Idiot demon-jocks, tons of profanity, copious psychedelics, and an airborne kiss at 300 mph, hanging from the back of a mushroom-shaped mecha! All this and more in my comedy/horror/sci-fi absurdical, Kor’Thank: Barbarian Valley Girl!
Check it out here: Kor’Thank: Barbarian Valley Girl
Get The Unbound Realm here: The Unbound Realm, Volume 1 Get Kor’Thank here: Kor’Thank: Barbarian Valley Girl. Get Echo Vol. 1 on Kindle here: Vol. 1 on Kindle. Vol. 2 on Kindle here: Vol.2 on Kindle Vol. 3 on Kindle here: Vol. 3 on Kindle Vol.4 on Kindle here: Vol. 4 on Kindle Echo Omnibus here: Echo Omnibus Echo Vol. 1 & 2 Combined Edition here: Combined Edition Musings, Volume 1 is available here: Musings, Volume 1 Here’s the miscellaneous gear that I use to try and become an uber-human: Optimization! 🙂 🙂 😀
Hold on! I just got approved to be an Amazon affiliate! If you’re going to buy ANY product from Amazon, and you’d like to support my efforts for absolutely free, then simply click on one of the Echo links I’ve provided—they’ll send you to Echo’s Amazon page—and THEN buy whatever product you wish. Amazon gives me a small referral fee each time this happens! In this manner you can support my books, musings, podcast, zany ads, or my adventures along the noble path known as The Way of The Man Child WITHOUT spending any more money than you were already going to! Should you do this, I vow to send you a silent blessing, causing your genitals to adopt the optimum size, shape, smell, and death-ray attachment of choice that paralyzes your enemies with fear and envy! Entire worlds will bow before your nether parts! 😲💪 😜 #Kindle #KindleUnlimited
Dirty Sci-Fi Buddha 
I sincerely hope so! “Farce” sounds a little old-timey, so I feel like they need a more modern-feeling word. 😁
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Quit it with that nonsense! 45 isn’t old! My clientele are in their prime!!! 🤣
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Whoa! Never thought AARP was that aggressive! 🤣 Bout to start popping up on their mailing lists myself in the next few years…I also like old-timey words—I wish someone would call me a trollop, LOL! I like old-timey detective speak as well, but I doubt I could call a lady doll unless I was dating her.
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Well in that case, the history on my xvideos search engine is striking a blow for equality, LOL!
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Yeah I hear what you’re saying, and it is messed up. But it’s time to take the word back in 2022! Trollops unite! 🤣
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Hope you didn’t drop an accidental “trollop” in front of her—don’t cross the streams! 🤣
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Well I’m getting my first few…gray-hair tracking bastards!
Maybe I should send them some gray pubes in their reply envelopes. 🤣
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I know, it’s pretty crazy! For awhile I thought myself and my military brethren were kind of it for ptsd, then once I started researching the mechanism of it, I realized we were swimming in the shallow end, and it wasn’t a contest. I see sexual assault survivors in kind of the same light as some military folk who’ve really been through the shit, that is to say with a lot of respect and some intimidation on my part, to be honest, because I don’t know if I could keep it together after something that heavy.
I’ve heard thot, but everyone’s using it! Boo! I’d much rather be called a trollop or something made up on the spot—I’m a big fan of the word “yerbert.” 🤣
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I’m happy you see things the way you do, after all that’s happened! Many people I know become paranoid and super involved in politics because they have chosen to hand over the reins of their happiness to others. And though I don’t have anything against politics, it often seems to be an avenue where folks express the idea that the majority must bend to their will, or they won’t be happy.
Yerbert’s just a made-up word. I like the sound of it! 🤣 My ex took the dog-naming responsibilities away from me because I wanted to name them things like Dogface, Rowfus Roofus, and Mustache Guy (little mustachioed terrier who I also wanted to name Wizard-face and Rat-thing.) I just like random funny words. 🤣
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I’m on board with what you’ve said, especially the part about “you kind of have to come to a place where you can be your own light.” When I’m in a good enough mood, I can see how negative experiences with other people actually were positive in the respect that they didn’t do what I wanted them to do, because if they constantly did what I wanted them to and I derived happiness from their actions, then I wouldn’t be my own light. I wouldn’t be in charge of my own happiness. Of course it’s nice when people do what I prefer, but whether they do or don’t is a separate thing from my decision to be positive about it (I can at least be satisfied with negative experiences and take an it is what it is approach to them).
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Sounds like you’re in a good place! There’s a lot of folks who get stuck in the misery and are just too stubborn to try a new tack.
And maybe I am “echo chambering,” because being happy despite being in agony is what Echo is all about! (if-you’re-reading-this-comment-and-you’re-interested-in-Echo-please-visit-amazon.com-and-purchase-a-copy). 😅 Mwahaha! 🤣
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Of course! Bantering with others is half the fun of blogging!
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The unsightliness of unwashed dishes! They should have a hidden compartment for them that raises up on a motorized track when you’re ready to wash them. I’m a total bachelor about it—I use one dish and one fork, which is a holdover from when my ex told me I was littering the sink with dishes. I washed them and said I was henceforth only using one dish and one fork, and, of course, the sink filled back up with dishes which weren’t mine. One of the few (maybe only) arguments I won without arguing, lol!
Don’t worry about Echo, it’s definitely more of a niche book. Sure, it has an innovative and fresh (I think, at least) take on enlightenment and Why We’re All Here, but a lot of it is a disgruntled soldier being pissed at his superiors, lol! Echo 2 is almost all action and all pissiness. If you want something angry but at least funny, Kor’Thank might scratch the itch. I wrote that trying to capture the spirit of an r-rated version of Calvin and Hobbes. But no worries either way—I’m stoked that you enjoyed at least one of my books! 😁
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I don’t really get the dishes thing either, because the logical guess would be it was more than an issue about dishes, but it really was about the dishes that time because after I switched to my one dish/fork policy, I never heard about it again!
I get the content warnings—there’s a giant spectrum that comes with that. Some folks want outright regulation of some subjects, while others want things publicly categorized to varying degrees, to include subjectively distaste. Can’t please everyone, but at least you can try to avoid ruffling feathers here and there.
I’ve never been so complimented by someone’s saltiness, LOL! If you want to read Echo despite it bearing the marks of my early noob writing, along with the big doses of disgruntlement and violence, then consider me flattered! 😁
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Grammar Nazis! I think they were the first target of my humorous ads, lol!
I think you’re on the right track. I believe conditions can’t force someone into happiness, nor into misery, as evidenced through anecdotal experiences, rich folks who hate life, poor folks who love it, etcetera etcetera. While getting smashed in jiu jitsu or straining in the gym may not seem outwardly pleasant, I truly enjoy the release and expression of both activities. Same with dancing! (Just fell down a BTS rabbit hole after watching them do Dynamite at the 2020 VMAs, and now I’m trying to learn the dance, lol!) Whatever’s in front of me has the potential to be appreciated to at least the point of satisfaction (it is what it is, no use worrying about it, I’ve been here before and I know it’ll pass, or at the very least, we all die eventually so this won’t last forever) and satisfaction opens the way to more positivity, which primes my perception to see opportunity and my attitude to take advantage of it. Everyone has a different way to frame that, and Jon’s is still that of a nineteen year old kid, so he definitely will see things in a different light than others. But as you said, the core philosophy will be the same. He, like others, wishes to express as much of himself as he possibly can. And like many others, he doesn’t want to compromise to outside obligations that infringe on his self-expression. I’ve planned a good twist of irony at the end of the series that’ll wrap that conundrum up, but even when it’s written, I won’t be on the nose and straight out mention it. It will unfold through everything that happens to Jon. 🙂
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For the achilles I do a 2 minute roll out (kneel like a samurai with a baseball between thigh and calf and wriggle back and forth to massage the muscles, breathing and relaxing to deprogram the knots, move the ball progressively lower then go back up to hit the whole calf) then a bent knee calf stretch against an angled surface like a foam roller (straight knee targets the knee, bent knee targets the ankle). It’s important to roll before stretching, if you’re going to do both. Hopefully that will help if you have time or inclination to do it.
Belly dancing looks pretty tough! (Coordination-wise, anyway). My core is used to tensing to support weight or to twist sharply sideways to generate force, so it’d take a while to make it learn how to rotate smoothly like that. Awhile ago, I tried to learn locking, but I had other commitments, and it really was like learning a foreign language for my body. Fun, though! BTS are nuts with their dance practice, diet, and the fact that they sing while dancing for live performances. Plus only two (I think it’s two, but I know most of them don’t) of them have a strict dance background, the rest just train their asses off and it definitely takes a toll, so I doubt I could get to their level. I can learn this one dance though, maybe, lol!
Applied martial arts (stuff that works against an actively resisting athlete) is a bit of a catch-22, because it’s very easy to get injured, so it requires a bit of experience to find a training rhythm that will give you enough recovery time. It’s different for competitors—because they pretty much have to go full-burn injury or not—but for the rest of us, it’s a delicate balance of making sure we don’t go down the spiral of injury, depression, weight gain, recovery, and repeat.
Sounds like you’re doing the right thing—all or nothing mentality is what kills progress, but if you’re willing to veer off the track towards a tangential goal, or something that may not solve everything but is at least a step forward, you tend to come across unexpected blessings (in my opinion). The indirect way may seem frustrating at times, but the milestones tend to yield more and more leverage, which tend to make the journey fun, which of course is really the point. In any case, I’ve seen my friends who demand all-or-nothing results lose out and slowly erode over time, staying exactly where they are, exactly as they have been. Usually, their feelings of powerlessness manifest into an intense interest into politics, and I just can’t with the rants. If you have the time and feel that strongly about it, go do something about it, even if it’s just a little bit. That’s how I feel, anyway.
Go get you that nose piercing! You deserve it! 🙂
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Congratulations on the piercings! In the end, you have to make time to make yourself happy. Pleasing others can quickly become an endless rabbit-hole.
I get it with the losing sympathy. At a certain point, the only way to communicate with others is to be happy yourself. Good luck with the new therapist!
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Perfect! I love when that unexpected free time comes along and I get to do something fun. Sounds great!
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Like most folks, I’ve got a list. Surprisingly, I’d rather not travel. I like my routine, I like my setup.
I think I’d really get into grilling and barbecue, raising dogs (I’ve raised one puppy at a time, but I’ve always dreamed of having enough time to raise a litter and have them all nap on top of me) learn to sing, learn magic tricks, learn to play guitar, learn to draw, I think that’s the order I’d like to do things in. 🙂
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I think the resonance is from the fact that as I get older, I just want to have fun in the moment, as opposed to toiling away and constantly justifying to others how I’m doing the right or noble thing. (Oh, I forgot to add freestyle rap, standup comedy, and beatboxing to the list). Sure music and dancing can have a lot of ego attached to it, but to me, more than any other activity, they’re about enjoying the moment and spreading some joy. Drawing falls dead last on the list because it’s the most solo of the activities for me. It’d be nice, though, to be able to at least capture the feel of my covers in a preliminary image for my cover artists, instead of sending them lengthy descriptions with attached images that approximate the feel of each element in the cover pic. (Also, it would be fun to mock my friends with pornographic caricatures).
The bathroom thing sounds tough! I think I’ve gotten spoiled with my solo life, since I couldn’t imagine living with others unless they had their own bedroom and bathroom. I tried allowing one of my very good friends stay with me for a few months, but I hate having to wait for the bathroom, feeling any up-and-about energy when I’m lying in bed, or sharing my space in general.
Puppies, though…I still feel I could get on board with puppies. I’d have to have the right layout with lots of outdoor space and a dedicated indoor space where I could build up their routines while minimizing the destruction. (Also, I would have to make enough where I wouldn’t feel guilty about hiring twice-weekly cleaners. Dog hair is no joke!) I think in the end I want three adult dogs minimum, five dogs max. 😁
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That’s important to realize! I wanted my primary gift to be military stuff, but it’s pretty obvious at a certain point who’s designed for it and who isn’t. There’s a military equivalent of a pro-athlete, where they intuitively get the concepts, teamwork, and daily routine, where they don’t need much sleep, where they can move well with weight, and where they have pretty good physical recovery to the point they can get drunk on a regular basis and still perform pretty well.
For better or worse, it has been made clear to me that I am made to be a writer. And honestly, it gives me a lot of peace to write whether someone likes it or not. The activity is very relaxing, so I’ll keep going until I’m given a hint otherwise. I think it’s great that you’re still staying involved in music, but you’re not making it something to stress out about (by that I mean if I stressed out over writing as my potential only source of income, I would begin to hate it pretty quickly). If my writing eclipses my other sources of income to the point where I could live solely off my books, I would love it, but I can’t worry about that in the present moment, or writing would suck balls.
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Wow, I don’t think drawing could ever bring me that much joy. Not because it’s uncool or anything, but when I futzed around with it, I realized that there needs to be some intuitive understanding of where the light sources are in the drawing, and how it affects every object within it along with the perspective. I feel like I have that intuition with writing though, where I can kind of sense a character’s presence and psychology and let it flow into a linear narrative. It’s great that your (daughter?) is talented at drawing! Maybe she’ll do comic books one day! (A Door into Evermoor was heavily inspired by Ultimate Spider Man, specifically issue #13 where he almost kisses Mary Jane). Comic books were a huge influence on my writing process.
Your helping people superpower is a great superpower to have! Especially since you can live off it, and it’s an easy source of self-worth (not that I believe people should ever have to defend it, it’s just that society tries to diminish it for better sales and whatnot) I tried to guilt myself into believing I had it, but people honestly just drain me. I hope I can help them in more indirect ways, like easing their stress or entertaining them with a well-written story.
St. Bernard! One of my favorites! I always get them confused with bernese mountain dogs. Nothing better than hugging a big dog, or seeing them romp around with giant smiles! 😁
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SAme with me—don’t feel obligated to respond to something just because I commented. I’ve set my boundaries with comments and interactions, and it’s served me well so far. When I first started, I would respond at all hours of the day as fast as I could, and I almost went insane! (Half-kidding, but half-not.
After my dogs died, I went back to work as a dog walker for awhile so I could pal around with a horde of dogs. I loved em all but I really loved the big ones, and I took a perverse pleasure when my dogs started howling and crying for me whenever I walked in (much to the dogsitters’ dismay). I probably would have loved Ramoth, lol!
It’s important to get space from people because that would be a horrible life if we were expected to just continue helping people no matter how miserable we became. Gotta set those boundaries!
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The feeling’s mutual—no obligation here! Every now and then I do like you do and just pretend that social media doesn’t exist. The last time I did that was in August or September.
I’m boosted up myself. Felt it was the responsible thing to do because of jiu-jitsu, but it seems I always get weird skin issues a week or two after the shot.
