myth's Belated DMSI 3.1 Journal

[myth]

I'm tempted to think that the emptying-my-home thing (calling it "cleaning" seems to have confused readers) may just have been UD lingering for an extra 6 weeks or so. Thankfully, that distraction from DMSI seems to have faded with time rather than with a completely empty home.

Last week, I was reminded (by life, not advice) to take stock of my social patterns and preparatory instincts: how many are inconclusive-tests-on-indefinite-repeat, how many are fear-inspired superstitions, and how many are true cause-and-effect. I was also reminded that who I am in the moment is what matters to others at that moment.

Both reminders bring me to an interesting turning point. Long ago, I'd accepted that I'd never understand people's interest in me. I'd also eventually figured out that people's opinion of me would be unique to each person. And, within the past few years, it occurred to me that any appreciation for myself would not resemble anyone else's appreciation of me. But, finally, I think that I've hit a point of realizing that no one's reasons even necessitate explanation, as they only really apply to the person who has them to the degree that they apply for as long as they apply to that degree. The scope is so tiny that it may as well be nonexistent. In the end, I don't need to know what those reasons are and never really did, as the answer, no matter how detailed or thorough, doesn't contain any truly applicable information.

Knowing why is usually prompted by a desire to replicate results, but I've known for a very long time that people aren't replicants, no matter how driven toward conformity (or fearful of being different) they might be. They're individuals. Replicating the unique is an oxymoron, while replicating the replicated is redundant and unsatisfying. I've never wanted or needed the dime-a-dozen, so charting a map to find them is like learning everything that I can about my least favorite imaginary food. It's a pointless research exercise, twice over. Add the fact that individuals change their minds over time, and it might even start pushing what was tilting at windmills into Lost in La Mancha territory.

And that conclusion isn't so far removed from ideas that already make sense to me. I choose what I choose for reasons that matter to me, not to copy others. And I don't see past precedent (a.k.a. tradition or habit) as a terribly legitimate reason to copy myself indefinitely either. A natural extension of both points of view is to stop wanting moments to copy each other and to let them be as diverse as they are too. Over-using my present to recreate or sustain my past (out of fear of losing what I've had) wastes my future. Treading water isn't drowning, but it's not swimming either. It's clinging to the past to avoid loss and grief (moving backward) at the expense of possibility and opportunity (moving forward).

I'm not sure that all of these are necessarily the same thing, but I do think that a lot of the same elements overlap. If I can overcome enough elements in the pattern (jam enough of the machine's cogs), I might overturn its examples and the fundamental perspective that produces them.

[myth]

Haven't updated this journal much lately, but I've also only been around other people a couple times in the last two months. Was still enjoyed and rewarded on those occasions, often by new people, but not in any strikingly new manner, so my prior reporting (which was positive, albeit summarized) still stands. I'm not bored or displeased with 3.1 (quite the contrary), but repeating myself is a habit that I'm trying to overcome. It's also why I'd skipped yet another DMSI 3.1 results poll, having already answered these questions before.

I've also been unenthused by insinuations from the less experienced that past experience and concurrent relationships disqualify the value of our DMSI feedback. "Maximum sexual irresistibility" and "sexy enough to get laid" are not the same goal, so mutual respect and tolerance for others putting in the same time (or more) with DMSI, regardless of experience level, wouldn't be unwelcome. It's getting harder to tell whether people prefer feedback or silence anymore.

There's another reason that I've been disinclined to report. Been noticing for a while that some DMSI users seem extremely preoccupied with anecdotal reporting and equality of results. Put an unbaked souffle in the oven, and a baked souffle comes out. Put an unbaked cake in the oven, and some DMSI users still want a baked souffle to come out. Put an unbaked pot roast in the oven, and they still want a baked souffle to come out. Ovens bake things; they do not souffle them. But I keep seeing this cycle of: 1) another story where baked souffle is credited solely to the oven -> 2) applause and envy -> 3) others wait for the same oven to produce a baked souffle for themselves -> 4) complaint that the same oven didn't turn an unbaked apple pie into a souffle and only produced a baked apple pie -> 5) conclusion that the oven doesn't really work -> 6) demand for new oven -> 1) another story where baked souffle is credited solely to the oven -> repeat.

