On Striving and Other Things

I remember starting a 1000 words a day challenge a few years back and prompt forgetting. I saw the category the other day and thought it’d be a good thing to resurrect. People keep asking me what I do for myself, regarding creative things, in the way of having an outlet for myself. I have no desire for this in art. I want it to be formidable and honest and genuinely well-crafted. I meet so few artists that seem to care about objective quality anymore. Everything is hedonistic and self-indulgent. The reader matters. I want to make something of value for the reader, because I’m a reader, and I know the value of something that is genuinely well done. There’s no adults. People think art is about hanging out with your friends and having fun. I know how great it feels to be in good company do what you love, but it’s a very different attitude than what most people think. It’s a great feeling due in part to group competence as much as group amiability. Writing is, of course, more solitary, but much of my enjoyment of writing comes from the ability to accurately express, more simply to express. 

I feel so rusty. I can tell. My rhythm is off. Sentences are too long. Or if appropriately long, not well structured. Nothing is well structured. I’m out of touch with the logic of words. It’ll come back but it’s unpleasant to feel so rusty. 

Writing and breathing were always the same to me. Essential and indispensable. What an odd thing to make a living from breathing, as if used air had value. I guess that is how I feel about writing. I forget that people value it. People value it so much. It’s embarrassing how moved they are by work that isn’t even that strong. Accuracy, sharpness, clarity. People don’t care enough about these things. They’re so desperate to have some form of acknowledgment that they’re satisfied by any occurrence of themselves in the world. Situationships, empty careers, weak sentences. Throw in a cultural climate where any form of judgment is an attack and any nod towards excellence an elitist insult, and then there’s no room for even a belief in excellence. It’s a bad word, a dark ghost that makes people feel bad about themselves, instead of being something worth reaching for. 

It’s never just about yourself. That’s what sets professionals apart. That’s what sets quality apart. Enough obsessing about grandiose virtues. I can’t wear jeans anymore unless they’re elastic. Well, not without unbuttoning them when I sit. I remember having a job interview years ago during a time when I had a flat stomach, and just admiring to myself how comfortable it was to sit and not suck it in or struggle against the tyranny of waistbands. It wasn’t the waistband. It was me. It was a great relief to feel how I always wanted to feel. I’m always oscillating around my best self, my most desired self and my most desired life. Closer at times, further at others. Sometimes different areas of life being closer or farther at once. Further, farther? See, these things. I used to be so sharp.

Speaking of self-indulgence, here I am, writing about myself, analyzing everything, feeling inadequate, and marinating in it. Sometimes I wonder if I’m exactly like everything I hate, just in a slightly different form. Narcissism is so typical of creatives and the ambitious. Maybe it’s inevitable and not as bad as all that. If it keeps you from reaching your potential, it’s worth discarding. Some softness must often go. People around me will dislike it, but it’s necessary. I like armour. I like being myself, brazen and untouchable. I like feeling like this. It’s hard to keep it going. To keep my head above water. To be a person in the world. To face others. To believe in anything good. Anything good in or from myself. That spores from my being can populate the world with something valuable. I’m very concerned with value. Can that come from anything other than insecurity? Maybe in security, if you understand the value of that security, but again, value. Good and bad, hierarchy. An acceptance of hierarchy is necessary if you want morality, fairness, anything good. I think about this a lot. A blanket equality of merit is nonsensical. Beyond deserved decency and human rights, there is no equality. And even that is only a few notches above a gentleman’s agreement. Universal human rights. It’s just something we decided upon, we being whichever countries will try to consider upholding it as an ideal. And everything fails, anyway.

An outlet for myself. Aggressive self-analysis and compulsive ingestion of sweets. Fretting about finances. They’re better than in a long time. No reason to fuss. GLP-1s. Eating enough animal protein can naturally cultivate those enzymes in the body. Or whatever they are. Often I feel repulsed by what I need most. By what’s best for me. How is that possible? Life is so bizarre. Pressfield’s resistance.

Getting close to a 1000 words. I’m getting antsy. Trying to reach the finish line. I hate finish lines. I like the middle. I guess that’s everyone? Or maybe people hate the middle.I’m the weird one who likes being in the thick of it. The last ten seconds is always the worst. I don’t think I’ve ever been someone to finish strong. I need to work on that. I get caught up in things and don’t have anything left. I need to learn to pace myself, or be intentional about bursts. What am I talking about? The general pacing of my life. Working outside of a 9-5 structure. Seasons of intensity and creativity and rest and sorrow and bed rot. 

