My girlfriend is leaving soon and I want to focus on her and the relationship.
I have a pretty good work system set up, but I’m not sure how to balance work with time with her.
I think the answer is just to wake up early, plan out my day and do as much breakdown as I can, then work while she is next to me in the couch reading, and if not just work during the morning.
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:
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:
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:
Finally, I’ve put off doing a LinkedIn post for far too long.
Let’s tackle the steps:
Questions to ask myself (step 1):
Strategic Hat
*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.
I’m really struggling to process some feelings right now.
Let’s work through them one by one.
Guilt, shame, deep desire
Center of my chest, painful clenching
Stomach clenching
I am bad
I am defective
I am ugly
I am guilty
I am rejected
I won’t ever find beauty or be happy
What if the perfect one is out there
It’s not about the perfect person who meets all your needs. It’s the relationship that meets all of your needs.
Why do I place all my hopes and dreams on a person? Because I want to be happy and I’ve only felt that in shallow relationships. I like meeting people. I like the feeling of possibility in life of variety.
Can I meet those needs in a relationship? Can I find novelty and excitement in a relationship?
Why is desire such an important need for adventures for me? Just because I’m in a relationship, doesn’t mean I can’t be attractive. But I want to find someone attractive, then for them and me to do the little romantic dance. I worry when I’m in a relationship, that’s not possible anymore.
I think honestly the fear comes from lack of needs being met in the relationship. Specifically around safety, social needs, chemistry, and inspiration. I feel if I felt if I felt safe to talk openly about people that are attractive and my partner is secure enough in herself, I felt my social needs are met, I felt strong chemistry, and inspired I would not find others attractive.
I want to switch my mindset over from comparing and wanting to meet my needs via others, and focus more on the relationship. Looking elsewhere is giving up on the relationship and if I really want to look elsewhere, I want to first end the relationship.
I don’t want to neglect my needs anymore.
I want to first meet my needs myself, then in the relationship:
For the relationship, I want to continue working through needs course.
I feel fear in my chest when I think about my relationship. I feel uncertainty.
No matter what happens I will find peace and happiness because of the way I engage with the world.
My little emotional processing toolkit for meeting my needs:
Chemistry
The indescribable feeling
Like the beauty of the red in the roses
Unfurled
Cutting in the corners, filling then in
This feeling of a world around you
That you carry everywhere you go
Our worlds meet
The openness to connect with me
Ok, this raises so many questions it is time to move along
I feel lost, overwhelmed, and misunderstood.
What if I fail? What if its all for nothing? I don’t know what to do. It feels like so much work.
I don’t know what to do to be effective. I feel the time is running out so fast.
I need to focus on the end goal. Ignore everything else, its just a bonus.
I’ve been sick in the past two days. Not a terrible sickness thankfully. I credit that to the copious quantities of water I consumed as well as the zinc I took and the lymph node massage to clear my stuff nose. I can’t smell anything, I feel tired, and my mind feels fuzzy but other than that I’m actually doing ok.
Earlier my throat was hurting and I woke up many times in the night, but overall I slept pretty good. I’ve been self-medicating a lot by playing games, and I want to stop. I did go for a walk this morning and workout, and I feel that helps.
Some more thoughts about my brand for AI Consulting: