Breaking Down the Walls

Journals - Custom Subliminals
#181

Sitting here about to put together my second custom for the music production stuff. It shouldn’t be this hard to decide, but it is. I want to write meaningful stuff, but I’ve found that in that endless pursuit to write meaningful stuff I dug myself deeper and deeper into a hole of self criticism and perfectionism. Spending too much of my time debating what I should write vs just writing. In the end most of the time what I write isn’t even amazing, so I put myself through all that self torture and yet I’m not doing anything differently. Hell the people writing stuff and not giving a shit are having more fun and enjoyment than me.

Don’t I deserve to just enjoy the experience and live a life where I can make a living off of this without grinding myself into the ground? Without worrying if it’s “good enough”. Yeah I think so. There’s a difference between being ambitious and creative vs harmful and self critical.

Not just music. I want to get rid of this pervasive feeling of “not good enough”. It isolates me. I automatically assume nobody really likes me and nobody could like me for who I am. And it’s just a self fulfilling prophecy from there. If this whole “not good enough” just leaks into EVERYTHING. Everything I touch will be not good enough. I can’t have that, I know there’s a better way.

Obviously me running StarkQ in my custom there’s an element of wanting to be that fun sociable guy who’s in the spotlight. But I feel like I’ve been trying to be that vs actually being it. To be honest I just feel like a social reject. An outcast. I know that’s my perception though, any of my friends I’ve hung out with will tell me just the opposite. But it doesn’t matter if I can’t believe it myself because I end up doing stupid shit that further self isolates me. And of course I’m always lying to myself and saying it doesn’t bother me, but fuck it. I’ve been on the outside for so long, for once in my life I’d like to be part of something to be closer or like I belong. I’m not a strong lone wolf independent person like I deluded myself. Even those guys have the capacity to make friends. Me, I’ve just always been insecure and those insecurities destroy potential relationships with people.

This reminds me of when I was 18 years old and had my grand epiphany that I didn’t need other people in my life to be happy and I could be happy by myself. Of course that was just an elaborate defense mechanism for the ostracized feelings I internalized for most of my life. That definitely wasn’t an epiphany based on self growth, love, and compassion for myself.

Gah, I should have expected such harsh reconciliation when I chose StarkQ. It’s pretty much the exact opposite of how I’ve lived most of my life, but I chose it for that exact reason. I’ve just been really shooting myself in the foot lately though.

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#182

Listened to SanguineU before bed last night. Listened on the floor and fell asleep lol. I’ve been keeping consistent with 2 loops of the custom and it feels like it’s what I needed. Sometimes I’m too gentle with myself and treat myself like I’m made of glass. It’s weird how one loop doesn’t really do it for me, it kind of keeps me afloat but doesn’t help me grow. I don’t know how that works, but it’s interesting. Looking back on my journal 2 loops does seem to be the pattern for when I had more breakthroughs, so maybe the decrease to one loop was reconciliation because I knew subconsciously I could hold it off.

Looking forward to this new focused custom based on the music production. I really want to do this and this is me taking more action towards it. Putting it at the forefront of my life vs burying it behind how everyone else encourages me to live my life.

I’ve realized it’s not easy doing things a different way that others are hesitant about. Especially if they are your “tribe” so to speak. You trust them and especially if they are older like your parents you assume they must have a lot of knowledge or experience. But it’s not always true and going along with the tribe can hurt you in the long run. I don’t actively seek advice from my parents, it’s moreso a subconscious conditioning. Like my dad is still obsessed with the idea of finding a job that will take care of you. That’s how I was raised. And that’s just being codependent on someone outside of yourself, not to mention putting you in a position for some heavy manipulation if they tug on your fear of losing job type strings.

It’s just a lot of stuff I still have internalized that works against me and my real desires. I’m still forming my own roadmap of the world vs relying on others.

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#183

My patience is being tested. This whole work week has been a nightmare. Just non stop, I keep coming home too burnt out to actually enjoy my life. And then the icing on the cake, I got asked by the IT director if I could work this Saturday because the shipping department wants to work then and they need to make sure the system doesn’t run into problems. Just no. I told him I had plans and I can’t. I’m not doing this, not for this company at least.

I’m going through some heavy reconciliation right now. I’m realizing how much of my life has slipped away from me. It’s just all so limited and I’m tired of it. I was trying to work on everything to make me happy and feel good about my life, but I just realized today I really have to grow more before that’s a possibility. I can’t force happiness and fulfillment in the same bubble that causes misery. It just doesn’t work like that. And it’s just been a tactic to avoid change, bargaining that I could somehow make it work within those boundaries.

I cling to the old for a sense of security and safety. Moving beyond this point has always been incredibly difficult because it’s all I know. I have nothing to draw upon to give me a sense of what it is my life can be. I find it difficult to even believe it’s a possibility at times for me. But I feel like I just need some kind of experience to change that, anything to break it. To stop the pattern of misery I’ve put myself in.

