Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Creative Writing Entry
I read a little too often a site called reddit. I recently started a thread for creative writing inspiration. So, if you'd like, check it out and read some of my random writing.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Catchup Crap & Random Thoughts
It's been far and away too long since I've updated this. I have a feeling I'm getting in the habit of saying that. I suppose I can be a broken record too! Ha. But, I'm going to redeem myself with another freewrite, hopefully bringing people up to speed on what's going on in my life and what's going through the thought processes, but probably, I'll just wind up on some tangent instead.
Let's start with today. It's been raining like we should be investing in archs. I dont' really mind though, since it's not snow, but it made my commutes quite long today. However, the weather itself did wind up working its way into a nice flirtacious conversation I had with a cute cashier at trader joe's. Too bad I think she was probably like 18. I find that the girls who go to and work at Trader Joe's tend to be more attractive than normal. I dunno though! Maybe I just like the store and it's more crowded than most others.
This entry is sucking horribly thus far. Does anyone find this crap remotely interesting?
I suppose I can always deviate back to the topic of conversation that perpetually rolls through my mind and that's myself, my self improvement, how I think I think different than most other people, and my push towards being more “gregariousness.” Tim told me on Saturday at the Boston Blazers lacrosse game that he is using me for my general gregariousness. I find that hilarious, considering at the heart of it, my inclinations are to be a very shy person. I have the heart of an introvert and the skin of an extrovert. But alas, pain is power.
Oh yeah, here's an excerpt from a conversation I had with Tox the other day. I find it sums up the thoughts I've been having in regards to my life since I've been writing in this conversation, since I've had that conversation with my brother way back when:
(9:58:36 PM) dizdique: do I look like that kinda tool?
(9:58:49 PM) dizdique: who derives happiness from such a singular source
(9:59:26 PM) dizdique: no. I'm toasty. So fucking relativisitic that I get joy from so many sources that they all kinda become insignificant next to each other and to achive and sense of absolute value becomes a fucking act of futility
(9:59:41 PM) Mike Smith Toxicology: you seem like you're very clever in how you go through life
(10:01:47 PM) Mike Smith Toxicology: you do what you have to do to be "successful" from an outward perspective, because you recognize there are hoops that no man can avoid if he wants to have a minimum of comfort and happiness
but you don't buy into most of the social construct bullshit, and you mostly choose the path that maximizes your own satsifaction and success, avoiding the pitfalls of pursuing one or the other to its fullest
basically you're a walking talking Venn Diagram
(10:04:48 PM) dizdique: damn
(10:04:49 PM) dizdique: thank you
(10:04:59 PM) dizdique: that's often how I perceive myself
(10:05:11 PM) dizdique: I didn't think I made that aspect of myself blatent
(10:05:14 PM) Mike Smith Toxicology: haha
(10:05:17 PM) Mike Smith Toxicology: I'm just that good
(10:05:19 PM) dizdique: and I've never had someone else comment on it so succinctly
(10:05:27 PM) dizdique: well, comment on it it at all
(10:05:30 PM) dizdique: most people just praise me
(10:05:38 PM) dizdique: which in some sense is flattering but also sickening
(10:05:44 PM) dizdique: it's like, is my ruse really working that well
(10:05:51 PM) dizdique: do people not see through this thin guise?
(10:05:51 PM) Mike Smith Toxicology: hahaha
(10:05:57 PM) Mike Smith Toxicology: I know what you mean
(10:06:05 PM) dizdique: do people not fucking realize that even though I'm successful I'm just a fucking ant amongst giants?
(10:06:23 PM) dizdique: I'm not really effecting change, sure, compared to you I'm a god, but compared to the idols of society I'm nothing
This touches upon so many points of self-reflection. I truly do believe that I think incredibly different than most of society. What I've read about autism/narcissim/sociopaths, I really think that my mind ticks quite a bit differently than most others. I'm quite glad about it too, but it doesn't come without and downsides either. But I don't think I experience emotions in the same way that most other people do. I don't really get extremely emotional. I am not driven that impulsively. So while I'm capable of seeing the (irrational) emotions, instincts, and mannerisms of others, I don't really relate entirely. Fortunately, I'm not completely off the rocker and do have some emotional capability, but for a long period of my life they were misunderstood and mostly repressed.
That isn't to say that I'm a very wildly emotional person now, I've just been able to let myself experience them once again. They are still entirely under wraps. That's why almost nobody hears me being a mopey or upset person. That's why people think I'm generally outgoing and a bubbly person. It's why I'm capable of talking to complete strangers. I'm just good at putting on a facade. I'm good at blending in and slipping through the cracks of every group, so that nobody perceives me as a threat. By being noticed you are more easily ignored, at least, that's what I find.
It's hard to really relate to other people what the mush of a man I am. It's hard to really transpose my abstract thoughts into something that will interest and entice people, but that's where my mind is a good amount of the time. It's how I really feel emotionally too. Most things in life are rather just bland to me, but to the rest of the world they're spicy and exciting. I have to play along and give the impression to others that that's how the world is to me as well, and that I can show them even more interesting and new parts to entertain them, but that's not really what I ever want to resolve or talk about. Most things tangible are already solved. It's the unknowns that fascinate me. The ability and power to be a charasmatic person. The inner workings of society and code and writing and people's motivations. Those nebulous concepts. I like to wield those. Unfortunately, I am not good at being a complete hermit so I get the compulsion to interact with the rest of the world in the wake of sadness otherwise and I socialize.
I'm boring myself writing about this so let's switch topics.
I've been working more and more on talking to new people. As I said before, I was commented on my gregarious nature. It's due in part that I've been thinking about more and more how I want to be a leader. How I want to be able to more easily manipulate my feelings and be an outgoing and sociable person and at the same time not hate myself for being phony. In short, this requires to make myself into an interesting person, who has interesting stories, and/or at least have interesting things to talk about. After all, people are just perpetually bored walking through life, seeking entertainment, and it's a much more special thing to have entertainment personalized in the form of a conversation than it is to derive through secondary means like television or Internet, but, also more risky. Plus, all guys like talking about girls, and talking about how to talk to girls, so, at very least, I need dem there braggin' rights. Isn't my source of motivation wonderful?
So, let's see, what else has been going on in my life. I visited Columbus, OH on a customer visit. I wound up staying with Stevie for the weekend which was awesome. I went snowboarding in VA, while hanging out with my old high school friend Jason Richmond. I also snowboarded over Valentine's day weekend. Tutoring has been going fairly well. I went to a party in Amherest this weekend, which was a nice little deviation and reminiscent of the old college day parties. Oh wait, the parties in college kinda sucked for the most part. Haha, oh well.
I've been really slipping on my personal goals. I haven't written in this journal, nor studying a language since I've been back. I haven't even been doing my pushups and situps daily, mainly due to the fact I bruised my ribs learning to snowboard. Whatever, it was worth it. It was fun as fuck being able to go down the hill without hurting myself! I really need to get a firmer grasp on accomplishing shit. I even went to far as to creating goals for myself awhile back. Let's go revisit those to see how much progress I haven't been making:
1.Become solid with French, Portuguese, Spanish. Practice 6x a month
1.Wine Riot is in April! Gotta get decent at French by then.
2.Go snowboarding. Should be easy considering you've already made travel plans.
3.Maintain exercising. 3X a week is good. Be able to do 50 pushups / 100 situps daily by year end
4.Write your own fictional story
5.Develop the personal goal tracking website
6.Get a raise at work
7.Go traveling again, probably south American
8.Learn a new technical skill and/or ability for programming
9.Learn more math skills
10.Finish my magnum opus for TM
11.get new walrus painting
12.stop all your bad habits: scratching psorisis, biting callus, finger nails
Hmm, well, we're done with 2.5 months out of 12, and I've accomplished the snowbarding bit. I've thought about all of the above consistently though, which is a good sign, but haven't really made particular progress on any of them. I think I should also add to the list start my campaign to be elected for president. I've got 12 years until I'm 35, so if I start now, it'll give me plenty of campaigning time. I should also add to that list writing in my blog at least 2x a month. I have, at least, been writing fairly often in my own personal journal. Maybe I should publish that as well. I'd probably need to edit it a lot, and considering it's now 52 pages, single spaced, that's a fuck-ton of reading. Any volunteers?
I guess I've been thinking about women a lot as well. I've been reconsidering what role I really want them to play in my life. The way I think about it right now I'm a fairly hot commodity. I'm a moderately attractive package for women, and I'm only going up in life. So, in essence, I think I'm fair market value for a woman that's:
a) Highly Attractive
b) Someone that is around the same point in life as far as self improvement goes. Someone who would be motivate me and push me as well as I her. Someone that's actually trying to continue improving in life, and not someone looking to cling to greatness. I need some balance, I can't always be the fucking teacher, but as fucked up as it sounds, I feel most people I encounter don't have much to teach me or methods to motivate me.
So that eliminates like 99.9% of the girl population damn quick. Tim told me I should probably look into older girls, which makes sense. It's just hard because I'm generally attracted to younger, slim girls. Oh well. When I'm seeking someone and something that's not a distraction but a means of amelioration, I am gonna have a hard time.
Maybe I should make a website for autistic dating. Or a website to rally the youth of america who are too young to be elected, but want to run for office someday. Or maybe I can actually work on my personal tracking website. Or maybe I can make a webcomic and become famous like xkcd. I'll probably wind up finishing at least a half dozen trackmania maps before any of those things happen. This is where having an excited partner in one of these projects would greatly help! Self motivation is tough.
Anyway, I fasted today (for health reasons), so I'm looking forward to going to sleep to wake up for breakfast. I've felt that I've been in a rut as far as self control and productivity in general (which I give myself minor consolation in that I have been relatively busy with life-events), so, I'm going have a week of sobriety. I've been tracking my mood & alcohol/other stuff consumption on a site medhelp.org and the results are fairly stunning. A cunning stunt of consumption... or something.
Yeah I'm done now. Hope you liked this random brain dump crap.
Let's start with today. It's been raining like we should be investing in archs. I dont' really mind though, since it's not snow, but it made my commutes quite long today. However, the weather itself did wind up working its way into a nice flirtacious conversation I had with a cute cashier at trader joe's. Too bad I think she was probably like 18. I find that the girls who go to and work at Trader Joe's tend to be more attractive than normal. I dunno though! Maybe I just like the store and it's more crowded than most others.
