349-350: Why write?

13-14112013

I have had trouble with daily writing ever since June. Back then I was backpacking in Asia and Oceania for a few months, and ever since I left I faced increasing troubles keeping up with the writing rhythm I had started building for myself 10 months prior. I think it was in Japan where I started to “give up” every other day or so, and I felt really guilty for doing it, which exposed my fear of not being accepted / being excluded if I did not keep up the writing rhythm I had committed to. This showed me that I had not made the commitment to write purely for myself but that a part of the decision had been fueled by the need to belong to a group and be recognized as someone “worthy” for the group.

I continued to write every other day or so, being preoccupied by whatever was going on while I was traveling and worn out by the constant instability of my environment. Before the journey I committed myself to use writing as a method of keeping myself stable regardless of my environment, and to that purpose I mainly utilized it, clearing myself out to survive my day-to-day. This experiment showed me the fact that if a being is lacking in basic needs (shelter, nutrition) there simply is no energy left for any kind of “self-development”.

Something changed when I came back home. I am not sure if it is me perceiving my environment to be stagnant (which it isn't – it just isn't changing from one extreme to the other in the matter of days or hours) or maybe the fact that the professional projects and self-development tasks that I'm working on are to be finished in long-term (I'm talking lifelong stuff here). Somehow it feels as if things are “going nowhere” even though they are; it's just so gradual that sometimes it's difficult for me to see the relevance. A part of this experience may also be true, because as I have explored some points in private writings, I see that I still expect things to just “happen” to me instead of me actively creating them and making them happen. So in ways I am stagnant, whereas in some ways I perceive myself to be stagnant.

It has been difficult for me to keep up the daily writing, and sometimes I have only written once or twice a week. I have seen the results in my living. I am confused with myself, I am less structured, I don't know what I'm experiencing, I don't seem to be making any progress, I don't see much practical change. When I started with this project of writing about a year ago I was going through a crisis phase when I had A LOT to go through, many things to write about, many potential growth points opening up – and thus it also felt like I was achieving a lot through writing. Now that my life is not in a crisis (as I have learned how to prevent myself from messing up my life, lol) and things seem all smooth and fine, I am not as motivated to write, because I don't see the point. It's like I already believe myself to be “enlightened”, which I know to not be true, oh god no, lol. Because I am less bothered by my fuck-ups in my everyday life I don't really spot them unless I specifically attempt to do so.

And this is exactly why it would benefit me to go through the effort of writing every day, be it just a tweet, a short description of what I went through or an assignment in my DIP Lite course. What I struggle with here is self-criticism. Even now I have decided to not publish what I have been writing yesterday and today because I thought that the text was just not “good enough”. I have already written a little about my self-expectations concerning this blog (the length, structure and content of a blog post) and I know that these expectations limit me from 1) expressing my experience in writing as it is because I expect my self-expression to fit into a specific format, and 2) publishing the text because I fear that others will judge it for not being in a specific format.

Another thing is that I have created a resistance towards writing self-forgiveness. Whenever I write something and face the point where all I have left to do is SF, it's like I face a wall where writing myself out feels like a huge burden that I just can't be bothered to do. This is where I have made a structural pattern a burdensome “must”, when in fact the structure is there to support me to have clarity within and of myself. Whenever I do write (or speak) SF, I feel lighter afterwards, as if there'd been some kind of a release. I don't know if reminding myself of the “reward” during moments of resistance would help me through: they might as well just cause me to expect to feel relieved, ending up in disappointment of there was no relief after writing.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, while traveling and being on a “holiday”, to create a pattern where I justified myself “slacking off”, “letting loose”, “taking it easy”, “relaxing”, “not worrying” and “resting” with the fact that I had worked so hard the preceding months.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to work myself towards exhaustion and burn-out, not realizing that as I “tipped the scale” to the other extreme it would eventually tip to the other extreme as well, and that I am NOW facing the consequences of how I worked a year ago – I am reaping what I sowed – as powerlessness, unwillingness, lack of motivation and self-centeredness (comfort-orientation as opposed to the discomfort I went through while working my ass off).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the consequences of my actions will follow me in long-term.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that I have already had enough rest (the polarities have balanced out), and that if I do not get myself moving I will stagnate within the belief that “I can't”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to write for an “audience” to seek for acceptance instead of writing for myself to find self-acceptance.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to confuse public writing to be such where I seek for a response, not realizing that public writing can be an act of expressing and sharing myself that is valid in itself even without a response.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that my self-expression is valid only if it gets a positive response, not realizing that self-expression (me standing within myself and moving myself within and as self-honesty) is valid in itself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to seek for a validation for my self-expression because I have not been OK with “who I am” (who I see myself to be within the act of self-expression) – because I have judged myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, as I have not wanted to face myself in self-honesty and accept who I am now as the reality that is, to seek for validation for who I have presented myself to be in public writings, feeling “energized” upon receiving validation and feeling confused and frustrated upon not receiving validation.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to use the amount of comments and +1's to validate the “me” I present within a blog post.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not write about things that I fear admitting to, not realizing that it is those points exactly that I should be writing about.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge and deny what I see of myself and thus refuse to write about it, admit to it, accept it, stand as who I am now and share what I have seen and learned.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that in order to forgive myself (release) I first need to apologize to myself (expose).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that if I am scared to talk publicly about a point, I shouldn't push myself to do so, as this is a sign that I have not really apologized to myself (exposed myself, admitted to who I am, stood within my flaws), forgiven myself (self-acceptance, release) nor made a commitment (decision to move).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to give up on writing on days when and as I have believed and perceived myself to have been “too tired” or “too busy”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not plan my schedule to include daily writing and to thus already decide in the morning (or even days before!) that I am not going to write, thus in the evening giving myself excuses such as “I'm too tired to write now” or “I don't have time for this now” to feel as if my planned laziness was justified.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that instead of allowing my avoidance to end up with the same outcome every day I can prevent this by planning my days in such a way that leaves room for writing.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to compare my writings to my previous writings – or more specifically, to writings that I have received positive feedback from AND felt satisfied with myself – and thus make my current writings appear “less” in comparison to these older writings and judge myself for not reaching my standard.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that I have created the standard of a “good text” based on the experience that I had while/after writing it and the impact it had on my life, and not on the structure, length or coherence of the text itself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to seek for the experience of release and relief whenever I write, not realizing that epiphanies don't just happen every day but need to be built through consistent work, and that even then they might never again feel as “overwhelming” as some of the realizations I have had while writing.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to long for the feeling of having a big realization/release because I am not at ease within every moment of my living. (All the more reasons to keep on writing, then.)

