Dead people don't realise their dreams
You can live the perfect lifestyle. You can eat well, exercise regularly, elude stress, avoid the French, and you can still die before you're thirty. And then you can drink, you can smoke, you can do drugs, live on McDonalds, and you can live to be a hundred. There's no perfect formula. There's no science to life. All that you can do is give yourself the best chance possible.
The last blog that I wrote, I was talking about how me and Lilach, we're separated. Now. Somehow though that's made me feel closer to her even than I was even before.
I don't feel like we're separated. And even though she says that she wants me to be with other girls now (I don't believe her) so that I've got it out of my system for when we get back together when I'm finished in Utah... I just can't do it. In fact, I don't even want to do it. It just wouldn't feel right to me if I'm honest.
Honestly and truthfully, even though we're officially separated right now, she is the person that I expect to spend my life with. I don't have any scenario that runs through my head of my future, when she's not a part of it. This is how I see that things are going to go.
Six-months ago I was basically a drifter. By choice rather than just a bum on the street. But I was kind of just wandering the earth, traversing from place to place with no real aim or intention.
Lately though, I don't feel like that.
My life has suddenly got shorter. Because for the first time I can see a future in it. I have visions of where I'll be... sorry, where we'll be five-years from now. Ten years from now. What we'll be doing. And with that comes a degree of responsibility. Because...
These things aren't just all in my head. We've talked about it. We've talked about what we're going to be doing a year from now. Five-years from now. Where we'll be. And all of a sudden I feel responsibility. Because my failings on any number of levels could be the undoing of not only my visions, but Lilach's as well. I could be failing her if I was to never achieve certain things, on a financial level for example.
And there's this strange air of responsibility that I feel now, that I can see a shape to my future. I'm not just a gypsy anymore. Rather I feel like I have responsibility to more than just myself.
A family-life was always something that I saw other people having, and I was happy for them. But I never thought that it would be me.
I'm not the only one in fact. Went out for a beer a couple of nights ago with a friend that I went to university with in Canada. Haven't seen each other for a couple of years (since Mexico in '08 possibly). And we're talking about... where we are in life. And he was saying out of all of us, the people in our "friend-circle" from Canada, I am the last one that he could ever see getting to the point of settling down. Having a family. And six-months ago, I'd have completely agreed with him.
And let's be frank that it's a long way off ever actually happening. But for the first time I can actually see it as possible. I see it as more likely than not, that I've found the person that I'll spend my life with.
It used to be that I had a choice. That travelling would come at the expense of ever being able to settle into a real relationship. They could not go hand-in-hand.
But we've already talked about this. About how she wants to travel some more. That I want to travel some more before ever settling down. In fact it's too soon for both of us. It's like everything just fits perfecty. I've found the person that I don't have to sacrifice travelling to be with.
And premature I know, but we've talked about maybe one day having kids, that kind of thing. In fact it took a lot of hard-bargaining to win the decision that our boys will be able to keep their entire penises. But I don't see all of this as fantasy. I see it as something that could, and hopefully will one-day become real. And with that I'm finding myself not just thinking about day to day to day. About having enough money to get me to Utah, and then New Zealand afterwards. I'm finding myself already feeling a responsibility that one day soon, I'm going to have to have, a career. Or a reasonable income that stretches beyond doing fun jobs (like ski-lifts) for minimum wage. Because this dream becomes a nightmare if you can't afford to give your kid a good start in life.
We might have separated four or five days ago. But the fact that we did so on the assumption that it's only temporary. That we will be back together again soon, it makes it all feel even more real to me.
For the first time in my life, I'm actually having dreams that are about more than just me. I feel a responsibility to someone else not to fail. This is how I see my life going.
And where I feel responsible to Lilach to protect her, to not be the reason that her dreams aren't realised, what I can't do is protect her from herself.
You can never be sure in life. You can have the perfect lifestyle and die by the time you're thirty. Or you can smoke and drink everyday and live to be a hundred. All that you can do is give yourself the best chance possible.
Smoking? Your chance goes down. Significantly. Your chance to live. And in dreams, death is failure.
Dreams of kids, dreams of family, dreams of love. Dreams mean nothing if you don't live long enough to realise them. And in family you hold responsibility to others to give yourself the best chance possible of prolonging your life.
All the dreams that you ever had, your chance to achieve them, it's lowered by smoking. And if someone else is relying on you to achieve their dreams, then theirs is lowered too.
What's worse? Dying before you ever had children, or dying after their born and never getting to see them grow-up?
There's no science to life. There's no science to life. Nothing you can do will guarantee that you'll live to be a hundred. All that you can do is give yourself the best chance possible, to live long enough to realise your dreams. And when smoking significantly reduces this chance, how could I ever commit to someone that does so?
One cigarette. Perhaps even your next one. That will be the one that provokes the lung cancer, then the painful demise, before the premature death. Why? All because you cannot fight a little craving? Because you're too pathetic to not be able put a cigarette in your mouth? To not light it? This is why you're willing to throw away everything that you ever dreamed? And to destroy someone elses?
Giving up. It's hard. But is it really harder than taking to your death the knowledge that a little bit of will-power was all that stood between you and realising your fantasies? That your inability to not smoke a cigarette destroyed your life, and the people's that care about you?
There is no fucking science. There is no fucking science. But there's common-sense. Dead people don't realise their dreams. You give yourself the best chance possible. You're selfishly hurting more than just you when you don't.
