Tuesday evening I wandered over to Laura's workplace to keep her company while she finished some late-evening work. While I waited I grabbed some Post-It notes and left a message for the new receptionist, who had started on Monday:

Monday night we had book club, where we encountered an eclectic group of older poets whose pens are still anchored to the beat era for which their minds still pine. One of the poets wore a hat that appeared to be a dead peacock dyed neon blue. We relocated to a different region of the coffee shop and discussed Sinclair Lewis's "Kingsblood Royal". Though I do enjoy his writing style and the book was surely sensational at the time, now it falls in the "Eh" category. 

A while back I grabbed drinks with some coworkers, and I ended up in a conversation with one of my coworker's friends. She is some sort of author. I told her that I am in a book club, and she responded negatively: "That is a feminine thing to do." First, no it isn't. Second, why would she, as an author, take a stab at someone who enjoys books? Third, she apparently has never published a book (the Internet yielded no relevant search results).

I received an e-mail that stated: "Yes sir, your all set."

Three possibile interpretations:

1. He meant you're.
2. He misspelled my name.
3. I possess an "all set", which I presume is similar to the All Spark in the lore of Transformers.

Tuesday and Wednesday I performed open mic at the Purple Onion. Someone asked me to be in an upcoming comedy show. An invitation which I had to decline in a very "first world problem" fashion as I will be in Brazil on the date of the show. I tried to pass it off as simply being gone, but then they asked where I'd be. 

Thursday I woke up at 4:30am to be on an early morning phone call, and I lost the rest of the day in a blur of day dreams about feather pillows followed by seeing the movie "The Five-Year Engagement". The movie is okay, but the plot needs to be tightened up and the length reduced by 40 minutes.

And earlier this week I had my first attempt at the "I Wish This Was" stickers:

I have tried to write a new blog post multiple times over the last three days. Each attempt has been fruitless--Bradford pear fruitless, but without the dank smell of pollen. Typically when this happens I write through it (the writer's block, not the pollen), and a common thread appears between the paragraphs. Then I rearrange the paragraphs into an acceptable perfection.

Lately I sit down and find myself uncomfortable (the apartment is too warm, my chair too hard, the penguins too distracting, etc) or I find myself to restless (my desk is too cluttered, body eager to move, or I can't focus on a topic). More accurately, I feel a bit unbalanced and therefore bored and unproductive.

A few months ago, in a moment of introspection, I asked myself two questions: How can I feel more healthfully balanced? What makes me interesting? Both are good questions with a nice introspective bite that started a long string of thoughts.

On the question of health, I first divided health in to three types:

• Mind (Mental) - Bettered by Learning, Solving, and Remembering
• Body (Physical) - Bettered by Exercising, Eating Right, and Sleeping
• Spirit (Spiritual) - Bettered by Expressing (i.e. forms of art) and Meditating

Then I decided to focus on one aspect of each health for an uninterrupted 20 minute period a day. For aspects that don't fit neatly into 20 minutes, I decided to exercise them whenever the situation allows. For example, I might do 20 minutes of puzzles, 20 minutes of exercise, 20 minutes of art, eat right, and go to bed on time.

Finally I realized that each type of health can be combined with another in a way that lets: you more thoroughly enjoy the world, you help others, or others enjoy you.

• A healthy mind and body allow you to take part in adventures.
• A healthy body and spirit allow you to be at service to others.
• A healthy spirit and mind allow you to express yourself in a creative or passionate fashion.

On the question of interest, several thoughts came to mind. First, having an interest is moot if you don't exercise the interest. Second, the things I find interesting are things I admire. Third, I don't exercise my interests enough.

From there I began to couple my interests with aspects of health. For example, I try to walk to work every morning (health), which takes 45 minutes. During that walk I either spend my time lost in thoughts (meditation), listening to podcasts (learning), or doing language tapes (learning).

I've lost some of that balance lately and am eager to get it back because I know it makes me more agile.

And if anyone is interested, I try to listen to a different podcast each day: "You Made It Weird" (interviews with comedians), "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!" (game show about current news), "Mike and Tom Eat Snacks" (a humorous review of popular snacks), "This American Life" (stories), and "Radiolab" (where American Life is more about the stories of people, Radiolab is the stories of science).