|

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

Similar Posts

|

She Knows

Byjack
She Knows

That calling is very important to me

That I only ask when I really want to

That I’m tired and lonely

That it’s excruciating to see her having fun

With others

When she refuses to play with me

That is why she gives me vague answers

In hopes that she won’t disappoint me

She knows

The lengths

I’m willing to go to

To make it work

Maybe she just cannot give me

What I need

Or maybe

When she’s upset

She cannot see anything but the negative

Forgets all the happy times

Forget the fun we had

How well we work together

Before she stopped listening

The love we shared

Before the angry words

How much she wanted to reassure me

Before she was afraid

How much she liked being mine

Before she wanted to push me away

The nights when she doesn’t want me to get off the phone

And told me I was right

That we always understand each other better

Be more real

On a call

I need rest

A very long one

Away from all of this

So I know 

What is best

For me

Focus on what I want

For a moment

It takes strength

To get past all the mess

To true understanding

And to part of a relationship

That is secure and loving

It’s like pushing an elephant

My feet are dug in

The struggle goes on

And on

|

The Invitation From Life

Byjack

A few days ago, my coach asked me a powerful question. I don’t remember what it is but I came up with this poem.

the summer sun on the blue pool
smell of chlorine, flip flops on the concrete
the late nights in your city, lights on long streets
big dreams in a small classroom on a paper on the board
paint covering the canvases, dripping off the walls
life has always been waiting
for you to be recklessly, wildly, lovingly creative

This led to me deciding the most powerful question in this whole poem is “why has life always been waiting for you”?

I felt in many ways this is true. I live in a wonderfully creative city. I have a youtube channel, a coaching practice, a well-paying job with lots of free time. Life is waiting on me to make a move.

| |

Profit in Peace 24: Warm and Cold Outreach

Byjack

As Alex Hormozi said (or am I just saying this?) everyone needs to know sales. Because sales lead to money and everyone needs money. If you don’t know how to sell, then you end up working for someone who does.

Before I try out the leads techniques on my coaching business, I am using it for my AI company.

And for that company, I’ve been feeling extreme pressure and stress around talking to my warm and lukewarm or cold leads.

I’ve processed some of these emotions and came up with some of a process:

  1. Accept that I cannot control how someone sees me and even if I could, I don’t want to. Everyone’s mind and thoughts are sacred and my freedom is sacred as well. Both would be violated if I were to control how people saw me because I have to put on a mask and deceive people.
  2. If I’m not trying to control people then the point is just to engage with my network. Talk to people, have a good time, make some jokes.
  3. Anyone who doesn’t respond is an opportunity to process my feelings around rejection because that is the most important thing to me – not trying to change their mind.

The other part of this equation that I still am scratching my head about is delivering fast and big value. Alex talks about that but I don’t know what that value means, and I don’t know if I am allowed to give away things. I need to think about it some more and come up with some ideas. Perhaps my time can be split between developing value and content and reaching out.

I’ve been thinking of way to provide people value and the only thing I can really think of is having some time with me.

Maybe one way to think about it is I need to establish myself as an AI expert or someone with a lot of prior success. Perhaps one helpful detail is that I’ve worked with companies where we saw a 10x increase in efficiency in specific areas.

Maybe it would be helpful to show them the website as well for use cases or a list of ideas for their specific area.

|

Valorant Poems

Byjack

Today I will be playing a lot of Valorant and hopefully processing a lot of the stress and feelings I have around Valorant through the use of poetry.

Pregame Stress

I’ve got knots in my stomach

What if it is another day

Of humiliation

That drop in my stomach

Feeling helpless

Like I’m worth nothing

I go down in rank

The more I play

What is wrong me

That I cannot get better

I hate this

Myself

Me

Hands Sweaty

On my keyboard

Heat on my face

Clenched stomach

It is no wonder

Valorant has such a big impact on me

I wish to let go of my fears

And remember the satisfaction of shooting

I starting to find it a challenge to write poetry because my mind always turns to thinking strategically and thinking in terms of sentanaces and bullet points. I’m going to roll with that. If that is how I feel, we are just going to write in sentences and bullet points.