The other day I was worried I’d never feel like myself again. The past two days I feel that person return. It’s a good sign. Writing is more necessary than I realize. The life I want, it’s so much closer than I realize. A few millimeters to the left, even though at times it feels like lightyears away. 

Retrospection, As Always

Whenever I login, I love seeing this cascading time capsule of my various thoughts and musings. Even if it isn’t consistent anymore, it’s a place I can come back to as needed. A little virtual rug for my sad head.

I wonder if I’ve destroyed my ability to concentrate and function forever, and that this haphazard life of floating through my days in a dreary, fatigued state is my future. I spend more time with YouTube than any human being. I like and respect my favourite YouTubers more than any of my friends. I don’t know how to write. It’s very rare. It’s very hard. I eat compulsively. I’m just a guinea pig with an intellectual lilt.

I have a heater one. A plug-in heater. How does that work? There’s just… hot air. The air goes through the machine… it receives heat… the air is now hot and it spreads. The room becomes hot. How can I do this with all of my dreams and goals? How can I be a machine that allows everything I want to happen to happen through me? I guess that’s living a focused, disciplined life. Hokey dokey.

Not that we have to be machines. I kind of do. Which doesn’t make sense as an artist, but I think they’re more compatible than most people think. Especially non-artists. Art is far more methodical and planned out than people can imagine. It’s engineered, in a lot of ways. It’s not fully mystical.

I struggle to write even 500 words now. I used to write essays on the regular. I can feel my sense of syntax and style wavering, and when I read my writing it doesn’t really feel like me. It’s a diluted version of who I was. But part of that is just practice and getting back into the groove of things. However, I think I might have to accept that writing will be different from now on. I’m at a different stage in life, and my writing is more focused and intentional. It’s the sacrifice you make when you want to be a professional. It’s measured and meaningful.

I worry I’ve decayed. I find solace in the thought that there have been so many times I believed I was past my prime and irredeemably pathetic, but was on the cusp of some new and wonderful thing.

Forgot My Pens

I have a small leather pen case filled with pens of varying sizes, colours, and styles, which I invariably forgot at home when moving items from my tote bag to my backpack. I’m taking this as a good tactic from my subconscious to not simply journal the entire time and actually do the laptop work I intended to do.

See, it’s working. I haven’t posted on here in ages. I am writing again though. Working on some poetry, after many years! It feels good. It also feels shitty because I’m so rusty. The road is wilded with overgrowth. I need a clear path to my savage heart. Bring out the machete. That’s what words have always been for me.

Life is… good. Pleasant, and getting easier day by day. I went through this entire blog and copied all the entries from 2013 into a word doc. Thousands of words. Much gibberish but some good. It would be interesting to do a retrospective. An 11 years later retrospective haha. We’ll see. I wouldn’t write about those things now. So much of it is truly malnourishment (psychosis, depression, etc).

I wonder… I think the switch to who I want to be isn’t as big and dramatic as all that. It’s a few gentle maneuvers. That’s what it will look like on the surface. It will take big internal shifts, turbulence in the depths, a few ripples at the surface.

Keep going.

“The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.”

John Steinbeck

This really hit me, and I wrote it on the back page of my manuscript. I will make a small poster of it. It’s true. It’s the only way it works, and this is true of all things.

Sometimes I resent having to freelance and make my way in the world. Why can’t I just have a wealthy husband and write, or have a lucrative day job and just be taken care of in that way? But I need the skills this way of lives necessitates. I need challenges, I love problem solving, I get bored easily and that’s worse than being scared or feeling weak. I love rising to the occasion.

Venoms, repeated ponderings.

I was laying in bed having pretend conversations with people in my head and I liked what was happening and I remembered who I was and thought I should share it. Because that’s what writing is. You share things. How did I forget such a fundamentally simple concept?

The truth is what which works. I believe I’ve said that before on here. So what works? Bitterness, or moving on?

