Jen just jen

full :: transparency
2019-07-13 02:23:45 (UTC)

I did a lot today. There was ..

I did a lot today. There was no work so I put myself to work and decided to get into the thrift-flip business. After a morning of purchasing 7 items for flipping, I bought groceries, then got down to cooking, and posting. All that got me here on my computer taking a break. I was thinking of cooking again tonight, but I'm thinking I'mma nix that and resume tomorrow instead.

I'm here on my computer reflecting on my life and watching some of my fav youtoubers and such. this Olivia Kathryn girl, like I wish we could be besties. I'm doing that thing where I feel like we're a lot alike, but I'm also nitpicking at the parts of me that aren't exactly like her, and the way her life is falling in line right now it seems and mine is all just.

Here. today, I guess I was reflecting on what I'm doing with my life. Not in the usual overwhelming way per-se. No, yesterday I cried awhile so my stress levels weren't quite reaching those panicked peaks, and also I think the unusual tiredness I've been experiencing is also a nice sedative for my insecure anxieties. I've manage those alright today, somehow by avoiding the panic that's been bothering me today and yesterday. I guess, emotions first, everything else after.

But, there's things I'd like to pursue in my life in the next year, and rest of this year. When it gets down to it though, those things are largely the maintaining of simple things. My mental health being a priority is one- and learning to not fold it in with things like ambition or expectations of me. What's helped me maintain the mental health that brought me genuine calm joy throughout the first half of the year was remembering that it's okay to be simple, and being human means tending to your needs enough to bring joy to your own space in the world. No more is expected of me to take up space in this world. There is no requirement of me to reach a level of human. I am already me, and that is enough. And I will take care of that.

Also, remembering to take patience and heed joy in the simple building blocks like this. I don't want to get ahead of me in thinking about missed assignments or roommates or other things. My relationships I hold with others aren't always easy for me so I'm keeping priority my relationship with myself. And I don't want the opinion of others about me to cross contaminate my opinion of me, no matter how horrible they seem to think I am. I want to keep my story with myself straight, so that I don't turn on myself. I want to stay in my own seat of understanding, cleaning up the self-hate and taking it out to the curb regularly.

So as far as I'd like to pursue larger goals, like this Olivia Katheryn is doing in getting closer to her dream job of music-video making (what a super cool dream, I'm jealous of not thinking of that for myself), I'd really like to learn how to not put the horse before the carriage in my personal-emotional things. Which is sort of a conundrum, b/c where am I going anyway?
my life is taking direction and I don't want it to move away from me.

I could just get a psychology major. And that's easy, and something I'd enjoy, I'm just familiar with the stigma regarding it being useless.

What I truly want is to pursue a degree in music, piano, mostly. But I've talked about this before- how I used to play piano and I stopped lessons in high school when I couldn't keep up with practice because it caused me grief, and I was stressed, and unable to enjoy it like I used to. I can pick up a music sheet from time to time and practice to enjoy playing, but it feels too far off a dream to make it attainable. I'm not good anymore, just average. (some would say I never was 'good,' and I would agree)

The thing is, what more are these dreams made up of rather than lived reality mixed with imagination? Like, in the dissection of a dream there's got to be thousands of hours of conscious living behind a strong dream, composed of a solid mind interpreting reality as a means to an end, and the end being the purpose you want to instill on the world in some way. Through music, movies, collaboration, understanding others, whatever it may be.

What I'm trying to argue here is my lack of sentient living in the world. I feel so disengaged most days. Today I let some lady go in front of me in line, because she had less groceries, and she was insistent I go first, but I was more insistent and she went. Then when we left the store, I ended up leaving before her, and she said 'You even got out before me!' and I didn't even understand what she meant, I just reflexively explained that I didn't have to bag my groceries. It was off. I just don't feel like I'm clued in lately. I used to be able to pick up on this stuff.

maybe I'm being hard; I don't have much to do lately and I don't have many, if any, friends, and my mental space just felt empty.
I miss working at cedar point because it filled my heart up with so much company and purpose, even if it did feel mildly overworking to my soul.

I'd like to feel calm despite all these things not quite being in place. In some ways I do today. Cooking brought me a sense of peace today, and listening to the OnBeing podcast while doing that got me in touch with this larger overarching thing called life. I never know how to treat the thing. It's a passionate affair, or at least it wants to be, and I feel limp to the call to be unafraid in it.


