twenytwenytwo

[twenytwenytwo]

Dec 31 2022 (8:00pm)

“You own weakness can become your strength with clever manipulation.”

“Jealousy is a signal of what you truly desire.”

“Have enough”

To have enough is something I once felt. It was great and allowed me to see life’s beauty. Beauty is a gift. If you’re at a deficit, you cannot appreciate a gift as such.

[twenytwenytwo]

Dec 31 2022 (12:34pm)

In the midst of feeling lost, confused, disconnected from the infinite well of inspiration and joy in life, it’s obviously difficult to find your groove.

I’m used to be being somewhat possessed by a drive to build and create. It wasn’t so much my choice, or an articulate formulation, or a blatant decision at all… it was just a feeling of vague goodness. One that I frankly just trusted.

What if in this deep, disorienting funk — one that sometimes makes me question what is even going on — what if I just blindly dedicated myself to that same energy, that vague goodness.

What if, in this darkness, I groped around blindly as best as I could, and acted as if I could see the light. Instead of being motivated by that vague goodness, I would be motivated by a dedication to it, a trust that it is there despite it not being so ecstatically certain.

I would act the part, prepare for it eventual arrival.

This is an interesting idea. That despite your murderous, dizzying sadness, total despair, depressed state (or whatever), you can identify a possible path that you can take that is worthwhile, righteous, valuable in some way. An even seemingly trivial path like musicianship.

You can take this path, dedicate your energy to it, and do it and achieve with all your swirling emotions at your side. You may not have that indestructible certainty, heavenly focus, and inner stillness that accompanies being possessed by the creative spirit during simpler times in life, but you are serving it.

You do not need to feel genuinely inspired to do it. You can feel how empty and pointless it is. These sorts of things, in their positive form, would be my usual motivations. I’d feel good and invigorated, and the energy would come forth.

But, in the stomach of that beast of total disillusionment, pointlessness, meaninglessness, contempt, disassociation, and loss of colour… you can dedicate yourself to the opposite.

Within those black, tar-like feelings, crawling inside your skin and your mind, draining you of life, you can decide in an act of total senseless rebellion to your current bleak reasoning, to embody the creative spirit in what little way you possible can. You can act on it’s behalf during it’s current absence.

You will not feel a spark of invitation, of validation that this is the right thing, a good path. You will set out on the path with absolutely no hopeful indication whatsoever, no glimmer of warm feeling within, not even a blip of certainty from the deepest parts of your being.

BUT. You will know and understand that it is something worth hopelessly throwing your bored body at. It is at least a micrometer better than doing absolutely nothing, wallowing, motionless, paddling around in your tiny pond of black goo.

Logically, you can conclude that this is normally something that you would deem worthwhile — in even the most trivial way — if you were in better spirits. If you were feeling good, you might genuinely engage with it, this thing, idea, activity. So, for now, you will act on behalf of this good feeling during it’s absence. Your plain will is now substituting for the good vibe that would normally guide your attention. Your will will give you that sensation of objective, and you will obey as if it came from the currently absent good feeling.

Do it all in the face of your doubts, fears, hang-ups, everything. Literally pretend to be too stupid to heed the alarms, too stupid to understand the reasons you should think twice, too stupid to hesitate, too stupid to be aware of the emotional puzzles that surround you and the people involved, too stupid to be even slightly afraid.

Too stupid to let the bad vibes of the world permeate into my core.

Too stupid to not enjoy life.

Interesting.

[twenytwenytwo]

Dec 31 2022 (11:45am)

Despite the darkness, the feelings of sadness, confusion, I am undergoing something good. My life and my self are changing into something better. I am feeling incredibly sad, but that is part of my existence. I am thankful for the times I felt joy and purpose, fun and friendship, but now this is what I must experience. It is part of the same life.

I must suffer gracefully. I must be a servant to my future self, who knows the way, is confident, calm, and at peace, and enjoying life. How can I help him?

Suffer gracefully and make beautiful decisions.

—

I’ve experienced a myriad of feelings this year, but this degree of sadness is new. It’s not frustration, conflict, disappointment. It’s the absence of someone important to me. The spot left behind is large and I can feel it.

[twenytwenytwo]

Dec 31 2022 (9:46am)

When your ideal is in the future, your motivational juices can flow. If it is in the past, you must let it go, and understand that you must separate it (your ideal) from the now tangible things, people, places, situations that your ideal manifested, now in the past.

You now must perform and daunting surgery, a distillation and rescue mission to free your ideal from the weights that brought down to you from the heavens.

When your ideal is in the future, you (at least I do) embrace the unknown, the random unfoldings because they are symptomatic of the process that is taking you closer (perhaps not directly toward) to your ideal.

When things are good, I don’t feel in control or out of control on any grand way. What little amount of influence and control I have over the universe is plenty.

I look back into my past and see good times of going to London drugs and driving to the movie theatre, laughing in the car with Izabel. I also see good times with Ethan, jamming in the basement, making incredible music that fills my heart with inspiration and good feelings. These visions from the past are not the whole truth, they are part of it, but not the entirety. What I miss is part of it, a slice inflated into perfection, but I am treating it as the whole. The whole truth of the time gone by. So in a sense you could say that I’m having nostalgia for something that isn’t real because the version of it — of the past — is not real; it’s incomplete. It’s missing the frustrating, unpleasant parts.

