I feel so good right now! It’s 9:25AM and I walked 6 miles round trip to Albertson’s. I got

• Three bags of rice
• A bag of dried garbanzo beans
• Two cans of garbanzo beans
• Coconut creamer
• Almond/sugar/salt snack
• 5 lbs of passover matza bread/crackers(?)
• Small bag of chex mix
• Gluten free garbanzo-based rotini
• 3 bars of soap

It didn’t seem too heavy at first, but walking all that distance and the elevation on the way home was enough to make my whole body ache. I’m making these trips to the grocery store a routine… I’m going to get so stronk!

I think next time I will buy more bags of dried beans rather than cans of the same thing. I end up dumping the aquafaba down the drain anyway, so I might as well not buy the aquafaba in the first place.

If you see recipes with aquafaba, you’re getting trolled. That’s my view on the ingredient, anyway. Aquafaba gets turned straight into the most disgusting and bubbly gas you could ever have. Farts from aquafaba are comparable to explosive diarrhea… Do yourself a favor and say no to anything made with it!

Aquafaba is just the liquid found in canned garbanzo beans, by the way.

But really, having to walk to the store for groceries is making me really appreciate things. I appreciate how effortless it is to drive and do the same thing. It takes a fraction of the time, and I burn a fraction of the calories. My vehicle is doing all the work!

I was feeling very burdened by the weight on my shoulders. I was carrying the big box of Matza crackers in my arms, and everything else luckily fit inside my Jansport backpack. I appreciate the shopping baskets at Albertson’s because they hold about the same volume of groceries that will fit in my backpack. It’s easy to portion how much stuff I should buy by filling up my basket to the point where it is just about full.

I never had to worry about this when I drove my car to get groceries. I could make one trip to my vehicle with a cart full of groceries, and I could take as many trips as I wanted between my car and my apartment once I got home. Now, I’m going through the aisles, being very picky about what I put into my basket. I pick up a can of garbanzo beans and instead of immediately putting it in my basket, I hold it in my hand and imagine it being added to the weight of the groceries already in the basket. There’s an extra layer of complexity that I have to worry about now!

I felt like my whole body was being put to test on the way back. The durability of my feet was being challenged. My shoulders, my arms, and my back were being strained from the food in my backpack. My daily exercise walks felt like a breeze compared to this! It’s about double the distance of my daily walks, the ground is harder, and the elevation travelled is much greater!

I was getting a good workout, at a length that was unpracticed. I got to the point where I started thinking, “this sucks.”

That’s when I started counting my blessings. I started naming things that I’m grateful for.

I’m grateful for the cars that pass by me and give me extra road room.

I’m grateful for my family and friends who love me and care about me.

I’m grateful that I have a grocery store to walk to. I’m grateful that grocery stores exist at all and are well stocked. I’m grateful that food is plentiful and it’s there just waiting for me to buy it.

I’m grateful for sidewalks. I thought this a lot, because there are a lot of sections on that round without sidewalks.

I’m grateful for the sound cars make as they pass me. Both the road noise produced by the tires, and the engine noises. I always have something to look at and be stimulated by. Oh there goes a Honda. Oh that’s a nice Nissan. Oh that’s a loud and stinky pickup truck. It keeps things interesting.

I’m grateful for delivery drivers. All kinds of drivers, from truckers who restock grocery stores and provide for people, to grocery and fast food delivery drivers who keep people comfortably fed.

I’m grateful for the green grass along the sides of the road. I’m grateful for the warm spring weather. I’m grateful for that tree in the middle of the Valley Bible Church lot which nobody has pruned, nobody needs to prune, and it looks fantastic because of it.

I’m grateful for my brothers. They are great friends and family and true individuals.

I’m grateful for 7 Wonders board game. I’m grateful that we were able to play it online last night.

I’m grateful for boardgamearena which is a jenky website but very popular and very featureful. I’m grateful for it because it gives me hope that I can release a jenky website and gain a large audience not because I’m the best coder, but because I can make something that works good enough and is useful.

I went on like this, finding things to be grateful for. It was especially easy to do given the voluntary suffering I was going through.

That walk was difficult, but I am grateful for it. I rehearsed in my head what I would say if someone stopped and asked me if I wanted a ride.

No thanks, I’m training for life.

Indeed, this is precisely what I was doing this morning. Life is hard, life is a chore. It is okay to seek comfort, it is okay to live my dreams. I can make it happen, but it’s going to be difficult and it’s going to take a lot of work.

My first item on the agenda for living a good life is to be physically well. I am grateful for my mobility and my health. I’m grateful for my long legs and my endurance.

I would like to work towards being in top physical shape, to the point where I can get a bicycle and get around anywhere in all of the greater Spokane area. I don’t even plan on relying on busses. I simply want the strength and the conditioning to be able to bicycle anywhere between 5 and 50 miles in a day. For example, I want to be able to cycle down to Dragon Parlor Games in the morning and play board games with friends until 5pm. Afterwards, I want to be able to bicycle all the way home, no problem!

