Let's play a game.
Let's only deal with bad stuff happening when it is actually, really, happening.
If it isn't happening, in defined, concrete and objective ways, ways that are somehow actually impactful, and not purely mental (including gossip), let's just not deal with it. Since, well, there's honestly no it to deal with.
Let's try that for a few days. All the bad stuff on the registry, ready to occur? You know the stuff I'm talking about. Let's only deal with it if it is real. I have a feeling it might make life a little more enjoyable.
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Happiness In Life -- It Happens Only Now
Would you be happy with your life if nothing changed--that is, if from now, from whatever present circumstances you have (job, family, et al), nothing substantially different happened/changed? That is, you didn't get to "win" any of your myriad fantasies?
Could you force yourself to be happy, to be content and sated?
I'm asking because I have a deep suspicion that true happiness will only occur if the answer to that question is yes.
In other words: happiness cannot be predicated on changing any of the fundamental attributes of life. That is the challenge of happiness. It is not, in other words, to necessarily work hard to obtain the types of things that most of us think signify happiness. It is to let go of those things so utterly and completely that you're naked, and in that nakedness, that fundamental vulnerability, feel totally content.
This is it, folks. Get used to it, adjust, and find a way to see your life that is not ensconced in the fluff of impossibility and innuendo at more important lurking events/places/things on the horizon. '
Now, just imagine getting to this mindset, and then obtaining something that really matters. Instead of feeling like you deserved it, and it is just one thing that you have, you might actually value it as something incredibly special and totally unique, and feel a deep sense of humility.
Could you force yourself to be happy, to be content and sated?
I'm asking because I have a deep suspicion that true happiness will only occur if the answer to that question is yes.
In other words: happiness cannot be predicated on changing any of the fundamental attributes of life. That is the challenge of happiness. It is not, in other words, to necessarily work hard to obtain the types of things that most of us think signify happiness. It is to let go of those things so utterly and completely that you're naked, and in that nakedness, that fundamental vulnerability, feel totally content.
This is it, folks. Get used to it, adjust, and find a way to see your life that is not ensconced in the fluff of impossibility and innuendo at more important lurking events/places/things on the horizon. '
Now, just imagine getting to this mindset, and then obtaining something that really matters. Instead of feeling like you deserved it, and it is just one thing that you have, you might actually value it as something incredibly special and totally unique, and feel a deep sense of humility.
Monday, February 24, 2014
Normal Ain't So Bad -
In fact, for us addicts, it is downright difficult, and that's probably why we think it is so pathetic, prosaic, and just plain stupid/boring--because we have trouble being it. Normal, that is. For goodness sake, what's wrong with it again? Stability. Peace of mind. Expected routine. Habit.
And so, let's stop thinking we're so damn exceptional all the time, okay?
That doesn't mean it has to be depressing or banal or clinically registered. It just means we can get joys and not go to extremes.
Blah blah blah, self, takes a lot of learning to get there.
yes, it does, self.
And so, let's stop thinking we're so damn exceptional all the time, okay?
That doesn't mean it has to be depressing or banal or clinically registered. It just means we can get joys and not go to extremes.
Blah blah blah, self, takes a lot of learning to get there.
yes, it does, self.
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Hard To Get Hold/Firm Grasp/Purchase
In a way, the only "grasp" we can have is self-induced. If we don't intrinsically feel grounded, well, we won't be grounded. It is really as simple as that. There is no reference, no person, and no place/event that can define us beyond the meaning we apply to those references, people, and/or events, no matter the permutations, the complexity, the layering, all of the aching meaning we WANT there to be. And still, at times, we know when meaning "is" there and we know when it "isn't" even when we want it. So wanting it does not seem to be the actual variable that determines what is--that is, whether we ourselves are grounded or not. We can't just want to be grounded and make it happen.
Which is to say sometimes we have to be lost.
And sometimes, we have to be very lost.
And that is quite scary. Way scarier than I can write in words. Because if you know the lost/scare I reference, then you know it already, and I will not be able to show it or not show it. You've got it by reference of sorts, and so. Perhaps I disprove my earlier point in a way, or maybe prove it. Whatever.
The point is that being scared and seeking stable ground is intrinsic to our existence, and we might not be able to get rid of it--period. Ever. This is the whole faith issue, in general, the capacity to have faith that there is something worthwhile, that life has meaning, and that the meaning we impute on things is somewhat accurate to the intrinsic meaning, or even the meaning we really have in relation to those things--i.e. that we're not lying to ourselves.
