road imler

It's difficult for me to write regularly for both my blog and Medium at the same time. When I get on a roll with Medium, I can't write my blog - it just doesn't flow - and then, when I get going with my blog, I can't write on Medium. 

I do stuff

I used to write down a separate to-do list each day, but then I realized that there are some things I do every day, so I came up with the idea of having daily goals that stay the same. 

It's good having a list like that because it means you don't have to think, and you know that everything important is being addressed. I don't have to think, is this the day I do X? because I do X every day. 

The problem I had for a long time though, was that I didn't do my daily goals. The difficult process of tapering off valium, and stopping drinking, which is related to that process, is what made my goals essential and not just desirable. 

misunderstanding

Some people want to completely learn a language before they read in that language, but that takes all the fun out of it. I like that dynamic where you partly understand but there is a lot that you don't understand....everything is like that anyway - we're always forming our own ill-conceived interpretations about stuff. 

illiterate

I started reading The Fragile Threads of Power by V E Schwab, and I'm enjoying it so far. 

I always say that I don't like contemporary literary fiction, but I think maybe it's mainly because I don't read a lot of it. Maybe also I don't know how to read and appreciate it. 

out last

Agonizing over my decision, I was parked across the road from a bright, stylish new furniture shop. 

Ten years later when I was still on the path I had decided to follow that night, I drove by the shop and it was boarded up and no longer in business. 

the margin

Margins are powerful. What you marginalize will come to define you as much as what you embrace, maybe more. As Harold Bloom writes, whatever you suppress becomes a giant in your imagination.

 

measured progress

When you're working on something that has 6 parts, you feel really good when you reach the third part because you think you're half way through, but you aren't. When you begin the third part, you're only a third of the way through, and when you end the third part, you are half way through. When you begin the fourth part, you think you're 2/3 of the way through but you're only half way. 

ure tropes

Looking at my stats on Medium, my writing that does well is when I write about my Christian faith, my own personal journeys and insights, and things that people can relate to (like social media for example). 

I found that really interesting, especially that what I write about my faith does well. I always think that people won't be interested in that, but people seem to enjoy reading about it. 

What doesn't seem to do that well is when I write about literature, literary theory, Romanticism...that kind of thing. But that's one of the things that I really like to write about, so I'm going to keep going with it. 

It's been very interesting developing on Medium while also continuing to develop this blog. The two are very different. 

for good

I don't think I can write anything profound today or in this moment because this is just another moment in another day....

....but then I realized that every moment is another moment in a day like every other day - they're all moments in days - that's all we ever experience. 

So, the opportunity to write something worthwhile is as present now as it will ever be. 

visions

Good writers aren't like artists who convey images for the reader to see in their mind. It's more like they give you the ability to create your own images in your mind. 

books

If I hadn't experienced it, I would doubt the power of literature. If I hadn't read David Copperfield, and I just listened to the experts and read Bleak House as the best of Dickens, I would have thought, this isn't that great. 

Or, if I hadn't read The Idiot and Demons and read The Brothers Karamazov as the best that Dostoevsky has to offer, I wouldn't have been that impressed. 

But I know from experience that there is fire and magic and food in literature. There is something real in it. So, all the teachers and experts are right that there's something to this, but not necessarily right about what that is. 

authenticity

How different the film, The VVitch is from the TV series, Salem, even though they're portraying a very similar context. 

I liked Salem though. It was pretty entertaining. But The VVitch is better. What Robert Eggers did really well was to capture the social/ psychological dynamic that produced witches.

personal effects

Sometimes I think about using swear words in my writing as a way of shocking/ creating a certain impression, but then I usually decide against it because I think - no, let me express what it is that I want to say....let me use language to create the effect I want. That's always better. That's always more powerful, more real, more expressive, more valuable. 

A word that you can chuck anywhere in a sentence, and doesn't hold any meaning of its own, isn't a powerful word. 

I could use a swear word in this post....that would be ironic and funny.....but no it wouldn't. Not really. 

dialogue

There are always two considerations. There is the very practical matter of how to get results, and then there is the spiritual matter of what is meaningful. Both are important and inform each other. 

cover

I nearly bought a book because it's on a subject that I find really interesting. Then, as I was going to buy it, I read in more detail what it's about, and I didn't buy it. It covers too many topics, which means that it's going to be superficial. It's going to be a kind of survey with no in-depth analysis. 

Initially I was quite interested in it, but then as I continued reading and more topics were added that were kind of like extensions of the central topic, I lost interest. 

NLE/DR

I'm prejudiced against short books, with some notable exceptions. Harold Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence is very short but I really like it because it's so evocative and rich. 

fire

One of my favorite plays is The Crucible by Arthur Miller. I saw a production of it and I was absolutely rapt. 

