Holiday stress, Knicks, and more
I’ve been feeling stressed out lately. It’s not just the holidays, or even mostly the holidays, but I think they are helping push me past my limit. I don’t want to sound like the Grinch. Christmas is probably my favorite time of the year. However, as an adult, there’s a lot of additional work that goes into it.
I have some pain in my left thigh. I believe it’s stress, because I don’t feel it when I’m able to settle my mind down. It can get genuinely unbearable, though. I’m not sure if I need to add some new meditation passages, take a break from the blog, or what. But something has to change.
I try to save (Cell) Culture Talk as a reward to myself for the drudgery of mass-emailing letters, but I’ve been cheating a bit lately. Anyway, here are some of the things I’ve been playing, watching, and reading.
Game — Magic: The Gathering Arena. I was playing with a gimmicky kind of deck, that I thought was pretty good, which made opponents run out of cards. But as I started getting matched against better players with better decks, the gimmick worked less well.
Now, I’m using a more conventional deck, featuring lots of artifact creatures. If there’s a central card in the deck, it’s probably Reinforced Ronin, that interacts productively with Patchwork Automaton, Oni-Cult Anvil, Dragonspark Reactor and others.
Sports — Knicks lose to Mavericks, 121-100. There are always a couple of games each season after which I’m ready to blow things up, fire the coach, and trade everybody. This was one of those games. I’m not completely out on RJ Barrett, as a lot of the Knicks fanbase seems to be, but I’ve accepted he’s probably not going to be a major star.
Sports — Knicks beat Cavaliers, 92-81. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say this game saved Coach Tom Thibodeau’s job. He might still get fired, but he bought himself a little bit more time. As a side note, have commentators Mike Breen and Walt Frazier always been stationed directly behind him? It seems super awkward when they’re talking about him losing his cool with the referees and he’s like two feet away.
Meditation passage — How Great Is His Name! by Swami Ramdas. This one emphasizes the importance of the mantram. It’s one of many aspects of Eknath Easwaran’s 8-point program I need to do a better job with.