It can get quite scary, again, when we're totally unsure whether the thoughts we have are in fact relevant in any way to reality, and yet: thoughts that we have are the only way to get back to reality, to reconnect.
Thoughts, or experiences, rather. Sometimes the funnel-cloud of thoughts, swirling while listening to music, for instance, or riding a train, in a somewhat opaque cloud that isn't distilled, on purpose, and isn't distillable.
And to bridge that chasm, yes, we need a little faith, not always in all the grand stuff that "is" out there, but just straight up in other people--that they care about us, for instance, and that we care about them and that our mutual caring is intrinsically good, and not, for example, just a way for genes to reproduce successfully. And I think that it is good and not just vessel-like, and I hope it is. And I feel enough beauty still, in my life, to maintain a flicker of hope in all of the tremendous confusion, but I know that I don't have the answers and I've grown a deep humility along the way. And that is not a fun process. But it is a solid one, that, ironically, allows me to feel slightly more solid with myself, too.
This is like the incompleteness theorem. I have to feel insecure to feel secure.
Which is to say sometimes we have to be lost.
And sometimes, we have to be very lost.
And that is quite scary. Way scarier than I can write in words. Because if you know the lost/scare I reference, then you know it already, and I will not be able to show it or not show it. You've got it by reference of sorts, and so. Perhaps I disprove my earlier point in a way, or maybe prove it. Whatever.
The point is that being scared and seeking stable ground is intrinsic to our existence, and we might not be able to get rid of it--period. Ever. This is the whole faith issue, in general, the capacity to have faith that there is something worthwhile, that life has meaning, and that the meaning we impute on things is somewhat accurate to the intrinsic meaning, or even the meaning we really have in relation to those things--i.e. that we're not lying to ourselves.
It can get quite scary, again, when we're totally unsure whether the thoughts we have are in fact relevant in any way to reality, and yet: thoughts that we have are the only way to get back to reality, to reconnect.
Thoughts, or experiences, rather. Sometimes the funnel-cloud of thoughts, swirling while listening to music, for instance, or riding a train, in a somewhat opaque cloud that isn't distilled, on purpose, and isn't distillable.
And to bridge that chasm, yes, we need a little faith, not always in all the grand stuff that "is" out there, but just straight up in other people--that they care about us, for instance, and that we care about them and that our mutual caring is intrinsically good, and not, for example, just a way for genes to reproduce successfully. And I think that it is good and not just vessel-like, and I hope it is. And I feel enough beauty still, in my life, to maintain a flicker of hope in all of the tremendous confusion, but I know that I don't have the answers and I've grown a deep humility along the way. And that is not a fun process. But it is a solid one, that, ironically, allows me to feel slightly more solid with myself, too.
This is like the incompleteness theorem. I have to feel insecure to feel secure.
Saturday, February 1, 2014
Owning Up, Releasing Shame
This one is hard to do, but hey, let's give it a shot. Instead of holding on to the shame, bitterness, and the outrage that has settled into grooves around our collective eyes, let's instead find a way to own up to our past(s) and be at peace with those pasts, such that they do not negatively impact our current and future selves.
It is easy, especially after partaken in tremendous amounts of shame inducing activities, to NOT LEARN from those activities, but instead let the lead blanket of shame that came from those activities cover up current life. But that's really no way to live. Nor is the other extreme, simply forgetting about the past completely. But there is a sweet spot here, one that is highly idiosyncratic, that you cannot learn from others necessarily, but must endeavor to find on your own pace and intensity.
Which is to say that you don't need to hold on so desperately to all of the bad stuff, even or especially because it is familiar and routine. It is possible not to be defensive and insecure and to live into the future on a level plane of curiosity, neutrality, and relative engagement.
It is easy, especially after partaken in tremendous amounts of shame inducing activities, to NOT LEARN from those activities, but instead let the lead blanket of shame that came from those activities cover up current life. But that's really no way to live. Nor is the other extreme, simply forgetting about the past completely. But there is a sweet spot here, one that is highly idiosyncratic, that you cannot learn from others necessarily, but must endeavor to find on your own pace and intensity.
Which is to say that you don't need to hold on so desperately to all of the bad stuff, even or especially because it is familiar and routine. It is possible not to be defensive and insecure and to live into the future on a level plane of curiosity, neutrality, and relative engagement.
