How was my day, you ask?
I suppose this blog is about non-rhetorical questions. I'm actually asking you, the reader, stuff. This blog is for what I don't know the answer to and want to know the answer to. I want you to send me what you think the answers are.
I'm researching heart disease. I don't want to die of heart disease, that's why. My dad died of an LAD heart attack when he was 49. He was slim, active, didn't eat excess sugar or processed food, non-smoker, and not high enough LDL-C to be put on medication, at least by up to 2003's standards. My mom said he had borderline high blood pressure but wasn't on medication for it. So why did he die when he was forty-freaking-nine? His dad and his brother also died of heart attacks. Am I screwed? The only thing that signaled he might have a problem was slightly elevated blood pressure. Everything else said "A-okay." I am slim, active, don't eat excess sugar or processed food, don't smoke, and don't have high enough LDL-C to demand medication. And yet none of that consoles me because that's what my dad was and, like I said, forty-nine. I'm doing well blood-pressure-wise, 112/64 at last test. Though that usually rises with age. Tom Dayspring sort of implied once that high blood pressure means you're probably insulin resistant. Ivor Cummins had a slide in a presentation that said there were people who had visceral fat (a component of metabolic syndrome, which is related to insulin resistance) without "subcutaneous fat" (fat on the outside of your abdominal wall, the fat we're used to seeing) so you could have metabolic syndrome and appear skinny. Maybe that was my dad. Maybe he had "normal" (by 1990s medical standards) fasting glucose but elevated post-prandial glucose and insulin which was damaging his arterial endothelium and causing atherogenic dyslipidemia (low HDL-C, high triglyceride, small LDL particle size) so his LDL-P was high but his LDL-C was still low because his particle size was small, and he had visceral fat and slightly high blood pressure and BOOM that's how you have metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease and still look skinny. Total speculation. I have no data on any of this. Maybe he had high Lp(a) which worries me because then I probably inherited it, but they do have those antisense drugs in the pipeline which might be expensive but might be worth it to save my life, Peter Attia thought that in five years they'd be done. I won't be able to afford them for at least five years anyway. But does high Lp(a) or high LDL-P matter if you're insulin sensitive and your endothelium is in good shape? Great question! That's why I research heart disease! I listen to podcasts and lectures and take notes. And I'm going to compare them all. So stay tuned for my Heart Disease Internet Content Literature Review. Because people don't all agree about everything. There are people out there who read tons of scientific literature and there are recordings online of some of them talking about it, and I'm going to keep listening to those recordings and trying to distill what they say, identify points of consensus, identify conflicts and specify the nature of the conflicts, then look more deeply into the conflicts and see which arguments I'm more convinced by and see what I think is genuinely unknown. I'm lucky there are people actually reading all this scientific literature and distilling it and citing it so I can just listen to them and compare what they say.
This blog is not for me to think aloud to myself. This is to communicate. I want feedback. Um...but there's no question for you in that paragraph. I just told you that I'm listening to a bunch of people who have done a lot of research about heart disease talk about it and I'm going to compile and compare all their notes.
You know, in a sense this blog may be an attempt to try to start communicating about authenticity. And the thing about it is that it is seemingly futile to try to talk in the abstract about it. So some sort of journal would help me show you on the day-to-day level the kinds of decisions I'm trying to make and, you know, I think I think about authenticity in-context a lot, so presenting my thoughts in context might help make sense of what I'm trying to say. I developed the theory in context.
Inauthenticity at the walker today:

• I don't really care if people touch a lot of the art. If it's a bare-canvas painting or some surface that fingerprints don't come off of, then fuck you for touching it and fuck you for being so presumptuous as a person to walk into somewhere you don't own and don't know the rules and just have no caution or hesitation about starting to touch stuff. Okay--but do I really care that much about that or am I just frustrated at them because they're forcing me into a situation where I either have to confront them about it or let something slide that would absolutely be unacceptable if one of my bosses saw me letting it slide? You know, like today there was a guy leaning on a bookshelf in a gallery that's supposed to be a recreation of an office building. Do I care? No. The bookshelf was fine. I don't...care about this job. I'm not there because I want to be there. I'm there just because I need money. I don't care if people bring backpacks into the walker art center---I mean, the galleries. Or if they have a water bottle in the galleries. You know, do I want to stay there all day and just enforce these stupid rules that I don't believe in? No. Here's me at my job if I'm actually real:
