21 Mar 2024, 04:36

First meeting John of New

(written 04:36 Thursday 21 March 2024 AEDT)

Dear God

Today is the day I will meet John of New after seeing him on Alex Ferrari’s podcast Next Level Soul back in August 2023.

This is the first timeslot that was available. 7 months booked solid. Nice.

06:20

I’ve just listened to several of his videos, mostly those labeled “Coffee Time with John”.

21:18 Sunday 24 March 2024 AEDT

Here’s the recording of our session. Maybe I coulda jumped in, but I’m a great listener and I just let him talk.

20 Mar 2024, 12:41

art.robnugen.com extension on my Mediawiki instance wiki.robnugen.com

For a while, I have been paying an extra $5 per month to keep one of my servers running PHP 7.4. In the past few days, I have started poking around my art.robnugen.com extension to get it up to Mediawiki and PHP 8 standards.

Follow along here:

https://wiki.robnugen.com/wiki/Art:Rock_Map_-_December_2014 (currently features a <dump> tag as the basis for updating my <permalink> tag)

https://github.com/thunderrabbit/art.robnugen.permalinks (repo that I’m updating)

20 Mar 2024, 10:27

Good morning routine

This morning Jess and I worked on the images for the new workshop we plan to host here on March 29th. Then some cuddles and kisses (sans sex so far today) before heading out to get some food for today: coconut milk from Scoop, veggies and such from Harris Farm, then two 2-liter Nudie juice bottles from a different grocer near Harris Farm.

As a challenge, I carried the juice bottles with a single finger each on my right hand: index and pinky fingers. Index finger was fine, but pinky was a bit tired by the time we got back.

Now with perfect timing it has just started raining; oh now it stopped. nvm. Oh now it started again yay perfect timing.

20 Mar 2024, 08:11

Images for our first co-hosted workshop

My first draft:

2024 mar 29 connection circle for men and women first draft

With Jess' ideas:

2024 mar 29 connection circle for men and women

Meetup size

2024 mar 29 meetup connection circle for men and women

19 Mar 2024, 17:04

Busy walk crossing the street

Haha Google Maps

2024 mar 19 busy walk

19 Mar 2024, 09:43

Lovely Lush Valley

For some reason, Lovely Lush Valley is called Cooper Park in this reality.

Matt and Amanda were there as I arrived at 7:02am for a meditation.

The earth was still soaked and trees were still drippy from rain so instead of a sitting meditation, Matt suggested a walking meditation event.

An amazing fig tree with tree-sized roots criss crossing connections down a small cliff inspired us to stop and gaze at its splendor. I wondered about its history: how do roots reconnect further down the line?

16 Mar 2024, 19:53

Paranoid about bus taps

20:36 Saturday 16 March 2024

Opal cards are debit cards which can be used to ride trains and buses in Sydney.

Tap On / Tap Off

Simple, right?

Yes, but there’s a delay from the time of the tap to the time the UI responds.

Tonight, curious if my tap was saying SUCCESS or if it was still saying SUCCESS from Jess' tap, I tapped again.

Now I thought the interface said I tapped on. Oops. So I went to the bus driver and asked. He said I can check, so I did.

ALREADY TAPPED ON

He said he couldn’t do anything about it, and he had to get going, driving the bus and all that.

Jess said, “You’re too paranoid; I just saw SUCCESS and didn’t worry about it.”

Now, I must admit, being described as paranoid isn’t something I like; in fact it kinda pissed me off. 😡

Interesting. I felt into my feeling and realized my version of the story is that I tapped again to do the right thing, which can be boiled down and traced back to my desire to be seen as a good boy.

I asked Jess, “do you have a recommendation as to how to handle it?”

Instead of answering, she began calling the customer service number on the back of the card.

“If it’s just call them, I can handle it,” I assured her, but that didn’t dissuade her from calling them.

She was nice on the phone. The result of the conversation, in summary: “call back in 24 hours.”

