Glowing Face Man

My Time in Air Force Tech School

2009-07-08T16:26:00.001-07:00

After what seemed like an eternity of bitter suffering and agony, we were released from the hell of Boot Camp and, early on a Monday morning, we emerged blinking into the sunlight as free men. Or, that's what we thought. Little did I know what I had in store for me as a military weather forecaster in training. We were separated into different buses for different tech schools: different jobs had their training at different bases; my destination was Keesler AFB, Biloxi, Mississippi-- the toilet bowl of the United States.

It was a long ride by bus from Texas to Mississippi. I listened to Pink Floyd on my CD player which had long lain neglected in a closet at the training squadron with most my other personal belongings. It felt so wonderful to listen to music; we tend to take music for granted until we're deprived of it for awhile (I would later experiment further with music deprivation: read more here). "Gone with the wind and the rain on an airplane..." went the lyrics, and I felt like they were speaking directly to me, even if the cheap contracted bus we were riding wasn't exactly a Boeing.

Lackland had exposed me to the draconian mindgames of the Air Education & Training Command (AETC), numbing me somewhat to them, but it would be at Keesler where I would really learn to understand this beaurocratic branch of the USAF. Under the tutelage of the blackhats, I had learned to endure pain; under the tutelage of the blueropes, I would learn that the pain was illusionary to begin with. But not before going through a lot more of it first.

Pingers and Poptarts

In tech school, certain airmen were pingers, certain airmen were poptarts. Let me explain this unusual slang. When we stepped off the bus from San Antonio, we were reveling in our relative freedom. We were naive. As we waited outside the training squadron, veteran techschoolers shook their heads knowingly at us; there was something about our behavior and our demeanor which set off their radar, and that's why we were called Pingers, because of how a radar monitor goes "ping". The sergeants in charge of us picked up on this signal too, and knew we were easy targets.

I was not a poptart. Poptarts are airmen with short training periods, people who practically start outprocessing as soon as they finish inprocessing. For them, Keesler was just a brief stopping point between bootcamp and their active duty stations. At first, some of my friends from BMT fell into this category. But soon, they graduated. And the poptarts of the next week, and the week after that. No, I was not in this category. I watched fresh meat come off the bus, giddy with freedom, and I watched them leave a few weeks later, all during a tiny fraction of my own training. They became a blur, and us toughened veterans in the weather school, we came to envy them.

Blueropes, Greenropes...

The blueropes, already mentioned above, were Keesler's version of the drill sergeants from Lackland. While TIs were identified by their black hats, blueropes were identified with a blue rope looped through one shoulder lapel. Our jubilance at escaping bootcamp was shattered when our blueropes opened their mouths and began heaping the same familiar abuse we'd resigned ourselves to in Texas.

There were ropes of other colors, as well. Red ropes, yellow ropes, and green ropes. While these ropes also bossed us around and generally exhibited their superiority complexes, they were no sergeants: they were our fellow airmen and classmates. This was all part of the deep, insidious community of backstabbing and informing which the powers at be fostered amidst us.

Green ropes volunteered for the position, and the only requirement was that they be "Airmen First Class", meaning they had two promotions under their belt. On the surface, this seems like a good way to pick out natural leaders, but bear in mind that merit-based promotions don't actually occur until well after tech school. In practice, there were two ways to get those two stripes: have them stipulated in your contract, or be Air National Guard. National Guard promotions work differently than active duty, and Airman First Class is much easier to get there. The perverse result was that we were lorded over by "Airman Leaders" whose "Leadership" derived entirely from the fact that they had made less of a commitment to their country!

I pray I never end up in a POW camp with a bunch of airmen. Beginning in tech school, comeraderie among the ranks is actively discouraged, replaced with one big contest to see who can get who in the biggest trouble. Later during my weather training time, my own contract's stipulations kicked in and I myself became an Airman First Class-- a rare active duty one! I thought about becoming a greenrope: the propaganda advertising the position was very convincing. In the end, I'm glad I decided against it.

Freedom

At first, we were elated, the blueropes' abuse notwithstanding. Every weekday, we had three or four hours of free time. Depending on a complicated formula depending on our seniority and behavior, we had differing levels of privilege. At the very minimum, we could wander the dorm and the base almost unrestricted, though we had to do it in uniform. Compare this to Lackland, where a fifteen minute "patio break" with snack machines and payphones was a heavenly luxury! As your privilege went up further, you could walk around in civilian clothes when you were off duty! And if it went up even further, you could go off base, and explore the sophistocated metropolis named Biloxi ;) There was even a privilege level where you were relieved the enforced bedtime, but in practice noone really got that high. On the weekends (including every other Friday), the whole day was free time!

It was almost strange being able to plan your own independent trip to the BX to spend some of that cash they'd paid you in boot camp. I immediately invested in a better pair of boots, "jump boots" designed for paratroopers. My feet thanked me all the rest of my tenure in weather school.

It was on off-duty time that I had my first "nightclub" experience, at a "club" designed especially for us students. Of course, there was no alcohol, since that was strictly forbidden for anyone underage, which was virtually all of us. And to disappoint any guys who went expecting to see girls dressed up sexy, most of us weren't privileged enough to wear civies, so most of the dancefloor was dressed in jungle camoflage! The place was called "The Vandenburg" and it was basically a scheme for some slick civilian to bleed our bank accounts. It was located right beside the $1/10 min (or something) internet cafe which must have made someone a millionaire.

Inprocessing and Hurricane Duty

The first week or two at Keesler were devoted to inprocessing. When you're in the military, it seems like everyone and their pet dog has to give you a briefing about something. Days and days were spent listening to one hour-long briefing after another. We were briefed about driving safety. Suicide prevention. Financial planning. Base protocol. Sexually transmitted diseases. Anything you can think of, someone was paid to stand in front of us for an hour and lecture us about it. Mostly, it was stuff which had been covered already in Lackland. The military is not big on efficiency (the briefings would not end when tech school ended-- they would continue all the way 'til I escaped the service completely, but that's another story).

After in-processing, what comes next is the actual training for one's career. But often, there's a waiting period until the school launches the new class, usually because you're waiting for more classmates to graduate bootcamp. During this period of limbo, you usually play dormguard, but I did hurricane duty instead. One of the fun parts of living on the Gulf of Mexico is the periodic whirling storm of death that comes your way. I spent a lot of time filling sandbags. Many things may happen in my lifetime, but I'll always be secure in knowing I've shoveled my fill of sand!

Stuffing giant bags with dirt was actually cool in one sense: for the first time since leaving home, I was doing real work, not just fantasy dorm guard duty or making beds just to have them torn apart by irate drill sergeants. It was fun working with sergeants outside the AETC, who treated us like normal human beings and revealed a human side of themselves we hadn't seen in our overlords prior to that.

Weather School

I don't know how intentional it was, but when my weather forecasting classes finally started, I found myself playing the suspect in a "good cop, bad cop" film. The bad cop was everything I've mentioned above-- the blueropes, the greenropes, the informers everywhere. The good cop was the weather school itself, fifteen minutes' march from the dorms. The sergeants and civilians who actually taught us our jobs, were a whole different world from the harassment and abuse heaped on us from every other direction. For once, tedious military protocol took second priority to actually learning about what goes on in the atmosphere and how to predict it.

Here's how a typical weekday would go. Unlike bootcamp, there was no trumpet blast to wake us all up. We slept in rooms with one roommate, and it was our own responsibility to get up on time. I only slept in once. It wasn't pretty. I don't remember exactly what happened, probably my mind scrambling to suppress traumatizing memories. I do know that after that one mistake, I never overslept for the remainder of techschool.

Upon getting up, we quickly cleaned our rooms and made our beds, but not to the exacting precision required in boot camp. It was only necessary to make the bed like a normal person really makes their bed-- no need for perfect hospital corners. In addition to quickly cleaning our own rooms, we each had a part in cleaning our floor. These were assigned by our Air National Guard airman leaders.

Breakfast was optional. What wasn't optional, was showing up in uniform, flashlight cone at your side, in formation outside the front of the squadron. It was still cold and dark as we fell into carefully determined positions in line to be counted and accounted for. A bluerope shouted at us for awhile and we turned and saluted as a microphone blared the national anthem. Then came the march to the schoolhouse. Since most of us skipped breakfast on account of having to get up so early already, we arrived at school tired and hungry. Nonetheless, we were happy to step into the school building, as that was the shift from bad cop to good cop.

The one good thing about all the abuse we put up with from the "military training" side of techschool was that it made the academic side tolerable. This is very important, because we were in class for around ten hours a day. By contrast, the workload in, say, undergraduate university is pretty small! There's a cool practice in military school, which would be useful in civilian universities as well: when you felt drowsy during a lecture, you could go to the back of the room and stand. It's a lot easier to stay awake when you're on your feet!

Weather school was split up into different modules, which were handled differently. Most modules were lectures, and by lecture I mean powerpoint presentation. If you're techschool-bound in any sort of technical field like weather, be ready for lots of powerpoint! The U.S. military probably has more powerpoint presentations than it has bombs and guns.

I developed a note-taking method which is pretty powerful in lectures where you need to memorize lots of presented information. I call it repetitive note-taking. Basically, you write down everything you hear, and when you have time left over, you rewrite it again. To conserve paper, I eventually started writing notes over other notes, making the whole page unreadable. That's fine, this method doesn't actually involve reading back over the notes-- it's the mere act of writing them which will hammer the data into your brain. Doing this hours and hours a day for months upon months, I even started developing my own crazy shorthand, which I'd later perfect in university.

(Too bad I didn't know about spaced repetition systems back then. Follow that link and marvel at the wonders of cutting edge memory techniques which would make most of weather school a breeze for anyone.)

Seeing Through the AETC's Mask

While I was doing great in class, I absolutely hated the other portion of techschool. While it wasn't as bad as bootcamp by any stretch of the imagination, the thing is that it was longer. For me, ten times longer or so. Many people pass through Keesler in a few weeks- poptarts- but us weather forecasters stayed forever, and as the months stretched out, so too did our patience for the circus which was our dorm.

At all times, whether in uniform or civies, on or off duty, we had to carry a little form in our pockets, the infamous AETC Form 341, the "Excellence/Discrepancy Report". The way these work is, anyone in any sort of authority position (whether real or pretend), can demand you fork over your 341. Once it's in their hands, they write something in it and turn it in to the blueropes. In principle, what they write can be positive or negative (hence the "Excellence/Discrepancy"), but in practice, only negative reports are issued.

When the blueropes get a negative 341, they take punitive action. At a minimum, you can expect to be assigned a 12-hour dorm-guard shift sometime during the precious weekend. In this case, you can luck out and get a day shift, or you can get the dreaded night shift which will completely destroy your sleep schedule and leave you sleeping away the rest of the weekend. A repeat offender can expect worse, like spending the whole weekend doing marching drills, led by everyone's favorite classmates, the greenropes. Sometimes, they'll even send an airman to visit a real military prison, with people who have really been courtmartialed. Actually, I kind of wish I'd been sent there for a day, since that would make a totally awesome story...

This might all sound fairly reasonable if a negative 341 was reserved for something serious like drinking under age or even just being late for class. Most of these forms, however, were pulled by greenropes and dorm guards, on the flimsiest grounds imaginable. I had some National Guard prick with a rope try to get my 341 once because he felt I "wasn't respecting him enough". Because I didn't call him "sir". While off-duty, civilian clothes, in line for dinner at the chow hall. When he and I were the same rank in reality, and I probably had more time-in-service than him. Guy wasn't even from my squadron. I was pretty fed up with 12 hour shifts, so I refused, and when he persisted, I abandoned my half-full tray unpaid for and walked out of the cafeteria. It worked!

That was the first time I "dodged" a 341. It would not be the last. The next would be a major eye-opener for me, giving me insight into the true nature of the AETC. I was walking into the dorms, in PT gear, and I stopped at the dorm guard desk, where some kids fresh out of bootcamp were pulling guard duty. I needed to write something on a form, and figured I may as well do it there. I started filling it out, but this dorm guard stuck her nose in my business, telling me self-importantly: "You can't fill that out in blue ink!" Okay, I thought, whatever... I grabbed the nearest black pen and started using that, but it was felt-tip and Ms. Form-Inspector objected to that too.