I’m glad Ramoth had a happy ending! I think that was why I was fine (after a few weeks) when my dog died, because I knew I had given him a good life. He had a bit of separation anxiety for a while, nothing as bad as that though. I kind of made a game of it–when he peeked in the shower, I’d pretend to turn into a zombie and lurch after him while making zombie noises. He’d run like hell, I’d go back in the shower, then we’d do it again.
The floor got wet, but we both had fun, lol.
Random question—since you’ve got a background in fantasy, what do you think of Tolkien? I respect him, but I don’t think his stuff aged very well, and I’m having a bit of fun in the new book making fun of him.
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It is a little weird, seeing widespread racism from way back when. Pretty sure a lot of it wasn’t malicious and just a product of the times, but who can say?
Apparently, Tolkien was hassled about his distinct lack of important women in his books (Arwen didn’t kick ass like she did in the movies), to which he responded that Sam’s wife was absolutely crucial. I’m like—come on, SAM’S WIFE? Lol! No worries, though, it gives Erany something to take issue with. Personally, I never liked the portrayal of magic swords. In the books, Sting glows and evil races seem to hate them (could you argue the swords are racist?). As a kid, I loved reading through the magic items section in the DM’s guide, so I was less than impressed by LOTR swords. Even the movies didn’t do a great job with them, imo. I think Gandalf uses Orcrist to channel some lightning, but that wasn’t in the books. And when Aragorn draws Narsil after it’s reforged, it doesn’t glow or anything, he just looks really impressed, which I found a little lacking for arguably the most powerful sword in LOTR.
All that being said, it gives me plenty of fodder to throw into my story. The few people I’ve asked about Tolkien say exactly what you do—respect the guy, but his stuff is like reading a history text—but it’s a different story in online forums. I’m not sure if people are trying to come off as purists or loyalists, but a lot of people swear up and down that he’s an acquired taste and really is entertaining. Not me, though—it took many stops and starts to read his books all the way through, and I never got sucked in to them like I hoped I would.
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Honestly, I was going to go that route myself by originally making it a fantasy buddy-cop thing between Ren and Jon (interspersed with some Gyrax). But obviously I changed things up. I also realized the party is still kind of unbalanced with two ladies and five dudes, which will change throughout the story. That isn’t me kowtowing to PC culture, I just thought hey, here are some characters I want to introduce, why not make them women? While I love the Hobbit (and not LOTR, ironically) it’s kind of a huge sausage-fest with ten-plus interchangeable Dwarves. I can’t remember any distinguishing features from any of them except Thorin, to be honest. Also, instead of Ren being Jon’s main partner, it is obviously now Erany. We’ll see. I just throw a soft intention out there, and see how my muse responds. Usually the broad strokes hit me while I’m exercising, driving, or showering, and then neat specifics arise during the actual drafting. Being YA, I’d like to have strong characters in there that different folks who might be younger can relate to as closely as possible. Glad you are on board with it, and you’re very welcome! 🙂
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I’m pretty sure I agree with you on all that. I suspect most people who oppose that stuff in books and movies are really against a preachy or ham-handed vibe, which I am against as well, and is a definite danger with writing inclusive storylines (really wish the admiral and Poe in Last Jedi could have worked out the problem in a way that showed they were reasonable and able to think critically, instead of thumping their chests and showing how feisty and stubborn they were). There’s a few who are just dead-brained reactionaries who I don’t think will ever change their mind. Those people, I think, are just driven by fear. They need something to push against, and they need to feel better than everyone else because they lived through the old days which they associate with their youth and some kind of rite of passage.
Didn’t strike me how weird my nineties comics and tv shows were until I went back and saw that marginalization wasn’t just a one-off fluke. Never even thought Friends was weird until way later! 😂
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Whoa, that’s nuts! From the outside looking, it seems silly and ridiculous, although it’s probably beyond frustrating if you have to experience it.
I’ve got faith that in the long run, things will change. It just takes a while to shift from society-wide belief to law to “common sense.” I like to think of the law against interracial marriage, which only just changed in the late 60s.
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I’m glad that everyone in your family is on board with it, and has made the decision to join you as far as leaving the church! I remember when I was in a cult-lite my ex was super invested in it, while I liked to joke and make light of it, but even that difference, while we were both in, led to a lot of unnecessary arguments and fighting between us.
As far as the rants…I think I’ve come to that view because I let a friend live with me who COULD NOT stop talking about politics in the same way rabid fans talk about sports teams. He just wanted to see people he didn’t like get crushed, and even criticized the people he DID like for not doing things the way he wanted them to be done. First thing he did when he woke up was go on insta and scroll through political unrest and oppression and start in on it, and no matter what subject I brought up, (he even framed sports as a way for elites to watch poor oppressed athletes destroy themselves for rich folks’ amusement) it always became about how someone was getting fucked, and how we needed to all fuck over anyone doing the fucking. When I suggested easy ways to start getting involved, he always made some excuse. So it’s not really the rants, per se, but negativity and the unwillingness to move toward something better (I guess I could make an argument for the “at least” thing here, because one of his primary tactics was saying it’s not that bad, at least I have this or that when I suggested stuff to do–in essence, settling for near-constant negativity). ANYWAAAaaaays…ironically, my rant has come to a close! 😅
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I’ve had to sit friends down and tell them we’re just way too far apart on vibes, and we’ll probably drift apart, which is exactly what happened. As I’ve gotten older, my tolerance for toughing it out to prove that I can get along with people has gone out the window. I understand that a lot of people can’t do what I do, and just be by themselves whenever they feel like it, but even when I was married I realized the same thing you did–it’s their feeling and it’s not my business unless they ask for my help, and even then, they may just want attention, not actual change. In a way it’s kind of freeing–I’ll do my best to be happy and enjoy my life, and that may or may not inspire someone to do the same. But the big thing is, that it’s not my responsibility to make someone else happy. Sure, I can support them maybe with money or time and whatnot, but there’s no reason to stress out over someone else being miserable, or make myself miserable in some twisted show of ineffective support.
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For some reason, I have always really been opposed to having kids (just me). I think it has something to do with seeing how hard my mom worked when she raised me and my brother by herself. It’s always been hard for me to walk the middle road in that I’ve never really been good at expanding on activities aside from my own interests and whatever allows me to put food on the table in pursuit of those interests. I think it’s great that you always wanted to be a mother and that dream came true. Personally I wouldn’t be able to give enough of myself to a kid because part of me would always be trying to figure out how to write or work out or do some other hobby I wanted to do. Maybe once I’m rich and settled, I’ll think about adopting, but even then I’ll have to really make sure that it’s something I feel passionate about. I wouldn’t want to shortchange myself or any kid I lived with.
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I agree! I know other folks who didn’t really want to have kids, they just wanted a miniature version of them. I saw that and I realized if I had a kid, I would have to make sure that I was always trying to do what’s best for the kid and not try to fulfill my childhood fantasies through them by attempting to make them into a miniature Batman, LOL!
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The other issue is I’d want to be too kidlike and not teach them any adulting lessons. Naps, finger painting, popsicles…the temptations are vast! 😂
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LOTR must have been the worst case of delayed gratification for your volcano-loving mind! They don’t get to Mount Doom until thousands of pages in! 😂 (Dissecting owl pellets? What the hoozis?)
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Gross! I’m definitely first world when it comes to that stuff, LOL! A few years back I was all into the sacrifice/discipline stuff, so I decided to try exposure therapy with bugs by trying to touch them with my bare fingers, but hell no! I got no problem mushing them, but I’m not meant to conquer one fear after another just to prove I’m tough! I’m old and lazy! 😂
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Blurg! 🤢 Sad to say that a couple of times, I was a dead ringer for a 70s scream queen when I tried touching bugs. 🤣
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Yeah I remember one time back on active duty I was sleeping outside and these big fat ants were crawling all over us. They weren’t biting, just tickling a bit. I was used to living rougher back then so I just snoozed (probably ate a few) but this guy who had come back from two months of leave couldn’t stop swearing and swatting at them. Definitely couldn’t be so composed now, LOL! Although ants don’t bother me that much. They’re like the least buggy of all bugs.
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I’m with you! They take some of that inside comfiness away!
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Holy crap! Didn’t even know that was a thing! Kill em all!! 😂
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Haha! At the same time I feel bad for em…they’re so industrious, lol!
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You’re the second person I know to say that geckos are cute. 🤔 What’s the deal with that? Is it because they’re tiny and they scurry around with a ton of enthusiasm? Do they have little creature sass?
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Just looked em up–they look pretty intimidating! That’s one reason I couldn’t live in australia or some of the tropic places–the size of those bugs and bats is INSANE!
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That dinosaur needs to be upgraded into an enchanted bludgeon, +3 against scorpions! 😂 Usually I scoop up bugs with a big wad of tissue, but I imagine scorpions are trickier because of how far the tail is from the body…
I could definitely get behind some geckos. There’s a couple newts around here but they really don’t seem to have much personality. I’ve enjoyed my stints in the desert, but I don’t know about living there, because I’m just not down with the bitey stingy critters! Aside from shaking my boots out before I put em on, I never caught a hint of any wildlife in the desert. Never saw scorpions or lizards or any of that. Lizards would be cool though…I loved dinosaurs too. Think I saw Jurassic Park over ten times. I used to make it a point to go see Komodo dragons in the zoo before I realized zoos were kind of sad except for the one near me, which is apparently one of the few good ones.
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Well, that all sounds better than ticks–I’m glad I’m not living on the East Coast or in the Midwest anymore. But my first choice is west coast, now I just gotta get that beach-overlook penthouse with an amazing indoor-outdoor space for grilling, relaxing, and dog-spoiling, lol! San Diego is good for now, but I’d like to try Hawaii one day, though they also have big creepy crawlies, specifically centipedes.
That’s nice that you have a zoo that is a little more spacious for its inhabitants; I have no problem going to the San Diego Zoo for that same reason. (wish I could pet the koalas, but alas. I guess that’s the only reason I’d live in Australia–they’re overrunning the suburbs so I’d have a chance at making friends with one.) Seaworld, though, definitely off my list!
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Ticks! NO!!! Dammit, I always considered the southwest as kind of a low-key second or third option, but maybe not so much anymore. I’ve been to the CA desert as well as Albuquerque for a bit, but never spent any real time as a resident.
It’s always been a casual dream of mine to have a home base in Hawaii, then sail around to small islands and just hang out by myself, eating fish and whatever fruit is growing off the trees. Everyone talks about island fever where there’s not much to do, but I’m pretty routine and insular anyways, so I feel like that’d be fine by me. Plus I think Hawaii has warm summer rain. That’s one of the few things I miss about the east coast–warm rains!
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I LOVE the quiet life! Pretty much my whole house is my bedroom, I can be as messy or as clean as I want, go to the bathroom with the door open…the benefits are endless! 😁
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I really doubt I could ever be married again…I’m with you, I know the pitfalls all too well to give it another chance. Even after I got divorced, it took a while for me to adjust to the idea that I don’t need to accommodate anyone else in my own home, but once I embraced it, I realized it was a big deal for me.
I don’t know…never say never! Let’s keep focused on that possibility to one day sleep in! Seems like easier days ahead, so as you say, some day. Some day, “some day” will be right around the corner! 🙂
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I get it. You gotta go with the thought feels best, or you’ll drive yourself crazy even if you have a billion dollars, get to sleep in, and live on the moon.
Pretty amazing that same sex can marry each other nowadays…when I was a kid, I never thought it would happen in my lifetime.
The accommodations thing really makes me consider what step I’m taking next. I think when I go back to living with dogs, I’m going to foster big old dogs so other people can pay the bills and I can just laze around with them and take them on easy walks. Even then, I’ll have to make some major accommodations–I’ll have to try and stop squiggling so much in my sleep or I’ll piss them off when they’re snuggling! 😅
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That’s great! I always wanted to have a relationship with a bi-lady (for obvious reasons) but after I had a few threesomes, I was WIPED OUT! It’s just way too much work for me; I can’t keep track of who’s doing what to whom, and who’s turn is it to get what done to them, LOL! Sex stuff aside, I think that’s awesome that you managed to make things work.
The dogs probably would forgive me. I gotta get rich first, though, so I can hire cleaning folks so I don’t spend a good chunk of my day cleaning up hair. I used to construct big piles of hair and joke that I made a clone of my dog.
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I respect your stance. Mine is that I was in a sexless marriage (for the last few years) so I can’t go back to that. That’s why I think I’m so big on my personal space, especially if I’m in a relationship; living with other people makes it much harder for me to keep liking them.
For me, becoming rich is just the next step forward. It takes a strict backseat to time freedom, which I have right now, but it’s not about the numbers as much as the freedom and certain checks in boxes as far as things I want to experience. I would never, EVER become a wall street broker because those first few years where you’re working nonstop sounds like hell. I’d much rather take the infinitely more enjoyable longshot of writing books or playing the lottery, even. I’d like to get stem cell shots, a penthouse condo overlooking the beach, three dogs, but I go against the grain when it comes to travel–going somewhere strange and figuring out a new routine and all that sounds like a giant pain. Although it’d be nice to experience certain places as a rich person, specifically New York City.
I don’t think I took the dog hair to the bleeding edge; I just saw a video where someone assembled enough dog hair to where it looked like a somewhat flattened copy of their dog lying down, and the dog was FREAKED OUT by it! Hilarious! 🤣
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You sound super busy! No worries about the wordiness. I was somewhat aware of the libido for women over 40…I’ve always been subconsciously attracted to that age range, even when I was in my twenties, LOL!
I guess as far as living with someone or establishing a sexual dynamic, I’d rather keep things simple, experiencing what I have with marriage and whatnot, but I get that everyone has a way that suits them best. When I was younger, I was like many young people in thinking that my way was common sense and I was puzzled (sometimes irritated) when others didn’t do as I did, but sex especially creates such a wide range of individual preferences that having a self-centered view only comes back around on people in a not-so-pleasant way. I LOLed reading a reddit by women who were ranting about how they were sick of pretending how specific traits about wieners didn’t matter (not just size, but they went all into shape and color), and they proceeded to unload about all the ugly dicks they’d seen. 😂
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I’ve been in similar places with the super busy schedule, where minutes matter and the stress lurks throughout the day. I hope your health gets better; I know what it’s like to have chronic body stuff, which has formed a big life goal for me: get enough money for the rich people treatments like stem cells and hyperbaric chambers.
