“This is my Valorant jacket. I got it when I watched the world championship in LA a year ago. I love playing Valorant.”
“But this is the 21 day youtuber challenge”
“I’ve yet to figure out how to connect those two passions together. But that changes today”
“Hi everyone, my name is Jack, and this in the Youtuber challenge, the challenge where I post a video everyday, working not for views, but for the love of making videos”
“There are a bunch of things I’m super passionate about, but haven’t figured out how to connect to a Youtube video yet. And one of those things is gaming.”
“But here’s my problem with gaming. I like playing alone, I don’t like talking while I’m gaming, but I do feel like there are certain things I like to share after the game is done.”
“Here is the plan. I have fun gaming. In between, I’ll do a little bit of journaling, and afterwards, I’ll just edit a video that is fun for me”
If I could burn their existence and wipe them from the planet I would
I’m so tired of fighting
I’m so tired of having to rely on others to do what I want to do
I’m so tired
I feel hopeless sometimes
Like there is no way out of this horrid existence
Where I am trapped
I breathed and breathed
And in the breath
I remembered
That I don’t need to let anyone control me
Only one person can live my life
No one else can touch me
They can’t hurt me and they can’t control me
I can do things my way
I did a little IFS therapy on myself and here are the parts that came up:
Black Hatred: This is a protector of some sort that prevents other people from taking me off course of what I want to do. It does this through extreme anger against people who don’t understand me and box me into what they feel my limitations are.
Mind Reader: The mind reader is always calculating what other people want in order to prevent the painful feelings around rejection and failure.
I reminded Black Hatred that I am 31 years old and he no longer needs to protect me since no one has any hold over me anymore. I can do whatever I want to do. I promised him that I will remain true to myself.
I reminded Mind Reader that I am 31 and I am fully capable with dealing with failure, and that at my age, failure helps keep the boredom away. I promised him that I will take care of myself and give myself time, space, comfort, and support.
Today I feel tired. My kidneys ache. They feel bloated and stagnated. My stomach feels slow. My head iches on the top. My eyes are dry. I feel burning inflammation up my back and spine. My skin is flaking on my face.
These past few days have felt exhausting, extremely stressful, and demoralizing. Last night, I asked myself the question, how do I get out of this.
I didn’t know the answer then, but my answer today during my walk was to take my stress seriously.
And just now, I had a realization that I have the systems developed to do extraordinary things. I just need to utilize them and follow their principals.
Systems in place:
Daily walk to ponder questions I am stressed about
Daily workpost to grow myself, plan for greatness
Clean space to deal with stress, clean place = clean mind
Meal prep strategy for healthy cheap meals with little stress – fridge containers, tacos, lettuce wraps
Whiteboards to write strategies
Off computer working systems (working while walking, running errands, working out, eating out)
Todo list strategy – focus on one thing at a time, prioritize
Clean after working hours to transition, decompress
Crawling to get cardio in small space
Walking backwards and tibialus for knee
Hanging for shoulders and posture
Working out after and before meals for better absorption, muscle growth, and recovery
Journaling to ask myself questions at night
Walking with no effort
I have absolutely everything I need to build a life where I can do almost anything I want, achieve anything I want.
Right now, I want to focus on two things: recovery and priming
Priming are stuff like cleaning, wiping off my whiteboards, clearing out tabs, filling markers, mealprep, todo list grooming
Recovery means lots of sleep, rest, hydration, and exercise. Specifically paying attention to anytime I want to game to see if I feel stressed or uncomfortable, taking a break when that happens.
To top off this post, I want to attach something that I want to erase from my whiteboard, but want to save forever:
Reasons Why I’m Ready
I’ve developed very deep and powerful life theories (flow, connection) → these theories can give anyone direction in darkness, I forget them but they come back when I need them
When faced with pain I’ve always come out stronger (ACL) → pain is the greatest teacher
I’ve proven that I can complete hard challenges (knee, sova) → I can achieve the challenges I set my mind to
I can solve problems few people can solve (triage, nikola) → normal rules don’t apply
I’m deeply attuned to emotions (coaching, art, philosophy) → makes it much easier to connect with people
I used to walk up to girls on the street → Nothing is something I can’t handle. There is nothing that I can’t ask for
No matter how badly I fail there are people who still love me
The point is not to get there, be productive or succeed, the point is to find a meaningful problem, problems we want to solve → we will never have no problems but we can choose which problems we want to contend with
Happiness doesn’t come from acing the past but seizing the now → its never too late to be happyIt’s near too late to fix it with a degree in engineering and parents who don’t mess with me
I have lots of assets and saving and a degree in engineering and parents and a sister all with money saved
Today I feel very tired but at least better rested than normal. I really want to finish my taxes today and I also want to experiment with art therapy and exercise to help get through the stress and effort of finishing.
My initial thoughts about art therapy is that it is all about reconnecting with your body…to do flow theory or follow what you feel. Art is about touching the forms with lines and paint, music is about creating sound, dance is about moving your body.
I’m doing more research. Here is a video that talks about using art to find a safe place:
Here is another video:
Current art therapy ideas:
Express what you feel kinesthetically
Scribbling
Banging on the piano
Flow theory dance
Free writing
Create a safe space, express what feels safe
Drawing
Writing
Music
Repetitive motions
Shapes
Chords
Motions
But how does this translate to greater art creation? How does this create a world?
Thinking about this more, art creation is about the following:
What you want to share with others
What you find beautiful
What you feel wonder about
What stories you want to tell
What is quirky, unique, and creative
What worlds you want to live in and provide others
I have a couple ideas of how to transition from therapeutic art to art art:
My therapy exercise (take a problem and solve it in the story by making the main character face a problem 10x more painful)
