It is particularly sunny outside here in East Lansing today. I've been feeling sick the past couple of days, but that didn't stop me from going outside shirtless and absorbing that sweet sweet sunshine. It seems that it is generally recommended to get around ten to fifteen minutes of sunshine for these sessions, and I exceeded that. I have to do what I can for myself to ensure I'm firing on as many cylinders as is possible for this time of year.
This brings to mind a thought that I've had multiple times. What is the optimal suite of inputs for myself to be feeling at peak performance? Certainly sunshine plays a factor. It's most apparent in the spring once the temperatures start climbing back up into somewhat amicable existence range, and spending large amounts of time outside just feels so gooooood. I'm feeling it today too though; a midwinter sunny day hits immaculately. But what else contributes to a well-rounded, happy Cody? Here's a potentially non-exhaustive list:
I wouldn't say these are ranked in order, and the skin contact and love can be from humans or animals (better with a romantic partner, but we take what we can get). Listing these out is all well and good, but how to keep these rolling on the day-to-day? How to generally ensure that I'm doing the best for myself? That's where I've struggled historically. I seemed to have these more or less on-lock in my last semester of undergrad, where I scheduled myself down to 30-minute increments. I was feeling very much engaged and in love with life, but at the same time, I was decently stressed as well. Some of that would probably have to do with a lack of sleep for a few to multiple days a week, but the fact that I was still feeling so good about my overall condition means that there's some sort of unknown middle ground to be hit. If I can at least get x amount of these things in my life on a consistent basis, I should be able to broach peak Cody performance. Which ones are the most important to focus on increasing and holding steady? That's a very good question. My guess:
As said, I believe every element in the bigger list to be important, but I have had experiences where I have slipped in each of the above seven categories, and upon returning to them, I have palpably felt a noted uptick in my mood. Having a garbage diet makes me feel bad. Not moving my body enough makes me feel bad. Not sleeping enough makes me feel bad. Not being outside enough makes me feel bad. Not consuming enough literature makes me feel bad. Not outputting anything of meaning makes me feel bad. Not taking the time to center myself and my thoughts makes me feel bad. Finding a rhythm that gets me keeping these things up will, I believe, make me feel more productive and satisfied with life! Of course, if I were living in a vacuum, it'd be perfect, but I do also need to make enough money to survive. Truthfully, the money grind and money concerns have historically been two roadblocks to me feeling good, and I'm still on the quest to find the best balance between work and life. More than that though, there are certain things that I feel the need to limit for an optimal existence. These things would be:
I think the anger is easy enough to control with proper meditation and sleep, but the others feel more to do with willpower than anything else, and ensuring that I buy food often enough that I don't have to resort to suboptimal options. After writing all of these things out, it doesn't seem like the biggest ask in the world to combine the top "do"s with limiting the "don't"s. Cardio in the slippery winter can be harder to achieve when my default is going for runs, but all of these are attainable with a little dedication and commitment. Let's see if I can get there soon!
What stops someone from manifesting a reality they desire? Actualizing its existence? What hurdle must they overcome? Is it a first step that would need too much initial momentum to bare at the present moment? Is it the crippling paralysis of choice, and the tendrils of uncertainty that unfurl outwards from it? We are boundless and infinite in our potential, theoretically. Tuning in and staying there-- what is stopping us? What external machinations are we being crushed under, and what mental and physical states keep us plugged into a negative feedback loop based on those machinations? Are we at the reigns of something (read making our own complex neural decisions based upon a metaphorical time-space that we navigate with an analog I and metaphorical me) too beyond our scope, in the current external reality we have ejected onto ourselves, to possibly keep up with? Are we sublimating our own doom, or in the least our inaction?
And taking a sidestep:::::::::::::::::how to climb that mountain? Taversing the peaks and troughs ofour journey ever Further, mega-metamorphisizing endlessly bounding towards the reality we visualize, or even don't visualize but just experience and actualize and truly BE and embody. Become the variables you wish to radiate outward from you, in as resonant of a way as is. Channel and amplify the things and experiences and actions you resonate with the most and feel most deeply connected to, and tune into that!!!
So important, so important. To not get sucked in by the bullshit and addicted to the quicksands of dopamine rushes. They sink you in the medium of time, and can soften the edges of action that make a thought a reality. Too much, and they'll numb your ability to function as optimally as you'd prefer. It's up to an individual, at some level, to find the best balance of dopamine fixes and the rest of it -- probably easier to open as few Pandora's boxes as possible.
Man, but climbing that mountain of reality manifestation. Important! Tuning in to that process, instead of miring in the bullshit. Important! Investing in the things that build you up and making time, when time needs to be made, as in things aren't flowing intrinsically in an optimal-enough way, to ensure they have a place in your schedule at sustainable increments and focuses. Important! Here's to the days that we remember how to be our better selves and can find it within ourselves to go for that.
