Day 407: Being ill

17082014

I have now been sick for 14 days, of which I have had a fever during the last 11 days. The disease was identified as mononucleosis or “kissing disease” (a nickname derived from the fact that the virus only transmits through direct contact with another's saliva). The symptoms include high fever, muscle pains, swollen lymph nodes, swollen face, sore throat, stomach cramps and an overall fatigue that in the most extreme cases can go on up to months or even years. Once infected, the virus will remain in my body for the rest of my life.

The first few days with the muscle cramps were heavy, because I thought I was dealing with the usual kind of pain that comes as the result of having a bad posture or not exercising enough, and then got frustrated when the pains were just getting worse despite my attempts to support my muscles in healing. When the fever struck on day 4, I was overwhelmed by how “everything” can happen at once, as I still thought that all of my slowly-occurring symptoms were unrelated to each other. By Sunday the fever was reaching 40 degrees celsius, I felt like I was going to die and I was so unbelievably frustrated, as I had “been a good girl” and given myself rest - despite the fact that I wouldn't have wanted to - because I just wanted to heal as fast as possible so I could get on with my life. I didn't know why the fever was going up, I didn't understand any of my symptoms and I was getting depressed and anxious and thus cried a lot and tried to write during those few hours of the day I was awake. I felt cut out and separated from the world, a prisoner in my own home. I didn't sleep for many nights because I was too restless to empty my mind, and all the entertainment I had consumed to “keep myself busy” while hurrying up healing attacked me mentally during the nights.

On day 9 I got the diagnosis and my anxiety dropped, as I now knew I wasn't dealing with a normal flu and that I had done nothing “wrong” to not be healed already. With the knowledge of what was happening in my body I could give myself the peace of mind to rest and the time needed for the body to go through the process of adapting to the presence of the virus - I mean, my body's gonna have to deal with it for as long as I live! The fever lowered a bit and I started having energy to be awake and do something light, but as these kinds of days have now been rolling by, I've increasingly felt how everything that I am doing or thinking of myself possibly doing is somehow useless, a pastime, as if I was just killing time – and when I pointed out to myself that I am now simply on sick leave and that it is OK to not push myself too much, I asked myself: if I wasn't sick and didn't have all these constraints, what would I be doing now? And the response I got from myself was just as unfulfilling and depressing as all the thoughts I'd had before. I felt that everything I would be doing during these last few weeks of my summer holidays would be “killing time”, constructing sandcastles only to let them be blown away, and besides that, I'd be doing it alone or with people I didn't like or with not enough of a variety of people.

I'm a university student with a 3-month-long summer holiday, and for many reasons I decided not to plan anything special for this summer. I'd stay here in my hometown, working as much as I could (which turned out not to be much) and just give myself space and time to focus on myself and whatever personal projects I wanted to give my attention to. My semester begins on the second week of September, and until then I still don't have many plans.

So, where has my focus been during this summer? I have had a new relationship I have invested quite a lot of time in. I have traveled a bit, gone to some festivals, prepared for and celebrated my sister's wedding and experimented with having cats. I've read some books (not as much as I planned to) and played some piano (way less than I intended to). Basically, I don't think I've had a moment where I've had to wonder about what to do next, because the opportunities have been presented to me – one could even say I've been a bit busy, lol.

So I'm guessing a partial cause of this unfulfillment experience is the fact that I am now for the first time actually facing what my summer would have been like in some scenarios: if I had to spend it alone (as I am now doing in isolation) and without going anywhere (as I can't now take up anyone's invitations). I am in shock of this leisure, especially because I cannot do anything physical yet, which is probably what I would be using a lot of my free time for. I don't find fulfillment in studying when I can't balance it out by going for a run. I don't find satisfaction in making music when I can't shake it off with yoga. I have figured that I am a very kinaesthetic person (not saying that everyone isn't or couldn't be), and not being able to move has been tiresome for me. I've felt as if many of my preferred channels of self-expression have been cut off, as I haven't been able to dance or sing or even fucking walk properly.

So, the reason I'm writing all this is to try and make sense of the experience of unfulfillment, resistance, loneliness and dissatisfaction that has been triggered during this illness. It's been a tough 2 weeks for my psyche, as during this time many points concerning my new relationship, proactiveness and in general just living a life have surfaced.

I'm also curious about the infection itself. It may be quite telling that I got a “kissing disease” while coming down from the rush of endorphins of embracing and establishing a new relationship – I could say I've been quite easy pray, lol, with my guard way down. I don't know where I got the infection, but because it only transmits via saliva, a good guess would be my new partner. There are some things that have been straining the relationship as the premise of it was left a bit unclear, and I'm kinda thinking how this is now the “payment” for my carelessness, as I did see the things we slid under the carpet and chose to ignore it. “This is what you get for constructing a relationship in this manner.” In a way I'm not surprised at all.

Ok. There's a lot to process here, so I will continue tomorrow by going through what I wrote today and writing specific self-forgiveness on what I find.

Day 391: Winter depression

05032014

Audio transcripts from today:

“Today I cried out of joy when I stepped out into the sun. Apparently it's been a very dark winter. It is very difficult to find life from within yourself when everything around you is dead. But then again, it shouldn't be about the polarity of life and death, now shouldn't it? Like going from one extreme to the other.”