Fine, I thought, I'll just go do this in my room. I crumpled up the form and asked this self-important guard to put it in the trash under the dormguard desk. That, apparently, was below her dignity. "Airman Alexander, give me a 341!" she exclaims, as proudly as if she was reciting a line in a 1st grade school play. This was a girl who had been in the Air Force a tenth the time I had, who I outranked by two paygrades. I was exhausted of all these games. My voice must have rung with exasperation and irritation when I demanded, "Why??" Turns out she felt I was "disrespecting" the elite dorm guard position by having them throw trash away for me.

I decided then and there I wasn't pulling a 12-hour shift because of this nonsense. I tried to argue with the girl, but now people were gathering around. I wasn't going to be able to just walk away from this one, like I had in the chow hall. The situation looked bleak. There was only one escape, and that was right into the lions' den: the dreaded bluerope hall, where our military training instructors had their offices. I told our upset dormguard friend that I was going to go talk to one of the sergeants about our dispute. I gathered my courage and walked into the office hall.

I walked right up to the office of the highest enlisted person in the squadron, the dreaded master sergeant, who routinely tore airmen to shreds. This was a woman who'd made more grown men cry than I'd eaten hot dinners, and I walked right to her office, rapped on the door and followed the appropriate protocol: "Ma'am, Airman Alexander reports." She gave me an impatient glare and told me to wait, and wait I did, standing outside her office. Things were very busy in the hall. At length the master sergeant got up and went into an adjacent office, ignoring me. I easily heard the conversation with her fellow bluerope:

"Look at all these 341s. These will take forever to process! Where'd they all come from??"

I was shocked. Our overlords were as frustrated with the system as we were! Of course... it meant more work for them! Finally, the master sergeant demanded to know why I was standing outside her office. I explained the episode at the dorm guard desk, and I think Ms. Master-Sergeant's brain short circuited. An airman sticking up for himself? This was unheard of, and I like to think the battle-hardened warden didn't know what to make of it! She told me to summon the dorm guard, who donned a look of sheer terror on her face as soon as I informed her she was wanted in the snakepit.

Now we were both standing before the angry and confused master sergeant. The universal, axiomatic truth in the AETC is that any accusation is true and any accusee is guilty. But who was the accusor? The dormguard was pressing charges against my "disrespect". And I was pressing charges against her uncalled-for behavior. The axiom of truth bent around and contradicted itself, causing the universe to violently explode in a big military paradox.

After getting the story from both of us, and switching erratically between supporting one and supporting the other, it was clear our boss was stumped. Finally I spoke up and suggested it was all a misunderstanding and she should let us both off with a warning. Normally, I imagine I'd've earned myself a 12-hour shift for that kind of insolence, presuming to make suggestions to a sergeant, but I think she was just glad to see a way out of her predicament. She took my suggestion and I kept my 341 and my weekend!

After that incident, my eyes were wide open to how the mindgames of military training really worked. The truth was so obvious, I should've seen it all along, from day 1 of boot camp. The TIs and the blueropes, they were only barely one step above us in the big picture. They were small potatoes, and they were as scared for their hides as we were... in fact, we were immune, and they were vulnerable. See, any black marks we got in the pipeline would be wiped away and ignored once we got to our actual duty stations. It was just make believe, pixie dust, a bunch of jumping through hoops. But a black mark on the sergeant's record would follow him the rest of his career.

What's more, the axiomatic truth, that every accusee is guilty as charged, ignores rank. At least as long as it applies to the enlisted rank and file. I don't know how it would work against officers, but I realized that I had a terrible power, that by merely filling out a complaint form, I could sink whatever military training bigwig I wanted. Colonels and generals, they turn a blind eye to the abuse heaped on students, but when you shove a complaint form in their face, they can't do that any more. A TI spitting in a trainee's face is commonplace and ordinary atLackland, and noone thinks about it twice, but if the trainee actually writes a complaint, Sgt. Hartman is suddenly in a world of pain. The TIs and the blueropes know this and they secretly fear it.

It was like waking up and realizing you're a superhero and just never knew it. I was virtually invincible to any further 12-hour shifts. After that day, when anyone tried to get me in trouble, I'd rush to get my complaint in before theirs got in. I never saw another 12-hour shift at Keesler.

Graduating Techschool

I graduated, a sparkly new Weather Forecasting Journeyman, shortly after the incident with the dormguard. But as far as I'm concerned, that incident was my real point of graduation. The word "graduate" comes from Latin "gradus": a stage, a degree. The etymology of the word teaches us that graduation ceremonies serve to divide society into classes and hierarchies-- "degrees", if you will-- like lines on a measuring cup. I felt like I had already transcended the artificial stages and structure of military training, so graduation was just a tradition to be followed.

My career in the Air Force was just beginning. I bid farewell to the institution which had served as my prison for the past half year. I bid farewell to the Air Education & Training Command and all its hoops and circuses. I didn't realize that the mind games and nonsense would continue no matter how long I stayed in the Air Force. They just become more spaced out. But I had a different perspective on them thanks to my techschool revelation.

FURTHER READING

My Time in Air Force Boot Camp
My Time in the Seduction Community
How I Taught Myself Calculus
Activism Goes Away After Graduation
51 Things That Won't Matter When You Die

30 Day Workout: Days 15-17

2009-07-07T19:09:00.000-07:00

As I compose this writeup, my arms are aching and groaning in protest ;) I'm glad it's a good sore! This is day 17 of my 30 day workout challenge, and that guy in my bathroom mirror must be doing the same challenge 'cuz he's starting to look pretty good ;) Here's what I've been up to in the gym the past few days...

Sunday:
A lower body day, for me, means an emphasis on squats, and that's exactly what I did. 125 lbs, 10 reps, 5 sets... that really felt good! At the end I was sweating like I'd just finished a run.
Next I did leg presses, 85 lbs X 15 reps X 2 sets, and then 100 lbs X 15 reps X 2 sets.
After my legs were all pressed, I strayed from the lower body and did a handful of rows. That's because, as I mentioned in the last writeup, I've been looking into expanding my routine to hit more muscles. I did 30 lbs X 10 reps and then 70 lbs X 10 reps. The 30 lbs felt more like 0 lbs, but it's always best to start a new machine with very low weight so you can get a feel for how it works.
After rows I finished with crunches, holding plates. 35 lbs, 34 reps, 3 sets. And then side legs, 29 per leg.

Monday:
I felt the beckoning call of the treadmill, so I threw on my running shorts and ran my legs off. Unfortunately, at somewhere around 49 minutes into the run, the machine decided I was finished and halted, simultaneously erasing the vital stats (distance, time, etc.) I started it right back up, but now I don't know exactly how long or how far I ran. I do know I ran close to 55 minutes, plus another 5 minutes of cooldown, and after starting at 3.5mph, I gradually accelerated up to 7mph. The last ten minutes of the run, after restarting the machine, I covered 1.12 miles.

Tuesday:
An upper body day and the day when I would really put the rows from Sunday into practice.

Bench: All sets were at 115 lbs. I did 10 reps, 10 reps, 9 reps, 7 reps. The attentive reader will no doubt point out this is actually worse than I did on my previous upper body attack. What this tells me is I've probably hit a plateau. I talked about the plateau in my latest article (which you should check out since it's based on this fitness challenge), Progressive Training. To push past the plateau, I'm gonna depart from regular bench for awhile, replacing it with some variation like wide-grip bench and/or narrow-grip bench.

Pull ups: Last time, I was happily able to push out two pull ups, even if the second one was mediocre. This time, I only did one, and even that was tough. I might be dealing with a plateau here as well, though that's a little embarrassing to admit when we're talking about just one rep. Maybe next time I'll try doing negative pull ups, where you just focus on the descent part.

Rows: Time to hit my rear deltoids! I did 70 lbs, 15 reps, 3 sets with a machine.

Dumbbell bench: 40 lbs per hand, 15 reps, 2 sets. I feel that I'm making good progress here. I use 15 reps as a kind of checkpoint and use that to determine when to up the weight, so next time I'll move to 45 lbs per hand and only 10 reps. Then I'll gradually up the reps to 15 again. I'll consider it excellent progress if I make it to 50 lbs/hand during the 30 days. Dumbbell bench is a little frustrating because the dumbbells only go up in increments of 5 lbs. Since you actually lift two of the things, that means the total weight goes up in increments of 10, which may not sound like much but when you get into weightlifting you'll realize it's a big move up.

Crunches with plates: 35 lbs, 36 reps, 3 sets.

I think the workers at Jesse Owens South are starting to recognize me. They're quite friendly. I'm also starting to notice and recognize other "regulars", I wonder whether any of them are with me in the every-day school of thought. These effects would probably have shown up a lot sooner if I actually went at a fixed time every day. Basically I go whenever the heck I feel like it. One of the benefits of being your own coach and boss :)

NEXT: Days 18-20 (Not online yet. Go to the Glowing Face Man homepage.)

Progressive Training

2009-07-05T19:16:00.000-07:00

I'm currently right at the half-way point through my latest 30 day challenge, a second 30 day workout challenge. It's really heightened my understanding of progressive training: starting small and gradually increasing the difficulty. The idea is simple: if you want to be able to lift a huge weight, something way out of your league, you can't just force yourself to do it. Straining and grunting, you'd only give yourself a hernia. Instead, the way to do it is to find a weight you can lift, an initial weight, and start there. Then, increase it by a small amount every week and have a lot of patience. Ideally, the initial weight should be right about at your limit, something you can pick up with effort but without unhealthy straining. But even this isn't a strict requirement. In principle, you could start by lifting two handfuls of thin air, just as long as you gradually add weight regularly thereafter.

The principle obviously isn't limited to weightlifting. With just about any goal or project, it's a good idea to take baby steps, starting with something small. One of the most common mistakes people make when they set out to accomplish something, is they bite off more than they can chew. Then they get discouraged because their magnum opus turns out to be more of a parvum opus ;) When I look at people doing things that are out of my league, I remind myself that they started out by doing a lot of things that are in my league. The legends and geniuses of the world got where they are by doing a lot of practice at lower levels, and progressively training themselves, upping the difficulty a little bit at a time.

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

At times, because of the ebb and flow of our energy and mood and so on, we have to actually move backward: if I go to the gym and I'm feeling like I shouldn't have even gotten out of bed, I might actually lower the weight instead of raising it. It still beats the alternatives: not lifting at all, or failing the lift and getting discouraged. And I've found that as long as I don't totally neglect the routine entirely, the net movement is positive.

Before the last two weeks, I had totally neglected my body for a few months, and then as a cherry on top, I spent a gluttonous week in Las Vegas ;) When I finally got my rear back in gear, I knocked off a good 15-20 lbs from all the weights with respect to what I was lifting before. Not a big deal: my muscles were at that level before, and so they're very quickly "remembering" that stage, so I'm moving forward with little effort. It's a lot of fun. Soon I'll surpass where I was before taking my workout hiatus. If I'd tried pretending I could just resume where I'd left off, I would've had a rude awakening!

The Plateau

In progressive training, there's a phenomenon which I call the Plateau: you've been gradually increasing the difficult and watching your skills and abilities blossom, but you reach a point where it seems like you're maxed out. This is the plateau, and it's something to celebrate because it shows that you're making lots of progress, that you're on the right track.

To push past the plateau, it's best to actually forget all about that goal for awhile and switch things up slightly. For example, if I find I'm "stuck" at a certain bench pressing weight, I'll take regular benchpress out of my routine, replacing it with a slight variation, like 30 degree inclined bench. To be safe, I'll start with a weight which is much lighter than where I hit the plateau on the regular bench. Then I'll repeat the progressive training process until I hit a plateau on the new exercise. Now, odds are I can return to the original lift and push past the sticking point.

The Self-Image Advantage

One of the benefits of progressive training is psychological. If I swallowed a magical potion which gave me a 500 lb bench press instantly, three things would happen. First, my skin would burst apart violently, since it couldn't stretch enough to handle my bulging biceps. Second-- once I got out of the hospital-- I'd find I don't know my own strength. I'd tear the cupboard door off the wall the first time I went to grab something inside. I'd give my girlfriend a bearhug, and next thing you know she's being hauled away by paramedics ;) And third and finally, I'd lose most of my magical strength, since I don't really know how to workout to maintain it.