There's something archetypal about what is portrayed in this play. As I watched it I had the sense that I know this story. I had trouble understanding what was being said, but the overall meaning was clear....or at least what I understood by the meaning. 

This is a good example of a text where themes and issues really are expressed in the text. Often, when we talk about the themes of a text, it's a bit artificial...we have to read something into the text that may not have been intended...but this play really articulates something about the idea of the crucible - precious metal being refined by fire. 

An ordinary man found himself in a position where, to simply be a decent human being, he had to give up his life. 

progress

I get a bit disheartened in this process of tapering because it's really grueling and it goes on and on and on. But when I look at the actual figures, I feel a bit better, because I can see the progress. 

I started seriously tapering in 2021, and by mid 2022, I had cut my dose in half. This year, compared with 2022, I have reduced my dose by 60%. 

David Powers, one of my two favorite benzo withdrawal experts (the other one being Michael Priebe of The Lovely Grind) talks about The Benzo Turning Point, which is around 5 mg of Valium, where you're kind of in the home stretch of recovery. I'm now around 3 mg a day, so that's encouraging. 

contentment and ambition

As Christians, are we meant to be ambitious and industrious - to really exemplify the positive qualities we stand for - or are we meant to make the best of what we have to exemplify joy and gratitude? Are we meant to strive for something better or accept what we have?

I really wondered about that, and a friend of mine gave me a great answer....we can do both. The two actually go together really well. We can put our heart and soul into whatever it is we're doing today and over time, at the same time, work towards our dreams. 

mistakes

The problem with extreme intelligence is that it gives you a false sense of your own insight. You could have a really immature or not very smart view about something and because the thinking you did to arrive at that view is really top-notch and no one can win an argument with you about it, you can't see that it's not a very good view. 

I thought of this when I was listening to Lex Fridman interview someone who is legitimately brilliant. 

I think we make this kind of mistake all the time. One variation of it is the way that we think that because someone is a successful writer and can write great literature, that their view of everything is really insightful and they have more moral authority than the average person. 

up

There's still 8 days to go of this month, and I have posted to this blog 122 times so far this month, which is the same number of posts I made for the whole year in 2020, more than twice as many for 2021, and just a few less than I posted for the whole year of 2022. 

So that's encouraging. If I feel like I'm stuck in this endless struggle and not recovering - which I do feel, especially on more difficult days - I can look at my writing and my art and say, hey, there's obviously something going on. 

freedom of expression

Stuck in this vicious cycle.....I don't express anything worthwhile.....I think people think I have nothing to say, and no one understands or cares....I think I mean nothing because I don't express anything....I don't express anything because I mean nothing. 

I think we have to learn to express things regardless of whether anyone is interested. It's only then that we can say anything worthwhile. 

joy

We're told that the first noble truth of Buddhism is that 'life is suffering' but that's a bad translation. A more accurate translation would be something like, 'life is broken' or better still, 'we are broken'. 

It's drawing our attention to the central problem of the human condition, so that we can then solve that problem. We suffer because of our desires and our attachment to the things of this life, and when we loosen that attachment and tame those desires, we gain access to joy - the deep, real internal peace and well-being which doesn't fluctuate according to our material or even mental circumstances, but remains rock solid whatever happens because it flows from something deeper and greater than ourselves. 

not what they are

I was thinking about Pride and Prejudice. That and Great Expectations were the first classic novels I read. I read them in high school. 

Novels are different to the way they are perceived. We have a certain impression of Pride and Prejudice, but the actual reading experience is different to that impression. It's not necessarily a love story, and Great Expectations isn't necessarily about someone having their illusions shattered. 

insomnia

I was in a vicious cycle....getting around 2 hours or less of sleep a night, sometimes 4 or 6 hours....maybe? I'm not really sure, but it was something like that. Not sleeping fueled my anxiety and depression which stopped me from sleeping. 

When I sometimes didn't sleep for one night, sometimes two nights in a row, sometimes even more...one time it went for 5 nights....I thought it couldn't get worse, but it did. 

protesting too much

Sometimes when a defence lawyer makes an argument that is too strident, it undermines their case. They thoroughly expound every possible exculpatory factor, they forcefully refute every single possible inculpatory factor. They pounce on every opportunity to make their case and raise every possible objection, and it gives you the impression that their client is not innocent, because they have to work so hard and grasp at every straw to prove their innocence. 

old new

I've been salvaging and cleaning my books, bookshelves and my room in general. I rediscovered a lot of my books and I sorted out and cleaned a bookcase, so it didn't have any books on it. 

I put the next 150 or so books on it in the order I want to read them. I always do this, although I don't normally stick to the plan, but I want this time to be different. 

festive

🎵 It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas... 🎵

liminality

We call them windows and waves, windows being times of relief and waves being times of the onslaught of symptoms, but windows are actually like waves. 