This entry is sucking horribly thus far. Does anyone find this crap remotely interesting?
I suppose I can always deviate back to the topic of conversation that perpetually rolls through my mind and that's myself, my self improvement, how I think I think different than most other people, and my push towards being more “gregariousness.” Tim told me on Saturday at the Boston Blazers lacrosse game that he is using me for my general gregariousness. I find that hilarious, considering at the heart of it, my inclinations are to be a very shy person. I have the heart of an introvert and the skin of an extrovert. But alas, pain is power.
Oh yeah, here's an excerpt from a conversation I had with Tox the other day. I find it sums up the thoughts I've been having in regards to my life since I've been writing in this conversation, since I've had that conversation with my brother way back when:
(9:58:36 PM) dizdique: do I look like that kinda tool?
(9:58:49 PM) dizdique: who derives happiness from such a singular source
(9:59:26 PM) dizdique: no. I'm toasty. So fucking relativisitic that I get joy from so many sources that they all kinda become insignificant next to each other and to achive and sense of absolute value becomes a fucking act of futility
(9:59:41 PM) Mike Smith Toxicology: you seem like you're very clever in how you go through life
(10:01:47 PM) Mike Smith Toxicology: you do what you have to do to be "successful" from an outward perspective, because you recognize there are hoops that no man can avoid if he wants to have a minimum of comfort and happiness
but you don't buy into most of the social construct bullshit, and you mostly choose the path that maximizes your own satsifaction and success, avoiding the pitfalls of pursuing one or the other to its fullest
basically you're a walking talking Venn Diagram
(10:04:48 PM) dizdique: damn
(10:04:49 PM) dizdique: thank you
(10:04:59 PM) dizdique: that's often how I perceive myself
(10:05:11 PM) dizdique: I didn't think I made that aspect of myself blatent
(10:05:14 PM) Mike Smith Toxicology: haha
(10:05:17 PM) Mike Smith Toxicology: I'm just that good
(10:05:19 PM) dizdique: and I've never had someone else comment on it so succinctly
(10:05:27 PM) dizdique: well, comment on it it at all
(10:05:30 PM) dizdique: most people just praise me
(10:05:38 PM) dizdique: which in some sense is flattering but also sickening
(10:05:44 PM) dizdique: it's like, is my ruse really working that well
(10:05:51 PM) dizdique: do people not see through this thin guise?
(10:05:51 PM) Mike Smith Toxicology: hahaha
(10:05:57 PM) Mike Smith Toxicology: I know what you mean
(10:06:05 PM) dizdique: do people not fucking realize that even though I'm successful I'm just a fucking ant amongst giants?
(10:06:23 PM) dizdique: I'm not really effecting change, sure, compared to you I'm a god, but compared to the idols of society I'm nothing
This touches upon so many points of self-reflection. I truly do believe that I think incredibly different than most of society. What I've read about autism/narcissim/sociopaths, I really think that my mind ticks quite a bit differently than most others. I'm quite glad about it too, but it doesn't come without and downsides either. But I don't think I experience emotions in the same way that most other people do. I don't really get extremely emotional. I am not driven that impulsively. So while I'm capable of seeing the (irrational) emotions, instincts, and mannerisms of others, I don't really relate entirely. Fortunately, I'm not completely off the rocker and do have some emotional capability, but for a long period of my life they were misunderstood and mostly repressed.
That isn't to say that I'm a very wildly emotional person now, I've just been able to let myself experience them once again. They are still entirely under wraps. That's why almost nobody hears me being a mopey or upset person. That's why people think I'm generally outgoing and a bubbly person. It's why I'm capable of talking to complete strangers. I'm just good at putting on a facade. I'm good at blending in and slipping through the cracks of every group, so that nobody perceives me as a threat. By being noticed you are more easily ignored, at least, that's what I find.
It's hard to really relate to other people what the mush of a man I am. It's hard to really transpose my abstract thoughts into something that will interest and entice people, but that's where my mind is a good amount of the time. It's how I really feel emotionally too. Most things in life are rather just bland to me, but to the rest of the world they're spicy and exciting. I have to play along and give the impression to others that that's how the world is to me as well, and that I can show them even more interesting and new parts to entertain them, but that's not really what I ever want to resolve or talk about. Most things tangible are already solved. It's the unknowns that fascinate me. The ability and power to be a charasmatic person. The inner workings of society and code and writing and people's motivations. Those nebulous concepts. I like to wield those. Unfortunately, I am not good at being a complete hermit so I get the compulsion to interact with the rest of the world in the wake of sadness otherwise and I socialize.
I'm boring myself writing about this so let's switch topics.
I've been working more and more on talking to new people. As I said before, I was commented on my gregarious nature. It's due in part that I've been thinking about more and more how I want to be a leader. How I want to be able to more easily manipulate my feelings and be an outgoing and sociable person and at the same time not hate myself for being phony. In short, this requires to make myself into an interesting person, who has interesting stories, and/or at least have interesting things to talk about. After all, people are just perpetually bored walking through life, seeking entertainment, and it's a much more special thing to have entertainment personalized in the form of a conversation than it is to derive through secondary means like television or Internet, but, also more risky. Plus, all guys like talking about girls, and talking about how to talk to girls, so, at very least, I need dem there braggin' rights. Isn't my source of motivation wonderful?
So, let's see, what else has been going on in my life. I visited Columbus, OH on a customer visit. I wound up staying with Stevie for the weekend which was awesome. I went snowboarding in VA, while hanging out with my old high school friend Jason Richmond. I also snowboarded over Valentine's day weekend. Tutoring has been going fairly well. I went to a party in Amherest this weekend, which was a nice little deviation and reminiscent of the old college day parties. Oh wait, the parties in college kinda sucked for the most part. Haha, oh well.
I've been really slipping on my personal goals. I haven't written in this journal, nor studying a language since I've been back. I haven't even been doing my pushups and situps daily, mainly due to the fact I bruised my ribs learning to snowboard. Whatever, it was worth it. It was fun as fuck being able to go down the hill without hurting myself! I really need to get a firmer grasp on accomplishing shit. I even went to far as to creating goals for myself awhile back. Let's go revisit those to see how much progress I haven't been making:
1.Become solid with French, Portuguese, Spanish. Practice 6x a month
1.Wine Riot is in April! Gotta get decent at French by then.
2.Go snowboarding. Should be easy considering you've already made travel plans.
3.Maintain exercising. 3X a week is good. Be able to do 50 pushups / 100 situps daily by year end
4.Write your own fictional story
5.Develop the personal goal tracking website
6.Get a raise at work
7.Go traveling again, probably south American
8.Learn a new technical skill and/or ability for programming
9.Learn more math skills
10.Finish my magnum opus for TM
11.get new walrus painting
12.stop all your bad habits: scratching psorisis, biting callus, finger nails
Hmm, well, we're done with 2.5 months out of 12, and I've accomplished the snowbarding bit. I've thought about all of the above consistently though, which is a good sign, but haven't really made particular progress on any of them. I think I should also add to the list start my campaign to be elected for president. I've got 12 years until I'm 35, so if I start now, it'll give me plenty of campaigning time. I should also add to that list writing in my blog at least 2x a month. I have, at least, been writing fairly often in my own personal journal. Maybe I should publish that as well. I'd probably need to edit it a lot, and considering it's now 52 pages, single spaced, that's a fuck-ton of reading. Any volunteers?
I guess I've been thinking about women a lot as well. I've been reconsidering what role I really want them to play in my life. The way I think about it right now I'm a fairly hot commodity. I'm a moderately attractive package for women, and I'm only going up in life. So, in essence, I think I'm fair market value for a woman that's:
a) Highly Attractive
b) Someone that is around the same point in life as far as self improvement goes. Someone who would be motivate me and push me as well as I her. Someone that's actually trying to continue improving in life, and not someone looking to cling to greatness. I need some balance, I can't always be the fucking teacher, but as fucked up as it sounds, I feel most people I encounter don't have much to teach me or methods to motivate me.
So that eliminates like 99.9% of the girl population damn quick. Tim told me I should probably look into older girls, which makes sense. It's just hard because I'm generally attracted to younger, slim girls. Oh well. When I'm seeking someone and something that's not a distraction but a means of amelioration, I am gonna have a hard time.
Maybe I should make a website for autistic dating. Or a website to rally the youth of america who are too young to be elected, but want to run for office someday. Or maybe I can actually work on my personal tracking website. Or maybe I can make a webcomic and become famous like xkcd. I'll probably wind up finishing at least a half dozen trackmania maps before any of those things happen. This is where having an excited partner in one of these projects would greatly help! Self motivation is tough.
Anyway, I fasted today (for health reasons), so I'm looking forward to going to sleep to wake up for breakfast. I've felt that I've been in a rut as far as self control and productivity in general (which I give myself minor consolation in that I have been relatively busy with life-events), so, I'm going have a week of sobriety. I've been tracking my mood & alcohol/other stuff consumption on a site medhelp.org and the results are fairly stunning. A cunning stunt of consumption... or something.
Yeah I'm done now. Hope you liked this random brain dump crap.
Monday, December 21, 2009
40 minute brain dump
30 Minutes of Work. No Reward. Sleep is my escape. It's the only thing right now that will allievate the burden of this exercise. I hope one day it's no longer perceived to myself as a burden. I can extract some joy from the stress it provides. I can be happy that I've exhausted it. But I feel that day will never come and I will be forever trying to attain it, miserable and uninspired. Yeah, probably, but you know what:
It's for the best.
You don't want to be a lazy slug who can easily manipulate his own happiness. You try to achieve happiness by overcoming challenges. You can remove all the challenges from your life, or make them much more trivial, aka, lowering the bar, but that's not going to make you happy. It's providing the illusion of happiness. It's making you content. You are winning the consolation prize. Human by nature by default seeks perpetual improvement. It's why if you had a direct neural link to stimulate happiness in your brain you'd press it all day, at an ever increasing rate. It'd make you happier despite the fact you've done next to nothing to achieve it. If you can derive satisfaction from an insubstantial activity, then you are deceiving yourself and being a self consuming disease, a virus of your own body and mind. I've always somewhat known this, but I don't think I've ever put it into such explicit words in writing: Pain is necessary. It's good to make yourself miserable to attain the sweetest happiness. Once you get to the next level, keep climbing. Keep struggling. If you are slipping downwards, gain solid footing, restore your homeostasis and push on. But never stop, otherwise, you might as well just die and get it over with. If you aren't going to get any further than you are now, what's the sense of keeping on going? Don't put up with this charade.
