25-5-22-Th
143 ⏳ 223 🗓️ W21
RMSDJ 📖 ✍🏽
🌡️ 88° – 58° 😎
🌘 ♓ ♈
The light today arrived gently—muted by a breeze that felt less urgent than yesterday’s blaze. It appears the heat will give us a reprieve. And with that small shift in temperature, my thoughts cooled just enough to shape themselves into clarity.
Another conceit came upon me regarding The Fasting Life. The book, already layered, must stretch further. I now see the need to include a full reflection on fasting’s effect on stress—its capacity to soothe the autonomic storm, to turn reactivity into rhythm. Stress management belongs in this book as much as ketones or circadian wisdom.
Equally so, weight regulation deserves clearer emphasis. Not merely the shedding of pounds, but the dignified architecture of restraint. The way one moves through the day lighter—not just in body, but in burden. Cognitive enhancement, too, is no minor effect. Fasting sharpens. It pares away distraction. It gives memory a stage and thought a clean mirror.
And so, I must widen the scope. Not to bloat it—but to reveal what was always there.
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“A well-lived fast reduces the body and restores the self.”
I am also considering adding my morning supplement protocol to the book. Not as prescription—but as practice. These capsules and powders are not isolated interventions. They are woven into the tapestry of how I live—glucosamine, zinc, D, magnesium glycinate. They deserve to be named. They are part of The Fasting Life because they are part of my fasting life.
Further still: the vagus nerve. I may add a section on stimulating it—for digestion, resilience, and calm. This is no small nerve. It is the thread between breath and gut, rest and regulation. I suspect fasting, prayer, humming, cold exposure—they all sing through that same invisible string.
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Does the fast refine us because it strips us—or because it tunes us?
This morning I received a call from AD. His voice was worn but open. He had packed a truck with all his belongings from the townhouse he shared with his sister and son. Just as he prepared to leave, the sheriffs arrived. Eviction in full form. But fate—or something like grace—intervened.
He called his VA representative. The Veterans Administration stepped in, spoke directly with the sheriff’s department, and arranged for the landlord to receive rent payments through the VA. All AD would owe is a fractional contribution. The remainder, including possibly the back rent, might be negotiated and resolved.
He was lucky. Or perhaps fortunate in a way not reducible to luck.
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“Fortune rarely arrives early, but it often arrives precisely.”
I told him not to worry about the $15,000 he owes me. Not now. Not in this hour. Fasting teaches that holding on too tightly can constipate the cosmos. Let the universe move. It doesn’t need our squeezing. The best thing he can do is breathe. Rest. Repair. Rebuild. That’s what The Fasting Life is about.
He asked about my work, and I told him: The Fasting Life, Questions of Value, and WordQuest are all taking form. One a spiritual discipline. One a philosophical inquiry. One a linguistic odyssey. Each is a limb on the same body of thought.
He mentioned his Bitcoin venture. He still believes it will come through, though he has no timeline. I am not sanguine. These private placement deals rarely deliver more than a promise, and promises are cheap currency. As for the Stabler deal, he said he would try to reconnect. Perhaps a Zoom call by weekend’s end.
Still, I was pleased that he called. Sometimes just the act of reaching out is its own emendation. He mentioned his son is receiving financial assistance for school, which brought him some peace. That, too, is something to hold.
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“When life offers no answers, sometimes it offers a pause.”
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Inquiries & Illuminations
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Discipline is remembering your intention at the right moment.
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What in my life deserves emendation rather than reinvention?
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Stillness is the most eloquent form of alignment.
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What part of me am I still rushing to outrun, when I should be sitting with it?
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Grace doesn’t knock—it whispers.
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🙏🏾 Gratitude
The unexpected mercy of government aid
Cool air against sun-warmed skin
Books that expand as I expand
Friends who call without asking for anything
Fasting as a form of unfolding
Stillness before the storm
My own patience, earned inch by inch
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“It is not the fast that changes the world—it is the soul returned to the body.”
— RMS
RMS INSIGHTS ✍🏾 