A baked apple pie may not be a souffle, but it's a whole lot more baked than an unbaked apple pie. And it's tasty in its own right. We can become sexier than we were without having identical sexual escapades to show for it. Without being disappointed by our interpersonal differences (or unduly proud of them), just willing to make the most of them. On my own personal scale, I've gotten sexier. Had more sex too, even though life taught me years ago that more sex isn't what measures my sexiness (e.g. might only measure my partners' emotional state, my partners' need for sexual validation, my partners' low self esteem, my partners' high libido, my partners' standards, and several more things that aren't even about me). And I don't credit improvements solely to DMSI -- because it's a team effort, because I'm ultimately the only member of that team that can choose or act/react, because my raw material is different than anyone else's, because there are many parts of me independent of DMSI, because there are factors other than DMSI or myself, and because some improvements require me to supply the external factors that neither DMSI nor I already possess. But this whole "I'm supposed to get those results too!" thing makes me more and more wary of posting anything, even my daily realizations (which are filling my private journal rapidly, BTW). Since I can't decide what others envy, I'd figured that I could at least reduce my own contribution to the pool of possibilities. But the thing that I'd forgotten is: that pool's going to stay filled by others whether or not I contribute to it or ever experience anything that anyone else desires.

I was prepared to stop journaling altogether. I still am. And then I'd read the latest edition of 3.2 impatience. Despite being someone who normally knocks off important projects in under a week (if not a day), I once spent 10-11 months on an "impossible" project that four other very talented people (who were given 3-4 years) gave up on (one of the four, twice), during one of the worst years of my life, and I vividly remember spending over 40x the amount of time that I wanted on a project that I absolutely loathed catching in my peripheral vision. A project where 70% of the total work and time was frustratingly spent on maybe 10% of the end product, trying to turn disparate (and often incomplete) input into something uniform enough to achieve the goal for all input. I remember not being able to set a perfect schedule for what no one else had actually managed to do. Even when they had 3-4x the amount of time. And I remember doing it anyway. When I could've walked away. I remember needing more patience than those waiting for the finished project, just to endure others' impatience and get on with the work. And having to leverage side projects to advance my way to the goal. And succeeding, because I knew what it took to build and how little the project's eventual users knew about how to achieve the goal that they understood only from a user's perspective, the ones who thought that fitting a whole world inside a thimble was as quick and simple to do as it is to say. When I think that something's simple enough to do quickly, I actually do it myself; I don't wait for others to do it. I've done projects that others took too long to do, proving that it could be done more quickly when it was simple, and, when it wasn't, I discovered and accepted that their original timetable wasn't unreasonable. But I wait to judge others' deadlines until I try doing it myself (or find a faster option) first.

I also see a difference between buying a finished product and buying access to a test project, and DMSI, while available pre-completion for a fee, is not stated to be "on the shelf" yet. Our early access is a privilege -- because we asked for it, offered to pay for the option to try it before completion, and agreed to be cooperative test subjects. We helped set the terms, including whether or not to keep DMSI testing strictly limited to volunteers requesting to pay to be testers. Testing it (for a fee) is only publicly accessible because we insisted on it, not because DMSI has ever had a real first public release. I remember waiting years for E2 because we didn't get the same pre-product option. Yes, there are more test subjects this way, but some of us seem to be touting the early-entrance test subject fee as if it's a product price tag. Timed upgrade increments were also not part of the agreement, and no firm completion date was given. IMHO, being impatient for DMSI's end result does not make a backstage pass into a shelved product or invalidate the original deal. I do think that the version numbering may be misleading for some, though, and that 0.31 would better remind us of DMSI's pre-product status.

Today, I've been reminded why I started this journal: To contribute a (hopefully respectful) perspective on DMSI that may not be a strongly represented one. This journal's never been about my own importance or because anyone else cares if I reach my goals; It's been because I often hear several people parroting one contagious reaction in different voices (a reaction which I still respect, whether or not I agree with it) and a comparative few mentioning the thoughts that cross my mind or the things that I observe. I'm not trying to convince anyone to change their minds or to agree with me, just offer a perspective.

[myth]

Feel like I need to play catch-up on my feedback again.

Went out on Saturday. Might've been the day-offset NYE thing, but reading interest in me was easier than ever, and, by my previous standards, that's saying something. A woman who barely took her eyes off of me during half of the night felt the need to come up to me on her way out to say so -- while her guy was waiting for her and while another woman who'd been interested in me for over a year was in the middle of finally professing it. So I was definitely getting attention, and women were overcoming even more interference than usual (including suspicions about the two female friends who'd been dancing with me for most of the night) to show it.