Truth is truth. Certain precepts of psychological and emotional wellness cannot be argued or altered. Of course, in modernity, anything goes, but for anyone committed to a functional view of something, only certain things go. Psychologically and emotionally well people do not hunt for revenge, or relive their struggles constantly, with dedication. I can hear the accusations of being insensitive to PTSD. That’s involuntary experiences, and certainly these people want to move on from the past. There’s an insidious encouragement to win the game of suffering. That’s at the core of modern movements. Modern academia, modern thought at large, modern attitudes and ideologies. The perversion of what strength is, or what a worthy life is. Bitterness has become chic. The desire to destroy everything around you without leaving anything behind, or without considering what should or shouldn’t be destroyed. There’s no more assessing what’s baby and what’s bathwater. It’s simply an full eradication of streets with apartments, any of which have bathrooms. That’s what emotional mismanagement does. I have no interest in painting emotions as the enemy. They are powerful and integral elements of our shared humanity, and because they are so powerful and so important, they must be carefully utilized. They must be positioned correctly. Placed correctly. Filtered, treated, purified. Poison versus elixir. It’s the same element it’s simply treated differently. Snake venom antidotes are made from the venom. I believe I’ve written this before as well. It’s true. People don’t want to transform their venom. What’s the sacrifice? There’s something so fulfilling in rage, entitlement, and… there must be something else to call it than victimhood. It’s an attempt at love. It’s holding all the painful broken pieces and cradling them and saying this is me and i love it but it doesn’t allow you to live. You have to bury those broken pieces and let them grow into something new. A million images and metaphors; venom/antivenom, broken things growing anew. Whatever it is, it’s just… people are living in pain and cannot move beyond it.

And those who do? They are quiet. Because when you’ve undergone this process of transformation, you’ve just living. You’re out there living, and you don’t need to scream as much as anymore, if at all. So the people with genuine wisdom quietly live their lives. They’ve earned it. But then the loudest people win.

Mmmmm I miss this. Thinking. Words. Thinking. Words. And I lived like this. I can do it again? In a new form. I’ve been undergoing this transformative process I’m advocating. It’s good. Shedding so many layers. Yet another metaphor.

–

Love. Only the loving find love. Neville Goddard.

Only the loving find love. I think about this a lot. It makes sense. Why wouldn’t it? But it can’t be confused for perfection. I’m realizing how much I have perfectionist tendencies. Being loving doesn’t mean you don’t have other things inside. It’s always Newton’s Third Law (also mentioned previously. I’m seeing patterns and themes today…), every action has an equal and opposite reaction. I suppose it’s not automatic though. In this personal development sense. There’s potential for greatness when you’ve been torn apart, but it’s up to you to actualize it. Potential. What is potential in a scientific sense?

*briefly Googles*

Good lord I can’t understand even the most basic concepts in physics. At least not through reading. Hmm… I need a good physics tutor.

It’s amazing how much we don’t know about really basic things. I can barely complete the simplest of arithmetic. I’m sophisticated enough to call it arithmetic without a sense of irony, yet single digit addition is about as far as I can comfortably go these days.

–

I’m loosing myself. The perils of stream of consciousness writing. I do miss crafting a piece. I don’t want to consider this at the moment.

A thousand words. It used to be nothing! A breath! A flick of my wrist. 720. I struggle to get to 1000 now. Amazing. Stamina, like anything else.

Ok. Giving up for now. More to do.

Praise

Praise God, it seems. I don’t know some days it’s so easy, but it’s important to celebrate that fresh wave of love when it does return, and ride it as long as possible. I think cherishing it makes it last longer. This seems to be the case with everything.

I’m noticing a new level of fear and sorrow within me, and it’s been quite surprising. Like realizing the paint on your walls are bright green, and they have forever been this way, and that’s why everything looks and feels the way it does. It’s painful to feel but an immense relief. Truth becomes a relief if you can learn it’s eternal value. Forget gold, invest in truth. A new level of self-soothing to reach. I got a coffee at Starbucks. It’s too late in the afternoon for coffee but if I workout after it should be fine. However, Starbucks also have higher levels of caffeine than most coffees, so that’s also a problem. I’ve always felt that tea isn’t a good bargain because there’s more work put into brewing coffee so it’s a bit more reasonable to purchase, but I think I need to become a chamomile tea person. I’m becoming of increasingly delicate constitution. I think this occurs with deeper spirituality and creative exploration, at least for times. I need steak every day. It’s the solution. I had sausage for breakfast. I tried to make a protein mug cake but it wasn’t very good. I’ve made delicious ones before. I need to be exact with the recipie.