“But everything is not dead. It's just... Darkness is not dead. Frost is not dead. The plants are not dead, they're just sleeping. The animals are not dead, they're just absent, they're just hiding. Winter in fact is not dead. Why do I label darkness as death? Or loneliness as death? Or coldness as death or discomfort as death? I've grown reliant on stimuli from outside of myself to make me feel alive. How do I learn to sustain myself?”

Some background:

I have recently surfaced from a couple-month long winter depression. It is a common phenomenon around the polar areas for people to become depressed during the winter, and this is usually explained by the lack of sunlight and the following lack of vitamin D, but also with the lack of exercise and other side effects of the environment turning unpleasant for humans. This, however, is the first time I have ever experienced this phenomenon myself.

It has been a very strange experience, and I cannot pinpoint exactly when it started. All I know is that some time around November I started gaining weight and that by January I started lagging behind on my schoolwork having lost all motivation. I reached a low point of sorts and haven't been able to pull myself out of it properly until I've literally had to in order to pass my courses. To pull myself “back to life” I have made reviews of my living habits – exercise, sleeping rhythm, nutrition, socializing, recreation – and these slight changes with the increase in daylight and temperature have brought me back to a state of vitality.

As a side note, I watched this really cool TED talk today about depression and found the key statement about the opposite of depression being vitality instead of happiness being quite accurate in my case. I remember feeling really alive before my downfall began, and I am finally starting to feel alive again – not happy per se, but energetic and motivated. God, I've been super cranky for these past couple of months now that I think of it.

Anyway, back to the transcripts. When I stepped out today and bathed in the sunlight for the first time in months, I cried out of joy because suddenly the world around me felt alive again – as if I was “connected” to life itself for the first time since winter began. However, this concept is inaccurate. Life itself hasn't been “switched off” during winter: I just haven't been able to see it. There is life in darkness, coldness, silence and hibernation, but it is just a different kind of life from the other end of the spectrum: of the noisy, bright, colourful and sweaty summers. So to think of winter as “death” and summer as “life” does not follow the reality.

What I am saying here is that I have somehow accepted and allowed myself to be affected by the environment I am in. Of course the circumstances the human being – an organic creature – is in affect its state, because different circumstances support different things: different possibilities are available and so forth. I do not suggest that the human being should somehow be separate of its environment, because that is simply not possible. However, one can believe oneself to be a victim of one's circumstances, thus giving oneself the permission or the excuse to do something, to for example “slack off”.

I have accepted and allowed myself to be taken by moods, going from one extreme to the other. I see that following these moods could possibly result in me being extremely happy during summers and extremely down during winters (which is the reason why so many people living here in the north escape the winter to warmer countries). I see that this is not a sustainable state, to resent one manifestation of life (winter) and to celebrate another (summer).

What I think happened in my case is that I used my prevailing circumstances (winter) to give in to my deep-rooted loneliness. My life is mostly quite nice and I can honestly say that I enjoy many aspects of my life, but the social dimension of my life has been unsatisfying for years now – actually, we might be talking about more than a decade of feeling completely alone, since I started getting depressed at around the age of 10 because of bullying and other malfunctions in my social network.

So what did I do when the winter came? I focused on my work, stopped exercising, started binge eating, forgot to rest and give myself space to be creative (with music, movement, theatre, writing, arts, etc). And then I wondered why nothing felt like anything, why I was so tired all the time, feeling restrained and secluded and brought down by my thoughts of self-diminishment. I was doing it all to myself.

I'm writing this now to support myself to remain stable and functioning no matter my surroundings. I might have to live through many winters, and I do not want that time to be lost into being stuck with myself. I might even face completely new circumstances, like staggering heat or humidity or drought, and even then I need to find the practical solutions for physically surviving AND the mental solutions for not throwing myself out of balance because I believe myself to have a plausible excuse to do so.

I'll continue from here with self-forgiveness and corrective statements.

Day 380: Continuing on Waking up efficiently

15012014

This post is a continuation to my previous post.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel guilty for sleeping “too much”, not questioning my definition of “too much sleep”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define 6 hours of sleep to be the ideal amount of sleep with no real evidence of this actually being the amount of sleep that my body needs to recharge, thus also defining less than 6 hours as “too little” sleep and more than 6-7 hours “too much” sleep.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel guilty for not living up to my ideals, not realizing that my ideals have not been constructed according to the physical reality to function as goals that support my living, but that I have instead constructed my ideals based on what others appear to be doing and what I ought to do to be as good as others – to be accepted by others – to not be less than others.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that if I cannot construct my sleeping patterns efficiently, I will have failed as a person.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to measure my worth based on how efficiently and supportively I structure my life, thus feeling like a failure when something doesn't work out (such as sleeping at the moment), not realizing that my definition of “supportive structuring” is based only on how much I get done / how much I achieve or accomplish, thus ignoring e.g. my physical and mental well-being.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that if I sleep more than 7 hours I am “wasting time” that I could instead use on “getting stuff done”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that my body might need more than 7 hours of sleep depending on what it's recovering from, and that forcing myself out of bed without sufficient rest is to compromise my health as well as my ability to “get stuff done”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that “getting stuff done” (work, study, whatever tasks I have) is sustainable when and as and ONLY when it's done in consideration of the physical reality – such as the well-being of my body, the physical organism I inhabit.

