I love to write. I need to write more than I realize. I want to work towards writing every day. It’s one of the best ways I can process my emotions and thoughts. I excel more at doing so through writing than I do through speaking, and since I’m an introvert it works better for my needs than it does through speaking. My inner life is so rich that I should definitely be writing the stuff down that goes on inside my head. My inner life is much more active than my outer life so it’s best if I make use of that through writing.

I frequently think about how I want to want to improve myself. I frequently think about how I want to get back to having good, productive daily habits that are in line with my values and strengths. I was reminded of something I learned about years ago when I went to the training I went to last week. The speaker brought up “Flow Experiences” and I was reminded of how they really do increase your happiness levels.

Flow experiences are experiences in which you are fully engaged in what you are doing because you love whatever you’re doing. You end up losing track of time and are completely in the moment. Typically flow experiences result from doing things that you are passionate about or strong in, and so they are truly fulfilling experiences. Multiple Positive Psychology books talk about how the more often you engage in Flow Experiences in your day to day life, the greater your happiness levels will become. This is one way to slightly improve your baseline happiness levels.

My flow experiences include hiking, writing, reading, creating music, making art, and meditating. If I were to do these six things regularly, or atleast a few of them every day, I know I would feel happier. I would be doing the things that I truly love and am good at, and would be living a life that’s more congruent with my values.

One good thing is that for the past several months, whenever I have a day off, going hiking is a priority of mine. I don’t always make it since the daylight is gone by about 4:30 pm lately and I have a second-shift schedule, but I atleast have the internal motivation to atleast strongly want to go hiking on my days off. I also want to get to a point where I go hiking or atleast walking before I go to work too.

I forget what year it was in college but I think it might have been my first or second year when I started to really get into meditating. What motivated me to do so was when I start to get panic attacks a lot, and I also had tripped not long before then so that reminded me of just how spiritual of a person I truly was. Before then I was an atheist. During that trip I was opened up to the spiritual plane and it was the most amazing experience of my entire life. I actually saw energy itself, in everything. I saw the energy fields around the people I was with, I saw how people had different aura colors that were more predominant than other colors. At the time I didn’t really know what energy fields or auras were but I got really into them after that.

Everything in the room I was in, which was filled with creative/abstract/psychedelic art, was alive. All of the pictures were animated. The room itself was filled with this translucent yet multi colored goo type stuff that filled the room starting from the ceiling and was formulated in large cylindrical coil shapes. I understood this as matter itself, which I then learned that matter itself was composed of energy, which is primarily spiritual. This experience felt more real to me than any other “sober” experience I had ever had before. My ego was torn away and I was exposed to the spiritual realm, which was directly in conflict with the reality that the ego had formulated and controlled for all of my life before this.

I did experience “ego death” before the highly positive/spiritual part of the trip began. The ego death was the scariest experience of my life. It was like a panic attack times 10, and when I looked in the mirror I felt completely dissociated. I was sure I was going to die, so my panic got worse and I puked a ton. I didn’t know it then but what truly died at that time was my ego, and it’s scary as fuck when it happens because it questions your entire perspective and understanding of reality. The ego convinces you that are in complete control, that you are the center of everything, and that nothing is real except for concrete/factual based information. Ego death reverses all of that programming and so your mind and emotions are given a complete shock. The ego re-gained control later on, but this trip changed my perspective on life for good.

A bit later I went to get Reiki done. Reiki is a spiritual practice in which imbalanced chakras are balanced, blockages are opened up, and repressed emotions are brought to the surface. Your spirit is interacted with in a way that can be felt strongly, even physically. During this Reiki session my Reiki practioner told me that I was an Indigo child. At the time I didn’t know what that meant but I looked it up later and it made *so* much sense. The way that I had experienced my entire life was finally clarified and so instead of feeling like an outsider/alien, I felt like I was here for a reason, for spiritual and healing based purposes, and so I felt special. Again this was a complete turn around from how I felt for all of my life until I was given this information and this experience. After this session I started to meditate daily or every other day for a few months. I felt amazing and my external circumstances didn’t control my emotional state anymore. I felt at one with everything and that was exactly what I needed.

I want to start meditating every day again. I want to start writing every day. I want to start making art every day, like I did after my trip for awhile. I want to hike as much as possible, in as many new places as I can possibly find. I want to re-remember that these are the things that I am here for, these are the things that truly matter, and these things are what make life worth living. Of course having deep connections/relationships with others and spreading as much love and understanding as possible are equally important, but the aforementioned passions are all internal/individually based things that fulfill me the most without depending on any other people to do so.

I just wrote a really long post, finished writing in the Tags to add to it, then pressed “publish post”. It said “invalid request”, that made no sense to me, so I clicked it again. Same thing. I really don’t understand what the fuck that was about. So then I clicked the ? icon above and it took me to another page, which made it so I totally lost my huge post. God dammit. I really enjoyed writing it and wanted to post it aarrrggg.

I suppose I probably got the therapeutic effect of writing the whole thing still, but I do also hope that some people will have some things to say in response. Maybe this incident can teach me to cut it short or atleast not be so extremely long winded when I actually do write things.

Let’s see if I can summarize what I wrote before it got lost (Gah so lame that that happened).

Basically I wrote about how I went on a hike with my brother Billy and this hiking group. There were like 10 other people there and I got shy immediately. I kind of felt like hiding and I kept to myself, atleast at the earlier parts of the hike.

Later on I spoke more with this older couple because they were talking to me more and they were more friendly. My dog Miles came along on the hike too. Other than this couple I just mentioned, I didn’t really talk to anybody else. Nobody else really seemed interested, was more interested in talking to other people, or whatever. Also, I basically need people to initiate conversations with me when I first meet them. I feel like I need to be convinced that they accept how I come off and that it’s a good idea to talk to them. I also feel like I’m socially awkward when it comes to big groups, especially when it comes to meeting a big group of people.

I think this has a lot to do with being pretty introverted. This is not to say that I don’t love people or socializing (because I really do, I’m very interested in the human psyche). It’s just that I hate small talk and am not interested in it, and I feel that it’s practically required in meeting new people. I am only really interested in discussing deeper topics and in conversations that go somewhere. I also feel that I’m out of practice with social things as of lately, since I’ve spent the past number of months primarily at my house, by myself, in a small town, with no car. All of these factors lead to complications in more demanding social situations.

I’m glad that I’m more introverted than I thought though, because this proves to me that I really like to think things through and go really in depth with things. I really like people, conversations, and topics that involve the deeper aspects of life. I guess to an extent I take life rather seriously, or it’s more that I don’t think it’s something to be careless with. Some of this is personal preference and perspective, some of it is due to the environment I grew up in. Meaning my parents are very serious people and my father is especially concerned with doing A LOT of deep thinking and analyzing. This definitely rubbed off on me.

I felt very strong today on this hike and I realized just how much I love to climb very steep and windy hills to eventually reach a summit with a beautiful view. I like to climb these steep trails fast, too. I feel the same way about track events- especially the 50 meter dash. I feel I am best at this event because I have the build for it and I’m good with being explosive with my energy. Sometimes I really feel like the Capricorn (goat) that I am 😀

In the post I wrote that goddamn got lost, I went in to a lot of detail about my build and upbringing and yada yada. I’m not going to write all of that all over again. Maybe another time lol.