“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” — Thomas Edison
Once again, this months posts are all at the end. At least I’m getting them posted regardless of what they are rather than doing what I’ve been doing most of the month and writing unfinished posts. Some with so many words.
This post won’t even be fully finished before posting it. Hell, only part of the title is gonna be written about… and it’s gonna be circuitous af. Cuz I wanna.
Just like my mind maps reality. All over the place. Continuously throwing metaphorical mind paint at a canvas until something sticks and makes some sort of sense. Some sort of pattern. Some sort of story. Some sort of something that makes sense of that story and the pattern that assembles some sort of reality that I can respond to.
It can be a bit of a nonlinear process. Maddeningly so at times.
Just like how I actually wrote this near the end of writing rather than the beginning.
Again in my life eating has sped up. Bigger bites. Faster fork to mouth. Quicker chewing. Less inhibition. More cookies. More sweets. More comfort foods.
I broke my fast 30 minutes ago when I started to write this. in between bites I’ve been making an effort to chew slower as I’m tapping this out too.
Upon retrospection and introspection, I appreciate that what this is is the prior patterns I’ve acted out in the past being re-enacted because of the comfort I’ve found in them previously. Previous patterns that I want to stay in the past. Present patterns that I want to become, and remain, previous.
That dopamine slaps so hard when you know it’s easy to get. Even though I’ve got a bit of consciousness as to the mechanics of me, that does little to make managing emotions much easier. Yeah, dopamine is the real deal… and there are healthier ways to get it than refined sugar. Is what they say at least.
As my Son’s said when I’ve made and effort to remind him to slow down, “But, it’s so good!” I am currently acting the hypocritical dickhead.
Sweets. Sweets. Sweets. Sugar has me feelin’ feeling so goooooood. So, so good. So good. Sweets. Sweets. Sweets.
Besides weight, I’ve lost so much in the past 12 months. And through time, I’ve lost more than that. But it has been through time. Through years. Not all at almost once in terms of time. I normally make an effort now to prefix “I feel” before statements such as that.
Heh. I tapped out “predict” rather than “prefix,” because I suppose prediction is something that’s been cycling around in my mind more aggressively than the participants of the Tour de France.
The dangers of the dark tempting path of refined sugar impacting the loss of progress losing weight is also the very real deal. It’ll catalyze the loss of what was lost. I wanna maintain what’s been lost rather than losing the progress of the progress made losing that weight.
Losing something might help you to grow. To move you out of your comfort zone. To move you on. To move you forward beyond who and what you might think you are. At least, that’s what I feel I gotta believe so I can apply to self, because it sucks processing all the events that have catalyzed these experiences of loss — the grief I’m working through — over time, and the incredible impact it’s had on my mental well-being and overall ability to function beyond the bare minimum required to bring in income.
So much loss. So much suck. I have so many not matching gloves. They fall out of my pockets because I’d made the questionable decision to tap, text, and walk. Similarly, so many relationships that have atrophied over time. That have been lost. Not over something in particular. Lost because of neglect. By one, the other, both, or the group that was cohesive once.
I like to consider myself, amongst at least a few other things, resilient and solution and opportunity oriented. And holy fucking shit balls. It’s been challenging to suss out the opportunity. The learnings. The positives meant to be laying within the traumas being worked through in the time machines of my mind. Probably just writing them.
Yeah.
That’s the opportunity.
Writing them.
Sure.
Hah.
I guess that’s what this is, isn’t it? Writing them. Theoretically. Unless I’m not writing them right, right now…
I’m not sure of much at the moment, but I am sure it’s okay to not to get it right. Just to get it written. In real time. Then incorporate feedback. I think that’s called living life. I have no clue how to do that though.
I gotta interrupt it — that life I’m supposedly living — to document whatever it is I wanna document. So dunno about that just getting it written thing. It can take quite awhile to document what’s being observed. There can be a lot of writing involved to describe anything approaching any sort of description of the nuances and natures of our supposedly somewhat shared reality.
Throughout the month I’ve experienced some incredible moments, I am grateful af for all those, and I philia all the folks that help me learn and grow - which is just about everyone whether they know it or not. The decisions you make and don’t make with every interaction can be used to improve future interactions if you’re willing to learn from them rather than defend them.