I didn’t think the wiener mattered that much either, except for being above a minimum size, but then this lady I hooked up with went all in depth about the various features, but I figured she was just an anomaly. Then I come to find out that there are a lot more ladies who are particular about em, which made perfect sense to me. One of them complained that men get to have all kinds of preferences about each body part on a woman, so now it’s time to stop pretending that wasn’t the case when women looked at men. I was kinda nervous reading the dealbreakers, but I fist-pumped after I realized I was in the clear! 🤣
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It was a bit selfish on my end–I just wanted to smooth over interactions with folks, plus I wanted to stop being so negative. When I assumed everyone thought like me, then judgment naturally followed, because if they did things not according to my values, then they were either stupid or immoral.
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I think that your statement about men and women is fairly accurate. I started out wanting to be noticed for my character, then when I realized that Asian men were allowed to be attractive and I checked off a fair amount of boxes, I loved being objectified. I cannot lie–it’s pretty awesome when ladies bug me for a d-pic or smack my ass like I’m a piece of meat 🤣 (it doesn’t happen often, which also makes it extra awesome; usually I just get a smile or the subtle stuff like hair flips, walking unnecessarily out of one’s way to be closer to me, or looking at me out of the corner of their eye and then avoiding my gaze when I look back) I’ve heard of men being asked out by women–I think that would be neat as well.
I only really started acting on my belief that folks thought differently when I came late to the game at social media (started in my thirties around 2015 for advertising books). I used to logically wrestle folks into submission online (and I was into actual logic, like syllogisms and fallacies and all those formulas that look like math), then I realized it was exhausting and there were too many of them, so if someone disagrees and they’re being provocative, I usually just try to agree with whatever I find positive in their argument and leave it at that. Or I wish them well as specifically as I can (usually has to be vague when I disagree with them but I don’t want to say why)
I’m glad that with the POTS, you can at least dance. I heard awhile ago that dancing more than any other exercise releases dopamine and serotonin, and personally I also believe it’s got innate healing qualities because of the good vibes. Love the positive attitude!
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Pictures and stalking?? Shaking my head, I really have no idea where the urge for that stuff comes from. Personally, I think I like being objectified because being an Asian guy in nineties high school pretty much made you undatable except for a select few. Honestly, though, I think that was mostly in my head because when I think back on it with my better understanding of how ladies show interest (which is still, admittedly, not that good an understanding), I’m pretty sure a good amount of girls I liked liked me back, but I just bought into the societal idea that Asian men didn’t have sex appeal. The bias against women in those dynamics has always been unfair, but I hope things get better soon. I feel like they have been slowly getting better, but time will tell.
Pretty impressive you can dance with those limitations, dancing destroys me, lol! Probably because I’m not that good a dancer yet. 😅
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It’s crazy imagining an adult doing that to another adult. The closest I ever came to that was relishing the routes between classes where I would get to look at girls I liked, but I would never have thought to take a different route or play music to make a certain girl uncomfortable. People definitely need hobbies, and I don’t mean that in a flippant way. I see folks without meaning or self-validating activities go deep into conspiracy land or doing that kind of trollish behavior.
You too with the booster, huh? I got weird skin issues with each injection, stuff that looked like shingles. Apparently it happens to small minority of folks who get the shots. Glad you were able to find some workarounds! I like hearing about positivity and creativity coming together and making things better! Even if that positivity just started as a desire to avoid a negative outcome.
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I like the growling! I used to do that for fun to troll my dogs, lol! Also used to run after them on all fours barking up a storm.
The skin stuff was weird. I got a cold sore, which in the past has meant I won’t get one for a year or two, then a week after the vaccine, I got one again. Then, after my second shot, I got what looked like a cold sore under my collar bone, which is apparently what shingles looks like. It cleared up in a couple of weeks, but it was still pretty weird. The tech said the vaccine stresses the immune system, which seems to be a fitting explanation.
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Friday is my relax day where I eat junk food, nap a lot, and do no writing whatsoever. Typically I get way too much sleep, so I end up waking extra early on Saturday. I think the growling is fun!
The skin stuff only lasted a few weeks. Kind of annoying, but oh well, I’d rather be vaccinated. I envy you for not getting cold sores, lol!
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I hear you! Stress brings out the noms in me, but I keep it regulated with cheat days or else I’d eat like a dog and grow a big pogo ball belly. Lately, I’ve been going with pizza and noodles but when things are hard, there’s nothing better than a heap o’ good breakfast food… 😋
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Weirdly, I kind of feel a reversal standards as far as abs, in that I feel like my abs gotta be visible, but it’s not an issue with ladies, lol! It’s actually kinda weird when they’re super visible, kinda like a crustacean exoskeleton or something, or one of those plastinated cadavers in bodyworlds.
There’s kind of of a trade off as far as our circumstances–I can stuff my gob until I’m pogo-belly comatose, but you can have more carbs. I’m jealous! 😅
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I think my desire for abs is just a response to reading a ton of Batman as a kid. He’s also why I refuse to go bald until I’m at least 80 (because in Batman Beyond, Bruce goes bald in one of the future episodes). I started losing hair in my mid-20s, but Rogaine stopped that dead in its tracks! 😅
Definitely jealous of your carbolicious ways! Nothing better than maowing down on bread and pasta! I’ve even learned to enjoy the resulting pogo belly, LOL! On Fridays, I’ll maow down, then lounge around like Big Lebowski whilst I bingewatch tv, pausing for the occasional nap.
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I’d totally go Dark Side for some carb-friendly genes! 😅
Why do you want to be taller? I’ve been with tall ladies but always preferred shorter. My friends are more or less the same, except for this one little 5’4″ crazy guy who only dates much taller women. But if I had to view things holistically and not just sexually I guess being short would come to some day-to-day annoyances, like not being able to reach stuff…I’m 5’8, which annoys me at times (I’d rather be 6’4″) but I’ve made my peace with it. Aside from generally being disadvantaged in sports, I’ve been told I have a “big aura,” to the point where some people have mistaken me for 6′. That plus looking decent plus pretty good luck…can’t complain. But if I was creating myself as a D&D character, I’d definitely go taller, lol!
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I hear you. I’d rather have basketball player or swimmer’s build, since that kind of frame seems to do well at a wider range of athletics, but at the end of the day I’m pretty glad with what I’ve got. I know some people, no matter how hard they try, can’t get abs.
I have the opposite problem as you–people think I’m lighter than I am, lol! That’s another reason I like to stay muscley. 😅
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Good way to think! But no matter what my partner prefers, I am NOT getting a wiener reduction! 🤣
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Points noted! And even if my joints felt better after lopping off some meat, there is NO WAY I’d even so much as CONSIDER such a thing, LOL! Being an Asian guy who grew up in the nineties, I was constantly measuring it, and only after decades of sex and obsessing over studies (probably inaccurate, because who’s gonna be honest about the size of their wiener), reddit, and quizzing women nonstop about my junk, have I realized it’s not only on the bigger side, it scores high in the stuff women never mention except through online anonymity: color, curve, proportion, etc. I’ve taken a hillbilly-like second-amendment-style stance on any surgery that’ll alter my sauseej! 🤣
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I couldn’t detect so much as an ounce of zombie, LOL! Maybe I gotta be there for it–maybe a dull gaze and a flat affect doesn’t translate to text. I hate to say it, but I’m of the same mind as your husband, not that I would begrudge you if you decided to get a reduction. Personally speaking, a big set of chesticles have always drawn me in.
I can somewhat relate to the zombieitis–I used to have a pretty bad case of resting mean face but I’ve consciously tried to smile a bit more and also keep correct tongue posture (on the roof of my mouth), which I was told to do as a kid but I dismissed because I thought it was BS. Apparently, however, it’s good for everything from athletic performance to teeth to possibly shaping cheekbones. 🤷♂️
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I hear you! And smiling when you don’t feel like it only makes you more pissed and hurts your face! (At least for me, anyway). I used to think that meant I’m naturally not smiley and people should just deal with it but I’ve kind of mellowed as I’ve aged. I feel like if I don’t feel like smiling, then it’s time to take it easy, chill, and relax for a while until I feel like smiling again. So now I view it as more of an indicator as to where my head is, rather than accepting I’m naturally negative. My younger self would have laughed at the phrase “emotional intelligence,” but life is ironic, if nothing else.
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I think I get it. I feel like I’ve been that way for most of my life, until I got to leave the military and all the bullshit of high school and adulting finally settled down. I’m pretty addicted to girly pop and random dog videos on my facebook feed as far as stuff that makes me smile. I’m always waiting for my emotionally repressed friends to give me shit about it so I can shoot them down with a good comeback, but they’re all too old now and they just complain about politics, LOL!
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I’m listening to Mummy Dust, makes me wanna go Meh-neh-meh-neh-MEH, Meh-neh-meh-neh-MEH! 😁 Wish I could play guitar so I could do riffs like this and make fun of my friends!
I like to watch dogs eating, falling asleep on their feet, or getting messed with. Not so much the ones where they’re starving or scared, although if one of them those snags me for a bit, I gotta watch until the end to know that they end up happy. Anything on Too Cute is usually guaranteed to amuse me, lol!
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I’ve always heard rumors, but nothing really concrete about LDS stuff. They seem Scientology-like, and somehow manage to have giant churches that look like Saruman’s house (how do they get the money for those? They look EXPENSIVE!)
Yep, Too Cute from Animal Planet. I love watching when the puppies make their way to the edge of the blanket, but for whatever reason it’s too much for them, then they start howling. Never gets old! 😁
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No worries. Back in my early twenties, I got involved in an MLM, so I understand a tiny bit of what you’re referencing. I’ve never had any direct interaction with LDS, although it seems like you said, most of them have a reputation of being nice people. I’ve heard it referred to as the nicest cult you could join (nice in terms of personality, obviously not in terms of what happens to its members).
I just watch the Too Cute clips on YouTube. When I was a dog walker, the best part was lounging around with friendly puppies, although they’re either dead asleep or going nuts. 😅
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I get it. I’m pretty cliche in that I never liked authority, and even more cliche in that I’m a straight-up introvert (lotta people seem to be introverts nowadays). I’m perfectly fine being alone for months on end, and when I hang around crowds, I feel super tired in about an hour’s time. Even when I joined a meditation cult, it was two nights a month, which was the most introvert-friendly cult you could ever imagine, LOL! I think psychedelics also kind of settled my conviction that I don’t need to keep questing after spirituality and finding the secret series of moves that’ll make me righteous or ecstatic. I can just enjoy what I’ve got, if I only let myself.
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I know! For me I really like watching the initial few weeks, because even though I’ve had puppies, I’ve never been around them when their eyes were closed (I think it’s a safety thing, like they’re supposed to be with their mom until 12 weeks or so). I get to daydream about sprawling on the couch with a big mess of tiny puppies, although if it happened for real I’d be scared of smushing one, lol!
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I was drawn to the military because it was my form of rebelling against the Korean expectation of being a doctor or lawyer, and also rebelling against the 9-5 culture (much like Jon). Back in the nineties, thanks to Mike Judge (Office Space, Beavis and Butthead), it seemed like as soon as I put on a tie and a button-down, I was doomed to suffer a slow, horrible death, LOL!
Psychedelics didn’t really end my quest for spirituality as convince me that everything by default is spiritual, so it’s kind of a goose chase to constantly label things as spiritual or otherwise. It’s kind of a controversial point, because how could atrocity be spiritual, right? The best way I can explain it is that omnipotent benevolence has to be able to limit and surprise itself, so it can love every imaginable iteration of possibility, which would truly make it infinite in its love. That’s not quite right either, because in my experience, we are that consciousness and can’t help but be it. Which brings me to the conclusion: since we can’t help but be it and can’t help but return to it, we’re stuck in a no-lose game, and we can either use this time as a limited being to throw a fit, or dream up a story we want to live (which we do by relaxation, acceptance, and allowing our greater aspects to do the heavy lifting). So really, in this no-lose game where the only choice is to throw a fit or enjoy the ride, the question isn’t about what’s spiritual and what isn’t, it’s more about enjoying the ride, as I just mentioned.
Of course there’s no way to prove any of that, but after years of meditation, the visceral ego-death of psychedelics, and my desire to believe that existence is inherently fair, joyful, simultaneously democratic (in that everyone is given the power to allow their greater aspects to come forth and shape reality) and republican (in that it’s everyone’s choice whether or not to pinch off their greater aspects), this is what I’ve decided to believe.
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I’m with you on the shame and damnation. Also not a fan of transactional thinking–“gotta pay a price to get a reward.” While that may seem true in many cases, there’s too many people who get more than they deserve, and vice versa. Plus, anecdotally, once I started chilling out more, more good things happened to me. Definitely not proof except in an individual sense, but I’ll take it, personally.
I think you’ve arrived at a similar conclusion to me–that the whole spirituality thing just doesn’t matter. It’s about how you’re engaging here and now, in the way you feel best and allows you to enjoy who you are. Ironically, when you dig into the core of mystical traditions, that’s about as spiritual as you can get.
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I think sometimes it may be the best thing to happen, because although it’s cliche, I believe people’s relationship with greater consciousness is strictly a personal matter in that they can’t be guided to it by someone else’s set of rules or say-so guidance. It’s okay in the beginning to have some structure and community, but in the end, what would be the point of having differing points of view if every point of view was fully realized in the exact same way? That’s my take on it, anyway. My disappointment with my cult-lite was one of the best things to happen in that vein.
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Yeah, I know it can be helpful, and I know extroverts can definitely benefit, but all that’s just a logical statement in my head with no true feeling, because I’m a dyed-in-the-wool introvert, lol! I think if spiritual communities are healthy, they either dissolve so that the person isn’t trying to validate their spirituality through someone else’s perspective, or they cap out as a place to just hang out and enjoy each other’s company.
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I used to be of the same mind, where I would seek out some form of community. Then I realized that people always disappointed me, not because they were inferior or unworthy, but because I was projecting my desires onto them. I wanted them to prosper and succeed and I was always able to logically point out what they could do better, like everyone looking from the outside in. Then I realized that they’re going to do what they want to do, and I can either drive myself crazy over it, or just relax and let them be. And in return, more people relaxed and let ME be, because I wasn’t making subtle digs and getting all in their business while pretending I wasn’t. I recently realized my newest friend was the only person who I hadn’t tried to change. Previously, with all my other friends and family, I had tried to get them to somehow do better, and it only led to heated disagreement or falling out at some point. So most of the time, I enjoy being alone, but if there are others of a like mind then I’m sure they’ll make their way around and we’ll relax together without trying to make each other “better.”
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That’s great! The world needs more people like you. For a long time, I tried to pretend I was that way, that I had a deep-seated caring for people, but really it was this twisted desire to see them succeed by following the principles I believed in, so I tried to press my beliefs on them or chased success partly because I wanted to prove to others I was right through my success. Ironically, I find myself wishing the best for people when I mentally just let them be. I’ll help people out materially, but now there’s no urgency or ulterior motive behind it.
