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A Strange New Place

Byjack
A Strange New Place

I got to a strange new place today

On the stop right after Heartbreak Hotel

Where I abandoned the dream girl

Who looked at me with soft eyes

In this strange new place

I found a place for the desire to blossom

To bloom without restraint

But the voice it spoke in

Didn’t need to be sexy and alluring

But a steady voice

They spoke of kindness and safety

A soft expression of that flamboyant love

The one the understood

That pain was part of the cage

Pain too hard too dark

For the mind to see any desire

As an invitation to an adventure

Rather than a prison

Of violence and terror

So hopeless

It cannot be faced

What a strange new place

Where the shamed can be accepted

Silently

Quietly

Letting themselves come to the surface in new ways

Passion as unwavering supportiveness

Fantasy as easygoing humor and happiness

 

This poem is about realizing that sexual love can be beautiful, adventurous, and happy. It doesn’t need to be suppressed. Yet it also can feel the pain of trauma, and be expressed as deep caring and supportiveness. It’s a strange new place because I cannot wrap my head around how it works even though it feels right and true.

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Workpost 42: Loneliness

Byjack

I felt very lonely today, so I watched two videos. I figured that whenever my knee feels bad I do research, but I don’t do a lot of research when I feel lonely.

Major ideas that might help me from this post:

  1. Think about how to help others to feel less lonely. It’s weird that I always think about who can make me feel less lonely, but I actually don’t need other people for that. Helping others will help me feel less lonely.
  2. Emotional perfectionism definately sounds like me. Thinking about how it might be possible for me to connect with people even if they aren’t perfect friends and fill all my needs makes it a lot easier to connect with people.

This one really really really helped me because it answered one of my questions, why am I distracting myself all the time and going on YouTube videos and playing games. The simple thing is, I’m not a good friend to myself.

Main takeaways:

  1. A good friend is honest in a loving gentle way. Be honest with yourself in a compassionate way.
  2. A good friend is encouraging and pushes you to be a better version of yourself. Remind yourself what you are capable of, believe in yourself. Encourage yourself to be a good man, a strong man, despite what others want you to do.

For some reason, the idea of being a good man makes me feel really really calm for some reason. I know I have been fighting myself and that’s why I’m on my phone all the time.

I wanted to spend some time thinking more about my ideal friend:

  1. Someone who is accepting of me, a good listener, empathetic
  2. Someone who wants to go on adventures with me
  3. Someone who encourages me to dream big, believe in myself
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Ugly Water

Byjack

Ugly Water

My little sloth talks about her ugly water

In a roaring ocean

Of fear and hatred

Roaring outside

Inside her little room

She stands by the room

Holding it closed

Always holding

As she feels the pressure of it

About to overwhelm everything

Leaking

Like the seeping of dread

She looks and

It was a mistake

Because she forgot to hold the door closed

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Workpost 18: Addicted

Byjack

I’ve been playing pokemon go so much recently. I’ve made a lot of progress in the game, but I really worry that I’m getting addicted because of how stressed out I am right now.

I stressed out about my relationship and about my career path moving forward. I want to make sure that work does not take over my life and that it stays aligned to what I want to do moving forward.

Every time I feel stressed, I reach for the pokemon go. Holy shit, I am addicted.

I feel very tired, but no longer sick. That is a good thing at least.

I’m going to walk around the airport. And this time, instead of catching pokemon, I am going to meditate and think.

On the plane I meditated on some of my issues and I came to a big realization. The first step to feeling or processing any pain is to notice and name the pain that exists. I spend so much time avoiding thinking about painful emotions or experiences, avoiding thinking about how things hurt me it makes it hard to face the pain at all since I’m not taking the first step,

I want to focus on doing that more now as the first step to processing more emotions.