I commit myself to write every day.

I commit myself to publish even a little bit of what I have written during the day, be it a short summary on my blog or a tweet on my twitter account.

I commit myself to plan my days in such a way that allows me to write, taking into consideration the writing circumstances (stability, peacefulness, time) and the writing methods (computer / pen and paper / video or voice logging).

I commit myself to explore and experiment with how to move myself when I stagnate, and I commit myself to write about moving myself through resistance.

I commit myself to utilize daily, weekly and monthly structuring to support myself to move myself.

I commit myself to embrace supportive routine and to explore how to make my current routines more functioning.

I commit myself to write for myself, writing from the starting point of “talking to a mirror” instead of “talking to a crowd”.

What helped me out when writing this was Joe's blog post, thanks for the support!

Days 281-283: Succumbing to circumstances

27, 30-31072013

I hate feeling stuck. Because of a many factors in my circumstances I have been falling into a passive state of standing still, lying limp as a carcass, waiting, waiting, waiting around for things to change around me because, apparently, things around me are required to change before anything can happen, before anything can change, before I can move. I hate this state of being because it reminds me of death – it is death – a portrayal of death in flesh, a mockery of the life running through my veins.

On a smaller scale I got stuck today while the company I was in did not offer any possible activities for me to take part in. On a bit of a larger scale I've been stuck ever since arriving to Australia because it is impossible to see the country without a car. On a slightly larger scale I was stuck most of my stay in Vanuatu. On a large scale I have been stuck for all of this trip as I have simply been waiting for my schooling to begin once the trip is over – it's like I'm here just to kill time. All these precious moments of LIFE slipping through my fingers and running to a drain like mercury, because I believe that life is waiting for me somewhere in the future, and that life will take me along with it – not realizing that life is HERE all along and that it is something I have to create, I have to mold with my own hands, because nobody is going to breathe for me, nobody is going to move for me, nobody is going to grow for me – I am the creator of my own life. I may not be the one who gave me life, but it is now placed in my hands, as is the responsibility and freedom to have my way with it.