Personally, I’ve realized that the people who have taught me the most valuable lesson are those who are happy being who they are. Nowadays, that’s what I seek to do, knowing that with others like me, I’ll influence them the most if I show them I’m happy and passionate doing what I’m doing.
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I think the world is just having itself a short-term tantrum, which makes it seem as if it doesn’t value your disposition. But in the long run, I think you’re on the right track. I also agree that you gotta let society be whatever it wants to be. That’s why Buddha didn’t answer Mara directly when Mara asked him why Buddha was worthy of enlightenment, and who will vouch for him. As soon as Buddha acknowledged the questioner and question, it would have taken him away from the truth of a mystical existence where everything springs from the same source. You don’t need to prove yourself worthy to anyone, much less society, and they don’t need to vouch for you. That’s my take, anyway!
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Definitely a good point. I know a few activists and I think they’re doing great work, especially since it energizes them and gives them a sense of purpose. On a few occasions, I have also followed up on the urge to donate time or money to certain things, so I guess I’m kind of a super casual dabbler in activism. But then there are some who constantly harangue me about my positions, and give me the stink-eye even though I agree with them, but not to the degree they want. I can’t even call some of them activists because they don’t even do anything, they just complain and try to get others to agree with them. I’ve had to distance from a few friends who became like this, because it was like hanging out with a political pundit who had no real opinion of their own, just talking points. In those cases, I just let them be who they want to be, so I don’t get sucked into trying to change them, which would make me someone I’d rather not be. I think my main point is if it’s something that you truly believe in changing or pursuing, go for it. But if all someone has to offer is complaints and judgment, then I’ll stay away from engaging with them, because they make me want to just oppose their position for the hell of it, and also because I don’t want to become them but from a different angle as far as opinion. The standing up for certain things, I believe, should more or less come from a natural-feeling inclination to do so, at least in my opinion. Otherwise, it can devolve into a giant game of Simon Says where there’s no real spirit behind my stance, where I’m constantly wagging my finger and not pursuing things that truly bring me joy. My two cents anyway. I think that’s where it’s important to have emotional intelligence—so you can feel out what your personal way is to best navigate the world, add to it, and perhaps bring benefit from an unexpected direction. I hope that’s the case, because I feel like I’ve tried the other way when I was younger and things just got messier and messier, and it made me miserable trying to make people see the “right” way.
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I think you and I are on the same general page. My thing is prioritizing my own mental state before I start making decisions and pushing forth. You could explain it from a law of attraction rationale, but I’ll go with plain old psychology, which is a more science-based parallel—if I’m constantly wallowing in and acting from fear and depression and anger, no matter how many justifications and how much logic I’ve piled on top of my actions, I will subconsciously find a way to become fearful and depressed and angry again, and interact with fearful and depressing and enraging circumstances (much like the invisible gorilla selective attention test, or a Derren Brown mentalist feat). I’ve personally experienced this in the military; I viewed everything through a negative bent, where I was constantly warding off disaster by triple-checking everything and I had to overthink and overplan stuff all the time. And yet people who truly enjoyed the military and did way less of that, found the bright side of things, and went more by their intuition, did better than me with way less effort. I carried that mentality into the civilian world, where I constantly encountered parallel situations where I was looking over my shoulder and stressing out over every little detail to avert disaster. I ended up counting “success” as when I could state a disaster was averted, instead of labeling anything as a triumph or accomplishment. Contrast that with when I started deliberately focusing on the most positive thing that resonated with me (which was sometimes apathy or futility), and things began changing.
Personally, that’s where all the power is for me. If I’m engaged and focused on resonant positivity, I get more leverage and encounter more opportunities. And that’s where my mindset of letting society be comes from. As I said, I go out and help with this or that, but I refuse to do it out of guilt or hatred or fear, and I won’t put that on someone else either. At the end of the day, I’m less than a billionth of humanity residing on less than a billionth of the planets in an infinitude of galaxies, so that helps restore my perspective and keep things light, easy, game-like, and productive for me. On top of that, I think that positive focus and setting an example for people to be in tune with their emotions and go for things that excite them leads to unexpected benefits, such as Muhammad Ali’s activism. I would never tell younger Ali to stop boxing and be an activist, because he became a great one anyway as a natural outgrowth of his passion. Same with Justin Wren, who fought in MMA and now brings awareness through his charity Fight for the Forgotten, advocating for pygmies that are suffering from pretty much a modern-day version of colonialist slavery. They both bring a passion to it as a natural outgrowth of their respective paths, rather than a justification-heavy mediocrity that would have resembled something I exuded in the military. Also, if I were to take the emotional guidance out of it and operate purely out of logic, I would cut everything out of my life aside from anything that didn’t support charity (which cause to support, anyway? Weighing that would result in the most complicated pros and cons list ever), and I would pretty much ignore all personal joy. And then there’s the rabbit hole of addressing causes of evil: is it from nature or nurture, and how would we manipulate either of those to ensure it’s minimized? That question in itself is an endless spiral of futility, where I blame so-and-so’s parents all the way back until I blame the microbes they evolved from. I would also have to stop eating plants and animals because both feel pain, I would have to stop existing because my bodily processes by default cause microbial genocide…you get the idea.
I guess long story short, I’m really just about taking things easy and positive focus, waiting for the inspiration to come and then lending a helping hand once I’m inspired to do so. And also not shortchanging the stuff that makes me happy, because like Muhammad Ali, it may grow in an unexpected direction. Maybe it takes a few twists and turns before it gets there…who knows? So leaving society as is really is more of a mental position, disproven as an absolute, if by nothing else, through my own actions. Hope that doesn’t sound like a copout! 😅
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I think you absolutely deserve to play around with eyeshadow and have fun! I actually think that’s our birthright and default/natural state (not the eyeshadow, obviously, but the fun and ease and peace). And from what it sounds like, you’ve been through the wringer in the past and you deserve extra on that stuff.
The environment will have caretakers that spearhead efforts and inspire the rest of us to help in ways that are convenient to us (until the sun goes red giant and destroys the earth, which is kind of ironic when you think about it—our local environment ranks pretty low in the eyes of our celestial environment), just like you’ll spearhead efforts at your local school, and inspire change from that end. Is it all futile? Arguably. But what isn’t futile is the joy and fulfillment you get out of what you’re doing and experiencing. That’s not hypocritical at all, and it may be the only thing of substance in the existential sense. And as I said before, who knows where it may lead? Who knew that Keanu Reeves getting injured at ice hockey when he was a teen, crushing his dreams to be a hockey player, would allow him to pursue acting, which would give us one of the most technically bad, yet bizarrely entertaining actors ever?
As far as mediocrity, I think celebrity examples like Muhammad Ali or Keanu Reeves are a bit problematic. I don’t count celebrity or high station as non-mediocre or even successful. To me, success is moment by moment, dependent on how much enjoyment you can find by how you frame things in your perception. There’s plenty of celebrities who live miserable, unfulfilling lives. So when you’re having a blast doing your eyeshadow, environment be damned, then I count that as the exact opposite of mediocrity! 😊
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I’m glad that you recognize that with your eyeshadow! As far as Keanu Reeves, I’ll use a bit of logical negativity to advocate for my point: good-looking men in entertainment are a dime a dozen, but very few get to enjoy something approaching his career. A couple of facts make him my role model: he sucks at acting, he’s kind of an eccentric doofy weirdo who’s not well spoken (my opinion, from the interviews I’ve seen and his low-key lifestyle), but he follows his heart, seems to be spontaneously nice, and seems to prioritize enjoying life as he sees fit (apparently, he turned down Speed 2 on a gut instinct, something Sandra Bullock wishes she’d done). I just watched Johnny Mnemonic a few weeks ago, and a big part of the entertainment is how bad he is at acting. I cracked up laughing when he’s dialoguing with his costar and she asks him “You got parents and stuff?” And he shoots back in his ridiculously stilted voice, “YOU got parents and stuff???” Also when he claws the air and shouts, “I NEED a computer!”
I’ve approached much of my life from the other direction, where I constantly delayed my enjoyment of the moment and acted with mountains of justification for every action, and it sucked. Even if I had been wildly outwardly successful, that would have been worse, because it would have felt miserable, and I could have been able to logically justify the misery with the outward success. That’s why seeing a doofy, good-looking weirdo who sucks at his job but prioritizes his enjoyment of life is so important to me, and in my opinion, is critical to his appeal. He’s really become my roadmap for life, LOL!
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It’s funny—I have been with ladies who appreciate niceness, but earlier in my life, it was kind of the opposite: they liked the fact I was brooding and quiet (maybe because that was more of a thing in the nineties), then not so much when I cracked a smile or made casual conversation. 😂
You’re in a hard-to-understand spot for most of the population, there’s no denying that. I think an easier concept that may resonate with you is net fulfillment. I have been in situations with distantly related parallels, in the respect that environmental needs dictated what I had to do for much of the day. Back in those days, I strove for net fulfillment, where I would often have to sacrifice immediate gratification for as much long-term fulfillment as I could possibly get. What’s weird is that I started realizing that in some cases, I actually enjoyed the stressful work more than when it was over, because during the work-period I started doing experiments where I was deliberately focused on pleasant thoughts. Then, when it was over and I was relaxing at home, I would ironically be in a bad mood because I had attached all my positivity to an external impetus. (This is just me, I’m not saying it’d work for you, or that it’s right for you.) I guess that’s why I’m settling into the cliche/belief that no matter what’s happening externally, what’s going on internally is completely up to me, because I’ve lived it in its fullest irony.
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Well you wouldn’t have gone for me—I was a brooding nerd at that point, nothing artistic about me! 😅 On the other hand, if I had known there were short, busty girls into D&D back in high school, it would have been a gamechanger…🤔 All three of those items are high on my list of desired qualities! 🤣
I remember my mom always working, yet still finding time to cook, take me to piano lessons, go to night school, and play the flute and read Korean literature in the early early morning. Just the sheer amount of work she did made me realize that I couldn’t handle kids, because I would be tempted to do what your mom did. As it was, I was always kind of scared she would, because her life seemed untenably stressful. It always boggles my mind when I ask her these days why she didn’t leave us, and she looks at me like I’m crazy and says why would you even think of something like that? It literally never occurred to her.
It’s pretty awesome you’re making time for your kid, making a bit for yourself, and starting to get a bit more relief. People deserve to pursue what they enjoy, and you’re no exception!
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Seems to be more of a common thing, now, nerds being attractive. I guarded the fact that I read comics in the nineties with vehement ferocity, LOL! Weirdly enough, comics aren’t even a nerd thing anymore. They’re for everybody, thanks to Marvel movies.
You’re getting where you want to be, it sounds like. I’m cheering for you! Over the years, I’ve shifted away from all the masochistic hustle-flexing, earn your sleep, billionaires wake up at 3 am, so and on so forth. (For years, I actually did wake up at 2:45 so I could fit in workouts and writing). That’s not what I’m here for, no judgment if people enjoy it, and I know some that do, but I’ve found out the hard way all that rah-rah is not for me. I enjoy hearing about people moving toward peace, relaxation, and stuff they want to do.
I’m having a blast writing this follow-up to A Door into Evermoor. So far, it’s got a giant brute with Sherlockian intelligence and old-school swag (he wears a bowler hat, knows singlestick fighting—Victorian martial art for canes—and smokes a long-stem pipe), and I’ve got the fantasy version of the Golden Age of Piracy, where instead of cannons, they have magically charged pillars of stone capped by sculpted stone in the form of dragonheads called bombardier obelisks that release big ol’ blasts of arcane artillery. That’s just a bit of it; I’m really trying to make my own version of that time-honored trek through a wondrous fantasy world, but without all the stuff I found draggy in Tolkien. Hope that sounds up your alley!
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Well it’s pretty inspiring, to say the least. I remember many folks in the military stating that their job wasn’t nearly as hard as a single mother’s. You’re not single, but still, I think you’re embodying the sentiment they were expressing.
To tell the truth, I never really liked pirates until I saw the documentary series the Lost Pirate Kingdom on Netflix. Bunch of fascinating folks! So I thought that if I could make a magical version of the Age of Sail, that would be amaze-balls. Seeing as it’s magic, I had to revolutionize the existing paradigm. Instead of relying purely on the wind, ships have a coterie of “seavokers,” which are mages trained to manipulate the currents and wind, as well as charge the bombardier obelisks. After a bit of research, I saw that our ocean currents depended mainly on wind, so I decided to add another element that could influence the current (because why have a seavoker specialize in currents if the currents are always in line with the wind?) so I decided to have these giant, city-size monsters at the bottom of the ocean that liked to fight each other, which would influence the surface currents independent of the wind. All that being the case, I had to change up the traditional Age of Sail combat where a ship tries to get upwind of its prey, then fires a broadside down longwise down its enemy (known as raking fire). Now, because seavokers can control the propulsion of the ship, the first step in taking down an enemy ship is basically a magical wrestling match, where one coterie of seavokers tries to wrest control of the currents and wind from the other and becalm the enemy ship, which will allow the advantage-holding ship to maneuver as it pleases.
Anyways, that’s what goes on in the mind of an overthinking nerd writer, LOL!
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I think it’s because my body’s seasonal. During spring and summer I get way more energy and I start doing more stuff, writing seven days a week, more interaction, extra workouts, that kind of thing. Then around september/october, I usually simmer down. I’ve been feeling a little restless these last few fridays, so I took the hint and got a bit busier.
Well sounds like you’re fairly blessed as far as relationships, that’s good to hear! I couldn’t handle a relationship with my ex, even though it was no kids and two dogs! 😅 Glad things are solid on that end!
Speaking of dogs, I’ve been amusing myself with an fb/instagram page called “Dog Named Stella.” That is one ENERGETIC lab, LOL! I cracked up at her vid where she destroyed winter and the one where she zooms so hard she changes seasons.🤣
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Maybe I just have to hear it in person, because the salt doesn’t come across through text, LOL! I didn’t even suspect you were salty!
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Yeah, I’ve only been in one long-term relationship, and it was exhausting. It firmly established that I am indeed an introvert. I can’t begin to imagine how people pull off something like diplomacy or politics, where they’re negotiating tons of stuff for tons of different demographics. Just negotiating household schedules was tiring enough!
Those too cute puppy videos are great! Pretty formulaic, but I never get tired of watching puppies howl when they get frustrated wandering around the blanket, lol!
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Yes to the bedrooms, and to BATHROOMS! I poop like a madman, so it’s a damn necessity, LOL! Plus I like staggering around in my undies with uncombed hair, and not hearing a peep from the living room when I’m taking a snooze. 😅
The best stella one has “winter didn’t end.
