Tag: DST-TK

Thinking about neuron structure and function. Not every neuron carries a thought—most are busy with other work, moving a hand or limb, reading a page. But borrow the structure for a moment.

Imagine a clean paint splat—one drop spreading outward in smooth curved arms of uneven length, pulling back to the center before reaching out again in a different direction. Not a star. Not a circle. Something organic and asymmetrical. More star. Splat. Milky white, slightly translucent. Individual neuron.

Each neuron hold a live topic or feeling as its own package. A center that contains, with irregular points reaching outward at inconsistent distances to connect with other topics, other feelings. The connections aren’t things in themselves; they just show that nothing is separate. One neuron takes the lead on the moment’s attention—ruminating, concentrating, obsessing. Then the synapse fires. A jolt. Arrive somewhere unexpected—sometimes somewhere deeper, sometimes what was underneath the first thing all along. Sometimes jot causes pivot. Sometimes after sitting awhile at the new location, the signal comes back. Bidirectional. Not because you’ve resolved anything. Because you haven’t.

Twelve topics ready. Make it a game, mix it up. Some brought to light. Some filed as leftovers wanting to be recycled in the tomorrow bin. Talk next. Not soon enough. Never enough time.

“You look kind of nervous. Do you have something on your mind?” Didn’t know at the time, but the answer was, “yes.”

For years I wanted to learn the saber form. I told people. Nothing happened. I watched Janet do the saber before class and thought it was beautiful. I saw photos in a book Paul was translating and thought the more complicated form looked even more elegant. Conversation included buying my own dao, since I want one that has the same personal feeling as my Tai Chi sword.

Part of the reason I stopped going to the Tai Chi Center after covid was pain. Standing for a full hour was too hard. I would have to sit down and rest while everyone else kept going. That was discouraging. My balance was off.

Since December I’ve been exercising consistently. Recently at push hands and sword I realized I could stand for multiple hours. My balance is back. Unsteady one-legged postures have corrected. So I asked Paul. I said I have something I really want—will you teach me the saber form one on one? He hemmed and hawed a little. Then he said yes. There are weeknight and Sunday sessions to consider now.

Asking him was mostly possible because my body is rebuilding. Months of workouts revitalized an old goal. The dao that I really want is only offered in a 30”. Paul and my classmates agree I need 36″. Nobody took a tape measure, but the consensus was clear. An email answer from Raven Studios says they can do a custom order. I want something nicer than the basic practice swords in the back room bucket—a beautiful hardwood dao.

Janet asked if I’d quit again. She forgot the years I didn’t.

A supervisor emails, wondering if I can discuss posting content to website; does he need input/ approval for my assistance…

[Wanted to begin, Dude!] but replied, “No input or approval needed. I’m already your person. I am the [my title]. I’ve seen that content before…” and I continued to give ideas and ask questions about usage expectations. Matt wrote back with twice as much information to consider. I have something to do. A small puzzle to solve: best way to present his content for his customers.

Since November, I really haven’t been my best at my job. That is a long time. There have been so many days, weeks have gone by with me slacking off, barely getting anything done.

Today was a good day; each aspect could be own daily.

• appt for sleep test results
• food from Gino’s
• did work
• email to PDoc for refill
• attend push hands
• ask Paul, teach me saber; yes!
• sword class, Doug asked me to lead
• took Janet with, PC for pool, 1.5hr

Theme song: Different, Come Undone, Jackson Waters

I love my boots. I love my Escape. Tim is no longer my most favorite thing, been displaced. So yeah, my two favorite things are all about movement. They’re available 24/7. I am in control. I don’t have to edit what I say. They’re all mine. I had no idea how much I missed having a stereo for music. I love the feel of the bass against my thigh as it leans against the door, in my chest through the air.

Escape approaching yellow traffic light: you say out loud to the universe: “I’m going!”

Tim asked why I got divorced. I gave you the surface version verbally about Steven and later a daily about Rick. Neither was complete — not even close to a full picture.

Realizing I had done it again — given you the surface information when the real version existed — I was compelled into two days of intense writing. Weekend therapy happened. I’m providing my answer, not a glimpse.

The why is in there. I’m working on using good writing style to show, not tell. I want you to use the information, the stories. Ask me more questions. Report back as to what I did in my marriages and what can be done differently.