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Trying New Things [and] Killing What You Love
I know you think you know what I'm going to say, that there's a way to abscond from our base desires, to heighten our meditational stance against the warring forces within and without, and just climb over past blights as if rock solid foundations, reaching new heights and then, well, the zen-buddhist stance goes on into a beautiful cycle of constant renovation through dismissal and letting go and all that, and it is all true. I mean, it is all as true as you want to make it. But it is not what I'm going to say.
I just tossed the header together, since I think there's a serious tension between trying new things and trying to hold on to what it is you know you love. And here I don't mean people, not explicitly anyway, although there's nothing quite as sour as the obvious reality of a relationship going south and the awareness that it is occurring, all the while both parties try to preserve it in a weird way that makes me think more of paternal suburban inauthentic cliches than it does about (actual paternal instincts or suburbia), and so what/ The point is more about trying to get into words a little bit of a lived experience, a reality that we know and one that we, individually, and mostly to ourselves, have trouble totally coherently talking about.
See, that's the thing, really, some sort of accuracy, that's the thing I like, or want, or think I want even as I really want what I really want instead anyway, like all of us. And yes, there's a bit of me smeared all over the highway there and you too, because we're dancing this accident out, in a kind of slow-mo booty call late into the night when we should be back in suburbia, living remote lives, buying creamy drinks, falling into patterns, and habituation of interactions and all the rest that yes, I admit, drives me in a way that also disgusts me. And that simultaneous understanding, when truly understood is indeed enough to crack better men than me, i.e. it is enough to crack me, and i.e. by the way, I have all sorts of cracks, for better or worse, and microscopic or relatively major, and life sober is not easy because it is very hard to stay sane without alcohol, no? And yet. And yet. Life with alcohol is not exactly manageable.
See the thread of impossibility runs through so many currents that it is impossible for me to walk away from this place. Basically everything I think is related to alcohol or something about alcohol, or something about alcohol is related to everything I think or experience, and that's fucking scary, and not because I'm an addict or alcoholic, or obsessive in a genuine almost need to be medicated way, but also more importantly, in the way that thoughts can merge and form synergy and find a way into brand new not just version2 thoughts, and realizations and insights, and what's simultaneously happening is that these great new insights are working on themselves, too, like bleach left on the counter, working to disabuse themselves, finding a way to crack, and fling mud and over-modulate right into the rough texture of incoherence, again, at the same time that they find a way toward foundational stability. And that's what it is, really, a live wire, one that is in constant tension, just balanced there with a lot of energy on either end, in all directions, and that's it, right, the thing I mean to get out here, and with that, I will go and eat a delicious baked in a slight layer of coconut oil sweet potato and go on trying to believe in myself, because I need to, for the base fact of going on.
I just tossed the header together, since I think there's a serious tension between trying new things and trying to hold on to what it is you know you love. And here I don't mean people, not explicitly anyway, although there's nothing quite as sour as the obvious reality of a relationship going south and the awareness that it is occurring, all the while both parties try to preserve it in a weird way that makes me think more of paternal suburban inauthentic cliches than it does about (actual paternal instincts or suburbia), and so what/ The point is more about trying to get into words a little bit of a lived experience, a reality that we know and one that we, individually, and mostly to ourselves, have trouble totally coherently talking about.
See, that's the thing, really, some sort of accuracy, that's the thing I like, or want, or think I want even as I really want what I really want instead anyway, like all of us. And yes, there's a bit of me smeared all over the highway there and you too, because we're dancing this accident out, in a kind of slow-mo booty call late into the night when we should be back in suburbia, living remote lives, buying creamy drinks, falling into patterns, and habituation of interactions and all the rest that yes, I admit, drives me in a way that also disgusts me. And that simultaneous understanding, when truly understood is indeed enough to crack better men than me, i.e. it is enough to crack me, and i.e. by the way, I have all sorts of cracks, for better or worse, and microscopic or relatively major, and life sober is not easy because it is very hard to stay sane without alcohol, no? And yet. And yet. Life with alcohol is not exactly manageable.