Ah, this thought chain. I want to call it existential, but it's even more nihilist. I don't know what to call but this is how I feel: Life is so devoid of solid meaning. We need to use intangible / imaginary concepts such as happiness and emotions to give ourselves a semblance of certainty and morality on the world. But honestly, these things are merely the stepping stones to what makes us human: are ability to act way beyond them. To be able to name them, see them, describe them, understand them, and hopefully overcome them. The self examining recursive nature of our thought processes may just be the only thing that makes humans unique.
But it really makes it tough to live life. What really excites me? What really surprises me? What inspires me anymore? Not much. I appreciate being able to seeing things, but rarely do they effect great emotions in me. I can find the beauty in the aesthetics of a building or sight, but life-changing? No. Not even close. I've become a sponge. I soak absorb so many ideas and reject so few, so it's hard to really find something that much different in my diverse eco-system of a mind. I refuse to let myself be surprised due to my own ignorance, so I must be in a constant state of improvement and expansion. Exponential growth of the mind. Ah, humanity. Wanting and expecting more than is likely possible and only really being happy once the nearly impossible has been achieved.
So why did I really go on this trip to Brazil? I honestly can't tell you what the exact mindset I was in when I bought those tickets. I feel like I was probably high, but the specific thought processes and the hopes and intentions of what I'd get of it? No, those I can't remember exactly. Perhaps I never really thought them all the way through. Perhaps I just had this nebulous notion that it was the right thing to do. I suppose I could scour my journal for details to shed some light on this mystery, but it'll have to wait, it's hypothesis writing time.
If I had to go off my vague notions, I'd say it was to challenge myself. To screw myself over. In some senses I knew I was becoming entirely too comfortable with my life. Becoming addicting to my routine of medicrity—well, perhaps not mediocrity but of doing a routine that didn't really meet my full potential. Something that let me be comfortable, perhaps even live a nice easy life, but not something that left me feeling fulfilled. Nothing that allievated that notion in my mind that I was being a waste of life. The belief that I was selling my own mind short, letting parts dwindle and die off due to negative self-perceptions and my various methods of circumventing them.
Yes. I needed to fuck myself over. Make myself really panic mentally. Make myself really uncomfortable, confused, at the fate of my own wits and intuition. I don't do that very often. I'm a meticulous planner or a cautious experimenter. It's rare I can't undo what I've just done. It's why programming feels so safe to me. There aren't any dead-ends or undoable actions assuming—well, there are substantially less. The turn-around time to redeem any mistakes is pretty quick and relies entirely on your own ability to solve a problem. It's not that bad.
Because honestly, I don't like talking to people. It makes me uncomfortable. I hate speaking in general. I don't like talking for a long time. When I'm speaking, I want to make a point, and quickly. I feel as if every breath I'm expending is wasting someone else's time unless I'm starting to make perfect sense quickly. But it's funny, I don't really feel that way when people are talking to me at all. I enjoy listening to people speak, it's a time when I can just go into data-retrieval mode. Why do I have these seemingly hypocritical views? Does my reluctant to speak come from the fact that I'm greedy with my own ideas? It does seem “safer” to be a listener than a speaker, indeed, you cannot offend someone by listening to them, but it's easy to say something that will make people rather uncomfortable. I suppose that may be one of the reasons why people enjoy speaking to me, or why I get called “approachable,” I'm seemingly the most nonjudgmental person there is. Nobody can offend me, so people probably feel quite comfortable saying anything around me. I guess that means people are just as self conscious as me about speaking, but they just feel the need to get a lot off their chest. Haha. I'm self conscious about speaking and really don't feel compelled in the least to say shit unless I feel it's pertinent.
I really wonder what drives people's desires to speak? Is it just a method of externalizing your own thoughts? Hey, you, buddy, do thinking for me and transmit it back in English. Oh, I like that idea, I'll use it. Thanks for sparing my brain some effort there, as it was easier for me to ask you and quickly assess the quality of the idea than uniquely come up with one on my own! You're the best (I hope)!
Ah, what the fuck am I talking about. I want to talk about the trip. Yeah, the trip. It was pretty good. I tell people it was amazing, but that's really what they want to hear. I don't think it was tremendously awesome by any stretch. It could have been a lot better. What the fuck is wrong with me. I had a great time and I still say it could have been tremendously better. Most people would say that I'm being too harsh or negative, but I don't feel that in the least. I guess most people don't understand that I can be 100% satisfied with a trip, feel I got lot out of it AND somewhat regret that I didn't do it better. These are not mutually exclusive emotions. I feel it's very healthy to have the second, more negative, emotion, as, it will only push me to have a better trip next time. So, thank you for yielding a negative emotion Mr. Good emotion. You're the best! At least it's a genuine feeling!
Genuine feeling, what a funny term for me to be throwing around. I guess I sense all too often that there are imitated or unsubstantiated feelings in people all too often. Imititated ideas are easy to understand how they come to be, by merely copying someone. But unsubstantiated feelings tend to derive from being the erosion of an idea into a mind, fitting the square peg into the round hole by using a mind trick to pretend it's not there. Or even worse, entirely removing the faculties for identifying what's a round hole and a square peg. Yes I'm making lots of references to humans in gov't nationalisms, religious followers, and double-think in general. I think such attributes were a necessary part of evolution of the human organism.
If you really think about it, human beings have become a giant organism that's more or less taken over the world. We even have specialized cells (people) that control such huge facets of our life (govt's and/or anything that may be true in conspiracy theories), which are more or less unaware of the whole. Without the coordination and growth of other cells would the human organism grow to its current size. There's an enormous about of interdependence amongst all the cells, and failure of a large group would have major rippling effects on the other portions. The scales of size and time are just a bit different.
Just as it's impossible for a cell in my toe to really directly talk and know what's going on with a cell ear, humans are often out of reach of one another. Yet we're all on the same ship (environment) sharing the same body.
It's for the best.
You don't want to be a lazy slug who can easily manipulate his own happiness. You try to achieve happiness by overcoming challenges. You can remove all the challenges from your life, or make them much more trivial, aka, lowering the bar, but that's not going to make you happy. It's providing the illusion of happiness. It's making you content. You are winning the consolation prize. Human by nature by default seeks perpetual improvement. It's why if you had a direct neural link to stimulate happiness in your brain you'd press it all day, at an ever increasing rate. It'd make you happier despite the fact you've done next to nothing to achieve it. If you can derive satisfaction from an insubstantial activity, then you are deceiving yourself and being a self consuming disease, a virus of your own body and mind. I've always somewhat known this, but I don't think I've ever put it into such explicit words in writing: Pain is necessary. It's good to make yourself miserable to attain the sweetest happiness. Once you get to the next level, keep climbing. Keep struggling. If you are slipping downwards, gain solid footing, restore your homeostasis and push on. But never stop, otherwise, you might as well just die and get it over with. If you aren't going to get any further than you are now, what's the sense of keeping on going? Don't put up with this charade.
Ah, this thought chain. I want to call it existential, but it's even more nihilist. I don't know what to call but this is how I feel: Life is so devoid of solid meaning. We need to use intangible / imaginary concepts such as happiness and emotions to give ourselves a semblance of certainty and morality on the world. But honestly, these things are merely the stepping stones to what makes us human: are ability to act way beyond them. To be able to name them, see them, describe them, understand them, and hopefully overcome them. The self examining recursive nature of our thought processes may just be the only thing that makes humans unique.
But it really makes it tough to live life. What really excites me? What really surprises me? What inspires me anymore? Not much. I appreciate being able to seeing things, but rarely do they effect great emotions in me. I can find the beauty in the aesthetics of a building or sight, but life-changing? No. Not even close. I've become a sponge. I soak absorb so many ideas and reject so few, so it's hard to really find something that much different in my diverse eco-system of a mind. I refuse to let myself be surprised due to my own ignorance, so I must be in a constant state of improvement and expansion. Exponential growth of the mind. Ah, humanity. Wanting and expecting more than is likely possible and only really being happy once the nearly impossible has been achieved.
So why did I really go on this trip to Brazil? I honestly can't tell you what the exact mindset I was in when I bought those tickets. I feel like I was probably high, but the specific thought processes and the hopes and intentions of what I'd get of it? No, those I can't remember exactly. Perhaps I never really thought them all the way through. Perhaps I just had this nebulous notion that it was the right thing to do. I suppose I could scour my journal for details to shed some light on this mystery, but it'll have to wait, it's hypothesis writing time.
If I had to go off my vague notions, I'd say it was to challenge myself. To screw myself over. In some senses I knew I was becoming entirely too comfortable with my life. Becoming addicting to my routine of medicrity—well, perhaps not mediocrity but of doing a routine that didn't really meet my full potential. Something that let me be comfortable, perhaps even live a nice easy life, but not something that left me feeling fulfilled. Nothing that allievated that notion in my mind that I was being a waste of life. The belief that I was selling my own mind short, letting parts dwindle and die off due to negative self-perceptions and my various methods of circumventing them.
Yes. I needed to fuck myself over. Make myself really panic mentally. Make myself really uncomfortable, confused, at the fate of my own wits and intuition. I don't do that very often. I'm a meticulous planner or a cautious experimenter. It's rare I can't undo what I've just done. It's why programming feels so safe to me. There aren't any dead-ends or undoable actions assuming—well, there are substantially less. The turn-around time to redeem any mistakes is pretty quick and relies entirely on your own ability to solve a problem. It's not that bad.