• I commit myself to stop compromising sleep, rest and recovery in order to achieve merit in the eyes of others.
• I commit myself to arrange myself enough time for sleep, rest and recovery; In cases where I need to momentarily compromise my sleep/rest, I commit myself to arrange myself time to recover from this compromise sufficiently.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that there are two kinds of tiredness – a physical and a mental tiredness – and that when I wake up in the morning I am able to discern between the two, and thus also able to understand and decide whether to stay in bed or to get up.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, when I have woken up in the morning, to ignore my awareness of the fact that I am mentally tired and continue sleeping regardless of my awareness of this fact with the excuse that “I have nothing to do” - “I might as well sleep more”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that when I stay in bed out of mental tiredness I am escaping something in my reality.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to expect that getting out of bed is a burdensome task, thus anticipating the moment of getting up and all the things I need to do, thus creating a desire to stay in bed.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a resistance towards my morning routine (washing up, yoga, cleaning the dishes) because I have found some of the tasks difficult and burdensome.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a resistance towards my morning yoga exercise because often when I do it I need to push myself over a threshold out of my comfort zone even though I know my entire body will feel better after the yoga.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to give in to the resistance towards yoga, thus skipping some mornings and eventually not doing it at all, thus also making it easier for me to give in to the resistance to get out of bed at all.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that expansion and growth requires constant pushing and discomfort before it becomes an effortless part of my living.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that to integrate yoga and exercise into my living – a form of physical self-care – I need to unwind the roots and habits of stagnation I have grown and become tangled up with.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see, realize and understand that slouching, dragging my feet, sitting down and being still in the morning when I wake up is a habit of not moving – a habit that I can change and replace with another – and that I have learned this method of waking up by observing the people I grew up with.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that my family's culture of waking up – making oneself as comfortable as possible to “soften the blow” – is not the only possible way of starting one's day.

• I commit myself to do my yoga routine each morning, unless I am physically unable to do it (sickness etc), as I now see, realize and understand that getting used to this small push every morning I get myself used to discomfort, thus supporting myself with all situations where I need to deal with discomfort in order to grow and expand. (This is pretty cool now that I think of it this way!)
• I commit myself to expand my yoga routine little by little, adding one move to the routine when and as the routine needs more physical challenge.
• I commit myself to experiment with other forms of morning exercise, such as taking a walk or running.
• I commit myself to do something physical every morning before I have breakfast.
• I commit myself to explore what else I could do before I have breakfast, for example writing, studying and meditation.

Also, an idea I got in the last post that I want to try out:

• When and as I do not have anything to wake up to the following morning - such as a meeting, a lecture or work - I commit myself to go through my tasks for the day in the previous evening and decide on the first task I will tackle the following day.

It's been working out well so far!

Note to self: the word "efficient" has a negative tone to me, and using it here makes it feel as if waking up "efficiently" couldn't be enjoyable but that I'd be gritting my teeth while doing it, lol. I'll return to this word and the concept of efficiency in posts to come.

Day 362: Energy from movement

02122013

silly dancing keeps you going!

I have been stuck for some weeks now after my first quarter semester at university is over and I have mainly had independent study work and very few lectures. The fact that I haven't “had to” get up and go someplace to study has had a stagnating effect on me, and my studying at home has been slow, painful and effortful. I have mostly been playing video games, focusing on my hobbies, cleaning up the apartment and socializing – all of them nice and enjoyable things, but done at the expense of my studies. Now I have a big exam and two major writing assignments due in only two weeks, and I still have plenty of work to do to complete them.

One major point pulling me down and making me feel tired and powerless has been the lack of exercise. Because I have had so much to do I have convinced myself that “I have no time to exercise”, when in fact all of my time goes to procrastination! If I'd take the time to go running for an hour and then attempt to do my work, I might actually be a lot more efficient.

I'm starting to see what a major point this is, because a couple of days ago I had a really physically active day at the theatre. We had a gig in the morning and another show in the evening, and so I was basically in motion all day, singing, speaking, dancing, expressing and connecting throughout the day. The effect of this was that I was really energetic the entire day, even when I got home – and the following day – and the day after that! Because when I had set myself in motion during that active day at the theatre it was a lot easier to keep myself moving even the following days, and keeping myself physically in motion (stretching, dancing, climbing, running, singing) has provided me with way more energy to actually do my study work as well as take care of my other pending responsibilities. When I am lying on the couch powerless and worn out it is easy to believe the excuse that “I'm too tired to move”, when in fact getting up from the couch would make me less tired.

Thus,

I commit myself to do yoga every morning, making the routine longer by adding a new move at least every week or two, with the goal of doing an hour of yoga every morning.

I commit myself to wake up early enough so that I will have time to do at least 15 minutes of yoga every morning.

I commit myself to make sure that I properly move each and every day to avoid falling back into stagnation, as I see, realize and understand that setting myself back into motion from the state of stagnation is an unnecessary “waste” of resources and can be avoided.

