Nemo makes a poor photography subject: he doesn't sit still. I dogged him for half an hour last night, playing with Lane's 300mm lens, and the best I could do was get some images of his tongue. Kris likes this shot because it feels like Nemo:

I met with Dr. Comic-Book-Guy the other day to discuss my sleep study. I told him the CPAP machine didn't seem to be doing a whole lot for me. "Give it time," he said. We discussed other possible causes of my fatigue. "You certainly could exercise," he told me. "And cut back on sugar."

Funny. That's what Jeremy and Jennifer have been trying to tell me all along. While I know the advice is sound — and it's advice I've given myself for years — these are two areas of my life from which I cannot seem to escape ruts of bad behavior.

Paul C. and I had an e-mail conversation related to this topic:

Paul: What is the energy that sustains "bad" habits? Why is it so hard to channel the energy that so effortlessly flows to soothing but "bad" behavior into "good" behavior.

J.D.: This is the central question of my life. Seriously. When I find the
answer, I will tell you, but you have to tell me if you find it first. I went for a two-mile run (crawl?) this morning. I walked for eight of the twenty-one minutes it took me to creep down the road. But I did it. I did it. And I hope to do it again tomorrow.

Paul: I have found one answer here. The answer takes work to get into your being. Unfortunately, bad habits feel like they inhabit much of my being. This is largely untrue when I reflect on it. However, trying to over come the magnitude of habits I have makes me feel weak when I try to replace them with positive behavior patterns.

Why is it so easy to stick with old, familiar habits even though we know they're bad? Why is it so difficult to pursue good habits, or even other bad habits? I want to get up every morning and go for a run. Why can't I make myself do that? I want to write fiction when I get home from work every day. Why can't I make myself do that? I want to cut back on my internet usage. Why can't I make myself do that?

As I wrote to Paul, I have begun running. I was talking with Sabino the other day, and he mentioned that his sister-in-law Trina had goaded him into trying to train for Run Like Hell, a half-marathon held in Portland on the day before Halloween. "I don't know if I can do it," he said. "Maybe you should do it, too."

What the hell? I thought. Maybe I should. Forget the fact I haven't run in five years. Forget the fact I'm overweight and out-of-shape. Forget the fact that I'm an old man. (Okay, I'm not that old.)

Rather than think about it, I've just been going out and running. Or plodding. My running is comical at the moment. And sad. I'm like a one-man herd of elephants, clumping down the road, gasping for breath. I run about two miles in about twenty minutes, though about half of that time is actually spent walking. My legs are sore. It hurts to climb the stairs at home. But I'm glad to be trying this. Pam recommends that I allow at least a week for the pain to go away, and I will. I may not run the half-marathon, but I'll try to stick with running for a while.

I'm also trying to reduce my sugar intake. Following a suggestion left in a recent comment, I bought an entire kilogram of dark chocolate in various shapes and forms. The commenter was correct: a little bit of dark chocolate goes a long way. I don't have a need to eat a full bar of the stuff. A little chunk is satisfying, especially if I consume it with blackberries.

Whether from the running or something else, I've had vivid dreams the past couple nights.

On Tuesday night, I dreamt that I was driving along a twist riverside highway with Tony, Jeff, and some random older woman in the car. We were in the middle of a fierce windstorm. There was debris scattered across the road. We came around a bend to find an enormous oak blocking our way. Suddenly an eighteen wheeler came plowing through from the other direction, smashing the oak into shards and splinters. The older woman got out of the car to see if she could find a path through the debris, but when she did the vehicle became too light; the gusty wind began to lift us into the air. We were going to blow away. We shouted and shouted for her to get back in the car (for some reason she was in no danger of floating away herself, but the car was), but then the alarm sounded and I don't know how the dream might have ended...

Last night I dreamt that Kris and I had purchased several bales of hay from a u-haul place (meaning that you hauled the hay). We drove to the farm to pick the stuff up. "I already picked it up for you," a grizzled old farmer told us. "It's up in the loft." We went up to the loft and tried to move the hay, but between us we couldn't even budge a bale. They were heavy as gold. We began to bicker; we each thought our way of solving the problem was correct. We sulked. Finally, I gave in and did it Kris' way: I unbound each bale and carried the straw, handful-by-handful, to the opening and threw it down below. This took a l-o-n-g time, but eventually we had a pile of hay at the bottom of the barn. "Now we have to rebundle it," I said, so Kris went to get some baling twine. (From where?) I climbed down and began to gather the mounds of hay into perfectly rectangular bales again. When we were ready to load the bales, we had to wait in line behind our former neighbors from Canby: Rick and Cheryl. They, too, were bickering. In the end, we left with our hay.

Flash, the neighborhood bully, found his way into the new bathroom yesterday evening. When Simon found out, he was livid. Mind games ensued. When I tried to separate the combatants (after snapping photos, of course), Simon slashed my foot. "I hate that Flash," he said.

On this day at foldedspace.org

2003 — Libraries I Have Known   In which I remember libraries I have known, both good and bad.