Just the converse. My intuition can sometimes see things coming far in advance, but my body has to sit tight and wait for them to actually be here.
I think it is important to learn to trust it so that the information is not just being wasted. But it also takes time to learn to trust it.
Meditation helps and subliminals seem to help.
Got more of my place packed up for my move so I’ve been feeling way better and ahead of things. So my head is a bit more clear.
Today’s realization. Elevate myself and be bold. There’s going to be no shortage of people who will tell me something can’t be done or isn’t realistic. My job is to elevate my own mental state so I do the things I want to do. My feelings and perspective on life matter even if others find it dumb.
It’s all about building my confidence to the point where the opinions of others will only be considered if it adds value. Cut off the toxic stuff, the what ifs, and the fear of being a person that stands out and lives vibrantly. I’m not going to sit here and hold myself back because others can’t stand to see someone living a deep rich fulfilling life. It feels like in the past I’d look for any little evidence to tear myself down and believe another person over my own intuition.
This might sound really arrogant but I always felt there was another part of me hidden from the world. A creative, untapped potential that had something to give to the world in the form of art. But due to a lot of conditioning over the years I was made to feel this art isn’t valuable and is a dead end. But you know what’s actually a dead end? Putting your passions aside, buying into someone else’s idea of what life is, and trying to convince yourself every day that things are fine. I deserve better than that.
The rogue module is definitely kicking things up a bit. At my job I have the technical stuff I solve, but I also deal with what I want to call emotional labor. This is when someone starts complaining how they’re so behind on work, why are things so slow, can you make it faster, etc. I’ve stopped investing any amount of energy into trying to help people feel better. I walked into an infrastructure that’s really unstable, I don’t get paid a reasonable wage to maintain it or improve it so it’s not my responsibility. I do what I can and that’s it.
Part of me wants to do something but the company doesn’t deserve it. Some people may see that as a shitty attitude, but you don’t get something for nothing. And the way I’ve been treated here, they’ve lost my respect and my desire to do anything other than keep things afloat.
Feeling really down today. Trying to figure out how to achieve my dreams and desires while navigating all the crap that’s been going on has been tough.
Once I move and get all this sorted I’ve decided to look for a new job. And now I have a more firm idea of where my rate of pay should hit. It’s not a negotiation at that point, it’s a requirement and if companies don’t want to meet me there off I go. Not rolling over and taking table scraps for pay when everything has become more expensive.
Too much crap to deal with in this company and at the end of the day it’s not like I’m well compensated for it. So why bother? The only thing that’s kept me around is fear, that’s it. Fear that I couldn’t get paid as much, that my skills aren’t transferable, that this is the best I’ll get.
Had a whole thing written up about life then caught myself halfway through it with how self defeating it was.
Things I’m going through right now. 1. Not chaining myself to one version of how this music thing ends up. By insisting it has to be a certain way, I miss opportunities it might manifest through. 2. Losing perspective of what this goal with music is. Self expression yes. Growth yes. I need to do a better job of not basing my self worth on how good I am at it. It needs to be freedom, not another box I put myself in. 3. Taking better care of myself. That means knowing when to push forward vs letting myself recover. I can’t push 24/7. 4. A deeper emotional level understanding that my difficulties in achieving my goals does NOT mean I’m a failure. This one is really tough. For most of my life I’ve had visions and plans in my head that never make it into reality. Hell sometimes when I can’t get the energy together to clean dishes I feel like a failure.
It’s been a really strong reoccurring theme in my life. I’m never doing enough and when I physically can’t do more I feel bad too. There’s no relief from the unending anxiety of feeling like I’ll never have my shit together.
It’s always going to be Now.
Only moment there ever is.
It’s ironic how much time it can take to arrive at Now.
This is interesting. The post I wrote prior to this one and deleted was talking about finding the now. How one day I’ll die and all I have is the time I have now to make use of. I feel like I’ve lost a lot of time not even truly living
The contemplation of time, happiness, and frustration is connected by one ironic insight after another.
The irony grows and grows until all that’s left is happiness.
Man what a buildup to moving into my new place, but it’s over. I can relax and unwind in my new home. I’m hoping the new location helps me break out of the cycles I always found myself in.
Once I get myself all unpacked I’m going to see what kind of musical expression wants to come out. I haven’t touched anything in weeks.