For the first time ever, my dreams hinge on more than just me. And the thought of it all... "poof"... evaporating because of a slight lack of will-power one day. It would kill me as well.
Sweety I'm talking to you right now. I don't know any other way how I can tell you how important it is for me and to us, that everything I talked about becomes real. That we are what we think we are. And how important it is that we give it the best chance possible of all becoming real. And sweety when I see you smoking, or you tell me when we talk, I just start to see it all disappear. Because this can't work without both of us. And if you're gone because you didn't want to put out a cigarette one day, you're killing more than just you.
I don't know any stronger way that I can say it to you. Think about the life together that we talked about. Think about the kids that we talked about. And then think about it not happening. And then ask yourself sweety, ask yourself if you're really going to be content by saying, "well at least I had that cigarette."
I love you more that you can know. And you don't know how much it hurts when you smoke. Because each one, it puts everything that we dream about in jeopardy. You're killing me as well when you do it.
The Canyons
Two months now, two months until I plan on flying out to Utah (via New York). Haven't got a visa yet, haven't booked a flight, haven't even started looking for a place to live. But if it's any consolation, I have now been accepted into 'The Canyons lift opertators' Facebook group. So I suppose that says that I must be getting somewhere.
For the first time though it gave me a snapshot of where, all being well, I'll be spending my Winter.
I remember posting photos of Panorama before I went out there. And when I got out there and saw it in person... it really didn't disappoint. So hopefully The Canyons is the same. So here is my first exposure to what I'll hopefully be calling home for five or six of the coming months. God bless skiing.
Have your cake and eat it
I arrived home from an afternoon in London on Saturday evening. And I was greeted by this box exquisitely bound by a blue ribbon.
I untie it to be greeted by a huge chocolate cake. And written on the blue marzipan decoration: "Mazal tov Sweety." Hebrew for congratulations. Happy birthday. Something like that. I kind of got the feeling that Lilach might have been something to do with it.
And... you know it's kind of hard to put into words how happy that made me. I don't even know how you'd start getting a cake delivered to Twickenham when you're in Peru. It made me smile for a day though. To know that there's someone that cares so much. That's thinking about me that muc, to arrange something like that from so far away. It's something that I don't think that I'll ever forget.
It's things like this that make it hard to accept that we're apparently separated right now. Because... you know I don't want to feel like I'm not with someone that I know cares so much. And that I care for so much.
It's Monday now. 48-hours later. And I honestly haven't stopped smiling since.
That could also be attributed to the excessive sugar intake that accompanies chocolate cake being the staple of my diet for the past two-days. Of which I did manage to finish this afternoon having again had cake for breakfast and lunch.
But... I don't know. It just makes me happy. Just makes me smile to know that I've found someone that cares enough to arrange something like this from thousands of miles away.
I feel lucky.
Dr. Jro's 1% diet
I have something of a history of using myself as a dietary guinea-pig. And before the chocolate cake I needed to cut some fat. Now it's become a necessity. And I want to do it quickly. So... I've come up with a new diet. I sometimes wish that I wouldn't do that.
It has two rules:
The first is that everyday I must undertake at least two-and-a-half hours of fast walking. That's around ten miles. And fast-walking is classified as keeping my heart-rate at around 115-130 beats per minute.
The second is that I cannot consume any food or drink of over 1% carbohydrates.
Apart from that, anything goes.
So in preparation, all of the fresh foods that I already have of over 1% carbs have been frozen. And I just did a tour of Tesco's stocking up on what foods I could find in the value range that satisfy my criteria. That means eggs, bacon, steaks, salami, chicken. And did you know that you can even get Tesco Value French brie? Fucking French. But I do love brie.
What meals I can make out of this cocktail are... to be confirmed.
This is a short-term diet. I've designed it for quick and painful fat-loss. It's not something that you could do for a long period because... well I'm not even sure that it'd be safe. I'm anticipating around two-weeks, but we'll see how it goes.
I'm expecting side-effects, particularly over the first-week, to include headaches, tiredness, nausia, excretory issues, loss of sense of humour, long nights of sleeping and just general bad moodiness. But I am also expecting significant, significant fat-loss. So we'll see how this goes.
I think that two-weeks is about the limit that I'll be able to keep this up before it starts to become unbearable. And taking into consideration that I had chocolate cake for both breakfast and lunch today, my starting weight is 82.7kg.
So there you go. I'm expecting the next couple of weeks to be absolutely shit.
Sometimes these bright ideas that I have pan-out. And sometimes... well let's not think negatively.
I'll update how it goes.
Kiss my rss
Lastly quickly, I finally got around to finding out what an RSS feed is. And then I wrote the code for one for this website.
And basically, if you're as clueless as I was 48-hours ago, RSS is a way to subscribe to site updates. Updates or notifications get delivered to you somehow. So everytime I write a new blog say, or add a new photo album, I'll add a link to my RSS feed. And whichever way it is that you've chosen to subscribe to the RSS, it shall be updated accordingly.
Basically that's fucking it. I don't fucking know. Google it.
Anyway, the Jro's World travel blog RSS feed is located at http://www.jrosworld.com/rss_feed.xml. So... fucking click on that to subscribe.
I don't fucking know how it works, I've just learned how to write the code to make it work. And it does work. I've tested it. So if you don't want to have to come back to this site to check for updates everytime, just subscribe to that fucking thing. I'll keep it updated. It's fucking genius. What's the problem?