Stella destroyed it” in the caption (. That dog is NUTS! 🤣
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This dog just might find a way—she is NUTS! 🤣
I’m all right with those bathroom transgressions. I just like cleaning the bathroom when I want to clean it, cleaning up after myself and no one else, and also not having to wait for it. That last one is big! 😅
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I saw that one yesterday! Stella is like ummm…UMMMMM…😂
Three bathrooms! I would stake my claim on one and tell everyone else MINE, lol! I’m definitely not fit to live with others anymore! 😅
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I’d probably make big bold sharpie signs with arrows pointing to the stuff declaring DON’T DO IT. Or: I SEE YOU with a pair of spooky eyes. I dunno—I’d definitely turn it into some kind of game for awhile. 🤣
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Make decoys! Put speakers throughout that use pre-recorded messages: “I KNEW it!” 😂
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Keep em on edge! And once you’re certain they’re not taking your stuff, plant it in their backpack like a dirty cop, then pull it out and hiss, “Gotcha! I KNEW it!!!” 🤣🤣🤣
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I only do it with humans. 😅 When I was a dog walker the company told me that I should give smaller treats or sometimes just pretend I’m giving one to the best dogs, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it until the owners started complaining they were paying for walks but their dogs were gaining weight! 🤣
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I know! Plus maybe it’s my Asian immigrant upbringing, but I can’t help but think that fat dogs are happy dogs, kind of like infants, lol! I love rubbing a big poochy belly! 😅
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Man those church folks seem to exist to get in each other’s business! I would never be able to keep my cool! 😅
I was the same with my dog Sneaker. He never got diabetes, but he got up to 80 lbs when he was healthy at 60. We had to be strict about scoops and limit the treats, although when I lived in San Francisco I always took him for a Cookie Walk on Fridays. If I mentioned Cookie Walk he would go ballistic, because it was a whole thing—a walk through downtown, then a perusal of the pet store where everyone loved him, and finally a treat before we went back. 😊
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Maybe it’s the text interface, but I never get any judgment or saltiness from you, lol! As far as the cat, it sounds like he and my dog wouldn’t have gotten along; they both liked to maow down food!
Sneaker was my first dog, so yeah, of course I loved him. I was a stereotypical reluctant dog dad, then once I started living with him, of course we became best buddies. He was one of those dogs where if he wasn’t smiling, he looked sad or scared by default because he had big eyes and a baggy-skinned face, so he got away with murder! He was probably gloating in his mind, calling me an easily manipulatable human! 😅
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I think I live vicariously through them—I, too, would love to be able to just constantly stuff my face and not give a damn! 😅 It’s partly what inspired me to write that scene in A Door into Evermoor where they go to Alijyar’s house and are stuffing their face with mountains of noms. Sneaker once ate half my pizza, he’s got into a bunch of trash cans, eaten catfood and the other dog’s food, and gotten into the dog food bags. There was one time he scared the crap out of me because he got in a dog food bag and his stomach tripled in size; I thought he might have bloat. I think that was the only time I was relieved when he threw it all up and went back to normal Sneaker size. 😂
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He was! I picked him because his siblings were pushing him around. We got him a too early at six weeks old from a shady rescue agency. He couldn’t sleep well for a couple of weeks because he had a disproportionately big puppy belly; I think he had a hard time breathing when he laid down on it. I called it his “pogo belly.” 😂
We got another puppy at 12 weeks. A little cairn terrier mix named Bodhi. That guy wasn’t a rescue, but he was always trying to steal human food specifically. We tried to train him with clicker stuff, but it only could go so far because he was little and he lost interest in food, but if he was in your lap he’d snap at your tacos or chicken or whatever. One day, I woke up in the middle of the night to hear loud crunching, then I walk to the kitchen and find some leftover wings had fallen on the floor and Bodhi was eating them. He snarled up a storm when I took them away, even drew blood from my fingers because he was biting down so hard and caught my skin in between his teeth! Crazy little shit! 🤣
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I think the first and foremost is the fact that he was only six weeks old, so we took him away from his mom too early. I only found that out later when I got more dogs—apparently, you’re not supposed to adopt em out if they’re less than 12 weeks old. Also, he was coated in fleas (that’s probably more common), and if I remember correctly, they never interviewed us or even collected on their fee. It was just sign these forms and you can have him.
I know Sneaks was part-ridgeback, because the ridge showed whenever he was one edge, but he’s definitely a mutt, because he was light gold, not reddish brown, and he was super unathletic, which is pretty un-Ridgebacklike, LOL! I tried to run with him a few times, but after half a mile he’d sit and start crying. And when I did sprints on a field he’d follow along for a few rounds, then just lay down and pant. He had a default sad face, so people always fell for him. I remember he had my ex wrapped around his finger; one time she yelled at him, then he slowly plodded to the corner, sat and stared at it, then laid down facing it while sighing sadly. She was simultaneously amused while her heart was melting, but much more heart-melted than amused. I was just cracking up. 🤣
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What about a foster? You could get medical bills and food paid for, and you have a good chance of getting a mellow older dog. I’ll probably do that next time I’m ready to hang around dogs again. Man–I remember raising Bodhi as a puppy, I had to start with taking him out 5 or 6 times a day, then once he got used to the schedule, he would pee in the house if I didn’t stick to it with a five minute margin of error. Over time, I slowly added a minute to his times, then two minutes, then in a month or two I would merge two breaks together. It took a while to get him down to two breaks a day…exhausting just thinking about it. Maybe I’m idealizing older dogs, but I would like to think I wouldn’t have to go through that again! 😅
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I hope the meeting with your sister went well! I’m assuming the ten year break is from church issues…
That’s too bad about the older dog. I think the best way to do it might be to have enough money for a dedicated dog room and biweekly cleaning service. Man, I remember when I was working at the dog walking/sitting company, they were headquartered in a townhouse, and they needed professional cleaners EVERY DAY just to keep up. Even then the staff was constantly cleaning. But still, you can’t beat the feeling of getting raucously greeted by thirty dogs when you walk in the door! 😁
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I wonder if they had bad experiences with that kind of thing. They must have seen he already is good with cats…
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That’s a healthy perspective! Ultimately, I believe it’s correct as well. I do think in some grand, existential sense, everyone is doing the best they can, and eventually will get where they wish to be.
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That’s too bad…maybe things will change as he makes progress. Fingers crossed!
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You know what’s interesting, is that I think like all religions there’s a kernel of truth in what they teach, specifically attracting people through example. Although I would replace being righteous with being happy and fulfilled, which entails not caring about using personal example to draw people in.
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That’s too bad. I’m not really sure why anyone would care about the shoulder thing, it sounds kind of funny and cute. Well, rescues aren’t the end-all be-all…when the time is right, I’m sure things will fall into place and you’ll get yourself a fuzzy! 😁
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I really think all those groups and philosophies are supposed to lead to people self-realizing and not needing them at all. Or if people choose to use them after they’ve served their purpose, use them simply as a fun place to hang out and chat, lol.
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My cult-lite experience was similar to yours, but sounds like mine was way less intense. That doesn’t sound fun for anyone, including the leaders! Me and my former cult-lite homies came to that same conclusion—no one seemed to be having fun around here, they just pretended like it, then lapsed back into bitterness and misery.
I think it’s kind of funny that there are atheists in a congregation…part of me wonders if that could be a measure of quality, lol! If your congregation isn’t attracting atheists, then it’s doing something wrong, and it needs to shift gears. I feel like there’s something weirdly profound in that!
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You’re probably right about the closet atheists thing, but at the same time, it’s pretty remarkable how people can condition themselves to just avoid any situation that directs them toward introspection. For the people I know that do it, it doesn’t even become a conscious decision, they just start flailing for any and all excuses that will get them away from self-reflection, regardless of logic. They also, from what I’ve seen, tend to become more and more insulated, so as to avoid those types of situations.
I like that anecdote about your unitarian fellow being willing to draw wisdom from a generally opposite set of principles. But I probably would have been haunted by a scooby-doo suspicion that he would tear off his face mask and reveal himself to be LDS! 😅
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That’s great that you’re letting go of the bitterness! Nice that you realize that it’ll hold you back after a certain point. I’m pretty sure that over time it will fade even further. That’s how it worked for my issues, anyway.
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That’s definitely something I had to learn the hard way! It was like my brain was constantly justifying everything I had done or was going to do 24/7. Eventually I realized no one cared about my justifications; they nodded politely but if I bought them up again, they had already forgotten. I was defending myself to a nonexistent jury! 😅
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Don’t I know it! I used to get into internet arguments because I was all about formal logic for awhile, and I’d almost always win, but it was exhausting in the end. And what can we really prove, anyway? Until we know the fundamental nature of the universe where we can rule out (or verify) that we’re living in a simulation, or at least know the deal behind those UFOs that were making headlines a couple years ago, it’s just being argumentative for being argumentative’s sake, as far as I’m concerned. Fine if other people do it, but I’m too lazy! 😅
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That’s where emotional intelligence kicks in for me. If I’m feeling drained from continually telling myself how good I am compared to how I used to be, then it’s a no-go (and honestly, that’s mostly how I feel nowadays—I used to constantly contemplate the past to try and eke out points for myself). On occasion, however, especially around friends, it’s nice to kick around some old memories, laugh at them, and soundly declare fuck THAT! I’d never do that now! 😊
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I’m can see where you’re coming from, I think, and I’m with you on the general intent behind each point. My approach, if I had to boil it down to a simple sentence, would be to enjoy being a happy idiot. 😁
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I think it’s a term that works for me personally, as far as where I am right now. I’ve gone way down the other route, so now it’s time to balance things out a bit. 😁
Man, been so long since I mucked around in Echo world…nice to see that you got to Leat! His name is a play on words: Lee Atwater. Lee was a paradigm-shifting Republican operative who came up with the Southern strategy, the eighties plan to polarize voters through code-word racism. His blueprint is still in use today and set the stage for divisiveness-based tactics. He really didn’t have any values aside from win everything, so I figured in a future life, he’d be an oblivious cannibal who couldn’t stop consuming the less fortunate. 😅
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No worries! If you want to skip ahead, I do put a brief recap at the beginning of the books to catch readers up. I won’t be offended if you detour around Echo 2! 😊
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Yeah, I’m not big on fetishizing intelligence either. I’ve just seen too many people that are way more capable than me or happier than me who aren’t smart. Quentin Tarantino, for example, is kind of a savant as far as knowing how to put together something entertaining, but I’ve listened to interviews of him, and his critical thinking is terrible. And, of course, Keanu Reeves.
I learned pretty young that I’m smart. I looked down on people for a while who weren’t as intelligent (which is the majority of people I interacted with), and I was threatened by people who were more intelligent. That was miserable, in retrospect: either living in smug superiority, or in low-key fear of someone who was smart. After a deep dive into trying to logically outdo everybody and also outwork them, I realized I was pushing in the wrong direction. It’s kind of depressing once you start seeing anecdotes of people who work way harder than everyone else but fall so much shorter, and people who are super smart but can’t seem to exert the control they’re supposed to enjoy. And it’s even more depressing when it becomes evident that they’re not necessarily happy because of their work ethic or their smarts. Am I here to try and outthink and outwork everyone? Only if it makes me happy, which I’ve found it doesn’t. 😊
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I think it becomes kind of circular tail-chase in the end. What we can prove shows that we’re pretty insignificant in the cosmos, and straight-up ignorant as far as the underlying nature of reality. When I was a kid, I used to wonder if I was a brain in a jar. It’s kind of why I’ve gravitated toward feelings—I’ve managed to feel great in bad situations and bad in great ones, and yeah, sure, I’ll angle for good situations, but my main focus is going to be on managing my emotions. (Like Keanu Reeves who turned down Speed 2 on a gut feeling. Sandra Bullock took it for the money and said she’s regretted it ever since). In the long run, what’s a good situation and a bad situation anyway? I’m sure amazing things have come from bad situations, and I’m sure horrible things have come from good ones.
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That’s a healthy way to look at it, and a good way of avoiding judging someone for not doing their best. I remember watching some science show describing how they detected the first gravity waves a few years back. This is a terrible example because I forget the specifics, but basically some twist of laziness on the observers’ part allowed them to glimpse the gravity waves at a critical moment, when they would have missed it otherwise due to the setup. That’s probably the vaguest, most unhelpful anecdote ever, but I’m just trying to emphasize point that you never know what will end up being a good outcome. 😅
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I agree. I’m fairly certain that’s why I’ve directed my life onto the path I have. I’m too lazy now to try and pretend I enjoy the competition and judginess that comes with being around motivated people. And super chill people just don’t have enough drive or passion to stave off my boredom. It’s pretty cliche at this point, but for me it’s dogs over people for the most part, lol!
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That’s a valid argument as far as competition, but I have seen people succeed wildly at it who don’t have their competitors at the forefront of their awareness. I really just write for the fun of it, honestly, although I definitely started out thinking overly much of how I was stacking up as a competitor. Let’s say I wildly succeed, I still might be super stressed and unhappy. I read a piece on Harry Styles where he was talking about how he thought the only thing of his own was his sex life, which is why he wasn’t too public about it. He also said it was a giant relief when he didn’t have to worry about whether what he was doing next was going to be a commercial success. I’ve had to drift away from a few of my veteran friends because they couldn’t let go of that competitor-at-the-forefront-of-their-brain mentality. It morphed into vast conspiracy theories where shadowy individuals and far-reaching organizations were always targeting them. That’s the ultimate competition: one you can never win, where you’re always outgunned, and where you always have to look over your shoulder. NOT my cup of tea, LOL! So yeah, I guess I’m in competition with others, but I’d rather not think about it, as I’ve gone down that road and it’s exhausting and–in the end–kind of a giant exercise in mental masturbation. I really I just want to be a (your hated phrase). Maybe I should change it to happy goof. 😅
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I used to think that the outcome was tied to the price, as you could suppose with someone like him. Nowadays I’m of the opinion that it was an experience that–if he found unpleasant–allowed him to clarify what he truly wanted and move toward that.
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I’ve definitely been in those situations, but I also have an underlying, unfounded optimism that moving forward with the best choice will at some point lead to a hidden opportunity or pathway that opens up into the things I truly want. My strongest support, admittedly, is anecdotal–that’s how it happened for me. And my friends, once they got to a point where they had to stop choosing out of necessity, chose to stay in a risk-averse mode where they chose practical stuff over their dreams, even though they had resources to start dedicating toward the stuff they wanted. It’s definitely not an either/or: I think I’ve mentioned where I’ve had to exist mostly out of necessity and dedicate sometimes no more than 5 minutes out of the day to writing, but it wasn’t nearly so dramatic a case with my friends.
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Well to elaborate on what I said, I am strongly, STRONGLY against forcing optimism. I believe in continually reaching for the best feeling that resonates, which I believe eventually leads to optimism or joy. That being said, maybe disappointment was the best you could muster for a bit, and that was the right place to be to clarify your desires and move on to the next step. You’re doing great!
