Friday and Old in Book Five: Working Through the Maze 2018

Happy Friday all!

First thing’s first: Exercise update.
I.... am an even more fat blob than I thought. Only partially kidding. I did another swim workout and forced myself to do more yards. That is something I’m going to enforce. Every swim workout, I want at least 100 more yards. But honestly? For a kid who used to do most of his workout swimming Butterfly (yes, I was crazy)… 25 yards of fly now requires a 10 minute break! But… and seriously if this disgusts or offends anyone, I apologize… it is getting harder to walk past mirrors with my shirt off. Since I’m using my muscles, my body relaxes when it gets the chance… so as I walk past mirrors, I see my belly fat so much more clearly and it thoroughly disgusts me. I know that it is something I may have to deal with (though I hope not) but I do wonder if (provided I can lose the 60 pounds) I’ll have to get skin surgery. It may seem like a strange thing to think but… my body was genuinely meant to be a smaller frame and my skin has stretched a bit to accommodate. So I do wonder if skin will be a problem.

Second: Jobs?
On a whim I checked the Iowa County Attorney’s Job Board. Two new openings arrived yesterday. Both promising paychecks of between $50 and $75 thousand dollars. Both promising benefits better than any I’d had in the job market to date. One being 1 hour from my parents and 90 minutes from MBFITWW (47 min to my Bro). The other being 2.5 hours from my parents and 1 hour from MBFITWW (2 hr 15 min from Bro). I talked to Wife about it last night to gauge her response but the honest truth? I was/am going to apply to both jobs anyway. Not in some “Fuck my wife’s opinion” kind of dick hole misogyny move. But more in line with “She’s worried about funds. We need good insurance. I’m coming to grips with the fact that she may be a miserable sod no matter where we are. I want to work and get paid.” Besides and I said these exact words to her… “If I get one of these jobs, we could afford to have two places. She could stay here and live and I can get an apartment wherever the job is.” That is true (very true) and… if I’m being honest… might be for the best. Living apart and taking time to reassess may be good for both of us. IF any of that happens. Just me doing that thing where I think of all possible scenarios and paint Good and Bad.

Third: Old
Damn. Sometimes I’ll wake up in the morning and immediately before I even have a second to think or sort my ideas… an entire song will play in my head. Like my brain is a radio and one of its random settings got flipped by mistake. This morning, the song that played in my head was “The Way U Move”, track 2 on the Killer Instinct Original Soundtrack. Because, apparently, I’m a fan of torturing myself… I thought… Huh, how old IS that song… and video game? Because it was the first video game I ever owned. It came with my Super Nintendo that I had to buy with my own money. The game came out in 1994. It is 24 years old. Now… I know a lot of my TV shows and movies are celebrating anniversaries but movies are different. People celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Space Odyssey this year… movies last. But video games? 24 years… I don’t know. Kind of blew me away. I have dear friends younger than that. Seriously! Some of you reading this right now are younger than that! lol. Just… definitely an interesting way to make me feel old this morning.

Fourth: Epic
So… that thing that I’m writing? That is taking time? SUPER personal and SUPER emotional but… basically, when I’m finished? Whoever reads it will know me better and understand me better than anyone I’ve ever met. A bold claim for something that surely won’t be the combined sum of my life… but… it will be the most honest, self-reflective, open thing I’ve ever written. Some of you may lose respect for me or come to despise me after I’ve written it… some of you will surely be bored to tears by it… but… I’m glad I’m writing it. A little unhappy with it as I write it, though. I wish I could interject more detail, more emotion… just… write it more completely, I guess. But… I’m giving it the most honest attempt I’m able to now and… if I need to, I suppose I could always fix it again more later.

Fifth: Draft Poop
One thing that does somewhat irritate me, if I’m being honest, is that this Marienbad My Love length entry is preventing me from finishing my Drafts project right now. In the grand scheme of things, of course, the entry I’m working on is much more important in a lot of ways and I acknowledge that. It is just… I was also hoping to finish some fun creative writing and some (I would dearly hope) erotically stimulating creative writing projects.

Sixth: My Day Entry
Today I woke up fairly early but figured… what the hell. These days I tend to have so much I want to get done that waking up early is probably for the best! However, the house chores I wanted to do… could be a bit loud. So… had to wait for Wife to leave for those. Instead, I got some digital daily work taken care of and had a most excellent conversation with a friend on-line. I’m telling you, I can’t sufficiently communicate the difference something like that makes. When your first interaction of the day with another person is a pleasant or good experience… it makes the entire day better and easier! One of the many significant reasons to celebrate being out of my old Firm!

In at least a bit of an attempt to keep that going, I then caught up on PB entries and sent in my job applications. After that.. I was in one of those awkward limbo times I don’t like. One of those moments of time where there is too much time before the next scheduled event to just get ready and leave… but not enough time before the next scheduled event to take care of anything else of importance. So you just kind of… kill ten to twenty minutes doing little to nothing. So in my case, dinking around on Skyrim. Then it was dressed and Insurance Meeting!

The insurance meeting was better than good. The original plan I was telling my Wife we needed was estimated to cost $511 a month. Thus why she completely lost her shit. However, the plan made the most sense for our health needs regardless. Anyway, after finally convincing her to do the intelligent thing instead of the cheap thing… at the Insurance Meeting, the agent and I worked together to input the numbers and do the work… the plan will cost us $198 a month. Saving us $313 per month or potentially $3756 per year!

Afterwards, I hit the grocery store. Well… a grocery store. I tend to like using Hy Vee because it is a local store. Well, local like Kum & Go. Meaning it is a franchise store throughout the mid-west but it’s Headquarters is located in West Des Moines. However, as Wife is freaking out about finances… she wanted me to take care of this week’s shopping list at Wal Mart because she thinks it is cheaper. It still cost over $100 so I hope that makes my point. Besides… if Wal Mart is $101 and Hy Vee is $112… I’d still rather Hy Vee because more of that money stays in my State.

