(no subject)
This is very foreign territory for me.
Basically, I'm finding myself lamenting the end of the day.
I want to draw and paint so much that it kills me that it's two in the morning and that I should go to bed.
x
I won't say I'm cured, I won't say I'm 'awake,' but I will say that whatever's going on, and where ever I am, I am thoroughly enjoying it.
o
"Do Or Die."
A short while ago, one of the members of my mental chorus said, If you're not doing something, then you're not really living.
It wasn't so much a thought as it was a message, and it didn't exactly scare the shit out of me, but it maybe scared the bullshit out of me.
It lit a fire underneath me.
That day, I noticed how lethargically I'd been moving physically and how used to it I've become. Move!, I shouted mentally, and it was like I'd gone one moment from trying to walk at the bottom of the ocean to walking on good ol' solid ground. It was freaking amazing how I hadn't even noticed it, and how I was able to choose something different.
For a few days, all it took were the words 'do or die' in my head to get me to fucking move.
x
[6/30/2009 11:00:22 PM] Sam: Have you been studying/practicing?
[6/30/2009 11:00:32 PM] Person: to be honest no I haven't been
[6/30/2009 11:01:09 PM] Person: a few friends of mine and me are going to meet up tomorrow for a study session
[6/30/2009 11:01:24 PM] Person: so hopefully that'll get me into a study routine
[6/30/2009 11:01:26 PM] Sam: cool
[6/30/2009 11:02:27 PM] Sam: i've finally been able to get myself into a routine of sorts
[6/30/2009 11:02:46 PM] Person: what's your routine?
[6/30/2009 11:03:24 PM] Sam: the routine isn't really what's important
[6/30/2009 11:03:35 PM] Sam: i had to remember I liked doing this stuff in the first place
[6/30/2009 11:03:51 PM] Sam: so after i wake up in the morning i just write down what I want to do, and when
[6/30/2009 11:04:03 PM] Person: ahhh I see
[6/30/2009 11:04:44 PM] Sam: i've been super-depressed for a long time, and it kept me from doing most of the stuff i love doing
[6/30/2009 11:07:06 PM] Person: may I ask what you were depressed about?
[6/30/2009 11:09:09 PM] Sam: Since I was a little kid I knew I wanted to do comics.. up until middle school, I'd gotten more and more into drawing and comic books, studying stuff on my own...
[6/30/2009 11:09:31 PM] Sam: when I got to high school, my free time started getting swallowed up
[6/30/2009 11:09:56 PM] Sam: and so from like high school through college till now, almost ten years, I've basically ignored that part of me
[6/30/2009 11:10:02 PM] Sam: I think that had something to do with it
[6/30/2009 11:11:02 PM] Sam: kinda sounds like a weak reason, but I know it was a part of it
[6/30/2009 11:13:05 PM] Person: no it doesn't sound weak at all to me
[6/30/2009 11:13:13 PM] Person: I can understand completely
[6/30/2009 11:13:23 PM] Person: it's really depressing when you don't have the time to do the things that make you happy
[6/30/2009 11:14:08 PM] Sam: that's a very good way of putting it
o
So now I leave the curtain just slightly open at night so that the brightness of the sun naturally wakes me up in the morning.
I lie in bed for a while longer, reading something, so that my brain and body can catch up to each other.
I get up, I brush my teeth, yada yada.
I get out my notebook, write down a list of categories of interests, things to do in those categories, when, and then I do them.
And it becomes night again. And I'm torn up inside 'cuz I want to keep going.
I've been talking about happiness.
Oddly, I think it gets a bad wrap, intellectually. From my ignorant perspective, it seems like people don't trust it, or consider it an illusion. An errant goal, of sorts.
The intellectual attitude towards unhappiness or depression or whatever you'd like to call it, seems to be one of mournful acceptance of something one simply has to deal with. Or indulge.
Goddammit, I want my Happy Meal and the toy inside. And I want a Happy Morning. And I want a Happy _ Hours of Drawing.
("I want the house/ the kids/ the keys/ and the dog/ I want it all")
x
And I want it because I've barely been able to feel it for way too long.
I'm not chasing it anymore, but cultivating it.
