— Health for the soul

I’m reprogramming myself, a little.

Hit that link. Two reasons.

1. In case you didn’t see the post before.
2. In case you saw it and took the [free, non-obligation] action requested, and nothing happened.

I had quickly tossed all of that together before heading out the door very near spur-of-the-moment for an 800Km trek to the north of Thailand. If you never get anything else from me, learn to do that one thing. Drop everything and go…just like that. No reservations.

… In that rush, I didn’t test anything. Later, I checked, and: zero submissions. Huh? I can understand lack of interest, it happens, but zero? Turns out, the form-submission wasn’t working. It gets worse. None of the forms on the site were working. Anyway, I got it all fixed, so if you were someone who tied and cursed, try again and smile.

It’s 14 months now that I have been going 100 kilometers an hour. Never slowing down, never idle. Always doing something. Even sleep has been generally crap for the first time in my life because I can’t relax.

I have never slept in. Not once. I can count on one hand the number of mornings I’ve been in bed after 05.00. After 07.00?

Zero.

I got up late just this morning, 06.30. But that’s because I didn’t hit it until 01.30.

This is what an obsession with alcohol does if you’re so inclined, and then stop the alcohol. I never drank because of laziness or anguish. Alcohol is a serious upper for me. It has to be enough to render me comatose (a fuck of a lot in a short span) for it to be a downer. Alcohol always made me want to do stuff.

So now I do even more stuff.

Sober.

Marijuana is a lazy-ass, stupidity-wanking downer for me. For this reason, I hate it. I also detest people who think dope makes them smart and insightful and wow, man.

Fuck off. You’re a moron.

(What is it about humans who marvel at their own ability to think in the abstract? Mental masturbation.)

… Anyway. I look back at what I’ve built over the last year, and it’s pretty cool. Some hate it. Some way prefer the drunk-Richard posts and videos. They seek entertainment.

I don’t care. That’s not to say I’m satisfied with how things are. I’m not, but the path forward is one of my own making. I have suggestions from others to consider. Onward is the only place to go.

A big part of the huge volume of postings, water-hydrant level, is that I was building pipelines and want something flowing though them. Post series of various sorts, AI Chatbots, Midjourney cool-ass images from my crazy steams of consciousness as a feature, downloads, Discord server, and more.

Now I can slow down. Everything is in place, and the marketing plan is almost ready to kick off, complete with a budget for social-media ads. We’ll see. I doubt it’s going to start off shattering worlds. Almost nothing ever does. 5% luck would be nice, though.

I’ve given it thought rather than posting 1–2 times every day for the last week. It finally dawned on me this morning.

Richard: model it after your crazy gym training!

And everything fell into place and I instantly knew the way forward. What are the elements?

1. I began July 1 and did 30 straight days. My “pipeline building and filling,” above.
2. I took a week off. Now.
3. I began a long-term, 4-day-per-week routine with 4 variations to mix things up, which I did for 8 weeks. So, 3–4 posts per week, tops.
4. I took a week off. I’ll do that every 8 weeks, just like the gym. It will give members a chance to catch up, too. Maybe I’ll sync those weeks off…then I can fuck off somewhere for a week and not worry about anything.

… Although, I’ve undertaken another stupid-crazy 6-7-month program that has me busting it 5 days per week…just because it’s designed for 20-somethings and I can do it too at 62.

But I’m doing this is conjunction with the TRT and HGH, in order to cash-in on the benefits that cocktail provides.

(If you think TRT and HGH is untoward for a 62year-old, you’re most likely ignorant, fucktarded, and I don’t give a fuck what you think that you think. Just watch this if you want to know anything.)

This new program, patterned after what Brad Pitt did to play Achilles in Troy, is really something. True gym-bro stuff. It’s tough. It’s supposed to be. 25–30 sets, 5 days a week (10-12 sets 3x per week is a respectable program). In total, it will be a 7-monther, as I said. I may do another one that’s 21 weeks patterned after Hugh Jack[ed]man’s 15 years of gym work to only get better and more jacked, man, for each role as Wolverine.

At this point, I’m frolicking with it all. And again, all it took was that mental switch that happened during that 30-days-straight in the gym where I had said that I’ll do it, and no way I was going to report failure.

(Funny thing. Never have my unsubscribes to the newsletter and member cancelations been higher, or general engagement lower, than since I began this physical culture stuff. What’s the solution? Should I do a poll to find out what readers want me to write about? Fuck no. The solution is to seek out and market membership to audiences who want the sucky, hard-life realities…and forget about anyone looking to read bullshit that suggests they’re smart and on top of everything…just a teensy little tweak right here, nothing too disturbing… I want only people looking to be fucking disturbed to their core daily and who are ready to do a lot more than fuck-all about it.)

Onward.

Here’s a general outline as to how things are going to go beginning Monday.

• Series posts (currently the No-Pill 114 and PC:GDF) once per week (1 total; of either, or any new ones I introduce).
• Here’s What I Think once per week. This is the one where the post archive here is for members, but each one goes out free on the email list first.
• One wildcard post minimum, 2 max (but rare) drawn from the general things I post about: diet, exercise, philosophy, culture, politics, current events, travel, expat, stories… et cetera et cetera. When I do 2 wildcard posts in a week, almost certain that one will be about whatever is The Current Thing.
• So, minimum 3, maximum 4 posts per week.
• Every ninth week totally off not a peep anywhere, even Discord or social media.

