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Backwards Walking

Byjack

This feels really good. I want to try to incorporate this while I’m walking to anything.

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Knee Mobility Challenge 3: Fasting

Byjack

Today I fasted and I had mixed results. Fasting seems to create more inflammation as my stomach felt irritated and painful and my body felt hot. The left side of my body felt blocked right where my spleen is. It sort of feels like I have an enlarged spleen. The only thing that sort of helps with this is doing meditation. I’ve been having sweats. My lips are cracking from the dryness.

But I decided not to give up. I am going to address the problems at their root, which is certainly the stomach and the spleen. Digestion issues are not new to me. I started using dance therapy techniques and feeling the discomfort in the spleen as sensual and my body started to move. I started to feel pain inside the spleen area. It feels cold. The pressure relieves a little and I feel a trickle.

I wonder if the stress of the drawing challenge and traveling soon are making my stomach clench. It is certainly possible.

I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again. Dance therapy is like magic. I don’t know why I stopped using it. There is this interplay between feeling the feelings and finding comfort. I guess that might be why I left this technique behind. I left it behind to feel pain. To feel without judgement or plan.

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Workpost 54: Fears

Byjack

I’m starting work on the new branding project but I’m feeling some fears:

  1. Fear of failure
  2. Fear of being misunderstood and not heard
  3. Fear of being seen as bad, lazy, unproductive, dumb

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.

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Fitness Challenge 3: Sleep and Pills

Byjack

So I’ve fallen off the weight challenge a little bit due to losing my phone and having some serious trouble with routines.

But here are some updates.

In terms of appetite, I realized that stuffing yourself with food simply doesn’t work with me. I tend to feel stressed and bloated, and end up somehow losing weight as my digestion falls apart. A major tip for me that seems to work is eating enzymes. They always seems to help me a lot when breaking down food and I definitely seem to gain weight after that.

In terms of routine, I started implementing daily walks morning walks with a cup of tea and that has been working great. What hasn’t been working great is getting enough sleep and going to bed on time.

The main blocked appears to be Valorant. Today I thought about how I always focus on the problem itself as the issue but I was wondering whether or not the issue actually manifests earlier.

For example, I know in Valorant, I always blame my aim for losing gun fights, but I never think about what led up to the gunfight and how that might have put me in a unwinnable situation, or at least, a very difficult to win situation.

In terms of going to bed on time, I always blame gaming late at night. But thinking about it more deeply, I theorized that the issue actually occurs much earlier in the day, specifically during noon and afternoon. This is when I start to feel discomfort and turn to Valorant to start numbing out the pain.

Fix noon and I fix bedtime.

Today I tried taking a nap at noon and it seems to work. It’s 11 PM and while I feel pretty shitty from playing Valorant, I actually feel like it was easier for me to stop, and I may go to bed around midnight instead of 2 or 3 AM.

Today is actually the end of unit one (Baseline health: strong enough to exercise bulk and be normal health). The next unit starts tomorrow (Bulking and buildup: Gain 3 pounds of muscle).

I’m excited to see how I can start to use the rhythms I’m starting to build up, with the energy exercises and increasing diet to greater effects.

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Bedtime Challenge 1: 44 Days In

Byjack

I started this challenge on October 8th. Now it is November 21st. And I can say with honesty that I really followed the challenge very very well.

A couple of notes:

  • I was forced to go to bed later on two separate occasions, once for work, when I finished a production deployment at 11:30 and went to bed at maybe 12:30
  • Another time when I was helping my girlfriend with her project and I was up until 12, I cheated by “sleeping” on the coach by the computer at 11 but since I didn’t actually go to bed until much later, it wasn’t that good

After these cheat days it got really hard to stick to my schedule for a few days, but now it is easy again. There were a few times that I went to bed at 1 or 3 am because I didn’t go to sleep and I often go to sleep at 12 or 1, but I get to my bedroom by 11:30 usually and almost always start washing up by 11:10.

Overall this is a smashing success. I have genuinely changed for the better and I think this time the change might actually last.

I do want to still apply some of my earlier ideas and focus on different needs and try to meet them better every day.

I can also work on turning off screens earlier and stopping eating so close to bedtime. But the eating has definitely gotten better and the screens are just hard since I like to play Valorant with my friends at night.

Overall I am very happy with the progress.

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Bedtime Challenge 2: Wavering and Innovation

Byjack

I’ve done it, started to waver on my sleep challenge. The main issue is that I no longer take a hard stance on when I go to sleep, but the one thing that is holding over, is that I get to my bedroom by 11.

I want to recommit to getting into my bed by 11, even if I continue to stay up after.

However, despite wavering, and getting into bed at 11:30, I have started to innovate and think more carefully on how I spend the rest of the hours of my day:

  • I stop playing Valorant at 9 (or in the case of yesterday, don’t even play Valorant)
  • I started writing in my journal every night before bedtime to process any feelings that need to be processed
  • I started doing cupping before sleep to improve circulation
  • I also usually work on posture and my knee exercises

Now that I think about it, I actually succeeded pretty good at this challenge because I’m starting to feel like doing all sorts of things before bedtime such as drawing and reading books.

Another thing I like to do at night is listen to videos that are about AI and are interesting to me to keep up with the latest AI news.

I really like where all of this is going, and writing this at 5 AM in the morning makes me feel like it is nighttime and I’m feeling the vibes. I want to spend more time at night creating worlds. Either drawing, writing a novel or learning.