I’m so tired I have no inclination to write at this moment, yet I do this because the only alternative I would have would be distraction. As I have blocked distractions I tend to go to YouTube and I quickly get fed up by the format. Most things on YouTube seem to move too slowly and its recommendation AI is terrible, at least for me, so in five minutes I often deflect from this distraction.

It is in this moment of deflection that I think: instead of consuming, I should be producing. But producing requires much more energy than consuming. At the end of the day, I don’t feel the creative energy necessary to produce anything, and so I come to blank.page to write my stream of thought.

But this is also creation! And it can be told by the quality of my writing that I am not in a good place to find the inspiration necessary to produce an interesting account of anything, and here I am writing down my own mental diarrhea which at this moment seems to have no value, though I do not know if I will ever come back and think I am glad I wrote this, even if it’s uninspired.

Speaking of diarrhea, I’ve been suffering from it since… I’ve forgotten when it started. I wish not to write much about my bowel movements, but I’m slightly concerned now that I know that the gut is the second brain, and the source of all serotonin in the body. Foul mood is often accompanied by stomach woes. William James would often speculate about the relationship of both in letters with a friend who would also manifest the same problem.

This evening I debated wether I should go to the gym or not. The past few days I’ve been taking it easy because of my stomach woes, feeling weak, not really putting the effort necessary to progress, or even mantain my current physique. But I did it anyways. When I arrived I looked at the exercise menu and nothing was appetitizing, but then I thought: I haven’t squatted in ages, but this is perhaps the worst idea to do when having stomach woes.

Still, I put the bar on my shoulders without any weight and I squatted a couple of times. It felt not only fine, but nice. Muscles that have not been excerted give a pleasure difficult to express. So I put two 20Kg plates, one on each side, and performed another couple of squats. It felt fine and pleasureable too.

So I loaded the bar with a new record weight, 30Kg on each side, and was pleased to see that I was able to perform the squats without any stomach uneasiness or even too much effort. After heavy weightlifting the body is inundated with happy chemicals, and I went on to the bar to attempt some muscle-ups, which I’ve been practicing lately. I saw much progress too, I’m very close to be able to perform my first muscle up.

And this went on and on, and at the end of the workout I had gone beyond what was a “normal day” even at 100% health (probably becuase I was well rested), and I was quite amazed at the difference between the expectation and the outcome.

Perhaps I ought to leave it at this: in times of uneasiness in body or in spirit, the expectation will not match the outcome.