You can do whatever you want in your tiny sphere of influence.
Of course you can't quite yet move mountains, but you can do
plenty already. My sphere is small, but I exercise my control over
it like a tyrannical dragon.

I don't have to talk to anyone I don't want to.
Don't have to see 'em neither.

I was never good at obeying the bizarre unwritten rules.

The Particles Know I'm Watching

Uranium decays over time in a process that's called nuclear decay. Unless you're watching it, that is. Then it defies the laws of physics and seems to stand still.

Anxiety's keeping me up again tonight. It's the kind of anxiety where you want to do so much but you know it's just not fucking possible to do it all. I want to build a fantastic success scenario at work and I want to make amazing designs and prototypes for the Mobile stuff (which we have no time/resources allocated to within the workday). I want to work out and reach another level of fitness. I want to write my novel. I want to practice my guitar playing and learn some songs, and I want to learn how to do decent recordings on Cubase. I want to learn how to make videos, editing and adding graphics. And I want to spend quality time with my love and do things together.

There are just nowhere near enough hours in the week, no matter how I try to crunch it. Even when I'm up until 2am like I am now, my brain's just not that functional for that long.

Frustration!

You Will Become Clever Through Your Mistakes (German proverb)

*Work ↑
*Training ↑
*Diet -
*Creativity ↓↓
*Gaming ↓

Maintaining motivation on many fronts is exhausting, especially if that front needs to be 100% of the time not to fail (I'm looking at you, slippery slope of nutrition! I let my guard down once last night and fucked my otherwise fabulous week).

I've been utilizing a lot of visualization tricks lately to keep me in the zone. It doesn't usually encompass all areas, some things are easier to imagine yourself being an unstoppable force at, but it helps anyway. I've been reading about the powers of mind over matter and think it could do me some good to be more positive.

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A note on "The Productive Zone"

I'm reading an excerpt of The Talent Code as I try to determine whether this would be a good, applicable read for me. So far it's about how talented people tap into a neurological mechanism in which certain patterns of targeted practice build skill. Without realizing it they enter a zone of accelerated learning that can be accessed by those who know how. That's the talent code. I feel like I've touched on that in the past while studying but in the book they're talking more about things that require motor skills. I'm sure it's a decent read but I don't think it's quite what I'm looking for, as I don't have a serious skill with a goal that requires a lot of practice (sure I'd like to be a better guitar player, but it's not up there on the list of priorities). What my goals require is a lot of learning.

Taking it Back to a Hardcore Level

Here are some of the things I'm up to these days:

- Working: leave my house at 8am, get home at 6:30pm. I haven't been getting much out of my work except money. Bug fixing is not conducive to personal growth. This takes up the biggest chunk of my time.
- Exercise: I've been lazying on the weight-lifting front, opting instead to stay in during evenings. I still get some walk/cardio time during the day. Now that its been a good two weeks, I'm starting to feel the need to start going evenings again, as draining as it is.
- Creative writing: I've been mapping out the storyarchs and characters of my novel. I find that writing overalls and concept is much easier than actually writing the thing. I'm still on the first chapter, even if I have a pretty clear idea of how the whole story will go. Also I can't write in the evening, my brain is too tired, so I'm limited to on-the-train.
- Making music: I gave up at trying to figure it out on my own and enlisted my coworker Vac to teach me how to use Cubase to record and to program music. My first goal will be to record my own version of Ocean Soul, since it's the song I know best. Not sure where to fit in time for this.
- Video editing: I finally got a copy of my trainer Krystle's video and I need to find some online tutorials on how I might go about creating an intro and including some graphics. I hope to do this on one of my upcoming Fridays off.
- Drawing: I shouldn't even put this in the list, because it's so low in priority. I just wish I could do 1 photoshop drawing of Tania.
- Roleplayinging: Roleplaying while playing SWTOR. It's a double-edged sword. On one hand, I feel like it just makes me a happier person, like it enhances my drive and creativity. On the other hand it's such a time-sink that it takes time away from other goals.

A Sith Does What a Sith Wants.