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#184

Need some fuck you energy. Seriously tired of dealing with all this shit. If I want one module in my sub to kick into overdrive right now it’s Rogue. I just am so exhausted caring what others think. Worrying if I come across as an asshole or wrong, trying to be nice to people. I don’t want to hurt anyone and I think that’s why I’ve been so overly cautious, but all I get is disrespected and taken advantage of so fuck it.

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#185

Am I correct in my sense that communicating this to the IT director was a really fucking big deal for you and should be recognized as such?

It seems like it.

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#186

You know what? You’re 100% right. Old me would have caved to this request either out of fear or an inability to consider my own needs.

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#187

It’s happening. New music production custom.

image

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#188

Great stuff. Any more modules in it? Quite a bit of room before you hit 20.

#189

Looks good.

#190

Nope keeping it lean with 10. The goal was to create a hyper focused custom that links up to the more broad one I’m already using. It’s a branch off of ultimate artist to further support my goals.

#191

This sub complements

#193

Two day sub break coming up. Gonna go up to three loops. Gotta push this and see how far I can take it. Last time I went up to three things got intense. I think it triggered a lot of fear and I ran back to safety by pushing away the music aspirations and criticizing myself. Going so far as to say I haven’t really grown and I actually need to stop living in a fantasy. Harsh words from myself, no doubt. Those are not the words of someone seeking to push the boundaries of their reality.

The question is. Is the fact that 3 loops made me insanely self sabotaging good or bad? Meaning was I closer to a profound breakthrough on 3 loops? Or was I just hurting myself? Very hard to tell. I guess I can only try again and remain more mindful.

I read through my whole journal and it’s interesting to see the dips and then the resurfacing. Everytime I resurfaced I had more insight and growth for myself. Three loops really shook me to the core and challenged my identity, so I’m looking forward to seeing how far I can go this time.

#194

Ran rebirthU last night before bed. I feel a lot of stuff today. Going to do my best to not ignore it and not slip into detachment and run away.

I thought a lot about this lately. I’m used to other subs where they force you to do stuff. So I had to learn to “let go” and allow it to work. But subclubs stuff, I have to reorient how I approach the sub effects internally. I’ll say this, it’s much easier to shrug it off. When I run something like RebirthU my subconscious is like “hey look what I found, but that’s it, you’ve got it from here”. So I definitely have to make more of a conscious decision to engage this stuff.

I guess that’s what happens when you spend close to 6 years on someone else’s scripting

#195

Cleaning my place because it’s a mess. But holy shit cleaning is so difficult for me. I finish one part and have to take a 10 minute break. I’ve always been like this, I can’t keep anything clean for more than a week. Going through others experience with this same thing, it’s apparently a very common problem among people with ADHD. I’m using all my willpower not to get distracted and derail myself from cleaning. Don’t know why vacuuming a room takes every last ounce of effort from me but it does.

But anyway I’m constantly self conscious of it. It’s not like I enjoy living in this, I’m just kind of blind to it until it gets bad.

Hoping when executive comes out it can help me with this. I seriously suck at any kind of upkeep and I feel guilty about it which also sucks.

#196

Every time I run RebirthU I’m like, hey not so bad. Then things just start to get heavy and I’m like oh… RebirthU definitely doesn’t seem like a more than twice a week thing. For me at least.

Having said that, it shakes up my core and that’s what I need right now. My jobs been eating away at me and I’m tired of putting myself in situations that don’t benefit me. That’s as straight to the point as I can get with all this.

I haven’t touched that networking course I bought because quite honestly I realized I had to force myself to sit down and do it. I gave it an honest shot, but nothing clicked for me. And I’m at a point in my life where I think to myself why are you doing that and what’s your motivation for doing it? Just money and to feel secure? That’s definitely a trap, that’s not gonna give long term happiness for you. Fuck what everyone says, they don’t know your best interests only you do.

So I’ve stopped beating myself up for being a square peg that doesn’t fit in a round hole. That’s all there is to it and I need to stop wasting so much energy trying to change into something else to fit. I’ve got my challenges and issues no doubt and I’ll continue to grow, but as far as the unrelenting guilt? I need to do away with that.

Right now I find it hard to take solid concrete action. I’m afraid of moving to a new job in case they decide to can me if another wave of covid hits and budgets get cut. My job is really taking my energy so it’s hard to write music, and the whole pandemic thing is just insanely limiting. I lost out on a lot of my life when I was younger and I feel like due to all this I’m losing out now too so I’m kind of bitter about that. It’s just not a good time for me and I’m doing what I can but I wish I could just get my ass in gear.

I’m hoping when I start up the new custom it can help me out with my music so I can build up more consistency. I’ve been away from it for a week now and unfortunately instead of feeling refreshed it’s like I’m having even more anxiety trying to get back into it. When I was more consistent it was a habit, but all the stupid job bs and future worrying got in the way and threw it all on the back burner. So now it feels like I have to scale a mountain again and it’s tough.

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#197

Finally got around to creating a patch in my modular synth for drum samples. I can cross that one off the list. Took me damn near the whole day because I had no idea what I was doing. But it was a learning experience.

