As I sit in the wreckage of my life
The pieces, strewn about the floor around my feet
I wonder
Has she read my messages
Does she now know
That it was all a misunderstanding
And that only by leaving
Did I finally draw out the truth
That could have prevented everything
I wonder what will happen next
And how I can stand up again
When all I want to do
Is lie on the ground
Curled up
Like a hibernating bear
Waiting for the summer
I’m starting work on the new branding project but I’m feeling some fears:
I feel trapped. Shoulders, fear in center of chest. I don’t know what to do to be seen as productive.
I feel overwhelmed. I feel out of control. Nerves vibing in my chest. Clenched stomach. I don’t know what will work.
I feel like a failure. Pain in my chest. I don’t know what I’m doing.
I’m imagining failing. I feel worthless. Head, chest, cold, numb tingling.
Grounding
I may not satisfy other people’s ideas of productivity, but I can satisfy what I see as productive. I can focus on my personal growth and the growth of my companies.
I don’t know what will work but I know what I can try.
I’m adventuring into new territory – that’s why I don’t know what I’m doing.
This gives me the opportunity to process the I’m unworthy wound.
Reframe
This is my opportunity to help other people grow in what they understand as productivity.
Embrace people knowing what you are working on, practice being proud of your process (like emotional processing). -> Big trigger from dad being skeptical of my process and feeling like I need to justify
Big failure literally always leads to big growth and learning. Let’s chase failure. I shouldn’t feel guilty as failure is all on me.
Ok, that makes me realize a lot of this comes from my dad constantly being skeptical, not trusting me, and dismissing my process. I feel always I need to justify myself.
It leads to a very strong I am trapped wound. Shoulders compressed and pain in chest.
Also some I am misunderstood, I am a failure, I am not trusted.
I wonder if that’s how he was treated? I wonder if he has those wounds too.
To grow from it, it occurs to me that he needed an explanation, a justification, and was skeptical because of his own internalized judgement – not because there was something wrong with me.
His comparison of me with other people was all due to his own shame.
Demanding an explanation is from own lack of trust in himself, he can’t understand my trust in myself.
Additional processing:
I did some more processing later in the day. I felt super tired but I kept feeling pressure to work. I feel fear that if I don’t get a certain amount of work done, that I will be rejected.
My dad would say that I didn’t plan the day out well enough, I was not efficient enough, or that I need to work harder.
I felt that fear in my chest as a I am not good enough wound.
In reframing I came to the conclusion that even though my dad had no boundaries around the amount of energy he could put into work, doesn’t mean I cannot.
I choose to put boundaries around my work, and to stop working or move on when I feel I’ve given as much as I can give within the course of the day.
A couple of weeks ago, I rented a car at National car rental. My sister returned it for me, and I got a shock in my email a few weeks later.
I immediate assumed this had to be a scam, or some sort of mistake. But the more I read, the more that I could tell this was actually legit. They had the right time, the right place and right company. They were charging me for $1295.81 for damages to the vehicle.
Looking at this deeper I noticed that the line items were VERY extensive, replaces door parts and handles. According to them, the car was HEAVILY damaged.
Looking at the pictures, I could barely see any of the damages they were indicating. It almost felt like they were offloading the cost of wear and tear on me.
Obviously I was LIVID.
So I went to chase down this problem:
The last woman who oversaw the appeals to the damages told me the following information:
So my lessons learned from this whole experience:
A day later I got an email.
Today I’m walking around with Yad
And I feel anxious because I don’t know what will happen next
What should happen next
But as I move
As I talk to girls
To guys
I feel more and more
Like this is the adventure I was looking for
This is the freedom I’m looking for
I don’t know where this is going
I just need to be able to stay in my body
And have courage
I’m so scared
But I feel a little hope now
This poem is about feeling so lost all the time. Not wanting to meet anyone or talk to anyone, but feeling so incredibly isolated and lonely. I’m afraid of wasting time but I don’t know where to focus my energy. But right now I realize that I just need to have an adventure and make an effort to overcome my fear of getting close to people or showing them who I am.
It’s not important to make the right decision, more so that I am able to feel the feelings.
I feel tired. And yet I feel so inspired.
I ran with the ideas last night, of dance and music and I can say I feel extremely sad. Something about how much I miss this part of me. I feel sad about the weight I’ve been carrying around for so long. I feel sad because sadness acknowledges the pain in the world without shying away from it.
I watched this video last night:
I remember in art there is no right or wrong way to go about something. Just like in life. I feel we forget that a lot.
For some reason, I feel the desire to write stories. Here is a space for some freewriting:
A shark was washed onto the shore. That was the day when I asked my next door neighbor Amy to marry me. We were both 12 at the time. Amy was a quiet sort of girl, not shy, just took a while to think about things before she talked. When she did, she didn’t say much.
She looked at me up and down as if she was trying to size me up.
“So what do you say Amy?”
I wonder if this is how the shark felt. He was already dead when he was on shore, but his eyes seemed to look at you as if to say…well? What’s up?
“I don’t know,” Amy finally responded. Her fingers figeting.
“You don’t know?”
“Yea.”
“That’s ok!” I said. I was 12 and I felt invincible…
I feel sad because of how much of this I repressed within my self.
In terms of work, I feel I’ve done the experiment and I can officially say to myself, working on too many things at the same time does not work towards my strengths. I think I need to focus on one focus every day. If I get to a second one, then that’s good. Also, I can have many low effort progress toward every goal, but it can’t be the main focus.
In doing one main thing, I might be able to go to bed much sooner which is something of great concern to me.
I had quite a stressful workday as I expected but I wanted to jot down a couple of reflections today:
I was thinking about how to transition from work to Valorant more effectively since I usually start to feel dead and I end up watching youtube and ordering food and that kind of makes it hard for me to stay sharp when gaming and I end up feeling even more stressed and awful.
I think cleaning is a really good transition point. Cleaning reduces stress and is a great way to transition slowly…if I’m worried that there will still be a call coming in and I might have to go back to work, cleaning makes it easy to go back to work without feeling like I am not ready to transition to the next thing. In fact, if I clean, even if I go back to work, I will still be more ready to game after the work is done because my space is now clean.
I also like the idea of a mental dump to write down everything you are thinking about at the end of the day so that you can pick it up at any point today or tomorrow or the day after.
Finally, I like to look at the schedule for the next day and mentally prepare for it to know what you can do today to give you a lot of spaciousness tomorrow.
Early this morning I parted ways with a friend and a girl who I loved deeply. While everything is fresh, I want to write everything I loved and hated about her in order to deal with the heartbreak and to understand better what I want in a girlfriend.
What I loved:
What I didn’t like:
Overall, I felt that my needs were getting met less and less because she would never deal with any trauma that came her way, choosing to avoid things instead. I felt that she stopped being so objective and instead was really unable to listen to the truth when it hurt her ego. However, I still love her very much and hope she will at least come back and want to be friends. I do feel some relief though to be able to focus on myself and explore dating in the city. I feel very alone without her. I hope she is doing ok and will see one day that I really did love her.