When and as I feel like moving myself is “too much” - I stop, I breathe and I realize that unless I am majorly injured this is not in fact true. I realize that I make the excuse “I am too tired” because moving myself out of my self-induced stagnation is uncomfortable and requires effort. I face the fact that I have in fact caused my own weariness and that the only way out of it is by my own actions. I look for the starting point of my stagnation and I forgive myself for how it was created. I then proceed to self-correction by moving myself breath by breath, motion by motion and assisting and supporting myself to set myself back into motion, no matter what kind.

Days 355-356: Escaping physical strain

20-21112013

In regards to what I wrote about alcohol/socializing being a way to relax for me, I've been paying attention to how and why I make my moment-to-moment living uncomfortable / unenjoyable so that I need the release from “leisure” to balance myself from the exhaustion I have created. So far I have come across some points.

• Physical strain: either my backpack is too heavy or the wrong size for me, or my posture is not OK for sustainably carrying a heavy backpack while walking long distances. Also, my physical reading positions are rarely such where I would not end up in pain: I always eventually jam up my back and/or shoulders. As I write my shoulder muscles are currently in a very painful state.
• Partly because of the physical discomfort I tend to escape my breath-to-breath living into my mind. I usually think about a) past events, b) future events or c) imaginary events – stuff that doesn't exist anymore / yet / at all – and I do this over and over again without achieving any new insights with any of the recurring thoughts.
• A point I noticed while walking long distances was impatience. When there is some reason for me to feel impatient to “be there already” (e.g. be home already because I am hungry and I have food waiting for me) I escape my moment-to-moment living into the mind as described above, as if to distract myself from the discomfort that is here (such as hunger) to get me “faster” to my goal/destination. Even though this method makes it seem as if “time goes faster” because I momentarily become unaware of myself and the discomfort my physical body is experiencing, I actually sabotage myself because when and as I distract my attention from my body's actual needs I lock myself into a state of tension. For example, when I am walking outside and it is cold, if I distract myself to not be aware of the coldness and instead ”float around” in a mind bubble, my body will still experience the coldness and be in a state of tension as I am not giving my body any attention. Instead I could be aware of the experience of coldness, keep myself in deep and slow breathing and relax my body with each breath, through this assisting and supporting my body to survive the cold. I have noticed through experimenting that when I relax myself within an uncomfortable experience, it actually becomes less uncomfortable (e.g. cold feels less cold) – I'm guessing it has something to do with how blood flows in muscles (tense vs. relaxed).

Alright. I will now walk these points and see what comes of it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to forget to breathe so that I have not noticed the physical pain in my body caused by a bad posture before the pain gets bad enough.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to ignore my body telling me that the posture I am in is damaging to me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that I “need to” study at the expense of my physical body because there are “no better options”, not realizing that I am causing myself extensive damage and making my studying more difficult in the long run, and that there is sure to be some option that I just haven't figured out yet.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to give up on trying to find a physically painless way to study and instead settle for positions that are not good for my health.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that pushing myself to study through pain is self-sabotage, as the pain will eventually render me unable to study.

--

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to escape my discomfort into the mind.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react to my experience being uncomfortable with fear and thus create a desire to no longer be there, thus fulfilling this desire by escaping my experience into a mind illusion.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react to discomfort with the fear of not being able to handle it, believing and perceiving that physical discomfort is something “overwhelming”, not realizing that physical discomfort can in fact be dealt with simply by breathing, locating the problem and taking necessary actions to solve the problem.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to no realize that when in discomfort, the simple act of breathing and bringing my awareness to the pain is to gift myself with the attention that I actually require, and that escaping the discomfort by not breathing and distracting myself with thoughts/images is to neglect myself and ignore the needs of my physical body.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to escape my uncomfortable experience of the physical reality into the mind as thoughts and imaginations of the past and future, thus losing myself into what is not actually HERE and neglecting that which is actually HERE.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that a thought/image is “more enjoyable” than my experience of the actual reality and that this enjoyability is a valid reason to escape the reality, not realizing that the enjoyment in the mind is temporary and fades and that every moment spent away from HERE brings consequences: if I shut my eyes while driving a car, every moment spent driving with my eyes closed might take me off the road.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the enjoyment within/of the mind / the conceptual reality always fades, whereas enjoyment within/of this physical reality is sustainable.

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I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to become impatient with the cause of my physical discomfort (cold, rain, hunger, tiredness) and to escape the discomfort by thinking of the moment when I will get rid of it (by getting home, getting to a shelter, getting food, getting to rest etc.), and thus “mend” my impatience by imagining I'm “there already” or by telling myself I'm “almost there”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that my physical needs need to be “soothed” with imagination or otherwise they will overpower me, not realizing that if I am not actually dying my physical needs cannot in fact overpower me by themselves, and that my experiences and memories of a physical need becoming “overwhelming” are such where I have made it “overwhelming” through the mind with enhancing thoughts such as “I am so hungry/cold”, “I am in so much pain”, “this sucks”, “I hate this”, “I'm so far away from home”, “why can't I be there already”, “this feels awful” et cetera, where I have eventually been overpowered by my own helplessness and not the problem itself.

--

I commit myself to keep myself in breath before, during and after I study (read text from a book / computer screen OR write on a notepad / computer) to keep my awareness in my physical body and to thus ensure that no painful point – message from my body, the living organism – goes unnoticed.