After having given myself over a week off of DMSI since Christmas, I'm going to be switching to SE for my second brief detour from 3.1. Mildly tempted to post a few (mostly philosophical) DMSI-propelled private journal excerpts from the past week or two before I do so, as I find some of them (while lengthy) very telling about my present perspective. I did post a mental bookmark of my current mindset when I paused DMSI to spend a month on UD, after all, so it might be consistent of me to do something similar when pausing DMSI to do SE.

There seem to be enough people discussing SE already that I probably won't journal it myself. I expect to return to 3.2 afterward, but, in the meantime, I need to address my reflex to disagree or apologize when someone compliments me. I can and do suppress the reflex consciously, but I'd rather have a grateful and encouraging response that doesn't require conscious intervention at all. I know that part of that stems from a feeling that I can always be better than I am, but my hope is that SE will help me see (deep down) that "amazing" and "improvable" aren't mutually exclusive.

[myth]

So here's my current attempt at a DMSI mental bookmark before migrating to SE, in the form of a few representative private journal excerpts from the past couple of weeks. Sorry about the length, but my private journal (me talking to myself) is even wordier than my public one.

Excerpt #1:

Very few of us seem to see how self-fulfilling prophecies work, probably because we don't want to. We feed our own self-delusions. Yet so many of us set the table, cook the food, and then, failing to consider the side dishes or clean-up, complain that the meal is exactly what we prepared. Our perspective loves to self-reinforce (and turn its own drawbacks into blindspots) as long as we feel the need to be endlessly right about how we see it.

Many of us forget that "all people" are not all people. We don't see those that we don't see. Clearly registering maybe a few hundred out of billions at any one time. Whether we miss them on purpose or by accident. Some are intentional visibility choices and blindspots, and others are more incidental ones. Anyone points out an exception afterward, and we're quick to disqualify, reason by reason, whatever doesn't fit our perception, defending what we've already decided is the truth (to justify our existing perception as "correct") instead of reconsidering what may be closer to the truth (and correct our existing perception).

The first all-people limiter ("on purpose") is about who we choose to incorporate into our lives, sexually or otherwise. Several of us set our attention on the most common attributes that we want in others (qualities often based in things like envy, pride, greed, or fear), not the rarer ones (based on compatibility, sincerity, and depth). Examples: Prioritize youth and appearance, which aren't really as rare as people treat them, and, suddenly, I'm emotionally upset (angry, frustrated, whatever) because the young and pretty world that I assemble for myself seems largely immature, shallow, or utterly random on the inside. Prioritize those who can't emotionally hurt me, forgetting that all emotional intimacy includes some risk of harm, and the safer world that I assemble for myself seems emotionally distant or uninterested. Prioritize those who will pull me out of my shell, and the motivated world that I assemble for myself seems demanding, pushy, and unrelenting. Prioritize those who need my support and look to me as the hero, and the needy world that I assemble seems unable to take care of itself without me. Prioritize brutal honesty, and the frank world that I assemble may never spare my feelings, callously voicing opinions that, while honest, are interpretation only, not fact. Prioritize those who want me most, and the stalkers that I assemble may tear me and each other apart in a jealous rage. We select our world's negative bias when we insist on its positives.

This isn't the universe or society punishing us for wanting what we want; it's us forgetting to remember the other side of the coin when we toss our wish into the fountain. To read the entire contract before signing. That the cost per item should be one that we're willing and able to pay before we check out those selections in our world's personal shopping cart. That the advertised flaws in our purchases are acceptable drawbacks, not disappointments to enrage us later. What we target (and with whom we surround ourselves) says something about what we'll get, and what we've deemed unimportant is left as the (sometimes predictable) potluck minefield beneath it. As much as people claim to understand the law of attraction, very few of us seem to react to the costs and consequences of our desires as if we understood what we said that we did. We say "I know exactly what I want" while ignoring the fine print, EULA, disclaimers, and other posted warnings and then confidently screw ourselves over. And then get upset that our purchases had the exact flaws that we dismissed as unimportant, crediting the products for buyer's remorse instead of ourselves for buying precisely what was advertised.

