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Hell yeah.

How beautiful it is, to love something so precious, so fleeting, so beautiful, so valuable, so ephemeral! You cannot truly love something unless it may someday  leave you. Otherwise you simply get used to it, accommodate it, and take it for granted. Don’t believe me? Ask a blind man what he would do to be able to see again, or a cripple what he would do to walk, and ask yourself what you need to do to be able to do those things. If you are healthy, and have healthy relationships with people in your life, then are you are rich, rich beyond your wildest dreams.

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I’ve never really liked running. I like cycling, and I imagine I’d like swimming, but I’ve never really liked running. I think the main reason is because I’ve never really learnt how to run properly. I’m tall, skinny and have really long legs, like Dali’s elephants’. As a kid I used to take huge strides when I ran- overstriding, wasting lots of energy. My legs were always underdeveloped- muscles, tendons, nerves, all of them- and I’ve always, always been really self-conscious about my chicken legs. I’d hit the gym, play basketball, do pushups- but I’d always neglect my legs. In the first 30 weeks or so I was determined to change that, but I was afraid to suddenly confront what I’ve always been hiding from, and chose an indirect approach, through compound lifting.

I decided to take running more seriously- I’m doing a half-marathon in May. I took a 2 week break after 8 weeks of all-around muscle building in the gym (focusing on the overall posterior chain) and then decided to start running.

My first runs are always very painful. During the run I get breathless and my legs go weak, and afterwards my head throbs for hours. I perspire profusely and I get a dry, sandpaper feel at the back of my throat.

I persisted. Second run was less bad, but not good either.

The third run I tried changing things around a little, doing intervals. I’d run at a faster pace from one bus stop to the next, then stretch and catch my breath and repeat. This time I felt really good- warmed up, high on oxygen, heart beating. And most notably, my head wasn’t pounding this time. Well it did for a short while, and then it dissipated, much quicker and more smoothly than it did before.

And that got me thinking, as I was thinking about systems in general, about the processes that were going on in my body as I ran, and somehow it all seemed really interesting.

I mean, what’s going on when I run? I decide to run, and signals from my brain go to the nerves in my legs telling them to contract as necessary. As this happens, a complex dance begins to happen- my conscious movement of my legs is supplanted by my brain’s finely calibrated requests to the heart and lungs to adjust their activities accordingly. I breathe deeper and harder, taking in oxygen and expelling carbon dioxide- the aerobic respiration process supplying the necessary nutrients to my muscles and whisking away the waste products, whatever they are, I forget the finer details. This process generates and sustains movement, a destruction of balance.  But my muscles are underdeveloped, as are the tendons supporting them and the nerves instructing them. The circulatory system is not used to the increased demand and is overwhelmed. The central planning system, the brain, starts to throb and hurt.

In a way, isn’t all this really similar to any other system that we put under stress? When I start to look at it this way, running becomes something powerful- a kind of pursuit of elegance, in a way- to streamline the processes in my body and to boost the capacity of my mind and stuff like that. I know it doesn’t really make a lot of sense and it seemed a lot more beautiful as a concept in my head, but there’s something in there.

Running reveals to me the weaknesses and inconsistencies and structural failings of my body, and gives me an opportunity to strengthen them. I suppose we could say the same of any kind of focused, directed hardship- be it for an individual, for relationships or for larger systems like businesses or even governments, maybe? What then, is protectionism? Lots of interesting thoughts and ideas to be derived from this little analogy. I’ll think about it as I’m running tomorrow.

There are some things about smoking cessation that nobody really tells you about. In the words of the poet Marshall Mathers, I can’t tell you what it really is, I can only tell you what it feels like.

The first is that it changes your world. I mean that very literally. The world as I perceive it appears to be changing. I know of course that the world isn’t changing- it’s my perception of it that is. My peripheral vision is expanding, as is my hearing- I see and hear a lot more than I usually do. My skin feels more sensitive, too. I believe all of these things are happening in the mind- the input into the sensory organs are still the same, but the processing element is somehow different in the absence of nicotine.

Having smoked for 4 years, I somehow modified my natural state into one that is simultaneously sedated and stimulated- a smoker’s world is less diverse but more focused and clear. Not having smoked for this long, I see much more colour and movement than I ever remember seeing. The change is outright frightening. When I walk, I find myself acutely aware of my head bobbing up and down, and it actually makes me feel giddy, and a little bit nauseous. I think we all feel these things and that our brains usually sort of balance out these subtle “bounces” and movements such that we don’t notice them- until, of course, we quit smoking.

It’s scary, though tolerable because I know exactly what it is. Now it’s kind of fun and exciting. It’s like taking a drug in itself, or exploring new perspectives and ideas. I feel, quite literally, like a different person- I am experiencing and perceiving a different world altogether. It’s deeply unsettling. I think people don’t give this enough importance. Quitting smoking is not just giving up something like a food or drink- it quite literally changes your brain, and changes your experience of the world, and makes you feel (I don’t mean to be presumptuous or insulting) a little bit of what I imagine autism and schizophrenia might be like.

