“Enters and Exit the Dragon”

Well, after becoming individualistic and ending my Thai political involvement, I accomplished a big task and that was to bring my weight down from about 125 kilos to 117 kilos. It was about 10 kilos in a matter of about 25 days. I obviously was very weak physically from such a rapid weight loss regime. And my mental condition suffered along with my physical health.

If ever there was a time for my detractors to strike, it was at that point! I could hardly walk and my head was wheezy.

And struck they did, and very heavily. Those closest to me were on the war path to get me.

In hindsight, my self-improvement thus far should have been commended, and the pressure eased. Apart from the weight loss that bought with it money from my father, I kicked the drinking habit and stopped completely. I hardly go out partying and whoring anymore. I practically stopped all my lying and cheating. And I also went back and started saying sorry to those that I had behaved badly to in the past.

But the powers that be weren’t satisfied. They wanted more from Terry.

That might be because all that focus on improvement and individualism saw me going off the cliff again and this time it was for protecting nature. And of course what represented nature is the “Dragon.” So I started a social network webpage at tagged.com/tavivoot.

In it, I trashed Einstein for being too materialistic, and wrote that God had a mum and a dad. And things like how nothingness can’t give birth to a big bang. I also wrote about kings in general - if you visit the site, don’t let the language fool you because I am not that crazy. It is just a language I use like an actor uses to try to communicate with his audiences.

But for those powers that be, “Dragon” could be interpreted as a threat - that I wasn’t going to stop writing and so could return to politics again. And I agree with the powers that be!

If there was anything left to improve in me at that point it was two things. First, I simply don’t know how to let go and be a loser and let other people win some. Then I have been playing the journalism game for so long, playing games had become second nature and an integral part of me. Both those negative traits, feed on my writing. And “Dragon” was a form of my self-improvement.

So not knowing how to lose and game playing were certainly a big flaw of my character.

And perhaps they are the roots of my writings and until I got rid of them, I was like a tiger who may have lost his stripes, but always a tiger still that was always ready to put the stripes back on and go off hunting and killing again. I was still very much like Tom Clancy’s novel, “A Clear and Present Danger.” I started to realized that I needed help now, because these problems about games and winning in journalism were very specific problems that were a major road block for me.

Being a clear and present danger is what I was then, but I was trying to be like that movie Shawshank Redemption, where the character played by Morgan Freeman facing his parolee said that, “the guy that was arrested and found guilty was very young when it happened and didn’t know shit and has long ago been replaced by a wiser and older man.” For which the character got paroled. So I was looking for real maturity and real growth in my character.