Today is Day 14

It's day 14 of the new program. For those unfamiliar, the program started on my 37^th birthday. The idea is to take a full circle ride around the sun whilst following several rules, with the goal of eliminating coping mechanisms and getting back in touch with my authentic voice.

Of course, the first two that came to mind were alcohol and caffeine, but I had already began a campaign to minimize the use of both of those. I hadn't had caffeinated coffee regularly in almost a year, but went on a coffee bender prior to the start of the program just for the heck of it. And I had been having chai tea lattes a lot a the cafe at work as an excuse to get up from my mind-numbing job. Sort of a mini-escape. But I need to ditch all that.

I went vegetarian in May 2015, so meat wasn't an option either. I stopped watching news and deleted all my news apps on the phone six monthgs ago. But I did scrap together some rules to follow.

My theory is that if I stop coping, I may start taking more steps to find a job that is not so odious to my nature.

The primary objectives for the program were:

1. No alcohol (eliminates coping mechanism for social situations and job dissatisfaction)

2. No coffee (caffeinated or decaffeinated – reduces spending and artificial productivity, reduces exercising and resting heart rate)

3. Exercise Every Day (intended to help weight loss, but I am now wondering if this is a coping mechanism in itself)

4. Log All Food (hopefully improve quality of fuel. Very hard to do in this society. It's easier not to eat than to eat healthy in America)

5. No Sweets (my ultimate addiction – sugar. Eliminating this is a purely mind over matter thing, but also for health and weight reasons)

I also added secondary objectives, focused on minimizing spending:

1. No Amazon orders (reduces unecessary spending)

2. Buy a maximum of one lunch per week (reduces uncessesary spending and coping mechanisms / lunch breaks)

3. No cafe purchases (eliminates small spending that adds up over time / coffee break coping mechanism)

4. Kill Cell Phone While Home (hopefully, building up to killing it altogether)

So far, I've met all the primary and secondary objectives. I lost 6 lbs the first week but have been holding steady since then. But weight isn't the primary goal of this program. No, the goal is self control, and a voluntary hiatus from all those things that serve to make me servile, little more than a lab rat stuffed in a gray cubicle.

And here, on day 14, perhaps the clarity is beginning to return....

Sure, Marx was right that religion is the opiate of the people, but our modern overseers need much more than that. Try as they might, they can't stop all progress. Too many people have seen through that particular charade. They are now turning to an expanding and ever more sophisticated number of treatments to ensure your slavelike devotion. They have alcohol to numb your senses and give you a brief respite from your trite, meaningless existence. For those that need an extra push, they have a cadre of doctors ready to prescribe you all manner of pills for any symptom you wish to address, but will offer no suggestions on how to address the root cause. They have all manner of fast foods, restaurants, and grocery stores to address your hunger at the market price, but will never satisfy your basic nutritional needs. They have an endless array of garments, gadgets, and gizmos to have you chase in and out of fashion, spending your life earning money to buy things you don't need. They have houses and home improvement stores, so that while you never notice that your house has more space than you will ever need, somehow it always needs more work. They have an all too perfectly rigged political media machine to feed you lie after lie after lie, and a dismal education system to ensure that you won't be able to tell the difference. They have credit cards and mortgages, to ensure that even if you aren't buying their things, at the first of the month they always get their pound of flesh.

Yes, it's starting to return. That bane of clarity. But, is clarity really that bad? Sure, the other way is more.....comfortable.

But maybe I want to be a more noble lab mouse.....