Breaking Down the Walls

Hard to say, but Blue Skies is definitely a heavy lifter. The way that one can get you to uncover hidden parts of yourself is immensely valuable.

Oh yeah it’s got mass appeal. And it absolutely got stuck in my head, but not in an an enjoyable way lol. That 2 note piano chord replays in my head like a broken record. I already have issues with songs playing in my head nonstop. But I have to respect it because despite how simple it is, it works.

Definitely need to detach importance though, I’d agree with you there. I’ve gotten better, a lot better. I used to have a lot of my own self worth tied up in my music. Not a fun place to be. But yeah enjoying the ride of life is unfortunately something that I don’t have a lot of experience with so I have to work on getting myself to that place. I remember specifically choosing a module for that in my custom too because I knew I was so bad at it lol

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Gonna be upfront about this because fuck the stigma. After going to the doc today I got a prescription for antidepressants. I’m also going to make an appointment with a neurologist to get the testing done for ADHD. I’m done feeling like all this is my fault and I didn’t try hard enough in life. From now on I’m taking care of myself and what I need to do to get better. Being at this for close to 10 years, feeling like I need to figure it out all on my own or be stronger is bs. I know I’ve done some seriously heavy lifting and inner work on my part, so I’m not going to feel like medication is cheating or the easy way like a lot of misinformation is spread around.

Having said that I picked up the meds today at my pharmacy. The pharmacy tech looked a little out of it/having a bad day. So when it was my turn I asked her how her day has been going so far. She told me ok then asked me and I was like eh it’s been alright, which got a laugh out of her. She was cute and after I was done she was giggling while telling me to enjoy the rest of my day. Despite how little words we exchanged, it felt like she let her guard down a bit around me. Having worked in retail environments it was always nice when you got that one person that could just be real with you and understood how draining those jobs can be. Especially before i saw her I saw a guy cracking these jokes in a way where he was just trying too hard to get a laugh out of her. After one joke she looked over at me and made eye contact as if to say “please get me out of here” lol.

But yeah. I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve had a girl interact like that with me. There’s still a lot of cognitive dissonance. And to not upset Saint anymore than he already has been lol, they definitely seemed like small hints at attraction to me. I guess my head has trouble acknowledging it.

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I can’t say that I’ve ever heard of this before, and I have a ~1400 day streak for meditation. The internet sure does like to spread a lot of BS about anything remotely spiritual, though. (That goes both ways)

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Medication, not meditation. Unless that was mistype on your side. I was referring to people that call antidepressants “happy pills” and pat themselves on the back because they were blessed with good genetics that didn’t predispose themselves to a mental disorder. So they assume stuff like medication is a shortcut and things lazy people take to not have to do hard work in life. I’ve had to deal with metric tons of bullshit like that throughout my life. It’s what kept me away from medication for so long.

Whoops, yes I thought you meant meditation haha. Yes, you have to do what you need to do. Have you also tried SanguineU? It’s pretty good (as well as Ultima 1A which will get released soon).

Haha all good. I have not tried SanguineU. It’s on my to buy list. Right now I’m being more reserved financially as my custom Q took out a large chunk of my money and I told myself only purchases that I absolutely need and not want. For now I have Rebirth Ultima which has been helpful.

Sanguine u definitely helps

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Mind briefly describing the benefits you’ve had from it? Rebirth Ultima really kicks my ass. Is it just good feelings on sanguine u?

On SanguineU, sometimes it’s so effective that I feel good for no reason. I don’t bother to inspect why, I just decide to enjoy it!

If you’re strapped for cash, I’d recommend waiting for 1A because that was also giving people a feel-good effect. And guess what? It will be

F R E E

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Hmmmm. Maybe I should give it a shot. So far the only Ultima titles I’ve run have felt very processing intensive. Would be nice to try one out that wasn’t as heavy.

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Less negative self talk. Less agitation. Less anxiety.

No euphoria like 1a but a nice mellow flow.

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Grabbed Sanguine Ultima and listened today. Decided it’s important for my well being so I can justify buying it.

But that should have me set for now. Beyond Limitless Ultima, Rebirth Ultima, Sanguine Ultima, and my custom q. More than enough. I’ll probably be listening to Sanguine Ultima the most as reducing reconciliation is a big priority for me and in general doing something about this dread I feel every day of my life.

