more tips that I didn't have to get from a computer.

  Tomorrow I'll add what I've learned and what I'm probably doing wrong in some kind of helpful list.  

-Mike

Day Three - Project 2

  I think I'm starting to hit the stride of this project.  I'm glad I've still got a week, but I am getting closer each day.  Today, I touched my toes in a sitting posture for a full breath, and briefly touched my foot for a moment at the end of a 30 second hold while trying to touch toes in a standing posture.  I measured my toe-to-toe distance this evening and it is now 68 inches doing a sad attempt at the splits for a 30 count.  Oh, and for those of you who like visual humour:

There, you like that?  You sick pervert.

  It's kind of cool that my partner Mary thought to outfit our house with the day-care style floor mats.  My heels were killing me before I laid them out for stretching.  Forget getting them for your kids, they make your hallways bouncy and colourful and your kid won't appreciate them like your working-every-day feet will!

  I am definitely getting the feeling that a couple of short stretching sessions are what I'm taking away from this project after it's all said and done.  I mean, I know logically that I wouldn't be horseback riding or pickling every day for the rest of my life (TANGY DILL COWBOY! CRUNCH! ZING!  I've got my own theme song for it, but you sing it however you want), but taking a little time each day to stretch and stay flexible seems to be easy enough.

  -Mike

Day Two - Project 2

  I'm going to share a story.  Americans like standardized tests.  They're like education melting pots.  It makes me think they ought to get some Confucian-era civil service exams going on and just give the jobs to the top ranked.  But then that would negate the opportunity for the high school and college level standardized tests.  I think I had a point at one...point.  Oh, yes.  I had to prepare for a standardized test a few years ago when I made my first leap towards competence.  In order to take a liberal arts degree - Teacher Certification, you needed to take a high school level math/language assessment test.  I panicked.  I had grade 11 Math, and I had taken it in 1992.  So I bought the test guide, and I studied it.  I pored over everything, everyday, until I thought I could maybe take a test and squeak by with a barely passing score.  I wasn't chuffed* about the English, because one of my Not-Majors was English, so I'm awesome, right?

  I got a nearly perfect score on the math, beating the English score by 3 points.

  This was not a story of hard work and perseverance.  This is a story of me thinking that simple part-of-the-process tasks are nigh impossible.  I tell this story because today was day two of my Improve Flexibility project.  I have added two inches to my distance between left and right toes for the splits, and held it for 30 seconds instead of 10.  My standing toe touch attempt is only four inches from the floor instead of six.  And during my second and third stretching sessions, I briefly touched my toes at the end of a 30 second hold while sitting with my legs straight in front of me.  I'm happy with this, but what I am bringing away from this early success is this:
 
  I am lazy in the creation of my hurdles.  I had such an assumption of inability, I didn't even bother to check if I could do these things easily.  So I am now going to really try to accomplish the splits, not just get close enough, expect to be able to touch my toes standing or sitting and go as far as possible (I saw some of those yoga people putting their heads on their shins, so that's what I'm aiming for).  I also think I have to find a few moments to really see what my maximum bench press is like, because I'm just assuming it's pathetically low because I feel weak.

  Gee, as self-absorbed as I am, is it possible I also have low self-esteem?  Wow, how fabulously unique and compelling I am with my one-of-a-kind personality flaws.

  Okay, enough of the down-on-myself bullshark**.  I'm going at this confidently, but not going to get too overconfident.  I have a long way too go, and I'm not getting complacent or accepting early success as total.

  Gotta choose my training montage theme song.

 -Mike

* Aren't the Harry Potter books just wonderful?

** I and everyone else swear too much.  I'm going to try to treat my life as if I'm in an edited for airplanes movie.  OOOH, maybe go without swearing could be a project.  Or am I making something too easy for myself again?  I need more data.

 

Day One - Project 2 (Improve Flexibility)

  To be clear.  It is easier to touch one's toes if one can also see one's toes.

  I spent a lot of today stretching.  I also gained a little measurable data.  When I attempt to touch my toes, my fingers are six inches from the floor (which is improved from the seven I recorded at the beginning of the day).  I think doing the splits is a long way off, but I have and will continue to put myself through some serious awkward pain to test that assumption.   It's 60 inches from left big toe to right big toe.  I have no idea what kind of mathematical operation I could use to tell me how far away doing the splits is, but I bet there's like long division in it.  And variables.  I'm too sore to solve for X right now.