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I have been in situations that, if not similar, evoke the same feeling of damned if you do, damned if you don’t. In the darkest situations (which doesn’t necessarily mean outward circumstances, because I believe the hardest thing you’ve been through is the hardest thing you’ve been through, whether that’s torture or not getting the toy you want), it can help me to focus on the fact that my life will end regardless, and that whatever I’m enduring will end as well. Don’t know if that helps, and it’s not necessarily the most positive thought; only go for it if it gives you relief, then ditch it after there’s something better to resonate with.
As far as bucking the rules, you gave them a fair try, and the rules were meant to help us out, we weren’t meant to worship the rules. If that weren’t the case, then you could always get away with “I was following orders.” Or, “That’s what the manual says.” Life isn’t a series of lockstep orders or technical manuals; you’re figuring out your own way forward and that’s how it has to be because your perspective and experience is different from others. You’re doing the right thing!
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I’ve had multiple moments where I’ve done that exact same thing. Ironically, I went the other route—I learned that I’m okay with being dead. But since that was the case, it begged the question: why not see what I can pull off before I die? It’s guided many of my life decisions, which have been somewhat unorthodox. And it’s always been kind of a comfort, because if things get too bad, I can always pull the plug. I don’t know why I trust that everything’s awesome after death (maybe psychedelics) but I do. Also, a famous (but crazy) Korean-American artist named David Choe once said on his podcast that if you want to kill yourself you should go ahead and do it…but only after you’ve gone on a binge of doing everything you want right before you check out, just to make sure you really want to do it. So I’ve kept that in mind–if I ever really want to do it, I’m gonna max out my credit cards doing everything I think I want to do first.
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I’m pretty sure we’ll never be sure of the big picture while we’re alive. But I do suspect we can stumble-feel our way into it. When we allow ourselves to appreciate everything in totality, all the bumps and thrills and nice placid stretches of nothing, then I think we’re living as we meant to live. Some people who do psychedelics have uncomfortable experiences, some have pleasant ones, but by and large I have heard they are educational. Whenever I’ve pushed it to the edge with mushrooms or DMT, a bunch of questions about this or that written down or locked in my attention, the message has always been consistent: those are silly, passing concerns. Relax and enjoy. I suspect it’s part of my evolution from super-disciplined logical overthinker to someone who tries to feel their way through life. 😊
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Yeah, if I had to try and put some practical spin on it, I would venture to say that they’re worth doing a couple times in big doses, then maybe with microdoses or moderate use afterwards. Everyone I know who’s done a big dose of DMT says it’s lifechanging the first time, including me. But afterwards, people keep insisting it’s still amazing but I don’t think it’s necessarily needed. I know someone who’s done it dozens of times and he’s just become more negative and bitter towards the world and society, and all he does is play video games, refusing to do anything, even when I present him with easy options to at least start moving towards his desires. It’s kind of a relief, actually–if doing DMT or mushrooms was the causal factor behind being good or capable or happy, then we would be living in kind of a stupid world where our personal intent was dependent on an external substance. However, I do think doing a giant dose of DMT once is pretty helpful, just to know it’s possible to feel that much love for everything. And the first time, for whatever reason, leaves you feeling positive for a month or two afterwards. I feel like it’s like looking down at a compass and checking your heading. You get a little taste of where you can be and what direction that is.
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In some cases they’re the opposite of addictive, which is pretty interesting. Ayahuasca has been known to have a fifty-fifty (or close to it) chance of relieving addiction to hardcore stuff (can’t remember if it’s heroin or cocaine). Ibogaine has been known to be particularly effective against addiction, even when you don’t want it to be. I had a friend who took it and stopped smoking for eight months even though he wanted to keep smoking. It’s a big thing for opiate addicts. But instead of expanding consciousness out into everythingness, I’ve been told it goes the opposite way, funneling attention down into a super introspection.
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I see two other comments, three in total…wordpress moves in weird ways.
Yep, ibogaine is a fascinating one. From the research they’ve done into it, I think I remember that they’ve ruled out the fact that any effect it has on addiction doesn’t come from a chemical trigger, so it’s a purely psychological process. I definitely think that out of all psychedelics, it should be given the most attention along with MDMA (which is actually an amphetamine, but whatever). It seems to have the most practical value, just at a glance in my opinion.
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That is kind of weird. I’m with you on the tech–I remember as a kid in the nineties I asked the elementary school teacher if something was 8 bit or 16 bit and they exchanged glances as if I was a mutant Einstein. that’s how I see kids now who are good at tech, lol!
Yeah, I think it’s not recommended for anyone with a heart issue or in poor health. The last time I looked into it people generally agreed it could be hard on the heart.
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I’m in similar straits with programming. I’ve taken a stab at it multiple times throughout my life, figuring that if I just matured and gained some perspective, I’d be able to learn it. I’m an abnormally fast study in academic stuff, so it was kind of shocking each time when I could barely pay attention and the class would easily pick up the concepts while I spent tons of extra time trying to wrestle them into some working form of knowledge. It’d always start the same–I’d grasp the concepts and basic definitions, I’d do fine with the first layer of applications, but once I started to build off that initial knowledge, my mind just wouldn’t absorb anymore. It’s one of the big clues in my life–I’ve always had a casual desire to design computer games, but it would take way too much effort; I can’t sense the excitement and potential in the initial stages, like I can with writing.
Man, that’s rough with your brother. I’ve never been close with anyone that struggled with addiction to hard drugs, but ironically I do know someone who is addicted to video games and can take hard drugs for weeks on end and go cold turkey without any problems. But he plays video games as if it’s literal job with healthy overtime. That was one of the other clues I was handed by life–this guy just couldn’t be satisfied with who he was or take advantage of the opportunities before him (of which he had many, especially in terms of easy legal money), and he had to fill it with artificial accomplishment in the form of video games. It really cemented my commitment to being a happy…goof. 😉 I realized even if I became rich, accomplished all my goals, blah blah blah, my satisfaction would ultimately depend on how I decided to frame things through my focus. I could take advantage of exciting new opportunities and revel in the expansion, or I could stay constantly negative, metaphorically play video games all my life and complain about not having enough, even though I had opportunities that other people would kill for, which, in his case, required nothing more than filing some papers and letting other people do my work for me.
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Life definitely doesn’t pull punches when it tells us we’re not suited for something. It’s kind of why I focus more on relaxing and being intuitive–I just got sick of being life’s punching bag, trying to justify everything with a lawyer-esque rationale in my mind and through my actions. I’d get nods and agreement from other people, which I think was important to me because I was insecure and judged everything through external standards, but I never really had any lasting satisfaction or fulfillment.
Whatever you dream, I hope you get it. You deserve it! And whether it happens or not, or unfolds in the way you want it or not, I adamantly believe that the pleasure the dream gives you is your inalienable right. 😊
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No worries. I think that’s where the emotional intelligence comes in. If focusing on a dream feels like crap, then it’s time to distract myself for a bit with whatever gives me some relief, maybe something as mundane as a dog video. As far as working for or fighting something, sometimes that is indeed the path of least resistance that leads to some relief, but I have to be careful that I don’t just do that because that’s the way it’s always been done. I say that because I’ve worked hard, fought for stuff, and felt only misery in the outwardly positive outcome.
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I think I get what you mean. If I do, then I feel the same way, in that doing the right thing hasn’t always necessarily leaded to me feeling better. In order to feel better, I have to feel my way into it, for lack of a better phrase. I have to feel out the thoughts that give me relief, then calm, then positivity.
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I forget about calm when things are hard, but I can always find relief, even if that relief comes from me being super pissed at whatever’s going on. Sometimes I might have to revert to a mindset that I know isn’t long-term sustainable or healthy, like a tough-guy or elitist mindset, but really I’m just looking for relief, which I take as an indicator I’m moving in the right direction.
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Yeap, I agree. In those situations, my relief comes from staying focused on performance, then later it comes from anger and reviewing how I could have performed better. After THAT, it comes from putting together a better approach and gaming out how I’m going to do it better in a similar situation.
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It took me decades to come to that realization that you concluded with. I actually go so far as to believe what other people choose to do is completely outside of my control. I think that if they’re on the same wavelength as me, they’ll listen to me and take my advice, but if I approach them with an antagonistic or elitist mind state it’s only a matter of time before it comes through and backfires on my efforts. So I try to always keep that open door, but I don’t try to drag anyone inside my office, if you get what I mean.
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Absolutely. For me, it definitely hasn’t worked out exactly the way I wanted it to, but I’ve genuinely been surprised by how it’s actually worked out better in certain respects. It’s a big part of why I focus on not being so controlling and plotting and hard-charging disciplined as I used to be, and concentrate more on relaxing into the moment. To be fair, that might not be for everybody, because I’m kind of naturally attracted to routine and discipline without conscious intention at this point. As a general rule thumb, I go for the path of least resistance. If I had done that earlier in my life, I would have applied enough discipline and logic and all that to be confident I had my bases covered, then enjoyed the ride instead of spiraling into overthinking competitiveness where I spent loads of energy on what else I could do to prepare for extraneous problems and contingencies, which always amounted to wasted effort because they never came to pass and I ended up mentally exhausted.
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I’ve experienced something similar, waking up throughout the night in a state of anger or annoyance, then already pissed off when I wake up for the day, unable to go back to sleep because I’m angry. The self-talk can get pretty nuts at that point, more like a self-screaming match.
I’m glad you’re enjoying Echo! It was kind of a herky-jerky development in that I was learning how to do personalize someone in the first book, write action in the second, while the third is kind of my first complete book, with setting, female perspective, and a couple different climaxes, and the fourth was kind of my thesis statement on life and reality, which I couldn’t have written without the skills I’d gained from the others. With the second, I wanted to make Atriya’s job/identity a visceral engaging experience, but at the same time I wanted to show he didn’t belong there anymore and also foreshadow what was coming.
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I’m actually following the saga of an f-list celebrity/comedian/podcaster/former pro athlete who’s suffering from this very thing. Instead of just leaning into the criticism and rolling with it as best as possible (in his case, that would be cracking jokes about the insults), he continues to deny, deny, deny, and get continually caught out on his lies, which has turned his small fan subreddit into a booming hate reddit against him.
I think acknowledging criticism can be important, but really there’s a lot of impact in the tone. To me, it’s not so much when I’ve tried to grasp someone’s argument, as it is when I’ve acknowledged someone’s feelings and their right to be heard. It’s kind of like when you give your dumb friend advice but they refuse to hear it because it’s not really about the advice, it’s about how they want someone to acknowledge their feelings. That’s just me, though. Also, I don’t like being in those environments, which is probably one of the reasons I like writing. Every character has a clear-cut development that fits with external influences, and every one fits neatly into their roles.
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Sounds like a frustrating situation. I imagine over time, you’ve worked it from both ends—figured out a way to communicate so you have a better chance of being heard, and built a network of folks who tend to listen. In my opinion, the second is more helpful, because you don’t have to go through the spiel every time.
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That’s tough. Sometimes it helps to pull those people aside and try to make the case privately, but it’s still hit or miss. Even if you preface it with “I know the consensus, and you’re not gonna believe me but this is what I’ve been through,” experts often like to do it they way anyway.
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What about references from other professionals who you’ve worked with in the past? Maybe they put more weight on that because they’ve had the same schooling.
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The saltiness, eh? It never came across in text, although now I’m a little curious and frightened as to how it would feel face to face…😅
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I feel I’ve been in similar waters, as far as making non-optimal impressions. I spent a good chunk of my life as a blatant overthinker, stressing over every little detail and nuance in conversation, justifying it by saying I’m a good people-reader or I truly care about others. Then I swung toward obsessively functional, where I left no room for emotional standing, so I think I came off as a robotic sociopath. Now I try and catch myself when I end up stressing over other’s thoughts. I have to remind myself that I don’t TRULY know what they’re thinking, and refer to the period where I took so much pride in reading people and remembering where I fell woefully short, where I’d hazard a confident guess and I’d get a laugh and a puzzled look and something along the lines of, “That is not at ALL what I meant.” I think for awhile (not sure if this is still the case) the ability to read people became trendy and fashionable, which led to a bunch of armchair psychologists and click-baity articles about psychopaths and narcissists.
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I’m a big fan of that approach. If I used nail polish, I’d definitely be applying it, lol! I usually interrupt with some super-lazy break in my already-lazy routine. Yesterday, I received some frustrating news, I couldn’t continue with my routine without seething and pushing through it with sheer willower, so I decided to quit stretching halfway through and watch some podcasts instead. It’s tough, sometimes, because I spent so many years as a creature of routine and willpower, but my intuition has warned me of so many things before, I just refused to listen to it.
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Yeah, it definitely is that way for me now. I remember a time when I scheduled some stuff in minutes and hard deadlines so I would always arrive early, always stay ahead of the game, and I remember getting a mild rush out of really digging in and focusing on whatever I had to do, then moving on aggressively through task after task. But that stuff really was for a younger me, when I enjoyed that kind of thing. I’ve become much more blurg over the years. 😅
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Yeah, I’m way better at decision making than I used to be, and although I have had to accept a bunch of physical limitations, I’m stronger in some respects than I ever was.
I’m not really concerned about my health (although I am very healthy) so much as my satisfaction and fulfillment. Health is another thing that I went overboard with, in regard to timing this or that, eating these supplements, taking cold showers, parsing every factoid from Rhonda Patrick…I still have a routine and make tweaks here and there, but I’m not an elite athlete trying to eke .01% more out of my performance, lol. Way too stressful!
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I hope I fixed it. From now on, I’ll make an effort to check the spam folder. Sorry I didn’t do it earlier, now I feel like I was inadvertently big-timing you, lol!
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I get that, I think. I’ve gone through a bunch of obsessive approaches trying to fix my chronic pain, but alot of times I’ve lost my satisfaction and ease in doing so. I do think unexplainable spontaneous healing is possible, and I suspect a large part of it is being in the moment and being as positive as possible. The thing is, I’ve fallen into the trap of trying to be in the moment and be positive as a means to an end instead of the other way around…
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Yeah, I kind of poo-pooed the idea of spontaneous healing as random luck, it’ll never happen to me, but then I figured why not? I read about a Marine who lost the use of an arm due to nerve damage in World War II, he takes up painting, then in his seventies his arm suddenly starts working again. It’s not something I focus on because that can quickly lead to misery (why aren’t I healed yet????) but I do think positivity gives it room to happen if it’s in the cards. 😊
Yep, no problem on the junk folder! I thought it was only going to happen once or twice, but this latest time, I realized if I didn’t start checking the junk folder and unspamming your messages, it was kind of a big-time move, as in I’d be acting too big-time to simply click over and read what you wrote. That’s the last thing I wanna be!