I'm starting the Big Work of reuniting with myself. After a very long separation.
o
I don't want TV commercial, Made in China happiness. That kind of thing is illusory, yes, or maybe incredibly fleeting.
But along the same lines my thinky brothers and sisters shun material happiness and respect, if not embrace unhappiness, and begin to generate it internally, independently, the same thing can be done with happiness.
With love.
With joy.
With forgiveness.
I'm doing it now.
x
This past that's been haunting me, I'm not trying to forget it or get past it. I'm trying to understand it. So that I can find where I lost myself.
Now that I'm an art machine again, I think a very large portion of this missing me has been resuscitated.
o
The past, the past, the past.
And what of now? And what of the future?
I said last time how perilous it's been for me to write only about bad times, because these become the things I commit to memory, while the good things get forgotten.
These past x years of diary writing do not include the wonderful roommates I had in college, how proud I was of our EOF students, how marvelous my travels were, etc, etc.
Not just stuck in the past, I've been stuck only in the bad parts of the past. Packed up, labeled, indexed, stacked one on top of each other, easily accessed.
Good memories, lost in the basement, unorganized, scattered, gathering dust past recognition.
x
I said everything can be seen negatively or positively, and I am believing it more each time I think about it.
And I believe anything more, each time I think about it. (Did you just hear thatclick! for me?)
I've believed, on a subconscious level, for a long time, that one's attitude and outlook really affects their experience in life.
It doesn't sound logical, of course. Or maybe it sounds very unempirical. But I've been so bogged down in unhappy thoughts and feelings that even when the good things came around, I didn't take the time to write about them. I didn't take the time to remember them, or to use them as a starting point to get the hell out of my emotional hell hole.
And because of the way I was thinking, I reinforced the way I was feeling, which sent out negative vibes, which led me to behaving unhappily. I believe this is why my ex left me, why I never got that graphic design job, why I was not treated as a valuable employee I had at my old job.
Sometimes people put a show on for us, but sometimes we can feel how sad or upset someone is. Their feelings really do betray them. They may be able to smile, but all the cogs and gears whirring within a person is too significant to not have an influence both on their physical presence and the people around them.
o
In the past, and even now if I'm not careful, if I thought about the future, I would scare myself out of thinking about the stuff I want and want to do.
I scare myself out of thinking about it, so it doesn't get any further than that.
Part of the big work is remembering this stuff, getting optimistic about this stuff, about life, again.
I'm like a baby learning how to walk. Sometimes I can really move. Sometimes I wobble, but keep going. Sometimes I fall on my ass.
The difference now is I'm getting back up!
x
Almost exactly a year ago, I began working at my old job.
At first I was excited. But then, after a little bit of conflicting information, my old boss bitched me out on the phone. I wanted to curse him out and hang up on him, but I'd already put in my two weeks at my previous gig.
I bowed my head. I went to work the next Monday. I continued bowing my head. As everyone else did.
How I've hated that man. Even after quitting. Even months after having seen his face. He's the only human being I've truly been able to picture murdering without any remorse.
His crimes against me are products of my own perception, of course. Chief among them was this: disappointing me. It's taken me a really long time to realize/remember this, but when I'd first gone there for the interview, I found myself identifying with him; skin color, button-down shirt, the air of seriousness. (But he, a bit on the uncomfortably dorky side, lethologica, and desperation to seem intelligent and in charge.)
I was a very good employee. He and his second tried to convince me otherwise. But I was good.
They'd made me feel like I had been the disappointment. I was smarter than both of them put together, and I'm sure they both knew it. I was better than their stupid job, and I think they knew that too.
I think they knew I knew that.
I think they knew I was someday going to wake up from the daze I was in that had led me to them, allowed me to be spoken to and treated like a dog by them.
I think they knew it was just a matter of time before I realized what they already had: they would never control of me.
I think that made them angry.
If you'll allow me a moment of ego, I'm sure I've always had the potential in me to be the type of man my old boss had always pretended to be. And the type of man I was hoping he really was.
I bring this up because I feel a lot different than I did a year ago. I'm rebuilding myself. The confidence and excitement I had for life are, day by day, returning to me.
