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My Father Tells Me It’s Going to Be Hard

Byjack
My Father Tells Me It’s Going to Be Hard

As I sit on the chair and explain to him my life dreams

I was so caught up in listening to his objections

And explaining to him how it would be successful

I forgot to tell him that this is what makes me feel alive

I forget to tell it to him in a way

That he wouldn’t respond with judgement

And disgust

As if one’s purpose was something flimsy and cheap

Not the energy

That created the great figures

He admires so much

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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

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Warm Days In The Middle of December

Byjack
Warm Days In the Middle of December

I run on the worn pavement

And it’s warm

So warm it feels like balmy spring

Not the middle of December

It makes wonder

How the fuel in the car

So hot

Can make our world burning up

Those plane flights to those wonderful places

Are the poison that fills the air

A girl who

You want to be with

Likes to hurt other people

For fun

December is sure

A strange month

And all the wonderful paradoxes

Won’t let me get out of my damn head

About it all

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To Explore Love

Byjack
Who She Is For Me

When I’m with her

I feel I can be so ugly

So weak

So bad

So hurtful

And yet I feel safe

Like I can stop checking

Her face for signs of anger

Stop feeling ashamed, worried

It surprises me how calm I feel

When my mask is off around her

Her acceptance like a balm for my soul

Her love can

Make her helpless

Like the most beautiful creature

So vulnerable

She would endure

Pain if it means my pleasure

I like to explore life

And uncover it’s discoveries

Now I can have someone to share them with

It’s like

She can hear music in my mind

Of imagination, of beautiful ideas, of glory

And she smiles at me

Like we have a joke only we know

When I am struck with pain

Like an animal looking for its home

I seek her warmth

And her love is like a blanket

I can snuggle deep within

Protected from the world

Sometimes, we are just laughing

She’s shining as brightly as a star

It’s like the kind fun

You only find

As a kid on a playground

When she is hurting

I want to take her pain

Spread it around

So I can see her smile again

She is strong-willed

And I’m grinning

When she leads me by the hand

And shows me the world

Through her eyes

And all I can think sometimes

Is how much I love her

I Was Wondering What Would Happen If

I feel open

Like a canvas ready for paint

No future

No expectations

No obligations

Only action

Or no action

I didn’t pick up the phone

Except for the time

When I really felt like it

When I open my mouth

My words are driven

By the moment

In the freedom

Of saying fuck it

I’ll do what I feel like

I dream at night

For a relaxed afternoon

Sipping tea

And beauty

Both sweet and ordinary

When when I’m done wondering

We pass on

With happy memories

Like the lasting sweetness

Of a candy

Melted in your mouth

These two poems are comparing the feelings I have for two things – the girl who I want to wait for, and the experience of dating around that I want to explore in the meantime. I was trying to reconcile them and understand how they can coexist.

Some thoughts:

  • I used to think I had to be super upfront about not wanting anything serious when dating. I don’t think so anymore. I will only explain if asked by the girl or if there comes a time where I feel I need to explain it (she is getting too invested). Most girls don’t even care until they develop feelings since they have an abundance of men.
  • I used to reach out to people even when I didn’t want to (usually because I felt guilt since I knew the girl liked me and I didn’t want to hurt her/lose her). I’m not gonna do that anymore. I’ll basically treat them like guy friends. If there is something I want to say, or do with them, I will reach out. Otherwise, I’ll say nothing, make no effort.
  • I’m afraid that I will mess up the beautiful connection I have with the girl I am waiting for by dating. I decided to stop pushing down that fear. It is happening for a good reason. As soon as I feel scared, unsafe, or distracted I should just stop dating and refocus on her. I never went into this to replace her and I should keep her as my top priority.
  • I worry about meeting women so attractive I will forget about the girl I am waiting for. Honestly, this might happen at first, but I think at the end of the day, personality matters much much more to me. I think I would only be distracted by looks because I haven’t dated before. As long as someone is attractive ENOUGH, if I love them, they will be the most beautiful woman in the world to me.
  • Overall, I should worry less about hurting women since they aren’t like men (have only one or two women to talk to). They usually have lots of men and could care less if I stopped talking to them. I can still be compassionate without overcompensating (for my fear of being an asshole).