Then more boring stuff. Well, boringish. Doing dishes and watching Outside X Box. Not just because I enjoy video games, or British accents, or Jane Douglas… but because I enjoy all of those things. :p

Then off to the gym! I genuinely timed my workout today to coincide with Jeopardy. BECAUSE I wanted to watch Jeopardy while I used the ARK. Because I like Jeopardy and wish I was smart enough (well rounded enough) to be on the show. I have a family member who was on so… it kind of gives me hope. And there are typically three or four categories per show where I’m killing it. But… that isn’t enough to get on. And I do kind of have this fear that if I ever do get good enough to get on the show… the show will have been cancelled by that time.

After the gym… laundry… Prosebox Epic writing… and hopefully my therapist will have gotten back to me on the worksheets I sent her. It is kind of nice having multiple outlets now. I get to talk to friends, keep Prosebox so I can remember my thoughts, work on the narrative journal thing so I can cleanse and process, and have the therapist to help guide some of my stuff when it veers from constructive to dwelling.

I do have to say though… acknowledging that Two Points of Data create a line and not a pattern… I am happy to say that starting my day off by talking to someone pleasant has really helped make both days really good. Apparently, a big part of a good day is just… the right person in the morning.

Seventh: Totally Random
I’m always going on about how find “attraction” fascinating. I do. I honestly have no idea why we find specific things attractive and not others and how all of those things can change based on social standing, global location, upbringing.... all of it. I appreciate and understand that there is inherently a mating signaling regarding health and genetic proliferation going on in attraction and the like… but there’s so much more than that. For example… hair color choices. My preference for black hair and red hair can certainly be explained by “genetic diversity” reasons… but why do I also equally like blue hair and purple hair? The human body/mind can NOT have developed to consider blue/purple for genetic diversity since blue/purple aren’t real. Similar arguments appear for breast size. Science has done studies showing that men’s breast preferences can be affected by if they have a job, if they’re hungry, if they’re well rested… all of that changes with mood. But there is no “set” expectation or over all “universal” size preference. In fact, the old idea that bigger is better has been entirely debunked as there is a “point of diminishing returns”. It changes with generations, locations, socio-political groups, all of that. But there is no culture where it is a pure upward line. I mean hell… my own preferences are mostly non-existent. I legitimately do not care about size. Science has also analyzed this. Traditionally, men with no size preferences have stricter shape preferences. But that doesn’t count for me. And like Sigmund Frued with psychology, I find myself constantly drawn to the analyzation of beauty and attraction largely because I want to understand myself better. I know what I find attractive; I’m always curious as to why.

Eighth: Potentially MRA Statement
I have a law school friend who got through Bar Stress via Pole Exercise. She met lots of great and wonderful people and has kept it up because she loved it. I have always respected pole fitness. GENUINELY respected pole fitness. Yeah, there is sexiness to it but the idea of combining elegance, grace, strength… it is everything dance is but involves even more muscle and muscle control. It is some bad ass exercise stuff! AND YES… anyone who bad mouths Pole Exercise is going to get an earful from me! I watched some Pole Exercise 30 Day Videos today for fun… and saw two things I wanted to point out because they were awesome. First: Roz the Diva. She is a pole instructor that most people would like at and think, “Pole? You? HA ha HA ha HA ha!” This woman BRINGS IT and is awesome. Yeah, she looks like she is just a “big black lady with no strength or grace” but she takes the floor and just blossoms. She’s playful, she’s funny, she’s graceful… she hits the really physically demanding moves like a graceful beast, just ROCKS it. Second: I saw a video about S-Factor LA. This is where the title of this entry comes from. The women of Ladylike entered S-Factor Studio and it was a very unique type of studio. Red and pink lights (womb-like effect) and no mirrors on the walls. The instructor Divine described why the space did not look like a typical dance studio. Because the focus of S-Factor is to “allow women to feel at home in their bodies, to take control of your body rather than letting your body take care of you.” And the women kept talking about feeling empowered. And… I was a little sad. I said the MRA line, “What about me?” lol. I want to be involved in a class that would make me feel at home in my body… I want to be involved in something that makes me feel confident and sexy and powerful. Truth is… honestly… I think if we did have stuff that made men feel confident and sexy and powerful… without loading up all the toxic gender norms… we’d live in a more harmonious and peaceful place. Because a lot of the WORST, MOST TOXIC male behavior comes from the insecurities men have about power, about themselves, about virility. If there was a space where men could go to feel all of that (while also not encouraging hostility, judgment, etc) that could be a step. And that’s the issue. We live in a society that dictates “in order for men to feel all of that; it requires competition, domination, conflict.” Why? Why can’t men feel empowered without all of that toxic shit? Just food for thought. Oh, and since someone may say “Dude, you join pole fitness”… as awesome as that would be there is something certainly holding me back. I’m an actor… which means most of what I know about human behavior I learned from observing others and interacting with my emotional reactions to those observations. Essentially… that means my “feminine seduction” routine is pretty good. Because I saw the behavior, it turned me on, so that is how I define/reflect sexy. To this day, I have no idea… none… zero… what it even MEANS to be sexy “like a man.” So before I enroll in classes dedicated to empowering women? I need to figure out that part of myself. I need to figure out what it means to be me as a man. And sometimes I wonder… maybe the reason why my most sexual relationship in High School was with a bi-sexual… maybe part of why I have such sexual issues with my wife… maybe it is because I can give off male and female vibes in that arena?