I need to believe that I can be well again. Consistently energized and pain-free. It’s possible. Like my realization that I didn’t believe things could be better, I don’t seem to fully believe that my health can be stable and good. It’s true. I know it’s true. Knowing and belief are so different, seemingly disconnected and irrelevant to each other. We need more words. Knowledge is fickle and illusory. It brings us absolutely nothing. Belief is where it’s at. What’s the it that exists at the location of belief? Perhaps it’s embodiment that makes the different. Oh, there you are again, Descartes, you scoundrel. The mind is the body; the body the mind. There is no special compartment for knowledge. The cells of the entire form experience life and speak out.

I had a stage combat instructor who said that muscle memory was a misnomer and that it all occurred in the brain, which I don’t believe. The belief of centralization of consciousness and experience in the brain doesn’t account for the ways in which cells and parts of the body themselves react and live. They are living in their own right. Cardiac cells produce their own electrical impulse and scientists don’t fully understand why. I don’t have more complex examples of the body doing it’s own dance beyond the central nervous system, but they’re out there. Perhaps something with phantom limbs has something to do. The Body Electric by Robert Becker has been sitting on my shelf for some time, unread, but apparently explores the electrical nature of the body and it’s various psycho-spiritual ramifications.

Anyway. I’m thirsty. I feel grateful to be alive, for God, for all things. Maybe there’s something about fall that makes me hopeful. It’s quite possibly the best season. I’m enjoying working on my business again. It feels different. I feel more free to explore and post and try new things. I feel free. Why now? Who knows. Enough time to erode my fears against my hope. Filing down a callous or tough piece of skin. Fear is protection, so it stands as an analogy. Shame is so interesting… fits anywhere, gets through anything, an octopus squeezing itself into any opening.

Make takoyaki. Yes. Delicious.

In other news, I have lost all interest in chicken. I have lost most of my interest in food, which is troubling. A sudden lack of appetite. I have to be careful because time passes and I don’t notice. It’s been weeks of no appetite and little nourishment. These days I am always afraid that I’m dying. Something is definitely off. I’m not sure how to remedy this. It’s been years of on-and-off. It might be as simple as protein. It might be as simple as prayer. Everything comes down to prayer. Starts with it.

I want to read A Course in Miracles. Earlier today I saw an IG post quoting it… what was it… well I can’t find it but something like how a miracle is a removal of illusion.

Ah, here we go. The end of an illusion. This is a solid thinker. Ha. Problems vanish when you see through them. See beyond them. They’re guiding posts more than walls. There’s just nothing but hope and potential. Inertia and other forces interrupt but they’re as significant as we want them to be.

I am scared of modern times for reasons beyond what I can say. Erasure of dissidence. No one studied the Cold War. And our world is perilous and strained for anyone who knows the value of words, freedom, ideas.

Why don’t I drink water when I’m thirsty? Why am I afraid of this simple act of wellness? Is it a desire for sensation? Thirst and deprivation? I don’t know. Am I scared of cups? Of washing bottles? Of some other adjacent act. Remove friction from the things you want done. I simply don’t want to drink water. How can I deprive my mouth from it’s ability to detect and alert thirst? Hmm, some strange allegiance to the pain systems of the body. Keep them alive. They’re all you’ve had. Something strange like this. Well, habits, familiarity. We want what’s familiar. Denial is familiar. Lack is familiar.

I haven’t been eating. It just hit me. Why haven’t I been eating? I wish there was something to watch me. To notice. Isolation, adult isolation in the modern age is so painful and bizarre. I can’t think about this too much. I’ve found that the antidote to loneliness is cultivating the inner relationship with self. What is that? It’s God? Reparenting? Cultivating ones own consciousness? It’s the other voice inside. The better one. The friend inside. Why is that absent in some people? I suppose healthy socializing allows this to flourish and be natural. The mental landscape can be abundant when it is taught abundance. I just have to consciously teach it abundance.

