fearful new life

It's good to keep a record of the progress you're making. I tend to just be focused on the challenges I'm facing and to be blind to my progress, so it's good to consciously record the progress. That way, the progress becomes more real. 

The thing about the challenge is that it doesn't seem to change or get easier, so it doesn't seem like I'm making any progress, but I am, in ways that seem to me to be peripheral to the challenge. And somehow, with time, the challenge dissolves or stops being relevant. 

Embarking on a new life involves facing death, and it's a real death. I think it's because all there is of you at this stage is your old self - or at least that's how it seems. So the birth of your new self feels like death because it is the death of everything you know. It's like actual, physical birth in that sense. All you know is that you are being pulled out of the world and the life you know. You have no idea about the life that awaits you.

change adaptation

It's best to take a dichotomous approach. Master the rules and pursue your passion at the same time. Acceptance is important and so is adaptation. 

Adaptation begins with acceptance. When you accept what you are given, you get what you want. It's a strange kind of alchemy whereby accepting the loss of what you want leads you to what you want. A similar thing happens with goals. For some reason, it's often when you stop trying to achieve a goal that it just happens.

Maybe wanting something too badly drives it away and trying too hard to avoid something attracts that thing. Like with anxiety and fear, if you try to resist them and hate them and don't accept them, it gives them power over you. With worry, if you try to resolve it or reassure yourself - if you argue with it - your thoughts go round and round, over and over the same unresolvable question, wearing a deeper and deeper groove until it's so deep that, whatever you think about, your thoughts always end up flowing down into that groove. The problem is not the thing you're worried about, the problem has become the worry itself. So you start worrying about worrying, which is worse than worrying about some real situation or eventuality, because it fuels itself. If you worry about worrying, the more you worry, the more you have to worry about. So, it escalates. Anxiety is like that too. 

My two biggest maladjustments are catastrophising and rumination. But I've been learning some solutions - some strategies that really work against these and other cognitive distortions. The solution to catastrophising is to recognise when I'm doing it, because then I know it's not true. It's an error in my thinking. The solution to rumination is action - doing stuff. When you're in a mental hole, it seems impossible to be active - to achieve the goals you have for each day. So you don't. But then it gets to a point where it's a matter of life and death. You know that if you don't change, you don't have a future. So you start doing your daily goals as if they were a job. You're so far out of your comfort zone now anyway, and you discover that you can live and love and function regardless. Doing more and ruminating less changes everything. 

alchemy

The 19th century was, in a way, the opposite of the 21st century. Back then, science and technology as we know them, were in their infancy, and poetry was an important part of life. Today, poetry is very peripheral and technology is central to our lives. 

Before the existence of anti-depressants, John Stuart Mill wrote about how the poetry of William Wordsworth was a 'medicine' for his 'state of mind' because it 'expressed, not mere outward beauty, but states of feeling, and of thought coloured by feeling, under the excitement of beauty.' 

I think one of the mistakes we make in modern society is to think everything is accomplished by science and technology and we ourselves are inert and passive. One of the lessons that I've learnt in my own experience of mental health issues, medication and therapy, is the immense power of my own thoughts in creating or changing my mental state. 

We neglect that natural ability we all have because we've always had it and now we have all these great medications and therapies that we can use instead. I think that's a huge mistake, and we are paying the price for it. Not that we shouldn't use medications and therapy and continue to develop them, but those things shouldn't be a replacement for our own personal work on ourselves. 

the obstacle is the way

There's something to be said for not doing things the easy way. Sometimes we want to do things in a way that avoids all pain as if that's somehow the healthiest or most desirable way. We think that if we experience suffering, there must be something wrong - we think, this can't be the way to do it. 

But some things - some of the processes that we have to go through - are meant to be painful and difficult and to inspire fear in us. Sometimes it's a good thing that no one really understands or knows how to help us. Sometimes it's good when we experience circumstances that we can't cope with. What happens is that we do cope and we connect with something strong within us - something that can cope - a better self. 