Progressive training is almost like a "check and balance" built into the universe to prevent this sort of thing. By increasing skills slowly and surely, we give ourselves time to adjust to our own development. It's because of this that we can enjoy any sort of continuity in our lives.

In some cases, there are magic potions: for example, you can win the lottery and become a multimillionaire overnight. That may not make your skin rip open, but if you're not used to being filthy rich, you'd find it a little more alien and disorienting than you expected. Chances are, you wouldn't be able to adjust your mind fast enough to the new reality, and you'd end up wasting a lot of the money, subconsciously sabotaging yourself until you got back to a bank account you were more comfortable and familiar with.

Interesting, and going off on a slight tangent, the mechanics of self-image work the other way, too. That's why athletes train by visualizing themselves with the performance they want. Let's take the magic potion from the previous example, but change it a little. Rather than give me actual hulk strength, this new potion just makes me think that I'm a musclebound titan, and that I've always been one. The new magical self-image will clash violently with my true, 100-lb-pressing self, and the result is that I'll feel a very intense motivation to go work my butt off until I make the illusion real.

Progressive Training Is A Metaskill

The kind of gradual training I'm telling you about is an example of what I call a metaskill: a skill which acts upon other skills. You can read all about these in my article, Skills And Metaskills. The upshot is that, like any other metaskill, this ability can be twisted around and applied to itself. In other words, you can progressively work out your abstract progressive workout skill!

Thus, for example, by applying these techniques to weightlifting, I'm teaching myself how to better apply them to other areas, like public speaking, writing, mathematics, etc.

Start Today!

One of the great things about ProgTraining is, it's easy to start-- almost by definition. When I decided to get back into weightlifting, I admit I felt a little bit of resistance. But because I lowered the weight a bunch as part of the "two steps forward, one step back", that resistance was lessened considerably. My first lift after the long hiatus, was not difficult but fun. If I had never pumped iron in my life and I wanted to start, I'd start by just lifting the naked bar (which weighs 45 lbs). All the fear and resistance disappears because it's so easy.

If you want to start pursuing a goal or project, you can start today. Want to start public speaking? Start out by saying something funny right now, in front of the computer! If you want, you can pretend I'm your audience, watching through the monitor. Wanna be more like Arnold Schwarzenegger? Just lift your arms-- lift thin air! Tomorrow you can find something that weighs five pounds and lift that, and by then you're well on your way ;) Want to be better at striking up conversation with strangers? Just start by asking someone what time it is ;) With progressive training at your disposal, you no longer have any excuses not to begin taking steps toward all the things you always wanted!

FURTHER READING

Boot Camp
Become More Intelligent By Doing New Things
Positive Affirmations

30 Day Workout: Days 12-14

2009-07-04T20:22:00.000-07:00

I just finished a late night light jog around the neighborhood, to finish the fourteenth day of the thirty day workout challenge I'm currently on. Almost halfway done... or should I make it sixty? ;)

You might wonder why the sudden change from routine today-- Glowing Face Man working out outside the gym?? Of course that's because the OSU gyms are closed for the 4th of July. Here in Columbus, for some reason, fireworks are held on the 3rd, but the gyms are closed on the 4th. Go figure. Not that I'm complaining, the timing is good for me: I can run anywhere where there's oxygen and gravity, whereas it's much harder to make your own bars and plates ;)

Here's what I did over the past three days...

Thursday:
Began by doing some not-light stretching exercises led by Glowing Face Girl.
Then I jumped on the treadmill and ran for 53 minutes (59 counting cooldown).
Total distance: 5.5 miles.
Speed: Started at 3.5mph and gradually sped up to 6.9mph at the end.

Friday:
July third was an upper body day, with a focus on benchpress.
Bench: I'd like to say "115 lbs, 10 reps, 4 sets", but it's not that simple: last set I only managed nine reps. On the ninth rep I felt that I was at my limit; if you're doing bench without a spotter, you should err on the side of caution. Only once have I accidentally tried a rep beyond my limit without a spotter. Unable to get the bar back to the hooks that hold it above my head, I had to grunt for help; embarrassing enough that I no longer try a rep if there's any doubt about making it (unless someone's spotting me).

Next I did "2" pullups. The quotation marks there are because it was one "good" pullup and one "mehhhh" pullup, where my chin reached the bar but I couldn't get it clearly over the bar. I think most people would count that as a pullup, but I inherited strict standards from the guy who got me doing these at all.

Next came dumbbell bench: 40 lbs, 15 reps followed by 40 lbs, 13 reps.

Crunches (with plates): 35 lbs, 32 reps, 3 sets.

Side legs: 26 per leg.

Saturday (4th of July):
With the gym closed, I just did a light jog around the neighborhood, including a bunch of laps at a local elementary school's basketball courts. I only ran about 25 minutes. Without a T-mill, there was no way to measure distance or speed. This can almost be thought of as a "rest day", but I still wanted to do some exercise so as not to break the chain.

Back and Rear Delts

Bryan pointed out in the comments that my routine doesn't have anything that hits the upper back or rear delts. Laregly this is because I'm not all that intense about my lifts, the purpose being to get lots of benefits from what are (relatively speaking) really some very light weights. I have to confess though that this illustrates an area I've always neglected, which is, getting to know more about the body, and about how to plan a really solid workout. The routine I've been recording during the past two weeks was decided in a pretty arbitrary way. In short, I'm not an expert.

There's no major danger in not being an expert, as long as I keep the weights light, but there's no reason not to study and learn more-- in fact, I should've been making that a cornerstone of the challenge. I will do that starting tomorrow, looking up info on the easiest ways to hit the back and rear deltoids.

Diet For The Win

Working out is all about treating one's body with love and respect. It doesn't make sense to love and care for the body at the gym and then eat a terrible diet. As for me, my focus is on spreading my meals out more and eating less at any particular meal. The food I eat is generally pretty healthy, especially when my girlfriend cooks Japanese for me :) But the healthiest food on earth can be a bad diet, if you're gorging on it just one or two meals a day. So I've been working on getting more snacks and eating less at mealtimes. My girlfriend is very helpful here :)

I'm also cutting back on beer, since it really fills me up. The policy I set is: drink beer at parties, not at dinner. Notice I'm only talking about beer, not alcohol in general. There's no such thing as a "winebelly" or a "liquorbelly". Tonight I had some delicious umeshu, Japanese plum wine. I highly recommend it, but good luck finding a bottle outside Japan. What's this? A self-development blogger who isn't writing knee-jerk beat-them-over-the-head screeds against alcohol?? Nope, you're not hallucinating! I even wrote a whole article titled, "If You've Never Drunk Alcohol, Try It".

NEXT: Days 15-17

30 Day Workout: Days 9-11

2009-07-01T17:58:00.000-07:00

I just had a great upper body workout, walked home glowing with all the warm fuzzy feelings that produced, ate a great meal with my beautiful girlfriend, and took a nice shower. This was the eleventh day of my current 30 Day Workout challenge, and I feel like a million dollars :)

I actually didn't sleep at all last night. I stayed up all night playing Rome: Total War, a pretty sweet (but dangerously addictive!) strategy game. Then I napped from about 2pm to 7pm. Then I got up and hit the gym. Obviously this isn't the best lifestyle! Certainly not for getting fit! Adequate rest is absolutely essential. Do what I say, not what I do ;) (The real moral is, one of the great things about a self-imposed 30-day challenge is you're free to go about it however you want, even do dumb things now and then)

Here are the specific workout details over the past few days:

Monday:
An upper body day, meaning the core exercise was bench press.
Benchpress, 110 lbs, 10 reps, 5 sets.
Pull ups, 1 successful, failed a 2nd.
Dumbbell benchpress: 40 lbs per hand. First set, did 13 reps. Second set, did 11 and failed a 12th.
Crunches (holding plates): 30 lbs, 38 reps, 3 sets.

Tuesday:
I jumped on the treadmill and ran 5.33 miles. Started at 3.5mph and gradually accelerated to a peak speed of 6.8 at the end. I ran 51 minutes, plus 6 minutes of cooldown.

Wednesday:
A lower body day, focusing on squats as the main event.
Squats, 115 lbs 10 reps 1 set, followed by 120 lbs 10 reps 4 sets.
Leg press, 70 lbs 15 reps 2 sets, followed by 85 lbs 15 reps 2 sets.
Crunches (holding plates): 35 lbs, 30 reps, 3 sets.
Side legs: 25 per leg.

Awkward Crunches

Today was the first day I went up to 35 lbs for crunches. For my first set, I used a single 35-lbs plate, seemingly the most obvious choice. Problem is, this heavier plate has a significantly larger diameter than the 25-lbs and 5-lbs plates I was combining before to make 30 (the OSU gyms don't have 30-lbs plates). It ended up being rather awkward, I couldn't do crunches very well and the plate was almost touching my thighs even when I had my back on the floor. Easy enough to solve, I switched to a 25-lbs + 10-lbs combination and it worked great. I did feel a little sheepish though, wonder whether any of the people on the bike machines saw my struggle. ;)

Lifting Weights on Little Sleep

Today, I was worried I wouldn't lift very well, since I only had five hours of napping. On the contrary, I was able to progress naturally from my previous squats day. "Progress naturally" basically means, add 5 lbs to everything and repeat (I'm thinking of writing a whole article later focusing on the subject of progressive training in general).

This doesn't mean I'm superhuman or immune to exhaustion. What it really means is that I could be lifting a lot more weight if I was pushing myself. That's ok, though, to me the amount of weight isn't all that important. I'm doing it for the benefits, like increased focus and energy, rushes of joy, and increased understanding of my body. If I were really approaching this from a hardcore competitive perspective, the method would be entirely different. I'd have to focus more on fewer-rep sets with massively higher weight. With that sort of system, there's no way I could lift every day for 30 days without overtraining to death. So I'd have to take days off, which vastly complicates the logistics and planning, and means the benefits I really care about would be smaller on the days off. Better to just take it easy, have fun, and do it every day.

Treadmill Blisters

I'm experiencing "blisters" on my inner thighs, a result of doing long runs after going for months without any significant running. Blisters isn't even the right word, the skin is just a little red from friction. I've gotten these before, during my previous 30 Day Workout challenge. They're not really painful-- a little painful during the run itself, but tolerable. After a run, the skin heals very fast, so by the next day the effect is almost gone. Then the next run, two days later, it comes back, but less strong. By the thirtieth day, I anticipate my legs will have gotten used to running for an hour+, and this side effect will be completely gone.

NEXT: Days 12-15

30 Day Workout: Days 6-8

2009-06-28T14:16:00.000-07:00

Distractions have continued, keeping me from doing a lot of work on Glowing Face Man, even though tons of cool ideas for articles have been swirling around constantly in my head. So today I'm posting yet another three-day block. I may be distracted, but I won't let that get in the way of a 30-day challenge. Even if zombies rise up and besiege Columbus, you'll see mee jogging across the rooftops until the bitter end. "They thought they could catch him and eat his brains. They thought wrong. Zombie Jogger. Now in theaters near you."

As before, for a three-day block report, the pictures I attach are from the middle day.

Here's what I did to work out during these past three days:
Friday:
Skipped stretching, in part because my girlfriend didn't come to the gym with me and I've grown to like letting her lead me in stretching. Jumped on the treadmill and ran for 47 minutes (plus 5 minutes cooldown) for a total of 4.72 miles. I started at 3.5mph and slowly accelerated until peaking out at 6.6mph at the end.

Saturday:
My girlfriend led me through stretching exercises. Let me tell you, this girl is really good... she could be a gymnast or something. As for me, I have a ways to go yet ;) Saturday was a lower body day for me and that means a core of squats. I did 1 set of 10 reps of 110 Lbs squats and decided I could go up another level. So then I did 4 sets of 10 reps of 115 Lbs. I'm sure that tomorrow, my legs are gonna let me hear about that! After squatting, I did Leg Press, but to mix things up a bit, I tried a new machine, the Paramount AP-2800. This is a leg press machine with a very different feel; rather than your feet moving, your feet push and the rest of your body moves. It felt a little better than the usual, more traditional leg press setup, especially when I realized you're not supposed to extend your legs all the way. I did 10 reps at 45lbs, 10 at 55, and 2 sets of 15 reps at 70lbs. Pretty light weights but that's because it was a new machine.

I then did crunches holding plates, 30 lbs, 36 reps, 3 sets. The gym closed on me and I had to do my side legs at home (28 per leg), which is fine since those don't require a gym.

