Like the baggage is part of your identity, and when it gets ejected, you feel like a different person because it’s like you lose part of your identity.
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Now that you mention it, I’ve been thinking a lot about how I’ve picked up all the responsibilities I have, and how much that’s felt like it’s crushing me and not letting me live the life I want. Like how did I become a homeowner, Dad, caretaker of two disabled people, sole source of income for four people, and the only one who can do housework? I got myself into that every step of the way, and in none of those cases was my motive “because I wanted that”. It was always me going along with someone else’s desires, what they thought I should, and letting someone direct my life to match the plan they had for their own.
Of course on a practical level, I can’t just set any of these burdens down easily, but I am seeing it now.
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The wife played a second loop of Paragon last night and woke up feeling like shit. She had a sinus headache and painful muscle stiffness. She said that that’s the first time she’s woke. Up feeling like that since she’s started playing it. She says it might be because she had me wake her up this morning rather than letting her wake up naturally like I have been.
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When I woke her up, I started gently like I normally do, but after half an hour of resistance, I got annoyed. That’s normal, and at that point I’d usually just let her go to sleep and miss whatever she needed to do. This time though, the kid was awake, so I couldn’t get to sleep until she got up. I actually expressed some of my annoyance instead of just bottling it up and acting calm and reasonable at all costs. It felt natural, and this is a change because I usually feel that I am the one who has to keep it 100% together at all times and show no negative emotion. Truth be told, I’ve conditioned myself not to show any emotion at all. Ever.
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The wife played two loops of Paragon last night and she’s having a very bad MS day. She’s taking her rest days starting tonight. It seems that one loop helps her a lot, but two actually hurt her.
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This evening I feel pretty negative. I’m thinking about how bad our financial situation really is, and not seeing much hope of getting out of it, or avoiding complete disaster.
This will pass.
- As that happens, I’m thinking of running RICH. This has happened in the past. I have been unable to focus on deeper issues long enough because I have to devote my resources to making it through a crisis. I don’t think I’ll be doing that this time.
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@COWolfe You and I are in a similar situation. My wife also has MS , I take care of her as well as another disabled person for my job, I do most if not all of the housework, and although it’s safe to say I got myself into this at this point outside of running Executive, R.I.C.H , Mogul, EOG , Dragon Reborn, and taking action I have no clue how I am going to get us out of this and sooner rather than later
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Taking action is the thing. I have no idea what action I can take at this point. I need to roughly triple my income to get us to a stable place, but I lack the qualifications to get the kind of job I’d need to get there as far as I can see right now.
The thing is, I got myself into that aspect of my situation too. I chose not to finish college, or do anything else that would qualify me for the kind of income I’d like to have. The responsibility for my current life is mine alone.
I can feel my mind working the problem in the background. Possibly Wayfinder and Mastermind trying to gain some traction.
Come to think of it, I notice I’m thinking of everything in a more strategic and analytical way.
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I slept through high school. Boring as hell. Never got any degree. And I’m still doing great. Of course, I’ve always been studying on my own.
But it means you have to build something yourself.
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At the moment I have two issues with that. I don’t know what I’d build, and I don’t have any capital to get anything started. Neither of those things is an insurmountable problem long term, but I don’t know how I’d solve them right now.
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Do you have time for a side gig?
You could learn some skill that people like me want to outsource. Get good enough at it, systemize it, then outsource/hire a virtual assistant or two to do it for you so you can concentrate on getting more clients. It’s scalable. You can have your own agency. AND, you can add more services to it too.
Then reinvest that money to some bigger business idea.
I can relate to this a lot these days…
Right now, I am of the belief that having money would be very important in easing all these obligation/responsibilities and lightening one’s burden.
Money can’t buy happiness, but a lack of it can make happiness a lot harder to find.
At the moment, not really. I’m sure that given time I could learn something and monetize it, but we are in trouble right now, and I have to do almost all of the house care stuff and a lot of the child care things.
A side gig like I think you mean it is more of a long term solution, and I have an ongoing set of short term problems.
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**Stage 1 Cycle 1 Week 6**
**Washout Week 1**
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I’m not sure if I’m going to do a full week of washout this time, or just skip two or three days for five weeks r six days without subs. A full week is nine days off with the normal rest days before and after, and I’m only going to be on stage one for a total of twelve weeks minus a week break before I start stage two.
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I was reading @James’s journal and something he said gave me kind of an epiphany about some of the earliest roots if not the earliest roots of my not having the success I should have in life.
That is that from as far back as I can remember, I was EXPECTED to screw up every time I did something, even the simplest of things.
I was treated to a series of memories from my childhood which illustrate that concept.
The first was a flashbulb memory where I was at my grandmother’s house and drinking milk out of a cup. I’d been doing that for a while, and I thought I could be reasonably expected to do it without a problem. However, Grandma had her hand poised a few inches away from the cup every time I picked it up. She seemed almost panicky every time. I remember thinking something like “good lord I can drink without spilling” and kind of resenting it. I remember a lot of similar incidents but that one came up very vividly.
Both of my parents both said that I couldn’t do anything right, and just acted like it was an inevitability that I was going to fail at anything I was doing.
