Category: personal growth

Decision tree

high contrast black and white, grainy, tree planted in ground, growing arrows pointing in different directions

I just went through and deleted all of my drafts.

Most of them were unplanted seeds – random thoughts I liked the feel of but never enough to nurture into more than a few sentences.

A few were complete, unpublished entries written by a person in a different place and time. Eloquent, witty, no longer representative of either who I am or who I want to be. I thought it might be hard to part with them, but they had their time, and in it I decided to hold them back. They don’t have a future, unless I’m living my life wrong. Which, of course, I might be, but I’m not going to bet in favour of that reality. So they’re gone, and that feels almost as good as writing something new.

A few years ago I ripped up all my journals. I meant to burn them, and I tried once, but I didn’t have the equipment necessary to start a good enough fire. And I never got the equipment. And at this point I’m unsure whether I just dumped them in the recycling, or squirreled them away in a suitcase to be uncovered at some later date.

The decision to burn them felt liberating. Then, later, the failure to burn them felt relieving. Now, honestly I don’t care what happened to them, but if I find them, I’ll throw them out. They don’t represent me, and they hold no interest to me. I remember who I was in them. I’m sure there’d be a few surprising cringes lurking between their lines, but broadly, I understand their writer. And their writer was not me. And nor was she someone who had very much to teach me.

Before the big rip, I’d considered my journals precious. I would return to them, and experience new revelations. I was dealing with big lessons and the process was agonisingly repetitive. After the rip, I flip-flopped a bit, and so their usefulness swung from better off dead to in need of resurrection and back again. I’m not sure my decision over whether to burn or dump or store made any difference to that journey, and I’ll try to keep that in mind.

If you’re not sure what to do yet, the choice might not matter that much anyway.

Posted on by Yve 0

Conservation or conversation?

high contrast black and white, grainy photorealism, winding path made of words

My last bunch of posts have been scheduled in advance.

And I changed my theme to try out some of the wordpress functionality that I have been thoroughly ignoring for some time. Then I regretted it when I saw the results, but ploughed on bravely.

And I connected this to my Twitter account. My barely broken in Twitter account with 100 followers that rarely tiptoes beyond vss365 prompts and replies to Lex Fridman.

Then I didn’t like how it displayed the first post, so I deleted it, and panic-disconnected, then added silly AI images to my posts, then reconnected, and then it didn’t display the same way again so the images made no difference, but hey, at least we all had fun.

I seem to be trying something new. Something somewhat uncomfortable.

I might even stretch to a complete blog overhaul, given I’ve now spent several hours just making it look not too horrific to bear. Though that does sound ambitious.

I had been conserving myself for a long time, because for a while after my last relationship, getting through the day was the priority, and that didn’t feel guaranteed. But what once was a survival tactic has now become an easy habit. One it’s probably time to break. After all, what could I be conserving myself for, if not this?

I’m better when I write. That part’s simple. So…why not also make it a little bit complicated? Just a little bit – just enough to let it feel serious. And why not expend some of my preciously conserved energy on it too? At least enough to let it feel real.

I don’t know where I’m going, but if I don’t go, I’ll never find out.

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Openings

black and white, high ISO grainy photorealism, chaotic and busy schedule, weekly planner, book

I’ve been trying lately to dedicate myself to projects that may not have any perceivable outcome. To get fully immersed and commit chunks of time that I won’t get back, in exchange for nothing but the knowledge that I did so. Things that have little to no hope of earning money or gaining acclaim.

I have felt time-poor ever since starting work a year ago. And to be transparent I don’t even work full-time. I work on the days I don’t have my son. And on the days I do have him, that’s my work. I am aware that I put much more conscious time and effort into parenting than other people I know, and I’m not going to say that’s the best way to parent, because who the fuck knows, but it’s what I do. I notice myself getting irritable if I try to split my focus while I’m doing the parent stuff, so I avoid even WhatsApp messages during that time if I can get away with it.

My life is dichotomous at best, and chaotic at usual, so I tend to fail at daily consistency. As I have so lamented on many occasions. But, though I lack predictable daily windows of opportunity, I do get periods of time that open up, not according to a particular schedule, where I can dedicate myself to something else. And there are a plethora of projects I would like to dedicate myself to, but I have gotten into the habit of simply not engaging with them, for fear either that it will be, objectively, a waste of time, as judged by its outcome, or that I will reach the end of the opening and it will remain incomplete; pending into oblivion.

So I’m trying, again, to do things anyway. Make progress on some non-linear scale that perhaps only has meaning somewhere within the hidden labrynth of my mind, assessed purely by the sensation in my body at having done the thing.

It sounds like an obvious thing to do, when I put it like that. See, this is why I like it here.

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Unknown love

How many people these days are falling in love with people they’ve never met? Never even had a single two-way interaction with?

I have a proclivity for falling in love with people (and one may argue also objects and ideas) that are incapable of loving me back. So whether or not I fall in love with people I’ve never met is not a particularly useful gauge of anything. But technology has created a very robust category of one-way parasocial relationships, that can come in many flavours. Romantic love is surely one of them.

I wonder how many people, today, are hoping for something impossible. And how many are, secretly, perhaps even to themselves, glad of the impossible. And how many are wondering if, maybe, just maybe, the impossible is possible after all.