Because honestly, I don't like talking to people. It makes me uncomfortable. I hate speaking in general. I don't like talking for a long time. When I'm speaking, I want to make a point, and quickly. I feel as if every breath I'm expending is wasting someone else's time unless I'm starting to make perfect sense quickly. But it's funny, I don't really feel that way when people are talking to me at all. I enjoy listening to people speak, it's a time when I can just go into data-retrieval mode. Why do I have these seemingly hypocritical views? Does my reluctant to speak come from the fact that I'm greedy with my own ideas? It does seem “safer” to be a listener than a speaker, indeed, you cannot offend someone by listening to them, but it's easy to say something that will make people rather uncomfortable. I suppose that may be one of the reasons why people enjoy speaking to me, or why I get called “approachable,” I'm seemingly the most nonjudgmental person there is. Nobody can offend me, so people probably feel quite comfortable saying anything around me. I guess that means people are just as self conscious as me about speaking, but they just feel the need to get a lot off their chest. Haha. I'm self conscious about speaking and really don't feel compelled in the least to say shit unless I feel it's pertinent.
I really wonder what drives people's desires to speak? Is it just a method of externalizing your own thoughts? Hey, you, buddy, do thinking for me and transmit it back in English. Oh, I like that idea, I'll use it. Thanks for sparing my brain some effort there, as it was easier for me to ask you and quickly assess the quality of the idea than uniquely come up with one on my own! You're the best (I hope)!
Ah, what the fuck am I talking about. I want to talk about the trip. Yeah, the trip. It was pretty good. I tell people it was amazing, but that's really what they want to hear. I don't think it was tremendously awesome by any stretch. It could have been a lot better. What the fuck is wrong with me. I had a great time and I still say it could have been tremendously better. Most people would say that I'm being too harsh or negative, but I don't feel that in the least. I guess most people don't understand that I can be 100% satisfied with a trip, feel I got lot out of it AND somewhat regret that I didn't do it better. These are not mutually exclusive emotions. I feel it's very healthy to have the second, more negative, emotion, as, it will only push me to have a better trip next time. So, thank you for yielding a negative emotion Mr. Good emotion. You're the best! At least it's a genuine feeling!
Genuine feeling, what a funny term for me to be throwing around. I guess I sense all too often that there are imitated or unsubstantiated feelings in people all too often. Imititated ideas are easy to understand how they come to be, by merely copying someone. But unsubstantiated feelings tend to derive from being the erosion of an idea into a mind, fitting the square peg into the round hole by using a mind trick to pretend it's not there. Or even worse, entirely removing the faculties for identifying what's a round hole and a square peg. Yes I'm making lots of references to humans in gov't nationalisms, religious followers, and double-think in general. I think such attributes were a necessary part of evolution of the human organism.
If you really think about it, human beings have become a giant organism that's more or less taken over the world. We even have specialized cells (people) that control such huge facets of our life (govt's and/or anything that may be true in conspiracy theories), which are more or less unaware of the whole. Without the coordination and growth of other cells would the human organism grow to its current size. There's an enormous about of interdependence amongst all the cells, and failure of a large group would have major rippling effects on the other portions. The scales of size and time are just a bit different.
Just as it's impossible for a cell in my toe to really directly talk and know what's going on with a cell ear, humans are often out of reach of one another. Yet we're all on the same ship (environment) sharing the same body.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Dream Log night of 10/08
Lots of dreams last night. I dreamed Obama was entering one of my class room's and taking Q&A. My class wound up asking him way tougher questions than the media does. (not part of the dream) I woke up to found out he'd been given the Nobel peace prize, wtf?
Another dream, which I believe was one of my first of the night. There's a beginning to this dream that I'm not remembering but... what I do remembered started off with me driving in a city-scape similar to boston. I needed to go to an ATM to pickup money... which I get the impression was for drugs. When I was nearby the ATM, there wasn't any convenient parking nearby. However, there was an ally, which I pulled down, and had some yellow barred spot (like where you're not supposed to park) where I figured I could park for 5 minutes while I went to the ATM. I knew at the time it was a calculated risk.
Soon after parking, some hobo wound up stealing some groceries that I had. When I asked for them back, the woman sounded all snobby as if she were entitled to steal from people “in better situations from her.” I don't remember the exact conversation. I'm pretty sure she was trying to convince me to give her money afterwards, which I may have even done. I'm not sure how my opinion swayed.
For whatever reason, I wound up following her back to her Shanty shack place or whatever. There were lots of hobos there. They all seemed quite friendly and what not. For some reasons I was even trying to flatter them explaining how hobos “have a lot of culture and always great stories to tell.” WTF Brian. It was a generally happy time, and I left the place without much of an issue, though, still without my groceries. For whatever reason, I'd given up on them at that point.
When I got back to my car, I was saddened to find that it was not only blocked in, but completely surrounded by other cars. Ulgh, pretty shitty. In order to get to my car I had to crawl under piping and squeeze through tight spaces. Once I got there I was appalled to see my car up on jacks, in the progress of being stripped or something... there were 4 people there doing it. While I was still halfway under a pipe, one of them came over to me. I tried to scare them away, but it was to no avail. I think the one hit me with a monkey wrench or something, but it didn't really hurt. I'm pretty sure I started crawling away at this point, considering how outnumbered I was.
Then, somehow it kinda broke to a news break or something in my mind. And I realized that the 4 people stealing my car were 4 of the hobos from before, just now looking slightly different. The scene broke away almost like a player profile for a spots game or something with just them visible and the background cutout. I was infuriated and felt completely betrayed. I remember somehow afterwards peering at them from above, as if sitting on a high up platform, but I don't really remember much past that.
Earlier in the night I had a dream about visiting someone's house. I don't know where or why, but it had a vaguely familiar atmosphere similar to the couple of homes I visited in Rochester. I can't say I can I knew anyone there, which was strange, yet I felt rather at comfort. I was sitting on a couch eventually, when someone sat down next to me. Oddly, they wanted to lay down, and immediately asked if they could lay down on me, to which I let them. They weren't like obnoxious, but it definitely had some homo-sexual connotations and atmosphere which I was plenty of aware of in the dream.
Eventually he sat up and we began talking. I believe he asked who I was. I knew who he was: Erin's uncle. (I'm pretty sure she doesn't even have one of those). Anyway, my answer was “I used to date your niece for 2.25 years.” To which he replied, “oh the old one, haha! Now she's been dating some other one for 4 months.” To which I replied “As if I cared!” causing the whole room to laugh with me. It felt like I was just masking my feelings with laughter though, as in some ways it made me kinda sad to know she was dating someone else.
Now that I'm conscious again though I really don't give a fuck. I'm guessing the dream was pointing out to me that there is still some residual emotional attachment even though I haven't talked to since May or so. Weird how that works.
Another dream, which I believe was one of my first of the night. There's a beginning to this dream that I'm not remembering but... what I do remembered started off with me driving in a city-scape similar to boston. I needed to go to an ATM to pickup money... which I get the impression was for drugs. When I was nearby the ATM, there wasn't any convenient parking nearby. However, there was an ally, which I pulled down, and had some yellow barred spot (like where you're not supposed to park) where I figured I could park for 5 minutes while I went to the ATM. I knew at the time it was a calculated risk.
Soon after parking, some hobo wound up stealing some groceries that I had. When I asked for them back, the woman sounded all snobby as if she were entitled to steal from people “in better situations from her.” I don't remember the exact conversation. I'm pretty sure she was trying to convince me to give her money afterwards, which I may have even done. I'm not sure how my opinion swayed.
For whatever reason, I wound up following her back to her Shanty shack place or whatever. There were lots of hobos there. They all seemed quite friendly and what not. For some reasons I was even trying to flatter them explaining how hobos “have a lot of culture and always great stories to tell.” WTF Brian. It was a generally happy time, and I left the place without much of an issue, though, still without my groceries. For whatever reason, I'd given up on them at that point.
When I got back to my car, I was saddened to find that it was not only blocked in, but completely surrounded by other cars. Ulgh, pretty shitty. In order to get to my car I had to crawl under piping and squeeze through tight spaces. Once I got there I was appalled to see my car up on jacks, in the progress of being stripped or something... there were 4 people there doing it. While I was still halfway under a pipe, one of them came over to me. I tried to scare them away, but it was to no avail. I think the one hit me with a monkey wrench or something, but it didn't really hurt. I'm pretty sure I started crawling away at this point, considering how outnumbered I was.
Then, somehow it kinda broke to a news break or something in my mind. And I realized that the 4 people stealing my car were 4 of the hobos from before, just now looking slightly different. The scene broke away almost like a player profile for a spots game or something with just them visible and the background cutout. I was infuriated and felt completely betrayed. I remember somehow afterwards peering at them from above, as if sitting on a high up platform, but I don't really remember much past that.
Earlier in the night I had a dream about visiting someone's house. I don't know where or why, but it had a vaguely familiar atmosphere similar to the couple of homes I visited in Rochester. I can't say I can I knew anyone there, which was strange, yet I felt rather at comfort. I was sitting on a couch eventually, when someone sat down next to me. Oddly, they wanted to lay down, and immediately asked if they could lay down on me, to which I let them. They weren't like obnoxious, but it definitely had some homo-sexual connotations and atmosphere which I was plenty of aware of in the dream.
Eventually he sat up and we began talking. I believe he asked who I was. I knew who he was: Erin's uncle. (I'm pretty sure she doesn't even have one of those). Anyway, my answer was “I used to date your niece for 2.25 years.” To which he replied, “oh the old one, haha! Now she's been dating some other one for 4 months.” To which I replied “As if I cared!” causing the whole room to laugh with me. It felt like I was just masking my feelings with laughter though, as in some ways it made me kinda sad to know she was dating someone else.
Now that I'm conscious again though I really don't give a fuck. I'm guessing the dream was pointing out to me that there is still some residual emotional attachment even though I haven't talked to since May or so. Weird how that works.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Night of 10/03/09 dream log
Only remember two dreams last night. Wasn't really in much control of either of them, but they were rather interesting.
The first one involved me going to some party walking distance away from my apt. in Boston, but certainly the landscape didn't match. I just had that impression the entire time. I'm not sure what sparked me getting there, but even so, I was there. It seemed like some big street celebration or holiday parade. Anyway, I was wandering around the anarchy that was the party, not really interacting with someone. I didn't want to stay there too long, my pretentious vibes made me think “jeez these people are all so young.” While I was on my way out so me extremely retarded looking and sounding person was asking me if I had alcohol to spare him or knew where the beer was—I forget which, but I was just only extra disgusted by him, politely told him no, and went outside.
