StarkQ and Ultimate Artist

Journals - Major Programs
#61

Thanks for the insight as always. After processing last night and reading this today. Yeah I’m afraid of all of it to be honest. It was easier for me to chase after that invulnerable state vs allowing whatever ungodly mess of emotions are bundled up inside me right now. The irony of it all, I tried for years to let this stuff go in a detached sort of way. I bet if I just had let go of control and allowed myself to feel I would have moved past them naturally.

Same concept with my music. What gets expressed is what needs to be expressed. Not anymore complicated than that. The complications just arise when my insecurity gets the best of me and I revert to old patterns of hiding what I feel.

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#62

Shit day today. Found myself increasingly upset at my job. Was stewing in that all day till I realized I wasn’t doing anything. All this anger and frustration just made its way back at me. There are aspects in this job I’ve fucking had it with. The database is a fucking mess, the consultants that implemented it were a joke, the replacement consultants don’t want to touch the thing (I don’t blame them, the thing is held together with bubblegum and tape), I frequently am expected to know how to do other departments jobs, and the constant performance issues fall on my head as I get people complaining to me as if I can do anything about it.

I don’t feel like rising to the challenge or giving my time to fix these issues. There’s 0 interest there.

Thats it, I had to vent. Am I grateful I have a job and money to survive? Yeah. But that doesn’t mean I have to settle and put up with others bullshit. Gonna stop getting angry at this stuff moving forward and just accept the fact I’m currently in a lose lose situation. All I can control is my reaction to these things so that’s what I’m gonna do and not let it stress me

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#63

So I’ve decided I’m gonna cut back on my loops and see how that goes. 1 of everything. Gonna let that ride for a week or two and see how it goes and calibrate from there. Sleep has been unbelievably crappy for me, I think I’m giving my mind too much stuff to process and I need more sleep to do so. I’m talking like 10 hours. But I’m not really willing to go to sleep at 8pm every night, I need as much time as possible to work on music.

So start small and build up is the plan. Easier to assess not doing enough vs complete burnout and overwhelm

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#64

Day 1 of the “lighter” stack. Much easier to focus at work. My job can demand a lot of mental processing at times to troubleshoot issues. I was kind of running on empty the past few weeks and I’d pretty much have to close my eyes for 2 to 3 minutes sporadically throughout the day just to get things done. It was a combination of tired and emotional overload. I kept telling myself “push through it, it’ll pass”. Well it would pass, but the way I kept hammering my mind I was burning out. And I was super angry and irritable in the most non productive way.

I feel reconciliation going on, but it’s not stopping me dead in my tracks like before. I feel like it was just too much exposure before and I had no energy to act because my mind was continually processing. It’s more like it’s running in the background now vs taking up all my resources and having trouble doing anything else.

Of course my mind is like “no it’s not enough, you need more”. And I’ve got a theory that maybe the excess exposure was a way to keep me from taking action. What better way to avoid action than have an excuse that involves needing to heal/reframe/let go of negative beliefs. So I listen to the stack once and it’s like “ok balls in your court, what are you gonna do with this time now?”

Uncovered some limiting perspectives I have towards music creation. Mainly feeling like I suck if I’m not utilizing 1000s of different techniques. Worrying too much about something being simple. Basically me thinking I need to do more and worrying about it vs asking myself what do I want to do? If I can’t answer why I’m doing something or why I need it, I probably don’t need to do it. It’s very easy to overdo a song out of insecurity. Oh that chord progression has been done before, that bass is only using two notes, the drum pattern doesn’t vary enough. But they aren’t creative improvements, just fear and doubt that gets filtered in. Realizing it’s not that writing music is hard, I’m just too judgemental and throw it all out before I can even execute the ideas. And sometimes the music just isn’t there in terms of what I envision, but I don’t know what’s missing. I think that’s just an indication that there is more growth to be had and I shouldn’t dwell on that one song not hitting that vision.

