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 was thinking today about boundaries and needs, and how I’m starting to work on recognizing them. I’ll add a new one to the list:
Honesty – truth is important
Empathy – emotions are important
Respect – it is important to be valued and value others
Time – control over your time and space
Possibility – belief anything is possible
Health – lifestyle is important
Needs are interesting, because I think boundaries are used to protect needs. I’m not entirely sure whether or not these are needs or boundaries. I also don’t know if they are values. In doing a little more research it seems that some people would consider these values, not needs. Maybe I should switch up my terminology.
In any case, health is a value that I recently added to incorporate my dedication to sleep, digestion, and exercise all in the service of feeling happy, strong, and energetic (for the long run).
I also recently thought about possibility. The most often neglected of all my values/needs but I feel equally important. I realized recently that possibility is what drives solutions. Boundaries are important, but communicating them, enforcing them, often requires compromise and communication. And what helps with that is the feeling of possibility.
Recently, I was feeling resentful of my parents not wanting me to go to a social gathering with friends. I felt it was violating my boundary around health (mental health), empathy (where they would value my emotions) and honesty (I did not feel like I could be honest about any of this).
However, I didn’t know what to do because I respect their boundaries around health might be a bit different from mine. Being older and frailer, they were more worried about my health and their own. I know that I cannot protect them from getting sick, but I felt increasingly stressed.
The possibility value came into play when I thought about how anything is possible. I started to think about how I could meet my need for emotional health in different ways, for example, talking more to my friends and meeting more of them (in a more one on one setting) that would potentially reduce and control the risk to my parents. At the same time I still see possibilities in meeting up with my friends working out as possibility is always there.
Will cut a hole through the concrete sidewalk below
The penny is in me now
Burning a hole
Through the bottom of my heart
These poems are about the fear that there was never a real connection, that I made it up in my own mind. I wonder if there was even the possibility of love, or if I was simply deluding myself.
I wonder what I wasn’t able to give her. Was I not attractive enough? Not fun enough? Did I not give her enough space?
I feel exhausted. My head feels numb. I feel hot and tired. My back aches.
My heart feels heavy. I feel angry at myself. So helpless. My mind in a fog.
My apartment is a mess. I just want to cry.
I can’t work. I just play games all day long. my eyes feel tired.
It’s 2 o’clock in the morning. All I want to do is eat and play video games. The pull is so strong in my heart like there is a strand of honey getting pulled.
I feel a numb panic deep in my chest. I’m afraid of failure. I’m scared I will disappoint myself and everyone around me. Pushing myself to make my business cards is only making me curl up even harder.
It was a long week. I’m exhausted. But the work just keeps coming.
I guess I can cancel tai chi tomorrow. Sleep in.
Tonight I can clean my apartment until I feel more peaceful.
I know I can use the gym as a way to process emotions, but I don’t use it.
I feel this pull, this overwhelm, like the honey being pulled, from my heart.
I’m capable of anything. Even rising from this challenge. This is important because as I get more successful, there will be days I feel exhausted, and in those moments, I need to find a way to find balance, to find peace.
I also want to learn to embrace failure. Failure is so scary to me. There is an image in my mind of my business cards being a complete disappointment and I feel a pit in my heart. A horrible amaturish website I’m not proud of and I can’t fix it.
Everyone starts somewhere. Everyone starts at the beginning. The people who are exceptional, who are savants are not people who started at the middle. They are people who enjoyed the beginning.
But how can I enjoy this? I feel so scared it won’t be good.
Makes me think of this video:
In this video, Jesse talks about how play allows us to feel pressure while still being able to learn.
That fun is the key to this.
But what is the key to fun? What would make this fun for me, regardless of the outcome, what would make designing and drawing fun for me?
What would make it an infinite game, not just a finite game focused on an end goal?
It’s true, the thought of designing business cards does not sound fun to me at all. It sounds like a slog. But maybe that’s because I’m worried about failing.
Ok, what if I tried to merge my painterly style with “woodcut” style prints. What if I created a new drawing technique that I could use to create cool stuff for friends and to sell as products?