Which can be challenging at times. It requires emotional energy for me to get the fuck over myself, slow down, and just absorb and fully consider what’s being said deep enough to regurgitate something authentic and positive in return. Making an effort to acknowledge what they’re saying and being calm, cool, and collected enough to be genuinely curious. To ask questions to figure out what kind of internal process they’re acting out that are triggering the emotional reaction they’re experiencing. Then to acknowledge it.
Someone I recently met told me something like, “Sometimes I just throw a grenade out there and hope it explodes in the right spot.”
That modus operandi sounds so damn eerily familiar…
It’s a pretty sound, solid, tactic. When you overthink all the possibilities of what that grenade might do, then that grenade might just blow up in your face. Which Is where the Time Machine comes into play. And the You Matter Machine. But that’s for another time. Like tomorrow. Hopefully.
I’ve been working through learning, and practicing, clean language. What kind of clean language? Well the kind that will hopefully help me handle communication with a little more grace and ease. It seems to work by being in a curious state, asking questions, shutting up and letting the person talk until they don’t, then asking questions about their words with their words.
And when you ask someone, “What kind of problem is that problem?” In a curious way… even if you’re feeling like you wanna scream… It’ll begin to retrieve details, metaphors, and process information. In other words, what they think and how they do it.
The important thing is shutting up though. This is very challenging for me sometimes. Sometimes.
Hey, neat. I’ve eaten this meat over 80 minutes so far! As I’ve written this! And all these little ADHD tangents are kinda of really out of order too lol.
This entire fucking post has been one long tangent so far, and just like these entire past few months, this post started off as something else, then veered off on to some other sort of wildly different topic than intended. Seriously, working through the symptoms, and learning to manager, ADHD is a fucking bitch.
I feel as if just experiencing this life is like some sort of weird surreal thing that I didn’t necessarily remember signing up for. No has told me how to do what I do. I’ve definitely picked up a lot, if not most, of my core moral tenets from the patterns my parents indoctrinated into me.
Even more from everyone else from everywhere that I’ve ever met with any sort of repetitive interaction in my life.
Repetition breeds familiarity. And familiarity breeds intimacy.
Which is not what Aesop said; which was, “Familiarity breeds contempt.” But Aesop was wildly inaccurate here. Familiarity breeds intimacy. Intimacy. Not contempt. Contempt manifests from something much more different than familiarity. Familiarity just exacerbates the details of the potential conditions brewing contempt.
Always. At least in my life it has. Always. The familiarity that repetition’s bred will just keep filling in the details. Intricacy extracted and defined from intimacy. A picture becoming more clear, more intricate, more defined, as there’s more exposure.
It’s the intricacy of that intimacy observed over time of what one’s experiencing that will begin to sway someone’s sentiment in a negative or positive direction. The impact of the reciprocal unconscious intent some may decipher over time. Unfortunately, many consciously do not. This can cause some quite severe communication breakdowns.
Yup, this entire post was a tangent to the next. Just a bunch of word salad to setup the next dose of word salad.
I’ve kept saying for years now that, “My kind of charm doesn’t translate well over internet dating.”
I mean, shit. This fucking blog post is basically like 7 - 15 minutes of speaking depending the rate.
In general, my kind of charm doesn’t translate well textually. It takes a lot of words to describe the emotions or contexts or situations or whatever driving the intent and the thoughts associated with the desired communication.
I am absolutely sure, to my inner core, that my interpersonal soft skill strengths translate best when exercised in person. Then video. Then audio.
Text much less so. Takes too many words.
So that’s my way of saying that random people I’ve met have kept saying that Hinge has worked for various couples they know. Even though I know Hinge’s whole, “the dating app that’s meant to be deleted” slogan is just very clever marketing — that has worked just fantastically — I decided to sign up and make a profile and give it a go.
Diving into the deepest of the depths of the abyss that is internet dating.
Becoming another signal in the noise of whoever I find attractive in whatever they call their inbox making an effort to tickle their attention.
Which is where the You Matter Machine, the Time Machine, and the Something Possibly Missed Because Something Wasn’t, bits of the story will be a different post… and Something Sent another.
Entire post.
Tangent.
Based mostly on recent experiences.
A few today.
To be continued.