It was nighttime, and many people from the party were now laying on the grass outside. It looked cozy so I did it myself. Of all the people in the dreamworld, I ran into Ashley Bloom and Ally Strong, who seemed like bestest buds still. We all had a very friendly conversation and started laying down together. It was funny, we wound up being in a big cuddle pile. I remember them asking me where I lived, and I said “New Jersey” and then later correcting them and being like “oh no what the fuck, Boston... still. I live in Boston.” Either way it was just a nice big cuddle pile that was rather cozy.
Eventually, I started talking to a big black guy, who was surprisingly polite and well spoken, despite what he was about to say: “Yeah, we're going to run the train on these girls. You're more than welcome to join us if you'd like. We'll be upstairs. Sound like something you'd be interested in?” Haha, what the fuck! I felt really weird and confused, so I awkwardly declined and the girls went off downstairs. I almost feel like the guy was a little disappointed and didn't expect me to turn down such a generous offer, but they went off, and I decided to head off on my own home.
I was walking home, past the pile of people still laying in the grass, and down the street. At this point, I was approached by a pretty, but young girl, who asked me “Could I lick your shirt?” She tried to get in close to me very quickly, I felt like I was going to be robbed or something and got very defensive and kept her away. I think I was screaming at her that she was something like a “Russian slave girl” who was trying to get me to buy her or something. She kept following me for a little bit, and even her pimpette princess start chasing after me, but I ran faster than they could. When I finally had a safe distance from her and was hidden behind some fencing box thing, I saw her again and yelled to now just the manager-pimpette-fugly monster “WHAT THE FUCK, what do you want from me?! I don't want to buy someone.” She reluctantly told me “well we're just the transporters.” as if that was somehow going to change things. Oh well, she stopped pursing me regardless.
By now, it was getting light outside, it was dawn of the next day. I was still walking home. I saw a few kids and a family outside who saw me, obviously distraught, and asked me what's up. I told them something like a crazy russian princess was trying to attack me—even though that wasn't exactly what happened. Either way, they emphathized, and told me I should inform the police. There just happened to be a postman though, who, for some reason, they were treating like a police officer. So, I did as well and told him what happened
He immediately assured me that I should go down to the station and file a report. He would take me there. He was upset about that meaning something like “well, that means we'll have to get on 90” which, I suppose solidifies my assumptions that the dreamscape was taking place in Boston, as that actually makes some sense. Either way, the car ride was very brief, and I don't remember it too much, and we arrived at “the station” which wasn't a police station at all.
It was instead almost like an office from the game FarCry overlooking a big field. I knew something was wrong. Anyway, next time I turned over to look at him, he clearly was not a police officer and was being more like a vampire or monster with red eyes. I was more like agitated that I still wasn't home by now, or filed a real police report, afterall, I didn't even want to go here in the first place. So then, rather than frightened or anything, I knew what needed to be done: kill this mother fucker. Somehow I had my trusty new Kitchen knife, Wurstoff or something, and I stabbed that mother fucker in the neck making short work of it.
That ends this phase of the dream.
My second dream phase started off in my manager's office, Matt. Though, we were more in a building resembling LiveTechnology than anything that is currently at Nuance. Either way, he seemed agitated about something, and I think even Dave might have been having a meeting with him. Either way, he was going somewhere far away, and I didn't know where exactly.
So somehow I get home, I'm sitting in front of my computer. It's now definitely nighttime. I'm looking at my cell phone, and realize somehow that if I send myself a text message with the country name that I'll be instantly teleported there. Pretty cool power. So, for whatever reason I type in the name of the country Matt was traveling to. Like magic I'm somewhere completely different.
I'm not sure what country it was, if I had to guess, it'd be Germany, Sweden, Australia, or Iceland. It was night time there as well, which probably makes little to no-sense considering it was night time where I was on the east coast initially, but that'd of been hilarious of my dreams actually took that into consideration. Either way, I started out wandering around some outdoor party. It was a pretty big festival, with plenty of people, bon fires, and a generally happy atmosphere. I couldn't understand anyone really, since they were speaking another language.
So, after wandering around for awhile, I was checking my cell phone trying to figure out how to use it again. My cell phone in my dream was way cooler than my current one. It had video emails, which I had a few of which I think were rather sexual in nature and I quickly skipped over. I'm fairly certain I got the impression they were from Kira, which makes sense, because when I got her voicemail last time it was pretty unexpected. Anyway, I was approached by some 2-3 guys who wanted to take a look at my phone. Knowing I just wanted to teleport and be done with it, I didn't let them. I tried to move away.
The more I resisted, the more confrontational they became, eventually grabbing me. Fortunately, another guy came to my assitance, demanding that I be let go and he had a metal pole by which to enforce such a demand. His friends reluctantly let me go, and he gave a short talk to them. However, he wasn't completely my friend either. They all seemed to bore some aggression against myself and Americans in general. When I gave a speech on how I just wanted privacy and be able to look at my messages in peace they almost seemed insulted. I either jumped or was tossed onto dinner table and started fleeing away.
But somehow, I was now indoors. So there weren't too many places I could flee to. I fled to the back right corner of the room where some blonde girl was telling me how I was going to be able to keep running for too long. People were getting suspicious and were going to soon start asking me for my papers. I still couldn't figure out how to get my cell phone to send me a text message. She asked me where my father was from, and I told him “Queens, New York” And she as if agitated by such a response replied “How am I supposed to know where that is?!”
To which I all too obnoxiously replied “Well, uh, I'm sure you've heard of New York City, and there are eight Burroughs to it. Queens is one of them. That is where he's from.” (even though there are only 5 borroughs...) She clearly felt humbled by such an initially succinct and sufficient for anyone who thought it through initial answer I gave her. To which she responded with “Well, you wouldn't know where the Plains of Rjorvak (or something like that)” are now would you? I didn't even respond.
Either way, as if by magic, all her anger now subsided and she was just hugging me. It felt really good to be held.
The dream ended there.
I wonder if these dreams are just telling me I have a big desire to be smushed.
The first one involved me going to some party walking distance away from my apt. in Boston, but certainly the landscape didn't match. I just had that impression the entire time. I'm not sure what sparked me getting there, but even so, I was there. It seemed like some big street celebration or holiday parade. Anyway, I was wandering around the anarchy that was the party, not really interacting with someone. I didn't want to stay there too long, my pretentious vibes made me think “jeez these people are all so young.” While I was on my way out so me extremely retarded looking and sounding person was asking me if I had alcohol to spare him or knew where the beer was—I forget which, but I was just only extra disgusted by him, politely told him no, and went outside.
It was nighttime, and many people from the party were now laying on the grass outside. It looked cozy so I did it myself. Of all the people in the dreamworld, I ran into Ashley Bloom and Ally Strong, who seemed like bestest buds still. We all had a very friendly conversation and started laying down together. It was funny, we wound up being in a big cuddle pile. I remember them asking me where I lived, and I said “New Jersey” and then later correcting them and being like “oh no what the fuck, Boston... still. I live in Boston.” Either way it was just a nice big cuddle pile that was rather cozy.
Eventually, I started talking to a big black guy, who was surprisingly polite and well spoken, despite what he was about to say: “Yeah, we're going to run the train on these girls. You're more than welcome to join us if you'd like. We'll be upstairs. Sound like something you'd be interested in?” Haha, what the fuck! I felt really weird and confused, so I awkwardly declined and the girls went off downstairs. I almost feel like the guy was a little disappointed and didn't expect me to turn down such a generous offer, but they went off, and I decided to head off on my own home.
I was walking home, past the pile of people still laying in the grass, and down the street. At this point, I was approached by a pretty, but young girl, who asked me “Could I lick your shirt?” She tried to get in close to me very quickly, I felt like I was going to be robbed or something and got very defensive and kept her away. I think I was screaming at her that she was something like a “Russian slave girl” who was trying to get me to buy her or something. She kept following me for a little bit, and even her pimpette princess start chasing after me, but I ran faster than they could. When I finally had a safe distance from her and was hidden behind some fencing box thing, I saw her again and yelled to now just the manager-pimpette-fugly monster “WHAT THE FUCK, what do you want from me?! I don't want to buy someone.” She reluctantly told me “well we're just the transporters.” as if that was somehow going to change things. Oh well, she stopped pursing me regardless.
By now, it was getting light outside, it was dawn of the next day. I was still walking home. I saw a few kids and a family outside who saw me, obviously distraught, and asked me what's up. I told them something like a crazy russian princess was trying to attack me—even though that wasn't exactly what happened. Either way, they emphathized, and told me I should inform the police. There just happened to be a postman though, who, for some reason, they were treating like a police officer. So, I did as well and told him what happened
He immediately assured me that I should go down to the station and file a report. He would take me there. He was upset about that meaning something like “well, that means we'll have to get on 90” which, I suppose solidifies my assumptions that the dreamscape was taking place in Boston, as that actually makes some sense. Either way, the car ride was very brief, and I don't remember it too much, and we arrived at “the station” which wasn't a police station at all.
It was instead almost like an office from the game FarCry overlooking a big field. I knew something was wrong. Anyway, next time I turned over to look at him, he clearly was not a police officer and was being more like a vampire or monster with red eyes. I was more like agitated that I still wasn't home by now, or filed a real police report, afterall, I didn't even want to go here in the first place. So then, rather than frightened or anything, I knew what needed to be done: kill this mother fucker. Somehow I had my trusty new Kitchen knife, Wurstoff or something, and I stabbed that mother fucker in the neck making short work of it.
That ends this phase of the dream.
My second dream phase started off in my manager's office, Matt. Though, we were more in a building resembling LiveTechnology than anything that is currently at Nuance. Either way, he seemed agitated about something, and I think even Dave might have been having a meeting with him. Either way, he was going somewhere far away, and I didn't know where exactly.
So somehow I get home, I'm sitting in front of my computer. It's now definitely nighttime. I'm looking at my cell phone, and realize somehow that if I send myself a text message with the country name that I'll be instantly teleported there. Pretty cool power. So, for whatever reason I type in the name of the country Matt was traveling to. Like magic I'm somewhere completely different.