  My kid helped immensely.  She's the kind of delightful sort of sociopath (you know, a three year old) that will grab your thumbs and hang from them without warning you this is coming.  I tried putting that depraved indifference to parental life to use today.  See if she could pull my arms past the comfort zone and drag my hands closer to my feet.  Mostly, she wanted to show me that SHE can touch HER toes.  I went into my whole "Gifted!  My toddler knows what onomatopoeia is!" type spiel, but Mary, who is smarter and more experienced in the bio-metric range of under five capability than me, assures me this is normal.

  I think the stretching was good today, because I don't know if you're in my hemisphere or not, but there's like a metric buttload of snow out there.  Normally, I shovel in a way that always hurts my back (yeah, I know, lift with your legs, but like, shut up, y'know?), but I feel a little better than normal.  Oh yes, project making me....less worse.....already.

  I think tomorrow I will look up information on improving flexibility.  I could have done that today, but I thought it was more important to get into the habit of trying some fun stretching in short periods throughout the day, to train out the instinct to not have fun stretching periods throughout the day.  Also, I had this weird fear that the internet was going to say that fat guys nearing 40 shouldn't be trying to do the splits and touch their toes because they missed their window.  I kind of want to make it true, and someone else's fancy data is just going to slow me down.

  Onward and Downward!

  -Mike

Day Ten - Project 1 - Complete

  I will now share my ten days of accumulated wisdom and experience about bjournals.  It's important that I don't use "Easy to do, hard to do well" in this, because that's a dangerously lazy precedent to set.  I could say that about the next ninety-nine projects as well.

  Writing your journal online is egotistical in the extreme if you're not trying to provide something to a reader. My partner reviews books, and she does it very well on her Cozy Little Book Journal.  My oldest friend writes comical, anecdotal stuff (you probably heard about his snowblower ad on kijiji, if you live in Atlantic Canada).  Me, I've been talking about the bjournal itself, complaining about it.  There are people who can just set out to improve themselves, get up and be better.  If you can't, you (and by you I mean I) can write about yourself (Iself).  Suddenly, you create an imaginary audience that is fascinated with your struggle.  And disappointed when you let them down.  Pre-Internet, didn't you wonder about the person you knew who wanted you to read their diary?  Worry about them, worry about their need for that level of attention, or that even in their own personal book recalling their innermost thoughts, they might be holding back because of what an eventual audience might think?

  Not now.  Now our diaries are public domain.  We want people to laugh, commiserate, and write notes in the margins.

  So, there it is.  I have a bjournal.  I have a place to make myself report on my attempts to learn new information and new skills.  I have personal guilt-based motivation and a worry about what a presumed society will think if I backslide.  I believe I have created an imaginary religion of one.

  Tomorrow begins project 2 - Improve Flexibility (Touch my toes, try to do the splits).  I can do it at home, My daughter can help me, and it will probably amuse anyone if I get some pictures.  Decided to change categories after all.

-Mike

Day Nine - Project 1

  Fortunately for me, and fortunately for you three, we are coming to the end of bjournal for bjournal's sake.  Project Two in two nights. I've done some thinking today, and more importantly have heard the weather people's voices of doom about the Maritimes this weekend.  I think the message I'm getting is "You probably don't want to start biking to work or jogging outside each night."  That might be supposition, but supposing is a position I like.  I think the next project will be a reading one, with no guilt about it.  I have a new side goal, and that is to make sure that  when I finish the list, there will be a near equal amount of humanities, academics and athletic projects.  Obviously, I can't go exactly equal, or I'd have 99 projects.  OOOOOOH, maybe the 100th project could be a combination of all three.  Astronaut training.  Yeah.  Or something I'd be allowed to do.

  I have decided to let the project list grow organically, as good ideas hit me, or are thrown at me (and I want to thank my friends who threw so many great ideas at me before I got started).  If this works the way I want it to, this time next year I'll have a number of new things I know and can do.  That might make it easier to choose new projects.  Also, I'd hate to have to tear things down from the list if I find something better.  I've decided to shoot for no more than a handful of new ideas a week, put them on, and get back to the project at hand.

  I had a thought about this project today, and the thought has been growing right up to this sentence.  I wanted to give some advice today, some piece of wisdom, some way to help another person do their own One Thousand Days.  The full grown thought is this.

