(09-11-2018, 02:36 PM)Shannon Wrote: [ -> ]The solution is to understand that the only person you can reasonably compare your self to, is what and who you were yesterday.
And if you're better than you were yesterday you're doing something right.
"Good enough" is subjective. Everyone is unique.
Thanks Shannon. I'm going to seriously remind myself of this every day until it sticks and when I'm feeling down.
So I've been banging my head against a wall with this track I've been working on. Today things came together. I realized the chord progression was all off and the bassline was way too busy. I think fear definitely contributes to poor decisions when it comes to songwriting. A lot of it is "but if I scrap this idea, what if I can't come up with something better?" But by holding onto something out of fear it limits my potential to explore other avenues. Also something about finally getting the right feeling behind a track just makes me feel so much better. It's like these past few weeks I've been trying to work out a puzzle in my head and when I solve it it's this feeling of relief. Ideally I'd like to get to the point where I can execute my creative visions without that gap of time trying to figure out how to do it.
Besides that I'm realizing just how bad online dating is. Like I knew people said it sucks, but I thought it was an exaggeration. But really it is terrible. And I feel like I've been using it as an excuse instead of actually getting out and meeting women. Thinking I'm too busy or that one of these days I'll actually meet up with a girl on one of the apps. I mean I have no real excuse. Just that I'm still working through my fears and I still have a lot of trouble with close relationships.
I guess one of my issues is I feel like I have a lot of skeletons in my closet. When it comes to dating or relationships I feel like I need to attach a disclaimer about myself so I don't scare someone away. I mean living almost 10 years battling things like depression and anxiety, it impacts you. It stunts your growth as a person a bit when it hits you when you're younger. I know in the past I took on this identity of this messed up person. But now I'm outgrowing it, but at the same time I'm not there. I'm sort of caught in between right now and it's awkward because I want to live my life one way, but I feel I still haven't recovered from the years of dealing with this stuff.
For a lot of my life I've been able to fake it and put on an act of someone who's got their shit together. But I don't want to have to act anymore.
Man today just doesn't feel good. You ever have one of those days where you feel so down you can't be too productive? But on the flipside you can't really relax either, so it's a lose lose. Despite this I did some cleaning in my place, it was due for it. I think I've been doing the exact opposite of what the logistics module has been advising me to do.
I'll say this though, as crappy as I'm feeling right now I'm not ruminating on things. I know this will pass and taking these feelings as proof of something about me is a flaw in thinking that will just make me feel worse. It sucks, my whole kind of situation is confusing right now to me, but I'm going to keep working through it. I've stopped feeding that inner dialogue that measures me up to others around me.
So I'm flying out to California for my job next week. A few years ago this would have left me a nervous wreck. But nowadays I only feel a little anxiety, nothing crazy. But it's made me realize when I don't know how to do something or I'm unfamiliar with it, I go into panic mode a bit. I sort of freeze up and lose my ability to think things through in a more calm rational manner. I've learned the key to dealing with this is being very aware of when it first spikes and remember to breathe and calm myself down. It's a matter of catching it early before I fall into an anxious thought loop.
I suspect this is how I've been reacting to DMSI as well. Getting stuck in that fight or flight state and not doing enough to calm myself down from it. Possibly even making it worse by trying to analyze the fear and think my way out of it too much. I think what it is is that the fight or flight reaction is a reaction to perceived danger. So when I go to calm myself it feels like it's a bad idea because whatever danger I've been perceiving will happen to me once I let my guard now. Highly irrational I know, but my life doesn't have a track record of being rational. Basically I feel like all my life I've prepared for bad stuff to happen and about 90% of the time it never does. The only thing that really happens is I make myself afraid and anxious by being too worried about what COULD come about vs the actual situation.
Man I've identified what this awful feeling is I've had these past two days. Hopelessness. Objectively I can see just how much improvement I've made in my life and I how I continue to get better. Yet a part of me is convinced none of this will come together for me. I can't shake this feeling that I just got really lucky with where I'm at right now, it's safe and it keeps me stable, but eventually I'm going to move on from it. I know this, deep down there's more for me out there. But I'm currently wrestling with the desire to be "safe" vs living a life that's more in line with my own values.
I went to the grocery store today and it reminded me of my time working retail and I NEVER want to go back to that. You're not respected as a person, they want you to dedicate your life to some minimum wage job, and their metrics are always retarded. Every time I had to work I swear it was like entering a building filled with toxic energy, I'd get nauseous and drained. I'm so glad I'm out of there, but really my worst fear is having to go back due to financial reasons. I'm at a point in my life where out of principal I absolutely will not work for someone who treats me as disposable.