I've been swimming in dopamine this week for no other reason than I can.

For the past little while I've had more-than-average anxiety and I find that I could give myself temporary reprieve by not really thinking of anything beyond the immediate moment. It's my Christmas gift to myself. All I want to think about is my little Star Wars adventure.

It's not at all the most constructive use of my time in the typical sense of the word, but as a rule, I find it's pretty important to do what you want in life.

And This is the Mutherfucking Thanks I Get?

I've been panicking about all sorts of things lately. Why was I panicking? Because it's what I do. If you want a nice visual representation of how I feel when it happens, watch Natural Born Killers, and look at the black-and-white scenes that take place when Juliette Lewis is seducing the gas station attendant.

Like everyone else, I try to apply causality to my experiences, especially things that I take to be negative. Causality at least gives a sense of control and agency. "The reason I'm sad is because I haven't been eating enough carbs" means that you can feel better if you want to. The problem is that in our haste to identify the cause (and solution) to issues, we often get it wrong.

My life isn't some sort of existentialist pit, in which I sip on wine, lament, and regularly use words like "lament". But I have some "problems", and I've had them for as long as I remember. I've come up with lots of reasons that assuredly, 100%, without a doubt explain the cause of the problem and give me a clean answer to how to solve them. These assessments pretty much end up being bullshit. Time spent with friends, exercise, video games, love and sex... these are all good things, but while I had a pretty decent control over my emotions before, now I can count on seemingly small things to make me feel like I'm going mental.

This isn't My Problem(tm) , but I do worry a lot that when people, especially my girlfriend, realize what I'm like, they'll go away. If I freak out and go irrational for a night, I don't think that people will get mad at me, but I do think that they'll be treating me as though I peed on myself. For now, I think that I've given up trying to control when I lose it, but I'm insecure. Sure, I know that people like me when I'm okay, but sometimes I'm not okay, and I can't control it. It's those cases that I worry about... I wish people would just treat it like a minor epileptic fit. I'd like that a lot better than trying to pretend that I have it together. I usually do, but sometimes I don't. People who have been very close to me got very mad at me in the past because of this, and I don't blame them. It doesn't mean that I'm saying that it's my fault; it just means that they might not have understood the situation. Sometimes, no matter what I do, I go crazy. Then a few others make the mistake of thinking that I'm "really like that" and that when I'm happy, I'm really just putting up a front.

Look, I have no idea what's the cause or solution (if any) to whatever it is that I have, but I can say: when I'm happy, I'm happy. When I'm mad, I'm mad. When I'm absolutely psychotic, thinking very very nasty thoughts, I'm absolutely psychotic, thinking very very nasty thoughts. To the best of my knowledge, there's no "REALLY authentic" way that I am. That theory's as dumb and appealing as the theory that we somehow store every sight and sound that we experience in our memories, where they remain forever. Memory is largely a process of active reconstruction (not passive recall) , and my authenticity lies in the fact that I feel what I feel when I feel it (not in some "true way that Mia is" that gets masked whenever I feel or act contrary to that "true way").

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Now that you're thoroughly freaked out, something to keep in mind about my blog: when in a good mood, I'm generally too busy *doing* stuff to bother writing in here. It's when I'm in need of venting or pondering that I'll usually have the "let's write" vibe. So if you take my blog entries as a good indication of how I feel most of the time, you're wronger than Jon singing a long wrong song about smoking a bong with a Viet cong named Wong.

Pale September

I do a whole lot of thinking but not a whole lot of doing. I'm lazy and undisciplined and I sabotage myself constantly. I like to pretend I know better than everyone else but I fall into the same traps as everyone else. I refuse to sacrifice, to truly sacrifice.

I berate myself a lot after lacks of discipline. I don't know if it's good or bad, but it's how I function. If I told most people about this, they'd call me crazy. They'd say I'm too hard on myself. They're idiots.

There's this illusion of safety people have where 1. they will never lose what they have and 2. things will 'work themselves out' in the end.

It's generally true that if you keep doing what you're doing you'll keep getting what you're getting. If that works for you, then great.

I'm in need of something different.