@Malkuth Lots to unpack there for sure. I can’t say I got 100% of that but I understand enough of it. I started writing more here but I felt it was hasty given my short time to digest all this. I’ll have to let that sit for a day. But the narrative thing did get some gears turning in my head.
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Started running regeneration at night again for one loop. It definitely helps, a surprising amount. I never should have stopped it. One thing I like about regeneration is it strips away the bs. I found myself looking at myself more compassionately and realizing just how fucking hard I’ve been on myself to be more confident and overall to be respected in the eyes of others. But what I realized is it’s a lot of needless pressure on myself, especially when those goals are born out of insecurities, not genuine desires. The fact is my priorities weren’t straight. So I found myself asking myself “what do you want?” “What do you genuinely want?” And I couldn’t answer for certain, but I noticed this weight that left me and it felt like for the first time in a while I genuinely gave a shit about myself.
It’s a small shift, but an eye opening experience because I realized some goals I was chasing only caused me more misery as they fed that neurosis of worrying what others think. So do I want to improve my confidence? Yes absolutely, anything to increase my enjoyment of life. But that confidence is for me, not built up as a way to gain approval from others.
Due to my long battle with social anxiety I still have trouble with eye contact at times, still fumble my words, have my mind go a bit blank. But I know what always made it worse was the thought “you should be better than this, look at all those fuckups when you talk”. But now I feel like I’ll be moving into the mindset of “ok this isn’t ideal, but it’s not a huge problem and it doesn’t make you worthless”.
So I won’t be living in a state where I’m perpetually trying to be confident, failing, and feeling like shit and I won’t be living in a state where I’m constantly pointing out my flaws and using them as a sign of my worthlessness. I guess I’ve just been really black and white for a while now. I’m either some super confident, high achieving, unstoppable demi-god or I’m a worthless piece of shit and there was no in between. No surprise there why I’ve been feeling bad for a while.
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Real talk when the coronavirus news hit I didn’t take it all that seriously. Another common flu, exaggerated death numbers, only effects the old,etc. I saw it from a distance, as happening outside the US. Then when it hit the US I still felt it was far away. Then a town about an hour and half out from me got quarantined. I felt like a royal dumbass for not taking it seriously. Just a lot of denial on my part, maybe a consequence of fear. But I see the denial in other people too, just carrying on like nothing is happening. I’m not saying lose your shit, but this definitely isn’t a situation to be taken lightly.
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Long fucking week and it’s not even over yet. I was responsible for basically giving 20 people the ability to work remotely. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you’re the only one doing it and juggling the usual requests that come in it’s a lot. Long story short, this company pissed me off a lot with how I was treated regarding this setup. No gratitude, no thanks for busting my ass, my only motivation for getting the task done was so I didn’t have people bitching at me why it wasn’t done. Cursed out when something isn’t working 100% and no acknowledgement of what actually keeps things running here. Obviously with the virus going around I’m gonna keep this job, but once things turn around I’m out. This was the final straw. The only person that showed thanks was my boss and while I appreciate it, life is too short to be stuck in a job where you just get kicked around all the time.
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I’m in a peculiar spot at the moment. I don’t want to treat myself horribly anymore, but at the same time I don’t feel like I can shine or be a leader or successful. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about affirmations and in general positive self talk for myself, it’s that it has to be semi-believable. If it feels like I’m blowing smoke up my own ass I’ll reject and simultaneously feel worse. As egoic as it sounds, I feel like I have such a huge self awareness of many aspects of myself I can’t do the “fake it till you make it” thing.
Seems like my mind went “ok you can have no more self-hatred, but we’re capping this thing off at neutral”. And I don’t want that. I’ve always sucked at taking compliments or people appreciating something I do. As a musician I simultaneously feel my stuff is special in some way but also worry it’s just delusions or ego elevating my own work. But then that raises the question, why do I want my music to be so special in the first place? Idk maybe that’s just me, maybe that’s who I am. Some people care about money, running a successful business, being a great athlete, so why do I condemn myself for wanting to be acknowledged for making music? In a way it’s more ego to not acknowledge the fact that I have that desire and try to be “above it”
I don’t know. It’s hard going beyond that neutral state. But that’s where it feels like I really need to go now. To stop doing this “good enough” nonsense and start building a life I can 100% with conviction say fulfills me. Maybe it’s a fear of allowing good things into my life because it’s always felt like they get ripped away from me and the psychological impact of that swung me into really dark depressed states. So I think to myself “ok this is working now, why risk fucking it all up and ending up back at square one?” And it’s safe and predictable, but it’s not happiness, not by a long shot.
