So today I had my weekly appraisal-of-progress with Rian.  And… it didn’t go that well.  They can’t all go well but I just hate it when that happens.  It wasn’t bad in some ways but in lots of other ways it was really really bad.  Mainly I just hadn’t practiced my songs enough.  Oh, I’d been playing every day but working on other things, i.e. learning a Boswells Sisters song that I’d become obsessed with, and running through some old rockabilly tunes, and working on a new song of my own.  I hadn’t run through the songs I was supposed to though.  Oh well.

My mind just wasn’t in the right place today, sorry Rian.  Last week I had no shows scheduled; this week I have two, and I guess that’s rattled me a little even though I did it to myself!  And, despite all efforts to get my diet together, my body chemistry is badly out of wack. Way worse than it was before.  So the verdict is: I have to stop quitting things.  I quit pot and cigarettes, and that was a huge thing all on its own, I need to just let that work its magic for awhile.  Saying I was going to quit carbs and sugar all in the same week (only 2 weeks after quitting ciggies) was a pretty dumb idea.  I wasn’t even EATING sugar before I decided to quit it!  Not refined sugar anyway.  And now I’m all obsessed with it; the very idea of giving it up completely makes me looney with craving for it.

So fuck that shit.  I’m going back to where I was a week ago and see if I can just maintain that for awhile.  Dietwise, I’m going to TRY practicing moderation and trick myself into giving up my piggish ways without actually telling myself that’s what I’m doing.  With the exception of quitting cigarettes, which had to be done cold turkey, the tapering-off method is the one that tends to work best for me.  I.e., with the potsmoking, I never sat there and told myself "it is time, I’m giving it up forever!" I just — found myself deciding not to buy it one day, and I went with that, and then a few weeks later I looked back and realized "Hey, I guess I kinda stopped smoking pot there didn’t I?  Huh.  Whaddaya know." I did the same thing with candy-bars early this year, I just bought them less and less and then one day I found that I wasn’t buying them at all.  Just EEEEEased my way out of that habit.  Why did I even feel the need to say "I’m quitting sugar?" I didn’t even have a damn sugar problem!!  Oh yeah… because I felt like I was gaining too much weight after quitting smoking; I wanted to cut carbs and thought I’d throw in the complete sugar-abstinence as part of that.  And I felt like I was suffering from low blood-sugar at times.  So… why didn’t I just have a peppermint or something if I was feeling that way?  Nope, I had to say I was quitting it completely.  Well… that idea didn’t work, it isn’t working and it’s not gonna work that way.  Avoiding the carbs is fine, that’s working out pretty well, but it’s probably not going to work to say I’m quitting them completely.  And let’s just forget the sugar thing for now, that was a dismal failure.  I’m just gonna ease up on myself, deal with one thing at a time here, no use workin’ myself up into a lather over all this.  And uh… I might want to think about practicing guitar a little more too, heheh.  That would be good.  :-)