I feel a bit tired like I’m walking through a haze. I’m scared to start a ranked game, and yet there is an eagerness to gain rr. Gold 1, what could go wrong? Yet I’m scared. HOW DID I GET TO GOLD 1? That’s unhead of. It gives me so much anxiety that I don’t know what is going on.

I want to remind myself of my main valorant tenants:

  1. Think of it as a 1v5
  2. Follow your feelings, peek when you are ready
  3. Keep wrist relaxed, use movement keys to aim

Some additional tenants:

  1. Find a space angle to hold, something that feels safe
  2. Peek expecting them there
  3. Notice things about aim, don’t try to change them, noticing is the pathway to the unconscious mind

Goddamn, this fucking omen can’t hit him while he’s moving . Why is Silver Movement so good?????

WHY IS THE RAZE HIDING IN THAT AREA? NO FUCKING COMMS? I hate this team. Why can I not hit shots.

I think I wasn’t aware of the danger I was in when clearing heaven. Maybe need more of that 1v5 mindset. Also, maybe need to notice where my shots are going. Scared but playing again. It is silvers I am with WHY THE FUCK ARE THEY KILLING ME. Counterstrafing, one tapping me??? WHAT DO I NEED TO DO?

THIS IS LIKE GOING BACK 2 FUCKING YEARS. I guess what I thought before is that I would never drop this low because I can beat them on gamesense alone.

I feel tired. Why are the braindead idiots getting more kills? I feel a bit better now. I adjusted and I was able to get a bunch of kills in the end. I guess its just about holding better angles.

I don’t like this bullshit bottom fragging. I feel so tired and awful and I feel hungry.

It is interesting that with these reflections I was able to drop 39 kills in one of my games.

|

Workpost 33: At the End of My Rope

Byjack

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:

  1. I want to find a way to post on LinkedIn again. That is the one thing I want to work on achieving.
  2. This new idea in taichi, and breathwork. To receive what is coming instead of taking. To allow things to come to me. To receive breath instead of taking it. To receive emotions, purpose, and understanding, instead of creating it. I feel this is the essence of patience.
  3. To be curious. I want to do more IFS therapy, but I feel overwhelmed by it. Too much thinking about thinking that is too cerebral, non-intuitive, and downright frustrating. However, we can take the core concept of IFS – the concept of creativity. Ask how do I feel? What do I need? Why do I feel that way.

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:

  1. How do I want to succeed my way? The issue with a lot of these people is that they got successful in things that I want to succeed in, but not in the way that I want to succeed. There is great value in succeed in the way I want to succeed.
  2. Hardship creates growth. Success isn’t the end goal, success just leads to creating more challenges for yourself to work through. The ones who go down the harder path to begin with will still succeed but will be more complete when they do.
  3. Is my goal to succeed a little in the short term? Or is the goal much bigger? This is the concept that if I want to gain one rank in Valorant, the outcome of a match matters (because my elo will be impacted directly). If my goal is to get to radiant (the highest rank), one loss in the scale of a huge journey is not significant.

Finally, I’ve put off doing a LinkedIn post for far too long.

Let’s tackle the steps:

  1. Answer a list of questions in a letter to my girlfriend.
  2. Come up with a research plan and timebox it.
  3. Timebox getting everything “on the canvas”, move very fast, get messy, take big risks, keep going until it coalesces into what the art wants to be
  4. Break to do other things, view work from different angles
  5. Put on strategic hat to finish

Questions to ask myself (step 1):

  1. What my vision for the ideal post?
  2. What am I worried about and feel uncomfortable by?
  3. What do I want to learn when creating this post?

Strategic Hat

  • See the work as something in itself, not just as a manifestation of my ideas
  • Put on creative hat, check: is there some feeling here, is there some beauty, fun?
  • Put on producer hat, check: if this was a work created by one of my clients, how would I promote it? If it was done by my brother?

*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.

|

To A New Place

Byjack
To a New Place

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