Falling Into Place

An Adele song plays that I love, that I haven’t heard in ages. I can hear music again. A wellness coach I follow encourages occasional “consumption fasting” in order to get out of self-numbing patterns (not automatically watching shows or listening to music, podcasts all the time), and she said that one thing clients said was a result was seeing colors brighter. We are so capable of escapism that we dim the colors we see. I haven’t fully succeeded in a consumption fast but am intentionally watching and listening to less and I’m noticing that music sounds different to me. Or rather, I’m hearing it again for the first time. I took a break from music for… a few weeks? I didn’t document it, but it was a notable break.

I always regret not documenting things. I love documentation. I love living. How did I forget?

I’ve really woken up this week. Yes, document this, it’s important. I walked home from the gym with my coach and he was consoling me over my struggle to make ends meet and have the resources I want, and he said my success was inevitable as I work hard, try new things, and am responsible. I said I believe this and he said that it didn’t sound like I believed it but rather hoped that I believed it, which was completely true. It was a relief to hear because I knew something was off and that I was dragging my feet along with this whole hope thing, and also disappointing because I’ve been working so much on changing the way I think. I’ve worked to reject pessimism, and I have had a lot of success, but something at the core still hasn’t budged. I spent the weekend in a strange state. Not quite wallowing, not quite acceptance, but an odd mix of both. Ultimately, however, something clicked. Or fell away. I started writing, I made content for my online store, I worked on the store, I decided life was good enough now to live and do the things I wanted. We had also talked about how we often have more than we realize, moneywise, and although there’s much more that I want, I really do have what I need. I can gripe about a lot of things, and yes there’s frustrations, but so what? The delusional gratitude is really what provides riches. Because it’s not delusional. Life is really that good. We get distracted.

The path of binding your soul to God isn’t for the faint or heart, or rational, or sane. It’s a separate thing. A lunatic path to Heaven. A complete rejection of the material world. No, but a different seeing. Why not focus on what’s good? Because you won’t relate to most people and will be seen as insane. Fine, but what’s the worth of most people, or sanity? They do keep you miserable. There are areas however where sanity is important. The material world does require care. Take care of your body, your bank account, etc. The focusing in on what’s good must allow you to handle your various matters with ease. That’s where they mix. Delusion and the table, the real world.

Delusion and the table. Delusion isn’t a good word. Selective reality. Making a sandwich. You’re not going to put everything available in the sandwich. Take what you want.

Okay, enough on that.

I started the year doing 1000 words a day. Maybe I can at least finish the year doing that. A fair task. I miss research. Quality writing. Oooph. Why stop doing what we love? It’s easy to forget who you are and how easy it is to really be happy. Everyone is so scared of the word happy. It’s terrifying how perfect life is. Absolutely terrifying. It bothers me. Life is so perfect – what more do I want? Lots, of course, but at the same time… it’s perfect. Romanticize your life now. Enjoy your life now. It’s weird how perfect the imagination is. There are dangers to living fully in your mind but there’s a different way where you just fill your life with joy, and it doesn’t matter where it’s coming from. The imagination is just a different room of life. Why not live there too? Use your whole house?

Houses, sandwiches, so many normative little comparisons. I’m baffled by how simple this all is. What are these experiences, when we feel we’ve woken up from a dream? Another layer of illusion peeled off. That’s all. It feels so… Everything feels so joyous… so strange and wondrous and possible. How does everything feel so possible suddenly? What is this door within me that’s opened? I’m not entirely sure. Will keep exploring. Well part of it is not denying despair. It was a relief to really admit that I didn’t believe that things would get better. And suddenly, everything got better.

Honesty within oneself is essential. The relationship with yourself and with God, this is the only thing that matters. The only thing. Everything comes from this. I spent a few weeks without God and it was awful. I blocked him out. How? I guess some kind of emotional denial. Give all your hopeless wretched weariness to the Lord and watch it all unfold. That’s the truth of things. Is this the giving your heart to God that people talk about? Did I do it, if only momentarily? At church someone said something about holding on tighter to Christ and in doing so letting go of the world. It was a bit more poignant than that but struck a chord. The only real thing. Why not commit fully to that? And watch blessings fall all around you. God wants to bless us. We push back. Sad puppies not wanting to come out. It is that simple, sometimes, somedays.