… I went to Chiang Mai (and back).

I knew this bar girl in Chiang Mai way back in 2020. I liked her and have always kept in touch cordially. She’s a 30-something girl, from central Thailand. She and sis care for the parents, both in their particular ways. No kids. During Covid, when she went back to the homestead, I’d get pics sometimes of her tending to the rice fields, repairing fences, even up on a roof doing repairs. Typical rural Thai. Self-sufficient and can do most anything. Resourceful.

Respectable.

(I don’t even bother trying to explain to Westerners how Asian culture works in relation to women sometimes doing what they do to make ends meet or seek a better life altogether, while still having the respect of society. It’s hopeless trying to explain it to a Judeo-Christian-Ethics programmed brain…too solipsistic for there to be any hope of understanding.)

Just over a year ago, I got wind she was in Phuket, over on Bangla Rd. in Patong, doing a stint in a beer bar. It was only 4 days since I had stopped the booze. I thought it might be a good test. I headed out on the MC for the 30-minute drive at 20.30, had a good chat with her over some sodas for me, “lady drinks” for her (about 4 bucks each, she gets half or more, depending on the place), back home before turning into a pumpkin.

I drove up again the next day and took her to lunch at a nice beachside restaurant.

… To give you a grip on what sort of scene can progress around here, she used to be a cook at a restaurant in Bangkok and one day about 18 years ago, a British fellow came in. He’s been her “boyfriend” ever since. He doesn’t support her, knows she still works the bars when he’s not here, comes out for 3 months per year, pays her “barfine” for the whole time, has her exclusively to himself.

She essentially learned English from him. Not only is her English one of the best of any Thai I know, she’s the only one with a Brit accent, which is quite lovely. The typical Thai accent on English is not charming. Hers is. Quite.

Well, he finally brought her over to England and I had a nice vid chat with her last December as she’s sitting in a flat south of London somewhere. She got to spend his three months, there, before returning to Thailand.

Anyway, that’s the brief intro.

… Thursday began like any day. I’m up at about 04.00 and at my desk. For some reason—and I haven’t communicated with her in some months—I gave a shout-out ‘hi’ at 05.06 according to the timeline. 10 minutes later, ring-ring. Vid chat on Line.

She’s in her car at 05.20, drunk (more than I’ve ever seen, including her birthday party once), and parked somewhere in Chiang Mai. She’s a bit distressed about something and finally, just to cut through it all, I ask, “Hey, remember that restaurant on Loi Krao Rd. we went to, back during the Covid lockdown? What are you doing for dinner?”

… I haven’t travelled anywhere since the drive from Phuket to Pattaya back in February, detours in Hua Hin and Kanchanaburi. I wad a voucher for a free flight from VietJetThai because of a hyper-delay last January, and it was about to expire.

So, I booked, threw some stuff in a bag, made arrangements for a bus to Suvarnabumi, hit the gym to get day #4 of 5 in, got cleaned up, and ordered up a Bolt to the bus station.

Thankfully, this was a trip where everything went off without a hitch.

Upon arrival in Chiang Mai, I grabbed a taxi right over to Montha, a hotel/apartment combo place where I’d stayed some months during Covid and snagged a room for 25 bucks.

Stopped at PaLynn, a bar right next door, and got all caught up with Frenchman Patrick and his wife Lynn, proprietors, and a few of the same ol’ clientele.

Then it was off to see the girl for dinner and have a chat about what’s up with her life. Damn, no pics.

Nice catch up. No going into chick drama; so, sorry to disappoint on that score.

I was up by 05.00, which is when I discovered that form-submission problem. Have you given it a test, yet? Got it all fixed before taking a taxi to CMX for the flight to BKK. Again, all went off easily and even the arrival in Bangkok and deplaning was perfect for the next bus to Jomtien in about 40 minutes. The end-of-line station is right next door to FoodMart, a farang market. So I did some shopping.

Ground beef, apples, onions, eggs, yogurt, and honey. I’m doing a pretty-low-carb for a few days or few weeks we’ll see. And though I’m not tired of all the pork by any means, I thought a stint of double-the-price ground beef might be a thing to do. I’ll head over to Thai Costco (Makro) tomorrow to get it at a far better price, since I’ll be needing a bunch of kilograms for the week.

The idea is not mixing my carbs (apples, honey…oranges too, once I get to Costco Makro) with fat, which is in the meat and eggs. Eat them completely separately so the metabolizing hierarchy does not come into play (where dietary fat gets stored because there are significant carbs in the meal).

Pro-tip: always mix about 1/2 tsp of MSG per pound in your ground beef because I like to be thanked.

Shopping complete, I grab a Bolt the 5 minutes back home and walk in the door about 25 hours to the minute from when I left.

Exhilarating.

What’s more?

I headed to the gym for #5 of 5 and done for the week.

I didn’t even miss a workout day.

* The pork chop with shroom sauce at Chez Marco in Chiang Mai. For 10 bucks. Comes with pommes frites.