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Man elixir really shakes things up for me. Nothing rattles stuck emotions like it. But what I’ve realized is I’ve got horrible emotional management. Going into my first listen today and I was trying to do this detached observer type thing where I release everything. I’d feel the tears start to come and I’d just snap back. I’m trying to stay open and let things process, but I have this really bad habit of just tensing up and holding back.
I guess I’ve had a lot of painful stuff in the past and eventually when it wasn’t resolved the solution was to stuff it down and just get on with life. It doesn’t feel particularly productive to just sit there and let go and just allow myself to feel whatever I need to feel. But it seems to be important, more important than trying to think my way to feeling better.
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Listened to the new aegis initiative sub. Felt this more powerful feeling of doing what’s good for me. I’m my case, my job is really short staffed right now and I have to handle a ton of stuff. I’m not gonna kill myself over it and I’ll just take it as it comes. The way I see it stress weakens the immune system and I don’t need that right now. I don’t need any of this shit in day to day life, but now with the virus going around I think it’s even more important to prioritize health.
Add onto that that a lot of companies really don’t care about you as a person. You’re just an expendable human resource. So why put your health at risk for someone who won’t even reciprocate with care?
Adding this into my rotation at the top. It helps promote a centeredness and focus on what’s really important during this pandemic, not getting caught in other people’s bs.
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Had close to an hour session with elixir. Not sure if that’s too much, but it worked pretty well for me.
I usually talk a lot in my posts, but through that session I went back in time to my childhood and there wasn’t a lot to bring back in written form. Basically I discovered what I’ve been searching for for a loooong ass time. Security/safety. I’ve never felt that. To know that the future will bring good things, to feel like I have stability under my feet, to be able to trust others enough to open up. It’s why I stay in familiar places that don’t feel good, because even I find some sense of security I cling onto it.
To put it into a visual metaphor. My life has felt like less of a solid land that stretches for miles and more like an island in a vast ocean where I can’t see or even begin to guess where the next island is. So swimming in hopes of finding something else feels like potential death. All this for someone who didn’t even grow up in particularly unstable environments, it’s just all due to how I reacted. Quite frankly it baffles me how much psychological distress I’ve been through despite not even having really trying circumstances. And I guess I really need to come to terms with that instead of comparing my life to people that never grew up with whatever I did.
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Just have to say this, this pandemic has revealed the true colors of people in the US. The narcissistic ones that think they are more important than an entire country(ex. college kids who felt keeping spring break going was more important than doing their part to prevent a spread of a deadly virus, the government who are so preoccupied with economic prosperity they are willing to put their citizens health dead last and completely fumbled in response to a pandemic AFTER being able to see how it hit another country, the employers who try to convince themselves their business is “essential” to remain open and refuse to set up WFH policies or put their employees at risk of unnecessary exposure of the virus by telling them they have to come in and using threats of termination to get what they want.
I hope people learn from this. I really fucking do. Prior to this I’d look for the best in people. I can’t do that anymore. I honest to god can’t, because if you’re willing to put others lives at risk for your own selfish reasons I have no faith in whatever goodness might be in you. There is no excuse for that. Having said that, there are really good people in this world and I’m thankful for all they do and the awful people don’t negate their impact. But I’ll never be able to look at people the same way again after all this. And I sure as hell won’t be expending any amount of energy to try to figure out why they behave the way they do, as if that’s an excuse for not taking responsibility for their own actions.
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That’s pretty amazing.
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Worked on a track today. I got maybe a 1/4 of it done then I had trouble moving forward. Days like today where I worked close to the whole day on a track and still didn’t finish kind of upset me. It feels like I’m not optimizing my time. Saturdays always feel like the one day where I can get into the zone with my music because I feel like I have plenty of time and freedom from my job.
Idk, feeling low right now. What I made today is pretty good to me and I’m happy I like it. But I feel like I wasted my day somehow. Conflicting feelings.
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Well said.
It makes us angry to see the behaviour of dickheads in a worldwide emergency, luckily they are being exposed and shamed for the cunts they are.
Here’s one example from the UK.
Idk, if you are still here, maybe you found something helped you. But I wanna add, if you don’t have a hardship in life, get your ass to the fighting gym, get your face punched, get angry, punch someone in return. This is your hardship, go to the regular gym, force yourself going, asking people to spot you there. Use subs to help you with social anxiety, if you need.