Buster's Tumblr entries

From http://bustr.tumblr.com

Had a good quiet night at home. Salad, wine, finishing the question book, catching up on Gossip Girl, posting to tumblr from bed in the dark while Kellianne sleeps.

The epiphany of going towards uncomfortable emotion is continuing to make me think. Tried it for a while and the experience and duration of an emotion seems to be completely different when going towards it rather than going away from it. It has no positive or negative value when you face it. When avoiding an emotion, or wishing to change it, a negative and unpleasant value springs up and merges with the initial feeling, making it stronger and more powerful.

It’s a Buddhist principle at heart, the whole embracing and letting things pass philosophy. Feelings are meant to be fleeting, it’s only story and meaning that prolongue and twist their faces in exaggeration. A feeling that lasts is probably being fed by an artificial source.

“Go towards it.”

-

Can You Become a Creature of New Habits? - New York Times:

She recommends practicing a Japanese technique called kaizen, which calls for tiny, continuous improvements.

“Whenever we initiate change, even a positive one, we activate fear in our emotional brain,” Ms. Ryan notes in her book. “If the fear is big enough, the fight-or-flight response will go off and we’ll run from what we’re trying to do. The small steps in kaizen don’t set off fight or flight, but rather keep us in the thinking brain, where we have access to our creativity and playfulness.”

Analytically, procedurally, relationally (or collaboratively), and innovatively.  Adulthood focuses on the first two, childhood on the second two.

Comfort, stretch, and stress.

In about 15 minutes I get to try to talk myself out of a fine. Strategy: emphasize our good intentions, our willingness to follow the law, our desire to do what is safe and good, and our acknowledgement of what we did wrong.

I’m feeling slightly sinking.  My mood matches the overcast weather, my coffee, a brisk walk to work, posting to Tumblr, and being quiet.

I want to feel stronger, to have an energy from inside that allows me to get the things I need to do today.  Drinking coffee drives me towards this goal, at least temporarily.  Brute forcing myself to begin the smaller tasks drives me towards this goal, as doing one small thing at a time creates momentum. 

People don’t really talk about feelings because it’s seen as an indulgent activity. To talk about feelings is to take them out of the place they belong (the background) and make them a more visible part of the narrative. We prefer feelings to be felt but not acknowledged, except in very general happy/sad/angry terms.

Feelings are everywhere, we’re experiencing them all the time, and yet it’s annoying to actually talk about them. It’s like talking about your dreams. It’s too personal, and also too ego-centric at the same time.

Feelings are the payout of life. They are the reason we want to fall in love, or get a raise, or avoid getting in debt, or avoid having a relationship fall apart. They are the reward and punishment for everything. Yet they are also fleeting and difficult to pin down. You can’t make a feeling happen directly. You can set up a scenario that often leads to a feeling though… like having a drink, or traveling, or shopping.

Then there are activities that have a variety of potential emotional payoffs. Like moving to a new city, or entering into a relationship, or changing jobs.

What good is money if it doesn’t give you a feeling? Isn’t it the feeling of money that drives us to it? The feeling of pure potential, of style and luxury and adventure?

What good is stability or a family or a relationship unless it gives you a feeling? Isn’t it the feeling of security or community or love that drives us to these things? The feeling of being accepted, loved, respected?

What good is health if it doesn’t give us a feeling? Isn’t it the feeling of balance, strength, and clarity that drives us to be healthy?

What good is adventure? What good is power? What good is a beautiful hike? What good is a great book or a great movie or a great show? They are good when and if they generate a feeling. And not just a feeling but a good feeling, one that goes with the appropriate activity, the one that we were after.

And then the feeling goes away and, if we liked it, we continue looking for ways to bring it back. Hobbies, likes and dislikes, and all kinds of daily activities are structured around this pursuance of new or old feelings.

I’m gonna do a panel for a silly overnight conference thing. The topic will be enjoyment and the panel will be about the different ways to enjoy something, and an attempt to come up with a system for classifying the kinds of enjoyment we can experience.

1. Enjoy something for its physical properties, and the way we experience them through the senses. Sensual enjoyment.
2. Enjoy something for its social or cultural properties. Its worth and meaning to you and/or others. Social enjoyment.
3. Enjoy something for what it is.

I think there are a couple other categories of enjoyment, but they’re on my home computer. I’ll need to add them later.

At slow weights today I mentioned to Sherry that I feel like there’s a mental block for me right now when I reach the failure point.  She asked me what thought or image or feeling comes to mind when my muscles reach failure.  After imagining my way through it, I realized it’s panic and “I can’t”.  I imagine myself explainingto someone (her) why I can’t continue, and argue to myself that I’m doing my best.

This strikes me as interesting because first of all this is parallel to other events in my life.  And the slow weights could be a good place to begin practicing and training myself for a better response to the point of failure.

She mentioned the Release Technique.  A program by Echart Tolle, Lestor Levenson, and a few other self-help gurus.  About reaching that point of failure and turning towards it, releasing the desire to change the failure, and letting it pass through you. 

We talked about how discomfort is merely the desire to change reality.  Embracing reality, going towards the feeling rather than running from it, allows the feeling to move through you and past you.  You learn that the thing you were running from is not nearly as uncomfortable as the discomfort created by running away from something that you can’t run away from.

