Thursday, June 5, 2025
The Venn Diagram of Existence
A dog was barking just now down the street. I thought to myself something is going on in some other circle in the Venn Diagram of Existence and it overlapped into mine for a brief moment. How utterly delightful to be aware enough to appreciate that.
Monday, April 14, 2025
Starting the Day
I was lying in bed around 5.45am and was having dreadful thoughts about my day today. I stopped and thought for a moment. I scanned my day to figure out what was causing it and I realized what it was. Absolutely nothing. I had not one thing to feel negative or dreadful about for the day ahead. Before my feet even met the floor my head was creating a dreadful day. In fact, I realized I had every reason to have a very good day. No challenges would be permanent. Situations would only be negative if chose to spin them that way. I understood right then and there how if we’re not conscious of it and present in it each moment is defined by some past regret or we’ve projected out into the undefined future. That unconscious need for constant negative bias is fascinating.
Wednesday, February 12, 2025
The Joy of Ordinary
For a while now I’ve been feeling this wonderful sense of “settled” growing in me. It's not a “give up” settled, but more a contentedness. An almost cosmic sense of having exactly what I need and not longing for anything more. If I had to put it into a statement it would be, “I am here, right now in this very moment, with everything I need and I don’t want for more.” I’m not rich, not famous, not powerful or even “worldly” to much of a degree. There are places I’d love to go I know I’ll never get to. Things I’d like to see in person I know I won’t. Good people in the world I will never meet. Sometimes I eat too much, have one Old Fashioned too many, stay up later than I should, sleep later than I intended, and sometimes don’t get everything done in the day I’d hoped to. Strangely enough that gives me a profound sense of comfort; that everything is okay. It’s a deeper sense of happiness and contentedness sprinkled with a dusting of a profound confidence as their product. The ordinariness of my life, the joy of the every day and the sense of comfort and place that accompanies it is absolutely delicious.
Sunday, January 12, 2025
Cosmic Confidence
Saturday, October 26, 2024
A Poverty of Stimulus
After that two-hour call I was frustrated. As the evening progressed that frustration began to grow. Not being able to have my drug, to get my fix, having my compulsion denied me started to become anger. There was a point where I literally had no idea what to do with myself. In that moment the realization of my dependence hit me. I'm an addict! A strange feeling of being severed from some sort of hive mind washed over me. All the “other voices” I had come to depend on to entertain and distract me; the apps, the games, the social media; random googling, losing myself down the YouTube rabbit hole had been suddenly silenced. A poverty of stimulus. I felt an odd sense of punishment. I'd been a bad boy somehow and Karma or the Cosmos had banned me from the amusement park. In short, I was jonesing.
It was an odd and very creepy sensation that sense of helplessness. The moment I realized I was in panic-anger-jonesing mode I also realized the moment was an opportunity. I backed away from it and got into my mindfulness mode. The place where I get quiet and recenter. "Removing" myself from the situation and turning inside to those places that calm me. I allowed myself to "return to the breath" as the saying goes. "I'm here. In this place. Right now. I have no say over what is external. I do have a say in how I react. Breathe in. Breathe out. I am here. I am now." This is how I put myself to sleep last night. "Your phone is a thing. It is external. It only affects me if I allow it to. Breathe in. Breathe out." I woke up this morning with a better understanding of my drug use. The choice is mine. I will be controlled only as much as I allow myself to be. I made the promise to myself and the commitment to devote more of my time to the things that give me more genuine pleasure and satisfaction; reading, walking, working out, cooking, time with my dog, etc.