[twenytwenytwo]

Dec 30 2022 (3:39pm)

After my last entry, I got (despite the positive thinkings) rather sad. Like deep sad, still somewhat fried and tired, lost feeling.

I believe yesterday (perhaps not?) I philosophized about the mechanics of my particular “problems”, and that they really are a clog in a figurative way.

Dopamine, responsible for pleasure, relaxation, desire, motivation. I’m sure Serotonin is woven in somehow, I really have little idea what I’m talking about…

… anyway, right now I feel like two of the big things in my life are not only out of order, but also in a state of stuckness, as far my brain goes. Lemme try again.

Consider the role of girlfriend in my life. I like girls and want a girlfriend. Right now, I have someone in my life, who isn’t my girlfriend, but acts as a clog (sorry Izzy) for that slot in my brain because by desiring someone, and getting a dopamine hit (or whatever), I’m fully breaking up with Izabel.

So, it’s like I don’t want to feel good, because I don’t want to feel bad.

To be excited and feel free to continue on with my love life and get to know somebody new, that would feel good. But the thought of that also feels really sad.

Similarly with Ethan and Zilch. I absolutely loved Zilch, admittedly the idealizations of Zilch’s eras gone by are likely extreme inflations, distortions of what they actually were, and void of any bad aspects. Hanging in the front yard in the sun. Practicing relentlessly. I miss it. Well, I miss the idealization.

Ethan and I were so amazingly arrogant and pretentious together. We talked each other up like mad, and felt like we were going to take over the world together. I felt like I had found my musical soulmate, and had no worries. We rarely, if ever, disagreed, and the juices flowed amazingly well, Life felt great because it felt like we were going somewhere amazing.

Then, of course, as it came time to change, Ethan and I’s differences slowly became more and more apparent. I didn’t know how to deal with this because I was afraid of conflict. When Ethan was a pain, I felt like he was threatened the very reason for me living, the thing that had made me feel so amazingly cool and like my life was worth something.

I feel like what would fully unclog the Zilch clog is if Ethan came to me and was like “Hey, I wanna be in the band again, and hang out lots and have fun, and you can do whatever you want with the band and I’ll just agree with it and make it better in the ways you think I make it better and nothing more.”

Dec 31 2022 (7:47am)

From there on, it would continue in the format that I don’t want it to: I’m the brain, Ethan’s the drummer. This is the way it largely was the entire time, also. For some reason, I cannot accept that Ethan does not make or break the band, besides being a operating drummer. He adds to the band as much as any other drummer of his calibre.

I have trouble finding my energy source, my enthusiasm because it’s stuck inside an idealization of the past that is dependant on perceptual distortions. The thought of Ethan and I jamming, creating, and playing music together in a band is bliss to me. I have total faith in it. BUT, this isn’t the whole story. Besides the dress-code stuff, there were many times during song development that Ethan was just not cooking anything up, he was playing really unimaginatively, or too basic, not enough balls. I began working on drum parts on my own, because I wasn’t satisfied with what he was coming up with.

Enter Florentine Unknown, in it’s full glory. That song that so encapsulates that era for me, was all me. That is some jazzy snazzy drumming for someone who was not a jazz drummer at all. Perhaps it’s hard for me to understand where I get that, and it’s easier to attribute it to Ethan. He likely encouraged it out, but it was there, I already liked it.

Other songs like Walking Thru the Night, Badadadada, were also rhythmically defined by me, again, not the rhythm section. It’s as if I wanted it to be a product of a really cool band, because that’s what I wanted; a really cool band. So I unconsciously credited it to Ethan.

But yeah, these idealizations are troublesome. It gets in the way of me letting go of something that needs to be let go of, because it was broken, inundated with naivety and inexperience, teenage ignorance and fantasy. It’s getting in the way of me doing what, underneath all the mud, I am genuinely passionate about.

Imagine a universe where Ethan simply did not exist, or perhaps he was squash farmer in Peru instead. I’d be here in Nanaimo, 17, writing songs, listening to the Doors, eager to make a band.

I encounter all the lousy drummers I have encountered so far. Either I’d adapt my standards to them, or — having heard Mitch Mitchel, etc, — would have found a drum kit myself, and started drumming earlier.

I get decent, fast. Faster than I did in this universe because I didn’t have a drummer. I’m sitting in my living room on Sherwood, on Florentine Unknown chooses me as is idea-host, I capture it. I record it, drums and all (I wrote that dope bassline too). It sounds great.

I write, record and release all the other usual songs, on my own. People love it. I hire a drummer to play the songs at the Vault, with a bassist. It’s great. People think Zilch is dope. Jazz rock. It’s like the Doors, Hendrix, and Santana.

Me and my band are great friends, we have laughs and beers after the show. They’re hired guns and there when I need them. I feel fulfilled, I got to make music like the music I love and was inspired by.

I go on to have a successful career and eventually find a regular band of cool dudes that love what I’m doing and are serious and dedicated. We tour, Zilch continues to release album after album of dope shit. Life is good.

