What the fuck is "simmer"?

What I really want is life is precision. What I practice is chaos. I am so determined not to give up on this path I've chosen for myself. Today when the opportunity presented itself to justify the decision to eat hot dogs and hamburgers, I reminded myself of why I'm doing this. Sometimes the reason I give is because I don't want to disappoint John. Sometimes I say it's because I just "can't". Today, however, it was an active mindful decision to do what would be effective for achieving my goals. It was a decision to practice the values I want to build in my life.

I suppose I could have eaten more fruit. I felt bad for eating what seemed like too much sugar in the morning though. Honestly, I think I had a distorted perception of reality from the moment I woke up. I was pretty out of sync with the bad dream I had last night. I felt guilty again. I felt like I was still to blame for another person's decision. Logically, I know that's not reality. When I woke up this morning, though, it sure felt real.

I guess it might also be "that time of the month." I don't know... time escapes me these days. That might explain the dizziness and crabbiness today. The emotional roller coaster I'm on also might be pretty well defined by my lack of sleep, lack of eating, and general bad luck these days.

Something has to go right sometime, right?

I am comforted by the precision of my work. I only wish I could make my life fit into a nice standard operating procedure. Life isn't a test tube though. It's messy. I wish I could control my mind. I guess it feels pretty good to at least be able to control what I eat. Making rice eludes me because everyone says to "simmer" it. What is the precise definition of simmer? What temperature at what elevation? For how long? How would I measure that?

And how do I measure progress in my life?

If life were like making brittle, I'd have it down. Give me a number, a target, an objective with subtasks and I'll do it. Leave me to asses right and wrong in the context of my own life, and I'm a wreck.

I feel bad for not being up to working out. I feel like a failure. But what else is new? I guess the effective thing to do right now would be to eat, rest, and prepare for tomorrow. I feel bad for "falling off" so often though. I imagine that most people don't melt down as much as I do. Or maybe everyone else is better at hiding it... or at just doing what needs to be done. I feel needy and whiny. I feel like I'm relentlessly hammering the nails into my hands to crucify myself for not being as "good" as everyone else is. I guess it's time to make the decision to just do what's effective for this moment. I can do that. Sleep.