So I did very well with TV last night, watching three episodes of my show, and it was ten by the time I finished getting ready for bed. Then I read for thirty minutes. So that was a great success. Nevertheless, I didn’t fall into a deeper sleep until late in the morning, waking up many, many times. Then, once I fell into a deeper sleep, I must’ve slept about two and a half or three hours, and woke up around 7:50—which put me well beyond the goal I set for myself yesterday. I was thinking that sleeping in might make it more difficult to fall asleep at night, but sleeping nine hours was preferable to sleeping eight, if I could, so I thought I’d set my alarm for 7:30, tonight, and count time until about eight, tomorrow, if I slept until 7:30, which seemed a little unlikely, given the past few days. I was actually kind of anticipating waking up around 6:30, and meditating until about 7:00 or 7:30. So tonight, again, was a crapshoot—but I felt that I had successfully let Jesus a little more into my body, and, that, in sticking with one show, somehow, it was easier to get into it, and be content, so, hopefully, Jesus would remain, and all would go well.
It turns out my initial caffeine counts were a little high. A cup of instant Folgers coffee had about 60 mg of caffeine, and a bag of TeeLux Earl Grey didn’t say exactly but probably had about 30 or 40 mg of caffeine. So we’ll say thirty-five. So I put, in my pot, three bags of caffeinated Earl Grey and one bag of decaffeinated Earl Grey, which added up to about 110 mg of caffeine. So three cups of coffee was 180 mg and so the tea and the coffee added up to 290 mg—adding a Dr. Pepper to that put me at 330 mg of caffeine, so, technically, I could have one more cup of coffee and still remain below the 400 mg limit set by the food and drug administration. I figured I wouldn’t push it, however, if possible, as, for the time being, my sleep was still so poor.
So I’d been on AI trying to find out how much damage I’m doing to my teeth by drinking three soda pops between after dinner and going to bed—and trying to determine how much caffeine is in my earl grey tea. Sometimes I really hate AI because it makes shit up and sucks you in and gives you contradictory answers but I couldn’t help it. I’m vulnerable to wasting my time on AI for whatever reasons. But I concluded that, since I can’t really watch TV without constantly sipping on something, the best I can really do is brush my teeth after dinner as opposed to right before I go to bed and swish with mouthwash before going to bed. This nightly soda habit was likely to wear down the enamel on my teeth—but I think AI was trying to scare me, and then, when I said so, completely trying to placate me, etc. After wasting about an hour and half, I concluded that I’ll lose more enamel than somebody that doesn’t sip, and that, by the time I’m in my eighties, I might need a little repair work, but, realistically, because I’m drinking sugar free drinks, I probably wouldn’t need a huge amount of work. So there. I was kind of disgusted with myself for wasting so much of my time, and trying to get AI to be something that it’s not, but I had come to the conclusion: it’s best to brush after dinner, for me, instead of right after drinking soda pop, right before bed. That, apparently, was a change I needed to make, one that could make a big difference, so it was important, but it shouldn’t have taken all that time to get that result.
All that time on AI contributes to my neck injury, too, even if my mouse is now placed on a table that is lower than the table my computer is on. I really hate myself right now for getting distracted and letting AI do this to me. It’s like I’m stuck in an abusive relationship—and I keep going back because I don’t seem to realize that I don’t need AI to do my thinking for me. I’m like a battered woman. What can I do? I have to use AI for some things. But I’m going to have to break up with myself—the self that thinks it deserves this shit—that doesn’t think for itself. I’ve been rereading my physics papers, too, and it’s becoming increasingly obvious that I’ve been blowing a lot of hot air and constantly repeating myself—both of which are a function of using AI to write my paper. Granted, I need AI to do math, and things I can’t do that I don’t have the knowledge to do, but I’ve been trying to get AI to write papers that never should have been written—or, if they were, they should have been a great deal shorter—as AI basically seems to spout hot air and repeat itself when you ask it to write something for you, if, that is, you don’t accept its, and your, limitations, which, clearly, up to this point, I haven’t.