A portal opens. Me from the universe steps out and tells the other Adrian my story, that I can’t do it without Ethan. Other Adrian is like “who the fuck is Ethan? I did this all myself, with a little help here and there. This universe is great, I get to fully develop my vision with some fuckwhit screwing it up, I hire people to play the music, have fun with it, we jam, they look good cause they’re getting paid…”

He tells me I sound a bit pathetic, and that I shouldn’t let my hangups slowly suck the life out of my talent and genius. This Ethan guy is just a guy who plays drums.

Other Adrian tells me that he became a renowned artist, and earned himself a career because he didn’t fuck around, if something wasn’t right he fixed it, no bullshit. He said my hangup sounds like the kind of bullshit he’d flush away.

This other Adrian is having a ball. He’s never met Ethan, and even think that collaborating is great, but doesn’t work for him. He finds people screw with his vision for the song, and the songs always end up better when he crafts it himself. Songs like Florentine Unknown.

(9:25am)

Ethan was a catalyst for me. The thought of playing a tune, an idea, for real was inspiring. Like, hearing it live in the jam room, drums and guitar, was stirring and inspiring. When he and I fell out, I lost that. I felt like my ideas remained just ideas all the way through to the recording being finished. “Stop Dreaming” has still technically never been played in this way, live, by living people.

The thought of live, living music is what gets me going. When Ethan and I would record live, it was perfect, conceptually at least. The idea was perfection, even with it’s imperfection. Ethan was the thing that made it a living thing, because he was the person a played my ideas with.

[twenytwenytwo]

Dec 30 2022 (6:47am)

Slept good, 9:00pm-5:00am, with wake ups at 1 and 3. This morning, I feel little tired, but not as much as yesterday morning. I think today will feel a lot less groggy.

There is still some funk present, likely just cause I haven’t changed my groove yet, and encouraged forth a more positive sub personality.

Hm. Maybe that’s something I need to live with, or accept better, that this general state of extreme grumpiness and and lack of fun is simply a part of me, a sub personality that is always in me, and always has been. Certain things call it forth, others don’t. There’s no getting rid of it. There’s only choosing to embody a different sub personality, a more pleasant one.

Of course, I’ve already talked about how you choose to do that. It’s thinking like that sub personality. Pleasant thinking. Positive thinking. It’s a choice, not a distraction.

I was thinking a little earlier, trying to get out of my funk. “What would I be looking forward to in 5 years?”. Maybe could is a better word. I could be looking forward to do a new music video for a band that just booked me. It’s good money. Excited to try out all the ideas we put together, it’s gonna look sick.

I could be excited to put out my new song I just finished. The band is humming along nicely and we’ve got some dope gigs coming up. Shooting a new video in a couple months with one of my videographer friends. In the desert. Ye baby. We’re going on a desert road trip and doing a Easy Rider style video.

New album sounds great, best shit I’ve ever made, better than my first bunch of songs. I’ve learned what it was that I liked about the early songs and that I can write many other songs that are like that, songs like Florentine Unknown were just the first glimmer, the spark, of the crackles and flames that now follow.

I met an amazing girl, and we don’t just get along, we love being together. She helps with band affairs, photography and such. We have great sex and go on surprise road trips. She’s hot. I undoubtedly love her. And she loves me and is happy.

With the money of been making through film making, we’re gonna buy a place and have a kid. Business has been good and we’re living comfortably. We have our struggles, but we are handling them well.

Izzy and I parted ways and are still dear friends. I don’t have feelings for her anymore, but there is a certain fondness there still. She’s made great progress with her stuff and is really hitting her golden era. Despite her usual troubles she’s living good.

Ethan and I are still friends, we ended working things out years ago and played music again. We still play but he’s got his own projects now that take up his time. I’ve since found a new bunch of guys who are dedicated, and we’re all friends and get together regularly to have drinks and such.

I’m a respected artist in the community, known as one of the best. People ask me for advice and I tell them that if they’re doing it right, the road will be extremely difficult, and if they stay on it, it will pay off. Practice, run positive things through your mind often, and don’t forget to enjoy other things in life. Being an artist is about transforming your experiences into art. You have to have experiences first, then art comes second.

I feel good about myself. I have done well. The heights to which I used to aim mean nothing to me now, and I’ve found what I truly wanted. I look back on that tough time in my mid twenties and see it as a time of intense transformation, an improvement in myself that I would never wish didn’t happen. I came through it, I figured it out, and learned about what I am.

[twenytwenytwo]

Dec 29 2022 (1:25pm)

Continuing exploring this theme of “turning the page”, starting fresh, brand new.

It’s really resonating with me today. Of course, I’m in a mood (I’ve now replaced “depressed” with “astronomically grumpy”), so themes that relieve me of that will be nice, but it doesn’t seem so cooked up. It feels like that what I really need.

There are forces, drivers within me. They’re simple and arguably haven’t changed. The simplest description of my ideal circumstance is:

I want a cute girlfriend who loves me, I love her, we have fun, and build a life. I’ve got friends I play rock music with, and we’re trying to take the band places. I’ve got a job that finances all this, and maybe adds to it.

That’s it.