However. FEAR. I am afraid that somewhere in these Steven and Rick stories, you will stop being my therapist and become an ordinary person with ordinary judgments. That you will read “idyllic farm, good man, still not happy” and think: why wasn’t that enough? Or, why didn’t I leave sooner? Or, dismiss bipolar as a real issue. Or, the ugly truth: some actions might warrant a ‘bitch move’ label.

Maybe having the surface versions were all you needed — but it would be really great if the complete version gives you better material to review, analyze, and turn into a plan that actually fixes me before my next long term relationship.

I can hear Rocky saying to you, “Time for Tim to expand superpower, question?”

I called scheduling first thing Monday. No “talk soon.” It’s gonna be a gap. Tenacity has always been my superpower :::sigh:::

Attachment: The-History-of-Relationships-1983-1993.pdf

Every daily starts the same: something hits me during the day and becomes obvious. Free flow. Check the character count. Add if there’s room. Cut harshly if there isn’t. When it’s still too long, grammar gets compromised. Key words that aren’t key enough get dropped. Punctuation gets altered, chipped, until the number cooperates.

This is not casual. Writing every daily requires concentration, diligence, and real craft. Twitter had 140 characters. Some writers did very short stories — complete narratives in 140 characters. I was envious and tried. Portal allows 1,500. Different scale, same idea: within the limitation, deliver a complete arc.

Dailies subject line, chosen carefully — understandable at first glance, but only fully revealed after reading the body. It means more after than before.

No pronouns when writing about the primary reader. Not style — strategy. The intended reader is known. Full attention cannot be counted on — skimming is reality. Dailies, written for the ether: complete whether or not it’s fully read, with Easter eggs dropped. A message in a bottle. Sending, followed by hope.

Each daily stands alone. not a journal entry, not quite a blog post, but something in between that doesn’t have a name yet. Over time, read together, there’s a thread. They’re all me — things seen, felt, wanted known.

Some good ones: never sent. Life interrupts. Filed “unsent dailies.” Sometimes urgency wins: send happens 12:01. I pour heart into every one. Every single one.

Sometimes… when you create a list of possible activities… it is empowering to suddenly realize you don’t have to only pick one thing. Movie? Shopping? Exercise?

Yesterday. All three. Enjoyed a third viewing of Ryan Gosling in Project Hail Mary. The cinematic tears, teaching how to hug, and the humor were still amazing. Noticed more unseen small things on a repeat watch. I left the theater and checked out the music section at Target. But section it is not. I may have found five CD? Typed the titles to Claude—too lazy to research individually on my own—“based on what you know about me, tell me which one I might like best.” I drove to New Berlin; Escape is my new stereo. Luke Combs, The Way I Am — yeah, No. Taylor Swift, Midnights — I don’t know. And, I didn’t know the resistance pool closed at 9 pm, and I didn’t know that the lap lanes closed at 10 pm. I worked hard: ten minutes of the lazy river, an hour of laps. Exhausted.

Lessons learned. Spend more time telling Claude my music choices and work out hard more often at the end of the day. I slept a full eight hours for the first time in … how long? Woke up with meltdown disappeared. Focused and productive at my job. My afternoon off, probably isn’t absolutely necessary.

Why is it much easier to tell someone to, “chill out,” than to describe yourself as, “chill?”

A successful request to switch Tim appointment back one hour…apparently earns someone a gold star. Timing is everything. Need right time to manipulate time.

===

Luck, Heard a Silenced Phone. I may not have heard the phone call from the the scheduler. Seems a bit serendipitous that my conference call ended and I was able to notice the very muted ring and vibration.

Apparently meltdowns don’t always just melt away. Sometimes they just come back anyway. What is happening? I am going to dose up on Advil and Pregabalin and see if that helps. Steps involve:
 
Taking afternoon off, taking tomorrow afternoon off, and will appreciate that Friday is already scheduled as a full day off.
 
After a single, mid day meeting today, I am… going… to either

• Go watch Project Hail Mary for the third time
• Drive to the lazy river in New Berlin
• Shop at a music store so I have at least 1 music CD to Escape play
• Just start driving and have a good long think — except you can’t think yourself out of too much thinking. Oh well. Forgot about that. Except unable to force forget.

The narrative, long; the why you got an FAQ and talking points. Or… how about the last minute summary:
 
I have a blackout for what happened week ago Tuesday 4-5pm. I have near zero recall of seeing you in the room, most of your office is a huge blank. I thought my recording was all static; found out days later it was there after all. Listening has mostly restored an audio mental record. The line in the poem about Office Tim is not Video Tim? Nevermind. Complete fiction. Normal Human Tim is.
 