• Before I study, I commit myself to find myself a comfortable position to study in.
• During studying, I commit myself to take note of any pain I might feel and to adjust my posture/position accordingly, making sure that I get up and move around every 15 minutes.
• After studying, I commit myself to pay attention to the remaining effects of the physical act of studying in my body.

I commit myself to show myself that I am capable of surviving non-lethal physical discomfort, such as hunger, tiredness and changes in temperature, by returning myself to breath whenever I escape the physical reality into my mind and by keeping myself stable and relaxed in breath until the problem can be solved.

When and as I create dramatic thoughts about my state of discomfort – such as “I am so hungry/tired/cold” - I stop, I breathe and I realize that with these thoughts I give in to helplessness, believing and perceiving that I am powerless to direct the situation to the best possible outcome. I realize that the reality is not in fact dramatic as everything moves according to simple causality (if I do not eat, I will eventually get hungry) and that within a reality of causality there is always also some kind of a course of action available that will work as a solution to undesired circumstances (when I go home, I will eat food). I stabilize myself in breath, search for an actual solution to the problem, and I keep myself stable until the problem is resolved.

I commit myself to explore how to find comfort in discomfort through breathing, relaxing and taking care of my basic physical needs.

Alright, I'll continue with more related points tomorrow.

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!

Day 344: Self-judgement curling me up

30102013

These days I often get this feeling that I don't want to do anything at all but to sit down and entertain myself. I started to wonder how exactly I accumulate this experience, and I realized that HEY, this state of being is a symptom of something I accept and allow in myself. People don't “just become” unable to function out of physical tiredness: when one is physically tired after a long day, it can be slept off, but this “I don't want to do shit” -experience appears even when I am NOT physically tired and would have plenty of energy to do other stuff.

I noticed this just now when I had gotten myself onto my couch to scribble some nonograms and I realized that I had physically drawn myself into a very withdrawn position with my knees against my chest, head down, toes curled and breathing shallow. I looked at myself and thought: “what am I hiding from?”, and I remembered a moment of self-judgement just half an hour before and realized it had added on top of my weariness and become the catalyst for me withdrawing.

What else has happened during my day to make me want to hide and withdraw?

For the entire day I have been bothered by a discussion I had yesterday which I think did not go as well as it should have. I went through the topic of the discussion in writing, found certainty in my point of view and made a decision to return to the topic with the person involved, but I didn't realize that the reason I was bothered by this discussion was because I judged myself to have “failed” in the discussion because we did not end up in a clear solution / consensus. So this point of self-judgement has followed me and weighed me down all day.

I went to work in the morning and throughout my shift I noticed these small moments of self-judgement coming up. My morning shift includes cleaning up the bar, and unless I start early enough and work overtime, I might not finish the task before it's time to open up the bar – and when I “fail” this task, I judge myself, and it shows in how I treat the customers, because on some passive-aggressive level I take it out on them. Today that moment of self-evaluation was there, but because I had started work half an hour early and finished cleaning on time, my self-evaluation was positive and I tipped over to the other polarity where I was overly cheerful with all the customers.

However, there were other moments where I noticed stress coming up (I feel it instantly as tension in my shoulders) when I feared that I might “fail” a task. During morning shifts these moments usually come up when I have to leave the cash register unguarded to pick up some stuff from the storage, because I fear someone will come and rob the bar the very minute I turn my back, which would make my employers disappointed and angry with me and perhaps result in some legal consequences. So because there was a lot of stuff I had to pick up from the storage, these moments kept adding up to the feeling of “failure” that had already been gnawing me since last night. On top of that, right after I left work my employer gave me feedback about a mistake I had made with the register last week, and I thought of myself as “stupid” for being so careless.

It appears I really fear disappointing my employers (authorities). This links directly to my experiences with school: trying to do well to please the teachers and my parents.

In the evening I read a comment in the internet with which I judged myself as “stupid”. With this moment of self-judgement I instantly withdrew from the internet, curled up on the couch, watched a little TV and curled up even more to scribble because just sitting up straight felt too heavy. Interesting in retrospect to look at what I did, because it all happened without me having direct control over my doings – I was not directing myself at all, but moving as if on autopilot. It's as if the negative feeling within me (self-judgement, heaviness, smallness) was pulling me into this tense little ball, like a hedgehog defending itself from the world.

Fascinating. Tomorrow, self-forgiveness.

Days 340-342: SF on Day 339: Balancing the social

25-27102013

A continuation to my previous post.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that when I stress about things I make myself so tired that it feels as if I cannot do my daily writing – the exact thing that would help me with the stress and the tiredness.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, when and as I am tired, to rather entertain myself than find the cause of the tiredness and as the result of repetition create a behavioral pattern out of this.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hold on to the pattern of entertaining myself when tired instead of challenging myself to for example write about the tiredness and thus try to resolve it instead of escaping it.