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Or a spam-can outline with a bunch of code in it, with the caption SPAM. IT’S WHAT’S FOR DINNER! 😂
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Haha! Well put! I’ve been there, but I now prefer to be featured on the buffet! 🤣
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I hear you. I probably only think that way because I spent so long in a listless marriage. 😅
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I kind of stumbled into it, to be honest. When I was married, I remember getting so frustrated I got on my knees and prayed to nothing in particular to make something happen where the marriage would dissolve, or just take my life because I was too afraid to end things myself. After I got that out of my system, I realized if I wasn’t going to end things myself, I had to accept where I was, and be as satisfied as possible regardless of what was happening around me. She ended things, which I still am thankful to her for doing, and that’s when I started to wonder if maybe I didn’t have to force or overthink everything, because I had made the decision to just be okay with whatever came along. Definitely not the bravest approach, but I’m too old and carefree to keep trying to prove how brave and smart I am anymore…😅
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Thank you! I also used to be very pragmatic about romance, but now I see it as just another piece of life to enjoy. It’s funny–when I started writing, one of my friends asked me “You’re not gonna write any romance bullshit, are you?” Simultaneously super insecure and hilarious, lol! I really enjoyed writing the romance between Jon and Erany, and if I didn’t, I don’t think I could have written it. Personally, I see a failed marriage as just some clarification as to what I want next. If I’m ever in another long-term relationship, I know specifics as to what I want. 😊
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I think I understand where you’re coming from as far as romance. By that I mean for the longest time, I hated the idea of it because traditionally, there was this power dynamic threaded in it with a big smattering of ownership exclusivity. One person for another person everywhere, all the time, with extremely narrow room to maneuver, where if you step outside the bounds you get a big shock. To me, that’s a lack driven mentality. I gravitate more to the Kevin Smith style, which is fun and sweet and goofy, mainly about two people enjoying each other and having an adventure together. It’s how I envisioned the Jon/Erany romance, where they weren’t nervously speculating about how much the other liked each other and if it would be reciprocated to the same level, or if someone else was trying to steal the other away, or reveling in the fact that one was the other’s and no one else’s; I really wanted to focus on the joy and fun of it. 😊
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Absolutely, in regards to history. I feel a bit of irony in my circumstance, because with my ex I would often encourage her to do whatever she was inspired to do, but she wanted me to be jealous and possessive, which, even when I was younger, seemed like a giant waste of energy. I think some people get a weird kick out of it, which I can kind of understand, in the sense that it’s like being a little hungry before you eat food. But often, I feel, it’s taken to the point of starvation, if you get my meaning.
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Definitely agree with you on the Judeo-Christian pall on relationships. I actually think the religious paradigm (tit for tat, put in a ton of work so you can MAYBE get a reward later?) is in almost every pattern of thought, including Buddhism (meditate your ass off, work away karmas, so you can finally be enlightened). Although in mystical versions of all those traditions, you’re already fully realized, and it’s up to you whether you want to acknowledge it or not. I definitely resonate more with that. To me, it doesn’t have to be nearly as convoluted, articulated, or transactional, it simply boils down to appreciating the moment. 😊
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I’m not a word nerd (not a fan of when people use stuff like “mellifluous” just because), but I’m always on the lookout for a well-placed descriptor, and sometimes they slip out, even when I talk in person to people. I remember I said “proclivities” around my buddies and it completely derailed the conversation; one of them wrote it on his whiteboard so he could remember to use it later and he wasn’t even a writer. 😅
I’d probably agree with that guy’s claims. I meditate myself for 20 minutes a day. The tricky thing is that the absence of meditation benefits don’t make themselves apparent until I’ve been negative for a while, then it takes a bit to reestablish them. That seems to be the case with my friends as well–it’s really subtle, aside from a few exceptions. Also, I think in general, spiritual practices started from a good place, and most of them are similar when you dig deep enough. Just gotta keep focused on that OG goodness! 😁
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I agree! (Also, those sounds like good story premises, LOL!) Romance is potentially a really enjoyable experience, but too often it’s sold as the end-all be-all.
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😂I’m being overly harsh–I think I snuck mellifluous into one of my books somewhere. I just try and pay attention to the rhythm so that it doesn’t feel out of place in the cadence. I’ve noticed JK Rowling likes exactitude, and put it in her Cormorant Strike books and I think in Harry Potter as well, but to me it didn’t read well. Exactitude is a tough one, and I can understand why she’d want to use it because it kind of pops, but it doesn’t seem to blend well in a sentence imo.
Just the other day, I used the word ataxic, which isn’t even an adjective, but a derivative of the real word ataxia. 😅
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I know what you mean on the dialing back. I used to be puzzled when there were so many cool ways to speak and people didn’t do use them. But as I grew older, I started appreciating all of it, to some degree or another. I especially like the tri-state area speech, like from New York or Boston. There’s something oddly poetic, stoic and fatalistic about those dialects, even when that’s not the intent and it’s just some everyday griping, nothing profound.
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I’ve been in and out of the South. In general I’m kind of indifferent about most of the dialects, but I do like that old school, Southern gentleman type of speech. Kind of an interesting blend of Southern twang seasoned with formality.
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I used to be unable to comprehend how folks could get by without a job, but no job AND no money? Now that I’m financially independent, I still act as if I somewhat have a job writing, albeit with an amazing boss that lets me workout and take naps whenever I please. Sounds like an interesting situation.
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No worries on the non-chatting. Get those teeth in line! I haven’t had many teeth problems, but the few I’ve had were absolutely humbling in their ability to suck the joy out of my day!
As far as being my own boss, I used to ironically kind of be a shitty boss to myself, telling myself I had to earn my time off and even though no one was around, strive to be the hardest working guy no one could compete with. Maybe that has a use here and there, but I don’t think it’s good for long-term stuff, especially at my age. 😁
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Antibiotics, ugh! I’ve been on several courses, including an emergency IV when I had terrible cellulitis, to the point where it hurt to move my leg and they were afraid it was going to poison my blood. Then I started working out too soon, too hard, and tore a bunch of stuff. I didn’t know back then that antibiotics weakened soft tissues, and you gotta gradually ease back into working out.
I got a pair of inward slanting front teeth, because even though I had a retainer, I didn’t want braces when I was a kid. It’s all good–I never really got the obsession with perfect teeth either. I drink a lot of coffee, so they’re always off-color anyways. I’m pretty lucky, though–I went nine years once without a dental cleaning and then decided to start doing them again, and the dentist told me I had healthy teeth aside from a bit of plaque. That was pretty much always the case in the military, when my teeth always looked fine even though I don’t floss and only brush once a day. Now that I’ve got dental insurance I figure I’ll do the responsible thing and get the cleanings, though. 😅
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I used to exercise around beaches, and the sand would get into cuts and abrasions, not to mention the not-too-clean water. One time, while I was swimming in a bay with a buddy, a diaper hit him in the face. 😅
As far as combat, yes, I have been deployed and shot at, BUT…this comes with some pretty big caveats that often gets lost in translation to civilians. First of all, there’s levels to combat. I went through (what I call) level 1, which is where I got shot at, saw some dead bodies, but I wasn’t seeing people getting blown apart up close. What I call level 2 is what I roughly equate to the opening of Saving Private Ryan, where friends and enemies are getting ripped to shreds right in front of you. What I call level 3 is something like Apocalypse Now, where war crimes–torture, rape, executions–are being committed left and right, troops have lost all sense of mission, and they’re willing to kill friendly forces (see fragging, much more common in Vietnam and older wars, but I imagine Russians in Ukraine are seeing a lot of level 3 right now). Of course there’s gradients between each level, and I’ve known folks who’ve been in all three circumstances (only one guy who was in level 3, his stories are absolutely insane, it’s hard to believe they happened in the GWOT and not Vietnam). Also, combat does not automatically equate to trauma, although it does seem to traumatize folks and definitely seems to amplify existing trauma. Some people actually like combat, which is kind of a dirty secret that doesn’t seem to get much attention. Trauma, from what I understand, usually comes from brain damage (car accidents is a primary cause) and/or a dissonance with someone’s accepted identity, so if a soldier thinks of themselves as a heroic Christian and ends up having to run over some kids to escape an ambush, then that action diverges from their old identity and they have to create a new identity in order to integrate the trauma. I am quick to say that any of what I went through is not as severe as your typical rape victim. Thirdly, elite status does not automatically equate to willingness or competence in combat, although it is a pretty reliable screening mechanism. I know of special operators who quit their operational status after 9/11, because they didn’t want to see combat, they just wanted to live the cool-guy lifestyle. Also know of a senior special operator who purposefully never went on missions and ran to a bunker and covered himself in body armor whenever there was a scud alert. Conversely, I know of a conventional medic who was super skinny and got made fun of because he looked like he played D&D, then when an IED hit his vehicle, he crawled around without his legs applying tourniquets and caring for his mates. As far as competence, there are similar stories; special training and status does not excuse someone from respecting the fundamental principles of modern warfare. By and large, however, hard training and assessment seems to fulfill its function, but a lot of folks seem to automatically assume it makes an infallible superman, which is not the case. Lastly, this one is pretty obvious, but it is not always dynamic and exciting, even though it may be life-threatening. And sometimes, even if it feels super stressful and engaging, it looks outwardly boring. As a rough example, when soldiers enter a room in a movie, they always do it dynamically, but from what I understand (been out of the loop for a decade, so tactics may have changed), that’s only appropriate if there’s an imminent emergency, like a hostage situation or active shooter. The better way to do it is to edge around the open door a bit at a time, weapon at the ready, so as not to present too much of the room to the assaulter or expose their profile and flanks, or induce “information overload.” Then, when it’s as clear as possible from outside, you can enter dynamically and clear the unseen corners and “dead space” behind couches or other barriers. At that point, you’ve gathered as much information about the space while being as protected as possible, so you’ve minimized the risk.
I’ve heard of combat veterans going to airsoft or paintball and getting destroyed, because they’re used to moving as a giant team, allowing supporting elements to keep in step, but their teen opponents have refined tactics purely for airsoft and paintball and are much more aggressive and skillful in taking advantage of the differing set of parameters.
As far as Echo, I wanted to write it in a way that would appeal to my younger self, with a plausible excuse for my choices. I don’t believe anyone trains to shoot two pistols at the same time, and nor should they. But I grew up in the 90s where it happened in movies, and I wanted a sci-fi, acrobatic version of a John Woo action scene, so I wrote a rationale behind it.
Long answer, but I hope it shed some light! 🙂
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🤣
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Interesting! Yeah, I’m not an expert on trauma, although at one point I thought I wanted to be, so I could help people out in some way. But then I realized I mainly wanted to help resolve my own stuff, and somehow pass that on to others for my own personal validation, not my true fulfillment. And THAT led me to realize you can lay out steps to progress–that even the person in question agrees will help them–but it’s really up to them; they will actually push back and fight you if you prod them to take even the tiniest step forward. I think the cliche is true–the best we can do is serve as examples, then leave the door open for others if they want a hand. And if they’ve made the decision to get better, they’re going to find a way to do it, regardless of if I’m the one who’s giving the assist, or if it’s something else. I feel like I said all that before to you, but you know how continuing correspondence goes…you end up repeating stuff. 😂
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I don’t think of it as wisdom so much as I’m actually kind of weak from a certain perspective–I get exasperated with lack of results and I end up reassessing my approach and seeing if anything needs to be tweaked or changed. I’m not putting myself down; I’m actually grateful for it, because my stubborn friends, who proclaim they’re stubborn with a bit of pride and regret, will just run themselves over and over into a brick wall. I was like that for decades, then I decided nah–being stubborn is NOT for me! 😂
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That does seem a bit backwards. Personally, I don’t think it would be an issue unless they can’t give practical advice, which seems to be the case in your experience.
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That’s a pretty frustrating anecdote! There’s definitely something to what you said as far as people creating more work and waste because they aren’t good communicators or they’re not examining their motivations. As much as I advocate emotional intelligence, I’ve seen people do ridiculous things and reap terrible consequences because they simply felt like doing something stupid. Part of emotional intelligence for me (which I’m still struggling to articulate to myself) is being confident my perception is focused on positivity and clarity before I take action. Otherwise, if I’m negative, doubtful, or believe that someone else is dumber/lesser/doesn’t know as well as I do, I’m going to act in a way that perpetuates those perceptions, maybe even backfiring so that I’M the one who doesn’t know better (which is how I read your example–they thought you didn’t know better, acted upon it, then they ended up being the ones who didn’t know better). I used to think it required a zero tolerance for internal bullshit, along with some kind of dogged determination to hold myself accountable to an exacting degree, but now I think it’s more productive to be soft and open, and let my subconscious creativity and perception do their job and inform me of what’s happening. Often, in stressful situations, I feel like it practically manifests as that cliche of stepping back, taking a breath, and seeing things through a calmer lens.
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An important, albeit frustrating, step is that you’ve recognized and articulated the problem. I have no doubt that as time goes on, you’re going to develop methods and approaches that address things in an increasingly efficient and effective fashion. In the meantime, you just have to make sure you don’t let the adversity destroy your peace. But you got this! 😊
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It may sound weird, but I actually believe you can find a measure of internal peace in all that. Because you’ve given them benefit of a doubt, tried it the friendly way, and now you don’t really have a choice but to do it the other way. I imagine there’s outward frustration, but inwardly, you know and accept what you have to do. I’ve been in similar situations as far as having tried the nice way and then doing it the hard way, and I actually learned to abide in the inevitability of my next course of action, so to speak.
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I figure that’s really the only way that makes any sense. If the universe is random, and bad stuff can happen because of chance, then I figure I have to make use of it or I’m ruled by the odds. If the universe isn’t random, I’d like to think that finding the good in bad is partly how I fulfill my function, because otherwise I’m just designed to suffer. Maybe this is where I’m stubborn, but I refuse to accept that. 😊
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That’s the best way to be. I just think that in the situations I’ve been in where that has been the case, I’ve been able to find peace in the fact that I know that the course of action has been decided because it genuinely seems to be the best I can do with what I have. Sometimes, I get the unexpected treat of finding a better method/tweak/hack along the way, but that’s been a result of my internal acceptance, rather than my paranoid second-guessing.