I think the hopelessness is definitely the equivalent of my subconscious sort of laying down and protesting. Nothing like making the future out to be hopeless to stop your momentum. Honestly I still can't get behind what DMSI is attempting to bring into my reality. It's really far off for me. I've pretty much never had attention from women in my life. I was never that guy. Still trying to break that identity, but man somedays it feels like looking at the sky and telling myself it's actually green. I guess that's why it's easier for me to focus on building myself up vs attempting to convince myself I'm desirable to women. I don't know if it's even possible, but maybe I project an aura that makes me invisible lol.
Been putting my job before my own emotional health which is not good. Some days I really struggle to get my work done and I've been beating myself up for that. But yesterday I decided I'm more important than this job. So that means if I have a few days where I'm not the most productive that's ok. I've had a lot of anxiety with this job because of the feeling of not always knowing how to solve something that comes up. And it's a unpredictable environment. But like I said I'm going to focus more on myself, treating myself better, being ok with whatever emotional turbulence I'm going through right now vs trying to bypass it to be "better". Being more compassionate to myself is very foreign for me, so I need to build it like a skill. I've been doing the exact opposite for years so negative attitudes towards myself seem to be on autopilot.
My god, what a terrible day it was today. Whatever Shannon is dealing with I wonder if it's the same for me because my job has been chaos lately. My company I work for got hit with a crypto virus today. I walked in, nobody could log on and checked it out and was so defeated when I saw what happened. Cue me scrambling to get everyone up and running and that's not even working. Then one of the programs we use to mount virtual disks couldn't attach outlook data files so we had to resync everyones email. But because the whole building was doing it everything slowed down. To make matters even worse our order entry person had a delay on receiving new emails so all the orders fell behind. Holy shit it was like dominoes today, one thing after another went wrong. The only positive to this was that I stayed calm and as stressful as it was I didn't beat myself up for what happened.
Yeah so other than that I'm taking a break from dmsi A because I'm going out to California next week and won't be able to get my listening in consistently. Plus sleeping away from home never works out too well for me and I don't want to be any more drained than I probably already will be.
It legit feels I'm in the middle of a hurricane right now. Like all this stuff that happened today, I feel like I'm just at a tipping point. I'm doing my best here, but when stuff like this happens it really knocks me on my ass. Makes me really upset, like I don't want to do or touch anything because it's all just going to blow up in my face.
The track I was working on took a turn for the worse, I finished it but upon completion I realized just how much time I wasted on it. And I say wasted because most of that time was really just me being indecisive and being a perfectionist without really accomplishing much. I think I worked on it for 2 months? Way way too long. That would be fine if the quality showed for those two months, but I'm objective enough to know what my music is lacking. It doesn't sound like 2 months of work. It sounds like 2 months of someone procrastinating on finishing a project that really only had a few hours of real concentrated effort put into it. That's been my constant struggle though. Finding myself with initial ideas and then being too afraid to develop them into a complete song because I've been consistently disappointment in the past. This of course has nothing to do with DMSI and it's design goals. Just felt like ranting.
This trip out to California has me twisted up though. I thought I was fine, but I haven't been able to sleep all too well. I also keep having dreams of me missing my flight or getting lost once I get there. It's just one of those things I'm dealing with, but I wish it wasn't such a huge deal in my head. As much as I'd like to believe I'm not anxious, I totally am. I also don't like flying, I wouldn't consider myself having a phobia but it makes me tense. A combination of the flying itself and just being around way too many people in close proximity, could be an energetic thing too getting overwhelmed by all the stimulus at once.
So my mind must be in processing mode because I had a dream last night all about childhood and being a kid again. Being happy with my brothers and having that sense of companionship. I think I was definitely happier as a kid and I've been trying to get back to that. Feels like I lost a part of myself over the years. Adulthood just steam rolled a piece of me out of the picture. Like I felt hollow inside but just kept doing things because I had to.
Other dream, weird one. There was an androgenous person hitting on me. Couldn't tell if it was a guy or a girl. But either way didn't care.
Had another one of my long thinks. It was all about mental health disorders, specifically the personality disorders. I think I mentioned this but I was never formally diagnosed with Avoidant Personality Disorder, I had mentioned it to my therapist but at the time she couldn't make a formal diagnoses because insurance wouldn't cover personality disorders. But she told me that I do fit the criteria. Having said that I derive no sense of identity from it nor do I want it. But I just bring it up here because I'm dealing with a lot in my life.