The next 365 days will be wonderful.
Basically, I'm finding myself lamenting the end of the day.
I want to draw and paint so much that it kills me that it's two in the morning and that I should go to bed.
x
I won't say I'm cured, I won't say I'm 'awake,' but I will say that whatever's going on, and where ever I am, I am thoroughly enjoying it.
o
"Do Or Die."
A short while ago, one of the members of my mental chorus said, If you're not doing something, then you're not really living.
It wasn't so much a thought as it was a message, and it didn't exactly scare the shit out of me, but it maybe scared the bullshit out of me.
It lit a fire underneath me.
That day, I noticed how lethargically I'd been moving physically and how used to it I've become. Move!, I shouted mentally, and it was like I'd gone one moment from trying to walk at the bottom of the ocean to walking on good ol' solid ground. It was freaking amazing how I hadn't even noticed it, and how I was able to choose something different.
For a few days, all it took were the words 'do or die' in my head to get me to fucking move.
x
[6/30/2009 11:00:22 PM] Sam: Have you been studying/practicing?
[6/30/2009 11:00:32 PM] Person: to be honest no I haven't been
[6/30/2009 11:01:09 PM] Person: a few friends of mine and me are going to meet up tomorrow for a study session
[6/30/2009 11:01:24 PM] Person: so hopefully that'll get me into a study routine
[6/30/2009 11:01:26 PM] Sam: cool
[6/30/2009 11:02:27 PM] Sam: i've finally been able to get myself into a routine of sorts
[6/30/2009 11:02:46 PM] Person: what's your routine?
[6/30/2009 11:03:24 PM] Sam: the routine isn't really what's important
[6/30/2009 11:03:35 PM] Sam: i had to remember I liked doing this stuff in the first place
[6/30/2009 11:03:51 PM] Sam: so after i wake up in the morning i just write down what I want to do, and when
[6/30/2009 11:04:03 PM] Person: ahhh I see
[6/30/2009 11:04:44 PM] Sam: i've been super-depressed for a long time, and it kept me from doing most of the stuff i love doing
[6/30/2009 11:07:06 PM] Person: may I ask what you were depressed about?
[6/30/2009 11:09:09 PM] Sam: Since I was a little kid I knew I wanted to do comics.. up until middle school, I'd gotten more and more into drawing and comic books, studying stuff on my own...
[6/30/2009 11:09:31 PM] Sam: when I got to high school, my free time started getting swallowed up
[6/30/2009 11:09:56 PM] Sam: and so from like high school through college till now, almost ten years, I've basically ignored that part of me
[6/30/2009 11:10:02 PM] Sam: I think that had something to do with it
[6/30/2009 11:11:02 PM] Sam: kinda sounds like a weak reason, but I know it was a part of it
[6/30/2009 11:13:05 PM] Person: no it doesn't sound weak at all to me
[6/30/2009 11:13:13 PM] Person: I can understand completely
[6/30/2009 11:13:23 PM] Person: it's really depressing when you don't have the time to do the things that make you happy
[6/30/2009 11:14:08 PM] Sam: that's a very good way of putting it
o
So now I leave the curtain just slightly open at night so that the brightness of the sun naturally wakes me up in the morning.
I lie in bed for a while longer, reading something, so that my brain and body can catch up to each other.
I get up, I brush my teeth, yada yada.
I get out my notebook, write down a list of categories of interests, things to do in those categories, when, and then I do them.
And it becomes night again. And I'm torn up inside 'cuz I want to keep going.
I've been talking about happiness.
Oddly, I think it gets a bad wrap, intellectually. From my ignorant perspective, it seems like people don't trust it, or consider it an illusion. An errant goal, of sorts.
The intellectual attitude towards unhappiness or depression or whatever you'd like to call it, seems to be one of mournful acceptance of something one simply has to deal with. Or indulge.
Goddammit, I want my Happy Meal and the toy inside. And I want a Happy Morning. And I want a Happy _ Hours of Drawing.
("I want the house/ the kids/ the keys/ and the dog/ I want it all")
x
And I want it because I've barely been able to feel it for way too long.
I'm not chasing it anymore, but cultivating it.