See the thread of impossibility runs through so many currents that it is impossible for me to walk away from this place. Basically everything I think is related to alcohol or something about alcohol, or something about alcohol is related to everything I think or experience, and that's fucking scary, and not because I'm an addict or alcoholic, or obsessive in a genuine almost need to be medicated way, but also more importantly, in the way that thoughts can merge and form synergy and find a way into brand new not just version2 thoughts, and realizations and insights, and what's simultaneously happening is that these great new insights are working on themselves, too, like bleach left on the counter, working to disabuse themselves, finding a way to crack, and fling mud and over-modulate right into the rough texture of incoherence, again, at the same time that they find a way toward foundational stability. And that's what it is, really, a live wire, one that is in constant tension, just balanced there with a lot of energy on either end, in all directions, and that's it, right, the thing I mean to get out here, and with that, I will go and eat a delicious baked in a slight layer of coconut oil sweet potato and go on trying to believe in myself, because I need to, for the base fact of going on.
Monday, January 20, 2014
I Can't Stop -
I guess I just can't stop posting here. I thought I was done, but every now and then a thought pops into my head, and I'm obliged to follow it through, and then, well, there's only one place for it, a place unfettered by the dogma of mindless social anxiety or forced interaction, or all of the filters and layers and endless sputtering that one must put up with to actually try to have a decent conversation; and that place, well, it turns out, is right here.
So I'm not quite back, but I'm not quite leaving, either, and that means I won't try to stick to a rigid schedule; I'll just post what and when I feel like (um, that's not quite different or anything, but a re-affirmation never hurt).
Because this is a bit of my identity, whether I like it (or want to walk away from it) or not, and I can't quite deny it anymore, even though I've sort of aggressively embraced it, I underestimated the need to stay strong in a low-volume way, and in a consistent way.
Yours always and truly, constantly striving to make headway into the nether regions of our collective addictions,
Offbooze (and off everything else).
So I'm not quite back, but I'm not quite leaving, either, and that means I won't try to stick to a rigid schedule; I'll just post what and when I feel like (um, that's not quite different or anything, but a re-affirmation never hurt).
Because this is a bit of my identity, whether I like it (or want to walk away from it) or not, and I can't quite deny it anymore, even though I've sort of aggressively embraced it, I underestimated the need to stay strong in a low-volume way, and in a consistent way.
Yours always and truly, constantly striving to make headway into the nether regions of our collective addictions,
Offbooze (and off everything else).
Sunday, January 19, 2014
Being Honest -
It is okay to just think the thoughts that you have and follow them, and know that they are not purely your own thoughts, and that those particular thoughts at that particular time don't determine everything about you or necessarily define you for all eternity. They could even be meaningless, inconsequential, flighty little things that don't hold much more water than the most recently passed flatulence.
Saturday, January 11, 2014
Faith
It has become evident to me that faith is paramount to life. It is a thing that religion gets fundamentally correct, at base, and it is important that we all see the more abstract notion of faith, divorced from any baggage of guilt or the sabotage of our personal histories regarding what we've been told to think, or reacted to, regarding religion.
Faith is vital. We must believe in the future. We must come to an emotional or philosophical, or even a hold-me-by-my-hips kind of need or want to aim into the future, not for personal gain, for laziness, sloth, etc., but because we can fathom a future of betterness, improvement, constant development, and where we matter. --
Not where we tell ourselves we matter, or where ambition flouts about for ambition's sake. But a future that we somehow fundamentally believe in, because it matters. Because it matters without a because. It matters. That's the faith part, at once intoxicatingly simple to say and disregard and hideously difficult to practice and hold steady and strong. But that is what we need, make no mistake, and we will go about trying to find it. Better to be clear about what we're looking for first, before embarking.
Faith is vital. We must believe in the future. We must come to an emotional or philosophical, or even a hold-me-by-my-hips kind of need or want to aim into the future, not for personal gain, for laziness, sloth, etc., but because we can fathom a future of betterness, improvement, constant development, and where we matter. --
Not where we tell ourselves we matter, or where ambition flouts about for ambition's sake. But a future that we somehow fundamentally believe in, because it matters. Because it matters without a because. It matters. That's the faith part, at once intoxicatingly simple to say and disregard and hideously difficult to practice and hold steady and strong. But that is what we need, make no mistake, and we will go about trying to find it. Better to be clear about what we're looking for first, before embarking.
Monday, January 6, 2014
Push Toward Flat
I have a tendency to build hyperbole into everything I do, think about, react to, or experience. It is exceedingly difficult for me to experience, to live, accurately, flatly, neutrally. I'd prefer to have some pinch of feedback to know that I'm alive. As if life's meaning is flat because life is flat. Because there is no drama.