I remember a few years ago, struggling with anxiety and depression and at certain times each week it was a bit more intense and unbearable. One afternoon, it was one of those times. Previously I'd made a list of impossibly ambitious goals because I had the thought that God wants to bless me and he's going to do it extravagently and soon. So I wondered, what would that look like? and started writing things down. Things that seemed impossible but they were my dreams. And on this afternoon, I was reading through those goals, and feeling the mental stress that was really challenging, and I was so aware of the difference between my current state and the state I wanted to be in one day - the state I regarded as being blessed. But then it occurred to me that the state I was in at that moment was exactly the preparation necessary to get me to where I wanted to go. 

no easy way

I started a new blog, but this one is for making money so I'm paying to have it hosted. I thought it would be fairly straight forward but it's not at all. I'm bogged down in a morass of interlocking technologies. I can't even do basic things, like editing my website or even posting to my blog. 

At first I was thinking about trying to get a refund because I'm completely lost and I can't do anything with this new website. It's useless to me. I wouldn't even know what questions to ask. But then I thought - no, I'm going to think of the payment I made as an investment in training. So, I've got a lot of YouTube tutorials lined up to watch and articles to read, and I'm going to learn how to do it, because having my own website is something that I want to do anyway. This first blog may not succeed or make money but, if I learn how to do it, a later blog or some other kind of website will. 

Youtubers or other content creators who talk about ways of making money online often make it sound easy and like you will earn a lot of money quickly. I think it's possible to do that, but it's also possible to win the lottery. The approach I've learnt to take is to get ideas from youtube videos and other online content, and then to apply myself and work at them. 

I think there is some truth to the youtube videos and content. A lot of the strategies and ideas presented work, but they're not like the goose that laid the golden egg. I think you have to work at something in order to succeed at it. 

pain

Sometimes what you take refuge in becomes the thing that hurts you and confines you the most. Conversely, the most challenging times can be empowering and life-changing. 

I've always believed in the value of challenges but seeing challenging times as literally a transition to a better me - to a new life - is something I've only learnt recently. I never had this sense before, when I went through episodes of depression or intense worry or struggles with anxiety. I was always most aware of the pain, and then later, when I thought about it, I had a sense that that pain had been somehow enriching. 

But with the challenges I've been going through in the last few years (especially the last year), I've been really captured by the idea that I am becoming something other than what I was - something better - and that I'm starting a new life. 

go your own way

I watched this video called, Why you need to make bad art to become a great artist. I don't know if I'll ever be a great artist....probably not, but I strongly agree with the principle expressed in the video. 

I've written before in my blog about how I got a wacom intuos drawing tablet and then, after a few attempts at using it, I put it aside and didn't use it for maybe a year. I had the idea that I had to do art a certain way, and I just wasn't good at it. I wasn't even good at art on paper using traditional art materials, and using a tablet is harder. But then one day I had the thought - I just want to use this tablet and some art software and create for the sake of creating. Instead of putting aside my drawing tablet, I put aside the idea that the way I create has to be like the way other people create. Since then I have made hundreds of digital artworks, and I developed some skills as I went. Same with traditional art. I just wanted to make art in my own way so I got all these different art supplies - water based markers, alcohol based markers, all different kinds of paint, crayons, pencils, pens, gel pens, paper and sketch books, and I just make art in my own way. One day I'd like to have a studio and maybe work on canvases and use oil paints, but for now I work in sketchbooks and use water-soluble paints and all the other implements I mentioned. 

I like something Andy Warhol said about art: “Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”

Sydney to Melbourne via Perth

Creative and intellectual projects are always attended by a degree of irony. Like, for example, the Russian formalists wanted to take a very scientific and calculated approach to analysing literature, but the ideas they came up with are quite poetic and esoteric. Defamiliarisation is one concept that they developed. The idea, as I understand it, is that the way literature works is that it mediates and slows down perception and that gives us a sense of perceiving things as if for the first time. Like, if you look at a flower, you perceive it directly and your thoughts about it, if you have any, flow automatically, and thoughts move very quickly. But, if you read a literary description of a flower, your thoughts are forced down a certain track and they have to follow what is written. Language moves more slowly than thought. That slowing down is what gives literature its beauty and power. 

