Day 202: Skipping a day

12042013

Alright. I had to skip a day of writing for the first time because I was busy working day and night. At first I felt guilty about this and tried to think of some way to squeeze writing into my schedule, but then I realized that it is simply not possible and that the purpose of writing is not writing itself but to assist me in my practical daily living, which is what I am now busy with. So I decided to focus on my practical application and assessing the current state of my process after 200 days of writing (that's, like, more than half a year!).

One thing that I noted yesterday was a new kind of certainty. I've been focusing my process mainly on human interaction for the past few months, because this is a basic component of my life that is clearly underdeveloped, and I have had a good way to assess this process as I work in a cafe 5 days a week, repeating the same information / committing the same tasks to various people numerous times a day: if something is different in my repetitious routine I always notice.

Slowly yet surely I have been able to work through my insecurity points and to establish a stable and reliable foundation for myself, within myself, of myself. I am noticing the change from destructive insecurity into a frail yet unwavering certainty in all areas of my life, or at least in all that I have lived through and am living as at the moment; who knows what's to come. So this certainty was something that I noticed yesterday as I was simply working – knowing what needs to be done and doing it.

Another thing I saw as I assessed myself and the way I work is that I have made progress with the stress point. I faced moments where I would have previously fallen into despair and given up on everything but now instead just stopped and forgave the stressful thoughts when and as they surfaced, located the according tension/pain in my physical, corrected my physical by breathing, relaxing and moving and kept on working after the stress was released. For example there was a moment where I was trying to put a thread through the eye of a needle and my eyes were starting to get tired because I had had a long day and my physical needed rest. As my eyes didn't focus properly and I didn't get the thread through after a few attempts I noticed a tension/pain at a certain spot of my neck/shoulders, and I realized that this is the “disability point” with which I disable myself from doing something. I realized that if left untended the tension/pain would once again lead to the thought “I can't do this” which would lead to frustration and giving up. And so I stopped, released the tension by “breathing through it” (relaxing the muscles while exhaling) with a couple of breaths, and I continued with my work with renewed focus and care.

Now as I look at my experience today, as my work and hurry still continues with the same intensity, I notice a constant tension in my shoulders that wasn't there yesterday. I realize that this is an unresolved stress point that has to do with martyrdom and sleep, as I only slept a couple of hours last night. I noticed backchat and thoughts regarding this before sleeping and they have come up today as well, such as wanting to complain about sleeping too little, glorifying myself for my sacrifice and expecting praise because of my suffering. I have not acted upon any of this and have simply kept on breathing and focusing on the fact that right now I am awake and that this is all that matters; when I get tired I will deal with it according to the situation. There's also a fear that “I will not make it through the day”, which points out to me exactly what I expect from my day, and these expectations I need to deal with.