Because sometimes it is. But you can only be known if you let yourself be known. And, sometimes, for that, you must make yourself known.

One way relationships are safer than the alternative. I have fun hiding in them all the time. My brain has been delighted by all the excellent people it can watch on a screen from the shadows. But I don’t want that to be the peak of my experience. I don’t want the best relationships I’ve ever had to be with people who didn’t even need to know about them. I want more. And for that, I need to let the impossible be possible. I need to show myself to someone capable of seeing.

Of course, what comprises that capability has always been the conundrum. But my part in it, at least, I have some say in.

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Tweet tweet

I have waded into Twitter.

It seems a weird time to do that. Not because I have particular opinions on how Elon is managing things, given my up-to-this-point complete lack of investment, but more just because…Elon is managing things. And my coincidental presence feels like a statement that I’m not qualified or inclined to make. I will admit I probably veer more toward the Elon-fanboy category than away from it – I would rather trust him than many of the other options. But I know fucking nothing, so make of that as little as it warrants.

So why have I waded into Twitter?

I’ll be frank. It’s because I watched Lex Fridman on Andrew Huberman’s podcast and it reminded me how much I fucking love the guy, and how from the moment I heard him speak I believed in his integrity, and from the moment I heard him speak about love I was thrilled to hear those kinds of words out of, well, anyone’s mouth except my own, but specifically an intelligent, rational man’s mouth. And it turned out a lot had happened since I decided it would be weird to tune into an artificial intelligence podcast just to hear his voice. He’s kind of a bigger deal now. And he even talks to psychologists.

So, naturally, I then immersed myself in his content to explore whether this admiration and, dare I fucking say, desire I felt, persisted.

And it did. So that told me some things. Not least that I am not in fact beyond having a proper fucking crush on someone. It hadn’t happened for a fucking while, so I was beginning to wonder. But of course I wanted to investigate the underpinning factors, given the fact I am unlikely ever to meet the man, let alone actually know him.

And what I learned, first, was that I wanted to be the kind of person that would attract a person like Lex Fridman. And what I learned, next, was that I am not, necessarily, not the kind of person that would attract a person like Lex Fridman. And what I learned, then, was that, regardless of that, there are things I admire about Lex Fridman that I would like to integrate into my own character, and that is more important to me than attracting anyone else into my life.

And so I wanted to scout for any opportunities to submit a question to him about something he has mastered that I have not. And Twitter seemed to be the obvious way.

So. after this extended meander, I arrived at Twitter to find that, of course, I had already been there and forgotten about it, when I intended to explore Writers’ Twitter. I have, in actuality, visited Twitter on a number of occasions, armed with a number of email addresses, and with a number of intentions…but none of it amounted to anything.

Yet there I was again, and this time, for some reason, without much thought, I fucking replied to a Lex Fridman post, and went about my day. Now, I absolutely acknowledge that is not remotely a big deal, objectively speaking. But, like I said, I’ve been to Twitter many times, and always I’ve felt deeply uncomfortable with the idea of actually engaging; fucking hell, no fucking thank you very much. And that’s why nothing came of it.

So, now I’m living in a new fucking reality, why fucking stop there? There are photos of space to comment on in awe, and writing prompts to indulge myself in ’til the cows come home. I am being conservative with it. Sort of. Maybe. I don’t fucking know. But, I’m there, and it doesn’t paralyse me to consider posting a tweet. So tweet I fucking shall.

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Flight.

Time. Timetimetimetimetime. Where does it all go? Nowhere, you’re the one going places.

I’ve been off on many tangents lately. Flittering about through fiction, illustration, leopard geckos and past traumas. And I keep coming back to the issue that there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to fully indulge myself in the explorations I wish to pursue. Quite often, I stop myself from starting because I know a thread left half-pulled is infinitely less satisfying than one left in the weave.

I suspect I need a radical change. A change more radical than I am probably willing, at this point in….’time’, to make. And so I also suspect that things may be about to get more uncomfortable for me, until I reach the point where I become willing to make it. But I’m holding out hope, still, in this relatively comfortable place, that there is an alternative of inching forward toward the precipice, throwing things over the drop, so that when I get there, and peer over the edge, I will see the landing, and feel reassured that I won’t break my legs. That the change will no longer be so radical that I feel I will need to spontaneously grow wings.

But it would be pretty cool to have wings, I can’t deny that. And the thing is, maybe I have them – maybe I’ve spent these years of life growing them. I don’t know. All I know is I’ve never really flown before. Maybe the only way to find out if you can fly is to fall a great distance, and see if the wind catches in your feathers.

I’ve tried flying a few times before – I didn’t kill myself, but the landings were hairy, and I didn’t arrive at the intended destination. It hasn’t felt fair to take that leap with a five-year-old on my back. Not because I fear he would suffer materially, if things went bad – he’s lucky to have a lot of people looking out for him. But if I land badly, my mind will likely become an inhospitable place for a while, and I probably wouldn’t be able to shield him from that. I would be less pleasant, all my demons made manifest. And it wouldn’t be his fault, and it wouldn’t be his choice.

Oh, but it’s so clear that I’m holding myself back. And I’m not sure there’s a rationalisation that can withstand scrutiny. I’m scared, that’s all.

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