June 2nd through 6th Feeling run down, still running. in 2016

Writing this, on the 6th, I have no distinct memories of anything of note happening on the second after the post was completed. It was a Thursday, and I had nothing to do. Likely I cleaned a bit, cooked dinner, wasted time, and went to bed.
I got up on the 3rd and went to Miyachu again. It was a day with Inori Sensei. I had three classes with her and 2 with Tateishi. I also wasn’t feeling great, so, I used down time to walk instead of writing. I also felt pretty awful as well. Thinking and focusing wasn’t really an option. The day was busy and at least nominally enjoyable. Any day where I get to teach a lot can’t be all bad. Students grabbing my stomach has gone from being a nuisance to being a problem. It’s just too many of them, and they’re squeezing now. It’s escalation. I didn’t mind a few kids making pregnant jokes from time to time. Now, getting your sides randomly grabbed kind of sucks. I feel this screaming, mute, impotence as I can’t smack these kids into next week. Which I could easily do as it’s mostly 1st years and they weight, on average, about 1/12th of an ounce.
Friday night seems as though it had some significance as I write about it, but, I think that perhaps I’m mistaken. At least, I didn’t do anything. I remember that I got to bed a bit late. As to why, I’m at a loss. Ah yes! I remember! My brain wouldn’t turn off and I did NOT want to go to sleep because it sounded like hell on earth in spite of the fact that I was sitting downstairs at my computer in agonies for want of sleep. I don’t know whether to blame my brain, my body, or both. Regardless, I hate something.
I barely slept on Friday night. I ended up waking up around 5 on Saturday. Ugh. I feel tired just thinking about it. I talked to Simona for a long time. I probably also played Civilization or something. I had to kill time. Maybe I went for a walk? Though I don’t think I did. No, I didn’t. It was raining, because of course it was.
I ate a moderate breakfast and played Pathfinder for far too long. We had a good session. Armand wasn’t there, which gave my character a chance to really go nuts and do some crazy stuff. However, without our party’s moral compass, it wasn’t nearly as much fun to go crazy. Somehow, part of what I enjoy is battling it out with Armand. Anyway, that was fun, in a way. The party then continued but I was already late for Harmony Satsuma. However, I had, by this time, started on a super bad headache. Migraine, presumably, though one of the dizzy kind rather than of an exclusively painful kind. It also could have been due to lack of sleep. Or a MASSIVE calorie deficit over the previous few days. Or all three. It doesn’t particularly matter. I felt like crap. However, this worked well to excuse my lateness. As it turns out, singing in a chorus, in a tiny room, with a migraine (whatever the cause) is about as pleasant as one would expect.
When it was over, I canceled my guitar lesson.
I went back home and did . . . heaven only knows what. It was a blur of aching misery.
As time went on, the air cleared up a bit. The weather got better. The Motrin kicked in. I don’t know what exactly happened, but, it all worked out somehow or other. So, I went on a long walk. I also ate a lot of cereal and fruit and veggies. To remarkably little effect. Which was as frustrating as you’d imagine.
I still felt kind of crappy and felt that I needed some carbs and protein, but not in the quantity that you get at a ramen place (which is 99% carbs anyway), so I went to the Izakaya run by the cute little Filipina in town. Shi-san is what we call her. Her real name I’ve long since forgotten. I hadn’t been there in forever. I didn’t especially want to go there because she’s a sweet lady who loves to talk, and I wanted to read, ingest nutrients, and leave; but, there was no way around it. So I went, and who should be there but Nagata the Zen priest. He paid for my dinner (I love that man) and I felt a bit better. The food was . . . lousy. I also think that I ate some part of a chicken that is not normally for human consumption, but, I had no idea what it was and it tasted fine, so I’m not too worried. I was hoping to get some wings and fries, but ended up getting a bit of Nagata’s leftovers and some chicken nuggets that I’m fairly certain were frozen before cooking. Oh well. It was pleasant. I also had two very tasty highballs. Man do I love those. But I stopped at two.
I went to bed a bit late on Saturday night, but I slept super late Sunday morning (nearly ten!) so it all evened out. I
Sunday I felt a lot better. I went on a long walk while talking to mum (whom I hadn’t talked to in several days). I also talked with Matthew and with Simona. That was nice. The guitar lesson went REALLY well. Somehow. I’m still baffled as to that. Yet, I’ll not complain or ask too many questions. I went shopping at Cosmo(s) (I forget which) instead of Plasse and found a breakfast cereal that is almost exclusively made of fiber. It made me happy. However, it has not yet demonstrated itself to be effective. Actually, I may have done that on Saturday. I forget, honestly. I need to go to that place more. They’ve got a lot of cool stuff.