When and as I see myself reaching for entertainment (TV, games, food) when tired, I stop, I breathe and I realize I am trying to escape my tiredness into entertainment. I realize that the entertainment will not help me with the tiredness as it will only make me more disoriented and exhausted, and that what will actually help me recover is resting and dealing with the cause of the tiredness. I breathe and return myself into my body and I check my physical state to see how exactly I am tired. If the tiredness is of the kind where I would be ready to fall asleep, I make the necessary arrangements to get myself to sleep as soon as possible. If the tiredness is not the kind where I would be sleepy but where I am worn out, I ask myself what I have done during my day to cause such a weariness. If necessary, I will write about the points that arise from this self-dialogue. If I am still not sleepy but the weariness persists, I will find some activity that I am able to do within the weariness until I tire enough to sleep the rest of it off.

--

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to stress about passing my exams and thus feel guilty every time I do something other than study, such as spend time with friends, hobbies, chores or writing.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that I don't need to pass my exams at one go, and that if I do not have enough time to study for the first exam, I'll have plenty to pass at the second or third attempt.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that if I study at the expense of my well-being I am in fact sabotaging myself, because when I neglect some facets of my life for the sake of others I am not supporting myself to live a balanced life.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to set myself a standard of passing all exams at first attempt, wanting to be a “star student” that doesn't get stuck with single courses unfinished.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge students who get stuck with some courses that they cannot pass no matter how many times they try, not realizing that I am terrified of being in such a position myself because of the powerlessness of not knowing what else I could do to pass the fucking exam already.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that I will face a “wall” with my studies where who I am is “not enough” to understand the study material and that no amount of practice will be able to surpass this obstacle – not realizing that there is no such thing as “talent”, a magical quality that others inherently have and others don't, which is why some people succeed and others don't – and that if I do face an “obstacle” that feels “impossible” it is simply because I accept and allow myself to feel overwhelmed by material that other people just like me have created with their human brains and minds and hands, which is something I am capable of understanding (because it is something I might as well have created in the other people's shoes!) as long as I break it down enough and allow myself time to “take it in”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that passing an exam, no matter how difficult, is not impossible but a matter of steadfast practice.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear getting “left behind”, not realizing that no matter how many people I compare myself to I am still HERE as myself with the knowledge and skills that I have, and that who I am now as knowledge and skills can be rehearsed only from HERE one word at a time, one movement at a time.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be impatient with myself and get frustrated when I study slower than what I expect of myself, not realizing that I cannot force myself to learn by pushing harder, but that I can assist myself to learn by slowing down, taking the information in one word at a time and allowing myself time to process and understand what I have read and place it into context.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel frustrated when my study technique where I actually try to understand things is “too slow” for the university schedules, and then try to adjust myself to the university schedule requirements, not realizing that the university schedules have not been designed to fit everyone and that if I study as fast as the schedules dictate, my learning will suffer and decline.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blame the study schedules for being “impossible”, not realizing that they have been created with the assumption that I study nothing else than my main subject AND that I do not work while studying, and that they cannot thus work for me as they are, making it MY responsibility to make them work, which is perfectly possible and a matter of simple planning, organizing and letting go of my “star student” standards.

I commit myself to study the given material with the pace I require to actually learn, process and understand within and as the realization that passing an exam (gaining merit in imaginary realities) is secondary to my process of learning (expanding in the practical reality).

I commit myself to experiment with different study techniques to see what would work best for me.

I commit myself to investigate what time of the day I am most “responsive” to studying and to utilize that time of the day as well as possible.

I commit myself to support my well-being – which reflects directly to my ability to study – by taking care of my diet, exercising daily (if only a little), sleeping enough / not too much, sharing life with other people and reserving time for re-creation (creation, building and self-expression).

--

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to go into an energetic “high” from the joy, excitement and happiness I have felt within the social groups and environments I have entered recently, thus losing my stability now as the “high” is starting to wear off.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to slip from one polarity into the other, crashing from the “high” into the “low”, by feeling like there's something “missing” when I'm no longer spending as much time with these people because of practical reasons (we all work and study).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to make my feeling of happiness, joy, enjoyment, fun, excitement and being relaxed and motivated dependent on the people I am with, thus feeling like all this is “missing” when I'm not with these specific people and filling the void with depression.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react with fear of abandonment to moments that remind me of past events where I have experienced myself to have been abandoned and excluded and where have felt like an “outsider”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to construct a fear of abandonment based on events where I have experienced loneliness and alienation, connecting memories of the past within my mind into a system that is triggered when my environment HERE resembles my past environments, within the moment of reaction believing and perceiving that my environment HERE is what I have interpreted my environments to be in the past (hostile, unwelcoming, estranged) and thus not actually looking at what is HERE but instantly “painting a picture” over the reality before my eyes, thus responding with depression and becoming withdrawn, making myself more difficult to approach and creating a situation where I alienate myself from others – looping around and fulfilling my own prophecy: “nobody wants to be with me”.

