This is the first post in over a month. This is inline with the reality that 2020 and the beginning of 2021 have been a blur due to the pandemic. One day fades into the next as there really isn’t much to differentiate them. We get up, to to work and school remotely, do exercise and/or video games, have dinner then go to bed. There is plenty of extra time in the day without the travel but it can be difficult to make effective use of that time. My mind seems to get stuck in deciding what the next activity should be and I’m aimless for a while.
I’m most active in the mornings when motivation and drive are high and this is primarily based on two things. The first is that for me the early morning is a fresh new day and I’m always awake before everyone else. The second is how I physically feel and I don’t know what to attribute it to. It is as though my body demands I be active and I can never just relax. I had wondered if this were due to always being in the yellow “warning” area of the blood pressure spectrum. Or perhaps it is psychological as my job is customer facing and I’ve always had to “be on” five days a week for the past 15 years? And so, as much as I’d love to sleep in my body wakes me up at 4:00 AM and if I do not get out of bed my body will demand I do so by 5:30 at the latest. I can never just relax on my own but must do something to force it like workout, get a massage or visit an onsen/steam bath.
This drive is what makes me do many of the things I do. It makes me write in this blog, it encouraged me to take up mountain biking and start getting in the ocean. It is this drive which makes me learn new things on the computer and so on and so on. If it were not there then I think I’d spend most of my time on in the La-Z-Boy reading and taking naps.
It is Saturday morning and I’m in my new favorite spot of the house which is my little reading nook on the second story overlooking the street. During quarantine we found ways to make more effective use of the space have and turning this little, front facing area into a reading space was a great idea. It faces the rising sun and so is the brightest room in the house in the mornings. Just a few weeks ago I got the idea to put a standing desk right under the window so as I write I could see outside. I haven’t found a standing desk yet so am using a fold up plastic table given more height by two plastic storage bins. Not elegant by any means but it does the job until I find that perfect antique desk in an estate sale.
Being Saturday morning the lawn care people have arrived at my neighbors house. I really wish they came on the weekdays instead of on Saturday because they ruin the morning tranquility with their leaf blowers. I recently saw that a city somewhere would ban loud lawn care machines at certain times on the weekends. I think that is a wonderful idea as I realized just how noisy our environment is when I was back in Ohio. I only get back to Ohio one or two times a year and my favorite aspect is sitting on the porch swing watching people walk by, seeing the squirrels frolic and enjoying all the lush vegetation that we don’t have here in dry California. However, I noticed that it is never really quiet. There is always a machine making a lot of noise somewhere and I am certain this has all affected our sanity. Now the lawn care people are leaving and for all their noise it doesn’t seem they’ve improved my neighbors lawn really at all.
Anyway, for the rest of this post I have quite a few things I’d like to write down so the subjects will change from paragraph to paragraph.
Cryptocurrency!
I love crypto! This may be hard to understand and so let me explain. I’ve always been fascinated by computers ever since we got a used Apple IIc from my uncle back in 1993. However, this interest ebbs and flows as I get stuck in a rut or there isn’t anything particularly exciting for a while. This past “rut” was in social media where my interest and enjoyment of it gradually declined over the past five years and then reached a breaking point when I realized how stupid many friends are with their support of Trump. As I like to continually learn I found myself getting a headache by their idiocy. Well, that just wouldn’t do. It is best to remember them for the experiences we had in the past and I learned there really is no need to keep in constant contact, even passive Facebook style, with them. Time to let go and get rid of the toxic environment caused by social media and so I did. I haven’t been on Facebook for two months and it is wonderful.
When I got rid of social media I found time to explore the internet like in the days of old and thus found Reddit and crypto! I stumbled upon crypto by accident when using Robinhood I thought it would be fun to own some Dogecoin. Suddenly my $200 investment jumped to $1,200! OK, I thought, I need to pay attention to this crypto stuff and down the rabbit hole I went. This was something new, something exciting and I wanted to learn! And luckily I began before this recent bull run when I’ve seen gains of 3 – 10x! So, this exciting new technology awakens that passion and excitement for the internet I had when the internet went mainstream, when I first ventured into chat rooms and when Facebook put everyone I’ve ever known in one place. Blockchain and Crypto is the future and I love learning about it. And through this learning I invest in coins and the excitement is greatly increased as I’m now holding potential “lottery tickets.” Blockchain and crypto is the future, and just like internet companies back in 2000 it is just a matter of which blockchains thrive and which die. I hope I choose the “Google” of crypto and not the Pets.com.
