I Wish I Knew Why

Byjack

I Wish I Knew Why

Maybe it was the defiance

Or feeling like I couldn’t have a reasonable conversation

Maybe I was just tired of having a virtual relationship

Or just feeling like she had no drive

That everything was just too difficult with her

That she couldn’t connect with me on art, music, dance, and singing

Maybe none of that is true

And my exhaustion is making me depressed

And I think my unhappiness is because of her

I wish I knew

Because I just didn’t have the will to fight for us anymore

I half wanted her to say she didn’t want it anymore

I wish I had a reason for hurting a girl who was

So devoted to me

So kind and sweet

A girl who I still care so deeply for

It hurts

My eyes drip with sadness

I hope she’s going to be ok

I hope she finds happiness

I hope the deep pain within her

Heals

I feel sad

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Workpost 26: My Way

Byjack

My Way

Anger in my heart

Ripping tearing

Destroy all the people

Who don’t understand me

Who want to tell me what to do

What I’m worth

I hate them all

With every fiber of my being

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.

Fitness Challenge 4: The Evolution of the Challenge

Byjack

It’s been officially four months since I posted about this challenge, so I think it is safe to say that this challenge is over…well not over per se, but evolved.

So what happened? First, I got very sick on the tail end of the fitness challenge. It was the sickest I’ve been in years and I lost a lot of weight.

Second, I have split this challenge into about 3 other challenges, two that I am tracking and one that I didn’t track but sort of is successfully completed.

Those challenges are:

  1. The posture challenge. I literally came up with my own posture exercises inspired by some of the most common and popular posture exercises and I’ve literally done it. My posture is much much better than it was before and I continue to improve it every day. What is the best part? I now can tell and feel uncomfortable when in a bad posture. I didn’t document anything and may never do so.
  2. The bedtime challenge. This is a version of a sleep challenge. My latest attempt involves ignoring the whole sleep side of it. Ignoring falling asleep, ignoring getting enough hours, or even habits of turning off electronics. I’m going to make it simple for myself. In the next 66 days (Dec 12, 2023) I will go to bed by 11 pm every night.
  3. The jiujitsu challenge. This challenge was a couple of things but I haven’t completely formed my goals around it so clearly yet. The main ideas I have right now are: getting comfortable and confident in moving and utilizing my body to defend myself, getting stronger and more fit, and mastering a lot of jiujitsu techniques.

So, it is a bye for now on this challenge, but there might be some future retrospective posts analyzing some of the biometric data I gleaned from this challenge.

Sova Fanart 1: Class Unit 1 Day 1

Byjack

UNIT ONE: Sova Model Studies | Day 1 – Portrait

Since this unit was all about model studies, I went into a custom game and used the model as a reference for drawing sova portraits.

I started with this side view of Sova.

Then I did colors:

I really didn’t like the colors. So I tried looking at tutorials.

New rough sketch of Sova:

Followed by a more refined outline:

Then by a painting attempt:

Something wasn’t clicking. I still didn’t like the painting job. I decided to try again and learn from another tutorial on shading.

I tried to color again.

This time I felt something clicked with using large soft brushes and the lasso tool. I used the soft brushes to create nice gradients and the lasso tool for the clean edges. Looking closely at the painter I see that he also uses the smudge tool a lot.

Deep Reflections Late At Night

Byjack

I was in a men’s support group tonight and I was mulling over some of the recent discoveries I had:

  • I realized that the right person in your life will be someone who will accept everything about you. Someone who isn’t like that may just not be right for you.
  • I usually walk away at the first sign I feel someone doesn’t understand me. I learned not to give up so quickly if it’s someone I love. If they care about you, they will try to understand. It may take some time, but they will. 
  • I realized I have a very deep-seated hatred of women that is shoved down so deep I didn’t know it existed. I feel this has affected my life in profound ways and I want to explore this deeper and understand why.
  • I realized that the way I work myself to death isn’t healthy and I need to find a better way.

I chose to explore the last realization – how I approach work. Through the discussion and coaching, I realized the following:

  • I feel deep shame for asking for help because I feel like this means I’m not good enough and disorganized.
  • I think of everything in terms of lone wolfing everything  – when in fact I work on a team. The work I do benefits the company I work for, my colleagues and my customers (as I believe in the product).
    • There is no shame in asking for help.
    • In the past, when I used to troubleshoot customer issues, I would work until 4 am in the morning and not feel like it is work because I know who it is for, and how  I am helping them (I felt good about it).

I resolve going forward, that every time I get overwhelmed and feel the urge to procrastinate I’ll do the following:

    1. Ask myself who I am helping
      • Myself for the money and experience I will gain
      • My family, and friends because of the money and time, and experience I can share with them if I succeed at my work
      • My colleagues for how my work will benefit their lives and careers
      • My customers for whom my work will transform their businesses and their personal careers.
    2. Focus on doing the work to help them (not just to get it done).
      • I will never forget the story of the teacher who said the moment that teaching transformed for them was the moment that they stopped trying to teach, and focused on helping their students learn. This feels like that moment to me.

I need to be kinder to myself. To enjoy my life when I’m tired and my body is hurting. I should eat out, take breaks, watch tv. There is no shame in asking for help. I’m on a team. Most of all, I should focus on how my work will help others not just myself.

How To Succeed At Really Difficult Stuff

Byjack

I was pondering today on the subject of doing anything really really difficult and I came across a realization.

People often go after really difficult stuff in the wrong way. By difficult things I mean anything that has a high degree of complexity and a steep learning curve. This might be mastering a new skill like the piano, playing a difficult game, getting big on youtube, or starting a new business.

People often try to get results too quickly. They immediately try to focus on success instead of having fun and its not productive. They move into what I call the “WORK” phase too fast. The “WORK” phase is characterized by the following:

  1. You are doing something “for real”. This can mean trying to make a business profitable or striking it out for real as a professional YouTuber.
  2. You want to execute a game plan for success. Success is a major focus, and failure is going to cost you something.

 

Instead of jumping into the “WORK” phase, with ANYTHING with a high degree of difficulty, you need to first go through a “LEARNING” phase.

This “LEARNING” phase is characterized by a couple of things:

  1. You have to be completely ok with failing and failing badly and over and over.
  2. You should focus exclusively on finding what you like about the thing you are doing (having fun).
  3. Exploring the thing, feeling out foundations should be the focus.

 

This is because success requires two things:

  1. Solid fundamentals borne from experience and mastery of the fundamentals
  2. Huge amounts of motivation due to the amount of hardship and failure you will experience.

 

The problem is, the “WORK” phase, when you have to perform and get results (make money off of your new business idea, perform on the piano, gain rank in the game) usually is not very fun. It is hard to build a good foundation or get motivation when you are so scared of failing.

The solution is clearly to not skip the “LEARNING” phase. Make sure you REALLY REALLY love the thing first, that you have tons and tons of fun, that you start to succeed without even trying before you start to TRY to perform when you switch over to the “WORK” phase. Maybe this means you start to make money off of the business you started, without even thinking about the business plan, or you start to rise in rank without even trying.

My visualization on the correct path for success.

The key part of the “LEARNING” phase is fun. Finding what you like about something is probably one of the most critical ingredients to success because motivation can pretty much overcome ANY obstacle.

Finding fun is both simple and difficult. Simple because all you need to do, is think about what makes you happy. Difficult because it is sometimes hard to pin down what makes you happy. You have to try many things. For me, letting yourself fail, is critical to having fun. With too much pressure, there is absolutely no room for play. I start every endeavor with the mantra, “I accept failure, it is ok/good to let myself fail”.