just checking in. Haven't written in a while.

I'm having kind of a hard time living my best life right now. Nothing
big, nothing serious. Overall, things are great and life is good.
It's just that I have all of these rules that I've created for myself
around health and nutrition and physical and mental well being. Eat
this, don't eat that. No caffeine, no booze. Meditate daily. Eat
vegan. Work out every day. Etc, etc, on and on. When I'm following
this plan to perfection, things are good and I feel great mentally
and physically. It's just kind of a drag that it sometimes feels like
it takes so much willpower and strength and focus in order to follow
this routine that I've built for myself, this lifestyle that I've
prescribed myself.

I think and feel about it right now in kind of the same way that I've
heard religious people talk about their faith, and how it's always a
struggle to live up to these high standards, but all you can do is
try and strive, and know that you'll slide and backtrack sometimes,
and then you'll refocus and double down and do good again.

Catholics and addicts know it.

My primary methodology for living life is this: you have your
baseline goals, things that you are reasonably sure you can do no
matter what, that you'll pretty always meet; and you have your reach
goals, things that you aspire to in a perfect world if you're living
your best life.

I know I'll always be achieving my base line goals. Hopefully I'll be
somewhere near my aspirational reach goals. But in reality, I'll
spend most of my time some inbetween. Which is a fine place to be.

This works well for me because it gets rid of the binary hit or miss,
success or failure kind of feeling that I am otherwise prone to
suffer when trying to work toward goals. It gets rid of the feeling
of discouragement and defeat that I otherwise would likely feel if I
don't reach my goals. It allows me to feel a degree of success as
long as I am somewhere between my upper and lower bounds.

So that's where I'm at right now. Still fine. Still doing good. Just
acknowledging that I'm hovering around near my lower bounds of
acceptable behavior at the moment, and have been for a while, and I
would like figure out the best way to take steps toward getting back
up to my upper bounds.