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#65

Fuck man. One of the things that hurts the most is how badly you get in your own way but have trouble bucking the habit. I’m sitting here on my lunch break thinking about my music. And for the past few months it’s just been painful to write. Literally. I find myself getting tense and I have this very visceral depressed/anxious reaction when I listen to my stuff. I know it’s my past habits. I have a long history of sitting in front of my DAW and just not feeling good about myself or my art. It’s followed me and now it’s almost like a trigger whenever I sit down to work.

But it doesn’t need to be like that. I don’t have to be super self critical. It’s not granting me any out of this world musical ideas. It’s not helping me enjoy it. It’s not doing anything except making me think I need it to be a good artist and stifling my creative output. So why do I continue to hold onto it? Theres the question.

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#66

More and more I’m realizing what I struggle with are emotional problems. That means overanalyzing and trying to figure out takes me further away from allowing and releasing. It’s resistance to what’s inside of me, plain and simple. I listened to elixir this morning and I reached a deep state where I let go and felt what was going on in a deep emotional level. No analyzing or figuring out, just getting in touch with parts of myself I try to avoid.

I don’t know how to describe it but I feel like when I’m meditating or using something like the elixir I open up. There’s this open state. But then as the day goes on I close up again. My body gets tense, my mind goes into overdrive trying to figure out why I feel stuck, and overall I just feel held back. It’s like in deep meditative states it feels safe to have normal human emotions. But around people or in day to day life it doesn’t?

In any case I see I’ve been stressing too much about needing to figure everything out and it hasn’t done much to move me forward. Instead of embracing uncertainty and things in the present moment I constantly feel I need to get things “right”. I think that’s because outwardly my life still feels like a mess but simultaneously I feel nothing out there will bring me happiness. It’s only been the pressure of not being a fuck up that’s motivated me to do some of the things I did in my life. And when I say nothing out there will bring me happiness, I don’t mean that in a pessimistic way. Rather what’s going on inside my own mind is infinitely more important than the external world. But it’s rare you meet people in day to day life that understand this on a fundamental level. Fix the problems at the source, not putting out fires and battling every day with events that you yourself ultimately bring upon yourself.

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#67

So it’s only been a few days since I decided to switch to the single loops. Overall I think it was the right move. But I’m also going to switch to every other day. I was working on some music today and things were just coming together for me. Also I read part of a music theory book I’ve had for a bit yesterday and I intuitively was applying it to my stuff today. That never happens for me. I usually have a very strong disconnect between read and applied knowledge that takes a while. I’ve also been feeling good today with less anxiety. And I was thinking of running my stack, but something told me I should just let this day go and keep riding this wave.

I’m thinking not even 8 hours is enough to digest Q for me. And looking back on even subs before Q I had a tendency to stay in absorbing mode far too often. Just basically hoarding and holding off on action.

I think there’s a fear inside me where if I don’t bombard myself with the subs and keep on top I’ll just slip up and go back into old ways. Ways that ruined my life and caused me a lot of unhappiness. But that fear also sabotages me by not giving my mind room to process. I’m gonna call it “panic listening”. It’s like the fight or flight response where you keep going and you’re not taking the time to slow down and asses what’s there because you’re running. That fear of time running out or not solving these issues soon enough before I die. They don’t help, they don’t make things go faster, they just cause stress.

Will see how this goes.

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#68

Feels like I’m getting a better idea of how to use these subs for myself. Woke up today feeling awful. Like a heaviness and depression. I recognized it as stuff that needs to be addressed. So yeah for me the pattern for Q at the moment is listening to my stack, taking the next day off to process, then listening again.

Really starting to come to the conclusion it’s the off hours for me where a lot of the heavy lifting is done/reconciliation ramps up.

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#69

Still felt quite awful all day today. Feelings of being a loser,failure, and overall undesirable human being. But I welcomed the feelings because I knew this was just me going through the detox process of letting these things go. Feeling them, but not identifying. This is in contrast to how I used to deal with it. Deny, avoid, resist, and subconsciously identify with it.

I need to let this energy run its course. I can feel the buildup of it that hasn’t been addressed properly. Just years of me battling and exerting willpower to get by. Going to treat it like having a cold or something. I’ve realized so often in the past I’d want to move past it by meditating or changing thought patterns or whatever. But that just prevented the proper release of it. It will pass when it passes.

