Workpost 9: Depression

Byjack

I’ve been feeling that I need to take a bit of a departure from what I normally write in these workposts because I need to write more about my emotions, and let tools like my todolist take over the structured work elements of my day.

Caged

I feel caged in the prison

Of my own ambition

Unable to do anything

But work

Mindless work

Though I know I love work

It gives me purpose

I can’t shake the feeling that

I’m not happy

Some free part of me is no longer free

I’m starting to feel like a major issue with how I’m approaching life right now is balancing between structure and freedom. I created so much structure to assist me in achieving all my goals, but now I have too much structure. I feel the need to relax and indulge myself a bit and I don’t know how to hold onto both. I suspect there are too many challenges that I am splitting my attention between and the fewer the better. I will seek to finish as much work today as possible so as to not split my attention as much.

I think something else I’ve been thinking about is cleaning my apartment and making it something other than just work. Perhaps that would create the spaciousness and happiness I need. Maybe I need to go outside more, not to do anything in particular, just to walk and think about things. In fact, I wonder if I would worry about having a huge number of things to do if I was able to just walk and think about them.

On second thought, I will try one more day with my multitude of goals, I will not try to finish one to free up my attention. Instead, I will try to find a way to work on all of these goals walking, or at the gym hanging, or crawling around my apartment. Maybe I can make art too! Use art to work through any challenge I have. I will also focus on cleaning up my apartment as much as possible.

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Finding Myself

Byjack

Today I went for a walk. It was cold, but amazing otherwise, I felt happy.

I realized that I don’t feel like myself because I feel so lonely. I miss feeling safe with people that I trust, who understand me. I think about how I lost my art. My dreams, my worlds. And I think more about this artist part of me and I realize I also lost the romantic part of me.

There was always a softer side to me. It wasn’t always about attachment theory and working on myself. I don’t regret going down that path at all, but I feel sad for the Jack who was left behind. The Jack who cries when he listens to the story of two sisters stuck in a Chicago together and one feels she betrayed the other one because she left her alone to sleep in the same bed as the flight attendant: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/175/babysitting/act-two-17

Or Neistat’s story about his girlfriend Candice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dALypGk3xbI

For me, even by telling the story, shows the depth of their love. They cared enough for these moments to be some of the most important in their life.

I think I always sought out a love story of my own. This is what I loved about college. So many opportunities for my love story to happen. This is why I wanted to learn daygaming, I just loved the idea of meeting someone on the street.

It’s why I liked the idea of dating my current girlfriend. Everything about it felt like a movie. Dating a girl on the other side of the world, and traveling to meet her in person. Finding my little sloth despite everything working against us.

I don’t want to forget the romantic in me. I want to be around people who see the magic like I do, and I feel safe around. People who allow me to get out of the fear and anxiety response long enough to feel more deeply. People who accept my story, who want to hear the truth, not what they want to hear. After all, a story about people being fake happy about everything is not a romantic one.

I think this is at least one part of the art that I’m missing. Art is one part exploring worlds, another part allowing you to feel deeply and effortlessly. Maybe another part is vulnerability, of pain.

This is what “high” art is missing. Feelings are lost behind academic musings. Worlds are exchanged for high philosophy. Pain is exchanged for numb confusion.

Workpost 56: Stagnating

Byjack

I feel like I’m stagnating in all areas of life.

I feel frustration as aching in my chest cavity and stomach.

I am helpless wound coming up. I am overwhelmed. I feel hopeless. I feel undermotivated. I am lost.

I am tired.

I discovered some things yesterday. I realized that I was obsessed about getting the brand and vision correct, but my goals for my consulting project are actually much more simple:

  1. Get experience in creating funnels/pipelines that are simple, effective, easy to maintain
  2. Make my client’s company cooler and inspire the people within to do more

The brand and vision just serve as a tactical basis for getting the funnel right because having no vision leads to pretty shitty, unclear websites and ads and makes decision making much harder than it needs to be.

Another thing I recognize is that mission, vision, and values are all things that need to evolve and change as what I want becomes clearer and clearer.

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Silence Speaks In Terrible Ways

Byjack
Silence Speaks In Terrible Ways

She told me she thought I wouldn’t notice

When she only replied to a handful of things

Of a series of long letters I wrote

How could I not notice

When I spend an hour

Pouring my heart out

Waiting every second of the day

For a response

She tells me she likes it when I write long letters

But I have grown wary of them

When I know

Most of it

Will never receive a response

She probably thinks that no response is better than a bad response

But silence is a response

It’s a blank check

For the deepest fears

And paranoia

Lurking in your brain

Letting your mind fill in the spaces

With explanations

For why the reason why the truth was too hard to say

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Workpost 37: Fundamental Systems

Byjack

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:

  1. Daily walk to ponder questions I am stressed about
  2. Daily workpost to grow myself, plan for greatness
  3. Clean space to deal with stress, clean place = clean mind
  4. Meal prep strategy for healthy cheap meals with little stress – fridge containers, tacos, lettuce wraps
  5. Whiteboards to write strategies
  6. Off computer working systems (working while walking, running errands, working out, eating out)
  7. Todo list strategy – focus on one thing at a time, prioritize
  8. Clean after working hours to transition, decompress
  9. Crawling to get cardio in small space
  10. Walking backwards and tibialus for knee
  11. Hanging for shoulders and posture
  12. Working out after and before meals for better absorption, muscle growth, and recovery
  13. Journaling to ask myself questions at night
  14. 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

Art Coaching Day 2/21

Byjack

I also figured out why I have troubling making a coaching website and why it felt so wrong. It had pricing and generic things on it.

I want my funnel to be an homage to my mission and vision, which is to foster the creation of more artistic masterpieces. So I want my website to have a feeling of magic, of the way Harry Potter felt when he was got his invitation letter to the Hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry. I want to remind myself of the feeling of reading children’s books. I want the website to be an homage to dreams, creating worlds, and fantasy.

I want my business cards to feel like a work of art, like a magical invitation.

Today I accomplished the following things:

  1. Bought masterpiececoaching.org
  2. Ordered samples of premium business card samples from Jukebox

Tomorrow I really want to design and put together my website asap using a template on wordpress.