brain – untitled atm

080a – better to speak, she said

“Is it better to speak or to die?” I’m starting to think it’s always better to speak.

I’m realising I’m perhaps not meant for the mainstream world. I know mainstream is a pretty evolving concept and it’s already been evolving from the previous decade or even the previous five years but what it is right now (especially in my environment) is definitely not where I belong. I really need to change my circles and/or my environment and find my people, my tribe. I definitely don’t belong in the heteronormative world.

Or is that just the anxiety talking? I don’t know. Sometimes we solve for x when we really need to be solving for y, I don’t know.

It’s the middle of the night and I have a long day ahead but I’m unable to sleep. Someone told me sleep problems are caused by a lot of suppressed thoughts and feelings in the subconscious, which would.. make sense, except that it’s hard to access suppressed things, they’re obviously suppressed for a reason.

Thinking about rationality and the heart and the gut a lot today. It can be really nice when they’re all in sync but often they’re not.

I’ve allowed my heart to run my life a lot lately but I might need to listen to rationality a little bit too.

What is rationality, really? Not ignoring evidence, I suppose. I suppose the heart can be a bit of a kid sometimes— stubborn, blind, spoilt, pampered, etc. And rationality, then, would be a bit of parent, or an elder sibling, really showing the heart that you don’t always get what you want and that’s okay. Most people in life don’t get what they want. There is no end to want, anyway.

How do we then make peace with what is? I suppose just facing realities can be a good first step. Acknowledging that what is is what is, even when it’s unpleasant, could be enough.

I always go back to poetry and music when things are tough but I haven’t been able to do that too much this week, not sure why.

How will I ever solve sleep? I don’t know. I need to make more action plans. I can’t just keep sitting with my problems, I need to be working towards movement.

Looking forward to this week though, have a couple of exciting music things lined up, and a couple nice social plans too. Maybe I’ll incorporate some workout too.

Alright alright, we got this. Gratitude, kindness, authenticity, learning, joy, nature— I can keep coming back to all this when things are tough.

070 – brain dump

Brain-only mode. I hate it. This is the kind of writing that I don’t want to make public. Primarily because it’s coming from a place of anxiety. And when that’s the case— I don’t end up liking whatever I write. It’s not due to shame or embarrassment, I’ve mostly safely conquered that. I just don’t like the style when it’s anxiety-produced.

I’ve only been “thinking” for the last 3-4 hours and it’s been quite unpleasant. I mean, it wasn’t unpleasant in the regular ways, I wasn’t spiralling, I wasn’t thinking too many negative thoughts. Most of the thoughts were related to ideas etc. But I knew at the back of my mind that I was still ruminating. I knew I was supposed to be sleeping instead.

It’s getting really cold here and part of why I haven’t been able to sleep is because I haven’t been able to figure out a configuration that’s comfortable enough in terms of clothes, fan speed and the number of layers over me. To be honest, I was hit with some thoughts about how I might really have to move again in June / July, which I know is sufficiently far in the future but it was quite upsetting all the same.

Drums practice was super fun today and I really want to buy an acoustic set for my place. But I know that buying an electronic kit will be a more practical and safer choice (primarily because it’s volume adjustable). I’ll do some research on this before I decide what to do. I don’t want to buy an electronic kit and then feel stuck with it either.

Learning more about my sensitivity has been a blessing and a curse. I sometimes like that there’s a potential explanation for the things that bother me and at the same time it doesn’t suffice. This was true for when I discovered more about my anxiety disorder too. Maybe I still need to find better ways to cope and actually solve these problems, not just have explanations for them.

So what does solving some of these problems mean?

I probably (definitely) need to purchase a heater soon.
I need to restart regular meditation.
I need to restart regular physical exercise.
I may want to read and research more about how to balance creative urges and pursuits with healthy habits and routines.
I need to read more of the HSP book because I may find out some more ways of coping.

I think yes, the primary problem is sleep schedule. It’s always been my biggest problem. How do I really go about solving this, and how much do I want to? I really need to take some time out to think about this. There’s often hidden reasons why we don’t solve some of our problems, I need to find those out.

—

I wrote this last night and was finally able to sleep. I’m going to shift to 1000-word posts as much as I can from now on. This one is a bit hacky because I’m combining two pieces of sorts, but maybe that’s okay.

I think yesterday I stumbled onto a melody I’m really excited about fleshing out. That’s my main task for today.

