I had an idea about what I'm calling psychic energy. I believe that there is a connection between it and inspiration. Just as music, or some other stimulus can have the effect of pumping us up and giving us more physical energy, a sense of urgency, or inspiration, I suspect, can give us a boost. It is not to be depended on for a long exertion, but it can be integrated into the system periodically. In other words, lets say I read an Emerson essay, which is the most inspiring writing that I've ever read. After I'm done, I feel like my soul is on fire and I can take on the world. What I'm saying is that I have to realize that my momentary inspiration will be fleeting, and that eventually I will become sedentary again. That is why I need breaks and schedules and shit, and stamina building, to prepare myself for the long haul, when the inspiration wears off.
What about continual inspiration? I think it would loose it's effect, like all other stimulation when overdone. After a while it wouldn't work. However, I believe that a habitual meditation would be excellent and would give me dispersed boosts. To test this idea, I'm going to read Emerson, or some other inspiring writing, for a few minutes each day.
To recap my semi-organized, semi-stream of consciousness post, here's what I'm going to do for my return to the endeavor of living well and learning more about what that means:
1. Get better at allowing myself to take breaks.
2. Put less on my plate at first, and work up to a full schedule slowly.
3. Habitually meditate on inspiring writing or ideas.
4. (This one I think I only mentiond indirectly) I'm going to prioritize my values more distinctly. Treating others well is most important, followed later by producing works. So, if, like it is at the present moment, I can only do one or the other well, I'll do the former, and wait until I have more stamina to do the latter.
About our rating system:
It isn't great, but it could be worse. I'm definitely keeping my "Days Since a Collapse" score, because stability is a basic requirement of living well. I don't know about the Franklin score. It made me more conscious of my actions, which was great, but it also increased my anxiety by causing me to worry about every emotion, impulse, and reaction that I had throughout the day. I might pick that up again, but not right away. I'll write about the Franklin virtues in more detail later.
What I want to do is use two scores: one is "Days Since a Collapse" and the other is "Following my Plan", which will be how well I stick to my schedule and complete the items on my to-do list. I'll rate this with a 1 through 5, like the original system. It's rough, and may be replaced in as little as a few days, but I like it for now.

The first problem is clear and simple. The second problem is nebulous. Here's what I think was going on:
We recognize that we have physical limits. You can only run for so long before you must stop. I believe that there is at least one other analogous energy in people. I'll call it psychic energy. Before I get too much into it, I want to say that I can see that what I'm calling psychic energy may actually be a complex of multiple energies, but I'm treating it as one thing.
Psychic energy is spent when we try to get ourselves to do things contrary to our impulses. Even being "conscious", as Dan says, requires psychic energy. The only time we're not using this energy is if we're completely going with the flow and being passive. If you try to change your state of mind, or if you start working, or restraining yourself from eating something, or trying to refrain from shit talking, you're using this energy.
My hypothesis is that one's psychic stamina must be slowly built-up. This means that I need only a few tasks per day to start, with a lot of real rest, as described above. Over time I can work more, or add more things, but until then, I need to hold back, otherwise I collapse. I've actually experienced this phenomenon, of building up psychic stamina. When I first got to college, the work load seemed absurdly large. I struggled just to get everything done, and we all felt overwhelmed. Of course we were just at the beginning level, and things got much harder. But, things got harder and more intense gradually, so we became more capable of handing the load. Readings got longer, the science and math got more complex, and the philosophy got more technical, but my psychic stamina increased to meet the increasing challenge.
This means that for the time being I'm going to focus on the basics, and the most important things. I'm going to work and try to be a good friend, family member, and boyfriend. This means that I won't be writing for a while. I'm not sure how long the delay will be, but I don't want to rush things. I'm also not going to work out for now. My job is very physical, so I think that should be sufficient for now.

My crisis was a version of saying "fuck it", but it was spread out over about 6 hours. First I came home tired after a long day at work, and since I had to stay late, my schedule was messed up. I decided to skip the activity planned right after work and jump to the next one so that I would still be on schedule. This irritated me, and I was just distracted in general. I also felt sick. I had two sodas when I had limited myself to 1 per day. Then I didn't write, didn't do anything else, just fucked around, and went to bed very late.
Here are some things that I wasn't doing right. First of all, I wasn't giving myself real breaks during my break times. Here's how I looked at it at the time. I thought of a variety of things that can be relaxing at least some of the time. Included among these were playing video games, eating, sleeping, exploring new places (especially cities), and reading. In making my decision of what to do during my breaks, I figured that the primary concern was doing something that rested me. I went forward with the shaky premise that the things listed above all satisfied that condition. Then I figured that if they were all equally good according to the primary criterion, then I should select my acitivity based on which is most productive. Accordingly, I decided to read during my breaks, or explore new cities, but at the least, I would avoid video games and tv since they aren't productive at all.
The problem with this started because I was thinking of breaks as times when I can also do something productive while I'm resting. Then I started feeling pressure to read as much as I can during my breaks, so it became another thing on a to-do list, or another task. This undermined the primary reason for doing it in the first place, which is to rest myself. What I need to do from now on is to just rest, period, and not give a shit what i'm doing. It is time that I have to let go of...I can't expect to get productivity out of it (but if I exercise patience and look at things over the long run, it's indirectly productive since it recharges me for later.

What does it mean to live well? What would that look like? What would a person that lives well be like? What would he do? How would he respond to various situations? What would be his values? To what extent would his choices be a function of an a priori moral calculus, and to what extent would they take into account the particular nature of each individual circumstance?
These questions, for me, get at the heart of what I've been struggling with for as long as I can remember, and our blogger circle seems to exist for the purpose of our advancement with respect to these issues. One might argue that the answers to some or all of the above questions are not the same for everyone, or at all times. Maybe that's the case, but we shouldn't embrace the opposite extreme either. The opposite extreme would be absolute moral relativism, to the point where the idea of morality itself seems not to have much meaning. The issue for such a person might be, how can I get the most out of my experience? Or, how can I be happiest, or most contented?...
Damn it--I'm getting off topic. I tried writing a moral treatise for myself, to articulate where my thoughts are with regard to the issues that interest me, but I stopped, because the issues got too messy. I believe that ethics is immensely complex. Just having read some of the classic moral treatises of the west have made me less quick to think that these issues are simple. I find that as I write, I don't expose my premises, or I don't fully bring the reader to where my thoughts are. These problems are not fatal, it would just require revision and careful writing. For the time being, I need to get back on the ball, so I just want to make a few comments that were promised in my last post.