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Honestly, I believe you don’t need to worry about comprehending the mysteries of the universe because you’re embodying the truth behind them by doing what you can and staying positive. In my experience, that’s what they all boil down to, and all the existential ruminations at a certain point tend to become mealy-mouthed poetry. 😊
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I agree with you in a specific sense, in that poetry isn’t an instruction manual from something greater. I do, however, believe it can use not necessarily logical combinations of words to transcend verbiage itself and encourage the reader into feeling the presence of something greater, if that makes sense. Most of my life I never liked poetry until I realized this was a possibility, so I played with the concept a bit in Echo 4. Once again, I don’t think you have to adopt any position anytime, anywhere, for any reason. But from what you’ve said, I’d like to think you’re hewing to the fundamentals underlying all that stuff, and if you aren’t, I believe we’re in a no-lose game so the worst you can do is hold up the fun for a bit. 😊
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I believe there’s very good reason for that. In my belief, the evidence should never go beyond anecdotal (the most fascinating anecdotes for me are past life memories claimed by little kids, which according to my mom, I had as well–I spontaneously told her on a car ride that I had lived many lives before this, and I think this is going to be my last one, which freaked her out; she didn’t know how I could have learned a notion like that at my age). If we allow the premise that we are mirrors of something omnipotent, then I believe it would not only imbue us with the ability to create through what seems to be coincidence (otherwise we’d be Sims at the hands of a separate intelligence, or characters in a story who were unable to change their roles), and we’d also be able to create our own hell and/or choose whether or not to believe in said omnipotence. Because otherwise, if we were bound by scientific evidence, then we’d be denied the freedom of wandering off the sweet spot so we could taste a little bitter, and in turn dream up new ways to make the sweet spot sweeter, if that makes any sense.
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I don’t remember saying it at all, which weirded me out because that’s the kind of thing I feel like I would remember saying. My mom told me about it late in my marriage, around 2014 or 15, and I was like what are you talking about,? I would DEFINITELY remember saying that! 😅
I never thought about vagueness of scripture from that angle, I always saw it as a good thing because it allows for people to form their own interpretations that apply specifically to themselves. I guess it’s when they start laying it on everyone else that it becomes a problem. On that thought-thread, now I’ve added another bonus for psychedelics: by nature, they give a personalized experience to each person.
I agree with the poetry requiring greater emotional connection…a lot of it doesn’t make logical sense, so the emotional alignment has to be on point in order to evoke a reaction even though it’s not logical.
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As far as the personal relationship with God (or whatever you want to call it), I’m biased because of my cult-lite experiences. I saw people take things literally and put themselves in bad positions to kowtow to the cult-lite leader.
But as to your question, I would say that it’s a little convoluted, but yes, ultimately, a person has to develop their own relationship with divinity. The reason I say it’s convoluted is that I believe everyone is part and parcel of divinity (as I’ve mentioned from before), and they have their own inner guidance, but sometimes, the path of least resistance for them may involve associating with other like-minded people. However, if they prioritize other folks’ desires over their own individual guidance, I believe it leads to disconnection, which is where disharmony arises. Ultimately, I do believe that in order to experience true harmony with divinity, everyone does have to accept and embrace their own divinity along with everyone else’s, which means as far as personal worth (in the existential sense), no one is better or worse than anyone else. So that’s where the seemingly weird mentality arises where someone can fight or kill while loving the other (Arjuna from the Bhaghavad Gita), and alleged special powers, because someone who truly experiences the lack of separation between physical illusions arising from divinity can arrange those illusions as they see fit, because they are existentially connected to them and it becomes an act akin to moving a body part that is connected to your brain.
From a logical point of view, I see it like this: starting with the premise that God has limits due to omnipresence and omnitemporality (how can you experience anything new or go on a journey if you’re in every moment and every destination?), and in order to become truly unlimited, God fragmented himself into limited pieces so he could experience journeys and novelty. Those pieces would have to be unique or there wouldn’t be novelty and it would defeat the point of self-fragmentation. So logically, I’d say that everyone’s journey back to their God-self is unique in nature, which means that in the end, they can’t follow someone’s blueprint for their return to divinity. They have to follow their own inner guidance.
As far as cherry-picking anecdotal support, I like to think that adhering to one’s own inner guidance, especially in times where it clashes with other desires, is where the advice against worshipping false idols springs from (the true God is within every consciousness, and illusory disharmony begins when worshipping others’ desires above one’s own inner guidance). I also like to believe that it is what Buddha meant when he said he’d come back as Maitreya, or friend. He’s not a teacher or boss or anything hierarchical, he’s just a fun piece of the divine to hang out with, which is self-evident to those who realize they are the existentially the same as Buddha. In the existential sense, no better, no worse. I believe the incarnation of Maitreya is referencing a moment when the aspirant becomes enlightened and perceives their existential equality to Buddha.
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From my set of premises, I can find partial agreement with surrender to God, but not in the way LDS seems to state, because I don’t believe in God as some separate, all-powerful overlord who bosses us around. I believe divinity is part of us, IS us, and our unique individual limited perspective is essential to God being truly unlimited, as I detailed in the last response. So to surrender my will works for me if I surrender myself to the full-being totality that I feel when my emotions and thoughts are truly aligned, in what I would practically define as a positive focus, when I feel good for no reason whatsoever regardless of whatever’s happening.
I can’t believe I used to agree with the idea of a God that is separate from us. In that case, God would be like a sadistic Sims creator who made a bunch of Sims that don’t know the rules (and are willing to kill/torture each other because they disagree over them), are born into randomly disparate circumstances, and have one shot to either make it or burn, all without ever being handed a rulebook and being very likely stuck with a shit set of circumstances right from birth. Additionally, those who make it to heaven probably had to delay massive amounts of gratification, which probably translated into a lifetime of unpleasantness, hell on Earth in some cases. It’s kind of a nonsensical, lose-lose scenario that I just don’t care for. Also, even if someone has the rules and makes the right moves, their life is reduced to a shortage-based, transactional existence. By that I mean there’s only so many ways to heaven to go around, and you have to continually pay the price to secure the reward. That’s also kind of ridiculous in my mind—it’s putting a cheap, business-transaction vibe on everyone’s lives.
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Ironically, I believe the LDS members, if engaging in that kind of oppression and lack mentality, are creating their very own hell for themselves at the same time they create it for others. And doubly ironically, the Unitarians, even though they don’t profess to adhere to a singular belief system, have, in my mind, mirrored the God-perspective with their acceptance and openness. God as stated in my other answer, in my opinion, is open and accepting of all his myriad fragments, and will accept them back into him at the end of a no-lose game. We fragments can throw tantrums before that happens, but with no reason whatsoever, I am confident that death will come as a surprising delight, as we remember what we truly are and relax back into unconditional benevolence.
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I’m not sure if you’re in the right place to hear this, but perhaps there is something in your LDS experience you could leverage for a positive outcome (if you haven’t already, maybe the poem was part of that). The cult-lite was integral to me writing. When I wrote Echo 4, Mandala City’s residents were written as members of my cult-lite. The cult-lite put me on the path to DMT and developing my own stance through introspection, because that time period introduced me to the nuances of the beliefs I now hold. Prior to that, I was just trying to find the belief system with the “right set of rules,” that would offer some kind of guarantee that I’m going to be successful. Now I firmly believe each person has their own set of rules, as I’ve mentioned through my long commentary about omnitemporal/omnipresent God and why S/He would self-fragment/limit. It sounds to me that your UCC is right on track with nurturing the fragments and encouraging them to a place where they can honor and relax into what I think is their true nature of acceptance and enjoyment of all God’s fragments (just as S/He would do as an unconditionally loving being—accept, love, and enjoy all his/her parts in their stumbling and bumbling adventuring through life), rather than suppressing them and encouraging them to suppress other fragments. That ironically, would be acting out a Satanic mentality, to use Christian terms.
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Nice! I wasn’t that way for awhile; I wallowed in anger and resentment and it affected everything I did. I linked up with former cult-lite members and we spent hours talking about how much we hated people we used to know. After a few years of that, I realized I had to let it go, I couldn’t let it define my life or constantly experience things from a place of reactive negativity. Ironically, I had to drift away from the former cult-lite members who I used to empathize with, because every time I hung out with them it was a big negative hate-storm. They would get pissed if I started framing things positively, or they would say it wouldn’t work out because of x y and z, or I was at least going to have watch my ass because remember this or that. It wasn’t an epiphany, but more of a gradual realization that I’m not alive to spend the rest of my life dumping on people who I haven’t seen for years. I don’t wanna be the beaten, snappy dog that never recovers from their ordeal; I want to be the happy prancy dog, if that makes sense.
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It’s only in the last few years that I’ve started to realize what you touched on with the LDS converts vs LDS born and raised pissing contest: the hardest thing someone has been through is the hardest thing that someone has been through. Just because other people have been through harder doesn’t mean that someone doesn’t have the right to feel pain or anger. Plus, I have also realized that people don’t feel pain the same way. I’ve been through things that make other people commit suicide, while I’ve heard things from others where I shake my head and tip my hat in the sense that I just wouldn’t see a reason to keep living if I had experienced what they did. Ultimately, though, I came to the conclusion that I don’t need to be spending too much time judging or weighing or trying to prove myself as worthy of more consideration or less. I know what it means to be predominantly negative, and I just don’t want a part of it anymore, even if that means I don’t associate with certain friends as much. I believe in abundance, so I’m of the mind that if I need new friends that vibe with me, I’ll find them somehow. And my old friends don’t need me to coddle them or echo chamber them when I’m ready to move on. They too, will find support in the way they are looking for it. That’s what I believe anyway–abundance mentality and all that. 😊
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I’d go a step further–even if you walk through it and do it differently, you still can’t judge the other person with true certainty, because you don’t have the exact set of inputs that person had growing up, and you don’t have the exact perceptual configuration they have due to genetics and whatnot. I’m fine with pushing people away or setting boundaries, but honestly, I can’t really say for certain what’s going on with them, which means that condemning them is my issue in the end. It’ll probably help to do it initially, move through some anger in the beginning, maybe revisit it for a touch here and there, but personally, I just can’t do it long-term. I became an angry bitter old man in my early thirties and I didn’t care for it. Now I’m devolving in a positive sense, lol!
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Yeah, it is definitely healthier in the long run. When I first started coming around to this point of view, I was still too hard on myself, trying to force positivity or chiding myself for having negative thoughts. Nowadays I tell myself I have the right to feel what I feel, but just relax, find the best-feeling thought you can, and have faith it will open into something better. Funny that in the older days I strove so hard to justify having faith in something greater, now I just work on living it and letting that faith prove itself to me, rather than chasing it and trying to prove myself worthy of it.
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It also makes me exponentially more tired and angry. For me, it feels like trying to dam up the ocean.
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It’s interesting how I disagree with the specifics of a “thought sin,” but I do agree with the generalized principle behind it. I don’t think I get punished for thinking wayward thoughts, and I don’t think they’re an affront against anyone, including a greater power, but I do believe they shape our perspective, emotions, and eventually behavior. To me, it’s more of a buffet than some kind of existential test in that I can choose to eat sour or bitter, but it’s really just to prime my palate for savory or sweet. That being said, I’d like the balance of my thoughts to skew more in favor of savory or sweet, but it’s not some kind of moral barometer, it’s just a personal preference which I find to be more pleasant. As far as feeling guilty or ashamed for thinking something, I feel like that will compound negativity, and if the church was truly in sync with a source of unconditional benevolence, it wouldn’t encourage that reaction. Sounds like the UC–where you don’t feel guilty for thought or belief–is more in line with that unconditional mindset. That’s just my opinion, though.
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Yeah I agree on the off-balancing. I saw this firsthand in the cult-lite experience, where there were many conversations about “I screwed up on the dream plane” and things of that nature, then the so-called guru would dole out reassurance at the right moments and win points for being the merciful authority. Mostly a lot of collective haranguing, though, with someone made into a specific example every now and then.
I don’t buy into the thought sin either. Just clarification as to what I really want, as far as I’m concerned. The only advice I give myself is at some point, it’s more enjoyable to stop clarifying so hard and relax into what I’ve clarified. But if I keep clarifying, that’s okay too, it’s just less efficient as far as enjoyment goes.
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I hear you on the planning. I, however, used to be an overplanner–contingencies upon contingencies and then once the plan was ready, worrying over the contingencies I hadn’t yet thought of. After awhile, I realized I plan way more than folks who consistently enjoy success, so I started dialing it back. I plan for the grossly obvious, things that evoke reasonable concern, things that catch my attention (when I’m not obsessing) as well as anything my intuition decides to highlight. That’s just me, though–I used to burn out because of the amount of planning and obsessing I would do.
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That’s the best way to do it, I think. The low-key shaming of someone else having it worse than me doesn’t work with me anymore.
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I hear you on the little voice. I think it’s a fine line, though. It’s good to make up for past wrongs and apologize, but then I try and keep in mind that the person has a right to react however they want. Honestly, it’s more for me to make sure I’m being the person I want to be. All too often, I viewed those kind of things as transactional, where I offered up a statement for a certain reaction, but that rarely turned out well.
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Totally agree with the kids having no say in being born. Not to get too political, but there have been times I sincerely wished I wasn’t born, plus babies are without sin so they go straight to heaven, so I never got the far-right argument against abortion.
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I agree, but I’m also guilty of it. I’ve drifted away from my friends who got involved in ranting about politics. I just want a regular conversation, maybe a CASUAL bit of politics, not a barrage of talking points. At first I tried to engage with them by doing research and following up on this point or that point, but they just dug in, so at this point I’m done with folks like that. A lot of those people, I think, feel powerless at a deep level and express it by trying to impose their beliefs on everyone else.
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As much as I’ve been a loner, I’ve definitely fallen victim to this desire to be accepted, so I can sympathize. It was only after I realized that even my friends and family could never truly see what I was thinking that I started to feel some peace; let them see what they see, and trust that I’ve seen what I’ve seen. Let them want what they want, and allow myself to want what I want.
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I have an odd take on that in that I believe she’s expressing her individual truth in that particular matter, and another individual in a different circumstance wouldn’t reap fulfillment or energy from pursuing the same route (e.g. stereotypical starving kid in third world country). It’s kind of why I like to believe that even though we aren’t bound by destiny, we are guided by larger currents, and it is to our advantage to go downstream with them. She’s been guided into a position to make a good impact by telling her story, but I think ultimately for her it is about being true to herself and expressing her own authenticity, not about controlling what someone else thinks. I believe her message will resonate with people who are primed to resonate with it and good things will come, but not because she was trying to control what others think, but because she was expressing herself in an authentic manner. If I advocated for a cause I had no belief or interest in, even though it was technically moral, I’m deep-down convinced that nothing much would come of it. If I tried to control people just for the sake of controlling them, I don’t think I’d have great results. If, however, there was something I was guided to do, then I think I’d resonate with people who were in the same mental space as I was, or were ready to be in that same space.
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I don’t think so either, which is why I like what she’s doing. Conversely, someone who just wants to boss around others thru shame and nobility, no matter how good the cause usually just turns me off.
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