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 had a really thorough and deep conversation with my boyfriend late last night about a number of different things. First we started off talking about our results to the Myers Briggs personality test. My result is INFP and his is INTP. He told me he took the test a few days ago. I had taken the test many times before. I told him that I knew that would be his result because we are really similar in the categories that this test covers. This test determines “preferences” for certain styles. One sub category is about how the individual prefers to process information. The preference is either for taking in information at face value only (sensing) or for using that information as only the starting point after which the individual further analyzes and adds meaning to that information (intuition). Another sub category is about the preference an individual has for how one will make the decisions that they make. This preference is either for making decisions based on logic, facts, and consistency (thinking) or for emphasizing a focus on the emotion-based particulars such as the people and subjective circumstances involved (feeling). The last sub category is about an individual’s preference in dealing with external stimuli and the external world. The preference is either towards wanting to be decisive about matters (judging) or wanting to keep things open-ended in order to leave space for other potential options or information to come into play (perceiving).

Since I had read so much about my results and about this test in general, I was able to infer what my boyfriend’s results would be. I was able to see this especially when we would have serious conversations/debates/or arguments about heavy topics. On almost every occasion, he uses the cold, hard logical lens in which to base his arguments. He has little to no tolerance for emotion-based arguments and opinions. I on the other hand do exactly that–with almost every controversial topic we discuss, I use the emotion-based lens in which to base my arguments. He wants facts, data, objective information, and linear thinking as the basis of the opinion or stance. I want a humanitarian basis, which includes focusing on the subjective information at hand. It includes the particulars, and definitely is based in my emotional response to the controversial topic. I have opinions that are mostly about the particular type of people and their subjective experiences/circumstances. Our debates turn into arguments due to our polar opposite way of creating opinions/stances. He will make implications that what I’m arguing is not backed by any proof or data, and will point out how what I’m saying becomes very abstract and emotional. I will make implications that he is being insensitive, close-minded and based in sweeping generalizations. Really what is going on here is that we are butting heads because our way of forming opinions are at two polar extremes. The Myers Briggs Test made that really clear to me.

I know that otherwise he and I share very similar morals, values, and perspectives on things. He and I clearly share the same need for down time since we are both introverted. He and I are both independent and unique in our sense of self. We both form our own opinions and never just completely go by what we’ve heard or read from somebody else–which would explain how we both share the “intuition” preference when it comes to processing information.

I was going to go into the heavy conversation that he and I had last night, but I spent so long just describing the basis of what lead to the deep conversation in such detail that I may need to just write another post up about the deep conversation. I do this every time that I write ha. I just draw so many connections to various things and they end up inspiring me to write a lot from time to time. That’s another interesting thing. I realized how much I love writing. I think being a writer is actually a potential career for me in the future. I never really considered that before. Pretty interesting since my current job and usual aspiration is to work directly with people with psychological disorders (which is rewarding but also very draining). Becoming a writer would be to do a complete 360 in a way. Being a writer is a very introverted and independent career. Writers spend hours by themselves, well writing. I don’t have a degree in writing, but I’m not sure one would be necessary depending on the type of writing I’d want to do. I can’t see myself ever being a formal writer of any sort. I’d love to write about what I’m interested in–psychology, art, philosophy, nature, and people in general. I would love to write about all of my observations and about all of the connections I’ve made between these subjects. To do that for a long-term job would be very therapeutic as well and I would finally get a break from all of the psychological energy I expend on a regular basis by doing the job that I do. I don’t know where I’d start with pursuing a career like this and it would require a lot of discipline/self-direction. Maybe I should just start by trying to re-develop the habit of writing on a regular basis.

My own computer has decided to start being a twat, and it cannot reach the login screen, it keeps going in this stupid loop where it can’t finish the final stage of these updates (which my computer told me I needed to do, and there were 8 of them). After it gets to that stupid screen where it says it’s on the third stage…the screen just goes black and then my computer restarts itself all over again. It’s really irritating. Especially because this wouldn’t be happening if I didn’t do the updates, which I thought were supposed to be things that *helped* the functioning of my computer. Also, it seems that every time I actually fully shut down my computer, somehow that makes my computer worse the next time I go to use it, which makes no fucking sense. Usually I just let it hibernate when I’m not using it, but somehow giving it a total break makes it have more trouble working again. I suppose that’s a bit like humans, actually. People normally get sick as soon as they fully stop running around being really busy. As soon as they take a break from that, that’s when they get knocked down by viruses and whatnot. But what the fuck computers are supposed to function better than humans ha.