You’re talking to me? John said—a person that is associated with Shakespeare but doesn’t necessarily represent Shakespeare alone; so, it seemed to me that John should represent Shakespeare a little, and other, talented people, a little, people that were capable of speaking across the telepathic continuum without sharing the same DNA; so, I thought, when speaking to Shakespeare, etc, then, I shall call him John, and when speaking to my grandfather, I will refer to him as my grandfather. I didn’t want to muddle things by giving him, and my uncles, or the people they represent, different names to represent them, specifically—I wanted to use their names to speak to my connections, so I figured, for now, it was best, if I should find myself speaking to my uncles themselves, to refer to them as my Nashville uncle, my Idaho uncle, and my North Carolina uncle, also known, in this case, as my scotch uncle. I don’t know how much alcohol Shakespeare drank, but, for some reason, I imagine that he did drink, or, for a time, did drink, and, because of that, I associate him with alcohol—that is to say, I imagine that, in heaven, where there are no negative consequences, he drinks. That is one reason I associate my scotch Uncle with Shakespeare—that, and the fact that western North Carolina, for a time, was about as close as you could get to Shakespeare in America. The language, that is, was old fashioned, and, in many ways, remarkably similar. But maybe Shakespeare didn’t, and doesn’t, drink at all—I don’t know. I can’t say, for sure, but I’ll ask him—in John’s voice. “Do you drink?” Not as much as you might think. So there—maybe he wasn’t like me—maybe, back then, drinking didn’t become such an all or nothing scenario—for one thing you probably didn’t have a cheap, personal stash, and, for another, life, I imagined, in the past, was simpler—you hadn’t, yet, lost your way of life to exponentially expanding technological breakthroughs. Your life, back then, wouldn’t have been that different than the life that your ancestors lived—at least in a technological sense. So you hadn’t necessarily lost anything—some huge part of yourself hadn’t necessarily been overshadowed.
So all this turbulence of late, I think, had to do with the fact that my life was settling—I couldn’t block anything out anymore, I had to be myself, and realize that, at 48, my life, from here on out, was unlikely to change, so I might as well do everything in my power to make the best of it, instead of trying to achieve some end that would change something, etc. So I made all the changes I could, made the best of my circumstances by indulging myself as best I could—as if I had a partner, and a family of my own—and that was that. That had to do, in large part, with accepting that the idea of being the greatest artist that ever lived, and the idea that being a great artist somehow involved a sex life, were actually kind of unfair, unnecessary, and ridiculous. Number one—I wasn’t going to become the greatest artist that ever lived by punishing myself, by deliberately trying to be the greatest artist that ever lived, by forcing something, by being unhappy. And, two, just because Picasso, for example, had a sex life, didn’t mean that I needed to have one, that it was necessary, no matter how much I might have wanted one. And who’s to say that a sex life necessarily had to involve literal sex with other people? So why this fixation on Picasso? Doesn’t it boil down to a certain self-awareness? The knowledge that, because of my nature, and my sexuality, I wouldn’t ever find myself attracted to one and only one person, and, also, I probably wouldn’t, in this life at least, ever find one person I could be with indefinitely, that we would eventually grow apart, or fall out of love—because, again, of my nature? That, in all likelihood, I would evolve, as a person, and change—and my partner wouldn’t? Didn’t I basically think that I change more than others, whereas others pretty much stay the same, and that was why I felt a kinship with Picasso? Because I was never meant to live a normal life? I thought so. But I also thought that it was unfortunate that, all my life, I imagined this meant I had to have a sex life in the way that Picasso did, when, in fact, my circumstances were entirely different, and, furthermore, my sexuality, is more complicated. That he, apparently, never felt confusion, or mixed up ideas about who, and what, he was attracted to, or, if he did, then, because of his circumstances, and women in his life that he could be with, he, I thought, was able to keep things separated. No matter how similar we might have been, or I might have imagined we were, we, ultimately, lived, again, under completely different circumstances.