Posted on Jun 15, 2013 in Personal

My first few days on modafinil (it’s life-changing medication for people who get sleepy during the day), I was so excited, I didn’t sleep well, but I think that difficulty was more related to my excitement that I had found something that helped, rather than the effect of the medication. Last night, I slept like a log, and made up my sleep deficit. So far I give a big thumbs up to modafinil.

I’m fascinated that when I share with friends how I’ve found something that has dramatically improved my life, more than 90% want to diss me and what I’m doing. I’ve noticed this over the course of my life. I’m a serial enthusiast and when I get excited about something, my friends rarely join with me in my joy. So I guess I don’t have much credibility because of my serial enthusiasms.

Still, I think there’s something to the idea of a net that friends and family will often try to drape over you to keep you in line with what they expect, and when you deviate from that, they become uncomfortable and if they can’t bully you back into their view of you, they drop you. I sense this reaction in myself when friends do something radically and threateningly new. Almost all of my big significant positive changes in my life (overcoming CFS, converting to Judaism, 12-stepping, modafinil, blogging, writing my biography of Dennis Prager) have had to be done against the wishes of most of those closest to me, and much of the time, I had to leave these friends behind.

That’s why moving can be such a spur to growth because you’re no longer held back by the expectations of those you grew up around.

On the other hand, people like Dennis Prager say they’ve never lost a friend, so there’s perhaps just something really wrong with me.

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Posted on Jun 14, 2013 in Personal

* I never learned to dance because I grew up a Seventh-Day Adventist and such a thing is a sin. Before I die, I would really like to learn to dance to disco.

* I don’t like it when women with a tubby tummy wear tight dresses. I just don’t like a bulge in the tummy area on my women. So let’s say my wife develops a bulgy tummy but insists on wearing tight clothing. How do I tell her I find this distasteful? Also, no kerchiefs on her hair. It would make me incapable of being a true husband to her. Other than this, I’m the easiest man in the world.

I just want to be of service. If you’ve got a bulging tummy, don’t wear tight clothes around your midriff or go bare.

You never see in public an upper-class English woman with bad legs because those with bad legs, cover them up as God intended, but in America, those with wretched bodies insist on displaying them in all their depravity. Makes me ill.

* In second grade, classmate Gavin Brown didn’t want to invite me to his birthday party because I was a jerk, but my best friend’s mom forced Gavin’s dad to invite me, so along I went and as we biked into the bush, the other kids let me know that they didn’t want me along, but when they see how great I’ve become, that wound will heal and I will have proven myself a superior man.

I have this vision that when a man like me is most filled with testosterone and feeling great about himself, his woman is sure to cut him down, look for his weak points and poke them until he’s not so full of himself. When he swells up with pride over something he’s done, his woman is usually there to bring him down to earth.

* I look at Dennis Prager and see a bloke who really loves people (while I feel so ambivalent about 99% of those I meet) with a gift for maintaining friends (while I don’t attach normally). I feel wistful. Dennis was always class president (for 12 years). All my life, I’ve had a burn against the popular kids because they seemed to set the rules and they looked out for their own and I wanted to be one of them but I was so far from them most of the time (occasionally they let me in). It feels like the MSM is run by the popular kids and they decide on the appropriate emotional tone to stories and they tend to be careerists and they’re careful to never say anything inappropriate and the MSM just seems so sanitized and I see myself as a courageous truth-teller, but baying at the moon on FB and my blog instead of in the hallowed pages of the New Yorker, where I belong but the popular kids won’t play with me, and so the greatest writer of his generation spends his days filing and typing other people’s letters.

* More than a decade ago, my therapist said to Old Luke, “You’re attracted to innocence and you try to corrupt it.”

Trying to get my lips around, “That’s a sanctity I can’t violate.”

* Most people I know have flaws as big as their virtues and I just don’t want to deal with them. I’m particularly not into angry and bitter. Goodbye! I’m not doing well looking past the bad behavior of those around me to the wounded inner child. I wouldn’t even want to show up to their funeral, unless I could meet chicks or do some networking.

* I don’t understand how people take Leon Wieseltier seriously (he’s unreadable except in short bursts of stunning clarity, I defy you to claim you read all of his book Kaddish), such as this joke: “Leon Wieseltier fears Israel may be in jeopardy, he said in an interview this week while accepting the Dan David Prize… The prize recognizes his contributions to humanity through science, art, public service, humanities and entrepreneurship.”

* Der Fuhrer says: “God sent you to me to raise you. I’m stuck. Your mom was dying, you were raised in foster homes and you didn’t learn certain skills and now you’re 47 and you don’t have certain life skills, a certain attention to detail, and after I tell you something 27 times and you still don’t get it, I have to get nasty so that you learn.”

My dad would say, “You’ll only learn through pain.” I don’t pay attention to things that don’t interest me and I only learn to pay attention when I am sufficiently hurt for my carelessness.

Life and women keep seeking out my weaknesses — a certain lack of attention to detail — and throwing it in my face and this is going to keep happening until I learn my lesson. Oy.

