Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Illness hacked into my Fitbit progress.
But those weekly averages please me. Buoyed by the fine weather, I’d increased my target miles to six per day in the second half of May. This week, I increased the target to seven miles per day. We’ll see how it progresses.
Thinking about getting out the bicycle, too.
An organized compilation of random subjects plaguing me that I may have posted about, but which I think I should update readers about.
There are other things to write about, of course, particularly on the family fronts, but I shield them and their activities, so I post very little about that. Politics, technology and economics remain passions that deserve posts but I end up diverting too much energy to write much about them. Dreams are experienced every night, so I could write about those, too, like last night, when I didn’t like how the dream was going, and changed it in the middle, astonishing everyone in the dream. We’re also undergoing the annual raccoon invasion, and dealing with yard work. My wife’s health continues to be a concern while I remain stupidly healthy. Trips and adventures are planned, and we’re hopeful we can pull some of them off this year and not get sucked back into the black hole of family issues.
Overall, I’m excited, optimistic and hopeful, a great way to live. The writer is pestering me to get on to it with Brett, Philea, Handley and the rest, so it’s time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
This song was originally performed by a small, little known group called the Beatles. The song itself was written by an obscure songwriter named Paul McCartney. I think he may have written one or two other songs that also charted as a hit somewhere. None come to mind.
I preferred the cover of this song by a guy name Joe Cocker. Not many people are familiar with his work but he had a minor hit with his cover of this song, ‘She Came in Through the Bathroom Window’, in nineteen seventy. I find it a soothing song to stream while tramping about. Cheers
We’re streaming some Blues Traveler out of the Wayback Machine today.
The day has a retro feel to it. It feels like 1995 all over again. That wasn’t bad for me, nor great. Likewise, for the rest of the world. The US ‘had swung to the left’ again, and Bill Clinton was POTUS. He wasn’t left, but a master of the center. The voting population still remained left of him on our political spectrum. Still does today.
Back in 1995, I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do. I’d just retired, so I had my military pension. My wife was working for an ad agency but income from those two stories didn’t carry far in the Bay area. It wasn’t as bad as it is now, but the rising house and land prices were harbingers of what was to come.
Anyway, to the music. The Blues Travelers had been around for a while but were making it onto the pop charts with ‘Run-Around’ in 1995. John Popper’s harmonica was unusual for pop music of that era. It’s a good song for putting your left foot in front of your right a few thousand times and perambulating down streets, sidewalks and trails. Singing it while walking about provides a fine feeling of freedom.
Sing it with them.
I enjoy the Fitbit. It’s amusing how it’s conditioned my thinking. Just like cats train us, the Fitbit has me trained.
I’m more congnizant of moving and the need to move. Whereas I used to attempt to be expedite doing things, I now make the most out of activities to get max movement. For example, I used to think, “Okay, I’m going to the master bedroom. What do I need to take back there?” Then I would load up so as to do only one trip. Now, I take one thing at a time and make multiple trips because I want those steps. This is also less stressful to me.
My average miles per day is up to five point seven three miles. Steps have increased to thirteen thousand, one hundred twenty-seven. Active minutes have increased to a seventy-one per day average.
It’s easy to forget to put the Fitbit back on. It needs to be removed for showers or baths, and recharging. My wife and I have both caught ourselves walking briskly around as we clean, accumulating steps, only to discover we don’t have our Fitbit on. So all that stepping you did, and no points! Damn!
My solution to the recharging side of it is to recharge at the end of the day. If I do forget to put it back on, my sleep won’t be tracked. That’s not a terrible loss.
The Fitbit’s sleep function seems iffy. One day it didn’t record my sleep at all. I reported it to Fitbit. We know we have some issues with it, they replied. We’re working on it.
Another night, my wife got up to check on something with the cats. I was also up at the time. It was about one thirty in the morning. According to the Fitbit, she slept uninterrupted for over seven hours.
The Fitbit can be cheated. That keeps me leery of all its numbers. For example, a rocking chair or playing with the cat with a string will increase your numbers. I’m dubious how much benefit either of those activities are to my overall goal of walking more and being more active.
Overall, after almost four months, I’m satisfied. We are more active. We go on walks together. Needing something for a salad or a green vegetable for dinner, we’ll just walk the mile to the store and back, together, to acquire the steps, miles and activities. We’ll walk to our favorite used book store, The Book Wagon. Its less than a mile away. Typically, we’ll combine them. The grocery is one direction and the book store is in the other, so we’ll end up with a three mile circuit.
Or, like yesterday, we’ll take a brisk walk around town and through the park. And sometimes, like yesterday, we’ll stop in a cafe, pub or coffee shop.
Yesterday, we stopped at Zoey’s for ice cream. I had the bourbon fudge gelato.
It was excellent.
The end of the last century went well for me. Retiring from the military, I was living in the Bay area and was able to catch fire a start-up. I worked with diligent, capable people. We had fun and the future was exciting. U.S. Surgical and then Tyco bought us, and everything changed. We made money but it was a lot less fun.