I'm not sure what country it was, if I had to guess, it'd be Germany, Sweden, Australia, or Iceland. It was night time there as well, which probably makes little to no-sense considering it was night time where I was on the east coast initially, but that'd of been hilarious of my dreams actually took that into consideration. Either way, I started out wandering around some outdoor party. It was a pretty big festival, with plenty of people, bon fires, and a generally happy atmosphere. I couldn't understand anyone really, since they were speaking another language.
So, after wandering around for awhile, I was checking my cell phone trying to figure out how to use it again. My cell phone in my dream was way cooler than my current one. It had video emails, which I had a few of which I think were rather sexual in nature and I quickly skipped over. I'm fairly certain I got the impression they were from Kira, which makes sense, because when I got her voicemail last time it was pretty unexpected. Anyway, I was approached by some 2-3 guys who wanted to take a look at my phone. Knowing I just wanted to teleport and be done with it, I didn't let them. I tried to move away.
The more I resisted, the more confrontational they became, eventually grabbing me. Fortunately, another guy came to my assitance, demanding that I be let go and he had a metal pole by which to enforce such a demand. His friends reluctantly let me go, and he gave a short talk to them. However, he wasn't completely my friend either. They all seemed to bore some aggression against myself and Americans in general. When I gave a speech on how I just wanted privacy and be able to look at my messages in peace they almost seemed insulted. I either jumped or was tossed onto dinner table and started fleeing away.
But somehow, I was now indoors. So there weren't too many places I could flee to. I fled to the back right corner of the room where some blonde girl was telling me how I was going to be able to keep running for too long. People were getting suspicious and were going to soon start asking me for my papers. I still couldn't figure out how to get my cell phone to send me a text message. She asked me where my father was from, and I told him “Queens, New York” And she as if agitated by such a response replied “How am I supposed to know where that is?!”
To which I all too obnoxiously replied “Well, uh, I'm sure you've heard of New York City, and there are eight Burroughs to it. Queens is one of them. That is where he's from.” (even though there are only 5 borroughs...) She clearly felt humbled by such an initially succinct and sufficient for anyone who thought it through initial answer I gave her. To which she responded with “Well, you wouldn't know where the Plains of Rjorvak (or something like that)” are now would you? I didn't even respond.
Either way, as if by magic, all her anger now subsided and she was just hugging me. It felt really good to be held.
The dream ended there.
I wonder if these dreams are just telling me I have a big desire to be smushed.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Dream log for night of 9/28
Last night / this morning my dreams were pretty trippy. I was part of a big musical production, I did lots of backflips. Matt was there, miss Orestano was there. It was huge and elaborate and I played one of the main roles and it went successfully.
I had another dream in which my cousin Paula's car was completely snowed in. My mom was there along with my cousin Phillip and it was night time and we were trying to drive somewhere. Driving never seems to go too well, and after I got in the car with Barbara it wasn't long before we were out of control and at some field party (during the day) that gave me the impression / vaguely resemebled the field across the street from me in Monticello.
I think like Donovan Monahan, James Clouser, and Mike Murdoch were there, drinking beer, being rowdy. Me being embarrassed to know them, and moving on further down the muddy path. I remember arriving at a big tent / convention / party. The people I was with weren't really sure what was going on. My entourage somehow shifted to Carlo and Raphael. We were still at this large tent / crowd convention thing, and everyone had fishing poles. I remember hearing it wound up being some anti-gay convention that I was aware of, that Carlo and Raph seemed slower to catch onto. I feel like I may have interacted with one male adult there briefly, but I don't really remember...
Next I saw Becca, she was further up the field and alone. I immediately went over to talk to her and yelled her name. This was a very strange interaction. I got the impression that from the concert that happened before I was now some sort of actor and so was she. She was happy to see me, or seemed to say so at first, but as we had a conversation it just seemed to give me more and more the impression that she was pushing me away and trying not to hurt my feelings by telling me she just wasn't interested. This was probably the easiest to see reflected in real life probably closer than any other situation that happened in the dream; that's exactly what's going on. Eventually, she left walking down to the rest of the crowd ahead of me and I somewhat following her not really wanting to acknowledge what exactly was going on. At this point I got the impression that I was playing the role of Michael Cera in some movie or event. I'm not really sure what else happened once we rejoined the main group.
Hmm... actually the most lucid part of my dreams were definitely the first section. It started off with me and Eric Brown being in some room, clearly at night, in a big building or house. The doors are locked. Eric is trying to remain in control, and I feel like in the dream I just have become aware or woken up. There are two entrances to this door, and they are both locked shut. Eric tells me, or I somehow get the impression I'm not supposed to be opening them. However,I hear people outside and they're knocking on the door. When I see it's two youngish / moderately attractive girls, I let them in, and they immediately start interrogating Eric. I feel kinda bad for betraying him, but I was trapped in there with him and he clearly didn't have a well thought out plan for reconciliation. I hear these girls asking him questions like “When are we going to get our money?” Ulgh, poor Eric. Either way, I start sneaking off exploring the rest of the house, which is quickly degrading into a highly raucous party. I don't know where my shoes are, but I do know I want to get the fuck out of there. Eventually, I sneak out of some back entrance, run in my barefeet over rough ground, and get outside. It's been night time the entire time, but I'm concerned the police are going to come and bust this party and me be lumped in when I have no desire to be there. While outside and have escaped from the house, I get the impression that I may have had in a confrontation, but this scene of my dream kinda blurs from existence and I don't remember there being much of a resolution.
I vaguely remember there being another dream section where I was in a wal-mart / grocery store hybrid, that was where the Jamesway was in Monticello. Home Depot wasn't there. It was also night time and raining, I remember the reflections of the puddles in the parking lot rather vividly. Brian Schulman was somehow involved in this scene.
Probably the most self referential and recursive section of my dream was also early on, where I was dreaming about sleeping. I was sleeping in my own very bed. To a certain extent, I was aware that I was dreaming, and in my own bed, but considering I was also having dreams about dreaming... it was recursive and fucked with my so hard. But I love it. I have the feeling that this part of the dream came early on and maybe one of the section about wal-mart or Eric were part of an inner-dream that I “woke out of” into this dream. Still, in this dream, it was all about bodily sensations and about a big emotional let down: I had the impression I was sleeping with someone. That we were cuddled up together and that I was sleeping with them wrapped up. I'm positive it was Erin, as, she's really the only girl I've ever shared a bed with enveloped with. Still, I never saw her face, and, as I was saying, in this section of the dream, I was dreaming, but was just aware. It's like I knew I was in bed dreaming but I could feel my bodily sensations around me and those of another person wrapped around me. It was very satisfying. Then my bubble burst: I realized it was all a charade. None of it was true. I wasn't really sleeping with a girl so intimately at that very moment. The emotions kind of crushed me, as my sense of certainty against me just collapsed. I was very aware at that moment that I knew that I was dreaming about dreaming, and I interpreted the emotion as something to the effect of “Wow, I guess this means you really are seeking to be intimate with someone in your life and it crushes you to lose it.” I got over the emotion very quickly once I accepted that analysis.
Another part of the dream, which I'm feeling occurred towards the end, involved me being at my grandparent's trailer in Bethel, NY... which I spent copious time as as a child. I was in the hallway, close to the living room, sitting down in it on no chair, and I had the impression there was one or two family members (probably my mom or brother) to my left, but I couldn't tell you who. Sitting in his chair was grandpa. I remember a dog, who, in the dream was actually a coyote was coming down the hallway from the bedroom and was being annoying, aggressive, and trying to bite me. Fortunately it had no teeth, but it still tried to chomp down on most of my forearm. I get the impression that someone from the kitchen yelled at the dog-coyotee hybrid thing, and got it to go away, but it just went after grandpa next. He yelled for help of “Help me with this dog” and seemed unable to do much himself. It was climbing up onto his lap and what not. To which he got a response “Oh you can deal with the dog.” Clearly he couldn't. Still, I didn't do anything either...
That's about all I remember, but pretty crazy dreams overall. It took me awhile to get to sleep last night, as I was in a very intense mental mindset beforehand contemplating a great deal of things. The day overall started off with very high energy levels, work going very smoothly, but after work I kinda felt unproductive and unsatisfied. Reading Overthrow just intensified my feelings of discontent, as I was now miserable at the world. Fortunately,once I decided to go to bed, my mind became very active, I contemplated many important topics, and my mental and emotional wellness rebounded considerably. It was nice a nice finish. Still, I say this, because I feel those conditions strongly increased the vividness of my dreams. Also, I've been making a more conscious effort when I go to sleep to try and be aware / remember my dreams / possibly take control during them. I had a long pre-sleep stage where I was very aware that my body was shutting down and falling asleep yet I couldn't / didn't want to fully engage it as I was afraid it'd wind up waking me up. I'm sure that also contributed to me remembering almost every dream I had last night.
Yeesh, all of this is so personal to me. I haven't even gotten into interpreting it all...
I had another dream in which my cousin Paula's car was completely snowed in. My mom was there along with my cousin Phillip and it was night time and we were trying to drive somewhere. Driving never seems to go too well, and after I got in the car with Barbara it wasn't long before we were out of control and at some field party (during the day) that gave me the impression / vaguely resemebled the field across the street from me in Monticello.
I think like Donovan Monahan, James Clouser, and Mike Murdoch were there, drinking beer, being rowdy. Me being embarrassed to know them, and moving on further down the muddy path. I remember arriving at a big tent / convention / party. The people I was with weren't really sure what was going on. My entourage somehow shifted to Carlo and Raphael. We were still at this large tent / crowd convention thing, and everyone had fishing poles. I remember hearing it wound up being some anti-gay convention that I was aware of, that Carlo and Raph seemed slower to catch onto. I feel like I may have interacted with one male adult there briefly, but I don't really remember...
Next I saw Becca, she was further up the field and alone. I immediately went over to talk to her and yelled her name. This was a very strange interaction. I got the impression that from the concert that happened before I was now some sort of actor and so was she. She was happy to see me, or seemed to say so at first, but as we had a conversation it just seemed to give me more and more the impression that she was pushing me away and trying not to hurt my feelings by telling me she just wasn't interested. This was probably the easiest to see reflected in real life probably closer than any other situation that happened in the dream; that's exactly what's going on. Eventually, she left walking down to the rest of the crowd ahead of me and I somewhat following her not really wanting to acknowledge what exactly was going on. At this point I got the impression that I was playing the role of Michael Cera in some movie or event. I'm not really sure what else happened once we rejoined the main group.