  Don't.  Don't get to the point in your life where you have to create a schedule to make yourself a better, more active person.  Just do stuff.  Read stuff.  Learn stuff.  Stuff is pretty awesome.  If you are younger than me, you have more time to get out there.  I have heard a few people tell me they thought this was a good idea, and each person who said this made me think "This woman/man doesn't need Remedial Life.  She/He has a ton of skills already."  It resonated with them because they like people who carpe their diems, and we all of us tend to like those who share mindsets.  But I don't share their mindsets.  I am dragging myself kicking and screaming towards human competence.

  If you are my age or older and you truly don't think you've done anything with your spare time, then maybe, MAYBE, give this a try.  You don't have to wait to the thousand mark, and if it's passed by already, who cares?  There's a scene in an episode of South Park that I really like.  The parents go to fantastical lengths to scare their children into avoiding marijuana, which eventually blow up in their faces.  One of the main character's dad finally says something like, "Marijuana probably isn't as bad as people say, but it makes you feel okay about being bored and doing nothing.  And that's when you should be out learning a new hobby or sport or something."*  I don't have Marijuana as an excuse.  I like doing nothing.  And I think it is even more important that I use my spare time to get some new hobbies.

  Tomorrow, the Exit Interview.

  - Mike

* Just to be clear, I know the names of the characters, and I deliberately didn't say the quote as true to the episode as I know I could have.  Like I said, I spent a lot of time sitting on my butt.

Day Eight - Project 1

  This is the eighth day of my first project (for those of you who don't dig on titles).  I think I have to really choose another project in the next 48 because this is really happening.  I added a couple more to the list, but nothing is really popping out at me.  I want to do them all, but all the physical ones seem to be better suited for warmer weather, and the academic ones feel like a cop out because I think I'm being lazy about physical activities in colder weather.

  I'll probably choose a reading project, to give me time to line up someone to help me with my first physical project.  I think I'll also use some of my allotted time on day nine and ten of this one for the same purpose.

  In related news, I am starting to implement other small changes life-wise, with an eye to making future projects easier.  I am cutting out eating in the evening.  It's a horrible habit from my years of night work, and at this age, it is neutralizing all the stationary bike work I do.  Plus, my little girl is taking an introductory gym/movement class, so maybe if I lose some more weight, at some point in the next couple years, she'll be able to be one of my flexibility/gymnastics mentors.

  Again, if anyone nearby wants to team up for a project, let me know.

 I am sleepy, and will see you tomorrow.  Only did the minimum today, and most was looking at my notes for the list.

-Mike

Day Seven - Project 1

  I'm currently suffering through my second reading of The Merchant of Venice in my life, and as I painfully bear witness to the simple honest racism (against Jewish people, against Africans, and Indians, and I've still got twelve pages left) of the piece, part of me is asking myself, "What the heck is so great about being a Renaissance man?"

  Obviously, my goal isn't to line my closet with pantaloons and compose sonnets, and is Elizabethan England even really the Renaissance?  I always liked "Jack of all Trades" better,  even with the qualifier "Master of None" attached.  I actually preferred it that way.  There's something about specialization that screams warnings to my rather Darwinian outlook.  I'm not saying I want my heart surgeon to be only as good at chest cracking and bypasses as she/he is at stage lighting or sushi rolling.  Obviously, we're not creating humans who can only survive in certain career strata.  Only so much is passed on to our kids.  I mean, my parents are hardworking and successful.  Until my kid was born, the most impressive thing I had created was ...wow, started that sentence before I knew how it would end.  Kinda wish I had something, even a pathetic, "How much time at your minimum wage job did you spend making that instead of doing your work" sort of thing.  Really.  I got nothing.

  Okay, forget I said anything.  Specialists are awesome.  I like technology.  I like services.

  But for me, I think the problem is my intelligence.  There's a quote by Twain that I put on the whiteboard for a "Quote of the Day" for my English students, where he said something like, "There is no appreciable difference between the man who does not read, and the man who cannot read."  For me, I think it reads, "If you choose to be ignorant long enough, you're not ignorant anymore, you're just stupid."

  I think I was that way.  I feel like my background knowledge covers the surface of a lot of things, but doesn't go very deep.  37 feels late in the game to try to develop depth.  Gravitas.

  On the other hand, I don't actually WANT to become a specialist in some field right now.  I am not interested in struggling to get a Masters degree in one specific area of teaching.  If I got that, I'd be kicking myself for not studying palaeontology, or anthropology, or one of the other things I'd be wasting my time reading about while I was running out of time for thesis work.