This past Saturday I was supposed to attend the Renaissance Festival with my sister, but we ended up holding off. Eager to still make the most of a day that we had set aside, I hopped on an opportunity that I had not known of even the day before. There was an article recommended to me on my Facebook feed, posted to a nature group that I'm a part of; it detailed a man finding an American Chestnut tree in Deleware. I was somewhat aware of the tragic tale of the American Chestnut prior to reading the article, having heard of the great blight that wiped out the majority of the population in the early 20th century. However, having a bit of time on my hands that morning, I refreshed myself on the details, and I'm glad that I did. As it happens, Lansing, Michigan is listed as one of the locations of currently-existing American Chestnut stands in the US.
Fueled by a dual interest in history and foraging, I convinced my sister to come with me to the location of the trees on our way to other destinations. It took us just a short hike from the car, which included the ID-ing of other notable trees such as catalpas, to complete our quest. There were around a dozen or so chestnut trees all told, in various stages of nut production. There were many burrs to be found on the ground, though none that were in the ideal harvest state of cracked burr with nut exposed. The squirrel population in the area can certainly be described as abundant, so I do have to wonder what level of competition we had that day with the local wildlife. Nevertheless, we grabbed a few unopened-but-green burrs from the ground to take home and investigate, and spent a little more time in the area further identifying trees and other plants.
We both had a splendid time finding chestnuts, and I spent some time after that in the car looking at existing by-county maps detailing further American Chestnut stands. Finding a large four-county cluster farther north in the state, I have resolved myself to take a journey up there once autumn progresses more. I don't know if I'll be able to find the exact location of these stands prior to heading up there, but that prospect fills me with its own brand of excitement. It'll be a hunting quest, though the object of my hunt will be a stationary being, a tree, rather than one on the move. There's something so innately satisfying about the successful sighting and identification of a life-providing species within nature. It taps me into a more fundamental modality of existence, and it feels extra special with American Chestnuts. It's tapping into an American heritage that has been largely lost to time and disease, but one that isn't completely eradicated yet. It's how I imagine I'll feel when I finally set my eyes on my first purple martin bird.
I'd like to do more with American nuts in general. Black walnuts, hickory nuts, hazelnuts, and chestnuts. Pecans would be nice too, but I'm pretty sure we don't have those here in Michigan. Stocking up on nuts, and utilizing any byproduct of that process in whatever ways are useful, seems like a great way to further invest in the idea of a more sustainable, tuned-in, harmonious existence as an extension of my natural environment, rather than something removed from it.
I'm so grateful for all of my friends, so grateful to have been connected with these humans for as long I have, and so grateful to still be connected to them after all of this time. We have grown together and apart, but remain linked through the bond of mutual experience, similar interests, proximity during youth, and memes. The humorandgood nature flows smoothly, and the love shines through. We love to see it and love to feel it.
It is, after all, so very important to get that locked-in feeling with our close ones; our dear friends, from prior years or contemporary buds. I think it is important to get that dosage of connection to the squad.
The post-Covid fatigue and laze was real. It took me awhile to get back up to snuff in terms of doing outside work. I started playing Chrono Trigger and a run of Pokemon Sapphire, though I haven't finished either yet. I started doing landscaping work for other people than just the Land Bank, which definitely helped secure my existence at the expense of time. I started leaning into identifying more plants and trees in my area, and found a very lucrative patch of mulberry trees an approximate two minute walk from my house. So delicious. I read two books, being a George Harrison biography (Behind That Locked Door) and The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. They both impacted me greatly, and I'm still feeling the reverberations. I would like to write in a dedicated fashion about the latter book in particular. I started writing creatively again, which has been very fulfilling. I attended Godzilla Fest in Chicago, which was super fulfilling as well. Generally, I've been branching out in different directions, working, and spending time with friends and family.
More recently, in August, I've been leaning a lot more into computer science projects. I have a few in the works, among them working on video games with my sister. Those are the farthest along in development. Along the way, I installed Aseprite onto my Linux machine, and began creating some spritework for this website in random spurts of free time. Eventually, I had enough momentum built up to re-invest time in the actual construction of this site, and now I've been on a bit of a bender the past few days coding and laying these pages out. Things have been feeling good, productive, and decently engaged in many areas. I'm putting the more complex text-blurb database semi-randomized system I had envisioned for my writings here on the backburner for the time being, as getting *something* out there is a bigger priority to me at the moment than getting the *perfect* thing out there. I've been having so much fun working on this stuff that I don't mind, anyhow.
As for music, I haven't leaned into that as much this summer. I feel like I'm much more musically productive in the late summer to early winter, and late winter to spring. Something about the draw of being inside during inclement weather, and the vibes in the air. Summer feels like growing season, and I do feel like I've grown this summer. Pear People has thus lagged, as has work on making my Zona Demos into a Zona Album, but it's okay. My sister got a Moog synth recently, and I was desiring a refactor of Pear People stuff to work within that instrumental framework anyway (I'm very jelly of the Moog, honestly). As it is, I've felt some pulls towards music here and there, especially while coding the music page. I imagine as the air continues to transition to more autumnal states, I shall find myself once again working out complex harmonies, getting better at the bass guitar, and writing guitar solos. As it is, I'm happy with where I'm at for now :)
I've decided to name the text blurb files with the date first, to make it easy to sort. This way, they can all display in a timeline-like basis. The next thing I've got to figure out will be categories, and linking certain blurbs to others at the bottom of the page. This will probably only happen on the standalone page for the blurb, but if standalone blurb pages are generated on-the-fly, then there will have to be some sort of pairing system to go with that. Perhaps a date-sorted list of links that share the same keyword(s), or maybe a custom table detailing which links are the most important to pair with a given blurb.