Hmm... actually the most lucid part of my dreams were definitely the first section. It started off with me and Eric Brown being in some room, clearly at night, in a big building or house. The doors are locked. Eric is trying to remain in control, and I feel like in the dream I just have become aware or woken up. There are two entrances to this door, and they are both locked shut. Eric tells me, or I somehow get the impression I'm not supposed to be opening them. However,I hear people outside and they're knocking on the door. When I see it's two youngish / moderately attractive girls, I let them in, and they immediately start interrogating Eric. I feel kinda bad for betraying him, but I was trapped in there with him and he clearly didn't have a well thought out plan for reconciliation. I hear these girls asking him questions like “When are we going to get our money?” Ulgh, poor Eric. Either way, I start sneaking off exploring the rest of the house, which is quickly degrading into a highly raucous party. I don't know where my shoes are, but I do know I want to get the fuck out of there. Eventually, I sneak out of some back entrance, run in my barefeet over rough ground, and get outside. It's been night time the entire time, but I'm concerned the police are going to come and bust this party and me be lumped in when I have no desire to be there. While outside and have escaped from the house, I get the impression that I may have had in a confrontation, but this scene of my dream kinda blurs from existence and I don't remember there being much of a resolution.
I vaguely remember there being another dream section where I was in a wal-mart / grocery store hybrid, that was where the Jamesway was in Monticello. Home Depot wasn't there. It was also night time and raining, I remember the reflections of the puddles in the parking lot rather vividly. Brian Schulman was somehow involved in this scene.
Probably the most self referential and recursive section of my dream was also early on, where I was dreaming about sleeping. I was sleeping in my own very bed. To a certain extent, I was aware that I was dreaming, and in my own bed, but considering I was also having dreams about dreaming... it was recursive and fucked with my so hard. But I love it. I have the feeling that this part of the dream came early on and maybe one of the section about wal-mart or Eric were part of an inner-dream that I “woke out of” into this dream. Still, in this dream, it was all about bodily sensations and about a big emotional let down: I had the impression I was sleeping with someone. That we were cuddled up together and that I was sleeping with them wrapped up. I'm positive it was Erin, as, she's really the only girl I've ever shared a bed with enveloped with. Still, I never saw her face, and, as I was saying, in this section of the dream, I was dreaming, but was just aware. It's like I knew I was in bed dreaming but I could feel my bodily sensations around me and those of another person wrapped around me. It was very satisfying. Then my bubble burst: I realized it was all a charade. None of it was true. I wasn't really sleeping with a girl so intimately at that very moment. The emotions kind of crushed me, as my sense of certainty against me just collapsed. I was very aware at that moment that I knew that I was dreaming about dreaming, and I interpreted the emotion as something to the effect of “Wow, I guess this means you really are seeking to be intimate with someone in your life and it crushes you to lose it.” I got over the emotion very quickly once I accepted that analysis.
Another part of the dream, which I'm feeling occurred towards the end, involved me being at my grandparent's trailer in Bethel, NY... which I spent copious time as as a child. I was in the hallway, close to the living room, sitting down in it on no chair, and I had the impression there was one or two family members (probably my mom or brother) to my left, but I couldn't tell you who. Sitting in his chair was grandpa. I remember a dog, who, in the dream was actually a coyote was coming down the hallway from the bedroom and was being annoying, aggressive, and trying to bite me. Fortunately it had no teeth, but it still tried to chomp down on most of my forearm. I get the impression that someone from the kitchen yelled at the dog-coyotee hybrid thing, and got it to go away, but it just went after grandpa next. He yelled for help of “Help me with this dog” and seemed unable to do much himself. It was climbing up onto his lap and what not. To which he got a response “Oh you can deal with the dog.” Clearly he couldn't. Still, I didn't do anything either...
That's about all I remember, but pretty crazy dreams overall. It took me awhile to get to sleep last night, as I was in a very intense mental mindset beforehand contemplating a great deal of things. The day overall started off with very high energy levels, work going very smoothly, but after work I kinda felt unproductive and unsatisfied. Reading Overthrow just intensified my feelings of discontent, as I was now miserable at the world. Fortunately,once I decided to go to bed, my mind became very active, I contemplated many important topics, and my mental and emotional wellness rebounded considerably. It was nice a nice finish. Still, I say this, because I feel those conditions strongly increased the vividness of my dreams. Also, I've been making a more conscious effort when I go to sleep to try and be aware / remember my dreams / possibly take control during them. I had a long pre-sleep stage where I was very aware that my body was shutting down and falling asleep yet I couldn't / didn't want to fully engage it as I was afraid it'd wind up waking me up. I'm sure that also contributed to me remembering almost every dream I had last night.
Yeesh, all of this is so personal to me. I haven't even gotten into interpreting it all...
Saturday, March 21, 2009
If that's the way it is, then that's the way it is. Cope with it.
Edit: I also added an older, drunker post... it's after this one, I put the real date I wrote it, since I left it in its near original state.
Well, I haven't written in quite some time... so I apologize. It's amazing how fast a month passes. I did write one entry, but while really drunk, and I still haven't brought myself to editing it for the web. Not that I'd care if drunken writing was put on the web, just it got a little more personal than I was expecting. If I'm any good I'll force myself to edit it after this.
I just wanted to say thank you to all the people who've read my last blog and the feed back and discussions I've gotten out of it. In general the responses were positive. The most unexpected / hilarious one I had was (paraphrased) “who the fuck do you think you are writing essays for blogs.” With that being said, I'd just like to say that any and all feedback is welcome, don't be afraid to talk shit, I'm pretty good at taking criticism, and I generally find it funny.
Now that we got that out of the way, we can move right along. In this entry I really just want to talk about my self perception and how I work to maintain it. I think this will be really interesting to look back on a few years from now, and plus, I'd love to hear if/how people see me differently.
Back in September I remember having a conversation with my brother that spawned a question I hadn't really figured out the answer to until recently. I was pretty much telling him that at this point in my life I have accomplished everything that I truly felt was important and that I was in a position to make sure that I could most likely sustain it. That is, I had finally achieved what I always wanted when I was a growing up: complete independence from relying on others, financial stability, a handful of very good friends, and for the icing on the cake, a stable relationship (note: Erin and I have since broken up). I really didn't have any more clear cut goals in life left. There was a void in my life, in that, in some ways, I felt like I had beaten the game. I won life, good job, but at the same time, I felt, this really can't be it. What else do I really want to accomplish?
George didn't know the answer, but I didn't either. I mean, I didn't just want to fill my life with activities, like becoming an adrenaline junky, just to keep myself from being bored. I never wanted to become a engrossed in my job or my work, or be in fervent pursuit of the all mighty dollar either. I've watched plenty of people do that shit, and it's not what I want. I crave working towards worthwhile goals. I want to live each day knowing I'm doing more with my life than just trying to maintain and/or improve my quality of life. I have my material needs satisfied—I don't need or want all the shit this consumer regime tells me I do. As such, for me, making money merely solidifies that stability; I've maxed out the comfort that money-alone can provide.
I've also seen the opposite end of the spectrum, where I think many more people are, living life without any real direction or goals, just sort of riding the waves of others, rarely making any big changes or tough decisions with their life unless their backs are up against a wall. As much as I love just riding my impulses and going with the flow, I don't feel it necessarily will bring me to where I want to go (happiness), but rather, where the current is taking me. Living life without direction is inefficient and slow, living life as a workaholic seems to just be a big rush and grind to keep yourself occupied while in pursuit of a false dream / ideal. So what the fuck should I do?
What I came up with seems painfully obvious in hindsight, and it's something I did anyway, but nothing well defined. So what did I come up with? Since I have satisfied to a reasonable amount my physical needs, I must work on the only thing I can be sure I will have for the rest of my life: myself. That is, my goal in life is now to make myself into the person I want to be and remove the aspects of myself are inhibiting such progress. This idea may sound just like what I've preaching before, but I don't think I ever spelled it out in plain English: My goal in life is to improve.
When I say I want to improve myself, I mainly mean it in the sense that I want to eliminate bad habits, understand how more things work, have greater exposure and more well-rounded abilities. I love feeling useful and helpful. The more knowledge I possess and more capable I am of sharing and expressing that knowledge, the better. It's not that I don't think I'm good at doing these things now—I really do think I'm good at all these things, but I want to be great. I feel that happiness is not a destination, the final stopping on the train of life, but happiness is the trip itself and the satisfaction that the places it takes you are the result of. If I don't keep trying to learn more and improve I eventually drift towards just feeling stagnant and unfulfilled.
This is a much trickier task to tackle than the problems I used to work towards in the past, which were mainly external related, are now internal. This is a task I cannot really accomplish through the direct guidance or over sight in others. To change myself, I have to define what I want to be, I have to create the yardstick for measurements, I have to decide what habits need to be culled and which need to be fostered. I have to force myself to wage an internal and non-essential war against my own impulses and instincts. There is nothing straight-forward, clear-cut, or easy about this. It requires being brutally honest with myself, frustrating myself, breaking habits of convenience, and figuring out how best to change myself. There are many techniques and tools I've developed to help me on this journal, and it's safe to say that this blog is one of the tools. Ultimately though, tools and techniques are only as good as their user, so the burden can never be shifted anywhere else, it lies entirely on my shoulders.
One of the cool parts about this war is all the shit that I continue to find out about myself. With the desire to improve comes the requirement to know where I stand now, so I examine my own habits as objectively as possible. Combined with the intimate knowledge of my own memories and insight, I can even generate theories onto why I act, how I act, to the point where I find myself pretty predictable. Isn't that a silly concept? Being able to predict yourself? I feel the general notion I feel is that you would never need to 'predict' how you'd act, because you have this magical thing called 'free will,' and when confronted with a situation a person can decide their actions against their beliefs and moral values. But if anything my personal observations have told me, it's not the case. Not even remotely. Most behaviors are quite predictable. There is always a root reason and causation for your actions, just usually we aren't aware of them. You have to really step back and eliminate that root issue if you ever want to solve the problem. Otherwise, you're just treating an immediate symptom. Just like makeup can hide flaws, hiding your bad habits and tendencies or merely finding environments in which they are acceptable doesn't really treat the issue, it masks them. It delays the inevitable, doesn't make you a better person, but makes you look better on paper. That is not good enough for me. At the end of the day I want to make myself happy, and as a harmonious byproduct make the world appreciate me for that. I don't' want to make the world appreciate me for something and then derive my happiness from that, but I see a lot of people work that way.