It’s surreal. I’m gonna be honest here. I’ve been living with my dad for a bit now. We shared a top and bottom floor apartment. Pooling together for the rent money helped both of us out financially. For years I couldn’t get myself to leave because I had no faith in my ability to do it on my own. But now I hit a goal that I was struggling with for years. The deep gut level fear I had about living alone and screwing something up is subsiding. It’s still not easy, but I’ll adjust.
Do I wish I moved out sooner? Maybe. Honestly living here with my dad I shared a lot of good memories. I repaired my relationship with him a lot. Which is interesting because I wasn’t even aware I had deeper psychological hangups around him. He wasn’t a bad person, just had his faults that effected me in childhood. But I’m glad to be able to see all the good in him now and no longer feel a rift between me and him.
So maybe staying here had some benefits for my own growth. Sure I wasn’t some super independent go getter out to conquer the world, but I learned a lot. A lot of people would look at my situation and think I just never tried hard enough or I wasn’t pushed enough. But I’m at a place in my life where I understand the hardships I’ve faced mentally. They can call it being weak or lacking strength, whatever they want. But I don’t care. I know I did the best with what I could work with and that’s more than good enough.
Congratulations on the move! 
Today I got really sad and cried. Something I haven’t done for years. If I can sum it up briefly, it feels like in order to deal with the manipulators of the world I closed myself off all together. Unfortunately it’s not selective so people I love get blocked out too. So I was really upset.
This isn’t something I chose to consciously do, it kind of just happened due to the circumstances of life. But I was just really upset because of the actions and horrible nature of others effecting my own personal relationships. The years stuck in my head, being detached, not valuing the time I was spending with those I love. Well it fucking hurts. Those moments are done and I missed them.
Everything I’m striving for in this custom is all well and good. But the end result needs to be more connection with people, not less. Not just people, but humans in general. I’d like to shed my cynical nature and trust more people. I don’t want this “every man for himself” mentality. I want to be able to have the vulnerability to depend on others, to look for support in them, to ask for help, to be human. I’m too emotionally independent which is actually a weakness, not a strength. If I can’t feel secure and safe enough to connect with others, then there’s work to do. Fierce independence can be a sign of not being ok with my own needs.
Just read a good quote. Felt like it was good for you, so I’m sharing it here.
It’s from Martha Graham, the great genius and luminary of American modern dance.
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.
(Quoted in de Mille, 1991:264 - Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham)
I love this, thanks for sharing. The objective is very clear and powerful. Not weighed down by the overly insecure chatter. I’ll definitely be putting this quote down as a reminder near my workspace for music.
Mogul side of AM kicking in. Finding myself trying to figure out how to reduce unnecessary spending. Big one at the top of the list is food. Lots of temptation in down moments to spend some money on good take out. The struggle has always been some nights having the lack of energy to cook, but not having a good alternative. Meal prep hasn’t worked too well in the past for me but I guess I can try again. I’m very guilty of having food rot on me because a “I’ll cook that tomorrow” turns into a “maybe it’s good for just one more day”.
To further complicate things I can’t really eat wheat, dairy, corn, or things like rice. So while ramen would be a good option for days I just need to fill my stomach, or rice and beans, they both mess me up physically and mentally and it hurts more than helps.
It can be really tough eating anything in general because a lot of food makes me feel terrible after I eat it. Which has consequently caused an aversion to simply eating.
Have you tried cauliflower rice yet? I haven’t yet. But I’ve actually purchased a bag and is sitting there waiting for me to give it a go.
One silver lining of your dietary restrictions is that it seems to leave your wide open for experiments with vegetables.
At one point, it hit me how ridiculous it is that we use the food category of “Vegetables”. Or “Vegetarians”.
There are like 5 to 8 meat choices.
But when it comes to so-called “vegetables”, it seems that there are maybe a couple hundred.
Recently, I’ve been determining to gradually step through the door of working with these amazing foods. So many different flavors, textures, and options. Seems unimaginative and flat to think of them all as simply “Vegetables”.
So the other day, I bought a wedge of pumpkin. And, twice so far, I’ve enjoyed cutting off a section of it, peeling off the rind, cutting it into thin strips, and simply sautéing it with some onion or garlic. Takes about 15 minutes and has a delicious, pure flavor.