Sunday:
Girlfriend at my side, I began another workout with some great stretching. Then I mounted the 'mill and ran 5.07 miles in a total of 55 minutes (of which 6 were cooldown and 49 were the main run). I started at 3.5mph and gradually sped up to a max of 6.7mph at the end of the 49 minutes. I feel like I'm really improving my run (even though I'm still behind where I was at the end of my first 30-day workout challenge).

Gym Music

I'm probably one of the only people in the world who doesn't take an MP3 player to the gym. Not like I'm some old dude screaming about kids and their new-fangled music thingies. Rather, I like listening to the radio they play in the gym. The gym has satellite radio with no commercials, and radio is underestimated as a way to expand your musical tastes. Whenever I go run or pump iron, I'm exposed to new music, and I feel like it broadens me and increases my connection to the world. A lot of the people who complain "music sucks nowadays" just haven't spent any time listening to anything recent. Just like the radio has to tune in, we ourselves also have to tune in, getting on the same wavelength before we can really properly "hear" anything as more than static. Once I do get myself calibrated to listen to it, I'm constantly amazed how much awesome music is produced all the time.

NEXT: Days 9-11

30 Day Workout: Days 3-5

2009-06-25T19:52:00.000-07:00

I've been distracted by other things the past couple days, so I decided to compress the log of three days into one. The pictures in this article are from the 4th day. Today I finished day 5 of a 30-day challenge to work out every day. Here are the exercises I did on the three days:

June 23

Stretches: about 2 minutes.
Squats: 100 lbs, 10 reps, 5 sets.
Leg press: 90 lbs, 10 reps, 3 sets.
Crunches (with plates): 30 lbs, 32 reps, 3 sets.
Side legs: 26 per leg.

June 24

Stretches: about 2 minutes.
Treadmill: I ran for 45 minutes, plus another 5 minutes of slower cooldown. I ran a total of 4.22 miles. I started at 3.5 miles per hour and slowly accelerated up to 6.5 miles per hour at the very end.

June 25

Stretches: about 5 minutes, lead by my girlfriend.
Bench press: 110 lbs, 10 reps; 8 reps; 105 lbs, 10 reps; 100 lbs, 8 reps.
Pec flies: 30 lbs, 10 reps.
Pullups: 1.
Dumbbell bench: 35 lbs per hand, 15 reps, 2 sets.
Crunches (with plates): 30 lbs, 34 reps, 2 sets; and an interrupted 3rd set.
Side legs: 27 per leg.

Observations

Stretching Together
I'm continuing to feel more energy, feeling better in general. I'm pleased with the familiar drowsiness which attends to weightlifting; I'm feeling that drowsiness pretty heavily right now. It's a pleasant drowsiness, the type that says "everything is cool", not the type that says "you pulled an all-nighter last night".

When I did the 5 sets of squats on Tuesday, I knew I was going to pay for it. Whenever I do a large number of squats, a couple days later I start to feel really stiff, sore legs, and that continues for another couple days. Again, though, it's a pleasant kind of sore, the type that you learn to love when you work out. Normally, I do less squats, usually 3 sets of 8 but with higher weight. The 5 sets of 10 was to compensate for using lighter weights to ease back into making squats a regular part of the week.

Today I enjoyed an unexpected benefit of workout out together with my girlfriend. She's really flexible and really good at stretching routines, and was able to help me out with them. I felt a little silly having my gf guiding me through aerobic stretches in front of all the bike machines. It was fun, though.

Pullups

Today I faced my old sparring partner: the pullup bar. When I first started working out, a couple years or so ago, I couldn't do any of these. How do you train pullups if you can't do a single one? My powerlifter friend who taught me how, it's all about using bands to make the exercise easier. At first, I hung two bands from the bar (think giant rubber bands) and put one foot in each. With the bands pulling you up, you can pull your weight up easily.

NEXT: Days 6-8

30 Day Workout: Day 2

2009-06-22T13:21:00.000-07:00

Today I headed to the gym just after noon for some nice running on the treadmill. Since I activated my account with the OSU gymnasiums yesterday, today I didn't have to walk all the way to the main facility (the RPAC), I was able to go to the much closer mini-gym, "Jesse Owens South", which is just ten minutes' walk from where I live.

Since it's Summer vacation, the building was fairly dead, which is good for treadmilling because it means I didn't have to wait at all to use one. During the busy quarters, sometimes I had to take a number and wait.

I did basic stretches for a couple of minutes before starting the workout. Probably not quite as much as I should have, but better than when I was working out before. Back then, "stretching" was something Mr. Fantastic used to fight villains, not something I used as part of my training regime.

During the stretch, I felt a tingue of awkwardness, because it was probably obvious to anyone watching me that I was making it up as I went. It still felt really good, though, and I look forward to touching my toes without bending my knees. Sometime later I'll do a little research into a more organized warmup set.

After the stretches, I got on the treadmill and got to work. My plan was as follows: 60 minutes, starting at 3 miles per hour and gradually accelerating, up to 7.5 mph at the end. I was more out of shape than I thought, and ended up doing 45 minutes, with a peak of 6.5 mph which was reached not at the end but in the middle. Distance: 4.14 miles total. I actually switched machines after the first 5 minutes, because the 'mill I started on seemed to have some weird problem where the "conveyor belt" would get briefly "stuck" whenever my left foot came down.

After the "officially" ending the run, I continued for another few minutes, rapidly decreasing the speed until I was just casually walking-- in short, a cool down. I hit the water fountain like it was an oasis in the Sahara, gulping down as much as I could take.

I felt really great after the run. I could just "feel" all the toxin and poison that's gathered up in my body over the past few months, seeping out through my sweat. Hmmm, I'll have to schedule a sauna trip sometime soon...

Today we were waiting for a sofa to be delivered, so my girlfriend and I went to do our training separately so someone would be at home throughout the day.

DIET

Being more conscious of one's diet goes hand in hand with the 30 day workout. One of my big problems recently was I was usually eating just two meals a day. Now I'm making an effort to enjoy lots of small snacks, and eat less at mealtime. That might require a lot of discipline this evening, since my girlfriend is planning on whipping up some delicious nikujaga for me! Good thing Japanese food is a hundred times healthier than American food by default ;)

The best things for snacking on are fruits, nuts, and certain vegetables. I'm a supporter of bananas, I just had one and it was delicious.

The idea that "more food = more weight" and "less food = less weight" is a total misconception. Truth is that it depends on how fast food is metabolized. When a person starves herself-- or eats just one or two meals a day-- her body switches to starvation mode and metabolism sputters to a halt.

Along with changing my eating habits, I'm making an effort to drink more. Water, that is. I drank enough alcohol during my recent Vegas trip, for the whole rest of the year ;) I wouldn't be surprised if the sweat in my gymclothes was a mild intoxicant.

FEELING AND LOOKING BETTER ALREADY

I'm kind of amazed how fast I'm starting to get some of the positive side effects of daily exercise. Despite the soreness in my upper body from yesterday (which is actually mildly pleasant), I already "feel" more muscly, and my girlfriend made similar comments after I gave her a nice bearhug.

Tomorrow I'll be doing a lower body weightlifting session, the core of which consists of squats. See you in the squat cages!

NEXT: Days 3-5

30 Day Workout: Day 1

2009-06-21T20:55:00.000-07:00

While I'm ashamed to admit it, I've been neglecting my body for the past few months. I have lots of excuses I can make: the Spring quarter was so busy, my girlfriend took up so much time, yadda yadda yadda, but really there's no excuse to neglect the body. Training the body does so much more than just make a person stronger, healthier, and more attractive. It makes one think clearer, it makes one feel better, and it makes every aspect of life more effective. Me in particular, I have even less excuse to put off hitting the gym, because I happen to love a good exercise session. Sometimes, especially after a weightlifting session, I'll literally get a surge of euphoria as my body is flooded with endorphins. It's like I'm walking on a cloud.

Because I was neglecting the gym, my body was starting to soften. Even if not for myself, I owe it to my girlfriend to turn myself back into the lean mean loving machine I was a few months ago. Therefore, today I kicked off day 1 of a 30 Day Workout challenge. The challenge is to go thirty whole days, working out every day. I did this once before, and I wrote a summary in the article, 30 Day Workout-A-Day Challenge Complete! This time, I'm going to go much further, and publish a day-by-day log of the entire experience. I had great success with this model when I did my "French In Thirty Days" challenge (even though I didn't learn as much French as I was hoping).

My basic get fit routine will go as follows, assuming that everything goes according to plan. Each entry on the calendar, I'll alternate between running and weightlifting. On the weightlifting days, I'll alternate between upper body and lower body. Today I did upper body fitness, which consisted mostly of benchpress. On both upper and lower body days, I'll also do crunches and side legs.

A big difference between this challenge and the previous run is that this time, I have a girlfriend, and she'll be accompanying me frequently, if not every day. That makes things a lot more interesting logistically since I'm planning for two people instead of just one. Good, I'll be training leadership skills as well as pumping iron ;)

Here at Ohio State University, the gyms are very impressive, but they cost $80 per quarter. Normally that's a mandatory fee in your tuition, whether you use the facility or not, but this Summer I'm not taking any classes. That means today I went and paid the fee to gain access. This is kind of a good thing. By investing money, I'm psychologically setting myself up so I won't let myself neglect the project. Even if the fee were $800, it would be worth it just for that extra monetary motivation.

Unlike the last time I did this gymnasium bootcamp, this time I'll be writing about it day by day, which further reinforces my resolve and forces me to stay true to the goal. It's one thing to slack off when noone's watching, it's a whole other thing entirely to slack off when the entire internet is watching. And as an added bonus, I'll post daily pictures so readers can see how my physique evolves.

Yet another change I'm going to be implementing is, I'm going to put more attention into proper stretching, warming up, and cooling down. During the previous adventure, I virtually ignored these, but I want to be more careful this time.

As for today, here's what I did...

Bench Press: 100 Lbs, 10 reps, 5 sets.
Dumbbell Bench: 35 Lbs per hand, 10 reps, 1 set.
Cybex Eagle Chest Press: 50 Lbs weight, 15 reps, 3 sets.
Biceps Curl Machine: 25 Lbs, 15 reps; 40 Lbs, 5 reps.
Crunches (while holding plates): 30 Lbs, 30 reps, 3 sets.
Side Legs: 25 per leg, alternating sides.

Of course, these weights are pretty laughable. I'm not a big huge dude. The awesome thing about pumping iron is that it doesn't matter how strong you are, you still get all the benefits. As long as you're progressively raising the weight and pushing your limit, you'll get the sweet endorphin rush, the increased concentration, the improved physique, the extra energy, and a thousand other benefits.

Since this challenge is kicking off on Father's Day, I'll officially dedicate it to my father. When I went through a very brief bodybuilding phase as a little kid, he helped me build some homemade exercise equipment out of milk cartons!

NEXT: Day 2

FURTHER READING

Boot Camp
Bench Press To Exhaustion
Running On The Treadmill

My Vegas Trip: The Stratosphere Tower Hotel

2009-06-21T19:31:00.000-07:00

With the conclusion of a long year of classes and work, my girlfriend and I decided to go celebrate amid the dazzling lights and sounds of Las Vegas. Our plane took off the very Friday afternoon of finals week, and we were in for a week of fun and excitement. We booked four hotels in advance: two days at the towering Stratosphere; one in the luxury of Paris; two in the Monte Carlo and two in the Egyptian pyramid, the Luxor. A vertical beam of light from the latter pierced the night sky as we descended into the glowing metropolis.

The first hotel and casino we hit was the Stratosphere, taking a taxi to the far north end of the strip. Since it was late, we were disappointed to find the buffet was closed, but we enjoyed some crappy-yet-expensive bar food instead (we hit the buffet the next night, and it was excellent). My girlfriend introduced me to slot machines, something that was previously outside my reality since I was raised with the idea that gambling was a wicked tool of Satan. Actually it'd be more accurate to say it's a wicked tool of the casino's shareholders, but in limited doses it's fun and I'll write more about that later. In one of the games, I got a near-jackpot (7 "quickhits", 8 or 9 would be jackpot) but it was with only a five cent bet so I only got about seven dollars or so, a max bet would've gotten me over a hundred. We walked the "strip" a little and took advantage of the lack of open-container laws, drinking giant cans of beer while walking the callgirl-card-strewn boulevard.

