I went to bed around 1:30 or 2 in the morning, woke up around .... 4 or 5, so not too great. Got up and had some sake to get sleepy again and back to bed at 7AM, and woke up at 10AM.
I was out the door with the bike trailer loaded at 10:20. It had been raining lightly when I went to bed for the 2nd time at 7AM, but it was clear and sunny and puddles weren't as much a problem as I thought they would be. It's nice being out in the sun. It's very different from going out in the early evening in that, while there's a bit more traffic the traffic is different. In the evening it's the yuppies in a hurry to get home. During the day, the yuppies are in their offices and it's workers I'm among. And they don't see me as an object of contempt but as one of them.
On the way back I stopped at a lunch truck on Junction Avenue that's my favorite kind - Asian. I got a little "boat" of pork meatballs wrapped in won ton wrappers and fried, for $2.50. They were really good.
I was back here at 11:30 and dropped off the trailer and headed out for Nijiya. It was nice being out among the trees and all the things in the bright daylight sun. The air's nice and cold, but overall it was very enjoyable. I reflected on how, back in Hawaii, people get up early and get things done, largely because of the heat but because it's nice in the morning too.
I got groceries including a new type of natto to try, and sake of course. I seem to be spending about $10/day on groceries and sake. After putting things away in the bike bags I walked the bike along the sidewalk on the other, sunny, side of the street and looked at the shops. Because it's Monday most are closed but a few were open. Mainly I just enjoyed walking in the sun in that area that reminds me so much of the town of Kaimuki back home. I imagined being back home and able to poke along at my leisure during the day and not worry so much about surviving (because I'll have Social Security and my busking will probably be later in the day). What's funny is, someone left a whole package of sushi just sitting out there (cover on) in the full sun - what, do they expect some homeless person to come along and eat it?
When I'd gotten up at about 5:30AM to drink a little sake to get sleepy again, I read the 2nd part of Man's Search For Meaning again. I am really glad I bought this book. It's not one to read but one to study. Frankl talks about the problems logotherapy has answers for. A couple more concrete examples are that of a guy who sweated too much when giving lectures. Frankl advises him to try to sweat more and paradoxically, it enabled the guy to stop his sweating problem. And a bookkeeper who developed writer's cramp so badly he was afraid he'd lose his job. Frankl told him to try scrawling worse, not better, and it enabled him to rid himself of the cramp and neaten his handwriting up again.
Another thing he advised for hang-ups is to look at yourself from the outside and have some humor about it. If you can laugh at your hang-up, it has less control over you. And I realized with a shock that I'd done this myself, to solve something that was a huge problem for me. Since I can remember, I was a nail-biter. I remember my mother putting nail polish on them when I was 5 or so, some kind of peppery or sour stuff, scolding me, etc. I just could not keep from nibbling my nails. I felt bad about it too, but could not quit. I was set to be a life-long nail biter, one of those people with pitiful fingers, bitten down to the quick. (By the way I noticed more than a few in the Army.)
For a while in my early 30s I lived in Colorado. There are lots of squirrels there and can those little guys ever climb trees! When I decided to quit biting my nails for good, I thought of those squirrels and how screwed they'd be if they bit their nails. They have their nails because they're tools they need to survive. And likewise, my nails are very useful tools and when I'd start to bite a nail I'd think humorously of one of those squirrels and stop cold.
The only time I've bit them since is a few times I've gotten really drunk, which shows that alcohol shuts down the humanistic, logical part of a person.
After reading about logotherapy I feel like the rest of my life might be a classroom in clearing up mental blocks, resentments, neuroses, and bad habits in general. A good project might be to see how good a person I can become.
After I got back here and the place all "buttoned up" I packed this one large thing for which I used a box that's a little bit too big but it was an easy "drop in" fit, and I packed another smaller thing and I'll just take those two to FedEx tomorrow. Then I had a couple of scrambled eggs, then before anything else, I did a load of laundry. My cut's all healed up now thanks to Dettol and the laundry was no problem.
Then I had some miso soup with salmon, and listed 10 Ebay things, then I was done for the day. Also somewhere in there today I got about 45 minutes of voice exercises done, which with breaks took more than an hour. There's a YouTube channel called Jacobs Voice Academy and I'm finding their exercises really helpful.
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