I’m on my mom’s computer, and it’s so slow. Don’t get me wrong I mean I am really happy/glad that she has one because I’ve come to realize how dependant I am on my computer. Everyday I check the weather for the whole day online after I wake up so I can figure out what to wear when I go to take my dogs out. New England weather is so fucking erratic that this is relatively necessary, but then again it’s also one of the things I’m OCD about. I like to be fully prepared for whatever weather change their might be, and this was much more important when I was in college still because I couldn’t just come home easily and change if the weather changed. Now I just do it out of habit I suppose. I also go on my Facebook a ton which is a total waste of time but being unemployed and having finished college, while still living in an incredibly towny-town at my Mom’s place, where we are the only ones that live here and she’s working a lot, I tend to be home alone most of the time. So my computer and fucking around on the internet are small things that keep my sanity. If I were a more motivated person I would probably read for hours a day and make art and do things that are actually productive. But being as I’m not except on random days, I tend to waste away my days on my computer. I check this site a lot too and read the blogs that I follow, and I’ve been writing here more often. So I suppose that’s a more productive thing as it’s still all reading and writing.

This computer shit wouldn’t be a big deal if I had thousands of dollars in the bank as i could just buy a new one, but as of now I have about $40, split between two banks, and no income. So that’s not an option, and I’m certainly not going to ask to borrow a ton of money from my mom for a computer, as she works really hard as is to pay for everything and she just worked overtime the past two days in a row, and is now at work again. Asking her for that would be selfish and it would weigh on my conscience as well, because basically that’d mean she’d probably be working even more overtime to help pay for that, while I’d be here sitting at home as usual fucking around on my computer. So I can’t do that. My brother is a computer expert and I emailed him about the issue in detail and I’m waiting for a reply. But again since this is an emergency to me but not to anyone else, I don’t want to continue the selfish behavior of expecting other people to drop what they’re doing to fix a problem of mine.

Basically this has made me fully realize how much time I waste on my computer, and how it affects my brain. When I went outside to walk my dogs, it was nearly silent in my head and I felt very calm. Normally it’s very loud in my head and my thoughts are swirling all over the place. Normally I’m really anxious in one way or the other, and I suppose my computer usage might play a role in this. I’ve always had more mental than physical energy, and my addiction to my computer only fuels my mental energy while continuing to not use any physical energy in order to get more physical energy.

The walk I took with my dogs was less happy as it was really cloudly out and kind of cold, but I went in this cool area in the woods that how more of a desert type feel to it. It’s all sand and rocks, with plants that look like ones that’d be in a dry/hot climate. It’s really cool, it’s almost like a portal to an earlier stage of the Earth, because the rocks there are also really interesting and different. All I could thin was “Moon rocks”. They looked like peices of the moon or other planets, and I collected a bunch of them. I spent awhile just looking through them and being in awe, and then even though I was enjoying myself, I had the thought that I am just a big kid. I’m fascinated by nature and rocks, things that most people don’t even notice or care about, and everytime I see something a little different it’s as if it’s the first time I’m seeing these things. I just felt childish, not necessary in a totally bad way as that means I’m more aware of my connection to the Earth and I’m more appreciative of it than the average person. It was more that it was like I didn’t know what to do with my days if I didn’t have a computer, then I went looking at rocks and collecting them, then I thought about how badly I need a job and income but how much I have trouble and how much I hate the process of finding one. It just made me realize how much time I spend alone too, on a regular basis, and how most people are out working or atleast in civilization for several hours a day, while I’m almost exclusively on my own, and hardly in civilization. I feel a disconnect from society. Whenever I do go somewhere in civilization to do something simple like pick up my meds, I feel dissociated/out of place. I space out and try not to make eye contact with anyone, and I feel like people can tell that I’m different or out of place and feel self conscious about that. That’s why I’ve started to avoid looking at other people directly when I’m in places like that now. Normally I used to look at like *everyone’* face, and a lot of them wouldn’t even see me but I’d basically get absorbed in watching other people.