That definitely sounds more like play to me.
So what about going to the gym, because I like it so much when I actually go, but I find it hard to go to begin with.
What if I saw it as supercharging myself – which it really is doing. Whether I go to lift weights or just to hang from the bar and stretch it really is building my body up to full potential. It might even solve my sleep problems.
And what about sleep, why do I not want to go to bed? Because if I go to bed, tomorrow, I wake up with tons of problems. Well maybe, that’s not a bad thing. Maybe before I go to bed, I fill my to do list with questions that I want to search out the answers to.
Here are the questions I have today, that if I knew the answers to I would rest easy:
What am I going to do about my art coaching and AI gaming companies?
Am I behind schedule and if so what do I do about it?
Should I extend the schedule?
Am I losing money?
How do I get out of my procrastination phase and get working?
What do I do about my art coaching website?
How do I get everything done in such a short period of time?
Should I start registering for fairs?
Should I pay someone to design the website for me?
How am I going to get the motivation to start drawing? How do I start drawing consistently?
How do I start going to the gym and working outsite the apartment consistently?
How will I start cooking again and cleaning up my apartment? Where will I find the time?
How will I prepare for the next week of work? How do I balance my other businesses?
When will I continue to work on my Javascript projects? What is the breakdown between AI work time and coaching work time.
Yesterday I was vlogging a guy \asked me if I was a YouTuber, and he asked me all these questions like what my channel was about and how many subscribers I had.
I felt REALLY self-conscious because I AM a YouTuber, but not a famous or successful one and I feel like I’m disappointing people when I tell them that I have three hundred subs. I realized a few things when I felt the feelings of shame:
People LOVE the idea of youtube, you don’t need to be big for people to be excited about it. Sure some people will judge you but I think most people like the idea that you are trying to succeed and are probably curious enough to look me up and subscribe. In fact, isn’t that what I want? People who are legitimately interested in my journey subscribing to me?
I’m always REALLY self-conscious when people stare at me when I’m vlogging and I always try to solve the problem by either NOT vlogging or trying to ignore the embarrassment. I realized that there is a third better option. Any time I’m feeling embarrassed, I should just feel the feelings until the right path becomes clear to me. Usually, I feel so uncomfortable I will do ANYTHING to avoid the feeling, but I should just embrace it as I should do in any uncomfortable situation.
Today I went for a walk. It was cold, but amazing otherwise, I felt happy.
I realized that I don’t feel like myself because I feel so lonely. I miss feeling safe with people that I trust, who understand me. I think about how I lost my art. My dreams, my worlds. And I think more about this artist part of me and I realize I also lost the romantic part of me.
There was always a softer side to me. It wasn’t always about attachment theory and working on myself. I don’t regret going down that path at all, but I feel sad for the Jack who was left behind. The Jack who cries when he listens to the story of two sisters stuck in a Chicago together and one feels she betrayed the other one because she left her alone to sleep in the same bed as the flight attendant: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/175/babysitting/act-two-17
For me, even by telling the story, shows the depth of their love. They cared enough for these moments to be some of the most important in their life.
I think I always sought out a love story of my own. This is what I loved about college. So many opportunities for my love story to happen. This is why I wanted to learn daygaming, I just loved the idea of meeting someone on the street.
It’s why I liked the idea of dating my current girlfriend. Everything about it felt like a movie. Dating a girl on the other side of the world, and traveling to meet her in person. Finding my little sloth despite everything working against us.
I don’t want to forget the romantic in me. I want to be around people who see the magic like I do, and I feel safe around. People who allow me to get out of the fear and anxiety response long enough to feel more deeply. People who accept my story, who want to hear the truth, not what they want to hear. After all, a story about people being fake happy about everything is not a romantic one.
I think this is at least one part of the art that I’m missing. Art is one part exploring worlds, another part allowing you to feel deeply and effortlessly. Maybe another part is vulnerability, of pain.
This is what “high” art is missing. Feelings are lost behind academic musings. Worlds are exchanged for high philosophy. Pain is exchanged for numb confusion.