I'm also intensely self-aware, which, when combined with the need to have drama, or seek action, really pollutes my own feelings of contentment or the possibility of peace.
I also don't think I'm alone.
So what?
So nothing. Deal with it and development within it too--a much harder task than the constantly bounding mania that so often fueled the exegesis of anything and anyone who would listen.
I'm also intensely self-aware, which, when combined with the need to have drama, or seek action, really pollutes my own feelings of contentment or the possibility of peace.
I also don't think I'm alone.
So what?
So nothing. Deal with it and development within it too--a much harder task than the constantly bounding mania that so often fueled the exegesis of anything and anyone who would listen.
Saturday, January 4, 2014
Death On My Mind
Constantly. That may sound strikingly myopic, or abnormal. Perhaps I am indeed deranged in some fundamental way, or just wrong, deep down.
Or perhaps not.
Regardless, I do maintain what I believe in is a healthy respect for death, for darkness, for the reality and need to heed that flavor of our basic existence.
It is hard not to sound quaint or even cliched at this moment, this point, and I don't mean it in a way to evoke some weird kind of nostalgia or even any reflection whatsoever. It is more about me getting to the basics of accuracy. I experience life with a chronic understanding of death. It isn't bad, necessarily. It just is. Before we get to bad, we get to what exists. In short, I have a certain awareness of vulnerability. I don't think it is bad, per se. I think it is perhaps helpful. You may think that my concurrent problem of never being able to relax, to "settle" into my life, as it were, was closely related to my chronic fatiguing ever present awareness of death.
You'd be right, possibly, but I don't exactly care because I know the more entrenched reality is that you likely care less than that. My thoughts are almost uniquely inapplicable to you, average person, and your thoughts to me likewise. It is truly depressing, that sort of relentless unhinged nature of modern life, but I do stare it down with as little distortion as possible.
The point is that death isn't funny, and it isn't intriguing and it certainly isn't something that can be used lightly. It is scary. Scary because of its permanence. Permanence is a concept that takes some time to get used to, since it is easy to hold traction of such notions in conversation, and much harder in the waves of isolation, or even habitual every day life. Permanence overlays lot of things, the concept of it, a nice little ancillary sub-death thought. I believe that we make decisions that stick with us, and maybe I'm wrong, but then again, the chance that I'm right is what worries me more.
Or perhaps not.
Regardless, I do maintain what I believe in is a healthy respect for death, for darkness, for the reality and need to heed that flavor of our basic existence.
It is hard not to sound quaint or even cliched at this moment, this point, and I don't mean it in a way to evoke some weird kind of nostalgia or even any reflection whatsoever. It is more about me getting to the basics of accuracy. I experience life with a chronic understanding of death. It isn't bad, necessarily. It just is. Before we get to bad, we get to what exists. In short, I have a certain awareness of vulnerability. I don't think it is bad, per se. I think it is perhaps helpful. You may think that my concurrent problem of never being able to relax, to "settle" into my life, as it were, was closely related to my chronic fatiguing ever present awareness of death.
You'd be right, possibly, but I don't exactly care because I know the more entrenched reality is that you likely care less than that. My thoughts are almost uniquely inapplicable to you, average person, and your thoughts to me likewise. It is truly depressing, that sort of relentless unhinged nature of modern life, but I do stare it down with as little distortion as possible.
The point is that death isn't funny, and it isn't intriguing and it certainly isn't something that can be used lightly. It is scary. Scary because of its permanence. Permanence is a concept that takes some time to get used to, since it is easy to hold traction of such notions in conversation, and much harder in the waves of isolation, or even habitual every day life. Permanence overlays lot of things, the concept of it, a nice little ancillary sub-death thought. I believe that we make decisions that stick with us, and maybe I'm wrong, but then again, the chance that I'm right is what worries me more.
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
I Think That's It -
From now on I'll post on a different blog, with mostly different topics, and maybe more or less frequently. Perhaps I'll check in here every now and again. I feel like I've actually "done it," whatever that means, and my sobriety is now a foundation instead of a shaky bit of dramatic angst, so I don't feel compelled to draw out every last shade to you, or to myself. I appreciate all previous comments, emails, communications, etc., and I wish everyone the best of luck.
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