When I assemble my world around me, I prioritize its membership (all relationhips, not just sexual partners) based on how its prospects feel about me, how they treat me, how sensible they seem (measured against my own unique scale of sense), how interested they are in my existence, and far rarer (and hopefully more mutually balancing) qualities than "Are they hot? Are they cool? Are they any other popular temperatures?" That leaves me with a world designed to make me emotionally happier, even if the scenery isn't a plentiful buffet of wall-to-wall hotties and coolest-of-the-cool best buds. Whenever my emotionally happier world turns up any sexually attractive members, I've already weeded out the craziest at the door, and the interest in me that got the rest through the door gives me a leg up on whether that ember becomes a smolder, flame, bonfire, or inferno. And, so far, I've been OK with how the monkey's paw has been reading those blueprints.

The second all-people limiter ("by accident") is about who we can't see due to an obscured view, and it's not as accidental as it may seem. It's when we let our world be affected -- instead of by who we choose for our world -- by where we choose to stand while making our casting decisions, in some ways more literally than others. Stay in the same town or city, and my view of the world is limited and distorted by those borders. Go to the same watering holes in said town, and, while gaining local celebrity, I miss those who diligently frequent other locations. Even varying my own altitude has an effect on who meets my eyeline, who misses it, whose eyelines meet me, and whose eyelines miss me. I should see and be seen, or I'll overlook a lot while a lot overlooks me. Conversely, I should be mindful of those who may worsen my world, no matter how conveniently present they may be.

I also see other filters and limiters applied to how my world looks too. For example, if I'm influenced by others' perceptions of the world suggesting to me what I "should" see (whether or not it holds any truth), a bit like what anyone else might make of this sentence. Another example is my current mood coloring how I register the actions of others, whether I attribute imaginary ulterior motives to people's actions, motives that may or may not be present. Or seeing an apparent lack of motive, when someone had a very good reason (that I valued differently or didn't see) to do something that confused me. Another example would be any expectations that I set for others, for them to disappoint (or, if I expect too much of them, betray) me. Or for them to impress me merely because I prepared myself to see even the unimportant as miraculous when done by a certain person. No matter how much I think that I understand the world, I bias my own comprehension of the data when I process its detail, meaning, value, and suspected intent.

I help to sculpt the surroundings that I presume to interpret, judge, predict, and resent. I filter (and, therefore, corrupt and distort) all of the information that I receive. I bear some responsibility in my criticism of the world that I filter, as I'm the one filtering it. And claiming that my version of the world is everybody else's version of the world is fairly short-sighted of me. If I don't like how my home looks or makes me feel, then I should make wiser choices in where I live and how I decorate it. If I don't like how my life looks or makes me feel, the same principle applies.

Being aware of the problem doesn't make me immune to it, so it's important to remind myself of these things when I'm blinded by my own perspective. Growth requires accepting that my original perception was limited (less informed), and the sooner that I ask myself if I'm missing (or doubting) important information, the sooner that I can learn to be someone better informed. It's like how being afraid or ashamed to ask an unasked question only keeps the potential asker uninformed of the answer. Refusing to update my perspective doesn't allow the world to look any different to me than it already has, which isn't a huge problem unless the world looks miserable to me. Ignorance may be bliss if I'm already blissful, but growth may lead me to bliss if I'm not.

[myth]

Excerpt #2:

I've finally clarified one of my elusive reasons for eschewing modeling and conformity for so long: A glass of water in a desert matters significantly. A glass of water in the ocean is meaningless. The difference between being an outcast and being indispensable is whether or not you're the perfect anomaly, deviant, and aberration for the occasion. It's not safe, it's not kind, and it's most certainly not what everyone else is doing.

In my mind, celebrity, leading, and growing up share a very specific thing in common: specialization. Becoming someone uniquely useful to division of labor rather than someone ubiquitously replaceable. The average human goal often appears to be to homogenize oneself through mimicry. To move from the indistinguishable baby stage to the indistinguishable adult stage. To be an undifferentiated stem cell that resists (or adapts to avoid) future differentiation, resisting the primary point (as I understand it) of being a stem cell.

The outcast is ridiculed for being different, for being the "error" and the mutation, but, survive long enough and get enough popular recognition for that difference, and others want to copy (follow) you. And, to me, conformity just appears to be an imbalance and a misunderstanding, trying to copy the specific (what someone was once doing differently) instead of copying the method (their ability to fill an unfilled need by being and doing what others aren't). Which creates a surplus where there may once have been (but is no longer) a drought instead of being the first to quench that drought. Instead of being what's needed when it's needed, not after the followers make it superfluous and (economically) reduce its value.

I see mindful deviation as evolution, not as risky mutation.