Note: This SF first goes through a specific event and then moves onto a larger scale.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to get frustrated when the people in my company were focusing on their own activities and did not make effort to include me in them, feeling neglected and ignored and thinking that now that I am here it is a “special occasion” which these people ought to “respect” by doing stuff with me and not without me – not realizing that I was reacting to the expectations I had built around the situation by getting disappointed and then blaming my disappointment on others when in fact I was responsible for the scenario I had created in my mind and for its consequences in my emotional state.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to expect others to create an enjoyable experience for me because of unvoiced expectations of how things “should be” done when people host guests, not realizing that I was abdicating my responsibility to create my own experience and instead passively waiting around for others to make my experience enjoyable.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to get frustrated when my company did not include me in their activities because when I looked at my situation through my disappointment I saw myself powerless to direct the situation so that I would have an enjoyable time regardless of my unexpected circumstances.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that despite my company not including me in their activities I had many options on what to do - I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to make myself blind to seeing all the opportunities available to me by judging all possibilities as “not good enough” as compared to what I had expected the situation to be.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hold on to my expectation of what the situation “ought to” have been and compare all other possibilities to this original scenario where things would have been “perfect”, thus making all other available options appear as less enjoyable/worthwhile as they would have actually been.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel dissatisfied with the activities I chose to do because I was still holding on to my original ideal scenario and hoped that some of it would maybe happen if the people in my company suddenly magically realized that it was a special occasion, gave up on their activities and instead decided to do something that included me as well – not realizing that as I did not in any way communicate my wish to socialize with these people there is no way they could have known for certain what I would like to do, and that thus I did not carry my responsibility of the situation as I expected others to guess what I was experiencing without any of my own input.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hesitate expressing my point of view of this being a situation that presents opportunities that will not be present any time soon again because I feared being judged, attacked, ridiculed and/or ignored – I feared confirmation of what I was already guessing the others to think of me (“I am irrelevant”).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that the others focusing on their own activities was an expression of their disinterest towards me – not realizing that it might just as well have been unsuppressed self-expression or passion (or a myriad of other things) and thus nothing personal towards me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to take it personally when others in my company chose to do things I was not involved in and had no possibility of being involved in, not realizing that this was nothing personal towards me but an expression of who the others were in that moment.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hold onto my expectation of how things “should have” been through the idea of “unfairness” as I judged the choice that the others made in not including me in their activities to be a “bad choice” as it was a choice I would not have made and did not find agreeable or justifiable – not realizing that by judging the others I refused to see and sympathize with (see in myself) the real reasons behind their choices and thus disabled myself from finding a real solution to the situation.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not address the ideal scenario I had created in my mind about the situation before I was there in order to prevent all of this disappointment, frustration, dissatisfaction and spite as I did not question the ideal scenario on any level.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to see it justifiable to expect for a fun, sociable, loud and playful gathering full of laughter and talk without taking into consideration who is going to be there, not realizing that a social situation consists of the combined self-expression of those that are present and thus will not be the same with every different compilation of people.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to seek for a night of fun to compensate for the dull, boring, repetitive, stagnant and meaningless experiences I have had recently.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to expect for a sociable event to be enjoyable in a specific way, not realizing that there are as many ways for a sociable situation to be enjoyable as there are different combinations of people – which is an innumerable amount.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to see it justifiable to seek for an escape from my recent stagnation through other people and thus not question my expectations for this particular event I saw to be my “savior”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the solution to my stagnation is not in escapism and entertainment but in me “taking the wheel” of my own life – directing myself out of activities that bear no fruit and into those that do.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to let my limiting circumstances bring me down and give up because getting myself up and active has felt like too much of an effort.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that I am helpless at the face of my limiting circumstances and to thus justify becoming passive and doing nothing of relevance.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to use my limiting circumstances as an excuse not to do shit.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the circumstances I am in are always in one way or another limiting as all the things in the existence are not available in each and every moment of time and space, and that the challenge is to make the very best out of each and every moment as it truly is – and that using the “limitations” of my circumstances as an excuse not to do things is just utter bullshit when and as I am motivated by laziness and thus am not making a clear assessment of the situation and the possibilities at hand.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not investigate and assess my circumstances “with eyes unclouded” - with the purpose of finding the solution that is the best for all - and that I have instead filtered my view on reality through the purpose of remaining safe and sound within my comfort zone unstirred, still, soulless and dead.

I commit myself to assess my actions, activities and choices throughout the remainder of my trip by asking myself: “what is the point of this?” or “what is the fruit?” - and, after a thorough and self-honest investigation, I commit myself to direct my actions, activities and choices according to that which is the best for all.

I commit myself to live out the commitment above with the intention of carrying it on to my “normal life” after the trip.

When and as I see myself using my circumstances as an excuse to do or to not do something – in other words, using the external reality as a reason instead of looking at myself – I stop, I breathe and I realize I am using my interpretation of the reality as an excuse not to get uncomfortable. I realize that I am “clouding my vision” from seeing the real possibilities of a situation because I have a hidden agenda to stay within my comfort zone – I have already made up my mind. I face myself in self-honesty and investigate why I truly do not want to leave my comfort zone. I utilize self-forgiveness to release the point. I then re-assess my situation with absolute diligence, accepting and allowing no uncertainty considering each and every possibility/opportunity in the current moment. I make a choice based on self-honest self-expression.

When and as I see myself thinking “I can't, because...” / “Emmä voi, ku...” I stop, I breathe and I ask myself whether this is actually true. I ask myself: “what do I fear/desire?” and I look at my motives within and as self-honesty. I re-assess my situation and, if I see it to be necessary, I do the exact thing that I was previously trying to avoid within and as the realization that growth only happens outside my comfort zone.