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#70

2 nightmares last night which I haven’t had any for a while now. So I’m guessing I was processing something heavy.

Mood right now is just feeling like I don’t want to interact with any human being that isn’t in my immediate circle of trust. Maybe that’s because I don’t have a really good experience of the world. Life has not been full of opportunities for me, it’s just felt more like pain and fear. So yeah, there’s not much joy in being a part of it to me.

Probably reconciliation. I don’t really relate with other people feeling restless and needing to socialize on StarkQ. If anything I’ve become more detached.

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#71

Son of a bitch. Just discovered today I’m actively bypassing the subs while listening. It’s the equivalent of tuning someone out or not paying attention. It’s like a detached, yet not engaged state. Apparently I’ve figured out a way to sit in that little corner of my mind away from the influence of the subs.

Whenever I’d start getting tense or angry or uncomfortable I’d just detach because I thought that was the right response. I wasn’t facing the internal stuff enough. I decided today I wasnt going to take the day off, but I still only did 1 loop each. At the end of my stack I had a desire to listen more, but I told myself to just let it process the rest of the day. Currently sitting here engaging these feelings coming up inside me vs running away.

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#72

Confession time. I just want to have sex with hot women. No strings attached fwb situation sort of deal. Is sex with hot women the holy grail? No, not by a long shot, but goddamnit I feel like I missed out in my teens. And I feel like I missed out as a young adult.

I was always so caught up in this bs about sex without emotional attachment being wrong. The typical beta mindset where all sex has to come along with romance and love. :face_vomiting:

I never thought I had hangups around sex, but holy shit it has become immediately apparent to me how much I bought into that PC bullshit. Yes I’m a sexually repressed guy. And no sex doesn’t have to have some elaborate meaning behind it. That would be like me eating a sandwich and having a whole philosophy on how that sandwich holds some kind of hidden meaning I need to decipher or understand. I was hungry so I made a sandwich, that’s it. Sexual urges are no different than hunger really, don’t know why I felt they were.

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#73

Can this be done consciously? Curious to know.

Sexual experience, the one thing most young men have and it seems to give them enormous confidence. Wonder what that’s like?

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#74

For me, yes. It stems from a coping mechanism I developed where I shut out my emotions completely. I guess it would be a form of dissociating. But without a doubt I have conscious control over it. It just requires a sort of relaxed focus to reorient myself to what’s going on inside me. There’s a constant pull to escape I have to handle, but without expending a lot of willpower. It’s tricky no doubt. I’d be surprised if anybody else here deals with it. I typically have to have a lot of self involvement internally for this exact reason, my mind is constantly trying to escape somewhere that feels “safer”.

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#75

Ah more discovery piggy backing off my last post. It’s not concentration that’s needed. It’s understanding and allowing. It’s not a fight to stay with the emotions. The dissociating is a symptom not a cause. When i tell myself, no you’re not allowed to feel that, it builds up. It gets overwhelming to the point I don’t know what to do with everything. So I just shut it down.

I guess for me my goals should surround deconstructing rigid controlling behavior as it pertains to my thinking and emotions. That’s the real problem here. Having an intuitive and natural process for processing things, but me intervening and introducing a metaphorical kink in the hose of the flow of emotional energy inside me.

That being said, I took today off to process. I noticed there is less pushback from allowing these things. Possibly when actively listening it triggers those parts of me very strongly that have conditioned patterns of rejecting certain things. And then I get in a tug of war battle to force them on board and just make things worse.

#76

Yeah that confirms it. This is the second day where I’ve entered processing mode and absolutely been flooded with reconciliation. It manifests in a “I can’t do this, I’m just gonna fail” type feeling.

I’m subbed to a content creator on YouTube but haven’t watched a lot of videos. But one video popped up today that felt like exactly what I needed to help me feel better. He’s a music producer and he was talking about how as a creator you won’t get support from friends and family. He’s right. It’s been my experience that it’s incredibly rare for anyone to encourage you to pursue something like music full time. It’s always something like keep it a hobby, find a stable job, you won’t make it, you’re too old, you didn’t start early enough, etc. Even the most loving people will gently try to curve you away from it due to the fact that it’s not something safe. So you have to believe in and trust yourself.