[myth]

And I'll end my DMSI mental bookmark with this one. Was tempted to include one more, but I didn't want to offend anyone's sensibilities with anything too controversial. I realize that these are more about perspective than sexiness, but I think that perspective plays a foundational role.

Excerpt #3:

Had a dream on Friday night (Dec 29th). Don't usually document dreams, but I'd found this one to be personally profound. Comes across a bit like a psychological thought experiment crossed with a causal loop paradox thought experiment, and it probably says something about me (or 5.5G or both) that my dreams multiplex philosophical experiments recreationally. Yikes.

In the dream, one of my oldest friends saves me from a situation that would've kept us apart from that point on, destroying our friendship. But her actions (which were impossibly tailor-made for the occasion and otherwise nonsensical, including the recruitment -- and critical participation -- of 3 sister-act stage magicians) prevent that result, not only avoiding that permanent separation but also bringing us closer together. Her actions, no matter how odd or indirect, each contribute to dodging the impending destruction of our friendship. Then, once those strange detours have provided a better outcome than the one that the original course would've reached, I suddenly find that I have the opportunity to send a message back in time to her, with the implication that this message is how she knew that the friendship needed rescuing.

Now, years of television time-travel TV would clearly suggest that I should send her the solution verbatim, recounting her actions (or, at least, the ones that I'd managed to spot) like a recipe that she has no incentive to act out, completely overlooking the origin paradox of no one having actually come up with the plan that both manages to trick me and outsources for additional Vaudevillian resources. And it's a dream, where grass could be pink if I'd wanted, so a tiny origin paradox is nothing. But, because I don't write for TV and prefer logic to loose ends, even in dreams, the message that I send describes the predicament instead and requests that, because she knows me well enough to do so, she comes up with a plan to derail it that I wouldn't see coming. Instead of trying to control the outcome with a plan that no one created (in fear of no plan at all), I trust her to come up with the plan, so that someone creates it. There's a whole other potential thought experiment involved if I were to imagine myself in her place, receiving a list of future pitfalls to avoid to avoid a friendship's dissolution, but that wasn't part of the dream.

This dream's dilemma (that of which message to send) underscored several things at once for me, most of which I already knew: I prefer trusting trustworthy people to be who they are and do what they already do well versus trying to micromanage them into following my instructions, I prefer logical solutions to overused fictional tropes, I trust my instincts more than popular reflex, I don't presume to see my own blindspots as well as others can, I value that particular friendship and feel that it's valued in return, and probably quite a few other things that don't immediately occur to me.

I know that it's a dream, where consequences aren't bound by reality, but, sci-fi opinions aside, I'm still consciously pleased by how my subconscious responds to a choice like that.

[myth]

Hmmm. As I already have a sex life with multiple partners (all of whom seduced me) that is supplemented in moderation (not derailed) by masturbation (alone or with said partners), it sounds like 3.1 may be my ceiling when I return to DMSI after ending my SE 5.5G run.

I fully respect Shannon's choices and his reasons for taking these steps in 3.2, but a zero-tolerance policy on specific (legal) sex acts is, sadly, a bridge too far for me. I've been listening to DMSI to increase my sexiness, not to join nofap or restrict which sexual acts I'm allowed to perform with or alongside safe and willing partners. I personally find mutual masturbation useful (and fairly integral) during foreplay and masturbation of oneself useful when with partners who are prone to exhaustion, ache, and slow recovery or who have lower libidos, and I prefer to keep all of my options on the tabl... err... bed. I'd also rather not feel inclined to fake or refuse phone sex, sexting, etc with a partner who proposes it when physical proximity precludes other options.

Others may posit that this type of activity (mutual/alongside partners) falls within DMSI's scope of usage (I would reconsider if it did), however, Shannon stated here that he's going "100% airtight" and not "distinguish[ing] between uses" regarding masturbation, porn, etc. He reaffirmed that stance here. Unless further elaboration on "100%" corrects a misinterpretation on my part, I'll interpret this as stated.

Since there's not much use for 3.1 feedback after 3.2's release (and I'm still running SE now), my public DMSI feedback will likely go no further.

[Benjamin]

I personally find mutual masturbation useful (and fairly integral) during foreplay

I don't think it would include that, as it's a sexual act with someone else and not as a way to escape.

[myth]

I personally find mutual masturbation useful (and fairly integral) during foreplay

I don't think it would include that, as it's a sexual act with someone else and not as a way to escape.

