Category: Morning Thoughts

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On My Mind This Morning – Medical Scares, Indigestion, and the Universe

Good morning all, it’s 4:50am and I’m banging my head against the keyboard thinking about content. Let’s start with the several hundred I’ve been paying to figure out what is going on with my abdomen.

Backing up to the beginning of the year, I decided to lose 30 lbs by September. This is an easy enough goal with plenty of time to get it done. I’ve abided by the SMART principles and, for the last 5 weeks, I’ve been on target, though only through exercise. My eating habits have not changed. I still love big portions and rich food.

About 2 weeks ago I was in the market when I felt a dull ache under my sternum. I was constantly rubbing at it, trying to soothe the burning when it began to balloon up. I know that’s not supposed to happen! I thought about going to the doctor and dismissed the idea. Perhaps it was a fluke. Fast forward 10 days and several painful episodes later and I was seeing my doctor. A physical check confirmed to him that my abdomen was swollen, and he couldn’t immediately tell what was wrong. I needed a scan.

It took two hours to get to the other office, get scanned, and retrieve the results. In the end, there was nothing that could be found. I am 100% healthy, apart from the stabbing pain in my abdomen. The final diagnosis was indigestion, the remedy of which is half portion sizes and no more hot sauce. Damn.

The Universe is a funny thing sometimes. We want to lose some weight, and when we’re not exercising or watching our intake, the Universe comes along like a big, friendly dog and nudges us in the direction we need to go. On the plus side, I should have fewer issues reaching my goal and avoid gout at the same time.

This Isn’t a Hobby – Upcoming Site Redesign and Posting Schedule

Let’s start with the definition of a hobby.

Hobby (n): an activity done regularly in one’s leisure time for pleasure.

Alright, let’s stop there. I’m not interested in tiny horses or weird bicycles. My apologies to any enthusiasts out there. A hobby is something done in one’s leisure time for pleasure. In this definition we have three main ideas, 1)an activity or action, 2)a mentality under which the activity is taken, and 3)a reason for doing the activity (i.e. pleasure).

The activity is easy enough to follow. Whether playing a musical instrument, gardening, painting, or any physical activity you’re actively doing something. The mentality under which the activity is taken might be new for some readers. Leisure time is a mentality associated with lower levels of anxiety, stress, and depression. The endpoint, pleasure, is your reason for performing the activity. You’re not looking to get more than a couple hours of joy out of performing the activity.

Action. Mentality. Outcome.

With that in mind, I can’t say that what I’m doing on this site can be considered a hobby. Yes, I’m undertaking the activity of writing and posting my thoughts to my readers. However, my mentality is not one of leisure, it is one of teaching what I have learned. Do I get pleasure out of this? Yes, and no shortage of all the other feelings that creatives have concerning their work. So, is FreemanFrancis a hobby of mine? No, it’s my platform for getting my ideas out in the world.

With that said I will be conducting a site redesign over the next couple of weeks to better align the content of the site to what I am writing. I will be publishing weekly or bi-weekly articles, the topic and length of which will alter the posting schedule a little. In addition, I will be writing daily blog updates with what I’m currently thinking about, much like this update here.

That’s all for today, I need a coffee refresh and a quick re-read of this post and a few others.