The next evening was one of the most fun ones of the whole trip: the thrill rides atop the Stratosphere. Since we actually booked in at the hotel, we got a two-for-one deal on an unlimited day pass up the tower and into the rides. This was singularly awesome and if I had to pick just one hotel to stay at, it would definitely be the Stratosphere, exactly because of these adventures.

There are three rides on the tower, roughly a thousand feet above the ocean of Vegas lights. First was the Insanity, where you sit in the grasp of a giant mechanical arm which swings you in wide circles with nothing but emptiness below you. The Insanity experience cannot be described in words: when the radius of rotation reaches its peak, your brain can't even tell which direction is up and down. We followed that with the X-Scream, a short track of "roller coaster" which abruptly ends after a few dozen feet: if the car were any "normal" roller coaster car, you'd plunge off the end to certain terrifying death. Instead, you jolt to a stop inches before that happens, only to have the track swing upwards and you retrace the path but this time in reverse. All the while, the only thing below you is the narrow track and a whole lot of empty air.

The third ride, oldest of the three but still the most profound, is the Big Shot. This is a floor above the previous two. At the uttermost peak of the actual building, a giant dark metal shaft rises up an additional hundred feet or so. At the bottom of this shaft, the rider takes a seat facing outward, looking down on the city far below. The seats rise slowly at first, only a few feet-- and then, within about one second's time, you're blasted all the way to the top. Time itself seems to freeze as your brain fumbles to parse this situation, a situation totally unaccounted for in all the millions of years of human evolution. And then, just as fast, the plummet back down turns your heart to dust. I'm not talking freefall, I'm talking significantly faster than freefall, and the mind doesn't know how to make sense of it, except to be terrified. After the initial ascent and descent, the ride takes you up and down a few more times, but slower and not to the very top; the main thing is that initial rise and fall, which is indescribable.

The next day, we checked out from the 'sphere. Our next destination would be the Paris Hotel and Casino, further south, in the heart of the strip. We ate breakfast at a very authentic, mom-and-pop Thai restaurant right next to the Stratosphere, and then it was into a taxi and off to our next adventure.

NEXT: The Paris Las Vegas (Not online yet!)

FURTHER READING

69 Things I Did in Las Vegas
If You've Never Drunk Alcohol, Try It!
Hashigo: The Japanese Art of Barhopping

51 Things That Won't Matter When You Die

2009-06-21T11:27:00.000-07:00

It's easy to fall into routines and get distracted from what really matters. Sooner or later I'm going to die, and when that happens, a lot of the day-to-day stuff won't matter: day-to-day habits that I performed like a robot. At the same time, those scripts might distract me from things that would matter when I die. Things like how courageous I was, which dreams and ambitions I achieved, and so on. Here's a list of 51 things that just plain won't matter when you die.

How many times you mowed the lawn.
How clean your underwear was when you died.
How many confrontations you managed to avoid.
Whether or not you cheated on a midterm in college.
Whether you managed to keep up with the Jones.
How many songs or movies you pirated.
How many TPS reports you filed.
Whether your facebook status was up to date.
The excuses you made not to follow your dream.
Whether or not you had sex before marriage.
Whether you saw every episode of that TV show.
How up to date you were on "current events".
How many widgets you managed to collect.
Your number of extra lives in Mario World.
The ideas you kept to yourself.
Whether or not you saved your old tax forms.
How many items you listed in a blog post.
Whether you said "po-tay-to" or "po-tah-to".
How many times you reviewed your flashcards.
Whether you left hair in the bathtub drain.
Until what age you still picked your nose.
The number of times you wore that shirt.
The talents which you never expressed.
Dreams forgotten when the alarm clock rang.
How many toys you collected.
Old grudges which festered within.
How many digits of pi you memorized.
Whether you were rejected that one time.
How many eggshells you tiptoed over.
What your boss thought of you.
Whether you managed to follow regulations.
Whether or not the neighbors approved.
All those times you felt embarrassed.
Whether or not "Ms. Manners" approved.
Your post count on any online forums.
Whether the professor gave you an A or A-.
How good you were at drill in boot camp.
Whether or not you told them you were hardcore.
Your annual performance reviews.
Whether or not you played using cheatcodes.
How straightedge you were.
Whether you gave them a proper 2-week notice.
Whether you played Nintendo or Playstation.
What place you came in in the ratrace.
Brand-name breakfast cereals or generic.
What you bought people for Christmas.
Whether the boss gave you a letter of recommendation.
What your neighborhood council thought of you.
Who you had a secret crush on (keyword: secret).
How much space was left on your hard drive.
How many nasty comments you got on the internet.
How much busywork you accomplished.

69 Things I Did in Las Vegas

2009-06-20T20:23:00.000-07:00

I just took a nine-day trip to Las Vegas with my girlfriend, and I ended up learning a lot more than I thought I would. Here are some of the things I did in the City That Never Sleeps.

Checked in at the Stratosphere.
Played slot machines for the first time ever.
Got seven "quick hits" simultaneously in QuickHits.
Introduced girlfriend to carne asada tacos.
Gazed down on the city from about 1000 feet.
Rode the Insanity thrill ride on top of the Stratosphere.
Then rode the X-Scream thrill ride (not front seat).
Then rode the Big Shot thrill ride.
Then the X-Scream again (front seat, matters a lot).
Then the Big Shot two more times!
Drank beer openly while walking the strip.
Ate at the Stratosphere buffet.
Ate at a very authentic, little-known Thai restaurant.
Checked in at Paris, Las Vegas.
Took pictures in front of the Eiffel Tower, LV.
Wandered up and down the central Strip.
Jaywalked across Las Vegas Blvd. Repeatedly.
Saw the fountain show at the Bellagio. Repeatedly.
Made fajitas at a cool Mex place, Planet Hollywood.
Watched lots of small bands while sipping beer.
Ran into Captain Jack Sparrow (an impersonator).
Drank Japanese Sapporo from a convenience store.
Stole a whole pack of hooker cards from one of those guys.
Saw some mimes who looked like golden statues.
Checked in at the Monte Carlo.
Stole some roses which were decorating Monte Carlo.
Pigged out at the Monte Carlo buffet.
Saw the lion exhibit at the MGM Grand.
Wandered around the giant MGM Grand for hours.
Saw the Treasure Island pirate-ship battle.
Saw "Le Rêve", a totally awesome show at the Wynn.
Drank about a million liters of frozen margarita.
Got trapped in the crappiest casino in the world.
Took the awesome roller coaster ride at New York Casino.
Explored some back alleys.
Found a cool secret area.
Ate sushi and unagi-don at a fancy Japanese place.
Drank umeshu, Japanese plum wine. Incredible!
Drank ichinokura and kubota-senju, awesome sake.
Almost got arrested at the Tropicana.
Checked in at the Luxor.
Climbed over some fences.
Took a grueling trek on foot to Inn-N-Out Burger.
Ate two double-doubles and fries at Inn-N-Out.
Agreed that Inn-N-Out is the best restaurant ever.
Experienced some rare Nevada desert rain.
Rode the Las Vegas Monorail.
Got $1 coins as change from the monorail ticket machine.
Watched some free opera at the Venetian.
Saw the Blue Man show at the Venetian.
Took pictures with the Blue Men and their bandmembers.
Four course meal at a ridiculously fancy Italian place.
GF introduced me to her fav wine, Brunello di Montalcino.
Improvised a new type of dance involving bananas.
Walked to the Atomic Testing Museum.
Sat through the nuclear detonation simulation.
Took a quick look at the UNLV.
Did an off-strip "cheap restaurant hashigo".
Went to the Japanese place *again*. It was that good.
Talked in Japanese with the lead sushi guy.
Saw multiple Elvis impersonators.
Lost $40 at the MGM Grand "Wheel of Fortune".
15 minutes in an oxygen bar. GF did the aqua massage.
Drank even more frozen margaritas.
Cheered by random passersby for being the cutest couple.
Snuck into the Luxor buffet after hours.
Won at slot machines, repeatedly. Lost, repeatedly.
Finally went to the airport in a sleep-deprived stupor :)

FURTHER READING

Pictures From Japan
Hosting My First Party
Become More Intelligent By Doing New Things

Extreme Grocery Shopping

2009-06-05T11:16:00.000-07:00

For a lot of people, grocery shopping is one of those chores you just gotta do. I've always had a problem about going in places like Kroger and Giant Eagle, they somehow seem to sap at my consciousness. Something about the environment just lulls me into a zombie-like stupor. Sometimes I'll end up staring into space and my girlfriend has to summon me back to reality. I bet I'm not the only one who feels this way about the tedious tasks of comparing eggs and picking out bananas. So it got me thinking: what could we do to make grocery shopping a more enjoyable, conscious experience? The answer struck like a flash of lightning: Extreme Grocery Shopping. Mix one part grocery shopping, one part extreme sports, and season with a generous helping of creativity.

So how do you put extremeness into buying your bread and butter? The only limit is your imagination. Here are some things I brainstormed up.

1. Race Against the Clock. Time yourself and try to beat your personal record. Not only will you have more fun, you'll save time and train yourself in time management and efficiency in general. If you're bold enough to actually dash up and down the aisles, you'll even get some exercise.

If you want to add an element of "danger" to the time trial, try doing your shopping as close to closing time as possible. If the cashier's still ringing you up when the doors lock, you fail. Picture yourself plummeting to your death. Fortunately you won't really die, and you can try again next time.

2. There Is No Shopping Cart (pronounced in the same "whoah" voice as "there is no spoon"). Do your shopping without a cart. You're allowed to use baskets, but it'll still be a big challenge to cram everything you need into them. Tip: You know the little bags meant for fruits and vegetables? You can put anything in them, and then you can tie the bags to the outside of your basket.

This challenge has an unexpected positive side effect. It'll force you to pay a lot more attention to what you buy, and you'll find yourself cutting it down to what you really need. No more spending money on junk you neither need nor want, because there's just not enough space!

3. The Ride. This one requires a partner in crime. Remember when you were a kid and your mom let you ride in the shopping cart? That's all there is to this one. Be a kid at heart again! You might get some strange looks, but those people are really just jealous because they always wanted to do it themselves.

For extra fun, take the shopping cart home with you and you have yourself a poor man's go-kart for the rest of the day. My girlfriend and I have had lots of fun pushing each other all around the neighborhood :)

Be creative and come up with your own methods of Extreme Grocery Shopping. The main thing is to do whatever it takes to turn a soul-draining experience into a fun, creative experience. See you at the checkout lines!!

FURTHER READING

Become More Intelligent By Doing New Things
Lucid Dream Report, 08 May 2009
Sword-Neck

10 Metaphors For Life

2009-06-03T21:33:00.000-07:00

I've written quite a bit from the frame of my own metaphor of choice: that life is a game. But this isn't the only one by a long shot. There are tons of analogies for this journey we're on (hey, look at that! I just used another one!) Here's a sampler of some of the things against which we can compare this mortal coil.

Life is.....

1. .....a game. This is my personal favorite, in part because I have a lot of experience both playing and programming virtual worlds which are, in a certain sense, alternate lives. What do you think of the idea that maybe a higher entity is "controlling" you, in the same way you might control Super Mario or a monopoly token? That sounds a little sinister, but it could be that that "entity" is that mysterious and intangible phenomenon which is your soul. When you view life as a game, you take things less seriously and you're generally less stressed out. Things can't get you down that much, cuz it's all just a game. This is a good thing. Another empowering thing about this metaphor is that in any game, there are cheats and bug exploits :)

2. .....a dream. "Row row row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily merrily merrily, life is but a dream!" The dream model has the advantage that it offers a very simple, intuitive answer to the question of the afterlife: when you die, you just "wake up"! Another interesting consequence is that everything here is a product of your own mind. Believe it or not, in my own life, I've experienced certain "miracles" which seem more readily explainable in the "dream reality" than using standard laws of physics. Like the game metaphor, the belief that this is all just a pleasant reverie makes you take things less seriously. Many fears dissolve when you consider you might be dreaming. The credibility of the dream model goes up a lot if you manage to experience lucid dreams.