At the moment, my major personal improvement projects revolve mainly revolve around what I would call mental discipline. Through the wonderful powers of meta-cognition, I realize quite easily when I'm bored or distracted, but I don't always have the willpower to force myself to be productive. It's odd to say this, but I really don't control my thoughts that much. They are very fluid for the most part and my active mind more or less has to corral them to go in the right direction. For something as focused, specific, and needs to have a wholesome feeling as this writing or a blog entry, that requires a great deal of active thought management, and sometimes I'm just too lazy or unfocused to do it. It's seems paradoxical to be able to think that you don't want to be thinking about something and then think about it anyway, but it happens all the time.
One of the other things I've been working on is trying to make myself more open, transparent, and social. There are very few things I hide about myself or wouldn't be willing to tell someone. I don't have secrets and I'm not going to try to pretend that I haven't ever fucked up or been foolish in the past. Yet, I don't share this with many people, not even myself really. It seems so pointless for me to have all these ideas and thoughts and then not share them with others. There are plenty of people who would appreciate hearing them, as well as plenty of people who would not be too fond to hear them. But, my bodily instincts keep me very hermit-like. I'm not socially awkward, but for whatever reason my impulses to keep myself at home instead of going out tend to prevail. It requires a lot of energy for me to want to go out, but then when I do, I almost never regret it. It's like my imagination is my worst enemy. But even still, I usually do get very worn out from going out and need to spend alone time. Achieving a healthy balance is what I'm striving for.
Well, I hope what you can take away from this blog is that I believe we all can be better ourselves. I didn't want to merely rant that I have issues that I need to fix, but I wanted to lay out the argument for why I want to improve, how I hope to go about it, and share what I've learned so far. I'm open to questions, and I encourage you to ask and give feed back. I'd encourage you to use the 'Add Comments' link below, but feel free to comment on facebook or just drop me an IM or whatever.
Just as an aside, here are some of the things going on or recently going on in my life:
Well, I haven't written in quite some time... so I apologize. It's amazing how fast a month passes. I did write one entry, but while really drunk, and I still haven't brought myself to editing it for the web. Not that I'd care if drunken writing was put on the web, just it got a little more personal than I was expecting. If I'm any good I'll force myself to edit it after this.
I just wanted to say thank you to all the people who've read my last blog and the feed back and discussions I've gotten out of it. In general the responses were positive. The most unexpected / hilarious one I had was (paraphrased) “who the fuck do you think you are writing essays for blogs.” With that being said, I'd just like to say that any and all feedback is welcome, don't be afraid to talk shit, I'm pretty good at taking criticism, and I generally find it funny.
Now that we got that out of the way, we can move right along. In this entry I really just want to talk about my self perception and how I work to maintain it. I think this will be really interesting to look back on a few years from now, and plus, I'd love to hear if/how people see me differently.
Back in September I remember having a conversation with my brother that spawned a question I hadn't really figured out the answer to until recently. I was pretty much telling him that at this point in my life I have accomplished everything that I truly felt was important and that I was in a position to make sure that I could most likely sustain it. That is, I had finally achieved what I always wanted when I was a growing up: complete independence from relying on others, financial stability, a handful of very good friends, and for the icing on the cake, a stable relationship (note: Erin and I have since broken up). I really didn't have any more clear cut goals in life left. There was a void in my life, in that, in some ways, I felt like I had beaten the game. I won life, good job, but at the same time, I felt, this really can't be it. What else do I really want to accomplish?
George didn't know the answer, but I didn't either. I mean, I didn't just want to fill my life with activities, like becoming an adrenaline junky, just to keep myself from being bored. I never wanted to become a engrossed in my job or my work, or be in fervent pursuit of the all mighty dollar either. I've watched plenty of people do that shit, and it's not what I want. I crave working towards worthwhile goals. I want to live each day knowing I'm doing more with my life than just trying to maintain and/or improve my quality of life. I have my material needs satisfied—I don't need or want all the shit this consumer regime tells me I do. As such, for me, making money merely solidifies that stability; I've maxed out the comfort that money-alone can provide.
I've also seen the opposite end of the spectrum, where I think many more people are, living life without any real direction or goals, just sort of riding the waves of others, rarely making any big changes or tough decisions with their life unless their backs are up against a wall. As much as I love just riding my impulses and going with the flow, I don't feel it necessarily will bring me to where I want to go (happiness), but rather, where the current is taking me. Living life without direction is inefficient and slow, living life as a workaholic seems to just be a big rush and grind to keep yourself occupied while in pursuit of a false dream / ideal. So what the fuck should I do?
What I came up with seems painfully obvious in hindsight, and it's something I did anyway, but nothing well defined. So what did I come up with? Since I have satisfied to a reasonable amount my physical needs, I must work on the only thing I can be sure I will have for the rest of my life: myself. That is, my goal in life is now to make myself into the person I want to be and remove the aspects of myself are inhibiting such progress. This idea may sound just like what I've preaching before, but I don't think I ever spelled it out in plain English: My goal in life is to improve.
When I say I want to improve myself, I mainly mean it in the sense that I want to eliminate bad habits, understand how more things work, have greater exposure and more well-rounded abilities. I love feeling useful and helpful. The more knowledge I possess and more capable I am of sharing and expressing that knowledge, the better. It's not that I don't think I'm good at doing these things now—I really do think I'm good at all these things, but I want to be great. I feel that happiness is not a destination, the final stopping on the train of life, but happiness is the trip itself and the satisfaction that the places it takes you are the result of. If I don't keep trying to learn more and improve I eventually drift towards just feeling stagnant and unfulfilled.
This is a much trickier task to tackle than the problems I used to work towards in the past, which were mainly external related, are now internal. This is a task I cannot really accomplish through the direct guidance or over sight in others. To change myself, I have to define what I want to be, I have to create the yardstick for measurements, I have to decide what habits need to be culled and which need to be fostered. I have to force myself to wage an internal and non-essential war against my own impulses and instincts. There is nothing straight-forward, clear-cut, or easy about this. It requires being brutally honest with myself, frustrating myself, breaking habits of convenience, and figuring out how best to change myself. There are many techniques and tools I've developed to help me on this journal, and it's safe to say that this blog is one of the tools. Ultimately though, tools and techniques are only as good as their user, so the burden can never be shifted anywhere else, it lies entirely on my shoulders.
One of the cool parts about this war is all the shit that I continue to find out about myself. With the desire to improve comes the requirement to know where I stand now, so I examine my own habits as objectively as possible. Combined with the intimate knowledge of my own memories and insight, I can even generate theories onto why I act, how I act, to the point where I find myself pretty predictable. Isn't that a silly concept? Being able to predict yourself? I feel the general notion I feel is that you would never need to 'predict' how you'd act, because you have this magical thing called 'free will,' and when confronted with a situation a person can decide their actions against their beliefs and moral values. But if anything my personal observations have told me, it's not the case. Not even remotely. Most behaviors are quite predictable. There is always a root reason and causation for your actions, just usually we aren't aware of them. You have to really step back and eliminate that root issue if you ever want to solve the problem. Otherwise, you're just treating an immediate symptom. Just like makeup can hide flaws, hiding your bad habits and tendencies or merely finding environments in which they are acceptable doesn't really treat the issue, it masks them. It delays the inevitable, doesn't make you a better person, but makes you look better on paper. That is not good enough for me. At the end of the day I want to make myself happy, and as a harmonious byproduct make the world appreciate me for that. I don't' want to make the world appreciate me for something and then derive my happiness from that, but I see a lot of people work that way.
At the moment, my major personal improvement projects revolve mainly revolve around what I would call mental discipline. Through the wonderful powers of meta-cognition, I realize quite easily when I'm bored or distracted, but I don't always have the willpower to force myself to be productive. It's odd to say this, but I really don't control my thoughts that much. They are very fluid for the most part and my active mind more or less has to corral them to go in the right direction. For something as focused, specific, and needs to have a wholesome feeling as this writing or a blog entry, that requires a great deal of active thought management, and sometimes I'm just too lazy or unfocused to do it. It's seems paradoxical to be able to think that you don't want to be thinking about something and then think about it anyway, but it happens all the time.
One of the other things I've been working on is trying to make myself more open, transparent, and social. There are very few things I hide about myself or wouldn't be willing to tell someone. I don't have secrets and I'm not going to try to pretend that I haven't ever fucked up or been foolish in the past. Yet, I don't share this with many people, not even myself really. It seems so pointless for me to have all these ideas and thoughts and then not share them with others. There are plenty of people who would appreciate hearing them, as well as plenty of people who would not be too fond to hear them. But, my bodily instincts keep me very hermit-like. I'm not socially awkward, but for whatever reason my impulses to keep myself at home instead of going out tend to prevail. It requires a lot of energy for me to want to go out, but then when I do, I almost never regret it. It's like my imagination is my worst enemy. But even still, I usually do get very worn out from going out and need to spend alone time. Achieving a healthy balance is what I'm striving for.
Well, I hope what you can take away from this blog is that I believe we all can be better ourselves. I didn't want to merely rant that I have issues that I need to fix, but I wanted to lay out the argument for why I want to improve, how I hope to go about it, and share what I've learned so far. I'm open to questions, and I encourage you to ask and give feed back. I'd encourage you to use the 'Add Comments' link below, but feel free to comment on facebook or just drop me an IM or whatever.
Just as an aside, here are some of the things going on or recently going on in my life:
- end of Feb, Erin and I broke up after ~2.25 years
- I learned how to make my own pizza dough, om nom nom
- Yesterday and the day before I saw two concerts, Bloc Party nd private concert, respectively
- I'm getting visitors! Hooray. My cousin in the beginning of April, and my Dad and Brother for my dad's birthday May 22nd. We're going to see the Mets vs Red Sox
- Ratatat Concert 4/20
- Read the book Guns, Germs, and Steel, then World War Z. Both awesome. I'm now working on One Dimensional Man... so dense... next book is definitely going to be more leisurely
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