I wonder, If you can’t remember something and you don’t know you can’t remember, I guess you can get along not knowing? But if you step out of an office door and suddenly don’t really know what just happened… it’s weird and emotional. And you might write 35 pages. Parts are actually pretty good.

[Note: Claude picked the title of the narrative].

Attachment: Narrative-20260401.pdf

Where does memory go when it’s lost? Short-term, long-term, muscle.

 
The John Nolan exit groundhog was a daily or weekly ritual. So if I was driving to Madison to get to work downtown, that would’ve been from the years 1999 all the way through 2019, the year I lost my Ranger. Admittedly once I moved to Bedford Street any use of that exit was occasional, such as when I was out and about and then coming home. But in my journal, I have a notation of a day —yeah somewhere that journal search can’t locate—that I saw him. Fat, brown, groundhog. Very likely that date as a pivot, maybe three years before it and maybe three years after it was the period where I saw the groundhog multiple times. Strange. I would search and search for him every time I went around the cloverleaf. Seeing him was so exciting when it was obvious that, no… he was just sitting there in the grass. I thought of him as my groundhog, which is ridiculous because that’s kind of like thinking an actor, artist, or musician has a relationship with you when you’re only a fan. At least I never named him. He was just the John Nolan exit groundhog.
 
It definitely is strange how muscle memory works. I’m still looking for him, but it’s been years and years and years —at least half a decade or more—since he disappeared. My head and eyes turn and scan before I even realize what I’m doing.
 
Where did you go? I miss the possibility of you.

Sunday. Two hours in the resistance pool, the lazy river, at New Berlin. Plenty of time to notice things.
 
The male lifeguard looks like he could be in a boy band or a future boy toy — hair parted on the side, a definite, full flip.
 
A woman wearing perfectly fit black shorts with a nice line at the top of her thigh, beautiful thighs, a white beaded ankle bracelet, long reddish-brown hair.
 
The swim instructor has a long blue t-shirt that comes down to mid thigh, when she pulls up the hem, you can tell that she’s wearing a salmon colored swimsuit, hair pulled back in a bun, earrings, large mostly green tattoos on her thighs.
 
The girl lifeguard just yawned, twirling her whistle by the string. A tiny baby — perfect proportions, just little — crawling all the way up the steps to the jungle gym.
 
The waterfalls have been turned on in the splash field. A boy and dad exit the whirlpool. Both shake their heads and tug at their shorts the same way. I thought the dad said “sammy sugar” to get the boy’s attention. Later I realized the boy is mentally challenged. This happy teenager is having so much fun in the water. Hairy guy. Full black beard, blue goggles on his head, board shorts also in black. Whole black bear, front and back fur.
 
A complete cornucopia of sight and sound, warm chlorine in the air. Maybe I couldn’t see Tim because I subconsciously thought my brain would over-describe him. I can see these people. I can see them too well.
 
Boy band lifeguard is back. Chewing gum.

[About the day of meeting Tim for the first time at his office].

The day of. A full day off. 7am complementary meeting with personal trainer. Satisfactory. 1 hour Resistance Pool. Exhausted. What to do with 5.5 hours? In keeping with the theme All About Me, I checked scheduling for my hair stylist to see if there may be an opening. There wasn’t, but I took the opportunity to book ahead. What is something else that I could do for me, about me?

I’ve been biting fingernails for several weeks, been happening for months actually. Keep chewing. Almost can’t call the activity biting, more like the hand and a digit is the vice and teeth are the tool. Sawing, sharpening, grinding the nail with the tooth edge. Teeth gaps make the best planing. tools.

Idea: find a walk-in appointment to a manicure. Maybe some professional care would put me on a fresh start to not tear and splinter the nails apart. The nail tech began working my first hand. As he both pulled and snipped, he said that my cuticles were very long. His pushing and trimming the cuticles was rough and painful. Multiple times he had to add the drops to bleeding.

Ten digits were tender, sore all day. I was Badger when I snipped his toes a little bit too close. Whenever I put my hands into my jeans, the pockets would catch on the sore spots. My nails are super short, but the tech could have taken a bit more time filing them smoother. Fingers really hurt. Maybe just good opportunity to appreciate pain. The main evaluation of this manicure service…

I would much rather have my teeth drilled.