blue öyster temptation
letters from the now #12
hello friends,
sitting in the usual writing spot, listening to Blue Öyster Cult. If you follow me on Twitter, you probably saw me meme about Blue Öyster Cult a little bit. I just got into Blue Öyster Cult, and I love Blue Öyster Cult. I can’t believe I didn’t really listen to Blue Öyster Cult until now. Blue Öyster Cult have a great sound, rock’n’roll, psychedelic, heavy metal, right up my alley. Blue Öyster Cult feel like a direct and very powerful precursor to Ghost.
Quick metalhead sidenote: The founder and frontman of Ghost (Tobias Forge) was also the frontman of an amazing death metal band by the name of Repugnant. They were ground breaking for a swedish death metal revival in the early 2000s. My buddy Rolex, who was following this genre revival with his own band Beyond, wrote an email to Tobias once, sort of as a fan/peer, that must’ve been around 2007. At the time Tobias replied, insinuating a change of direction with a “new secret project”. That project was Ghost, founded in 2008, which is now one of the most successful modern heavy / rock bands ever. It was cool to witness this exchange this closely, especially because Forge’s identity as the Ghost frontman was only officially revealed 10 years later. Felt like being part of something big.
I can’t remember getting as much into a band as I’ve been getting into Blue Öyster Cult in recent times. I’ve been bumping my way through my metal catalogue while working, that includes bands like the aforementioned Repugnant, Entombed, Death, Dark Tranquillity, In Flames, Katatonia, Edge of Sanity, Evocation, etc. The rock’n’roll spirit is strong with me right now. But a new oldschool discovery with as much weight as Blue Öyster Cult is quite novel to me and it feels so good. I think the last time I was grinding a particular artist this hard was probably when I discovered Jay-Z in 2020, when I diligently went through all his albums. My favorite remained The Blueprint.
So I’m gonna keep running this game and become a Blue Öyster Cult super fan. By the way, the first song I knew by Blue Öyster Cult was Astronomy, because Metallica covered it and I love the Metallica version. Now I’m knee deep. Into…
discipline
The theme of the moment is temptation and discipline.
My brother and I conclude our sobriety experiment (111 days no alcohol) two weeks ago.
We immediately design a follow-up, which is 111 days of calorie tracking, which is now on day 10. It’s going well and I’m getting interesting data about myself. I’m tracking calories honestly, without trying to adjust my behavior much. This allows me to observe my behavior, telling me that I tend to eat 3000-3500 calories in a day. This explains why my body composition contains a bit more fat than I would prefer.
My goal is 2500 calories / day and it’s totally doable, but it takes some discipline. I’m gonna try to get this discipline going in the next 91 days, I think it’s gonna be pretty doable. If you check out the “sobriety & sleep” post above then you’ll also read about my evening routine, and just by designing that routine with Claude it lodged itself into my being and my bedtime is now 9:30pm. This is memetically true, and most of the time my body agrees.
I’ve been drinking here and there, which is fun in the moment, but totally ruins this bedtime and I’m getting crazy hangovers from as little as 3-4 beers. Maybe drinking is ruined for me now. I guess I won’t complain.
The calorie tracking also invites gym time, and so I’ve decided to go to the gym on Mondays and Wednesdays. While I can’t do gym in the morning to get it done first thing — I just am not in that mindset in the morning, however afternoon after work (4/5pm) works perfectly — I think I can at least get it done in the “morning of the week”, aka. Mon and Weds. It worked super well this week. I’m doing a upper body & run / lower body split across the 2 days. It’s now Sunday and my leg burn from Wednesday is just wearing off. It feels great, going from Thursday to Sunday with no bad conscience or trying to cram in gym or some movement into the weekend.
It seems like this year is really a year of practice and discipline. First the writing, then food and movement… It’s amazing. I swear down, in any year before this one, I would have never made a pledge like “will write and publish every week” or “go to bed early” or “fixed slots for gym”. For some reason, this year it’s possible. Why??
temptation
Like I pointed out, plenty of temptation around with food, snacks and alcohol. But also other, more complex temptations find me this week.
One comes in the form of a job interview request. In the past editions of these letters I’ve excitedly reported on my progress and then disappointment in my attempt to find a J.O.B.. I was done with it and I committed to self-employment as a mediator. I’ll be writing more about this — or rather from this — decision soon.
Like some sort of zombielicious occurence, I receive an invitation for a job interview with a company that I applied at very early in the process, maybe even the first one.
It’s a good opportunity but I want to say no. Because these job scenarios always take me off the track of my made decision. But I can’t say no, it has too many upsides. So I engage in two interviews this week, and as always, the recruiter screen goes well (because of my W rizz) but the hiring manager talk goes so/so (because of my L technical ability).
I can’t escape the disappointment of this probably not going anywhere, so I wallow in it for about half a day, until I get pissed off for the time “wasted”. At the same time I develop an understand for why I engaged with it, cut myself some slack and mentally get back into The Grindset™. In the evening I go to a startup meet, introduce myself as a mediator and meet a lot of nice characters, which puts my Weltbild and my focus back together.
Temptation also comes for me in the shape of my littlest brother’s life developments. Without going too much detail, he’s been having some psychological problems during recent times, and he just changed back into a relatively normal living situation. He needs setup help and I think I know pretty well what he needs. I believe it’s a crucial time window, I feel like it’s going to close.
At the same time I’m arguing with myself, because I really want to lock in to my work, to which traveling is often an antagonistic movement. I just can’t seem to catch the focus I need then. I need this discipline.
I do believe I might be able to set some goals for the time away that I can get done. I need to go see my gf anyway (last time visiting Poland before she moves in with me!! <3) and I might as well extend the trip to go see my brother and my mom.
Somehow even with my best intentions I can’t put work matters before family matters. I suppose that’s somewhat virtuous, I’m just scared to be reckless or too dogmatic about it.
I remember this saying — you’re juggling three balls at all times: one is your health and wellbeing, one is your family and one is your career. Most people drop the family and the health ball regularly, out of fear of dropping the career ball, until they realize that the career ball is incredibly durable and can be dropped and picked up without taking much damage, while the other two straight up break after a few major drops.
This must’ve influenced my values a fair bit.
I’m also thinking about distilling the work I will do with my brother into some sort of teaching that can help others, and in turn count as work. I’ll figure something out, I’m sure.
Well, these temptations could be much much worse. All in all I’m grateful for my thoughts and intentions. I’ll do my best to heed these calls.
Thanks for reading and catch you next week.
Many blessings and much love
S
PS: Bonus points if you guess or know which game this is, bossman.
PPS: Check out Blue Öyster Cult if you haven’t yet. See ya ;D
nice field!!!