Writing Prompt: Your Shadow

Byjack

Writing Prompt: What is a pet peeve and how does that relate to your shadow?

Today I was listening to a Youtube video about the Harry Potter houses and turned off the video because I could not listen to the voice of the YouTuber any longer. The way he was talking was so affected it felt like I was drowning in discomfort.

He would have an extra lingering syllable that would stick at the end of each word. Griffindorrra instead of Griffindor and thennnnna instead of then. I felt like his proclivities were clawing marks into my heart.

I was thinking to myself. I hate him so much, but I bet all the comments are people praising him and encouraging him to continue with this horribly affected speech. And then I thought, maybe some people actually like it. He did have a nice British accent.

I wondered why I couldn’t stand him.

I just felt this cloudiness this lack of clarity in speech and I despised that. The fakeness also made me feel uncomfortable. Do I judge myself for being fake or unclear? I don’t know but I suspect I do. To me, those two traits speak to the worst fate in the world, mediocrity.

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Workpost 16: Risk and Challenge

Byjack

So I’m pretty frustrated because this is the second time I am writing this blog post. The first time I wrote this blog post, the post was bugging out and didn’t save properly.

Not too happy about that.

In the spirit of growth, I am going to let go of that blog post and focus on creating an entirely new one without losing the essence of what I wanted to say in the first one I wrote.

This morning I was feeling really stressed out and I was really enjoying my walk. I feel like this whole questions meditations thing has really worked out. I really like journaling at night, and walking during the day. Before when I was forcing myself to go outside because I felt like I had to, I kinda hated it. It was nice once I got outside, but before then it was pretty awful.

Now, since I know I’m going use the time to meditate on some of the questions I have in my heart, I feel really excited and motivated to go outside in the morning.

Here are the main things I was stressed out about this morning:

  1. My career, didn’t know where I was going next
  2. My medical bills, spent 8k on a new medical device, hundreds more for my GI doctor
  3. My financial issues, I spent 700 more than I made yesterday
  4. My coaching career, still not anywhere close to making enough money to be self sufficient
  5. I could move back home, but then I’m worried about having a place for my girlfriend to visit me

And through my amazing short 20 minute walk, here are the answers I got:

  1. Acknowledge that you are taking a huge risk by paying 1,700 per month on rent with very little income and building coaching business from 0
  2. Risk is not a bad thing, it is an incredible catalyst for growth
  3. Risk means, now is the time to shine. Focus on the few things that matter most
    • Building an really strong foundation of health, a very strong structure for getting stuff done
    • Changing the lives of my current coaching clients
    • Work slowly towards my career in AI
  4. It’s ok to invest money in the medical bills because they directly help with my foundational health goal. Double down on the investment by focusing a lot on sleep and digestion.
  5. Let go of all other goals and distractions because now is go time. Just work on small projects or really gradual work.

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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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Workpost 14: Tired

Byjack

I am worrying about a couple of things. First of all, I went to bed at 2AM again. This is becoming a pattern that I need to address ASAP.

Thinking about what I need via connection theory here is what I came up with:

  1. I need to be able to let go of not being productive during the day. It is hard, but I need to be able to say, I accept where I got to today.
  2. I need some way to process that pain and any anxiety from the day. Connection theory is telling me to yell and scream or hyperventilate.
  3. I need to get into bed at the proper time but again, like last time, I can intice myself with being able to use my phone while in bed.

Also, I feel linked to this is my anxiety around work.

My initial thought is to stop “trying” and pushing harder against a problem, rather everytime I hit an issue, write down all of the questions I have, then work out those problems outside my apartment, walking or going to the gym.

Connection theory is telling me drawing might help as well.

Overall, I feel like total shit and I feel the lack of sleep is taking a toll on my digestion. I hope to relax enough to take a nap and get back into working order.

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Workpost 12: Deep Journaling

Byjack

I was doing some deep journaling in the form of questions and answers, where I would ask all the questions I have, feel deep in my heart what answer is coming to me, and then asking more questions about those answers.

For example, I will ask myself, what do I do about the anxiety with art? The answer that I feel come up intuitively is to create art which then poses the question, what do I do with art? Then I have the answer, use art to create richness in your life.

I was doing this exercise because I realized at this point in my life, I am so confused on what will happen next and what direction I want to go for my coaching, my career, and my relationship that the best way to serve myself is to get some clarity about what I am feeling and what I want. The faster you make decisions, the faster you progress. I felt that having clarity would make it much easier to make faster decisions.

I had quite a few revelations from this exercise I wanted to note down a few of the most important ones:

  1. I will achieve what I want in the field of AI not by working with others and creating a startup but rather by involving others into my creative process. Remember the energy of anything is possible. Solve difficult problems in practical ways and help people dream again. Change the world for the better.
  2. The long distance relationship does not meet the physical needs of closeness. I will need to dance more to keep in touch with the physical. I want to use emails and video chats to keep connected with my girlfriend on a spiritual level.
  3. I’ve lost a bit of my focus with coaching where it has become too much about the client. Coaching is not just about helping people create amazing beautiful art, but also to create a space of my design. Aka a space where connection theory and flow theory rule.
  4. Use your fear of not having enough money to fuel art that creates more wealth than money can buy (not about the value of the art, but the experience about having stories, music, and paintings so beautiful I may as well be rich).

One more note I wanted to make…I had a new idea with coaching a few days ago. I always wanted to create video clips of my coaching in order to show social media, but I was thinking recently, I can create clips that can be used to share something a package that can be used to motivate my clients (clips of songs created during the session, major breakthroughs etc.)

Workpost 40: Refinement of the Game

Byjack

Today I made some definite progress. Even though I have the exact same feeling of lack of motivation, no interest in working. Wanting to just play games, I felt significantly better, having done spleen chi exercises both before bed and after waking up in the morning. As a result I started working 3 hours earlier than yesterday.

Today, I want to improve upon and refine on the game that I created for myself yesterday.

Firstly, in my walking meditation this morning, some wisdom came to me.

Relaxed > Easy > Fast

This was the wisdom first introduced to me in the book, Born to Run where the author talks about how you run completely relaxed first. Then you make your running more smooth, more efficient. If you are able to make it efficient and relaxed, you WILL be fast.

This is the same thing in Valorant. In your warmups you aren’t instantly trying to one tap everyone. You aren’t trying to do it fast. If you do, you probably are going too fast and the warmup won’t work.

You want to start slow (or even in the Miyagi technique, don’t even follow through with a shot, just track the target). As it becomes easy for you to hit headtaps, then you start to gradually speed up.

I want to implement this in my warmups. First, start off doing intense workout with the aim of expansion. Then focus on some brainteasers (Miyagi, completely relaxed). After a few minutes of that, work on to do list, trying to make my relaxed thinking more efficient and clean. Finally, at the tail end of the warmup, try to go fast. My thoughts are:

  • 5 min physical warmup
  • 2 min brainteasers
  • 5 min todolist
  • 3 min buffer

Then for the actual match, I would like to break it up more often with some deep breathing every 5 minutes, like I do with Valorant between rounds.

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Her Anger Like A Fire

Byjack

Her Anger Like Fire

I felt her anger like fire

Burning in my face

Searing like acid

Felt the heat of it

Within her body

But all I could think of

Was the weight of the cold stones filling my heart

While I wondered

What happens

When love

Gives up

 

I realized something today. Sometimes when you love someone so much, you can’t give them space. Love needs space to grow, absence to remind you what it is made of. Sometimes, if you really love someone, you have to let them go. Even if it means they may never come back.