That said, this morning felt like huge progress. After being besieged with headaches for days, today I felt substantially lighter and more clear-headed than I have been in a while. My lung capacity has practically doubled and the air smells so rich and sweet.

Run 3 times DONE!
List books for sale DONE!
Meet Someone Different (ONE WEEK LATE, BUT DONE!)
Draw (didn’t)
Record 2 guitar covers DONE!
Schedule 2 weeks worth of Inspiration posts (didn’t.)
Write Two “Hero” posts (Didn’t, but had the ST saga to play with)

Could’ve done better, but perhaps a decent start to begin with.

I’ve been feeling unbelievably edgy. I think I need to write down everything that’s on my mind. So here we go:

I have clutter in my bag that I ought to clear up. DONE!

Clutter by the computer.

Clutter by the bed.

Clutter in the guest room.

I need to shave before going to work tomorrow.

I have a headache and I need to hydrate and breathe. Shall take 5 to do that. DONE!

Information overload- I have too many things going on at the same time.

• Twitter Declutter
• Facebook Declutter
• Google Reader Declutter
• Gmail Declutter
• Bookmarks Declutter
• Evernote Declutter

I’ll be going to BMT in May. Not completely prepared, physically and/or mentally. I need to do a medical check up in camp tomorrow. Must not forget. Shall do this tomorrow.

I’m not sure when my next in-camp duty is. I should’ve taken the trouble to find out. Not knowing makes me unsettled. I shall find out tomorrow.

I have cavities in my teeth that should most probably get filled ASAP. I have been putting them off, which makes me feel unsettled.

Not smoking has been difficult for me and it feels like I’m in somebody else’s body. Which makes me feel edgy and uncomfortable. I must remember to set aside time to breathe.

My handphone screen is damaged and I can’t see what it says very well. It’s not immediately obvious, but it does contribute to my edginess. Should replace it.

I would like to get rid of the clutter in my room- my books and clothes. Not having done so makes me unsettled.

I would like to display/arrange/keep my guitars and basses in a safe and aesthetically pleasing manner, with hangers or stands. Not having done so makes me unsettled.

I do not, at present, own a pair of spectacles and I have perhaps been straining my eyes more than necessary. I should do something about that.

I have a long list of blog post ideas, all in different places, that are starting to suffocate me. I should list them out in one place, and then tackle them one at a time.

I haven’t been keeping track of my finances as thoroughly as planned. That changes right now.

I just feel so much more conscious of everything and it’s kind of crazy. I was watching a video about an autistic girl a while ago and she wrote about how it was like to be in her body, overwhelmed, like ants crawl up her body, and how they use output to try and ignore the overwhelming input. I wonder if there’s a nervous basis for it? I wonder if there are autistic people who smoke? Because I think the “ants crawling up the body” are something like nerves firing off like crazy, which is what I have felt (albeit not at such a ridiculous level, surely) now and then, and I am always aware of how smoking would quell it, sedate me as a relaxant and make it more tolerable.

Of course, life before cigarettes was completely tolerable, was it not? It’s amazing how much things can change, how easily we can adapt to new conditions when we think we cannot, and how easily we get comfortable and secure in our new conditions once we have adapted.

I am learning so much. It feels like I’m experiencing a different world from what I did a year ago, and a few years before that as well. Everything is changing, everything in flux.

PS: http://autism.about.com/b/2008/11/19/stop-smoking-drug-could-lessen-symptoms-of-autism.htm Found this from a hunch-based Google. Feels pretty cool to have intuitively noticed a similarity that has a correspondence with reality! It could be entirely random, but still, always cool. Kind of.

Now the easy and simple thing to do would be to just enjoy the cash. After all, I haven’t been smoking, and I deserve it, right? But that’s missing out on a wonderful opportunity to up the ante.

Here’s what I’m going to do- I’m going to create weekly objectives to accomplish, as stated in Week 34. If I accomplish them, I earn the $15, which I could then save or spend as I wish. If I don’t accomplish them, I have to put the money towards something completely out of the blue- something I don’t really believe in or care for very much- donating it to a cause I don’t know anything about, maybe, or buying a CD from a band I don’t know.

There’s a double whammy there, exploiting both two very human traits- fear of loss and fear of the foreign. I’d rather invest in things that I believe are optimal for me and my plans than in things that I don’t know about, so there’s an additional incentive for me to accomplish my goals.  However, if I fail, I feel a sense of loss financially- and at the same time I force myself out of my comfort zone and learn something through serendipitous discovery- perhaps something good, perhaps something bad, but something new nevertheless, and new is good.

And at a simple, philosophical level- we have to bet on ourselves, because if we don’t, how can we expect anyone else to? All I’m trying to do is to align the incentives- tangible and intangible- such that I feel the pleasure of my good choices and the pain of my bad ones. Though granted, perhaps this might not really be a good source of “pain”. What do you think?