2 of the 3 elements of that are currently bunged up. The third is to sustain the first two, so isn’t exactly life giving on it’s own.

I don’t know if I’m just sleepy so I’m easily impressed, but this articulation is so uncomplicated, but so true. I can weave a thousand ramblings about the intricacies of my current struggle, the metaphysics, the philosophy, the deep psychoanalytical maze, BUT…

… IF those 3 simple things were in a better state of repair, (girlfriend, friends/band, job) I can say with blinding certainty that I would not have any shits to give. I’d be sleeping fine, I wouldn’t be stressed, I’d be focused and engaged, not irritable, etc.

That’s it.

As for the cause of my stress, the extreme grumpiness, the poor sleep, the anxiety; it is that I don’t even get enjoy the intermediate stages between, say, being single and in a relationship, or looking for a band, or being in a band.

Instead, it’s this weird limbo that stops my juices from flowing. I’ve got a band a can play with, but we’re not really acting like it, so then do I have a band to play with? Do I have a band, or don’t I?

There’s someone in my life who somewhat occupies the girlfriend slot, because I care for her and enjoy her company, but we’re not together, but I can’t look for another girlfriend.

No wonder my dopamine levels are so low. I can’t even benefit from the state of desire, of working toward something because that exact process is frozen. To be fair, it’s not completely frozen. I have a hand in this mess.

How do I undo it? How do get the juices flowing? I believe the girlfriend one is the least fun. I need to conclude things, firmly, with Izabel. Are you my girlfriend or not my girlfriend?

With music, I kinda have to deal with the circumstance a little bit, and understand that I want to tight knit, devoted set of band mates. Devoted in the sense that they are eager to participate and enjoy what it means to be in a fuckin sick rock band.

Job, that’ll work itself out. Lol. Just understand the stress involved is a product of wanting to please society’s pressure because I don’t like being in a position to be viewed as a bum. The band insulated me from that, when it was fully formed and happening, though I was also younger and that was more acceptable. I’m 25. Being in a band is still pretty acceptable.

These are the “commitments” I’ve been leaning into the past few weeks. These things will turn the page, and start a new chapter, start fresh, clean slate. These things will unstick the clog.

[twenytwenytwo]

Dec 29 2022 (11:15am)

This idea of “turning the page” rings relevant to me again today. It’s a metaphor that very closely, if not the closest, describes how I feel. My forward desire is summed up by wanting to turn the page, and move onto something new.

I’ve said this before, but so much of what comprises my sense of life, the features of the landscape, are things that were once invigorating, fresh, developing, interesting, satisfying, etc, but are now in a relative state of decay.

Thus, my sense of life is that of decay. I believe this has a depressive capability because these aforementioned things that comprised my life’s landscape (now in decay, out of order) are still there. They are still there in their appropriate slot, and that slot’s vacancy is what being new things into our life.

Perhaps there’s a better metaphor, but that’ll do this go round. There’s a general feeling of being clogged, living in the past. This would explain my sometimes frantic energy for repair. I feel like I must fix the things now old.

And to be fair, some of these things are better repaired, rather than discarded. Other’s however, certainly are better discarded, or more aptly, let go of.

As long as I hold onto them, I hold onto the troubled emotions that accompany them and their situations. These emotions persist because it is technically an unresolved problem.

These unresolved problems have clogged my pipes, and made my mind somewhat messy in places. My passion for music, my love life, are covered in gunk. My relationship with myself is got some goo on it too as a result. Again, not the perfect metaphor, but there’s some truth to it.

Turning the page will come when I create attractive energy, attractive circumstances, and new things will begin to happen. I must simply be prepared for it, stay fit as a fiddle, and be patient.

[twenytwenytwo]

Dec 28 2022 (9:11pm)

Here’s a simple question:

What is genuinely my passion?

What do I genuinely like doing?

What do I genuinely want for myself?

What do I genuinely want for others?

There’s something about this word “genuine” that isolates myself from the bullshit and calls for the real, unfoggy self that resides in there.

I think not asking myself those sorts of things will be the only real mistake I could make. Living an ingenuine life, by accident, because you swirled around my the forces of the world.

What do I genuinely want to do right now? is a good question to ask myself in a moment of torrent.

[twenytwenytwo]

Dec 28 2022 (11:18am)

My takeaway from this frusty mood is that lowering our expectations should not hold the negative connotation that it does.

An expectation is a feeling of certainty about the future, that some particular thing is certain. Nothing is certain, so having any expectation is questionable.

Expecting to make it big in some way is unwise not because you are not capable, or because there is some tangible beast between you and glory, but because it statistically is unlikely. Expecting something unlikely is unwise, because it inevitably not coming to pass shakes us, makes us feel lousy, because our little “reality” is clearly not real.

There is a difference between expecting and hoping. Hoping to make it big requires sobriety, a level head, calmness. Hoping is more compatible with understanding why it is you hope for that, whatever it is. You can make music, and hope it makes it big…

… funny enough I don’t hope I make it big, because I understand that it isn’t really that important.

Viewing an expectation through the lens of hope seems to reorient us, well me at least.

