That first video was great, brought a smile to my face. Wooten has such a powerful energy to him.
That neverending chord progression was really interesting. I’ll have to try that out. Would be perfect for some more ambient stuff that just drifts. I actually try to incorporate principles from live instruments or playing in band for a lot of my stuff so this is always helpful. Even if it’s not traditional instruments I find everything still has to speak to each other.
I’ve got so much fear built up in life. I still have to finalize my schedule with the new therapist. What’s really interesting is that when I went to see her I felt good and hopeful. But this past week I lost that a bit.
I don’t know it’s like there’s this feeling of dread when I strip back all the busy activities during my day. What’s really keeping me alive at this point? My weekends hit and since I’m not really obligated to do anything my body takes that as a sign to do the bare minimum. So really am I getting through my days ok during the week? Or am I pushing myself and not even realizing it?
I try to take care of myself, but I feel like I’m hindered by the fact I have to keep up with this work every day. It’s just really frustrating as an adult having to recover from all this but simultaneously juggle all these responsibilities. Responsibilities that quite honestly feel microscopic in importance compared to my own mental health, but everyone in this company would have me believe otherwise.
The type of stuff I’m vibing to recently and want to get into creating more of. Break programming can get complicated real fast, 2 ways. One overdoing the chops and making things way too over the top and two not having enough variation. It’s definitely a skill making things sound energetic and rhythmic without losing the groove. You want to push boundaries but not get too caught up in complicated chopping for the sake of it.
LBFH is the most difficult sub I’ve ever run. My first week I felt pretty good, but I think that’s because I was hitting surface level thoughts and beliefs about myself. This past week has been a huge struggle.
I’m gonna do my best to describe it but it might get messed up because honestly I don’t fully understand what’s going on. There’s a very practical part of me that interfaces with life and gets the job done. I can feel bad at times, but sometimes running a sub will get me to correct those feelings and thoughts. It can all seem ok, but underneath is another layer or self that’s not doing too great. It doesn’t fit in, doesn’t like itself, wants to isolate, avoid people, etc. These are almost two very distinct personalities. And I think I’m going to be learning more about that in therapy soon.
LBFH is getting to that deeper self and it’s a struggle. Now I’m facing emotions and problems that really point to my own disconnectedness in humanity. But I override this with that more practical self that sits on top. It’s safer to be disconnected, but it’s not rewarding in any way.
In short it’s not easy. I can’t just be like “I’m open to everyone!”. Part of me is not having that at all. Part of me is just purely reactive and can’t even entertain thoughts of being closer with people.
I kinda want to just apply Occam’s razor to all this psych stuff. But honestly the more I uncover about myself, the more I feel like I don’t have a clue what the hell is going on in this mind and it’s not simple. Everyone in my life would reduce my struggles to something simple though and it didn’t help me understand or work with it in a way that was healing
I think I might switch back to Sanguine for now. LBFH, I like the idea of it, but this self love thing is too painful to deal with head on. I’m going to go with a more “neutral” sub for now to just help me get by while I do the harder work with these therapy sessions. Still haven’t put UA in the mix yet, but I think I’ll be doing that soon.
LBFH did give me some positives, but ultimately it’s way too many things to tackle at once. Self love is incredibly hard and always has been, being open around other people as well. Smash those two together and I’ve got a highly anxiety inducing objective that I don’t think I’m comfortable with handling. I can’t be placing unnecessary burden on myself to open up to others as a flaw in my character that needs fixing. This is one of those subs where a part of me like “this is a beautiful idea” and another part is like “are you crazy?”
Ironically I think the most self loving thing I can do is not keep pursuing LBFH, so in that regard it’s clear it has had impact on me because in the past it was always “you have to push through this, it’s not that bad, don’t quit, etc”
The thing that trips me up with these subs sometimes is some of them state a whole “go at your own pace” thing, so I’d think I would be able to self regulate more? But it doesn’t seem to be the case. Not a criticism on the subs, just how I integrate them seems to be wonky. Which brings me back to a similar idea I had in the past, the underlying mechanism for processing and regulating emotions is out of wack and that’s what the subs rely upon a lot. The healthier your internal emotional regulation is, it seems like the easier time you would have with subs.
So really maybe my “go at my own pace” is figuring out an alternative subliminal and seeking outside assistance. Which is exactly what I’ve decided to do. I think the calm and peace I first got on LBFH might have been leaning more towards Sanguine style scripting anyway. That always tends to be immediate and the more emotional stuff is usually on a buffer, which is what I ran into this past week.
How are you today?
Doing better thanks. I ran Sanguine yesterday and it stabilized me a bit.
I’m doing a deep dive into my previous journals. Something I’ve been meaning to do but putting off. Mainly for two reasons. 1 is seeing what growth I’ve had and 2 see what recurring problems I’ve run into.
I was really articulate in the past ones, full of a lot of hope and insights and growth. I’ve lost a lot of that recently. I don’t know if it’s the strength of ZP or just uncovering things that I still had suppressed back then but nowadays I don’t have much to say.
Insights, epiphanies, all well and good if they are merged into action. If not they’re more intellectual reasoning to bypass emotional states.
I feel like I’m in this cycle of pain where I don’t have enough energy to make my life better, but I also don’t like what I’m doing. I took a long weekend this week by using two vacation days. I don’t want to go back there. Every fiber of my being is just absolutely revolted at the thought of returning.
I look back on the past 3 years running these subs and I’m upset and frustrated because I just want to be better. But it feels like no matter what I do I’m always coming up short. At least now I’m getting outside help and that’s probably going to help me work through all this. But it’s this feeling of “there’s nothing wrong here, yet everything is so wrong”.
When you realize this one barrier you were fighting to push past turns out to be a whole complex web of issues and emotional states that you ultimately needed to address, not ignore and push past. And it’s just like fuck man, I don’t have the time, energy, or support system for any of this I need to be a functioning adult now.
I feel you brother. You are not alone here.
Hang in there.
“Challenges are given to ordinary people to make them extraordinary”
At least you are moving forward centimeter by centimeter.
Don’t stop.
Since I’m sort of hitting this low point I’m going to add UA with Sanguine today. I would rather channel all this into music vs get stuck analyzing it.
I can feel how I could channel it, but my issue is just not having the mental capacity to do it. A lot of that is emotional hangups around the process of creating in general. I know 100% that I would work with the goals of UA vs being reluctant like when I ran Ascension or AM.
A weird belief for me regarding music is that in order to create better music I have to not write how I feel. Very backwards. As if channeling my own feelings and states is somehow cliche or not thought out enough.
Going to start a new journal, reading back some of these older ones it got confusing when I shifted subs. For the sake of consistency on future me
Great! Very wise!