Yesterday at the coffee shop, I met someone a bit confusing. We connected pretty easily, but then he revealed a couple of highly polarised religious views which made me a bit uncomfortable. I also got the feeling he was drunk and that made me uncomfortable too. I didn’t feel too unsafe because it was a pretty crowded place, but then I didn’t want to hang out much longer. He gave me his number and I don’t know if I’ll be texting him. But it definitely made me feel weird because when I got home I had to take some time to regulate.

When I was trying to figure out what I felt, I felt a judgemental voice asking me why I’m always obsessed with “figuring out” my feelings and my experiences. And this has been a question on my mind lately. Even though here, I tell myself I don’t need to be judgemental about this because it’s just part of my nature, I don’t think it works that easy.

I’ve tried to find an explanation for this many many times before. There’s a part of me that thinks of this as a problem. If we forget about the why for a second, what is a reframe that can help me?

It’s just something that makes me curious. Scientists and academicians also care about really specific, deep problems. Sometimes these problems and occurrences are outside of us, sometimes they are within (psychology, biology, etc). Why is that okay and why is my “obsession” with my own nature and workings not as okay? (For the record, obviously this is an internal judgement, nobody else is telling me this is a bad thing). But alright, maybe accepting this reframe now, that this is just something that makes me really curious. Ie how my body, my brain, my heart etc react to external or internal experiences.
Understanding why something makes you feel unpleasant is also not unimportant. How else would you avoid it in the future, or deal with it if you couldn’t avoid it? I shouldn’t be quick to dismiss this as unimportant.

The ONLY problem I can think is that it can be a bit time consuming. But that is also only when I’m ruminating. When I’m quick to start journaling or writing, it doesn’t take that long. I really need to cut out as much rumination as I can. That is the primary solution to many of my problems. (Sleep, time-management, “too much going on”, overstimulation, etc).

Okay, that’s it for now. Really psyched to move to music stuff. Let’s go.

021b – cigarettes, shame and the anxious brain

Had a cigarette right now. Been thinking about how the last pack had lasted me more than a year. Which averaged like 2 cigarettes a month. One of my friends said that’s okay since you gotta feel French once in a while. This pack however lasted me around two months. Which averages to roughly 2 cigarettes a week. Not happy with this but I want to plan to not buy another pack unless I’m spending it with friends. Having a pack to myself definitely made it much easier for my frequency to increase.

Wondering what feels so good about smoking. I had to resist myself from lighting another one up when one ended. I managed to, and I feel good about it. But there’s a big doer energy in me right after smoking. I feel good, I feel optimistic, I feel hopeful. I want to feel this way from other things. I want to remember that this temporary relief isn’t natural. That it’s just that – temporary relief, temporary goodness.

Was researching a little bit last night and it does look like the nicotine stimulates the release of dopamine in the brain, so it’d make sense why I’ve been craving it more often these days. Don’t know enough neurochemistry to jam on this but I’m definitely curious about what’s special about this chemical.

I’d been feeling a lot of shame around smoking, however. I managed to separate it out into a) a worry about it becoming an addiction, b) cultural and societal shame around it. So for starters, it’s also nice to be able to smoke without feeling the shame associated with it. I feel like as long as I was feeling the shame, I was also wanting to smoke more. It’s natural to want things you can’t have, right? Once you remove the barriers to getting something, you can plainly see how much you want it. Honestly, it feels easier to let go of it once I ditch that emotion of “can’t have”.

I’m not sure how I feel about publishing something related to smoking on this blog, but since I know I’m kind of following a full-disclosure policy with stuff I write, I know if I don’t publish this, I’d be doing that out of (you guessed it) shame. So I suppose it’s worth completing this and hitting publish.

Since I gotta add around 200 words more – I was thinking about how the anxious brain is never out of thoughts. If my anxiety is cured, what will I write about? Will I still have thoughts to share? There’s definitely a part of me that has been anxious and coping with anxiety for so long that a lot of my identity has been shaped by it (even though I’ve tried hard for it to not be the case). There’s a lot of “good” sides to anxiety, being able to have very sharp focus when stressed, having a ton of foresight, “remembering” a lot? And of course I’m curious (or worried even?) about whether those “good” things will go away if I’m not feeling regularly anxious anymore. Thankfully, someone has written a nice, well-researched post about this as well. And thankfully, I don’t write or do creative work for a living, so I probably don’t have to worry about this as much as those people might have had to. I like the conclusion there, I can probably treat it as an experiment. If I never try, I’ll never know. Maybe everything is an experiment anyway. Like publishing this post.