It’d be a lot of fun to play giant concerts, but I wouldn’t say that anyone would be at a deficit without such experience. Such a claim would be retarded.

I hope things go well, simply because that’d be fun.

I expect things to go well, because I’m avoiding something. My steadfast expectations have been founded on an expectation that if I make something an expectation, I’ll work so hard that it’ll magically happen, because I’ll be filled with anxiety. Lol. True, didn’t work.

When you lower expectations, you correctly calibrate your sense of certainty of what is likely to happen in the future. No matter what you wish to become, The King Of Mars, or whatever, your expectations must be in the same spot, because you desires do not influence the external randomness of the world that you have no control over. You can only control what you do.

[twenytwenytwo]

Dec 28 2022 (8:39am)

Another day of pleasant weather.

I was thinking about my touchiness lately, my propensity for getting fired up, negatively charged, whatever you want to call it, while on my walk.

Having an anxiety response to the thought of not recording enough, or not being a rockstar, or something like that is a product of just plain broken logic.

The anxiety response is “designed” to keep me alive, free from broken bones, etc, therefore any time in is activated when nothing of the sort is occurring, is not only an inappropriate response, it’s also not equipped to do anything about what’s it’s responding to.

To be clear, if I feel like I really need to be productive today, and it gets me anxious, it’s 1.) a needless response and 2.) can’t do anything about it anyway, because that part of the brain has no idea what productivity is, so it can’t even help.

Part two. It’s responding to a slightly crooked sense of reality. Nothing that the fear centre of me actually considers “bad” is happening. I’m not dying, bleeding out, being chased by a predator, etc. This crooked sense of reality has been constructed over time by me and my expectations.

By setting my expectations so high, I’ve primed my system to have a very low threshold for what registers as “wrong”. I’ve very stiffly committed to a standard of excellence the past few years (or possibly my whole life), which in the face of life, is totally irrelevant.

People dreams are regularly crushed. My dreams are crushed then they are fulfilled. There are more letdowns and successes. There is more defeat than victory. But to be clear, this is only because we’ve raised the bar for what constitutes a defeat, and have therefore made it more common and more easy to fail and thus feel disappointed, etc.

These “successes”, these things that make up an ideal circumstance are almost, if not completely luxuries. The bare necessities of life are food, shelter, and then the first gifts are family and friends, and then basic comfort. Once you form a community and have somewhat of a sense of safety, friends, regular food and warmth… you’re doing good. Even then, that can be taken from you, basic as it may be.

These days, high comfort is common and considered the norm, if not a right. It’s getting to the point now where self-glorification, glamour and overall luxury are the baseline. And thus, we have 10 millions ways to be disappointed, and of course are often disappointed as a result.

Lowering our expectations is not dehumanizing ourselves, it is putting the bar in it’s rightful place, a position where the luxuries of modern life can be appropriately enjoyed, and are not considered to be necessities, consciously or unconsciously.

Not having brand new clothes, or expensive music gear, or self righteousness and glory has nothing to do with what our anxiety response is actually for. Yet we have found a way to connect a little wire up to it, to set it off, constant false alarms.

Finally, making it more personal. Because recording cool music is not a necessity, and an anxiety response in it’s potential absence plainly makes no sense and, if my conceptions about life are tidy and sound, recording cool songs is reduced to what it truly is: a fun, somewhat extraneous activity.

And finally, because these anxiety responses are not rooted in a sound, realistic view of life, they must simply be disregarded. Or better put, not acted upon, otherwise you are acting as though they are true. The only appropriate time to play and record music, is when you want to. Is when it sounds like fun.

[twenytwenytwo]

Dec 28 2022 (5:50am)

Slept good, from what I remember. I was fully asleep most of the night, though the usual wakings occurred. Only 1-2 though, which is surprising given my aroused state before bed.

Yeah, so yesterday I got rather triggered it seems. The degree to which I can be set off is either just purely physical right now, which I somewhat doubt, or there’s something within my software that needs to be repaired.

I believe there is an underlying belief that my impatience and frustration are rooted within. A belief that my worth in the world is dependant on the degree to which I am productive.

This is of course somewhat true, in that society (the mass of humans I live within) values work. Without it, things would fall into disrepair, and we’d all get pretty hungry, cold, or at least bored.

But the value I believe I’m talking about is… the most basic of value. To be valuable enough to be loved, to be a friend, to enjoy life. Valuable enough to be considered by others, perceived, worth inviting to a gathering. Worth kissing.

I seem as though I am harbouring a belief that unless I am superbly productive, I cannot enjoy life, and I am not human or something. It is an immense falsehood, obviously.

This feeling stirs me into a frenzy to produce something of value, to work on a song, to build a website for a new business, something. It seems like this frantic urge is piggy backing on an theory of sorts a proposed a while back:

Paraphrased, “If you’re not developing yourself, improving, acting with purpose, by the simple fact that time is passing and more importantly entropy is rolling it’s fickle dice, you are decaying. Developing ourselves toward an ideal is the means by which we make the inevitability of change work for us, and if we are not, we slowly lose ourselves to decay. Improving ourselves is, in this way, is keeping ourselves the same.”