  I know myself.  And I think that my self-image is more improved by the idea of getting off my butt and creating my own opportunities to learn.

  If I can do that without dumping a whole lot of money at university, that'd be okay, too.

  Renaissance means to "Be reborn".  There is no person in the world who learns as many new things as a very young child.  Not knowing Jack is a good place to start.

-Mike

Day Six - Project 1

Yeah, that's about right.

  My partner Mary has reminded me that if I am writing/riting/wrighting/righting my Bjournal, I should not complain about having to do it.  Like I had any say in the matter.  She just doesn't get me, y'know?

  Man, I hate when she's correct (too many uses of right, already).  So henceforth, I will put equal  effort into the regular posting, the furtherance of the 10 day ritual, the crafting of the Bjournal itself, and the fixing of problems.

  See what I did there?

  Homonyms are gnarly.

  I like Vitruvian Man.  Art does not speak to me, unless it is funny.  I have wept at plays and movies, and books will make me feel something powerful and profound (especially if they're funny), but visual mediums are just something I see.  In one of the upcoming projects, I'm going to try to go to a large number of museums in Nova Scotia in ten days (shooting for a minimum of ten, but who knows?), and I just sighed aloud in thinking about having to look at paintings.

  But like homonyms, Vitruvian Man is gnarly.  Also, like a homonym, one thing is performing a bunch of different possible functions.  Da Vinci apparently got this idea from Marcus Vitruvius, a Roman scholar in the field of architecture, who, in a fit of Roman calling-it-like-unus-sees-it, called his work De Architectura.  The human form can touch the line of a perfect square and circle.  From what I can comprehend, this can allow the human form to be the basis for proportion in the building of temples and other urban structures, which would be rather pointless without human forms in them in the first place.

  I like Vitruvian Man because of the history it drags along with it.  Vitruvius lived through the era of the Late Republic, Spartacus' slave revolt, Julius Caesar, and Augustus.  De Architectura was available to Leonardo Da Vinci and his mentor because of the mini-renaissance that sort of blossomed in Aachen under Charlemagne allowed it to be copied and survive the Dark Ages.  And it's just a cool sketch, when you get down to it, an intellectual exercise doodled by a genius thinking about mathematics and buildings and people and I guess everything about human existence.

  I like science when it's artistic.  And I like art when it's being scientific.

  Okay, the bjournal is available to my monoglot brethren elsewhere in the world, and the post is done.

  If I had a PhD, and I was creating an online journal as part of my thesis and research, would the document I uploaded be part of a post-doc doc-post?

  I bet that won't translate.

  -Mike

Day Five - Project 1

  I am boring myself.  I think other bjournals have the benefit of a writer who is writing about something.  Soon enough, I am going to have to consult the list and decide about Project Two, but in the meantime, I am feeling entirely too self-aggrandizing.  That's not remotely the right word.  There is nothing grand about sitting in one's tee shirt and underpants trying to think of an interesting fact or anecdote to share.

  Yup.  Still thinking.

  Okay.  Anecdotal.  Keep in mind this is derived from anecdotal evidence.  Did you know that ninth graders are the most hypothetically-minded humans ever?  Check it out.  anecdotal, unsubstantiated, and let's face it, hyperbolic.  Really, though.  Check out these totally not-just-from-questionable-memory FACKEDS*:

  "Mr. Swinemer, what if you had the choice between a Pegasus or a Unicorn?"  -Science class

  "Mr. Swim-a-nur, what if zombies attacked the school?"  -English class

  "Mr. Swim, what if you could run faster than light speed?"  -Math class

  "Mr. S, what if we are all in the Matrix now?"  -English class

  "Mr....Aahh (yes, two months in the same teaching position, forgot even the semblance of my name), what if the Hulk fought Superman?"  -Chess club

  "Miss......ter (remembered eventually teacher is male), what if I pulled my TECH-NINE on you?  Would you be scared?"  -Social Studies class

  I try not to let my students waste too much time, but jeez....

  Pegasus, save my chess players, go back in time by running real fast to save non-chess players, float in gelatin I suppose, Superman would beat the angry snot from the green idiot, wish for the super-speed again.

  Why are you still reading this?  I have a fervent belief that when I get into a project where this bjournal is not the message, only the medium, the three of you and I will be much more interested/interesting.  I'm sure you are all interesting already.