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Profit in Peace 15: Workplace Reflections

Byjack

I had quite a stressful workday as I expected but I wanted to jot down a couple of reflections today:

  1. Reminding myself of my boundaries (time, respect, honesty, empathy, and possibility) really helped
  2. It also helped to note down what I cannot control before every major meeting (usually something related to how someone felt about me)
  3. I noticed that keeping pace with my todo list was helpful:
    1. Keep all tasks that come to mind in my todo list (use it as a mental trashcan to throw all my worries)
    2. Reorder todo list to whatever I am working on right now (move something to the top if I am currently working on it)
    3. Do tasks immediately if they are low-effort
    4. Do sweeps (try to do everything on the todo list)
  4. Focus also helped
    1. Close as many tabs as possible
    2. Focus on one thing at a time

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.

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I Don’t Want To Feel Her Feelings

Byjack
I Don’t Want To Feel Her Feelings

Every time I read her words

My hatred for her grows darker and angrier

That I have no choice but to respect her

That she is significantly better

And I’m just jealous

She ruined this game for me I’m sure

It took me so long

To find the drive to learn

To explore

To have fun

Yet all the things I taught her

How to use smurfs

Trying out duelists

Buying on the second round

She realized makes sense

She isn’t even as toxic anymore

Yet she still thinks she’s better

Still thinks that hunting for kills

Wanting to put other people down

Is correct

It’s a poison

I can’t play the game anymore without it seeping in

Talking to her

Ruins me

Yet she is too bored to talk about anything else

Because all she respects

Are people who do well in the game

And are mean to everyone else

She cannot fathom

How little respect I have for those people

That I hate them more than anything

That I never wanted her to be like that

That what I truly respect

Is the love for learning

Passion for the game

Looking for new ways to explore and have fun

To take on the challenge

And rise up to it

To bring others with you

Now I am horribly upset

And I don’t know how to even recover

Life feels empty and all I feel is hatred

All I want to do is make her feel pain

Nothing I cared about in life matters to me anymore

Nothing seems fun

I hate everything

I wish

She was good at the game

Was passionate

Wanted to share it with me

Wanted to teach me

Wanted to work together with me in the game

Wanted to play together

Have fun

Explore together

But all she cares about

Is using it to put other people down

It’s funny

In the beginning

She made me love this game

More than anything

Now I hate it

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My Heart Is In the Back of My Throat

Byjack
My Heart Is In The Back of My Throat

And it hurts

Like fucking hell

When I think she says

I need autotune

And a backing track

That everyone who told me I was a good singer

Was probably being nice

Probably joking

And laughed when I told her that I try not to sing around girls I like

Because they always seem to like me afterward, and I don’t know if they actually like me

Or my singing

I’m livid

The subtext is clear

That I’m stupid or naive

Too wrapped up in my own head I can’t hear my own recordings properly

That I’m somehow terrible despite all evidence to the contrary

I can’t tell if she is tone deaf

Or just has such a low opinion of me, she assumes I’m bad

Or simply has an extremely high bar for singers

She can’t see any of the beauty that most people see

She doesn’t get that look

That I see in people’s eyes when I sing

That focus

Like I’ve completely captured their attention

She’s not like the mean girl in class

Who smiled at me and said hi for the first time after I sang

Or the blonde girl on the bench

Who started talking to me

After she heard me sing

She wasn’t all the people who told me that they wished they knew how to sing

She’s like the girl at work

Closed off

Sitting at her desk

Grumpy

Always with headphones on

Or my friend’s ex boyfriend

Who was probably jealous

He couldn’t sing

Because he thought I was annoying

Even though my friend thought I was cool

She tells me

There is only one person

Who she liked when they sang

A girl who was her old friend

I wonder why

She is able to see the beauty in her friend’s voice

But unable to even stop herself from shutting me out

When I sing

Because out of all the people

Who I wanted to share this beautiful thing with

The one I wanted to pour my heart out to

The one I wanted to look at me in that way

When I sang

Focused

Entranced

Like in a spell

Was her

And my heart is telling me

She will never get it

She will never hear my voice for what it is