The basic mechanic here makes sense. Everything is falling a part as a function of time, so use time to improve things instead. In fact if you don’t improve yourself, you aren’t just staying where you are (perhaps you’re satisfied), decay will slowly pull it away from you.

It is insightful, yet in it’s extreme, anxiety inducing. To think that unless I am muscling toward my ideal, I am getting into my grave… it’s almost certainly counter productive. Writing music, etc, should not be motivated by the fear of symbolic death, and if it is, doesn’t amount to very much, or is at least very unsustainable.

So yes, anyway, there is something flawed in my operating philosophy still. I mean, I knew I was still working at things, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.

I am very tired of not enjoying life because of some distant ideal, some better circumstance looming in the realm of possibility. A little bit if friction, sure, but being totally overwhelmed with anxious energy over not being able to work for a day… is a little much.

Last night, I went to Chapters and found myself, as usual, in the philosophy department. I encountered a couple books by The School Of Life that basically countered my “theory” above. The first was a praise of ordinary life, what I might call mundane life sometimes, and affected me. I was feeling emotional already and reading it made me well up a bit because it harkened back to a version of myself that was very very into the idea of a quiet life. The point it made was that perhaps people are so bent on being fabulous and busy and amazing because they simply cannot absorb that value any moment has to offer. They cannot appreciate what they’ve already done, so they look for more.

It was incredibly sad to think I myself had somehow gotten on that path, believing that music was the only life for me, dreams of a big house, moving to a more eventful city… the usual.

The second was in another book, and scattered among a few chapters. The overarching theme was that “everything will go wrong, you won’t get what you want, and you’ll die uncomfortably”. Dark, yeah, but largely true.

There were exercises in this book that ran your mind through not getting what you want, and being okay with it. Being okay with your dreams dying. For me, this is very unexplored territory. Part of my software was to never go there because… well why bother? Anyway, yeah, imagine the worst thing happening and how you could be okay with it. That’s life.

Even when you do get what you want, there’s always a price, something lost that will make you question what all the sweat was even for. And if you don’t get what you want, you wonder what’s even worth living for, bearing the weight of existence.

The key is in the middle. To expect and prepare for the worse, but work toward the best. If you build your house of cards seriously expecting it not to fall… you’re an idiot. If you almost perfect it, and it falls at the last card, laugh and do it all over.

All this while I was already stirred up made me feel like I had made a dumb error. How could I have gotten to this point? Trembling with anxious energy over unfulfilled expectations of tremendousness… I felt I had disrespected my own nature.

I was okay though. I am this morning, too. I still have some retooling to do. To balance my artistic life, my drive forward, with an outlook that is a little more reliable, and if fortune grants me an insane gift, enjoy it while it lasts. Fortune gives us nothing that we get to keep.

Pictured: my wandering around the north end yesterday evening. The Doors were at Home Depot.

[twenytwenytwo]

Dec 27 2022 (4:42pm)

SO, today ended up being a mood challenge for me. After realizing my mon was going to be home all day, I got kinda stuck deciding what I was going to do, because I didn’t want to play the drums right underneath her. I can’t focus. She’s relaxing today and I don’t really like feeling like I’m an opposing force in that.

So yeah, I got all flustered and stressed out and have spent the whole day being stuck. I’m mostly okay, no doomy thinking, just kinda annoyed. Stressed for nothing.

What I don’t like about when I get like this is that me doing things becomes so overly objective based. Like, the point of doing something is to satisfy this annoying feeling. When I work good, it’s because I want to and I enjoy it, and partly I enjoy what it’s building up to, or may allow me to do in the future. When I get all irritated, I HAVE TO DO SOMETHING otherwise BAD. It’s annoying. I get annoyed about being annoyed.

What I understand is that I must find a way to switch out of it. Ridding myself of that mood overnight won’t happen. When I get into it, I have to redirect myself into a different positive groove, or something. It’s something I have to accept is part of my workings right now.

[twenytwenytwo]

Dec 27 2022 (7:07am)

Slept fine, just the usual. Feel fine this morning. Next to no anxiety, though some structure in me feels like it’s making sure there’s nothing to be anxious about… lol

Yesterday was fun. Jamming in Brud House is like jamming in a reverb tank… it’s fucking awesome. The drums sound huge. We couldn’t tell if the reverb was on or off on the Twin. Super fun.

Very interested in recording there… but also afraid to discover how good it sounds and not being able to ever record there again. That’d drive me nuts. Let’s do it.

——

Overall, my anxiety has been nothing to moderate lately. After arguing with Izzy the other night, my stress spiked and had a domino effect over the following days. Weird sleeps, adrenaline.

Talking to Ben released some energy, glad I did that. Though I’m still working through the emotions.

I think my best path forward consists largely of letting go of things, acceptance, and also de-catastrophizing the events the past year and a bit.

Catastrophizing. It’s kinda like negative idealism. Instead of holding something inappropriately high, you hold it inappropriately low. It generates a sense of meaning, despite the pain. Because I held things so highly before, the band was a fantastic ideal to me, I created the environment for a catastrophe.

Had I been being realistic, balanced, relaxed, I wouldn’t have crashed so hard, and it likely could have been another obstacle I dealt with.