But it’s not just music. Any of us doing things outside the norm have to deal with it. I think that’s why surrounding yourself with people who are in a similar path to you is so important. We all have moments of weakness and in those moments we are highly impressionable. You can’t be around people who subtly influence you to call it quits.

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#77

You ever just hold back from the deep well of shit inside you because you’re afraid of being consumed by it? That’s where I’m at. This post might get long.

For most of my life I’ve tried really fucking hard to be happy. I told myself others had it worse, I tried to be grateful, I kept stuffing down that part of me that was hurting. Why was it hurting? Who the fuck knows. But the fact I felt I needed a valid reason to express that showed I wasn’t in a good place. And day in day out being surrounded by people who don’t get it. Having to blend in, having to explain why life is difficult for me but at the same time not having a good reason for why. Poverty? No. Abusive parents? No. Disease? No. So why the fuck are you sad all the time? If I had an answer to that I would have fixed it, don’t you think?

The early part of my life sucked. It really did. I have moments that I cherish and I’m grateful for, but that was in a sea of pain and isolation. I think this is the first time I’m even saying that out loud anywhere. I generally stopped talking to people about any of it because all I get is platitudes. Platitudes fucking hurt, I’ll tell you that. It’s emotional invalidation, despite having well meaning interest it’s like spilling your guts to someone and having them walk away because it’s too messy. I am ashamed of going through all that pain and isolation. In my mind I imposed it on myself and it was my fault and I wasn’t smart or strong enough to dig myself out of it. Every day I have regrets, some of those regrets aren’t even conscious but I feel them.

I’ve been using subliminals since I was 19, I’m 29 now. That’s 10 years of growth. 10 years of clawing my way out of the hell I’ve been through. Fighting off the opinions of therapists and medical professionals saying the best I can do is manage all this, that I have to just live with it. I was never content with that answer. And I knew even from a young age I had a long hard path ahead of me because nobody seemed to have a good answer to my questions.

And there’s been growth, and I’m thankful. I’m thankful for the creators of subliminals and even having the option of improving myself and having it available to me. But fuck if I don’t get hit with the question every day “when am I gonna be ok?” When am I gonna feel ok vs constantly trying to feel ok?" This has nothing to do with getting money, a good career, fame, whatever. This is about feeling good in the core of my being. If you don’t have that, what the hell is the point of any of this?

This all probably seems out of left field and just a bunch of reconciliation. But I’ve been carrying all this for a while. It’s only recently with the coronavirus, starkq, and getting increasingly frustrated at wasting my time at this job I have now that I’ve realized how deep it all goes. Everything I’ve been told is bullshit, all the advice I followed was bullshit, and all the ways people try to control me is bullshit. And the mask I’ve put up for years is finally dropping and I’m realizing the whole “I’m fine, I’m doing ok” thing was because I had the deepest level of shame for what I truly felt inside me. I have every right to feel what I feel. Society is not allowed to cherry pick the “good” and “bad” of my humanity.

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#78

It’s reconciliation, but it’s also re-evaluating your core being. Why should you be content because people say “others had it worse”?

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#79

That’s about as simple as it gets. Either I internalized that or people really do like to play the “who has it worse” game. Never understood that

#80

I definitely needed to get that out. Today I notice a lot of sadness still coming up. But it’s different. It’s just the emotion, I don’t feel like a loser or failure or any of that. And I know I need to process it and I will give myself the space and time to do that. Not feel guilty or ashamed that I’m having those emotions.

It seems like for me there’s two components to self growth. 1 is the restructuring of past negative thoughts and feelings towards myself towards something better. But 2, which I’m learning recently is really important, is the ability to simply be with those emotions and feelings and not judge myself for them. The strong desire for me to overcome things as fast as possible was a reaction to the fact that I was unable to accept myself in that moment with what I was experiencing. As long as I was unable to accept those parts of myself, I would never move past them. Acceptance doesn’t mean holding on however, I recognize they can be let go of, but first they need to be seen. It was the difference between running away from things inside me by trying to be someone else completely vs facing them and transmuting them into something positive.

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