I’m in a new place
And I feel lost
When I asked her why
She told me
It’s because I am coping with the emotions
By not feeling them
That my old life
Gave me a lot of my needs
And that it will take time
For me to find it again
I asked myself
In the men’s group
What I should do
And the answer
Was to be alone
In nature
And to be ok
With everything
Being a complete
Mess
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
I had a dream she messaged me
All caps and smiling letters
Like old times
When I was a boy
My friend showed me a bush
Full of moths
He grabbed one and showed me the dust that came off its wings
I wondered
If the moth
Like me
Felt something missing
Besides the poem, I also came up with a HUGE epiphany that suddenly makes everything clear. I realized that the main reason I’m so upset is that something that I thought was a friendship was much closer to a relationship than I would admit. The cycle I’m dealing with is less of a troubled friendship but rather a single>relationship>breakup>single cycle instead.
In order to move on, I need to start thinking like someone who is single who is getting over a breakup. It’s a bit embarrassing we weren’t actually in a relationship, but who cares about stupid commitments and labels. The feelings I had were far beyond friendship and the fact that they were reciprocated made it something more.
This also gives me insight into how I behave in a relationship, I’ll break it up into two categories, single mindset and relationship mindset.
Everything makes sense now – the feeling that I have to “find myself” and get time alone was basically my understanding (at the time) of reconnecting with my single person mindset, asking her to “pull me back” was my plea at asking her to go back to our pseudo-relationship. I had a strong feeling that I needed to just process my loss of what we had instead of trying to “fix” things and now I know why. We are basically not on the same page anymore and any semblance of a relationship is gone. In fact, it’s been slipping away for some time now.
Once I am able to fully process this “breakup” I can fully reconnect as a single person.
Side thought: I think I’m probably a monogamist from this experience. I can only hold strong feelings for one person at a time.
One day you will see
How you were so focused
On self-soothing
On finding your comfort alone
You forget that you ignored
A man who loved you
For a game
So trivial
You may lose interest in the next month
For you, it’s a question of winning
Of being right or wrong
But for me
It’s a question of love
I wonder
If I have so little self-respect
To spend so much time
Money
Effort
To cheer you up
Just for you to go back to the game
And put me second
Or perhaps this is what love is
And I should keep believing
That you just need
More time
To see
That you can let yourself
Need me
Last night I went to bed on time, got into my bedroom about 11PM and went to bed at midnight.
However, I woke up feeling abysmal, tired and my stomach was hurting. I feel that I ate a big dinner to close to bedtime. Also, maybe I’m just catching up on sleep.
This morning, as with many mornings, I did not want to go for a walk, but I did anyway. I realized that if I go for a walk because I “have to” then I feel undermotivated. But if I go for a walk to “meditate” and think, it actually is quite enjoyable and feels needed as I feel pretty shitty and need some time. I also makes it easy to not reach for my phone because I obviously don’t want a phone disturbing my quiet thoughtful meditation.
I also realized my morning singing and dance are part of my meditation and that I want to set an alarm so that I know when I need to look at my phone.
Today in terms of work, I don’t really know what to focus on. Perhaps I will finish up more things related to work so I can have fewer things on my plate and be able to focus on my two goals around AI and Art Coaching.
I’ve been feeling that I need to take a bit of a departure from what I normally write in these workposts because I need to write more about my emotions, and let tools like my todolist take over the structured work elements of my day.
Caged
I feel caged in the prison
Of my own ambition
Unable to do anything
But work
Mindless work
Though I know I love work
It gives me purpose
I can’t shake the feeling that
I’m not happy
Some free part of me is no longer free
I’m starting to feel like a major issue with how I’m approaching life right now is balancing between structure and freedom. I created so much structure to assist me in achieving all my goals, but now I have too much structure. I feel the need to relax and indulge myself a bit and I don’t know how to hold onto both. I suspect there are too many challenges that I am splitting my attention between and the fewer the better. I will seek to finish as much work today as possible so as to not split my attention as much.
I think something else I’ve been thinking about is cleaning my apartment and making it something other than just work. Perhaps that would create the spaciousness and happiness I need. Maybe I need to go outside more, not to do anything in particular, just to walk and think about things. In fact, I wonder if I would worry about having a huge number of things to do if I was able to just walk and think about them.
On second thought, I will try one more day with my multitude of goals, I will not try to finish one to free up my attention. Instead, I will try to find a way to work on all of these goals walking, or at the gym hanging, or crawling around my apartment. Maybe I can make art too! Use art to work through any challenge I have. I will also focus on cleaning up my apartment as much as possible.
I feel pretty awful. I’ve lost focus in work. I feel overwhelmed and unhappy. Every day I stay up late at night. The only solace I find is in games. Everything that I wanted to do now feels like things I have to do.
I struggle to regain the mentality that I use for these workposts.
I guess I feel extremely tired and depressed.
There are a couple of things that filter through the haze that I’m feeling:
It’s not been all lost I suppose. There was something I worked through recently – two people that I am jealous of. One who went to Harvard and ended up starting a successful youtube channel, and another who worked on my software company before leaving and getting big on youtube for his music, and is now a famous musician.
In speaking with my friend Edgar about this I came up with the following concepts to remind myself in times of jealousy:
Finally, I’ve put off doing a LinkedIn post for far too long.
Let’s tackle the steps:
Questions to ask myself (step 1):
Strategic Hat
*One Big Thing I Noticed*
It’s a lot easier for me to be motivated to workout than to work. Plan workout sessions for the entire day and bring work to do during those times. If no work gets done, I am still being productive and will be healthier, guaranteeing better work in the future.