3. .....a movie. Bring the popcorn, this is the most awesome blockbuster ever set on the silver screen! Sit back and enjoy the drama of life. Did anyone ever tell you "the world doesn't revolve around you"? Well, they were clearly wrong, because look! The distance in front of you is the same as the distance behind you and in every other direction, therefore you're at the center of the universe! This interpretation is great for explaining things like character, identity, and ego: everyone's just following a script! ...but now that you know it's all a script, you have the power to step out of character and ad-lib. Enjoy the sheer chaos which unfolds!! :)

4. .....a dance. Finally a break from the more "solipsistic" metaphors, the dance representation of life puts social interactions and other players in the foreground. According to this model, things like money and material accomplishments are of minimal importance. Instead, the measure of life is the way we interact with everyone around us.

5. .....a battle. Not all metaphors for life are "positive". The battle perspective is often assumed by people who feel like the whole world is against them. If you hold this school of thought, you're very liable to experience a lot of stress, anger, and conflict. But there is one advantage of even this dire outlook: it hardens your skin and toughens you up. Spending time through the eyes of the soldier is hard, but that means when you finally shift to another perspective, things are that much easier by comparison.

6. .....a song. Of course, it's a bit of a stretch to incorporate every aspect of human experience into actual music. What the "song" metaphor is really getting at is that everything's about creative expression. The idea that from birth until death, you're contributing toward some great magnum opus. All the things you create and imagine and give birth to contribute ultimately toward one giant work of genius: and that's what the "song" here stands for.

7. .....a journey. What sort of vessel are you travelling in-- a car, a ship, an airplane? And where are you going? We're on a great journey together, following a path with many twists and curves. Most people around us are going on autopilot, but since we've woken up to the reality of things, we have the power to grab the wheel and take control!

8. .....a mystery. This is often a "transitional" model, held by people whose previous reality has been shattered, while they try to explain the mysteries surrounding them with another model. The mystery model is one full of questions: Why are we here? What is the nature of this universe? What is the nature of consciousness? What lies beyond death? As long as you continue peering through this perspective, you can ponder these conundrums endlessly and never come up with an answer: an answer would not be a mystery! Therefore, to actually solve the riddles of the mystery model, you must shift to another perspective. The answer you reach will depend on which perspective you assume.

9. .....a party. According to "Party Theory", the whole point of being alive is just having fun. Have a blast, whatever it takes. While this may sound shallow at first, it's actually refreshingly honest. After all, everyone is always ultimately acting either to gain pleasure or to avoid pain. When people donate to charity, or even devote their life to some inspired cause, at some level it's because they believe this is how they can gain pleasure. Even masochists believe that by inflicting harm upon themselves, they'll feel better. If you subscribe to the party perspective, you're just being more forthright about the quest for fun and pleasure.

10. .....an opportunity. Whatever our time in this world might be, it's an opportunity. An opportunity to grow, to learn, to change, to develop, to create, to enjoy.

It's good to vary your representations of life from time to time. Different perspectives give different insight into different aspects of this thing we do called living. No single lens gives us a perfect view, neither is there any single right, "objective" answer to the question of what life might be.

FURTHER READING

Models Of Reality
Become More Intelligent By Doing New Things
Introduction To Lucid Dreaming

Toward Frames and Away Frames

2009-06-03T09:50:00.000-07:00

In neurolinguistic programming, there are a pair of related concepts called toward frames and away frames. Here "frame" is etymologically short for "frame of mind". In the context of NLP, the term can take on some additional meaning, but that's not necessary to understand the concepts in question. Consider the two statements, "I want to be happy" vs. "I don't want to be sad." The former is spoken from a toward frame, and the latter is spoken from an away frame. In general, when you speak or think about what you desire, that's a T.F., and when you speak or think about what you want to avoid, that's an A.F.

Frames work sort of like positive affirmations. When you focus on any particular thing, more of that thing is going to show up in your reality. Right away, TF's will make you seem more positive and confident. Someone who uses A.F.'s is a complainer, while someone who uses T.F.'s is a visionary, they're someone with ambition. And that alone is already worth making the switch. And beyond just changing other peoples' perception of you, the choice of which frames to adopt also changes your own thoughts and feelings. By changing your thoughts and feelings, a frameswitch changes your entire reality.

After I'd been in the Air Force for awhile, I was getting pretty fed up with military life. I adopted strong away frames, saying: "I want to get out of here", "I don't wanna go to work", "I don't want to do this weather forecast" (I was a weather forecaster). It won't surprise you to hear that my attempts to get out were pretty futile while I held that state of mind. One of the things which helped change things was when I shifted focus. Rather than tune my eyes to what I disn't like about my job, I changed my focus toward where I'd rather be: university.

When I was focused on university, that filled me with energy. I was eager to get up in the morning because I saw the day as a gift, time I could invest toward my goal. Before, when I was focusing exclusively on what was making me miserable, there was no reason to get up in the morning. My life was filling up more and more with the things I wanted to avoid. I'm glad I finally did shift perspectives, or for all I know, I might be doing weather forecasts out of Baghdad right now. "Get out there soldier, you've gotta measure how much sand is blowing around in this sandstorm!" No thanks!

FURTHER READING

Deep Desires and Surface Desires
Examples Of Positive Affirmations
The Reticular Activation System
Conscious and Subconscious Mind

The Pain Body

2009-06-02T14:08:00.000-07:00

One of the authors who influenced me very greatly was Eckhart Tolle, writer of the sensational hit, The Power Of Now. In this book, Tolle dishes out insight and wisdom in such heaping quantities, it'll shatter your reality. One thing in particular which really makes a lot of sense is his notion of The Pain Body. This is a way of modelling a certain phenomenon I've been aware of since my undergrad days. Once, when I was walking with a friend, I suddenly pointed out to him how, sometimes, when we're feeling miserable, we don't want to feel better. It's almost silly, when you really think about it. Have you ever been down in the dumps, and something funny happens, but you don't want to laugh? That's crazy, it's like a deliberate choice of unhappiness when happiness is right there within grasp! My friend laughed and agreed. We'd both had this kind of experience, but neither of us could explain why our psychologies acted in this irrational manner! Enter Tolle.

What is the Painbody? It's an entity inside every one of us, feeding off our every negative emotion. When I'm happy, my PB starves and withers. Obviously he's going to do everything in his power to prevent that! The more you starve it with joy, the more weak and desperate the entity becomes. If you're not wary to its tactics, you'll end up lashing out at something minor. I've heard of a guy going weeks "walking on sunshine", only to lash out at an ATM machine, furiously punching the screen in overreaction to some minor glitch. This is the desperate "last throes" of our friend the pain body. It's imperative to know how to combat this frantic, hungry creature, especially when it's cornered.

So how do you fight the painbody? Eckhart prescribes the most powerful tactic to pin the monster down. More powerful than any antibiotic or antivirus, Tolle prescribes attention. Simply allow yourself to be aware of whatever hysterics the gremlin is up to, and they'll break down. Because they're irrational and cannot withstand scrutiny. Being consciously aware of the pain body is like blasting it with a big spotlight. Like anything shadowy, it'll shrivel up.

Be careful, attention in the Tollian sense doesn't mean scrunching up your face in a big effort of concentration. It doesn't mean rubbing your temples or listening to your inner chi. Attention is effortless and natural, the state of mind of a newborn child gazing curiously at her own hand as if it's the most novel thing in the universe. It's looking at something without analyzing it or judging it or even just linguistically parsing it. The reason this is so effective at dismantling the patterns of pain is that those patterns are physically etched in the brain, the results of a lifetime of mental programming. When viewed through the eyes of a baby, when viewed with attention, the lifetime of programming is denied, and suddenly the sheer irrationality of anguish becomes apparent.

Let's look at an example. Say I'm a Very Serious Businessman and I just got splashed by a car. A lifetime of programming signals that it's time for me to enter my irritable mode, and all the patterns of misery are set busily in motion. Now someone on the sidewalk beams a smile at me. Rather than smile back, I glare and cross my arms. I've chosen unhappiness when I could just as easily have chosen to be happy. This is absurd, but a lifetime of programming has blinded me to that fact. If a baby were in the same situation, the absurdity of opting into misery would be readily apparent. Same thing goes for anyone who is present in the moment, experiencing life through attention.

In closing, I must address some of the more physical questions about the Pain Body. Is it real? Could a surgeon cut you open and find it inside you? Obviously not! As an entity, Tolle's creation is only a symbol for the autopilot scripts to which so many people submit control of their lives. In Glowing Face Man language, it's a convenient model of reality, capable of producing a valuable dividend: happiness. Whether the model is objectively true or false has no bearing on whether it's useful.

Remember this article the next time you're coming down from cloud nine and feeling the inexplicable temptation to smash an ATM screen with your fist.

FURTHER READING

Conscious and Subconscious Mind
Examples of Positive Affirmations
Gloom and Doom
Book Review: The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle (one of my VERY early articles)

Boot Camp

2009-06-01T17:00:00.000-07:00

Although a lot of things have happened to grow me as a person, if I was forced to name one single event which transformed me from a boy into a man, it would be when I went to Air Force Boot Camp (that link will lead you to the story of my experience there). These grueling, growing experiences don't need to be limited to the military. If you strip away the drill sergeants, the mind games, the inspections, the grueling exercise, the drill, the marching, if you blur all the particular details about these soldier forges, what's left? It boils down to a period of intense personal change. Besides lots of unimportant details, all a boot camp really adds up to is a voyage outside the comfort zone, outside what you're used to, into the unknown.

The default human nature is to hover on autopilot whenever possible, to avoid change, avoid the unknown. When you're surrounded by all the pet luxuries you've grown used to, it takes a lot of willpower and self-discipline to push yourself to improve or grow in any way. This is where rigorous, systematic, structured training really shines. The conscious willpower I had to exert to sign up for the Air Force was relatively small: the whole process only took a couple days of deliberate exertion. Once the plane touched down at Lackland AFB, I no longer had any choice about how I'd be spending my time for the next month and a half. That might not sound pleasant, but it means I had no choice but to grow like hell. Slacking off, veging out, procrastinating... suddenly, none of these things were an option. Is it any wonder I was in for the biggest six weeks of pure development in my whole life?

Want to become better at something? Maybe you want to learn a programming language, lose ten pounds, get a sixpack, pick up a 2nd language, read "War and Peace", or start a business. Whatever achievement you're going for, you can give yourself a free boot camp. Be your own drill sergeant. Since you won't have someone shouting orders at you, and you won't have the threat of military jail lingering over your head, you'll need something else to inspire you to action when you're feeling the temptation to give in. What's the next best motivator after a screaming, angry drill sergeant? Your own ego. Put your own sense of pride on the line by making your boot camp a public ordeal. Make a blog and record your journey there, day by day. Get your friends reading it and don't let them let you let yourself down. Hype the whole thing up until your only choices are abject humiliation or victory. It's amazing how easily you'll find the time to jog every day when the alternative is answering to an audience.

How long should you make your training? You should ultimately aim for thirty days. Thirty days is a great trial period for any change you'd like to make in your life. A thirty day boot camp is totally doable, but it's long enough that the changes it gives rise to will be built deep into your personality. You might even find that at the end of thirty days, you've grown to like your new routine. A monthlong challenge to write a journal entry every day could very well mature into an effortless lifelong journal. The big three-O is plenty of time for a space outside your comfort zone to become assimilated into your comfort zone.

If a challenge is very difficult, and you're new to being your own coach, you should begin with shorter runs to get yourself psychologically ready. It's fine to do even just a single weekend boot camp: you can rest afterwards and use the experience to prepare for a slightly longer run. Soon, you're strong enough to go a week, then two weeks, then three, and before you know it, you're conquering 30 solid days of adventurous challenge. And once you've done it once, you'll find it easier and easier to do new boot camps.

What are you doing still sitting there?!?! Get down and gimme forty!!! Then hit the drillpad and let's see some work! :)

FURTHER READING

Training Self-Discipline
French in 30 Days
30 Day Article-A-Day Challenge Completed!
30 Day Workout-Every-Day Challenge Completed!