--

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to react with fear to my environment being “unwelcoming” because I believed and perceived (unconsciously) that I need others to welcome me to this world and this life to have “permission” to be here.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to make myself dependent on the acceptance of others as I did not know (I had not been taught) that all Life has an absolute “right” to exist – that I do not need to get “permission” through anyone's acceptance because Life simply IS and exists – and that even though the acceptance of other people plays a part on the social field / the “social game”, this field/game is a conceptual, man-made reality that has no relevance unless I believe and participate in it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to believe and perceive that the acceptance of my peers in school had relevance because not being accepted on the social field had consequences in the actual reality (I was alone in class, during recess and after school; when I was not alone the company I had was not supportive).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to react to not being accepted by my peers with embarrassment, sadness and depression as I had not learned (I had not been taught) how to accept, support and assist myself in my living NOR how to seek for support from others (everyone outside my peer group).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the reason I never trusted authorities (adults) with my childhood issues was because my parents were pretty unstable themselves and did not offer me the model of a “trustworthy adult”. *

* This point is pretty new to me, because I have always considered my parents to have been “good parents” - and they did do OK most of the time, which I am grateful of. But the more I have studied up on childhood development and psychology the more I have come to realize how I was fucked up from the start by my parents' unresolved issues (which there were aplenty) – one day I found myself thinking: “My parents should have never had kids.” This thought still feels really “bad” to me, as if I had no right to say such a thing, even though I know that I don't mean it in a bad way: to me most of the parents having children are way underqualified for parenting. It's no wonder my parents were a pair of those people.

--

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to seclude myself for many years by living alone and by not seeking company outside my activities.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, during my solitary years, to not seek for company by my own initiative even when I would have really wanted to be in the presence of people because I was afraid of being rejected by those I would approach.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to suppress my desire to be with people because I did not know how to walk through the fear of rejection, thus accumulating the secret desire of having friends and being social.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel guilty about getting carried away by the joy of now having company, not realizing that it is the outflow/eruption/discharge of the energy I have accumulated during my years of isolation, and that on some level this discharge was inevitable, although I am still responsible for directing myself within the discharge.

I commit myself to investigate how to integrate socializing into my life without having to sacrifice myself for it.

I commit myself to investigate the fear of others abandoning me if I do not “please” them.

Day 312: Hiding self-judgement under a positive mantra

11092013

Lately I have accepted and allowed myself to feel like I have “failed” or “not done well enough” on some things. On a conscious level I've been thinking “I'm doing alright”, “that wasn't too bad”, “it doesn't matter that I [made a mistake]” - but in my secret mind on an unconscious level my experience has been “I'm not good enough.”

Today I saw how all these tiny little moments have accumulated up to a state of being where I'm physically in pain and do not want to even try doing anything of relevance and rather just keep myself entertained with useless stuff. I am living within and as the statement: “I won't succeed anyway.” I realized that I have created this state of being out of small moments of hidden self-judgement.

I can see how easy it would be to get stuck into this kind of a state of being, and that to me explains a great deal about people who become passivated. Why get off the couch if making an effort is never enough? Here I miss the fact that I am the one setting the measure of “enough” – which means that I can in fact change it.

I know that I've been doing reasonably well in my tasks lately, and not least because I'm allowing myself decent rest for the first time in at least a year. But the guilt is there. I'm not saying that guilt is entirely a bad thing – if nothing else, it serves as a reminder of things I would actually need to be doing sooner or later – but combined with self-judgement it's quite deadly.

--

Here I did specific self-forgiveness and commitments on each one of the points where I had been judging myself, and I will keep it private for now. Writing out the commitments I mapped out all of the points that have been "bubbling under" for the past couple of weeks, and in the posts to come I will be opening them up in more detail. A general SF statement from today sums it up:

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to cover up my self-judgement with a mantra that says “I'm OK”/”it's OK”, thinking this thought over and over again, not realizing that I am suppressing my actual experience of not being OK with myself by trying to override it with “positive thinking” and thus ignoring the actual issue.

It's quite interesting to see this because I have thought that I am "the kind of a person" who DOESN'T do this kind of positive thinking -mantra. When I laid out the multitude of situations from the past few weeks in front of me, the evidence was pretty hard to deny, lol. So it will be interesting to walk through this point.

Day 285: Travel summary - moving and not moving

04-05082013

For the past few days I have been going through very personal challenges which I cannot (yet) share much about publicly because they concern other people and matters that are yet unresolved. This private process has consisted of finding structure and getting to know myself through written and spoken introspection. I am currently going through past events from my childhood which are related to the events in my life right now. One specific theme has been present in all the points I've been processing, though, and because it's a bit more general I would like to open it up.

I am writing the following as much to bring clarity to myself to what has been going on in my life as much as I'm writing it to share it with others. Recently I have had trouble “getting a grip” of myself and this is helping me get back on track.

I have now been traveling for three months in countries and cultures previously mostly unknown to me. I left home after a massive workload of 8 months had just barely been finished and lifted off my shoulders, and I looked forward to this trip as a reward and also as a chance to rethink my life which, as had become obvious during that extremely stressful and demanding 8 months, was not the kind of life I wanted to live.

During the very first week of traveling I was ecstatic. I felt free and unburdened, I was full of energy, I was enthusiastic about the places I visited, the people I met and the things I learned. After the first two weeks I changed my location from one country to another, and I remember looking at my travel plan and thinking: “I have so much left of this journey. What will I do with all this time?” It felt like looking at a gaping void. I may have survived the first two weeks on nothing but the energetic release of the relief of finally being free of my duties, but I still had many more to come – many more weeks when there would be no one with me, no one to guide me, no one to hold me, no one to go to – no one but myself. This made me anxious.