When Jess hung up, I said, “Thank you for checking.”

She goes, “it’s not checked yet, they said I have to call back in 24 hours.”

“Um yes, I got that. My meaning is thank you for checking the situation. Thank you for what you’ve done already.”

Jess put a reminder in her calendar for tomorrow night; I activated a timer for 23:55:00 on my phone.

Silence lingered for a while and then I said, “I’m sorry for being paranoid; I didn’t mean to cause you any more distress.”

Jess thanked me for apologizing. Then she goes, “I just don’t want to take on any more responsibility.”

“I’m happy to call them tomorrow if that will help you.”

Jess checked her calendar event and let me know the bus stop name: Campbell Parade.

“Thank you. I’ll call them tomorrow.”

“It has to be at 8:30 (pm)”

No shit. (I didn’t say that.) I said as articulate as possible, “I set an alarm for 23 hours and 55 minutes from now so the time will be perfect. I’ll need to borrow your phone,…”

“That’s fine”

“.. but you can remove it from your schedule.”

“I did. Just don’t talk to me in that tone of voice.”

I said “I won’t,” as I began to walk away. I already felt furious so the best I could do at that moment was walk away for literally a few seconds to breathe.

When I came back, Jess got up and walked away.

According to my countdown timer, that was about an hour ago.

I walked to the beach and have been standing here while the sand zamboni goes back and forth clearing the beach of any big debris.

It’s too cold to stay out all night but I still don’t fucking want to go back to her apartment.

How amazing I have been planning for a week to buy her flowers tomorrow.

21:55

Sitting in silence inside Bondi Pavilion, I heard someone ask if I was okay.

I said, “technically yes; I just had a fight with my girlfriend so I’m just sitting here a bit.”

She patted my shoulder, “you got this.”

So I headed back to Jess' apartment.

I could hear Jess was listening to a podcast, so therefore presumably in a relatively good state. I went inside and gave her a kiss on the forehead. “How are you feeling?”

“Much better, thank you.”

Jess pretty much immediately apologigized and acknowledged it was stress from unrelated stuff which had really gotten to her.

I held space for her as she cried out the other stress and we were thereby able to connect with much more heart and mutual love.

14 Mar 2024, 22:04

Thoughtful Thursdays

(written 22:04 Thursday 14 March 2024 AEDT)

Tonight Jess and I greatly enjoyed Matt’s Thoughtful Thursday event at his apartment, just 10 minutes walk from Jess' place. Great food; great connection; great format:

While we ate his vegan gluten free cooking, Matt guided us in a check in about something we’re proud of for the past week. Then Matt spoke about “intention” including its etymology which includes the meanings of “stretch” and “lean toward”. Then we had a meditation while Matt played hangdrum. Then conversations in pairs for five minutes per person, basically reciprocal listening style. Finally we finished with closing intention for the upcoming week.

2024 mar 14 thoughtful thursday.

13 Mar 2024, 22:15

filming at Blackwood

(written 22:15 Thursday 14 March 2024 AEDT)

Last night on our way home, Jess and I saw lights at Blackwood cafe where they were apparently doing a bit of filming.

2024 mar 14 filming at blackwood.

13 Mar 2024, 10:28

No more root canal treatments

09:30am Wednesday 13 March 2024

Holistic dentist Dr Howard suggests removing this tooth with an abcess below it.

Hmm very interesting to hear the dangers and ineffectiveness of root canal treatments. Removing my molar doesn’t sound like what I wanted, but… true enough, there’s an abscess under one of my teeth that got a root canal many years ago.

Dr Howard’s main point seems to be ya cannot possibly clean all the bacteria from the 6-10 kilometers of micro tubal nerve canals, just 8 bacteria wide.

Sealing that shit inside eventually causes the bacteria to “morph”(?) into anaerobic bacteria which causes damage etc etc blah blah blah.

🤔 Hmmm