There’s a valuable piece of knowledge in there somewhere. 

Difficulties abound.  Woke up early and talked with some people on the phone about a very difficult situation, but everyone is positive and ultra helpful.  I am forcing myself to remain positive, while keeping in mind the seriousness of everything that is happening.

I’ve been getting advice that perhaps I’m playing too nice.  Everyone likens this to a fight or flight dichotomy where I must choose to fight.  With passion, good intentions, and power.  I need people to help me, but people who are not helping should step back.  My strong suit has always been to play nice, to appeal to a person’s better self, to try to inspire collaboration and partnership rather than opposition.  Fighting for cooperation, however, leads one to never strike out aggressively at someone who’s causing problems.  This is the move that many people say I should make.  I don’t even know what my aggressive move would be though.  I can’t do this on my own, I need help from my adversaries as well as my friends.

Which strategy is best?  I realize that my strategy is being employed right now simply because it’s my strong suit, and not necessarily because it’s the best strategy. 

I’m trying to pay attention to my feelings.  Not in the normal happy/sad sense, but more in the bodily sensations, the feelings that saturate my body throughout the day and prompt me towards certain dispositions, reactions, and judgments.

I’ve come up with three primary kinds of feelings.  The sinking feeling, the bounding feeling, and the balancing feeling.  

Sinking is that feeling in your chest of descending.  As if something were pulling you down.  As if there was a black hole in your gut and everything was being sucked into it.  Sometimes I think of it alternately as crushing.  I think crushing is a more intense form of sinking.  It can take the form of appreciation… seeing the beautiful in the ordinary, loving something you can’t have, dreaming of something better, running away from what actually is.

Bounding is that feeling of expansion, of wanting everything, of feeling strong, confident, and as if you could take on more than you currently have.  It is a desire for experience.  It’s passion, excitement, consumption.  It is the state of forward progress and creativity.

Balancing is the feeling of stillness.  It’s an active emotion and sensation, one that has to be maintained, like balancing on a ball.  Eating right, being healthy, being well rested, not wanting to disturb the status quo.  It is the state of responsibility, ration, and common sense.

Andy jumps into the picture.

Me: Hahahahahaha
Ingo: Hahahahaha, oh god. Ow.
Me: I have what they call a hangover. And a burning mouth from eating poisonous flowers.
Ingo: It's all your fault.
Me: Which makes the pain all the sweeter.

Almost everything I do in a day has an intended audience.  Lately I’ve been feeling that I’ve been getting lost somewhere between who I am and how people see me.  I want there to be a corner of my life where no audience is required, or even intended.  Something that does not take into account what people might think. 

I think some people are more sensitive to the feedback loop of impressions than others.  I’m one of those people.  I act, see how I act from other perspectives, adjust the act, reinterpret the interpretation, and adjust again.  It’s a hall of mirrors feedback loop and what once was a clear picture of myself turns into a tunnel of grayness extending to infinity.

I’m so tired of reinterpreting my own actions and motivations, that even the act of reading what I’m typing as I type it is beggining to grate on me.  Closing my eyes while I type is helping me connect with the in itial thought rather than the thought one step removed on the screen.  It feels refreshing. 

Even myself as audience is not required.

I’ve tried to start using Tumblr at least half a dozen times but the lack of comments really makes it difficult for me to get into it.  It’s the whole reason I love livejournal… threaded comments (and protected posts).  But then again, those comments also create an environment that gets set in a bit of glue.  In some cases, it can turn into a bit of an echo chamber.

Lately I’ve been feeling isolated in my online presence.  I put so much information out there, but it doesn’t help me connect with people.  I want to participate in a culture of creativity and passion and clarity of thought and emotion.

So I’m going to try this, and the lack of comments may be freeing.  Maybe it’ll feel more like a personal journal.  I have a lot of stuff in my head that doesn’t get said primarily because I’m afraid of the comments or the response it’ll create.

Okay.

Brunch with Asa, Carinna, and Megan was good.  The walk home was good.  Kellianne coming home right now is good.  The BBQ we’re going to is going to be good.  Friends are good.  This is good. 

I’m no longer afraid of what might happen.  Of course, I may become afraid again after this feeling of calmness wears off.

I am feeling calmness, a caffeine buzz in my head, a well-rested energy buzzing in my arms, a feeling of accomplishment and rightness throughout.  This feeling matches Metric playing on the stereo, a finished ice mocha, and a morning without too many urgent tasks on the agenda.

I want to feel this calmness, it’s good, with perhaps a bit more acknowledgment and completion.  I want my stress to be behind me, I want to feel like I have nothing to hide from anyone.  I will do this by using this calmness and energy to complete a few more things that need to get done.  Completeness of one sort or another is only a few more days away.  Forward progress of any kind is all I need.

I feel sick, smashed, and exhausted.  Symptoms are a feeling in my stomach as if someone were pulling my guts through a black hole near my belly button.  My fingers feel tired and don’t want to type.  My skin feels heavy.

I want to feel rested, clear, and positive.  I want the sinking to turn into a bounding, I want my eyes to become light and attentive.  My strategy for shifting this feeling is to take a little walk, send out the weekly member email, and breath slowly and deeply for a few minutes, in reverse order. 

“Prod ye the donkey’s rump ye are sure of a kick.”

- Geary’s Guide to the World’s Great Aphorists