I'm starting the Big Work of reuniting with myself. After a very long separation.
o
I don't want TV commercial, Made in China happiness. That kind of thing is illusory, yes, or maybe incredibly fleeting.
But along the same lines my thinky brothers and sisters shun material happiness and respect, if not embrace unhappiness, and begin to generate it internally, independently, the same thing can be done with happiness.
With love.
With joy.
With forgiveness.
I'm doing it now.
x
This past that's been haunting me, I'm not trying to forget it or get past it. I'm trying to understand it. So that I can find where I lost myself.
Now that I'm an art machine again, I think a very large portion of this missing me has been resuscitated.
o
The past, the past, the past.
And what of now? And what of the future?
I said last time how perilous it's been for me to write only about bad times, because these become the things I commit to memory, while the good things get forgotten.
These past x years of diary writing do not include the wonderful roommates I had in college, how proud I was of our EOF students, how marvelous my travels were, etc, etc.
Not just stuck in the past, I've been stuck only in the bad parts of the past. Packed up, labeled, indexed, stacked one on top of each other, easily accessed.
Good memories, lost in the basement, unorganized, scattered, gathering dust past recognition.
x
I said everything can be seen negatively or positively, and I am believing it more each time I think about it.
And I believe anything more, each time I think about it. (Did you just hear thatclick! for me?)
I've believed, on a subconscious level, for a long time, that one's attitude and outlook really affects their experience in life.
It doesn't sound logical, of course. Or maybe it sounds very unempirical. But I've been so bogged down in unhappy thoughts and feelings that even when the good things came around, I didn't take the time to write about them. I didn't take the time to remember them, or to use them as a starting point to get the hell out of my emotional hell hole.
And because of the way I was thinking, I reinforced the way I was feeling, which sent out negative vibes, which led me to behaving unhappily. I believe this is why my ex left me, why I never got that graphic design job, why I was not treated as a valuable employee I had at my old job.
Sometimes people put a show on for us, but sometimes we can feel how sad or upset someone is. Their feelings really do betray them. They may be able to smile, but all the cogs and gears whirring within a person is too significant to not have an influence both on their physical presence and the people around them.
o
In the past, and even now if I'm not careful, if I thought about the future, I would scare myself out of thinking about the stuff I want and want to do.
I scare myself out of thinking about it, so it doesn't get any further than that.
Part of the big work is remembering this stuff, getting optimistic about this stuff, about life, again.
I'm like a baby learning how to walk. Sometimes I can really move. Sometimes I wobble, but keep going. Sometimes I fall on my ass.
The difference now is I'm getting back up!
x
Almost exactly a year ago, I began working at my old job.
At first I was excited. But then, after a little bit of conflicting information, my old boss bitched me out on the phone. I wanted to curse him out and hang up on him, but I'd already put in my two weeks at my previous gig.
I bowed my head. I went to work the next Monday. I continued bowing my head. As everyone else did.
How I've hated that man. Even after quitting. Even months after having seen his face. He's the only human being I've truly been able to picture murdering without any remorse.
His crimes against me are products of my own perception, of course. Chief among them was this: disappointing me. It's taken me a really long time to realize/remember this, but when I'd first gone there for the interview, I found myself identifying with him; skin color, button-down shirt, the air of seriousness. (But he, a bit on the uncomfortably dorky side, lethologica, and desperation to seem intelligent and in charge.)
I was a very good employee. He and his second tried to convince me otherwise. But I was good.
They'd made me feel like I had been the disappointment. I was smarter than both of them put together, and I'm sure they both knew it. I was better than their stupid job, and I think they knew that too.
I think they knew I knew that.
I think they knew I was someday going to wake up from the daze I was in that had led me to them, allowed me to be spoken to and treated like a dog by them.
I think they knew it was just a matter of time before I realized what they already had: they would never control of me.
I think that made them angry.
If you'll allow me a moment of ego, I'm sure I've always had the potential in me to be the type of man my old boss had always pretended to be. And the type of man I was hoping he really was.
I bring this up because I feel a lot different than I did a year ago. I'm rebuilding myself. The confidence and excitement I had for life are, day by day, returning to me.
The next 365 days will be wonderful.