Waves are strangely persistent. For example, I haven't slept well and woken up refreshed for a couple of years, and it seems to be getting worse, when really, if I'm recovering, that should be improving. 

Then at the same time, there are measures of recovery that just seem to come out of the blue, like when you're in the surf and you get hit by a wave. 

spontaneity

I've realized that I don't work well in systems or groups that take a very systematic approach to everything. There's no recognition of individuality. Everyone is just delt with according to what relevant indicators they show. 

Everyone is either a problem to be solved or an opportunity to be taken.

hamster wheel

Questions are destructive. Rumination is just questions that defy answers. 

salience

We don't really want answers to the questions that matter to us, because the questions mean so much, and answers end questions. No answer can do justice to the question. 

essence

According to Harold Bloom, the defining characteristic of genius is strangeness. 

automact

When we make art or type on a keyboard or a play a video game, we aren't aware of each individual action of our fingers, we're just aware of what we are expressing or what we are doing in the game. It's as if the mind is doing it and just uses the fingers and hands as tools. 

London Paralympics 2012 (You are Unstoppable)

no quick fix

Withdrawal from benzodiazepines - like, ativan, xanax, valium, temazepam, klonopin, etc - is different from other drugs, including alcohol. My main experience is with alcohol, but I've heard that this is the case with hard drugs as well....that withdrawal can be really bad for a while, but once you're through that initial bad period, symptoms peak and then things get steadily better. Benzos aren't like that. The withdrawal symptoms get worse as time goes by and they stay bad indefinitely. 

My experience with valium has been like this....If you think of anxiety as a monster or adversary, valium is a huge help at first, but then, if you stay on it for an extended period and then try to come off it, you now have to fight a bigger, stronger monster and you have to do it without the help of valium. You have to actually learn how to overcome anxiety and depression. 

Tapering off valium has forced that fight on me, which is actually good, but from my experience with valium and alcohol, I now know that there are answers and they aren't it. Things like diet, exercise, getting into good habits, therapy, doing meaningful activities, interacting with people, being creative, learning, pushing yourself, making goals and doing them....all of those things are the answer ultimately. Change your life. You can do it. 

stop trying

I've been learning how to use affinity designer. It's fun. I only learn a bit each day. I have lots of YouTube video series that I'm working through and each day, I pick up where I left off the previous day, and I just watch long enough to learn one thing, that's it - a few minutes at most.

At some stage I will be as familiar with affinity designer as I am with some other art software and creating designs will be an exercise in creativity. 

It's interesting how acquiring skills works with art. To really get going, I had to abandon the idea of being good at art or doing art like other people do. In other words, I had to stop trying to develop skills and start being creative. But then, once I started being creative, I developed skills. I didn't get 'better' but I learned how to do some interesting things. 

б

I'm building a new world to live in. 

ա

In the drama in my head, the outlook is bleak, and there is no relief, but then there's something else that is there that I get glimpses of. 

It's like something crushed and beaten but new and alive at the same time. 

emotions and reasons

The impulse to withdraw is often an emotional reaction which doesn't even make sense to me, but it's so compelling. I think, I just have to give up on this or that, and I don't really want to but I think I have to.

Then I decide, no, I'm not going to give up. That's what they call the 'wise mind' in dialectical behavior therapy. There's the emotional mind which is a powerful influence but isn't very rational, and then there's the rational mind, which is logical but lacking in empathy. 

When you are reacting emotionally, and you don't even know why you are speaking and acting a certain way, except that it just seems like what you should do, and then you think about it and decide what you really want to do, and you change your mind about what you were going to do - that's exercising your wise mind. 

Wisdom requires both kinds of thinking. 

flow

I wouldn't want to read more than I do, not really. It would be good to be able to say that I read a hundred books a year, but then each book wouldn't be as memorable. 

trauma

I was watching an interview Lex Fridman did with Grimes, and she was saying that it's good that we don't really remember our very early lives - like, before we can walk and talk - because she believes that that part of our lives is really traumatic....we're exposed to all these stimuli and we can't do anything. She mentioned a story called 'I have no mouth but I must scream'. 

I've never really thought about this but I definitely think birth is traumatic, for the child and the mother, and life is more traumatic than we usually let on. 

Birth is like death. You lose your whole world and you're sucked into the unknown. 

banality

No one will commend you for simply going out of your house, even though for some people at some times, that's a challenge that takes real courage. 