It’s going to be a bit difficult monitoring what’s the subs vs my new medication. But im anticipating a combined effect that works from both sides to get me out of this stuck feeling I’ve had for years

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Wonder if this is Sanguine kicking in today. My job has gotten incredibly stressful, just juggling my workload has become impossible. Today I felt like “well this whole situation is a shit show for me, but I’m gonna do whatever I can and not let the rest bother me”. It’s this feeling of floating. When it feels like everyone is running around like they’re on fire and want you to be on fire too. But you just say nah that’s not how we’re handling this.

I definitely need to learn to stop giving a fuck. Situations happen, people react, but I don’t have to. Learning to put in the work and do a good job, but also being entirely unattached.

I’m gonna be flying solo this coming week while my boss goes on vacation. I guess that’s a good test as any for Sanguine Ultima.

On the music front been pretty burned out lately. I have a really hard time telling the difference between laziness/lack of discipline vs needing to rest and stop pushing myself so hard. Given that I’ve let up on myself, started focusing on my mental health more, and stopped putting so much emphasis on being good at music, I’m guessing I need to recover more as my body has been giving me signals to just chill. Nothing worse than a mind that spins nonstop about all the shit you need to do or haven’t done, yet your body feels physically fatigued and you have trouble doing much of anything.

I’m thinking about setting a timer for 1 hr for working on stuff. After 1 hr I just drop it wherever I am and relax. The goal would be to work on music without getting intimidated by the idea of writing a whole song. And also because I overdo it and don’t know when to stop. I often feel I procrastinate doing anything because the prospect of writing a new track is intimidating. So my wonderful mind just bins the whole thing then I feel like shit I didn’t work on something.

Looking out for myself, that’s what I have to do from now on. Have to really drill that one into my head. Not just reminding myself, but living from it. Nobody on the outside sees what I struggle with, so their perception of me is filled with expectations. But they’re expectations I don’t have to meet. The hardest one lately has been the working world. I just suck at it. Not necessarily my skill at doing something. I just mean keeping up with it all. I can power through for most of the week, but really at what cost? This is the shit situation I always tend to find myself in, being stuck trying to survive and not knowing how to pull out of it/not feeling like I have the energy to pull out of it. So I stay in stuff longer than I should. Hate it, it’s always my worst nightmare and yet eventually I end up in it.

I really like this. Lately, I feel that the outside world’s expectations of me have been acting as a pressure for me to change my thinking patterns, and I don’t like it; a good deal of these expectations conflict with my values and the way I want to live my life.

What does this mean? Do you get burned out?

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I guess? But I’m already burned out before I even start a job if that makes sense. My threshold of what I can tolerate compared to the everyday person is very low. Been like this for a while, most of my life. I just don’t “fit” into the well oiled machine of society. I don’t say that to seem special or unique, if anything it causes a bunch of dysfunction in my life and makes things harder. I can’t tell if the starkQ module is basically strengthening that feeling and I don’t have anywhere to go or do so it’s causing massive distress.

I’m very transparent in my journals. Some of this stuff is passing thoughts. Some of it is recurring patterns and themes in my life I’ve had trouble breaking or moving on from. It’s not me giving up. It’s just incredibly frustrating spending most of your life just trying to feel better or to live your life more and it comes up short.

Went car camping with some friends for a night over the weekend. Felt great. The new IT director called me while I was on my way up there and then texted me. Then I told him I was losing reception and I would be unavailable this weekend and that was that.

Maybe it’s just me, maybe I’m just a cynical fuck these days. But that shit pissed me off. I don’t want to be contacted off hours on my time. I don’t want to be thinking about work or whatever BS is going on. I’m VERY strict about my boundaries with work and my personal time. That’s MY time, if you’re not going to compensate me for it either by paying me overtime or giving me a significant pay bump while moving up to salary don’t bother contacting me. I’m seriously debating talking with him this coming week and telling him it’s not ok and he should absolutely not expect me to be available. I will not fall into that role again where I “help” at the expense of my own mental health, fuck that. I do my job and that’s all they get from me. Even if they did give me a huge pay bump I wouldn’t take it. That’s how much I value my work-life separation. One of those things America tends to really fuck up. I’m all for it if you’re passionate about your job and in alignment in it, but sadly for a lot of people a job is a means for survival. I show up on time, all the time, do a good job, and you want even more from me? No. You need extra help? Hire someone else.