I feel guilty that I keep going into the local convenience stores, walking around fifty times, and buying nothing. The problem is, I’m actually losing weight and I’m super motivated, and the things they have are almost exclusively highly caloric and empty. Especially with 7-11’s crappy salads. I did, however, end up going to the Family Mart that Wednesday night President works at (didn’t realize it was her FM) and found a katsu pork with rice meal that was pretty much exactly the calories that I needed to get to my goal. So, had a decent meal and saw a good friend. Not a bad deal.
Today, the 6th, I allegedly have class with Inori, but, thus far, I’ve not heard if/when I actually have classes. This is 1st period, and I’ve not encountered much of anything to actually do yet. I kind of hope it stays this way today so that I can get my walking in. I had a double portion of cereal at breakfast. And a double portion of milk. My thinking is that if I eat more at breakfast, I will eat less at dinner, and my body will have less to deal with during the night. I don’t know if eating late actually hurts weight loss, but that seems to be a familiar old wives’ tale. At any rate, I’m trying to do less exercise and eat less. I was down to 89.2 today. It’s less of a loss than I’d been hoping for (the goal was to get to 88.8), but, a pill may take care of that by tomorrow morning.
My big disappointment of the weekend was my inability to get the letters down that I swore to myself that I would. I also told Lindsay that I’d do it on Saturday. Well, that didn’t happen. For good reason. The question is, when I’ve got time to write tonight, what excuse will I use? Stress makes me sleepy (probably narcolepsy, eh?) and . . . just deal with it Ozment.
In random discussions lately, most notably to Nagata, Rachael has come up a lot. I think that when I look at my life, my trip to Japan in ’07 really was a turning point. I can remember at fifteen, in Open Diary, writing about entering the third act of my life. That was idiotic, and, at the time even, I had a sense that I was being dramatic. Yet, nine years on, nearly a third of my life later, I look back on that period, and that relationship, and when I see the before and after, I conclude that there was a me before Japan/Rachael, and a me after.
Before Japan/Rachael, whatever my tentative theology, I was most assuredly a devout follower of secular idealism. Things had meaning. Things were significant. Intuition was a valid means of understanding reality. Messages were everywhere. It was a manner of godless mysticism. A solipsistic deism with me getting messages from a neutral something. After Japan, I lost faith in the meaning of anything. Not immediately, but in the aftermath of Japan/Rachael/the collapse of my ideals and sense of self in relation to them. I think that it’s the lack of narrative framework that’s helped to render me even more indecisive. There’s no ideology. The old way is dead, though I still continue to warm its corpse from time to time, yet there is nothing to replace it. I was rereading a portion of I Am a Cat, for whatever reason, and the cat described his master as possibly ruined by a love affair when younger. This struck me as odd because the book is interesting for how mundane and plausible it is. The idea of someone ruined, or changed, due to a love affair gone wrong seems to be some idiotic notion out of a sentimental Victorian piece of chick lit. And yet, when I considered Sneaze (the cat’s master) and myself, and what Soseki was saying in his own beautifully mundane way, I kind of got it.
Part of this came to mind as I watched a YouTube video about the difference between historical, Classical, love and modern, (post 1750) Romantic, love. Why is it so hard for me to give up on an ideal that is so manifestly not real? I think it’s sort of that same trick that leads one to gambling. It IS possible. Just . . . not likely. At all. It kind of reminds me, in more practical and less florid terms, of my Levin love discussion from earlier.
Well, I don’t feel great, but, thus far, I’m not especially sick. I’ve gone two weeks without smoking and don’t especially want to. When I was bored and headachey this weekend, there was some desire, but it was easy enough to beat. When I decided I had to stop (due to singing) it was remarkably easy. Which is worrisome as that’s an indication of Alzheimer’s. And considering the amount of aluminum in my brain due to my incessant deodorant use . . . yeah. Frightening.
Well, I have two classes with Inori today. I may have some pickups with Tateishi, but he hasn’t told me anything officially yet. It sounds like I’ll just be doing little bits at the start for Inori. This is probably for the best. It lets me do something (so I’ll have earned my keep) without asking me to do too much. I doubt if I’ll get all of my walking in today (Eikaiwa is at 3, so I’ve got to leave early to get there). I’m also going to start doing some yoga strength training today. Presumably. Thankfully, cereal is there for dinner. Thankfully.
Not much else to report at present. Making plans for Michigan. Worrying about money.
Hope everybody’s having a great day.