Almost at a 1000 words. A simple accomplishment. I still can’t quite articulate this feeling. The click. The spinning into place, a top, I found the right hand motion, the right flick of the wrist.

Strange Revivals

Why are things that were once challenging suddenly easy? Why does the impossible melt overnight and become an irrelevant puddle you step in on the kitchen floor, dampening your sock, irritating and nothing else? Why is life so damn mysterious? Truly incomprehensible. The debris clears in a vast minute, and the earth is visible once again, when for years and years you dragged yourself along, a Cormac McCarthy protagonist, unsure of any future. Pain and suffering dissolve suddenly, reappear suddenly, and the world continues. Each day is not a journey but a walk through your kitchen, the lights off, stubbing toes endlessly, every inch of you a toe, every existing surface a corner you run towards at full speed. Then suddenly, you’re on a beach somewhere, with a normal number of toes and no corners in sight. Life is like this. Why?

In Camille Paglia’s Sexual Personae she describes that there was a time in human society where we did not understand that sex lead to pregnancy. People had sex, and women became pregnant. Those were distinct phenomena. Imagine the terror that women would suddenly start to swell and be with child. Women and childbirth were a terrifying mystery. Fortune and struggle are both like this to me. I have no clue when or why they occur. There must be something I don’t understand. Of course there is. What’s the proverbial sex I’m apparently having? Where are these mystical dicks of consequence? Who knows.

Probably something like “consistency” or “earnest effort”? One of those damn things.

Anyway. I feel less embarrassed by myself somehow. For some reason. So I’m writing again, posting again, everythinging again. Embarrassment is so… foolish… did I wear it out? I don’t know. Where did it go?! I don’t want it back, I just want to know where it lives. I’m sitting at a cafe, cocking my head left and right as I think about these things, like a confused puppy. No one is here. I wonder how often people see me and think that woman is a confused puppy. I’ve been reading too much Murakami. Well, not possible, but yes it shows. IYKYK.

I used to want to write. It’s great to not want anything. I had an episode this weekend of realizing I really don’t want anything anymore. All my dreams, my desires, they mean so little. They’re nothingness. As a lifelong passionate person, this is very perplexing. As a lifelong depressed person, it’s also odd because this is a different feeling. So much of depression had to do with intense feeling and yearning to live freely. Now I just… I just want to lay in bed and enjoy the slideshow of my imagination. I want for nothing. This is just of the past few weeks, culminating in this weekend and this present moment. A lifelong want-er who suddenly does not want. It is profoundly confusing and bizarre. And yet… this is liberation. There’s something about apathy and indifference that are so important. You can’t hold on with such pressure and preciousness. When you have a real foundation in your life, in your psyche, you can play with life in a new way. What is that foundation? It’s becoming God. Jesus. Of all things I never thought I’d say. But when you have something bigger behind you, supporting you, the smallness falls away. Everything you thought was big is in fact small. And everything that’s small is smaller than small. The place where words don’t mean anything because we can’t really comprehend anything.

Anyway. I would like to write. I think this is still true. It’s all so different now. The world is so… safe. There’s no enemy. There’s no urgency. And this isn’t true of course, because the world is terrifying and evil in a profound way. But also… I can just live. I am free to live. Maybe it’s safe to live. Why have I been so afraid of such a simple thing? Absolute terror in the face of simple deeds.

Grace and Understanding

I saw that people were subscribing all of a sudden. Maybe it’s a sign.

I’m reforging my relationship with God. Although I suppose that relationship is never actually harmed. We just stop going to it. We stand at the bank with our back to the stream, wondering how we ever got so thirsty. It is in fact that simple.

Coming to God, to Christ, is a remembrance of so many kinds. That there is guidance and love in this world. That we are not lost. That restoration of even a deeply troubled life is so truly possible. Redemption, and all that.

Words I never thought I’d say. Very interesting, this living thing. I am consistently surprised.

I bought a cross today. A necklace. I’ve been wanting one for a while and there’s a lovely little jewelry store nearby and I got one. I want a simple, physical reminder of who I’m serving and what’s giving me strength. I asked for guidance in church last weekend. In prayer. In surrendering to God. I was told that I don’t need to fear this, but rather see it as freedom, as an unburdening, instead of something to do. I was told that Christ is unlike anyone else, and that it is safe to trust him. Over the years I have become to cold and afraid and have buried myself deep in the tundra of neglect and denial. Thawing. This is thawing. Coming to Christ is feeling the sun again for the first time.

