Two months far gone

Hey. I don't really know who I'm writing to. I guess I have to say I'm writing to myself in a public way, on this blog. This blog which has been in my life for many, many years now.

I usually try and write at least one thing a month, so that on the sidebar of my blog it at least looks like every month is filled in. Not so for the past two months, but I guess for February 2016 there will be a post.

I guess I'll write down how I feel just now. I mean, I do that a lot on here and a lot of the time I write that I feel alone. Well, today is no exception. I feel alone. I want to be social. I want to be happy! I want to be social because I think it means I will be happier? I think it's probably true. But isn't happiness something that can be kind of addictive? I mean, being happy sure feels good! So why don't I make more efforts to be social? Is it because it doesn't actually make me happy? I really hope not! I recall reading that having a good network of friends is a good teller of many important things, like psychological health and happiness. So in the darker part of my brain I think "Oh, what's the point of being around people, I don't really have much to offer to them anyway". I don't like thinking that.

A lot of the time I will think "Okay, I will text so and so. Maybe we can do something". I never do. Or at least, I haven't in a long while. It's kind of scary to think about, so I ignore this behaviour. I talk about these things with a therapist sometimes. And I get good feedback.

Channeling some Lyra again would be great. I kinda am, again. I want to rely on this mystical conception of an angel that is there only to help me. Because otherwise the darkness is overwhelming and impossible to handle.

The darkness includes such ideas as:

• I'm going to be alone forever
• I'm never going to be able to build a life for myself
• I'm losing all my friends
• I am not a functional member of society

On the positive side of things, I know I made a new friend in the last year. Sadly, she moved back to England. But it was actually cool discovering that new friendships can happen.

I'm not sure when the next update will be. But my blog is not dead! So that's another positive.

-Gabriel

Stalling moments

I have moments in my life where I seem to not want to do anything. Wasting time. Stalling moments, I call them. I fear I may end up regretting theses moments when I'm older & wiser. I hope not. Really, these moments are easy to see: time spent mindlessly surfing the web, absorbing information I can't seem to recall in great detail anyway.

I wonder where I can draw more energy from. Vital energy that allows me to laugh with friends and go on adventures with them. Or energy that I use to buckle down and study harder - my study habits have definitely taken a turn for the worse as the coming winter approaches.

I guess I'm pretty disinterested in what I'm studying. Old philosophical writings from the early medieval era. I can't really even fully grasp what these old geezers are talking about. I should probably try harder to dig into it, but I feel like I'm studying philosophy because I somehow find it worthwhile. And yet, I can hardly explain what it is I'm studying. The nature of reality? There's some ethics here and there when I was reading some Abelard, but it seemed so far removed from what I experience in my own life (i.e. who ever considered the ethics of a servant killing his master in self-defence? why does this matter?) that I just feel apathetic toward it all.

I'm dreading the next essay that's coming for this course. It's almost 3x the length of an essay I just had returned to me (which, thankfully, fetched a mark that I'm content with) and I found this essay-writing experience not as intellectually fulfilling as I had hoped.

I'm so glad I can still write here. And it is strange that I feel like writing at this moment, for I have had a hard time finding the motivation to write anything lately. I'm glad I can write because I'm finding it difficult to talk to people. To relate to them, especially. I don't have much going on in my life right now, but I have had many moments that defy explanation in the past.

Speaking of these moments, I was talking to my therapist the other day about some pretty terrible experiences I've been through. And it felt good to really dig deeper into the kind of things that stress me out and keep me up at night, sometimes. That's one form of talk I do okay with; I'm talking about feelings more and more. Maybe not so much with friends, but at least with a professional. And I get along great with him, especially now that a lot of the anger and resentment I was feeling over some bad experiences is gone.

Stalling moments. Moments in eternity in a finite(?) universe.

I hope to see some northern lights someday.

 

Edit 2022/09/13 i.e. to i.e.

Simplify the dawn

Maybe I can write less. I feel like I have to commit when I write in this white box.

I am playing a game called Grim Dawn.It's kinda lonely to play a single player game all the time.

I wrote a philosophy essay last week. I think I'll do well on it.

I miss my friends. I miss my carefree times.

I'm thinking of getting my yoga more active again. Once a week isn't really doing much.

I've lost a lot of weight. Of course, I gained a ton of weight before I lost it.

I need to go to bed. I have a lot to do tomorrow (Class + Laughing Like Crazy Info Session + Mad Stories).

I cooked breakfast for the week. Egg muffins, no flour of course.

I am going to bed. And I'm reading The Worlds Within Her by Neil Bissoondath.

I am going to bed. And my dreams are once more part of my life.

The careful and the sluggish

Oh no, I'm not sinking again. I look at it as a vacation.
Yesterday, I played badminton again and then I came home and just... crashed. All day. I took care of one school thing (read: e-mailing my TA) and then decided to binge watch on Netflix.

Yeah, binge watching Netflix. I hear it's a rite of passage for uni students these days. Now that we have access to practically unlimited amounts of entertainment through the internet, it's become so easy to just... let the episodes fly by and forget about time for a while.

Ugh. It makes me feel dirty. Usually, the commercials would make me want to stop watching TV after a while, but now that they're gone... I just think to myself: "Oh, I'll just watch one more episode of Arrested Development and then I'll buckle down and get some work done". Yeah... well, that's not going too well. At least a part of my philo essay is done and I haven't left it to the last minute, which actually feels REALLY good. But if I keep down this Netflix path of instantly gratifying stimulating entertainment, I know that I could let myself go.

Luckily, I foresaw this cycle happening again and so I decided to enroll in a couple workshops/classes at Hart House early this September. One of them is a yoga class I've been going to (beginner's, but still challenging in so many ways!) and now I'm starting a class on training your voice & speech to boost self confidence. It's happening tonight, and for the next 8 weeks or so. I'm curious what it's all going to be about. I think it will help me get out of this mini rut I've been in since this weekend's late night gaming party.

My old yoga studio (that I quit this summer b/c I wasn't going and I felt too self-conscious to go to because of my weight which is now, amazingly, lower than I've been in years!) has been closed for a few weeks. And now I'm thinking of enrolling again - but instead of an unlimited per-month fee dealio, I'm thinking of buying a punch card that I simply have to use up. 50 classes. There's a challenge. I know that undertaking this challenge will make me feel great. And that's what I want to feel.

Great.

I am not going back to Netflix. I am not going back to Netflix. I am not going back to Netflix... at least not for the rest of the day.