It wasn’t a catastrophe. In my head, it was. I had put all my eggs in that basket, ALL of them. One’s that, even best case scenario, didn’t belong in there.

As the years went by, I put more and more of my eggs in there. When the waves got big, and water got in, it was the end. It spelt d-e-a-t-h to my systems. I did not have a flexible attitude installed, and had been practicing being stiff, anxious, and pessimistic.

Anyway, yeah, it wasn’t a catastrophe. My reaction was.

Perhaps that’s a good test for yourself. If you’re passionately committed to something, ask yourself, “What if this didn’t work out?”. If that seems like something you could not possibly let happen, some hefty examination is likely needed. What are you avoiding?

I was avoiding living in mundane and regret, feeling like a failure and a fraud. However, having a good career doesn’t directly correlate with that, it’s not even really a symptom. What does correlate with living mundanely is having a low-paying, boring job that doesn’t interlace into your dreams, AKA what I’m doing right now. I’m in my worst nightmare, and always was.

Yeah, what if I accepted that the life I was avoiding, was actually the life I am already in the process living. What if what I was avoiding was actually what I was (and am) strangely committed to. I have this program in my that says, if I put my passion, my attention, my energy into building a career for myself that I wouldn’t otherwise care about, that I’m tarnishing my identity as a die-hard artist-cowboy, who’s lives on the outskirts, in the wild, free and spirited.

What if I am not that. What if that story is a fantasy that has been constructed to justify my circumstance thus far, and frame it as romantic and idyllic. The convenient coincidence here is that I don’t need to take anything else seriously, and am largely untouchable from the outside world. It gave me a sense of self importance for nothing in return, except to remain in the fantasy, unchanged. Like Peter-pan.

What if my “I’m a dedicated, die-hard artist” story is just a fantasy to justify my being lazy and ignorant?

Perhaps it was actually a product of me sincerely enjoying things as they were, and music being the only thing that seemed worth sweating for. This sounds more familiar to me. Working my butt off to get a high-paying job, to have a house, etc, seemed to be disrespect the beauty I saw in how things were as they were.

Perhaps that scenario above, innocent and even true as it may be, was simply ignorant to realities that were yet to be faced. I thought that since it seem true now, it must also be true later.

In reality, if you took the 17 year old Adrian we speak of, and took him out of his comfortable surroundings, his opinion of things would be different. My outlooks then matched my circumstances, and assumed nothing would fundamentally change.

What if, I held that same exact attitude as I did then (before it was put under pressure, changed) right now? In my current circumstances, how would that outlook work?

It would seem as if I would just have far less worries. Adrian at 17 had yet to run into many monsters of human society, so didn’t really care. But I have run into them now. Feeling like girls want me to be a certain way. Feeling like I’ve got to do things I may not want to, in order to live a life like the one that was given to me as a kid. Feeling like I have to watch myself, how I interact with people matters. Feeling like, even if you try your hardest, you may lose.

17 year old Adrian thought girls were simple; as long as they had a crush on him, he didn’t need to do anything else. Feeling like if I just try hard, I can do whatever I want. Feeling like I knew things that others didn’t. That I didn’t have to live a normal life. Feeling like everything would stay the same degree of comfort completely on it’s own.

What if 17 year old Adrian held the same outlook as I do currently? What then? There’s a good chances he would’ve focused on getting a job, gotten one, it was okay, and would have never gone so insanely hard at music. At 25, he may simply have some ideas, and want to make a band, but his story so far was not that of a rockstar, and wouldn’t have encouraged him forward. Hm… that just what I think though, to be fair.

What if my true challenge was not to rid myself of the die-hard cowboy-artist, but to be the cowboy-artist that had died hard. What if the cowboy-artist needs to come back from the dead, and return with his visions of the underworld, and become again the die-hard cowboy-artist, but with the knowledge to not die hard again.

One of the main things I like about being a musician is who it allows me to be. I like music, but the identity associated feels good, the self-importance is addictive.

[twenytwenytwo]

Dec 26 2022 (9:06am)

It is a solid 9 degree celsius right now. It’s beautiful. It is perfect walking temperature. The air is fresh, the wind isn’t stirring up a chill. The sun is poking through a sheet of clouds. Gorgeous.

(9:53am)

Still walking around outside. It’s amazing and refreshing.

I can feel a new increment of progress coming into being the past few days. My feeling for future, though still largely unstable, is beginning to settle. This allows me to enjoy feelings about it, and look forward to it.

I’ve been working on fully accepting that Izzy and I are simply not well suited for each other. This is something that I do not really enjoy, as a large percentage of me would rather stay in the past. But the past few days I can feel a new glimmer inside of me that is enjoying letting go of what is not serving me, even with the sacrifices that go with it.

(1:36pm)

Going to Brud House to jam w Ethan

[twenytwenytwo]

Dec 25 2022

Christmas day. Already blessed, for one. But to sweeten the deal, my mom bought me some new Blundstones, the red chisel toe ones I love, and a peppering of other little things.

My sleep last night was a little adrenal, it seems. Had trouble falling asleep, mind was racing while I was half asleep. Heart pounding, not fast though. Body tense. I feel worn out. Sleepy. Just kinda stressed, it seems.