I really don’t know anything unless I write. I don’t know who I am. I don’t understand what exists within me. I don’t know what’s happening. I have no hope without words. Maybe I can do this now. Really do this. I keep searching for the right people and the right situations. The right thing I needed was always there, inside, like it always is. For everything. For all people. For everyone, in all time. It’s right with you. Always.

Again.

Ok, two months off, no big deal.

Wow, two months. Feels like years.

I’ve been adjusting to working and I’m not going to beat myself up for letting this project go, for now. I do still believe 1000 words a day of stream-of-consciousness is perfectly doable. Especially for me.

I’m considering many new alternatives as a way to make money and find work. Do those have to be the same? Maybe not. I’m realizing how much I live in fear of being seen for who I am and what I’m like. I seem to fundamentally believe that I can’t be valued for who I am. It’s interesting the anxiety that does accompany even writing these words that no one from my real life actually reads. It’s a struggle to see and accept who I am, in even a rudimentary way. I haven’t realized how deep it goes, and how much this is a critical part of my chronic underearning.

I came across something called Underearners Anonymous, a group which helps people address the underlying traumas and personal issues that keep them from living up to their professional potential. It’s amazing how almost all problems are rooted in self-perception and the patterns based on these self-perceptions. Whenever people complain that people with less skill get further ahead, they’re correct in the observation but simply chalk it up to corruption or prejudice or general unfairness. People are rarely willing to look at what about them is keeping them from getting what they want.

I’m a little shocked that I really am so different what I know I could be. It’s distressing and amazing that one can live such a lie.

I keep telling myself to keep my head down and focus and when I get the things I need I’ll be able to live a free life. The opposite is true. I’ll only be able to live a free life when I decide to, am honest and open, and then things will line up for me in ways I only dreamed about. I do question this regarding pressure and the diversity of paths that lead to freedom and truth. Some of us do need to lurk in the shadows.

This is something that’s been on my mind recently. The nature of the dark ones. Some of us are marked to be explorers of the underworld. A certain segment of humanity is called to do this. Sometimes I feel like I was born broken and I’m gonna die broken and all I have to do is survive until then. I don’t think I can love or be loved or have anything good.

I don’t have to believe that. I can create the beliefs I want and follow them to a better life.

But it’s so tempting to just… fall into hell and call it home.

On Hope, etc

Maybe I’ll make it 500 words a day. No, 1000 is perfectly reasonable.

I was gifted with a cold this week, and have been sniffling and resting and actually somewhat enjoying myself. The complete permission to do nothing is wonderful. But I love doing. This is a task of my present days. I must remember who I am, and how deeply I cherish being alive and having the opportunity to play around with whatever I’m interested in. That is the essence of life. Yes, even with our weighty responsibilities and challenges, it’s all fascinating and ours. Why not find solace in that?

I merge with what I listen to. I’m really noticing how much the voices of people I listen to online stay in my head and inform how I think. In a wonderful way, of course, but likely because I choose to listen to wonderful things. It’s startling to me now, whenever the rare self-hating thought comes to mind, it stands out so stark, like a blood covered Carrie at prom. In old days such things were the norm, everyone was covered in blood at prom. The I hate myself‘s and you’re stupid and all these thoughts. Beliefs. They’re so rare now. It’s nice. New furnishings in the ol’ psyche. It’s good.

I am coughing. I worry it will take me sometime to regain my strength to workout, but that’s fine. Everything is always fine because it is.

A thought that ran through my mind (isn’t that how it feels? Like millions of streakers one by one interrupting the broadcast) is how you show people hope and they hate you for it. Not everyone of course, but damn, it’s real. People say they want hope, are hungry for hope, desperate for hope, and you show them that they have everything they need and are fully capable of getting everything they want, and they become livid. They want the despair and the right to roil in despair, they do not actually want hope. I have experienced so many situations like this with so many people. There’s some hint of destiny within in all. I am good at inspiring and motivating. And I know people lie when they say they want that. They can find that for themselves, and would, if they really wanted it.

WC: 385