Day 2 of my break and I don’t feel so great. Whenever I take breaks my mood always does a nose dive. I don’t know if that’s me working on a lot of stuff or the processing really kicking in and it’s more than what I thought it would be.

After I was done with making the patch I put down a little drum beat and then played something over the top. I liked the idea, I think I’ll turn it into a song, just not today. Today is not the day to be pushing myself to write music because I feel like I’m in a very vulnerable headspace and I don’t want to get upset if I’m having trouble writing. Nothing worse than putting pressure on myself to finish my songs, I’ve realized that’s why it stresses me so much. So I’ll take the small piece of expression I got today and be thankful for that. Maybe I’ll watch some tutorials I bought a while back to keep the motivation up and give me ideas.

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#198

Lots of internal movement yesterday. Felt like I was experiencing a bunch of different emotions all at once. So backed up at work and I don’t even give a fuck anymore. Every time this happened I would blame myself and burn myself out trying to catch up. But yesterday I decided I don’t care anymore. There’s no benefit to me busting my ass. The company doesn’t care about me, it causes me stress, and it continuously promotes the idea that they should expect me to be constantly on top of things.

That’s the problem being surrounded by workaholics. They expect you to do that shit too.

But on a positive note I got some more music done yesterday. As I was working on it I reminded myself this was my primary focus in life. Not the distractions of my job.

Up to 3 loops now. I hit the third one before bed. Will see how things go.

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#199

Something weird I’ve noticed. When I’m in processing mode after a loop of Q I’ll get these moments where my breathing gets really shallow. I have to remind myself to breathe. It’s like the more intense the emotional processing I freeze up. I’ve been making a conscious effort to remind myself to breathe through whatever comes up. Actually now that I write that out I often tend to freeze up with a lot of this emotional processing I’m going through.

I have these sticking points. They are like these walls I hit inside of me. I can momentarily override them at the expense of my energy and more stress. But it doesn’t feel like a long term solution nor does it actually promote change. It’s like working around something, it gets the job done and life keeps going on but internally it still feels wrong.

This is how I feel about my music sometimes. I can push past those fears and anxieties, but it costs me and it’s not sustainable. Every once in a while things work and a track comes together, but it feels lucky in a way. Like I think to myself “you don’t actually know what you’re doing, it’s a miracle the song actually came together and isn’t a mess”. I’m currently working on taking small ideas and expanding them into full songs. I usually find myself feeling like I need to keep adding more, but it’s really just insecurity that ruins the overall composition because I start adding filler that doesn’t add to the music. In short it feels more stressful than it should be and I’m trying to work on that.

#200

Trying to make it through the 3 loops a day. Still don’t know. But I’m going to persist.

Right now I feel like I want to give up on this whole idea of being a better person. I’d rather take messed up and enjoying life vs miserable and on this treadmill of constant self improvement that seems to go nowhere for me. I don’t know if I articulated that correctly. It’s not that I want to give up all together. I’ve just put too much demand on myself through the years. Just want to say fuck it. It’s like I projected this idealized version of myself in the future and kept telling myself when I get there I’ll feel better.

I’m still working on getting an appointment with a neurologist for the testing for ADHD. Obviously I don’t want it, but if it’s a piece of the puzzle for why things have always been so damn difficult for me I’m going to work with it. I don’t know how far I can go with subliminals truth be told. What’s in the realm of possibilities. If this is my weakness I have to work with I’d rather find coping methods and structuring my life to work with me vs trying to fix it and be disappointed and exhausted when I come up short.

I’ve begun to realize I’m not ambitious. Meaning I’m not looking to build an empire or business or compete. I just want to carve out my own little section in this world and be left the fuck alone by people that want to dictate how a life should be lived. Money is security to me, but I don’t have a strong desire to make it. Would it be nice to have so I don’t have to worry? Yeah. But my drive for money isn’t strong enough to make me want to put in all those hours and dedication for making it. I’ll save those hours for my creative pursuits. So maybe my perception of the goals of my custom regarding financial abundance were skewed and I have to better define it for myself.

#201

New plan. Finish a track a month. Doesn’t have to be a masterpiece, but it does have to be somewhat complete. The goal is to basically break my fear of not writing amazing stuff and learn that just because something comes together fast doesn’t make it less valuable.

I’ve got endless ideas, but my follow through is garbage. So instead of giving myself the daunting task of writing some super in depth musical piece I’m going to expand those ideas into full mini songs. Since I make a lot of electronic music there’s always a subtle pressure to make 5 min plus tracks. But I think just building something up and letting it be whatever length it’s going to be is a better approach. I get insanely jealous of guys that have these huge sprawling tracks that are intricate. I admittedly don’t have the attention span for it, I have a lot of trouble focusing on those minor details and the session quickly turns stressful as I fight to stay engaged.

One of my sticking points is the fact that I’m way too critical about repeating ideas. I feel like I need to have endless variations and if I don’t do something revolutionary my music is terrible. Which is simply not true because I’ve listened to plenty of tracks with repeating themes and grooves that I like. So someone else does it? That’s fine. I do it? It’s the end of the world.

Just want to make music without all this stop and go bullshit that plagues my head.

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