That's where I was a couple of years ago. Just going out was hard. Going into a shop and buying one thing was even harder, and buying more than one thing was virtually impossible. When you buy one thing, you can go in quickly and get out quickly through the self-serve checkout. It's important not to rush too much though because then you're creating panic. Buying two things is so hard. You've got that one item, and you could just go to the self checkout and you'd be done, but to get the second item, you have to walk in a different direction to the self checkout, and it's an agonizingly long walk. You get there, pick up item 2, and you still have the long walk to the checkout to go and then the arduous task of standing in one place, scanning your items, getting your card out, tapping, etc. I know it doesn't make sense, but some people will understand. 

Anxiety makes it hard for me to walk, and if someone is looking at me it's even harder. 

I remember after I started to see some improvement, one day I was able to actually go to the chemist AND go to the supermarket in one trip. Of course recovery is not linear and, after that day, I would struggle again to even go out or go to the shop. The whole of the way to the shop was fraught and awkward. If somebody looked at me I would have trouble walking. All the way I was telling myself that if it was too hard to actually go in to the shop, I didn't have to. I always did though. Only someone who has experienced this issue will understand how it's possible for the simple action of walking into a shop and buying some things to take courage. 

I'm much better now. None of that is even an issue. One recent development is that I can leave the house and go to the shop or wherever without carrying a rescue dose of Valium with me. I always used to carry it just in case. Even when I went for a run in the morning, I would take one or two tablets with me. Then, it got to a point when I thought, I don't really need it if I'm just going for a run. Then, at a later date, I thought, I don't really need it if I'm just going to the shop. 

M

I made my thousandth digital artwork today. That means that, for three years, I've done an average of one a day, which also means that, in the last year and a half I've done a lot more than that because there was a year or so around 20/21 when I didn't do any digital art. 

This is #1000:

thesis

Twice I started working on a PhD and didn't end up continuing with it, but through that I do have a draft thesis of sorts. 

nickels and dimes

One measure of my progress is that I always used to take at least 2 x 2 mg tablets of Valium at a time. There was no point in taking 1 tablet. 

These days and for the last year and a half, I break tablets into quarters and take a quarter at a time, sometimes a bit more. 

movement

Should a disciple of Christ be obsessed with making other disciples or obsessed with knowing God, and make disciples - bear fruit - as a result of that obsession and their own connection with God that Christ made possible through the cross? 

foolishness

I've heard well-meaning people say that it's possible to taper in a way that is painless. I can imagine that, but it's like the delusion you have when the teacher gives you an assignment that's due in 3 months, and you have this sense that you have so much time, but you don't use the time to work on the assignment. Instead, you keep thinking you have plenty of time, until you don't and then it's too late. 

I don't know what it's like for other people, but for me, tapering represents a change in who I am, and that needs to be painful. There would be something wrong if it was painless. 

change

I didn't used to think of the issue of withdrawal/ rumination vs active/ engagement, as being that relevant to me. I didn't see it, but it has become one of the defining issues of my life. 

The understanding I have now of this issue grew out of detox and what happened after that. First of all, when I stopped drinking, I was hit by a wave of depression and anxiety, and, from a conversation I had with a social worker, I came to see that challenge as the start of a new life. 

At the same time, I had a conversation with a nurse about how I cultivate and protect my anxiety, and one of the ways I do that is to withdraw and spend time not really doing anything but ruminating. I need to change and be more active - cultivate a worthwhile life rather than my anxiety. 

I didn't really link those two things though. That came later with other challenges. Again, especially through a key conversation I had, I came to understand that the way to get through the struggle I was going through was to structure my time better....in other words, to be more active - to do more. 

I won't explain exactly how, but this was a matter of life and death. I really needed to make this change. When I thought about how I could do it, the answer was clear. For years I have had daily goals - things that I try to do every day. That was the way. That was the change - doing those things. 

Instead of being a list of things that I might do or I try to do, they became essential, and that's how it is now. 

creativity feeds hope

I watched a video by Jamie Windsor and he talked about an exhibition by the photographer, Nan Goldin that he went to. The video was titled, When Bad Photos are Better, and he said that it was the imperfections in the works that facilitated more of an emotional connection. 

He goes on to discuss a number of other photographers who deliberately make mistakes - taking photos through car windows, underexposing photos, etc. I've come across this idea about photography before, quite recently - finding photographers who use cheap cameras and take deliberately blurred photos. 

It's very reassuring to me, because I feel so constrained by rules about life. According to the rules of how my life goes and my experience of tapering so far, life is going to be hard for the foreseeable future. That's the way it is.

But then, in art and other forms of creative expression, I find a place where the rules do not determine the outcome. Taking great photos isn't about having the most expensive, 'state of the art' equipment and editing with the best software. 

room

Spatial and directional references aren't completely useless though. When I'm struggling, there's a sense in which I feel trapped...I'm not at liberty to do things....and relief comes as a sense of space to move in.