• I'm in gallery 1 and someone comes in with a backpack. "Hi. Look, I'm so sick of saying this that I'm flabbergasted as to why we don't just put a fucking sign up that's big and obvious enough that people actually see it and know that they're going to get talked to if they don't do the right thing with their backpack and water bottle and admission tab et cetera, but if I let you go into gallery 2 with that backpack on both of your shoulders then I know my coworkers are going to see it and know that it's their job to take care of it but also that the gallery assistant in gallery 1 didn't take care of it so, whatever, I don't know what goes through their heads but I know for me definitely when I'm in gallery 2 and I see a backpack come through I feel annoyed with the gallery assistant in gallery 1 that they didn't take care of it before the guest got into the flow of looking at the artwork, because it's kind of like, why am I being talked to about this in gallery 2, I passed other employees and they didn't say anything, why are you saying something now? I was enjoying the art and now I feel like I'm being reprimanded by security (because a high percentage of people are insecure and easily sent into negative emotions and thoughts by even little things like this) and nobody told me the rules up front, and as the gallery assistant I feel like it's more likely to be a negative social interaction if I take care of it in gallery 2 versus gallery 1 or better yet, Bazinet lobby, and, well, if the gallery 2 guard doens't take care of it then it's going to go up to gallery 3 and I have it in my head that someone is going to get frustrated about this stupid backpack, because I sure do in those situations, since if I'm in gallery 4 let's say the chief guard walks by and there's a backpack that I'm obviously ignoring, I feel like now I did something wrong because I annoyed them and disobeyed their orders (I'd be much less incentivized to ignore a backpack if I knew the chief guard was watching, which is how I know it's wrong) and created a problem for them, not to mention the fact that I don't want to get in trouble for my own selfish reasons, so I'd guess that the other gallery assistants feel the same way, at least some of them do, and I don't want to put them into that situation, and I don't want to create a problem for the chief guard (who, depending on the gallery, might be able to see me on camera from the control center, as may Todd) so, I know this is silly, but technically if you just shift that backpack over to one shoulder instead of both, then none of this will be a problem." Notice how NONE of that had anything to do with believing that a backpack on one shoulder is less likely to damage the art. Which I don't believe. But that's why the rule is there. That's why I have to have all these social interactions with people about their backpacks. I've stood in those galleries 30 hours a week for a year and I can tell you people being fucking idiot assholes is a way bigger hazard to the art than a backpack. Even on a Free First Saturday it's not crowded enough that people are going to have such a small radius within which to turn that there's going to be a likely chance of their backpack bumping into anything it shouldn't. These galleries are spacious. A full backpack sticks off your back about eight inches. It's a stupid rule. So, when I have these repeat social interactions with people, one after the other about their backpack, I have to be fake. What I said above is real. I can't say that. Takes too long. And plus, installing a sign is the real solution. Well, I mostly can't say that because it makes the museum look stupid. (Which it is. I mean, this aspect of the security department and its coordination with visitor services is.) It makes the whole situation look stupid (which it is). Now, I don't know how to navigate a social situation if I'm being fake. Because what I've said so far is, what is authentic to say (what I said above) I can't say. Wow. Think about that. But I have to say something. See? I just don't want to be at this job anymore. (Well, whether or not there are any better options currently is another question.) Sometimes I can relax and be authentic, and I like it. But fairly often, I can't. I'm not able to just let loose and do what I want. And if money were no object, is this what I'd be doing? No. I just don't care about this. I care about displaying art, but not so much about this art that I'd be interested in guarding it all day. And the museum would have to figure shit out better before I'd want to participate with it, because right now it's kind of a their-way-or-the-highway situation and I think their way is poor. 
• So, in order to get my money and not create problems for my coworkers and bosses, I have to say things that don't come from the heart. Then the patrons have to receive what I say, and since I don't know how to navigate situations with fakeness, (since the way to navigate any situation is to be real, since that way the best possible thing will happen, in fact I think that while being fake seems to work sometimes it is still always a charade that if pushed in the wrong direction will reveal worse consequences than if you'd just been honest, since the truth you don't have to create, you can push it as far as you want in any direction and there's still more truth there, but falsehood has to be created, and thus the efficacy of the charade has a small perimeter, it's like a box you've created in mid-air, and if the situation gets pushed outside that box you have to invent some more box that will accommodate the new stimulus which requires greater and greater complexity the further you push it and thus becomes less and less possible to create, so I think there is no "right way" to navigate something with fakeness because the right way to navigate anything is with truth) I inevitably create many unpleasant and regrettable encounters with these people that my heart feels are for no real purpose, yet my "Gallery Assistant" character is creating this negative social interaction that cascades through this person's mind and then through their social connections and for the rest of their life and out into the world (in undetectable and minute but, I believe, real ways) and I'm responsible for creating this?? It's a wonder how I even tolerate this job at all. I must be asleep and numb. I must not be fully conscious. There's just no way my real, awake self could stoop this low and be this wretched. I don't believe in this! Every negative interaction I have is for a cause I don't believe in! I do it because this museum provides me with food and shelter. That's a lot to ask someone to give up. Off hand, I can't think of any jobs where I could just show up and be 100% real and get my needs met. (I can imagine long-term dream jobs but it would be quite risky to bet that I could actualize any of those before my savings ran out.) I suppose I could keep thinking about that. I mean, the other route is just sleep on the street and refuse to be fake. Man. I'll have to think more about this. Good night.

Okay, I'm tired. I'm going to bed.