Into this came a group with an unusual sound called ‘Smash Mouth’. They eventually had a few more hits and became well known for providing the theme music to ‘The Big Bang Theory’ on CBS, and for songs in the ‘Shrek’ franchise. Back in 1997, though, we knew them for ‘Walking on the Sun,’ with its cynical reflections on the hippie revolution, pop culture, advertising, and our future state of affairs.
Testing, testing.
Can you hear me?
Excellent. Let’s get started.
Today’s theme music is by Fine Young Cannibals. This is ‘Good Thing’, from 1989. I think you’ll be pleased with the selection. It’s a fine song for streaming in your head as you conduct your business today.
Have a nice day.
That is all.
I’ve had my Fitbit for three and a half months. My daily average for steps is eleven thousand, seven hundred. My daily miles are five point five two. My personal best for daily steps was seventeen thousand, five hundred.
Until yesterday. Yesterday, I achieved almost twenty-two thousand steps and ten miles. I confess, if I’d known I was so close to doubling my average, I would have done it. That’s how I’m wired.
Now it’s the morning after.
I feel great but I question myself about what my Fitbit goal and expectations should be. I will work to reach and exceed my daily goals. I want to attempt another big walking and exercising day.
It’s the same way with writing. I typically write about eleven hundred words a day. I also edit, revise and polish. That’s part of my pantser organic writing process. My writing mind is like a loom weaving the story. I move back and forth through it.
Some days, I catch fire. The most I’ve ever written in one day was five thousand words, five thousand very intense words. Just like walking twenty-two thousand steps yesterday, it felt awesome. The next day, I wanted to do again. Why, if I could do five thousand words a day, every day, I’d become impressively prolific.
But the next day’s writing session was a struggle to achieve my standard output. I fought to achieve one thousand words and felt exhausted and disenchanted afterwards. It’s been like that with other writing days when I’ve doubled or tripled my average. Why, I tested myself to understand.
After thinking about this over the years, I’ve concluded that I do have a finite daily energy level. Exceeding that can happen but it takes it toll on the next day. I don’t know if science and medicine back me up on this, or if others have had the same experience. I know through my military experience of working twelve plus hours a day through illness and terrible conditions that I can draw deeper from the well. But doing so requires me to shut out absolutely everything else.
That was easy to do in a military environment. We had an established mission with a high priority. Other missions and units were depending on us. If we failed, a domino effect began. The stakes were high. So was the visibility.
Our expectations also set us up for success. Everyone outside of ours – family, friends and other unit members – understood our focus. They knew we didn’t have time or energy for anything else, and they gave us space.
But the writing experience is different from the military experience and the Fitbit experience. With Fitbit goals, it’s a personal goal. If I don’t make it, well, that sucks, but c’est la vie. The military commitment was well-established and understood.
Writing, however, is a terribly personal beast that has a hold on me. While the Fitbit goals require physical commitment with some smaller levels of intellectual and emotional commitments, I have all that in me, no problem. The military commitments were drawn at higher levels from those same veins.
The veins of energy and activity required for writing are much, much different. Physically, sitting in a chair, thinking, reading and typing, it doesn’t seem like it should be taxing. Yet, it becomes physically exhausting. Writing takes more out of me than walking all those steps.
Likewise, from intellectual and creative points of view, writing is more of a debilitating challenge. I worked for a decade for IBM as a planner and analyst. I was often presented with unique business cases to analyze and consider for my recommendations, observations and inputs. Those were interesting and challenging logic problems, and required intensely creative problem solving approaches, but still, they fell way short of what’s called for when fiction writing. Yes, my stories, characters, situations and worlds tend toward being complicated and involved. I remain constantly astounded by the levels of commitment I give my writing.
Returning to my Fitbit goals, I understand that twenty-two grand was a terrific result for me. I’ll enjoy it and move on because my goal is not to beat myself every day, but to maintain and achieve an average that will help me toward greater goals of being healtheir. In other words, the daily steps are not an end of themselves but part of a larger process.
So it is, too, with the writing. The word counts, editing, revising and polishing are not the end results. They’re part of a larger process of conceiving, writing, finishing and publishing a novel.
Time to write like crazy now, at least one more time.
Despite the sobering news out of Europe regarding terrorism and the most recent attack, we go full on pop mode streaming today, with a pause to think of those who were died or injured, those who lost someone, and those now distraught by the latest.
It’s part of the world wide web that we can know such news with the immediacy of video and audio recordings and feel others’ grief, but experience a much different reality on a personal level. A legacy of our immediate wired world is that we reach across the connections to offer ourselves and our resources, no matter how meager they are or their nature, because we feel helpless to do much more.
A cold front bulled in here, shooing the rain away and sweeping out the clouds. Except for some high, feathery cloud remnants, the weather is blue sky sunny. ‘Walking On Sunshine’ has already begun streaming in my brain, establishing itself as the song for the day.
I know, like, five things about this song.
Stay strong, everyone. Let’s do this.
Reflective mood today from dredges of disturbing dreams. Today’s selection is a double offering from Jackson Browne’s 1977 album, ‘Running on Empty’. Here’s ‘Load Out/Stay’.
The first song begins as a quiet and pensive reflection on touring before shifting into something more triumphant and uplifting in ‘Stay’. They’re pleasant accompaniment to walking through the day while thinking about what is and isn’t.
Michael Seidel, writer 