The Beauty of Decay

2009-05-31T17:37:00.001-07:00

When I was in sixth grade, Mrs. Black had us do a very interesting science experiment which would have a subtle impact upon me all my life. We each took an empty 2-liter bottle home and filled it with various organic odds and ends: leaves, blades of grass, eggshells, tablescraps, and so on. The next day, these waste-bottles were set around the classroom and mother nature was set free to work on them. Over the weeks we observed as scraps of lettuce and french fries slowly rotted away. What initially seemed like a pretty dumb experiment-- of course it's gonna wither away!-- turned out to be something of an eye-opener to me. I was struck by the beauty of decay, which bears witness to the melancholy yet liberating understanding that all things are perpetually spiralling into oblivion.

The natural course of man-made structures is to crumble. Just as the unwanted scraps in that science experiment rotted away, so too do the greatest cities and nations of the world. Of course, we can't usually see this, because we exert tremendous energy repairing and rebuilding and repaving everything. But give the janitors a long vacation, send the construction workers elsewhere, and generally vacate the city, and you won't have a long wait before it all begins to break down. And as it breaks down, it gives way to a subtle, stirring beauty.

I long to stand atop a mountain overlooking some giant abandoned city, blessed with the eyesight of an eagle, and watch it turn to dust. I wish that this could be possible, that I were not limited by a lifespan less than a hundredth of the time it would require, even if I found the mountain and the city and the eagle eyes. Alas, long before I could watch the last skyscraper collapse beneath the weight of vines, my own body would topple first.

If you took the world and placed it in a box, detached from the rays of light from the sun and the stars, all life would end and all structures would disintegrate. All that allows our ecology to thrive, to build upon itself, is the energy sent by the sun. Because of this energy, life stirs, green things spring forth, and sentient beings evolve and build structure everywhere. But the sun itself is not eternal. In time, the world will be deprived of her golden lord, if she isn't smashed apart by some other apocalypse in the meantime.

The Buddhists have a famous saying: "This, too, shall pass." As for me, I'm glad! Sure, I'll miss things as they pass away. When I myself pass away-- if I'm still capable of missing things at all-- I'll miss this world. But in fading, the shallow and artificial decorations of the world will give way to the deep, awesome beauty of decay.

FURTHER READING

The Joy of Change
Short Story: The Balancing Beetles
Short-Term Assets vs. Long-Term Assets

Examples of Positive Affirmations

2009-05-31T16:06:00.000-07:00

If you haven't already read it, check out my main article on Positive Affirmations. I discovered these as a kid and have been using them off and on all my life. The basic idea is so simple, and yet at the same time so powerful: whatever goes through the conscious mind, will be programmed into the subconscious mind. When a belief is held subconsciously, the powerful unconscious mind will bend over backwards to make that belief real. This gives a partial explanation of how positive affirmations work, but as I began experiencing "miracles" that I just couldn't ascribe to my own powers, conscious or unconscious, I realized there's something deeper at work. And that's the Law of Belief, which you can read more about at that link.

For now, here are some example affirmations.

POSITIVE AFFIRMATIONS FOR JOY

My thoughts are positive and uplifting.
I wake up with a smile on my lips.
My heart is singing with joy!
My face is glowing with joy!
My eyes are shining with joy!
I choose to be happy.
I deserve happiness and I accept it now!
Happiness and pleasure are everywhere.
My spirit vibrates with happiness.

POSITIVE AFFIRMATIONS FOR HEALTH

I love my strong, slender, healthy body.
I'm grateful for my great arms.
Praise heaven my legs are so strong!
Every breath floods me with energy, life and youth!
I'm oozing with health and youth.
I love rewarding my body with good wholesome food.
It feels so good to work out!

POSITIVE AFFIRMATIONS FOR WEALTH

I'm a money magnet.
I'm both wealthy and generous.
I welcome abundance with open arms.
I gratefully accept all the bounty life provides me.
Money is awesome and I love having tons of it!
I use my wealth generously, I love pampering myself!
Money is easy and effortless.
My heart is full of gratitude for my vast fortunes.
I love playing the money game.
I surround myself with rich and powerful friends.

POSITIVE AFFIRMATIONS FOR INTELLIGENCE

I learn and grow from every experience in life.
It's so awesome to be this smart and intelligent!
Learning is fun and easy!
I'm a natural genius at math and science!
I unleash the monstrous power of my brilliant mind!
I'm always expanding my interests and doing new things.
I've got a great memory, I memorize things with ease.
I'm an excellent autodidact.
I love reading, and feeling how it expands my mind.

POSITIVE AFFIRMATIONS FOR LOVE

I'm overflowing with love for everyone around me.
My heart pounds with love.
I'm compassionate, trusting and trustworthy.
I deserve all the love in the world.
I love flirting, I love kissing, I love sex!
I'm smoldering and burning with passion!
I accept love with an open heart.
Love is visible in everything I do.

POSITIVE AFFIRMATIONS FOR BEAUTY

I allow my natural beauty to shine through.
I'm graceful, elegant, and I have great posture.
I love fashion and I've got a great eye for it.
I love my beautiful, healthy skin.
The deep beauty of my soul shines in my eyes.
I make my body beautiful with delicious, healthy food.
My beautiful voice resonates and inspires.
I perceive and reflect the beauty in everything.

POSITIVE AFFIRMATIONS FOR COURAGE

I boldly do whatever I want and live life to the fullest.
I'm an invincible warrior!
I love a good thrill, I thrive outside my comfort zone.
I deserve the best, and I'm gonna do what it takes to get it!
I calmly accept that I have a finite lifespan.
My life is being lived right now, in this very moment!
My heart is racing with excitement.
I choose to take the leap!

POSITIVE AFFIRMATIONS FOR SUCCESS

I release all fear of success.
Everything I touch turns to gold!
I deserve to succeed, and I choose to do so now.
In every endeavor, I succeed or else I succeed in learning.
I take right action, doing exactly what I need to.
Lady Luck smiles upon me.
Success is inevitable.
The trophy is mine!

FURTHER READING

Positive Affirmations
Declarative Vs. Supplicative Prayer
Merlin Carothers

Conscious and Subconscious Mind

2009-05-31T09:15:00.000-07:00

Ever since I was young, I've been interested in the subconscious mind. In junior high, I did a lot of experimentation with hypnosis. This gave me an understanding of the power of autosuggestion from an early age. Later, I dabbled for a while in neurolinguistic programming, which even further sharpened my love for those mysterious phenomena which go on beneath the surface of gray matter.

The best way to explain it is using computer analogies, which are very appropriate because of the brain's high similarity with a computer. The conscious mind is the graphical user interface, with user-friendly windows, mouse pointers, pull-down menus and shortcuts. Meanwhile, the subconscious is the OS kernel underneath it all, chugging out all the real work. As users, we have no direct control over the deep and fundamental actions of the CPU, but we can indirectly control them by issuing commands through the GUI. But whenever we need to do any serious computation, the GUI is useless. In that case, we must call upon all the power of the technology under the hood.

The inmost part of our brain is always at work, whether or not we're aware of it. Even when we're fast in a dreamless sleep, this hidden part of the brain is tirelessly at work. The amount of computation and processing necessary just to breathe is so intense that we'd have little hope of doing it with just our clumsy, plodding "thoughts". If a great pianist tries to focus on what his fingers are doing, she'll inevitably get herself all mixed up and suddenly she can't play. That's because great piano skills don't come from the GUI, they come from the CPU, and the process of becoming a great pianist is one of programming those skills into "machine code".

There is no way to directly access, direct, or control what's under the box. Instead, the monstrous inner intelligence must be trained with thoughts. Thus, there is no button to press to instantly become happy, or instantly become good at math. Instead, such changes must be affected by thinking positively or by thinking, "I'm good at math." Beware of thinking thoughts you wouldn't want to directly compile into inner sourcecode. The subconscious obediently digests even the most negative, self-debilitating thoughts, and integrates them into the our very ego.

If a human being has any ability to affect miracles, to perform magic, or to exert influence upon reality, it certainly doesn't lie in the limits of conscious thought. No incantations, prayers or utterances can, by themselves, transcend the constraints of physics. What they can do, is guide and program the intuitive engine underneath. And whatever higher power we might have as lowly humans, that power must be unconscious, for it certainly isn't something we can do with brute force thinking or willpower.

FURTHER READING

The Reticular Activation System
Declarative Vs. Supplicative Prayer
Positive Affirmations

Short Term Assets vs. Long Term Assets

2009-05-29T11:47:00.000-07:00

You've heard it a million times: invest for the long term, go for passive income, wealth which lasts. This is generally sound advice, but like any rule of thumb, it shouldn't be taken as dogma. There are exceptions to every rule.

It's easy to get so swept up in the "longterm vision" thing that you can miss the point entirely. Let's think about just why we should pursue enduring wealth. Presumably it isn't just longtermness for its own sake: the whole point is that in the end, it should add up to a larger sum. A retirement plan which penalizes its holder for early withdrawal should offer some increased interest rate or tax benefit, or something, to compensate for the early withdrawal penalty.

Furthermore, in order to make the wait worthwhile, the total at the end needs to be significantly higher: this is because money (or any other asset) is worth more in the present than the future. For one thing, a lot of people are in better positions to actually enjoy their wealth at a young age. It's cliche, but you don't wanna put off all your fun in life until you're too old to do anything (although I must disclaim that you don't ever have to be "that old"). For another thing, as soon as you get your hands on your profits, you can reinvest them. A 5% profit compounded twice is greater than a single 10% profit.

Passive income is all the rage: if you manage to build up a $1,000-a-week income from dividends, royalties, webtraffic, and so on, you can retire and live off of it indefinitely! But you won't live forever. Supposing you have 80 years left after setting up your cashflow, that $1,000-a-week only ends up summing to around $4 million. That means if you made the $4 million all at once, you could theoretically stuff it all under your mattress and just take out $1,000 a week. The point is, any money can be viewed as "passive income", to a being with a finite lifespan. Passive income is great, but let's not elevate it higher than it deserves.

When you really boil it down to the details, the long term assets fad isn't as great as people make it out to be. The "carefully planted seed" has to really compete, just to catch up with an ordinary salary. (It's great to "earn money while you sleep", but it's not that great if the total amount is less than you could've earn by working for just one hour.)

So what should we do, just swear off long-term assets completely and devote all our efforts to shorter timescale enrichment? By no means. The great thing about all the strategy and building of enduring wealth, is that it's fun. Building longstanding dividends is like playing a game. As a matter of fact, hundreds of games are all about doing exactly that: Civilization, Age of Empires, Sim City... the list goes on and on. If you figured out a way to short-circuit the slowly-building economies of these games-- using cheat codes or something-- the games would lose all their challenge. It'd be fun for awhile, but it would get old fast.

By all means, pursue passive income and large timescale wealth building. But not to get rich quick. Do it for fun. Remember it's all a game. In this world, we only live finite lives anyway, and in the end it'll all disappear, just like game money.

FURTHER READING

Positive Affirmations
Privileged Information
Real-Life Tool-Assisted Speedruns

Short Story: The Balancing Beetles

2009-05-28T02:35:00.000-07:00

I just returned from an exotic African safari (editor's note: this is fiction), and I'd like to share with you the details of a new species I discovered, the Balancing Beetle. These critters vary widely in size, with the smallest being almost microscopic, and the largest rivaling even the big jungle cats. They come in all shapes and colors, in fact the wide variety of "personalities" I observed in the beetles almost made me feel a kind of kinship with them, like I was observing some fellow human beings.

These hard-shelled insects got their name from the peculiar way they seem to live their lives. They never leave the Fractal Trees which are their homes. But upon any given Fractal Tree, each specimen clings stubbornly to whatever "branch" it currently inhabits. You can watch it crawl up and down the branch, carefully keeping its equilibrium, and in most cases, the bug will live its whole life on the same branch where it was born! And when I speak of "branches", here, the word can include not just the actual branches, but the smaller twigs which stem from them, or the tiny shoots found on each twig, or the tinier shoots on those, and so on.

Each of these eccentric insects carefully regulates his growth so that he can remain on his chosen twig or shoot. Thus, if you squint at the tiniest offshoot of the Fractal Tree, you can barely make out some almost-microscopic Balancing Beetles going about their routines. Watch out, though, you don't want to take your eyes off the tree-trunk, where giant "megabeetles" wander, massive enough to break your spine just by accidentally stepping on you. To some of them, I was like a bug!

