Seemingly stuck at 188 – And I think I know why

The unanimous opinion in the fitness community seems to be that you should not weigh yourself every day when you are in the midst of a diet or weight loss plan. It makes sense that the daily scale reading would be somewhat unreliable for an overall picture because based on a number of factors ranging [...]

Brains do funny things

 For more than seven years now I’ve dealt with on and off bouts of depression. None have been particularly awful, but the indescribable feelings of low mood and reduced energy do come and go enough to be noticeable in my life. Sometimes they are fueled by stress that is not handled correctly. Other times they [...]

$34 to get me through to next week

Within the last hour I was going over my personal budget. From each paycheck I try to deduct a about $150 and distribute that between two savings accounts. The remainder of my pay goes to recurring bills such as my Department of Education Direct Loan, Sallie Mae loan, a car payment and a collections agency [...]

Sleep deprivation

I work in government. It’s budget season, and though I am not privy to any of the dealings–as my line of duty is much different–we are all busy and all stressed out. It’s been more than a week since I did laundry and the burgandy checkered shirt I wear right now is the last of [...]

Living in rubble

I suppose that it may be a little rash to compare my apartment to a bombed out building in Beirut, but it feels that way. Today is the tenth day in a row that I have put on a shirt and tie and gone to work. Normally, I have weekends off, but with the state’s [...]

Negative thinking

Since the age of about 13 I have had on and off bouts of depression. It is easy to chalk a lot of this up to heredity as my mother, father and two siblings have had depression, two grandparents and even a great-uncle of mine committed suicide here in Albany in the 1930′s. Depression is [...]

My dying city

Part of living mindfully is accepting the things that cannot by your own will be changed. It is with this knowlege that I arm myself whenever I venture to walk down Central Avenue, Albany’s main strip or any other part of the decaying corpse that we live in. In my heart, I love this city, [...]

No luck with the scratch-offs

I don’t know exactly why,  but I felt lucky a few times this week so I bought Lucky 7′s scratch off cards from various convenience stops. Each time, however, I was surely mistaken, as I got nothing. Sure enough, I hate the lottery and rarely play it, particularly scratch-offs, but I figured I’d take a [...]

Visualizing the right mate?

It sounds a bit crazy, I think, but after more than a year-and-a-half of dating girls I’ve met through friends or social networking sites and finding no chemistry and them finding none as well, I’m willing to try mos tthings short of a Russian bride. A New Age friend of mine suggests visualization. To find [...]

Thing not done

I snapped the picture below this morning while I walked to the bus. There was no particular reason for taking it and most of the images that I grab with my digital camera are quite random. Nevertheless, when I looked at it, it provided me a more profound thought than I anticipated. Ever since I [...]