You don’t keep a good worker by saddling them with more and more responsibility. Don’t give me this rah rah team bullshit, the satisfaction of solving complex problems is gone for me. I realized I craved that to justify my own self worth and now that I’m deciding I don’t care about it I only do what I was hired to do and perform at the level they pay me. Call it a shitty attitude, bad employee, whatever, I’m tired of being taken advantage of and I don’t care.

I really hate that me standing up for myself, looking out for myself, that my first instinct is that I’m the bad guy and I’m doing something wrong. That I should be more open and flexible, a team-player, that I’m selfish, that my perspective is negative and I just have to be more positive. Still ingrained with that goddamn nice guy programming where I feel deep shame putting my needs above someone else or feel like I have to bend over backwards for everyone because I’m less important. And I hate people that want to continue to keep me in that programming because I make a good tool for them.

Despite all that, I kept my mind off work all weekend and it was absolutely liberating. Being completely away, in a place I’ve never been, it’s like a detox. Got me thinking about this career. My push for more certifications, learning new knowledge, trying to get into a specialty field, etc. Over the camping trip I was just like “fuck all this shit, why am I doing this? I clearly don’t want this. Why the hell do I keep telling myself this is the right path to take? I know it’s not”.

I don’t know if it’s a term but I’m gonna coin it “panic planning”. It’s when you’re afraid so you put a plan together to quell your fears, but the plan is bullshit. It’s a safe, well worn path with certainty, but you don’t actually want it. But you tell yourself it’ll be good for you. Plans are only effective if they are carried out from a position of alignment and true desire, otherwise they are a distraction and worse a long ass detour that you eventually have to swing back around from.

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Definitely need to think out the whole asc mogul and ultimate artist thing for my new stack.

On one hand I’ve already got starkQ so maybe having the business side handled. On the other hand if I keep going down the route of never investing in my business skills I’m going to keep doing this thing where I get stuck in jobs I don’t care for and my music loses focus. All the while wishing it could be a bigger part of my life.

So there’s definitely some black and white thinking here. Either fully expressive and free to create music or stuck “selling out” to make money.

There’s a middle ground to be found here. Freedom to express myself, but also make a living from it. And I definitely don’t want to go the route of being picked up by a label and managed. I don’t have a high opinion of the music industry in general. Despite never having first hand experience, it doesn’t seem like it puts the music first and it burns out a lot of artists.

And part of that is all or nothing thinking. Thinking I have to create masterpieces before they have any value. Maybe it’s about time I just focus more on putting myself out there vs hoarding ideas and being too afraid.

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Yup def asc mogul moving forward. I’ve settled on it. Also being more strict about getting in 2 loops a day. I was slacking on that. One is clearly not enough to build up the momentum and challenge me. I want this so bad, I’m so tired of falling back to the same old stuff because it feels safer.

I’m also looking into digital drawing. But I told myself to not put pressure on myself. To just keep it fun. I suck at figure drawing or anything realistic or with a form. I like drawing more abstract stuff or just putting my pencil down and seeing where it goes. I did this one over my camping trip. I thought it was interesting in its own unique kind of way. Still amateur hour over here lol. But the goal was really to just have fun because I really fuck that up with everything.

It’s dirty because it fell on the ground lol. But yeah. I used to draw a lot and gave up because I sucked at it/everyone seemed more naturally gifted. Idk maybe incorporate this with album art down the road.

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Ran 2 loops of my custom today. About 3 hours apart. And it felt good. It hasn’t felt good in a while if I’m honest. It always felt like an internal grinding and anxiety. I don’t think it’s a breakthrough from hammering away at stuff. I think the medication I’m taking is kicking in more. I mean I’d be psyched if it was just finally breaking through, but I’m starting to think the biological issues came first then the negative beliefs about myself.

I can’t prove that, but I’ve tried a lot and for years. Something was always insanely difficult for me but I couldn’t put my finger on what. I think even on a subconscious level if you’re experiencing the physical effects of something like depression it gets really difficult to integrate positive beliefs. Because there’s this automatic barrier that just shuts it all down or there’s a diminished ability to feel good about yourself in general.

Don’t know. Maybe I should check how long I’ve been listening and see if it coincides with a time period or length. All I know is I feel a lot more receptive to the script.

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