What We Owe Ourselves

Byjack

I’ve been making everything a workpost these days. Because I like it. I like feeling the pride that I’m getting work done. But today, I’m going to try something a little different.

I want to write a little different. Not as a workpost, but a journal entry or maybe an essay.

I want to try writing with more of my emotions, seeking to express and be understood rather just recording my thoughts.

Today I felt very angry with myself. I felt like a failure. It’s been days and every day feels like a repeat of the same nightmare. Wake up, work, play Valorant, go to bed.

The deadline for my entrepreneurship endeavor feels like it is creeping closer and closer, and nothing feels like it is getting done. I feel like I’m drowning under the waves of my anxiety and stress. What if three months pass, and I get nothing done, just like I’ve gotten nothing done in the last 3 months?

In times like this, I feel desperate for answers. I search and I search for some answer to hold onto, some insight that will unlock my mind and set me free from this torment.

The answers didn’t come cleanly. But they did come.

First, I thought about my worries and wins. I wrote them down.

I thought about how really big goals aren’t completed by thinking about the goals, but about who you want to become, and being that person every day.

I thought about how focus was about letting things go, being ok with certain things slipping away.

I remembered my theories: connection theory, and flow theory. I used flow theory to feel my discomfort and soothe myself. Flow theory told me to hold my arms up in the wide circle, almost as if I was giving a hug to an imaginary friend. I needed to do this when I felt the feeling of letting myself down. Like I needed to hold myself and remind myself that I really cared.

I asked myself what I was willing to give myself, what I was willing to do today in order to prove to myself that I cared. And I wrote this:

Website Copy Draft

The path to greatness doesn’t have to be a lonely one
Have you always wanted to write a book, create a comic book, or start a youtube channel?
I specialize in helping people who are retired start one their second career…a career in creative expression.
I believe that there are 3 pillars to success in creating any artistic masterpiece – structure, creativity, and emotional honesty.
Master all three and you will have a work that will feel honest, raw, playful, and beautiful.
But it’s a lonely path to seek this on your own.
That’s where I come in.

With a unique background of both art and engineering, I uniquely understand the feeling and structure, and psychology required to complete the masterpiece of a lifetime. I won multiple awards for art as a child, and got a full scholarship to college for fine art. I am versed in multiple forms of art be it painting, videography, writing, music, and dance. I also studied mechanical engineering and have won awards in the corporate setting for my dedication to the details, practicality, and results orientation.

Together, I can help you express what it is that you want to express in a beautiful, deep, and artistic way.

Tomorrow, I will ask myself the same question. What am I willing to do for myself, my future me.

Workpost 41: Enjoy Yourself

Byjack

Today I did a long breathwork meditation session after feeling extremely stressed out about three questions:

  1. Should I sign up for jiujitsu again?
  2. Should I do coaching again?
  3. Should I continue therapy?

And all the worrying stressful sub questions:

  1. What about the money for jiujitsu
  2. Jiujitsu is so hard to get good at
  3. People might not buy my coaching if I didn’t do something really big
  4. Therapy costs so much money is it worth it?

And after the meditation, one thing was clear to me. The answer to everything: take everything so much less serious. Have fun!!!

If you have fun doing jiujitsu, sign up for it, go to classes when you feel like it. Have an amazing time doing work. If you love coaching, do it whether or not people believe that you are a good coach or not.

Enjoy yourself. Indulge yourself in boba while working. Take breaks to play on the piano, to draw.

P.S. I did sign up for jiujitsu, and I intend to have fun learning tons of new martial arts.

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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.