Understandable, but, to be clear, every example I gave (outside of the first sentence) was a non-escapist sexual act involving someone else, either remotely or locally, that furthered or supplemented the relationship in some way. Wasn't talking about what someone does in complete isolation.

"I don't think it would" is, unfortunately, not a solid enough reason for me to go along with removing partner-participating options from a healthy sex life, including ones that Shannon himself said would be cut out. For me, this is not overly dissimilar to if DMSI started trying to decide which traits we get to find sexually attractive. It's simply a matter of which decisions get to be mine and which options are script-defined rather than user-defined.

(Also, since it might be called into question by others, I'm hardly running away from DMSI, the Wall, or a higher version number, and I have been executing on 3.1. I'll definitely return to 3.1 after my SE run, even if I don't return to 3.2. If a sexiness sub doesn't try to tell me which sex acts I can and can't do with my partners, especially preexisting partners of over ten years, I'll happily use 3.2, but how DMSI is designed isn't up to me, so I'll be deciding from the options that I'll have, not the options that I might think should exist or hope might work the way that I want them to. The "not-hype" updates may be funny, but I'm really grateful for Shannon telling us what we're nearly-blindly agreeing to in the pursuit of sexiness.)

[myth]

Mid-detour report! Not technically a DMSI post... just a brief (well, brief for four months of detour) postcard, in case anyone was actually curious about how my detour from DMSI was going. Currently on a PTPA detour from my SE detour because I needed PTPA to clear obstacles encountered on SE.

Two months on SE (plus another near-month of SE P6-fade-out) were interesting:

• "I hate me" thoughts became "I want to feel differently about me" thoughts.
  
• Translated a life-long unreceived message from garbled emotion to coherent thought: a parent treating their kid as a second run at life denies the kid their first life.
  
• Discovered that I became a private person (held back info) to keep decisions from being made for me (a familial form of identity theft through micromanagement), not out of fear of that info being used against me. Progressively hiding more and more of my life was the only avenue for keeping my future my choice. I don't enjoy being used as someone else's avatar.
  
• Noticed that my self-esteem and my freedom of choice/freedom of all available options appear to be interconnected. Someone else's reduced subset of options denies me fair decisive control over my own future (who I am free to become). The person that I've chosen to be and the person that I've been cornered into being are two different people, and I'll have a more favorable opinion of the former.
  
• Accepted that living up to someone else's fantasy of me is not my responsibility; it's their false expectation. I'd been applying that perspective to unwanted interest for years, but I'd repeatedly overlooked how important it is to all self-estimation. It's not my job to bring accuracy to everyone else's beliefs about me.
  
• Saw that my OCD might partly stem from taking childhood responsibility for others' fallibility and irrational routines. ("If, at first, their way proves false, try, try again.")
  
• Got even more sick of the protagonist over-identification ("life revolves around my story, and everyone else is a plot device/competitor") perspectives that've been fostered through movies and video games to sell more units. The rest of us have never been NPCs or an unpaid supporting cast, and the TV babysitter was illustrating an author-controlled escape (!) from reality (satire, fantasy, hyperbole, self-indulgence, opinion, art, etc), not training viewers in how reality really operates. But it seems like people got trained anyway. In short: got exhausted by watching so many people trust fun-house mirrors and then resent them for painting a distorted picture ("lying to them" about the real world when "the truth" was never on display in the first place).
  
• Increasingly saw modesty as dishonesty.
  
• Got increasingly annoyed by contagious hearsay, even when only implicit.
  
• Got more annoyed by people overvaluing consensus as proof or wisdom. Mass hysteria is consensus too.
  

So, since I kept hitting a lot of negative attitudes about other people (while fully aware that I'm far from flaw-free myself), I turned to a PTPA detour from SE. It's hard to like myself when I don't like the way that I see others. Been on PTPA since March 18th:

• Noticing that negative expectations are fertile soil for fear, stress, distrust, and contempt to bloom. Refusing to expect the worst cuts off their nutrient supply.
  
• Seeing that negative opinions of others add external excuses that encourage me not to fix problems that "aren't mine" and distract from problems that are. Without extra excuses and distractions, I can try to fix more of them.
  
• Really feeling how "right" and "wrong" are only subjective reference points for our own differences in values, standards, and beliefs. The greater the differences, the more "wrong" people merely seem to be to each other. But they're not necessarily wrong in any objective sense (although they may lack accurate/complete information), just drastically different from each other at that moment.
  