Stopped by Izzy’s and gave her her little presents. Being tired and shit

I ask myself, stressed about what though? My circumstances are hardly dire, everybody’s fine. I have this perception of all my relationships being it relatively unsettled states. There isn’t the simplicity of teenage hood about them. They’re weird. Maybe I’m just being weird, maybe I’m too sensitive, looking for reasons to read between the lines, and basically not trust.

My relationships are one thing that feel up in the air. Everything else seems to be as well. With Ethan, things are inconclusive about playing, like are we really playing? So that makes my music life kinda up in the air. With Izabel, we’re in a limbo of being around but not being official. There are so many feelings there. With Ben, it’s inconclusive whether him and I will be friends, or if I want to be friends even. Music in general, in limbo. My career status, limbo, though it’s moving along (I have no commitments though). And like, what’s Lawson’s deal? He’s so ghostly.

Everything that’s important in life, besides my family say, is in a unsettled state. A state that does not encourage confident action and a sense of a potential future. I guess in a more stripped down version, the future feels very uncertain. It’s always uncertain, but before this challenging period, it felt certain. I had the feeling of who was gonna be around, what I’d be up to, and who I was generally going to be. This relaxed me and allowed me to build in a focused manner.

Too focused perhaps. A lot of the decay that happened was connection to a potential over-ambitiousness that gave me tunnel vision. I did not maintain my relationships. I frankly didn’t know how.

Anyway, yeah. Conclusiveness. Not feeling like I have to think about things in such a “to be or not to be” sort of way. It’d be nice to feel a sense of who’s going to be around, then other things could fall into place. I could conclude about what I’ll be doing, musically at least. Who I’ll hang out with, laugh with. Romantically, what the heck. I’m still so confused with Izabel, or more precisely can’t commit to staying or leaving.

Commitments. Conclusion. They create your world.

What commitments could I make right now? What conclusions?

1. I could commit fully to video as my career path. Not say I haven’t but, it still new and maybe a little wishy washy underneath.

2. I could commit to breaking up with Izzy or commit to trying again.

3. I can conclude that Ethan and are working on our friendship again. I can conclude that he’s interested in mending things based on his demeanour when we’re together, and how he talks about doing stuff, etc.

4. Conclude that I need to talk to Ben, talk about mending things. Seriously. It’s easier to get a new wagon than to put the wheel back on your last one, so we have to be serious.

Honestly those first three are likely weighing on me more than I realize. They are core things in a life. Romantic relationship; passion project/friends; career goals. Like… yeah.

(8:54pm)

So. Went to Ben’s and talked. Stated my case, and he understood. He absorbed it in his usual bouncy, unaffected Ben sorta way, that almost seems too easy.

He understood me, had a few moments of seemingly trying sidestep responsibility, but I think ultimately is sorry and won’t do it again, but is too uncomfortable with a tone of seriousness and perhaps embarrassed to be the wrong doer to outright say “I’m sorry”. That sorta pisses me off.

I dunno, Ben’s daft and seemingly allergic to sitting still. His approach can come off a little too nonchalant. His brain seems to work but he doesn’t think to use it all the time. How am I suppose to be friends with someone who I hold such a… lack lustre opinion of?

Ben just seems like a bit off a dog. Will I remain friends with him after this?

I enjoyed our banter during our short discussion. Things felt natural. Ben’s not someone I can offend. There’s give and take always. I suppose there’s only an issue if I hold everyone to a standard of perfection.

I’m sleepy, bed time for now.

[twenytwenytwo]

Dec 24 2022 (10:54pm)

My previous entry talked about a potential poor choice of language when talking about our feelings. This is expanding on that general concept.

Our “positive emotions” are inner manifestations of forces of order. All our positive feelings (I think) can be related to some creative force. Love, joy, engagement, all serve a purpose to create communities, families, structures (symbols of togetherness) and art. We are creative beings. We are in harmony with our purpose when we are creating these sorts of things.

These positive emotions can invert - so to speak - and feel appropriately inverted. Your capacity for depression is your capacity for joy. This relates to my previous entry because thinking about emotions this way reconstructs the duality based way of thinking about feeling into something with more oneness.

So, if you’re feeling sad, you’re feeling your capacity, capability for happiness in it’s inverted form. This is better than sadness being thought of as a somewhat independent thing and now a part of something you like, something that implies there is work to be done to get things back in harmony, rather than to exorcise something, or to get rid of something.

It makes you respect unpleasant feelings, and give them worth in the overall system.

When we are creative, and happy, we fulfill our purpose by successfully creating. We are products of order and a creation of order ourselves. What other purpose would we have other than to continue the simple process that is the very reason for our existence? Order.

We are happy creating because it is maintenance. Maintaining in the face of decay, entropy. If unmaintained, entropy will flick us out into randomness and oblivion. We work to immortalize ourselves in children, in art, etc because it is manifesting that which manifested us. Order in the face of oblivion. It’s not fear of death, it’s a drive toward future order, future beauty, etc. What other possible drive could be sustainable?

Anyway… this all seems very insightful right now. Perhaps it’s just me running something very rudimentary through my words, my head, formalizing it.

tootles, i must sleep