What baffles me is just why exactly these funny coleoptera cling so stubbornly to their branches, their twigs, their shoots. Occasionally, you'll see a beetle get knocked off its chosen bough. As it flies through the air, it makes a terrible screech, flailing its limbs in terror. Quickly it'll catch a new branch, always a larger one than the last. And then, with astonishing speed, the little anthropod settles into the new routine for its new home, and grows accordingly.

After many long observations, I theorize that what keeps my colorful friends clutching at even the tiniest little branchling, is some sort of horrible fear of change or of the unknown. Unable, with their tiny eyes, to even see the world of larger, welcoming treebranches all around them, they just assume that there's nowhere else to advance, that they've done all the growing they can ever possibly do.

I wonder whether there's really any limit at all to how big these crazy creatures can become. I shudder to imagine what would happen if one of the "megabeetles" tumbled from the massive Fractal Treetrunk: it might swell to such proportions it could conquer the world!

About The Author

Raised in California, Glowing Face Man's first occupation was sandwich-making for minimum wage. Later, he joined the Air Force and became a weather forecaster. In that role, he broadcast weather watches and warnings with the power to close down any puny little sandwich-shops like the one he used to work for. However, he was unsatisfied with that branch of service, always having to prostrate himself before even the lowest-ranking commissioned officer. He got out of the military and took up mathematics. Now he's a math PhD student and he pays the bills by teaching math to undergraduates. Ironically his students include plenty of shaved-headed ROTC men and women, future officers of the armed forces; so that in a sense, GFM has far outgrown his former station.

FURTHER READING

The Mirror
Meeting The Geisha
The Juggling Balls of Destiny

The Reticular Activation System

2009-05-27T15:10:00.001-07:00

The Reticular Activation System (RAS) is a concept introduced in Tony Robbins' "Awaken the Giant Within". It's not to be confused with the "Reticular Activating System", the part of the brain involved in arousal and motivation in mammals-- though the two are certainly related to each other. The RAS introduced by Robbins is part of the subconscious mind. It's a filter, applied to all the enormous data picked up by our senses every moment of our lives. It's the reason we're not overwhelmed by sensory perceptions. It's how we can tune things out.

Right now, my body's senses are picking up and harvesting so much raw data that if I could browse through it all, it would be incomprehensible. Every tiny fraction of a second, my eyes shoot a snapshot of my surroundings, each one so high-resolution and high-quality that it would take hundreds of megabytes, if not gigabytes, to store on a harddrive. This continues even when my eyes are closed, even when I'm fast asleep. While I sit here and type, the tastebuds on my tongue tirelessly record the taste of the roof of my mouth, the taste of my teeth. My nose picks up every scent in my office, aromas so faint that I have to struggle to make myself aware of them at all. My ears record the music I'm listening to in such fine detail, I'm liable to be sued by the RIAA. Perhaps most staggering of all the sensations, every inch of my body picks up tactile sensations. My feet "feel" my shoes, my butt feels the chair, my face feels the cool air.

If I had to make sense of the sheer bulk of all this raw data, it would be beyond me. It's a miracle of biology and intelligence that I can make sense of just the monitor in front of me-- and even that, I'm tuning out most of it.

The Reticular Activation System is always at work, deciding what we see and what we don't see. And we can control it, to an extent. The RAS reveals to us what we want to see, and veils that which we aren't interested in. If I enter a room full of things, my attention will be pulled toward whatever is most interesting to me there: a tray of food if I'm hungry; a magazine featuring an article about something I've been contemplating; my girlfriend's face. If you follow me into the room, your attention is liable to fall upon something else entirely. Our raw senses pick up the same data about the same objects, but somehow our focus wanders differently. That's the RAS in action.

I'm sure you've noticed the following phenomenon some time in your life. You discover some new field or discipline of interest, and all of a sudden, it's everywhere you look. An example in my life was the seduction community. Until I was in my early twenties, I had lived a life devoid of romance or even flirting. Then I decided to stop living in denial and take control of my love life. I started reading literature about seduction, and suddenly my whole world changed. Everywhere I looked, I saw seduction, flirting, hot girls to chase, other men chasing them. It's as though I went to bed and then woke up in an alternate reality where all these things exist. The truth is, before, my RAS filtered them out. Looking back now, I can recognize instances where girls were flirting with me before I snapped out of denial, but at the time I simply did not recognize it, at all. In one ear and out the other.

As you expand your interests and turn your eyes toward new things in your world, your RAS opens up and lets more things get through. By learning about new things and being fascinated in new things, you strengthen your conscious mind so that it can handle "more hits" from the RAS. Your consciousness expands to soak up more of your world, and through your eyes, it's as though the world itself is enriched and enhanced.

FURTHER READING

Imaginative Memory
Positive Affirmations
Privileged Information

What I've Been Up To: Cocooning

2009-05-27T00:01:00.000-07:00

I haven't written any Glowing Face Articles for quite awhile. According to my "calendar of accomplishments", the last article was written on the 9th. That would be my newest article, entitled "Privileged Information." I wrote that on my girlfriend's laptop, and the reason was that my own computer had its backlamp burn out. Thatmeans that the screen is black... or at leat, nearly black. As a matter of fact, you can barely make things out through the murky darkness. If you shine a flashlight at the screen, ...

(Interruption as GlowingFaceGirl enters the room and breaks into laughter) yes, as I was saying, you can barely make out the faint details of the screen, and can even painstakingly read words if they're black-text-on-white-background. The reason my girlfriend just got so surprised was she walked into the room and saw me sitting here typing at a seemingly black monitor. Personally I think it's cool, it makes me seem elite and hackerish, like I'm broadcasting the blog straight out of a B-rate 80s techno-scifi flick.

But that's not the main reason why the website has been quiet lately. There are a couple reasons. First of all, I've decided to spend a lot of time reading, so I can provide better value here. I've been reading through a lot of self-development books, so that I can write with more authority on that topic. So far I've finished the giant tome which is Tony Robbins' "Awaken the Giant Within" and I'm just about finished with the much-smaller and less intimidating genre-starting classic, "Think and Grow Rich", by Napoleon Hill. Next on the list: "A Course in Miracles" and "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People".

So it's a kind of cocooning process. I feel like I am gaining priceless resources which will help me become a better writer here. At the same time, I'm rather startled just how much of the stuff I'm finding in the old classics, is stuff I've independently come up with on my own. It lends evidence toward the simple truth behind it all.

Besides this literary "cocoon", I've also been preoccupied with teaching myself more about webhosting. In the past two weeks, I've taught myself PHP, MySQL, UTF-8, Apache, and some of what's involved in being hosted on a real host. The testing grounds for all this is a certain dictionary website I launched, which is now under construction. Presently it has the ability to search for Japanese words in Romaji (Romanized Japanese) and output the English translations. I thought this would be a two- or three-day project, and it would've been, if I hadn't run into some unexpected limits. The free-webhosting site I'm using for self-teaching only allows 6,000 files. That presents a problem for a dictionary with ~200,000 pages. I managed, at great effort, to crunch the whole dictionary into just N files (where N can be set to whatever I want), using nothing but PHP. Then I realized how massochistic that was, when my reality expanded enough to make me aware of MySQL, a solution which is basically tailor-made precisely for the dictionary problem. So now I'm facing the prospect of redoing the dictionary from square 1... but with the much more ambitious vision of something like Wikipedia, with the ability for users to freely edit entries in real time.

While my webmastering interests are expanding outward, my interests for this blog-- my vision for the Glowing Future-- are tending away from language and spaced repetition, and I'd like to focus more on self-development topics here.

Summer is coming, and my girlfriend and I will be hitting Las Vegas once we're free from the Ohio State University. She recently gave me a really cool Japanese summer outfit, called a "jinbei" (that link leads to the appropriate entry in my sparkly, fancy new dictionary). It's sort of like a kimono/yukata, but more awesome.

I'm going to go sleep now. I justfinished a 2 AM jog, which was quite exhilerating. Look forward to some very high quality articles coming out of GlowingFaceMan!

Privileged Information

2009-05-09T18:50:00.000-07:00

In business and legal settings, the term "privileged information" refers to info meant for restricted eyes-- knowledge shrouded in secrecy and kept from prying eyes. But the term shouldn't be restricted just to these settings. All the raw, objective facts about our world fall upon a continuous spectrum of knowability.

On one end of the spectrum there are measurable phenomena which happen in front of our very eyes. Most people accept these without question, and it would take a real philosophical devil's advocate to argue against them. The argument would go something like Plato's "The Cave", that is, it would hinge upon the subjectivity of reality in general. In short, if we can really know anything, then we can know the things on this end of the spectrum. This includes things like where you're currently sitting, what your name is, how many fingers you have on each hand, and so on.

On the opposite side of the continuum are the profound unknowables of the universe. These are things that all the genius of mankind could never hope to deduce. Knowledge here includes things like: "How many atoms exist beyond the event horizon of a given black hole?" (The "event horizon" is the point beyond which the terminal velocity-- the speed a particle would need to reach to escape the pull of gravity-- exceeds the speed of light. As long as the speed of light is unpassable, no info can escape from beyond the event horizon.) This remote corner of the knowledge band includes the answers to paradoxical-sounding questions like: "What's the shortest true mathematical statement that can't be proven nor disproven?" (If you could prove that some particular statement was the answer, you'd violate the fact that its truth was unprovable.)

This metric of knowability varies from individual to individual. For me, the thoughts currently going through my head are very low on the privilege spectrum. But to you, they're not much more accessible than the stuff behind a black hole. Sure, you could ask me what I'm thinking, but you'd have no way, in principle, to know whether I answered truthfully. (Actually I'm a very honest and open kinda guy, but of course I'm arguing hypothetically in this example.)

There's a certain point on the spectrum beyond which the exact position of a piece of information becomes less and less relevant. See, for all I'm concerned, it's about as easy for me to calculate how many quantum particles exist in the entire universe, as it is for me to calculate what my girlfriend's doing while I'm at school. The former is a deep confounding mystery, whereas the latter is a fairly mundane piece of trivia. But, unless I call her on the cell phone and ask her what she's doing, I have just about as much chance of somehow figuring it out on my own, as I do of counting the quantum particles.

One of the distinguishing characteristics of knowledge beyond this "easily calculatable" threshold, is what I call the Ripple Question. The Ripple Question is true of some facts, false of others. It goes as follows: "Consider some fact, X. If you were transported to an alternate reality, which was completely identical to the current one, with the sole exception that the truth of X were changed, then would you be able to detect the change?"

For example, I'm currently typing this article on my girlfriend's PC. If I was suddenly transported to an alternate reality where I was typing it on a Mac, I'd definitely notice the difference. The Ripple Question is true about the fact I'm typing on a PC. On the other hand, if I was merely whisked off to a universe where some pebble on the surface of Planet Mercury was deleted, I'd never know anything had changed. Even if I cared about remote extraplanetary rocks, I'd have no hope of detecting such an obscure change. The Ripple Question is false about whether that pebble exists on Mercury.

There is a practical side to all this theoretical philosophizing about privileged information. When it comes to knowledge for which the Ripple Question fails, I can make whatever assumptions I feel like. If my assumptions happen to be wrong, I'll never suffer for it-- if I would, then that suffering would be a means of measuring the truth of the trivia in question, but no such means exists, by definition.

Thus, when it comes to questions which fail the criterion, questions which lie too far away on the knowability continuum, we may as well believe whatever is most convenient. Rather than reach for truth, which is unreachable by definition, we may as well reach for practicality. There's nothing "unscientific" about this: science is the realm of measurable phenomena, and if it were measurable, it would've passed the ripple criterion.

For all practical intents and purposes, it's impossible for me to deduce what Abraham Lincoln ate for breakfast on the morning of his fifteenth birthday. I may as well not even try. If, for some strange reason, I actually cared about this at all, I may as well make up an answer which is most convenient to me: "He ate alphabet soup, and the letters lined up to spell 'Glowing Face Man rocks!'"

To give a more down-to-earth example, when I'm in class, I can't tell what my girlfriend's doing. There's no practical way for me to find out. Basically, it's beyond the point on the spectrum where I can measure it. In this situation, I can fill it whatever my imagination can come up with, but I should ask what's the most useful. I could imagine her having an affair or something, but that would do me pointless self-harm, distracting me from the lecture I'm supposed to be following. It's more productive to imagine her fixing a delicious Japanese dinner for us to enjoy together when I come home :)

FURTHER READING Trivial Knowledge - Models of Reality - Reality Expansion