Crypto is such a new concept that it is still primarily the domain of internet nerds followed by very few investors who have taken the time to learn how to buy coins. This is why there are still such wild swings in the currencies, they are held by a limited number of “whales”, those who deal in hundreds of thousands if not millions and a relatively small group of people who have hundreds or thousands to work with. As for me, I began with the idea of just investing but it has become so much more than that. These are things that only others interested in crypto will understand and are the following:
- I’m using the Brave browser and love it.
- I now have a website on the blockchain! mcurtin.crypto
- An array of cryptocurrency can be sent to me using mcurtin.crypto
- I’m mining Gridcoin on my PC, Raspberry PI, Samsung tablet and phone.
- I’ve sent my son and some friends Dogecoin. This dogecoin I sent recently increased 6x!! I lost a $50 bet with a friend in the Superbowl and insisted I pay in Doge. Well, that bet recently increased to $300 now settling back town to about $200. As for me and my son we sold at about 0.39 and made a handsome profit.
Movies
I’ve recently been watching movies again. I’m always with my family so it has been years since I’ve watched a movie that I’m interested in, always deferring to whatever the family wants to watch. But recently I’ve found that after everyone goes to bed I really enjoy sitting in my reading nook, putting on the VR and watching a movie or YouTube (mostly crypto videos). I’m on an ’80s kick and have recently watched the following:
- Weird Science
- Wargames
- Sixteen Candles
- One Crazy Summer
- Real Genius
- Porky’s
- Porky’s Revenge
As well as movies that are not 80s:
- Meatballs
- Point Break
- 300
- Vendetta
One thing I realized is how much our society has changed since the 80s. The movies pretty much have only white people in them and there is a lot of straight nudity. In regards to the racial piece you can really see American society wasn’t too far from the era of segregation as it was quite evident in those 80s movies. As for nudity,yes, we have nudity and practically hardcord porn in popular HBO/Netflix shows today which is much worse but here is the difference. The movies back then were made for a wider audience and for the movie theater. Everyone was all together looking at boobs and some sexuality. Today’s shows have straight-up hardcore sex in them but are designed to be streamed at home.
Working Out
Aside from crypto one of the best investments I’ve ever made is my home gym. I refused to pay 24 Fitness anymore as they kept raising the price and one day my entire family would need to make use of a gym. So, I built my own for about $4,000 in the garage and boy has it paid off. The secret to getting a sculpted body is consistency and motivation. These are both very hard to do when you need to get in a car and go to a gym. They are especially hard when you have a family and not much individual time. However, when all you need is to go into another room then everyone can exercise anytime they want and you’re not throwing money out the window at a crappy, dirty gym like 24 Fitness. The second important piece for me was ambiance. I have to want to be in that room and a dingy, dirty dungeon wouldn’t do it for me. So I have nice mats down on the floor, sheet-rock covering the walls and ceiling and the single garage door can be opened then the entrance covered with a net for fresh air and a view outside.
Thanks to that gym and quarantine I have a better body and am stronger than I was when I was 19! At 43 exercise and building strength is really helpful as this is a time we all realize we’re middle age and the youth has slipped away. Young adults are 20 years, younger than us! It can be very depressing if you let it. But by hitting the gym, and especially by working out with my boys I feel energized. Yes, a big part of remaining young is doing things with my sons. In addition to working out, we do karate, we go to the beach for boogie boarding, we play video games together and have a lot of fun. My oldest has even expressed an interest in skateboarding. How I would love to go down to the skate park and rediscover something that gave me a lot of joy when I was eleven years old. This is the secret to staying young! It is also something that most adults normally wouldn’t do. I’ve learned adults (people my age) can get really boring really quickly. This is especially true in the Midwest. It’s all sports, food and beer. Whereas here in California, we have surfing, hiking, and an incredible array of culture and activities in San Francisco. It is good to become an adult here on the West Coast.
Well, I think that is enough for now. I have other activities to attend to and better get to them. The question is do I go workout or should I take care of the garden? I worked out yesterday so I think gardening wins this time.