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Posted on Jun 12, 2013 in Personal

I couldn’t sleep Monday night until well after 2 a.m. Tuesday and I woke up feeling wrecked. I took my first modafinil, 100 mg, and felt amazing all day, and super-productive.

Sleep is the hot new field. Most people in the western world, I bet, have sleep apnea and get inadequate sleep and operate much less effectively than they would with decent sleep. A couple of years ago, I had two overnight sleep studies (covered by Kaiser, every one should get one). They showed I have mild sleep apnea when I sleep on my side and moderate sleep apnea when I sleep on my back. I use a CPAP usually at night along with a mouth guard, but 99% of the time, I get ticked with both and take them off, and so I usually wake up feeling like crap, my teeth sore from my constant grinding. I’ve had a hard time getting my weight below 180 pounds (I’m 6′ tall). Every pound I lose will reduce my sleep apnea. I got on modafinil to deal with the effects of sleep apnea. One of its side effects is losing weight.

Modafinil is the first medication I’ve been on since early 2009 (when I went off lithium, clonazepam and clonidine). Modafinil is a wonder drug. I feel much more alert, focused, clear, and energized. The problem is that these happy pills cost $18 each. I’m cutting my 200mg pills in half and taking that bit each day. I took my first pill at 7 am yesterday and felt good all day, much more productive, and yet I had a normal night’s sleep.

* I hate myself when I deviate from the motto of “Never complain, never explain.” I particularly hate it when I stoop to explaining a joke. Any chick who asks me if I’m being sarcastic will never become Mrs. Luke Ford.

* I get a lot of grief for writing about myself. I know that my work in this respect sometimes approaches greatness, but what do I say to those who give me grief on this score, accusing me of pettiness, self-centeredness, narcissism, lack of vision, etc? It feels weird that the greatest writer of his generation has to defend himself to less creatures never given the honorific of A**hole of the Month, but we live in a fallen world, and I must stay in reality or die.

* I realize, with surprise, with enchantment, that I enter into literature as soon as I can substitute “He” for “I.”

* I have a hot friend who gets raped a lot because she gets into bed naked with guys and expects them to understand that “No means no!” Many of them do not abide by her directive.

* When you see a Volkswagon ad proclaiming the “power of German engineering”, what do you feel? Is that a pleasant association in your mind?

Arguing with a Jewish friend, who says, “Never trust a German.” I say, there are only two races — the decent and the indecent. (Viktor Frankl)

I’m thinking about an ad showing the atom bomb exploding over Hiroshima with the tag line: “The power of Jewish engineering!”

* It’s not that Fox News leans right that bothers me, it’s that it is not independent. It pushes a particular agenda (the Republican establishment), such as that immigration reform is good (all of the news networks push this). The New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC News, etc are left-wing but they are independent of the White House and the Democratic party.

* I have the general weirdness of the whistleblower.

* I lay on the couch Monday night in therapy and listed off my schedule and how I spend my time and asked my therapist if it was OK. She said it sounded fine.

* In June of 2011, I went to my first 12 step meeting. And I’ve kept coming back because I notice that just being in the rooms sobers me, there are some great insights to be gleaned, there’s a level of honesty that I rarely find anywhere else, and I like some of the people.

* LA is the recovery capitol! What second city complex in LA? I’ve never noticed that in LA, just New York pontificating that we have it. I notice New Yorkers always feel the need to trash LA when they move here, but it doesn’t happen the other way round. Los Angelenos feel free to love New York or Portland without the need to point out its shortcomings when compared to LA. Why?

* Are you more concerned about protecting the accused or protecting potential victims of predators? Those who will be hurt by the disclosure of predators (their family and friends) are easy to spot but those who will be saved from predators are unknown and hence have no voice.

It’s like free trade. Those who benefit from protectionism have incentive to cry because they gain a lot while those who gain lower prices from free trade have no incentive to cry out.

* My friends at shul aren’t impressed by my year of living shomer brit, but they are more willing to shake my hand.

* I wonder when I’ll get a book contract for “The Year Of Living Shomer HaBris”

* I’m not worried about the NSA tapping my phone and internet to fight terror. I haven’t formed an opinion of NSA leaker Edward Snowden. I don’t see him yet as a hero or a villain. So far, I can’t see anything terrible in what he did. Just because it was illegal to reveal these documents doesn’t make it morally wrong.

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Posted on Jun 9, 2013 in Personal

I took Friday off and spent the morning listening to Family Tree Counseling videos and writing in my journal. Then I spent the afternoon finishing this book on 1948 Australia vs England cricket.

And now it is Sunday and I want to spend my day off listening to more Family Tree Counseling videos and writing in my journal but I have a nagging voice in my head saying that I should be more productive, I should leave the house, I should mix with people, most of all, I should get something done. I should work on a book. I should hone some writing. Whose voice is this I hear in my head telling me to get off my bum and get to work rather than lying around watching documentaries on Everest? It’s my father’s voice. He taught that everything you do should have a purpose. If you choose to relax, it is for the purpose of becoming more productive.

I have therapy Monday evenings. I keep checking with my therapist if I am wasting my time and my talents and she says it is fine to do things I want to do, even if they aren’t productive in the sense of finishing another book.

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