Week 1 - Temperance.

Franklin has this to say about temperance: "Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation."

The general idea here is moderation in your intake. I am not a large guy, but I have recently lost a bit of weight, and I'm pretty happy with where I'm at. Much less face fat. Part of that is being more active these days, but another part is not stuffing myself at every meal.

I enjoy food quite a bit, that is sure. Rich food, buttery food, but also tender leafy food too. I notice a lot of folks around me will eat until near busting. It's not flattering.

As far as drink not to elevation- I think this is pretty self explainitory. Drinking can be fun, when appropriate, but drunkeness is not any fun, and never appropriate. Be wary the feel-good buzz, the tipping point at which you say "I feel really good right now, this is a fun time. I'd feel a bit better with just one more drink". That almost never results in just one more drink. The obvious dependancies are also an issue here.  At any rate- how did I do this week?

• Monday - Pretty good, no gigantic meals no alchol.
• Tuesday - Less good. Had a catered chicken dinner at work and ate a bit too much. The free meal is always a pitfall. Also no alchol.
• Wednesday - Hardly ate due to some illness. No booze.
• Thursday - Much the same. No booze, but did get a good spin going due to side effects of medication...
• Friday - I think today was pretty reasonable, though my sub for dinner was pretty filling. I haven't had anything to drink, and don't plan on it. 

I think I'll end up going over the weekend in the next post. 

The Virtuous Life

Instead of re-writing a bunch of stuff, I'd just reccomend checking out the excellent posts on The Art of Manliness. Brett McKay and his crew have done a great summation of what is there, and it's where I learned about it.

What I'm going to be doing here is work on one of these virtues each week and post my results, self-chastisements, and observations. During the week I may have some posts inbetween if something big or important has happened. At the end of each week I'll summarize what I've done. I think the first round through the virtues, I will post a description of the virtue and what I hope to accomplish by studying my behavior in regards to it.

That's all for now, we'll be starting soon.

Prologue

I have trouble writing in a book. I don't know why, but I do. I am instead going to try to keep track of things here. I am going to begin logging my behavior in regards to Ben Franklin's 13 virtues. More on that in the next post. My hopes in doing this are that I will make myself a bit better each day, and learn some things about myself in the process.