michael

In the week between Christmas and New Year holidays I take the time to reflect on the year, Despite the loads of drugs, err I mean medications, it was a healthy year. Nothing to report to a doctor. The first year in years I had no visits to a hospital, planned or unplanned. Take a deep breath of relaxation today. Yay for 2020. Did I just say that? “Yay for 2020.”? Yes, despite the year from Covid and Trump it was an OK year. My health remained good, we sold my in-laws house, I do not think we had any big plans for the year after those two items. Kent bought his first house, that was a shock that did not get me to fall over. Two or three of you retired, yay you.

Yay for 2020! What good things have happened in your life? C’mon, I know there have been good things happening in you life, fess up.

I am mostly thinking about next year in the form of writing. It is not that I have not been writing. I have been keeping a Morning Pages journal for nearly five years now. I tried to quite last year. That was like quitting smoking. (I do not smoke, but you understand how people do not quit)? I look at Bullet Journaling, and nah. I had no need to keep it brief and quick. I would hate to be pule, pulle, ((side note: when I forget a work, stroke side effect, I keep trying, in different forms until it comes again)) puzzling, That is it. I would hate to puzzle over what some half line of text means. I have enough problems reading my own handwriting. Not having enough journals (Cooked, Sketch, Morning Pages, Languages, One Typed Page, …) I am mulling over adding a log book. In the sense given by ships logs. A daily listing of things done or experiencing and just have that with references to other journals. Considering. That is taking up my attention span for next year. Hopefully this typing will help me figure that out.

I am also considering upgrading my journals to more expensive paper. Right now I am keeping everything in composition books. The kind used in schools. They cost about a buck for 100 pages, 200 things to write on. No worries about wasting money on them. $1.00 vs $9.95 or $22.00 for differing sizes. Yeah, one does save a lot of money. But, But, I spend, at best, 10 minutes a page. And that is Screaming along on writing. Taking 20 minutes is not at all unusual. I used to earn a lot more than I got paid for the cost of paper. Even if the paper cost much more, more than a buck a page, I spend a lot more on the time to type or write my thoughts. Why do I want paper to be so cheap to hold my writing? Even the stuff I toss aside costs more than the paper Am I so obsessed with saving money on buying paper while spending so much more on my writing? I am going to visit a store and something to write in. Give it a whirl.

And I will address the question about how the Royal KMM gets me to type

— MichaelRpdx :: rkmm

Way back when, when I was a “beer journalist” I thought, one day, that I had broken my foot. I set up an appointment with my doctor, Dr Ralph Yates, and went in, After listening to my description he had me take off my shoes. At one glance he said, “You’ve got gout.” “No, it hurts too much.” “Yes, but you have gout. We can get an x-ray so you are assured, but you’ve got gout.” I limped down to the x-ray place and got one. One that showed there was nothing wrong with my bones. I had gout.

We discussed treatment. It has been nearly 20 years since then. All I remember is that of all the treatments only one made sence to me: exercise. I bought a bicycle, a Bike Friday. (Yes, the place that Kent works at today.) And I started to ride. My commute to work was five miles. This, bicycle commuting, was a path to curing gout. With commuting I no longer had a choice about to get my exercise or not. I had to go to work. I was a bicycle commuter so I had to ride. And so I did.

Talking with a brewer he volunteered to ride with me on a long ride sometime. I heard about RACC, Ride Around Clark County. They had a metric century as one option. The brewer had suggesting a half century, 50 miles, as the long ride. I countered with a metric century. He liked that, I was upping the distance.

I did that ride. And others followed, Monster Cookie, that was one that I completed. There were other rides that I completed. And many that I did not complete. But I kept plugging away at it. Then one day I rode a 60 miles to celebrate Del Schaffenberg’s birthday. Afterwards, I wished him well and left. I had a ride I was hosting. It was an Ice Cream social for Slug Velo. We went to three or four ice cream places. We did not drop anyone. That was a thing about Slug Velo rides we made sure everyone was welcome and nobody, not anybody, got dropped. I had ridden a metric century before the Slug ride. Metric Centuries had become normal, just time on the bike.

Last week I walked seven miles, a mile a day. Well I do it at two miles an hour. This is a lot like when I started bicycling. Slow, not very far. With a full year of not going to the hospital for the first time in four years I am setting goals for my walking. Get my pace up to three miles per hour. And to resume the goal I had when I went into the aortic valve replacement and stayed there for six weeks. I had a goal of a half marathon, 13.1 miles. I was up half of that quickly and then 10 miles. I was set to complete the half marathon in early October. Instead I was just being transferred to rehab location after a month in the hospital.