That’s about the longest distance that I want to work towards at the moment, but in the future I think I would like to be able to bicycle all the way to North Town Mall where my friends often watch movies. Actually, B. is in that group and I think I want to distance myself from her, so maybe that’s not a destination I want to plan on at this time.

Progress, not perfection. That is my goal. I want to make a weekly trip down to the grocery store and improve my strength and endurance to the point where I feel comfortable carrying even more weight on my shoulders than I did today. I know I can get there because I have a wonderful bio-mechanical machine at my disposal. I can treat it right and train it, and it will reward me with increased endurance and vitality.

Heck, I rode 50 miles on a bike in one day before. That was when I was in boy scouts and it really sucked. I’ve done it before when I was young and weak, and hadn’t trained much at all. I can do it again now that I’m older and wiser, and appreciate the effects of physical training.

Ugh, I’m being all melodramatic about this. Or maybe that’s all in my head? I’m not sure, I’m feeling rather sleepy at this moment, and my mind often wanders to self-deprecation in this state. I gotta work on that!

The ultimate goal is to be able to cycle down to Tae Kwon Do, train, and cycle home. I think that is going to be an incredibly difficult task, but it’s one that I think I can safely do with regular practice.

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I took a little break from journalling to make some music. Then I did some reading about d3.js because I have an idea for a simple website. My brother B. and our friend S. have this friendly competition going on where they keep track of who got the most kills per match. I was thinking that it would be pretty neat to give them a Google spreadsheet that they enter their kills into, then the simple website reads that google spreadsheet and displays the data on a nice graph.

They were joking about starting to keep track of their scores starting in may, and I think a graph would be a perfect way to display that data! I could make it like a sports team stats chart, where maybe there’s a line for each player we play with. We can compare scores and get some competition and find out who’s the top dog of the group!

The thing is, I don’t know what kind of graph would be best for this sort of data. I want to show kills over time, but also who “won” each match by getting the most kills. It would be super cool if this all could be automated to the point where I could simply fetch data from the API of the servers we play on! But I don’t think that’s a trivial thing to do. I’m looking for a quick project where I can learn a bit more about d3 and apply what I learn.

I don’t want to add in authentication of any sort, which is why the google spreadsheet came to mind. I’d rather not use google products because google is evil, but if it’s the best tool for the job, I’d bite the bullet and use it. I bet there’s an alternative though. Something as simple as Etherpad would be excellent.

I’m focusing on simply reading about D3 right now. The link to the ObservableHQ tutorial on D3 is quite in-depth, and there’s a lot to take in. I actually took a break from reading and took a nap, because I was feeling loaded up with knowledge! I hear sleep is like a save button for the brain… We’ll see how much I can recall from what I’ve read!

I’m using the Pomodoro Technique to it’s fullest extent today. I used a session to journal, then I broke for meditation. Then I spent 25 minutes in LMMS and singing along with a simple bassline I created. 5 minutes of meditation after that. Then, I read about D3 for 25 mins, meditated for 5, then read for 25 more. Then I took a power nap and I feel excellent and rested again.

It’s 12:39 now. I misspelled the Jewish bread/cracker things I got from Albertsons. Passover Matzos is what they’re called. Surprisingly minimal ingredients. Passover non-bleached wheat flower, and water. That’s it! They’re like a giant saltine cracker (minus the salt) with closely spaced holes to where they can be snapped into smaller size crackers. I already ate about 4 of them right as I got home after going to the grocery store. I’m thinking I’m going to slather some peanut butter on some next. That’ll be a tasty treat! Wheat is incredibly energizing. I’m grateful for these large crackers.

84. I will remember; often difficult roads lead to beautiful destinations. (Like the road to the grocery store!)
85. There is more to this life than this moment; I choose to keep moving forward.
86. I am capable of bringing my dreams to life. (HELL YES!)

I covered gratitude in this article so I’m not putting them all at the end. However, I do want to mention one more thing. I’m grateful that the drivers I encountered while on my walk were alert enough to not drive off the road and run me over.

I didn’t experience social anxiety like I did last week when I walked. I think it was maybe because I already encountered that so recently, and worked through the feelings, and I came to the conclusion that I had nothing to be anxious about? Or perhaps it was because I was so at peace that I didn’t need to go to that place of fear.

I did experience fear during today’s walk, but it was a fear of getting struck by a car and having to deal with a police report and getting a ride to the hospital that didn’t cost me an arm and a leg. (not an ambulance.)

That’s a fear that ran through my head as I walked so closely to fast moving cars on the road without sidewalks. I think this fear is a lot better thing to worry about! I know that I could be injured from a fast moving vehicle, so I keep myself out of the line of their travel, and I stay alert to drivers who may not be paying attention.

I like that. I checked the facts and I know that my fear is somewhat justified. As for the ambulance and police report, I figure I can deal with those when or if the time comes. I could call a family member to come help me, I could make a police report on my own, it would be okay and having to think that far ahead is not as rational as being worried about getting hit in the first place.

I like that because it means that social anxiety got kicked off my list of worries. I don’t need to feel the shame of social anxiety when I’m walking to the grocery store. It’s unnecessary and irrational! I think this is a small success for today.

Excelsior!