Or maybe both! If I have particular blurbs that are derived from thoughts from a previous blurb, putting those filenames in a table or array or dictionary or whatever, linked to the base blurb, would ensure those files are pushed to the top of recommended blurbs, and after those are put in the list upon generation, they are followed by the generic keyword-matched blurbs.
This all begs the question of where the keyword information goes. Maybe another set of dictionaries. I did spend some time brushing up on PHP yesterday, but cannot currently remember what types of data storage variables PHP has. Time for more reviewing! I may just be able to make list files by keyword as well. Lots of thoughts.
Having blurby text files such as this, laid out dynamically on the page, depending on text length and potential word orientation. Converting pixel sizes of different fonts' letters into width values, generating different-sized boxes that can be overlayed onto the screen in a notepad-lookin way, with a nice border around each. Could make it into a php script as a project. Would have to incorporate css and figure out relative size to screen display.
There would be individual static pages generated for each text blurb as well, but having a main page where each one is laid out alongside the others would be cool-looking.
Pear People are imminently coming down the pipeline! Having Covid has held me back this week from beginning recordings, but it has given me this opportunity for pause once more in the pearocess. It's going to be a good time, and I look forward to much musical inspiration along the way.
Mama mia!
Old-school web development means reconnecting with and expanding upon that which drew me to computing in my formative years. My parents started me on the path of PC usage at 18 months old. My dad had built desktop computers for the family, and they ran Windows 3.1, 95, and 98 SE at different points. That do-it-yourself mentality, the allure of the World Wide Web while it still had the new car smell, and the ever-fleeting closeness of the underlying code to the machine that was already buried under several novel layers of abstraction:::::::::::::the vibe that I feel today. The Internet as most of us know it is in a mucked up, cluttered, overly-monetized state of dispensing distracting, consolidated, pre-sorted content in unfortunately universalized methods of experience. For all of the liberation that could and can come with the Internet, most of us have been content to gradually get choralled into fewer and fewer channels within which to surf in, more or less taking the same tired engines of Google/Bing/derivatives thereof along as guides through the boundless waters of the web. The engines were working fine enough, crawling us through uncharted routes in increasingly optimized and diverse ways, and at some point, that stopped being so. Optimization of the Search Engines became an ideological vessel unto itself, carving revenue streams into our surfed waters like an Energizer Beaver. Information at the last has become the biggest commodity; expanding into the new markets bursting forth after the PATRIOT Act's controlled demolition of our collective data dam.
Where did the fun go? Where did the zeal and engagement coupled with the glamorous digital realm of human information vanish to? Even in the rose-colored-by-comparison transitionary Windows 7 days, I yearned for a simpler time of computing. A time when it really didn't seem like such a hurdle to just type up your own digital self-expression in a ground-up, unique way. A garage sale HTML DIY guidebook and the return of the beigey behemoth PC we had stored in the attic for 10-ish years took me the first step along the way. I even got into writing my own text adventure games in QBasic, and making a bare-faced HTML CodyNet to store on a single floppy disk.
All of this led to a computer science bachelor's degree, but getting so immersed in the contemporary field definitely did much to turn me off to it. The convolution and abstraction in today's software and web development scene rubs me the wrong way, and many years of my 20s have been spent turning away from technology and towards the Earth; towards engaging with the life that our collective ancestors lived and that we are rapidly forgetting. Nevertheless, I have had within me the urge to express myself in a variety of ways technologically, and I feel as though I am close to where I want to be with my Internet presence. Public networks with which we can present ourselves, our thoughts, and pass along information for individual and collective betterment are hella tools to have at our fingertips. I have been adverse to engaging with creation on our main platforms for quite some time, and it seems my gut feelings steered me in the right diretion. The ever-shrinking circle of those in power on these platforms are increasingly picking and choosing, mostly behind opaque walls, what information we consume and how we feel about said information; engineering our behavior and exploiting our neurology to exchange dopamine for ad revenue. We can all do so much better than this pitiful state -- for how absolutely cool the concept of the Internet is, and for just how much potential it has to lift us up as a species, we really could be doing better.
If only we would choose to engage. If only we would see the power that we personally have to take charge of our existence. We can own our Internet presence. We can own our data. We can control how we present ourselves to the world, especially on the Internet. HTML is designed to be (relatively) intuitive, and css isn't the hardest thing in the world. Even if more people just generated their own static sites with their own repository of information/personal files, wouldn't we be better off? Smaller communities with more built-in redundancies? More engagement with locals? This problem of course exists in the real world as much as it does on the net. I'm doing my best to rectify it irl via multiple avenues, and I feel compelled to do it on the Internet as well.