While Creating E-Book on ADDICTION, I Released a Serious Addiction!

June 17, 2026

Over the past week or so, I created another e-book (20 so far!), by collecting old essays that focused in some way on Addiction, and putting them together with a title page, prelude, note to reader, etc.  Put it up on the tendrepress website:

MY LIFELONG QUEST FOR FREEDOM FROM ADDICTION

Meanwhile, and I didn’t realize this until this very morning, during this same time period I actually weaned myself from another addiction, to screens! Not that I don’t get on my computer (like now), or ipad any more. However, I’ve broken through the neurological pattern that had made it impossible for me to actually focus on reading a printed book all the way through.

This refusal, this instant restlessness, when I tried to pick up an actual book and read it, word by word, paragraph by paragraph, absorbing its meaning over the time it took to read it, had been there for years. Many years. I remember first noticing it, and grew alarmed. But that didn’t stop me from staying addicted to screens, and foregoing actual printed books.

In other words, I had become afflicted with, what is it called, ADD? Attention Deficit Disorder. Couldn’t sustain a focus. Just couldn’t. Would become restless, almost immediately.

But! Over the past week to ten days I have found myself actually able to focus in a sustained manner. So far, have absorbed three books, all during times when I would otherwise have been onscreen, continuously distracted,  attention flitting from one thing to another.

And yes, this renewed focus on printed books has calmed me down. I’m no longer just seeking the latest dopamine rush, over and over again.

Another serious addiction busted. YES!

Grateful.

From “peace activist” to UFC advocacy? Huh?

June 16, 2026

I find it fascinating that I, who used to “identify as” a peace activist — and then discovered that I was mentally violent in pushing peace, so stopped completely, to begin a lifelong process of healing— was so “into” the UFC event at the White House. What? Advocating violence? Because that’s what it looks like, the “caged” fights, seemingly “to the death,” that involve brutalizing fighters seriously adept in boxing, wrestling, and martial arts.

Well, no; but certainly I am advocating that we do begin to energize ourselves. Especially men.

Indeed I remember even back in my old “peace activist” days, in Jackson Wyoming, having joined the movement to keep Reagan’s new MX “Peacekeeper” missile from being installed near Cheyenne. Even then, back in the 1980s, I noticed the men in our movement were softies, not energized. In fact, I briefly looked at the idea of making a pin, “Wimps for Peace” — but thought better of it.

Reading through this AI description, I ask myself, what’s changed? What’s really changed? Trump is another “Peace through Strength” president, just like Reagan.

And how much money does this nation spend on the military? What percentage of our GDP?

According to this website: 

Then I remember Gandhi, his philosophy of non-violence, what steered me in the direction of peace activism in the first place.

 

At this point, frankly, I’m seriously confused.