The best stories take you off in an unexpected direction...they transport you, and when you know something about the story before reading it - like, if it's a famous story - you wonder how what you're reading is going to lead back to the point of the story as you know it. So, there's a detour/ a delay. And the journey is often far, far superior to the caricature of a story that you imagined or heard about. Frankenstein is a perfect example. This novel is a phenomenon. Mary Shelley wrote about Frankenstein as being a monster that she was releasing out into the world, and that's astonishingly true because the novel gave birth to a myth that has a life of its own and is very different and distinct from the novel. 

plays

I was just watching a booktube video: books i'd sell my soul to read again for the first time 

There aren't many books I would say that about. It has to be something extraordinary. There are a lot of really good books that I wouldn't say that about just because re-reading them is as much a pleasure as the first reading. The best books are like that. I know the book that I think is the most worthy of such a statement: Wuthering Heights, but I think the idea of envying the first time reader of the book was actually suggested to me by the introduction of the edition I read, because whoever wrote the introduction wrote exactly that. But then I think it's true. What a reading experience! And it's such a distinctive reading experience that I have actually wished that I could read it again for the first time. 

But Wuthering Heights isn't one of the books Jack Edwards talks about. What made me want to write about the video was that the first book he talks about is The Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. My sentiments could not be more different about that play, but it's probably because of when and where I read it - in year 10 (or thereabouts) in high school. I didn't get it and I didn't particularly like it. English was actually my worst subject in high school. But yeah - what Arthur Miller was expressing in this play completely eluded me. I had no sympathy for any of the characters and I had no idea what the play was actually about. I couldn't understand the significance of any of the action or dialogue. It just all seemed unpleasant, ugly and sad. Many years later I remember watching a production of Arthur Miller's The Crucible and being deeply impacted by it. It's still one of the best dramatic performances I've ever seen. 

.....I just came to the funniest realisation. Everything that I was thinking about The Death of a Salesman was actually about A Streetcar named Desire by Tennessee Williams (I found out because I went searching for The Death of a Salesman on Amazon and other plays came up as well). I still even remember the names of the characters - Blanche, Stella, Stanley Kowalski. I have a lot of memories of studying that play and not getting it and not liking it. But I have no memory at all of The Death of a Salesman....maybe some memory of it....was there a character named Biff? At least Streetcar made an impression on me. 

There's actually a pretty decent film version of both plays on YouTube. Streetcar from 1995 and The Death of a Salesman from 1985. I'm really interested in watching them now. I'm sure I will have a greater appreciation for them. 

Italo Calvino wrote: "There should therefore be a time in adult life devoted to revisiting the most important books of our youth. Even if the books have remained the same (though they do change, in the light of an altered historical perspective), we have most certainly changed, and our encounter will be an entirely new thing." So, when I watch these two films, it will be as if I was coming to them for the first time. 

Lana Del Rey's aesthetic

The very first time I heard and saw a Lana Del Rey music video I almost instantly recognised and liked her aesthetic. I'd never seen it actually expressed as a thing. It had been a mood or a vibe reflected in films or other expressions of American culture, but she represented it really exquisitely. 

I can't even remember what that song was (I think it was 'video games'), and I only learnt who the singer was later, but I'll never forget that first impression. 

Another thing that I really like about Lana Del Rey is this sense I have that she's truly an artist. I remember having this feeling about one of her albums, for some reason, that this was truly a creative project. I suppose that's the case for all or most albums of all or most music artists, but we don't always think of it like that. We often don't think of an album as being a conceptual whole, for one thing, but then also...I can only really speak for myself....when I enjoy music, the fact that it's a created thing is not at the top of my mind. But there was something about this one album and/or some of the songs on it, or maybe it was also something I read or heard Lana Del Rey say in an interview, that made me sense a real joy of creation that resonated with me.  

a new day

Nothing can hurt me more than my own mind. One of the things I'm learning is to be more active - to occupy myself more, physically and mentally - to do stuff, rather than ruminating and withdrawing. 

I'm enjoying this transformation. Recent events have given me a very real sense that I'm beginning a new life. It's more than just a new chapter or a different phase. It's really a new me. But it's more like REM's 'The end of the world as we know it' than Cat Steven's 'morning has broken'. That's the nature of the journey. At many points along the way I have felt hopeless, desperate and in pain and fear. I'm still feeling those things.