It is easy to see the distance goals, The aerobic conditioning is tougher I do not know how much I can increase my speed. But I have it anyway.

Those are my physical goals for 2021 On a base of a mile a day at two miles per hour.

— Michae1Rpax :: rkmm/48

Write about Producing vs Consumption
WA O Scribbles vs Handwriting
Reading differences electric vs paper
A bit of a wait
Losing/Lost memories due to a stroke
Pen wealth – I am OK with it
I used to be able to spell
Ryan Holiday review of book and ending with procrastion
Tipping the photograph with full postugue vs postcards 55 vs 35 carts per card
Procrastination in reading about procrastination
Worlds smallest alphabet only 12 charters Rotokas
4, Ways to coffee
Why I follow news,

I often complain about not having something that I can or can bring to mind something to type about. Yet all of those are notes to myself about what I can write about. They were all scribbled down as notes to myself about what I have to write about. To type about. You may recognize the one thing I did write, type about.

Holy cow, it is after 7:00? I was up and down all night.
A little delay Ehikes for chumpers, other online misc. 90/10 Biden/Trump
A rabbit hold of what might be. Trashed ballots. What? Why?
It is early – I decided to get up.
Up and puttering about. Went back to bed remembered dishes. U p again.
Yes, we are up. We are alive. The count goes on.
Well, yes I can still do it after being up awhile.
Yes, up. ready to go. Here we are in America.
Up early, after meditating in bed. Oven is preferring.
Up late, read a bit in curiocity.
Up late and then coffee, breakfast, cutting circles. Not first thing.
Deciding to write. no matter how late ti is.
Yes, awakeness ( get a synony

Holy cow, it is after 7:00? I was up and down all night.
A little delay Ehikes for chumpers, other online misc. 90/10 Biden/Trump
A rabbit hold of what might be. Trashed ballots. What? Why?
It is early – I decided to get up. ©
Up and pettering about. Went back to bed remembered dishes. U p again.
Yes, we are up. We are alive. The count goes on.
Well, yes I can still do it after being up awhile.
Yes, up. ready to go. Here we are in America.
Up early, after meditating in bed. Oven is prefeating.
Up late, read a bit in curio&gity.
Up late and then coffee, breakfast, cutting circles. Not first thing.
Deciding to write. no matter how late ti is.
Yes, awakeness ( get a synomym for that) up again, again.
Up, yes up. Weare going again again.
Up in the morning. Doing well, or so I think.
At 8em. Ready to bake back a loaf.
Quiety awake – Hey! Hey! Figured out setting on heart monitor.
Not scribbling today. Just being here.

Where those lines are the “How you feel” portions of my Morning Pages from October 31 through November 23. There is plenty more, back until April 19, 2015 through this morning.

Those are all the things that I type, or write, when I “cannot think of what to write.” Not having something to write is a strange state to be in.

— MichaelRpdx :: rkmm/48

Earlier this year I wrote about Anthony Madrid’s piece in the Paris Review, SIX BOOKS WE COULD AND SHOULD ALL WRITE. I thought I would come back to it and describe the xis?? gad, the six books one can and should write. On One Typed Page we are all participating in one or more of the suggested books. Certainly we are writing a book about ourselves. Whether we like that idea or not, there is a lot of people writing about themselves here. But for now, I will talk about a specific book he recommends. A Book to Burn.

This concept, A Book to Burn, comes from Li Ziu Li.  Ziu Li was a late Ming philosopher and gadfly. He wrote this book “thinking to enclose therein all his completely unacceptable views.” He named it “A Book to Burn” “implying that if you were caught with it, you would be executed.” He was caught with it, he was not executed for his heretical ideas because he commuted suicide first.

If you have, like I do, things that you do not want anyone to read, under any circumstance to read it, put it in your book to burn. In truth I do not write it down for others to find. Or I do not leave the writings around. I burn it, or put it in someplace, like a garbage bin, I put it in my mind and the do what I can to forget it. I do not want people to know about my thoughts. Never. Not at all. Not a bit of it.

Now you may have ideas that just need to be written to exorcise them from your psyche. Or perhaps they are not, to you, all that bad. But you do need to put them into some form. Typewriting is a fine place for them. Certainly much better than into a computer where some bit is stored somewhere. So type it, keep it someplace secure. And, dare I say, burn your book before someone reads it.

I will be back to this topic. For the record, the six books are:

* a book about oneself
* a book about others
* an anthology of favorites
* a book about words
* a book of lists
* a book to burn

Coming soon, or perhaps later, some commentary about these books.
Yes, I do have them on my computer.

— MichaelRpdx :: rkmm/48