You can follow me now.  I mean there are links that you should allow you to follow my online bjournal entries, not serve as the first recruits in what would became a vast army of theocratic soldiers devoted to my will.  The online one.



You CAN follow me now.


-Mike



*  "Wow!  These are easy to swallow!"  "They're low-carb, too!"  "What are they?"  "Just the FACKEDS (tm), Ma'am."

Day Four - Project 1

 It has not taken me very long to start resenting this process.  I have managed to externalize my One Thousand Days, and now seem to believe it has been foisted upon me without my consent or control.

  I don't think my brain works at factory standards.  I think the fact that I feel trapped by my project(s) bodes well for completion, but it makes me wonder if I am simply a prisoner of my own obsessive behaviour.

  Case Study:  Mike and Diabetes

  Mike spent his late teens and early twenties eating and drinking unbelievably sweet tasty things.  His metabolism didn't deal with this well, and two weeks before his kid was born, his doctor called him at home on the day of the Diabetes diagnosis and the doctor's subsequent reading of priority rush bloodwork (the second in a week), to suggest Mike go to the hospital so professionals could catch him when he fell into his coma.  Mike had started to eat more healthily that day, and went for a long walk, and said he would be fine.  His doctor is a really good guy, and waited on the phone to hear Mike test his blood glucose level again.  After that day, Mike's average blood sugar fell about 1-2 points per day, till it was a normal human's and not an Oompah Loompah's.  Mike did 65 minutes of cardio on exercise bikes (he is on his 4th, having worn out 3 in the 3 years since the diagnosis) every night, making up minutes if he didn't do a full 65.  He never eats desserts or sugary pop/juice.

  I am crazy.  I have been told by people who know how to moderate that you don't need to work out every day, and you can have sweets and treats every now and again.  I know I have to do it this way.  It is actually easier psychologically for me to do a workout every day than four days a week, and easier to give up chocolate cookies, yule logs, pie, double chocolate cookies, chocolate bars, chocolate milk, ice cream, man I would like some dessert, than it is to have them once in a while.  In fact, my daily regimen and forgoing sweets is just another form of my overindulgence.  My inability to moderate.

  And now I am trapped in a project of my own making.  It's like I'm Billy Pilgrim, not so much unstuck in time, but still moving down a set road into my future.  That stupid two-weeks-ago-version-of-me, if he ever catches up with me I'm gonna punch him in his busted-ass pancreas.

  Man, I could be playing Skyrim right now.

  Okay, I posted the in-progress list.  Please comment, question, critique, suggest.  I'm no longer a person, I'm a character.  and a democratic one at that.

-Mike

Day Three - Project 1

  So, yeah.  There.  That's a picture of me there.  This may shock you, but I don't actually photograph well.  My partner Mary suggested she simply take pictures without my knowledge throughout the first project, for the really candid effect.  To let you know what it's like to REALLY sit in a somewhat comfortable chair.  To know the wonder of not having a second to suck in the gut that's back with a vengeance.

  I think she's right, actually.  The whole point of this is to become more than I was when I started.  More metaphorically.  So hopefully less, quantitatively, in one way.

  I weigh 252 pounds, and am 5'9" tall.  That's actually 40 pounds less than than my worst, but about 40 pounds worse than my most recent best.

  This isn't a weight loss bjournal.  I had an idea for one of those, where the idea would be to actually try to really get into shape and lose a lot of weight, because the idea was a fictional weight loss journal that turns into a guy in a Zombie apocalypse videotaping his thoughts for posterity.  See, if I was losing weight, it would look like I was doing it because I had to ration food.

  Never did anything with the idea.  Again, lazy.  Hey, if someone wants to do that, it's free, but I want to watch it, and I want it to be well done, in a minimalist way.  You don't even need to see the zombies.

  I have lost my way.

  Okay.  Overweight.  I still have 997 days, and a bunch of Physical Challenge projects.  I think the goal should be to try as hard as is fat-humanly possible, because if it doesn't work, hey, the internet gets more entertainment.  I'll try to videotape some of it.

 
  I thought I should also give you my first ever "Selfie", but I have tiny little lips so I can't pout well.  Plus, I want you to know what I'm like on the inside.

  Today was very little time on the digital element of this project, and more analog work.  I can't decide whether I should post a personally made video tomorrow, or provide the "List So Far" of the projects I am definitely going to do.

  I will sleep-apnia on it and get back to you.

-Mike