On the positive side though....I started the previous paragraph by writing that I am enjoying this transformation...yes, I feel this new life taking shape - a life in which I am more actively engaged. 

Like I said, I've been aware of this transformation for a few months now. It was a realisation that I came to by talking to other people - a way of framing the experiences I was going through. But I thought that the way it would work is that, as I recover and start to feel better, I would transition into being able to do more. I knew that I needed to change in that way. So many people told me, directly and indirectly, that I need to get out and get active, not stay in my room and roominate. I know it's not spelt like that, but it's a perfect wordplay for expressing my tendency. 

But what I've learnt lately is that I have to force myself to do all this stuff. It's not going to come naturally. It's not going to be comfortable. I'm not going to live a kind of mountain-retreat-life and gradually recuperate and one day wake up and know - 'I'm ready'. No, I'm going to be forced into my new life by the misery and suffering that my old life (or the only life I know) now involves. I think God knows that the only way to get me to let go of my old life and to get into my new life is to make my old life unliveable. 

So yeah - I've started doing more and I've had to force myself. But I'm beginning to really want to do these things, and they're starting to fill my life and to give my mind somewhere better to go. 

speaking directly

In recent years I've gained an appreciation for reading the Bible in different translations. It's amazing the difference that different wording, which essentially says the same thing, makes to what you take from the text. I think I have an awareness of those differences because for many years I just read the NIV. So now, when I read a different translation, and I read something that sounds really unfamiliar or is really striking I look back at the NIV or I'll look at another translation and it gives me a deeper understanding of what the tranlation I'm reading is expressing. 

There was an example of this recently. I've been reading the NET Bible, and I was struck by how some passages from psalms that I read were so direct and the language used was so potent because of that - because it used words that made the point directly not in some flowery, poetic way. Like for example, Psalm 31:7 - "I will be happy and rejoice in your faithfulness, because you notice my pain and you are aware of how distressed I am." It's so direct and clear and real. We don't usually think of God in this way and it's so refreshing. I felt like I had never read anything like that in the Bible before. So, I looked up some other translations and I noticed the difference. The NIV renders Psalm 31:7 as: "I will be glad and rejoice in your love, for you saw my affliction and knew the anguish of my soul."

The words used in the NIV and other translations are the kind of words we're used to reading in the Bible, so it blunts the effect a bit. When you are distressed and in pain, it's powerful to read God's word and it says that God notices your pain and is aware of how distressed you are. It's real, whereas affliction and anguish - although more semantically powerful - because they aren't the words we would normally use, they're kind of distant. We know what pain is. We know what distress is. 

neural pathways

One of the challenging aspects of depression is how all-encompassing it is. An unsolvable problem consumes all your thoughts. The worry (to call it that) is so deeply ingrained in your mind that everything flows down into it, and you feel completely trapped. You feel like your mind is your enemy. It inflicts pain on you and makes your life miserable, even untenable. 

One of the things I've been learning is the power of developing new neural pathways. When your depressed, you don't feel interested in anything because your mind is fully occupied with the unsolvable problem. It goes round and round in the way that worry does - your mind goes over and over the same dark scenario, never able to arrive at any kind of resolution, because that's the nature of that kind of thought. For some reason that's the way our minds work. We think worrying helps. But worry is never about finding constructive solutions or healing. It's about fear. 

It's possible to develop new neural pathways - new thought pathways and associations, about things that you find interesting and enagaging. But you have to be proactive about it. You have to lay the foundation of those new paths. It's never just going to happen, because all your brain knows when you're depressed is the toxic and painful thougts and feelings associated with depression. You're not interested in anything. It's a fact. You wish you were. You wish you could be enthusiastic about something or look forward to something or enjoy something, but you can't because all you're aware of is your depression. 

The solution is to force yourself to be more active mentally and physically rather than ruminating or worrying all the time and withdrawing. When you do that, you begin to lay a pathway. You begin to inscribe new thought patterns in your brain, and you give your thoughts somewhere else to go. You're not trapped by your own mind in that painful place. 

meeting

The main content of today's proceedings will be Esmerelda delineating a range of project management methodologies by performing an interpretive dance in 10 parts.