I continue to move forward in life, but I still battle with a core sort of dysfunction. I know the common advice is to seek professional help, but really all of this stuff just boils down to past emotional triggers, current views and mindsets, and learning to manage my own emotional state better. A few years ago I had the firm belief that I was unchangeable and I'd always suffer in life. That I was different, messed up, and my life could never be like anyone else's. Looking back on that I see a lot of fear. Having those beliefs was my way of protecting myself from others.
It's hard going your whole life struggling with something that most people never see. They see the result of having the strength to face your obstacles. But it's hard opening up to people because it presents a sort of cognitive dissonance to them. What they see doesn't line up with what you tell them. At the same time there's this big gap I feel, where I feel like I'm missing something and it reflects in my actions more than my words when it comes to other people in my life.
I guess what I'm saying is, I'm not doomed. But at the same time I'm grappling with some heavy stuff that I am often very frustrated with. Irrational patterns that despite showing myself how irrational they are just continue. There's just something within me that started when I was young and I just continually act out that pattern in my life. Part of the reason why I'm so isolated in my life is because I'm a complicated individual. Maybe that's an excuse, but it's hard finding people to trust. A lot of my friendships now are built on strong trust and I happened to grow up with them. I'm lucky to have them, but that level of trust does not come easy to me with other new people.
I'm really just dissecting everything at this point, getting all the pieces together. You can't solve a problem if you don't have all the info. Sometimes that means being honest with where you are at and understanding that it doesn't mean you aren't trying hard enough or that you're over complicating things. If anything people are too dismissive and don't engage in deep thought when it comes to our own behaviors and actions. I know for years people telling me that I'd outgrow my anxiety or all these problems I faced didn't do much for helping me grow as a person. It just swept the problems under the rug where they grew into a more complicated mess.
Damn just a moment of clarity after getting all that out. I'm explaining what I'm struggling with, but I'm not truly facing it. Holding onto this narrative of things being incredibly complicated or hard to access in my own mind is a manifestation of fear. Yes there are things I fear, but by focusing too much on the manifestations of fear vs fear itself I don't get to the root. I'm going to start focusing in on the fear more and sit with it and observe it without being wrapped up in it. Fear is the anchor that everything is attached to. I have to remove the fear of executing dmsi and the changes that will come about in my life as a result of that. Fear is a sensation in my body, nothing more. By attaching excessive information to it I overcomplicate the healing process.
I've got this hopped up energy right now. Like a strong agressive anger. Like I just want to punch the shit out of something. Maybe it's because I'm tired of being afraid all the time. Not being aggressive enough in my life and just walking around being afraid of people. I don't know.
It's when I repress this feeling I get inner tension that I think I need to relax more. I just have this feeling where people need to fuck off with their petty nonsense and overly judgemental attitudes. It gets so tiring. I'm not saying people fearing you is a good thing, but it annoys me that some people just mistake kindness for weakness and try to manipulate you.
I don't know why this is popping up now. Nothing really happened the past few days to bring this up. I guess you could say I'm trying to just get above it all. People are so quick to gravitate towards the negative and judgemental and it's just been irritating me. Like what do you get by criticizing others and putting them down? Does it make you feel better?
I sound like a hypocrite because I'm criticizing right now though. It's just humans have so much potential to be kinder to one another and just squander it. Then do nothing about it.
Been off dmsi for about a week now? Not noticing much of a bloom effect really. If anything it feels like a weaker influence than if I was listening daily. Anyway, don't know if I should bother getting back on it if dmsi 3.3 is due soon. I've been running subs nonstop for a good few years now, maybe my brain needs some rest.
I do notice myself feeling more depressed lately. Trying to let that go without attaching excessive meaning to it. It just sucks when you have stuff to do but you just want to lie down.
Sounds like you need to rest. I take omega 3's, specially when I'm feeling down.
(09-26-2018, 05:28 AM)mat422 Wrote: [ -> ]Been off dmsi for about a week now? Not noticing much of a bloom effect really. If anything it feels like a weaker influence than if I was listening daily. Anyway, don't know if I should bother getting back on it if dmsi 3.3 is due soon. I've been running subs nonstop for a good few years now, maybe my brain needs some rest.
I do notice myself feeling more depressed lately. Trying to let that go without attaching excessive meaning to it. It just sucks when you have stuff to do but you just want to lie down.
Yeah, I find that it's good to take a break every now and again, especially with 'em new gen subs. Let it settle, so to speak.
That reaction you're having may be an effect of the sub getting processed full-blast. I think it should pass soon enough. Find some time to rest when possible, some quality "me-time" should help speed up the process.