Another really intriguing direction is mushrooms. My daughter can’t stand them. 
. But I’m finding that they’re incredibly diverse. I’ve been playing with Wood Ear and Porcini. Add one or both to a lentil stew. They do amazing things in there.
Like you though, I’ve had the food spoilage thing happen. I’m working on it still. Especially with some of the healthier organic options, you have a tighter window. One good investment is a blender. When something has not yet spoiled, but has become unattractively soft, the blender can be a good option. Stews can serve the same purpose.
Anyway, I wish you good food journeys. (Dashing this post off before meditation. Hopefully no major typos.)
Thanks for the suggestions. I haven’t tried cauliflower rice yet, but I’ve heard of it. That pumpkin does sound good. I definitely need to branch out more with food, been stuck in a cycle.
Tomorrow marks the 21st day of my custom. It feels like that last rep you’re trying to push out before failure when exercising. I can feel during the rest days how the subs influence is more obvious. Conversely I’ve become far less tolerant of the 2-3 hours after initially listening to it. Last night I had some down moments, haven’t unpacked my music equipment yet. I thought about breaking out my groovebox but I didn’t want a crappy music session sinking my mind further.
Aside from that, a girl I know texts me late at night and shares a Techno mix with me. Really random. I was thinking about sending her a track I did that’s on YouTube to get her input. She’s really into electronic music. Something stopped me though. I listened to the music and I was like ehhhh is this even good? But then I remembered outside feedback isn’t about validating how you feel about a track, it’s about outside perspective. So I could think it’s meh, but someone else would really enjoy it. I can’t really predict that.
Probably going to send that to her today and see what happens. In general I refrain from “take a listen to my track bro” mentality that litters the music production world.
At times I feel like I can’t be proud of my music. Whenever I meet someone new and they want to listen to my music I hesitantly throw them a link. It’s kind of like “here it is, but I’m only showing it to you because you were interested”. Do I want to spam people? No. But it would be a nicer feeling to be able to stand behind what I’ve created.
I do feel this is more an extension of me vs the music itself. An insecurity or reluctance to show myself. What’s waiting around to be expressed? Music is definitely the one form of expression I can’t even hide behind if I tried. The deep well of experiences and feelings is always tapped into. Sometimes not even what I’m currently feeling but things that were processed weeks ago. It’s always interesting hearing a musical influence sneak into a track but I haven’t listened to the artist for weeks.
Finding myself sitting down at work in the morning and immediately getting stressed. So what can I do about that? Need to get better at not being stirred up by things outside of me. Right now despite my attempts at not caring, I’m too damn responsible. I need to stop putting this burden on myself to handle everyone’s issues when the reality is they need to wait because there’s only one of me. Someone messaged our hd at 4:36 about their session being down, I leave at 4:30. This shouldn’t be my problem, but now there’s a ticket hanging around nobody responded to.
Far more valuable than finding an ideal workplace is learning to deal with a dysfunctional one and not have it effect you. I’m still learning how to do that.
Taking more of an effort to immerse myself in SoundCloud and see if I can meet other producers. I’m on that platform, but I don’t really interact and I feel like there are a lot of good artists on there that fly under the radar. It’ll be good for me to just listen to a large variety of stuff and get ideas too. Keep things fresh.
I write what I want when it comes to music, but that definitely masquerades as fear of the unknown. Sticking to what’s familiar is a recipe for creative disaster. I need freedom to write anything, not just what I’ve grown comfortable with. And at the end of the day it’s not a big deal if a few songs lack depth. Hanging onto that requirement is what kills my music sometimes. Like the person at a party who can’t just let loose and have fun, just step away from the need for things to have so much excessive meaning. I honestly don’t know why I do that.
The more I think about it, surface level interactions with people are less about the content and more about human interaction and bonding. Knowing that, yeah I overanalyze it because I lack that comfort of being around people. So the authentic part of me is held back in favor of an emotional shield that kind of just plays out the interactions from afar.
A good example of deep emotional conditioning being rationalized after the fact vs addressing where the real problem is. Exhausting. This has been my struggle in life though. Every time I think I’m beyond it, I come to realize I just shifted the excuses and dodged the emotional vulnerability of it.