I’ve just always felt like I didn’t really belong anywhere, yet I belonged everywhere at the same time. Like I could be a member of several different groups but I couldn’t be a member of just one group. I like way too many different things and different people to just choose one, and I never feel like I can just pick a few out of several things. I like a lot of things equally, and a lot. I often felt like people always wanted me to choose their group if I was part of it but not a complete member. When I was taking art classes at umass, I was an art minor and a psych major, and I always felt like the art major students didn’t want me there. It’s like they were insulted that I liked both subjects a lot, they were insulted that I chose to make Psych my major. I also was essentially the only person in every one of my classes other than like two other people that made abstract art. People didn’t like that either. They’d insult my art by saying it was basic or like doodles or that I could “do so much more”. They’d get annoyed that I couldn’t give them a concrete answer as to what it was that I made, and even a few of my teachers wouldn’t accept that I couldn’t explicitly verbalize the process behind my art. I don’t get why the process would need to be explained…I mean art is the exact opposite of language and usually artists are not as good at language because they think primarily in images. I just always felt like somebody somewhere was always trying to push me one way or the other. Essentially no one just accepted that I had so many different interests and I didn’t find anyone that liked as many various thing as I do until my last year at college. Everyone else seemed to just be really into like one or two things. I’m just not exclusive like that with my mind and interests. The world just has way too many awesome things in it for me to just choose a few and ignore the others. I want it all. And I don’t mean I want to possess it all I just want to be connected to a lot of it and I want to be invested in a lot of it.

I guess I feel like a bunch of different circumstances in my life have lead to me feeling like I was different than the average person, leaving me feeling alienated from a lot but more connected than others to more concrete things like nature and animals. The only people I’ve felt really connected to or a lot like are other people that are odd like me, other people that also don’t fit in and they do stand out, other people that the average person might label as a “freak”. I’ve always felt very connected to nature and animals though, and to music too. Even since I was a little kid. Maybe part of the difference is the level of acceptance and openness. Nature and animals alike are very open and accepting. There aren’t requirements for being connected to them, and anyone can have the same interaction with them. Animals don’t pick and choose between people, they love most all people, unless you are a bad person in which case they can sense that and they don’t like you.

I feel both adult and childish in a number of ways, and the the thing is outside of the fact that I don’t have a job, money, or my own place to live, I still feel mentally/intellectually mature. The thing is, in society you aren’t seen as mature *unless* you can show others how you can financially take care of yourself. It’s almost like the mental/intellectual aspect doesn’t even matter. I know so many adults that can support themselves but are very deficient in mental/intellectual/people skill based things.

I do want to get a job and make money so I can buy new things I’ve been wanting/needing for awhile and so I can comfortably move in with my boyfriend, and I do want to be able to start my own completely. I do want to see more people, to interact with more people, and to have more of a purpose. I do want to have a routine again, I want to make structure of my life and I want to be able to see a future.  I want change and I want to change. I want to be more active and balance out my over-active mental energy with physical energy. I want to feel more hope and joy in life. I want to be able to save money to travel. I want to feel excitement to face the day in one way or the other, rather than feeling like I’m wasting my days away. It’s just that these things take time, lots of time, energy, and money. They take persistent energy, they take discipline, and they take confidence.

I did up my dosage from 300 to 450 MG yesterday, and today too. Yesterday it was either the placebo effect or the dosage really did make a difference. I had so much more energy. I took my dogs on a longer walk at a more brisk pace, I did a bunch of chores, I even went for a run! I got a bit over zealous on the running part as I started off running the pace I used to keep when I was an actual runner and was in good shape, and ended up having to stop a few times out of having no breath and having huge side stiches ha. But atleast I tried. Atleast I actually did some cardio. I did it in the rain too, I didn’t care that it was raining. It felt good to do things out of my own motivation, out of my own desire to change. I want to continue that way. I need to keep believing in myself and reminding myself that I feel so much better when I do things on a regular basis like exercise, make art, make music, work a job, read, write, and do chores. I can become better and I want to become better. Than myself, not than anybody else.