• Seeing that the concept of people wanting each other to be "better" is subjective in similar ways. Better according to others' values is not necessarily better according to one's own values, and vice versa. "Better" often ends up as polite-speak for "more like me than like you."
  
• Been thinking that we're stronger together as a whole because of our differences -- provided that we show confidence in our own strengths, stop envying the strengths of others, heed what we currently lack, show compassion for what others currently lack, and have the humility and bravery to step into the unfilled position that we already embody, not the already-filled position that we covet.
  
• I'm accepting more that, no matter how disagreeable, others can help me save me from myself. It's not that no man is an island, but that no human reaches their full potential in isolation (or in homogenization!). Our variations stimulate and inspire each other -- as a springboard, not a photocopy. Each of us is limited by our senses, momentary perspective, comprehension, logic, past experience, etc. My continued differences can enrich others, and others' continued differences can enrich me.
  
• Finding that so much of human reasoning is a difference engine -- learning, building values, forming opinions, making decisions. Spot the contrast, and pick your favorite. It's no wonder that we tend to be overly critical of difference (interpersonal or otherwise) when life is a relentless eye exam: "Which is better, 1 or 2?"
  
• Considering testing "similar" and "different" in place of "right" and "wrong" to see if it changes my attitude toward other people and their ideas. If nothing else, it might at least be more honest in a lot of cases.
  
• Productivity-to-effort ratio and problem-solving have seen improvement.
  
• Getting to things faster to get to the upside of the result sooner.
  
• Reflexive rejection has been replaced with cautious consideration.
  
• Short-term setbacks seem to be displacing long-term roadblocks.
  
• More tempted to hear the angel on one shoulder than the devil on the other.
  

Still planning to continue on PTPA for a bit and return to SE after that, then returning to DMSI after SE. I can't say that PTPA's been a completely pleasant ride, but I seem to be clearing more toxic beliefs with it than I was on UD (and with a lot less of the feeling that I am the sum of my toxins). I also discovered something very beneficial to my health while on PTPA as well, although that may just have been coincidental timing. Female attraction has also been interesting while on both, but that's not really the focus of my detour.

[Darkness]

Very incisive conclusions: one that hit was letting people be responsible for the fantasy they have about one.

Privacy for autonomy.

Social hive mentality.

[myth]

Very incisive conclusions:

Incisive? Hmm. I was only aiming for refined and clear, not that I mind achieving more than I'd set out to do.

one that hit was letting people be responsible for the fantasy they have about one.

Yeah, back in my younger years, I'd noticed that it was the crux of those yucky guilt and disgust feelings when learning how to reject unwanted advances, either feeling at fault for not reciprocating (when it was never my responsibility to do so) or repulsed by the interest (as if the their presumption of that responsibility said something about what others thought that I was meant to be/do). And there's value in seeing both sides of what that means: it's not one person's responsibility to make another's false expectations come true.

But it's even bigger than that, especially when extrapolating the number of people. What really hit me on SE was that it's a fool's errand to try to live up to everyone else's conflicting (and not necessarily realistic) fantasies of one instead of remaining true to the person that one is or aspires to be. I am not bound by what everyone else pre-judges me to be or thinks that I should be, so I owe them no guilt, effort, change, etc to justify their hasty diagnoses. To feel that way wouldn't be so far off from actively trying to develop the flu because someone else thought that I looked ill.

Privacy for autonomy.

That one completely caught me off-guard. I was amazed when it hit me that my privacy's primary purpose (upon its inception) was to shut off the sensors and monitoring gauges for parental control over my decisions. If the decision wasn't visible on their control panel and read-outs, I was allowed to make that decision myself.

I'd been a boy that some Bizarro version of Geppetto kept wishing into a real puppet. And I've continued to stay private because, decades later, they still want the puppet instead. The puppet validates their scriptwriting because that's what puppets are for. Puppets aren't for making their own decisions or creating their own future. Is it easier for the puppeteer to be proud of their writing (and their puppet) when the puppet follows or when the puppet ad-libs? How can the puppeteer leave their immortal mark on the world (however right or wrong it may be) when their "legacy" goes off-book? I get it: people really get off on their own self-importance and want to be remembered after they're gone. As if they only ever mattered if they can never be forgotten. But I'm a person, not a puppet, and I don't recall donating my entire (singular) life to illustrate my author's artistic vision. (And I matter now, wherever I matter now, to whomever I matter, whether or not I'm eventually forgotten later, so I need no "legacy" puppet of my own, a stand-in who would never have been me anyway. I prefer legacies like art and music and words, that have no free will upon which to impinge and are a more accurate -- albeit unfinished -- snapshot of their creator anyway.)