Little by little my enthusiasm declined. I went through a phase of travel stress where I tried to move myself because of self-judgement: I felt like I “had to” travel around and achieve all these cool experiences just because I had the extraordinary chance to, but meanwhile I started to crave for stability in a “normal” life, a life with structure and balance and a level of certainty, where I wouldn't have to worry about my shoes getting wet, food running out or electricity being cut. I started to withdraw from sightseeing and focused more on enjoying slow-paced everyday stuff such as cooking and walking around, of which I learned a lot. (One doesn't have to go see impressive monuments to learn of a culture, when it is in fact enough to just turn the door-handle and walk down the streets.) Interestingly though, soon enough I was in a country where all I had a chance to do was this everyday stuff, and I didn't even try to go out of my way to do something extraordinary, which with plenty of effort might have been possible. I felt too worn out to even try.

But, within that period of forcibly sitting on my ass I did rekindle something in me that required me to get incredibly bored in the right company. I got excited about returning home because I started to see all the possibilities in the framework of the life I had “left behind”, and my view on how I could change my life for the better got clearer. I grew less and less afraid of returning home.

After returning to “civilization” - to a first-world country – I have been regaining energy to be active, but not in a hyper-mode as I first started off. I have learned that because my life at the moment lacks the stability one would have in a permanent environment I need to give myself stability through enough rest. I have learned a bit more about listening to my body as an indicator of the state of my wellbeing. What I have picked up, though, is that when I am alone all of this works fine, but when I am with others – whoever they may be – I easily give up all initiative and just follow around with little to no input unless I am in an obvious alpha-position. I have been paying attention to this phenomenon and working with it recently.

One thing I use to justify this limpness with others is the fact that I'm on a holiday: “I don't have to do anything.” And to an extent this is true. I have very few responsibilities to attend to at the moment, and most of them are small arrangements concerning my return to Finland. Apart from that there is nothing I “should” be doing. But I could be doing a lot. When I am alone I am more inclined to make the most out of my situation by investigating the places I am in and the possibilities they offer, because there is no one else here to make my life an enjoyable, interesting and “worthwhile” experience for me. When I am with others I give this up because, in all truth, I find it tiring. Whether this is laziness or a sign of stress, I am not sure.

This tiredness has made my return look more fearsome than it did before. I look at the responsibilities and challenges awaiting me and I think: “Ugh, do I have to?” Which is insane as I was just a few weeks ago very excited about the very same things! I see that there is an inevitable polarity pattern here, going from one extreme to the other, and I take this as a sign of a need to balance myself. How I relate myself to my tasks and responsibilities is somehow fucked up – I'm guessing I see the tasks as something “bigger” than me, something “out of my league”. But I will return to this in self-forgiveness.

This journey has been an adventure into myself. This perspective into activeness/passiveness, motivation, living, experience and work is just one of the many, and I will probably continue with the other aspects of what I have learned in the posts to come. I will next continue with the self-forgiveness on the points I mentioned here.

Day 251: Rebooting

08062013

I have just slept off a few night's worth of not enough rest, and I feel oddly powerless. I am trembling, there is no strength left in my muscles, I am sleepy. There are many factors contributing to this and I will now go through them to see what and how much can be done about this experience.

I have been going on with less than 6 hours of sleep for three consecutive days. Last night I slept 10 hours and woke up today at 1 pm. I felt like I could have slept even more but wanted to get up so that my rhythm wouldn't be completely messed up – and I knew that sleeping more hours in a row would not really help me because the REM stage was long gone already. So after waking up I've eaten, stretched and walked around a bit to wake myself up, and I am now in a really weak state with not much will to move at all. This may be a sign that I simply need more physical rest after a few days of running around sightseeing – or it may be a sign of a point I am reluctant to face and try to escape into limpness.

The past few days have been really fun. I have learned a lot about the culture I am living in – and also those of the other travelers - and enjoyed the company of different kinds of awesome people. I have learned new things about myself by exposing myself to various kinds of experiences and I have unveiled some new points which I have so far been unable to write about. I have been trying to write, but basically I have been unable to focus and haven't really known what to write about so I have decided not to until I have some grasp of what I am actually going through at the moment. Last night's sleep seems to have “rebooted” me in such a way that I feel like I have “returned to myself”, to a state of stability of some sort, and I'm starting to get a hold of myself again. The physical weakness may be a sign of this recovery.

I have been exploring further the point of living within, as and through relationships of dependency. I have gained new perspective on the network of relationships I “left behind” and I now have a clearer view on how I have been dependent on the people back home. I have also realized how easy it is to create new relationships of dependency with others when none of the people involved question this. The fatigue I am now experiencing might also be a sign of the re-stabilizing that happens when the people I have been dependent on to create my experience for me have left and I have “had to” become fully self-directed again. The weariness might also be from upholding a character/appearance while being social with other people.

I've become more aware of the creation point of a personality/character, and I have for example been looking at my “drunk personalities”. It seems that when I am drunk I become very gleeful, playful and more inclined to talk to others – all qualities which I would like to express when sober but which I suppress for one reason or another and only release when I am in the social situation of drinking. So this character I could write about in more detail.

Alright, so points I will write about:

• drunk personalities
• mapping out relationships of dependency
• the creation of co-dependency
• spirituality, bitterness and spite
• hesitation

I'll expand on these in writings to come.