With my Dad, this manifested as him hovering about an inch behind me, staring intently at what I was doing, and screaming at me like I had just doomed mankind to a nuclear apocalypse as soon as it looked like I might be about to do something imperfectly. This happened no matter what I was doing and wether or not there were any real consequences to making an error. I mean this got so stupid that he’d even stand behind me screaming at me while I was playing a video game… in public. (You see kids, there used to be these things called arcade machines…) There was usually physical contact involved which is probably why I REALLY HATE people getting into my space, especially if they’re behind me.
My mother was much quieter about it, but just as damaging. Her attitude could be summed up by “well, of course you fucked that up, what did you expect, you’re an inferior person,”.
This left me simultaneously extremely expecting to fail, terrified of failing, and defining any setback or mistake (no matter how correctable) as a disastrous and total failure. So the message from my early childhood was “you are expected to fuck everything up, and fucking up in any way is disastrous and unforgivable.”
This left me extremely nervous to say the least by the time I went to school. I had to fulfill the role I had accepted by screwing everything up, but I was terrified to screw anything up because it was painful.
(In defense of my grandmother, I understand why she was so buggy about me spilling now. She grew up in a dirt floored shack with no plumbing in Appalachia, then lived through the depression. Once she got nice stuff, she was overly paranoid about it being ruined)
School did not help. I went to kindergarten with all that going on so naturally I seemed weak, nervous, and like I couldn’t do anything right. I don’t think I need to tell most of you how that goes for a kid.
The teachers (if you can call them that) didn’t know what to do with me, so they just treated me like I was stupid.
To make matters worse, I went to a tiny rural school where the place you get in the social pecking order in the first week of kindergarten is the place you’ll graduate with. There was no escape. The constant humiliation made the fear of messing up worse and solidified my subconscious role as a fuckup.
I just LOOOVE it when my subconscious pukes these things up in one chunk. I understand myself more now. Hopefully it means that there’s been some improvement.
- Over the weekend, I was doing some thinking about how I wound up in the financial and life situation that I’m in. The phrase that came up is “you took on responsibilities before you had learned responsibility”. That’s a good one. I let myself take on too many obligations, financial and other before I had a sense of what that meant. Now I’ve got so much going on and that need to be fixed that the thought of fixing all of it is overwhelming to put it mildly.
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In all of that, I forgot about the stuff that actually happened this weekend.
I cleaned and organized my closet. Not too exciting right? Well, it had been in the same post apocalyptic condition that the rest of the house was, so it was me taking a bit of control over the mess that’s been subtly driving me crazy and symbolizing my lack of control over my own life. Now at least I can find everything I need without having to dig through piles on the floor.
That’s also the only part of the house that’s mine alone, so it’s not going to be remessed as soon as I clean it. -
The wife harpied out on me again. This time it was because… the stitching on … the blanket… that goes on the comforter… was facing the wrong way.
I was just amazed by that one. She somehow equated me putting a blanket on in a way that was to her estimation upside down to me never listening to her and not valuing her.
I’d have gotten angry before, but this time my reaction was just “give me a break, that’s ridiculous”.
It IS a ridiculous thing to go off on a partner about, and I just didn’t want to raise my blood pressure, or submit and validate it. I actually laughed at her a bit, then disengaged. How would she want me to react to that.
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- I’m seriously debating adding RICH to my stack. On one hand, I need to get something going money wise ASAP, and it has a serious emphasis on money manifestation. On the other, I had planned to be very focused on DE this year.
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I think R.I.C.H can be run as an Ultima and complement Dragon Emperor.
It wil be a good addon for sure
- I woke up feeling stressed and jittery this afternoon. Maybe a little depressed and overwhelmed feeling as well. I just kept thinking about all the things that could go wrong and the uncertainty of the situation.
This is kind of odd. Usually, I’ll feel like this when I’ve been running a program too much, but last night was the first night I’d have run it that I didn’t.
Even so, it’s not nearly as bad as I felt on a daily basis before I began this journey.
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- I’ve been thinking more about what came up last night, and what effect it’s had on me.
In short, the subconscious expectation that I would fail coupled with a terror of failure and defining any imperfection as total failure made me very passive.
When I was a kid, I tried to avoid anything that could result in failure. That means that I could usually be found doing something like reading or watching TV.
I also spent a lot of time in a fantasy world. Those are things that gave me entertainment, and helped me have a rich inner world, and didn’t put me in that position where I could not mentally deal with succeeding or failing. It left me pretty much without friends, and unable to relate to other kids.
My mother just thought that my lack of activity meant that I was lazy, and my Dad pushed me into participating in several types of activity that HE was interested in. I wasn’t, but I wasn’t asked. I participated in those, but my mind was elsewhere all the time, and to call my efforts halfhearted would be adding at least one more chamber than there was.
As I hit my mid and late teens, I did learn to push myself to do a few things and succeed at some of them, but there was always something holding me back from REALLY standing out at anything.
As an adult, I started to really try at a few things, but that self imposed barricade to really succeeding the way I want to has stayed intact. It takes the form of self sabotage. For instance when interviewing for the jobs I really want, I become nervous enough that it shows. I’ve tried to get an online degree, but just started procrastinating and failed after a few successful semesters.
I think it’s gotten better, and getting a look at what’s really causing it should help.
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I can relate to this too. I had very low self-confidence and didn’t like to do whatever I believed I would fail at.
I hope DR really clears all those limiting beliefs for you.
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