I won't bother extrapolating too far, but, for me, that's the tip of that iceberg. Gets even more complicated when I start looking at compounded ancestral artistic vision/puppetry. Exchanging control over my future (i.e. my existence) to my forebears in exchange for that existence nullifies the existence itself. It's giving me a gift (life) with the proviso that I may only ever use it as instructed, trying to justify that proviso with the option of passing on that gift-that-isn't-a-gift to someone else. I don't like the idea of accepting enslavement as "OK because I'm allowed to have my own slaves if I want to create them." It's a generational chain built on links of decision theft, seemingly defended because a baby bird isn't immediately ready to fly. And, before anyone gets confused, I'm not objecting to birds helping their baby before they can fly. But, if, as an adult, I just control my own decisions, there's no imposition (in either direction) between me and anyone else. I don't have to control anything else as a surrogate for not being allowed to control me.

That's just my current take on it today. Might change tomorrow. Often does.

[myth]

Once again, not technically a DMSI post (or an expectation that anyone reads these), but more of a postscript to my last detour-from-DMSI postcard. My return to SE (post-PTPA) was forcibly halted yesterday, after a week: my decade-old computer gave up the ghost and may have taken its drives with it.

I may have lost 70+ pages of an in-progress novel, my own musical recordings from the last 25 years, my self-scripted hypnosis/NLP recordings from over a decade ago (one of which helped me escape the worst relationship of my life and resume one of the best -- which I'm still in), over 20 years of self-written software, personal documents, and more. I'm not soliciting pity, although if any of you know how to find a missing superblock on a UFS2 filesystem that isn't 32 or 160, a block suggested by "newfs -N" on a much later OS release, or the result of taking incremental stabs in the dark, I'm open to non-destructive suggestions.

I certainly can't wrap my head around the situation, a week of SE (after over 2 months + P6 fade-out previously spent on it, plus past months spent on ASC, PTPA, SR, over a year on DMSI, etc and 25 years of mind programming) isn't really boosting the confidence levels or optimism, and, if anything, SE's P6 earworms may be muddling my concentration. It's an odd sort of technological grief, and (related to the grief, not the sub) I seem to be experiencing nausea, sleep disruptions, and decreased appetite while mired in the denial stage. I've even paused new habits that were greatly improving my health, all because grief (even premature grief) tends to make punishing yourself feel like an easy way of getting back some kind of control. But there's no control -- just exercising reasonable preparation, decisions, execution, and perseverance to exert influence on making the result (however unpleasant) as pleasant as possible. Then the cards fall where they may.

I know that punishing myself is going to produce a worse outcome (while negatively influencing my future) than overcoming the challenge, if it can be overcome. I know better than to wallow in this, but all of my focus aids were on those drives too. As were my entertainment/distractions/creative outlets. I'd re-download E2, if I didn't think that it would further diffuse my troubleshooting focus with turbulence, not that I'd have anything on which to to play it. I own no handheld players, and this backup computer has no audio support. That's not complaining as much as it is simple fact. I'm currently experiencing silence, which is probably why I'm shouting at the dark in this post.

You could say that this is just another test (rugs have been pulled out from under me all year) to prove that I can recover from this (data or no data) on my own, without those audio aids, but I don't feel clear-headed or rested enough to pass any tests right now, aided or not. You could also say that fear of not being clear-headed is holding me back, but that same lack of clarity is what led to the mechanical failure and what subsequently made that failure even worse than it already was. So I don't see it as fear as much as it being a desire to tackle an unfamiliar problem with (at least) the minimum resources necessary to solve it.

One of my favorite bands will be in town, this week, as will a friend from high school that I haven't seen in 25 years, yet I can't bring myself to be energized through the present difficulties by either. I want to be, but the current circumstances do obscure the future ones. In much the same way as a good day today obscures the end of days that we all eventually meet. Worse still, I'm seeing these good things as additional stressors that distract me from fixing the problem, when they should feel like support to boost my resolve to get through it. The tension between what I know and what I feel (despite knowing) is high.

Either way, my detour-from-DMSI has halted indeterminately, as I can't resume any sub until the computer/audio situation is sorted out.

[Leo1990]

You can always recover data from a computer. fyi