///


in rereading the goals I have for the rest of this year, I'm remembering how putting my mental health as a priority used to mean making space for it in my day to day. I have a lot of room in my daytime hours today, although I tend to override that space with worry and anxious filling it up with fretting online; the soc. medias. I forget that mental-health-care-taking is a conscious practice. I suppose I could ask myself the question more often- how am I showing up for my mental health today?
Taking inventory of these things more routinely is how I keep myself in stability.

What worries me is the way little mental health maintaining hobbies that are supposed to fill the role of 'space I make for mental health' can be hard to do when my emotions are undefined, and turn my brain into a gray matter white noise haze. Then the space I make for mental health can turn on itself, when I fail to see that it's my conscious sentient feelings I need to be attending to, not just the motions of acting for myself.

That's what meeting deadlines at school often feels like to me too. There's this expectation to hold assignments over yourself, above your mental health, and to meet them before everything, because that's just what you do. If role=student, that's what student's do.

This year I'd like to redefine this behavioral pattern thing that always gets me fretting more than my usual to put the homework last on my mental health hierarchy. although, I fear there's a likeliness it won't work that way.

it's an irrational fear though.

Sidestep of topic here; I realize a lot of anxiety is internalized negativity. It's throughout my day that I'll experience thoughts which have good positive or neutral intentions, then when they reverberate through my brain theres' negative feedback saying, in so many ways 'that's not possible' or 'incorrect; the world doesn't work that way,'
or some even harsher cynic's response to any innocent perusment of life.

And I know where these thought patterns originated from in me. subconsciously. I know the turning point where I defined my purpose as being to fix my parents' household, and to make right the state of mind I was raised under. This goal I returned to after trying to abandon it- but the mental strength to fully commit to that change was trying under the circumstances I was feeling in other areas of my life, and I caved due to those embarrassing reasons really (and failing to branch out in seeking mental help with my friends).

And, this story I told myself in my head was like- you'll fail. You're a failure.
and I can expand on this by saying- of course I'm going to fail because I fail to have boundaries amongst my mother and father and brother because I failed to be enlightened by following god at a young age in the innocent vision I expected of me.

And it's an idea that I know in my head is mildly insane- a child can't be expected to just know these things about boundaries- and a relationship with god shouldn't expect that perfection of me- but I know I could intuit some of what looked wrong and right in a relationship at a young age- just at some time that broke, and I don't know why it crumbled inside of me- whether the fault is mine or not- but it shouldn't matter.
what matters is now, reality.


And the fact is that when I dropped out and decided to return to that faulty goal, it wasn't working because my work here in creating my own boundaries is not done. Maybe this can still be a larger goal, but the primary one should be to fix myself.

//

and I've been thinking about that lately too. Today I woke up feeling okay to work on myself. I've been wanting a somebody to make me feel again, but I remember the first time I decided to take my life into my own hands, when I was 20, I wanted to do that seperatley of any other person. I wanted to live for others, instead of expecting things of others. I came from such a place of need I wanted to give back to myself and give back to those in need.
I suppose I've always been there in that spirit in some way.

There's a great feeling to that self sufficiency. And I think a lot of that desire for company comes from the need to feel your own love reflected back at you- rather than to experience the love of others. But I know somewhere along the lines of trying to give back, I felt my own needs become jangled up in the need of being needed.? it got all twisty and I couldn't trust the love I was giving again in a way.

All I know is today, I felt free to recognize I could again give myself permission to not need somebody to feel validated. I spent so much time making myself small to feel less alone, and I don't want to be small for anybody. Ever

(there is a caveat here where humility is required in relationship with another, and I think that was the gateway to making myself feel like being smaller than what I'd grown to be was acceptable. But at the same time, my needs felt quieted gradually by trying to meet members of my family at their level of communicating, and then, lost, as I became one with them mentally again, taking on the same pathologies I'd shedded (and sworn off) before)

Even if I become too big for myself, I guess that's just the awkward growing pains of changing your priorities and life outlook in a way.


This felt like a good entry- I feel like I'm finally digging alittle below the surface of my mentality. I want to dissect it all and recreate the life I want to lead. But you know, patience. it'll stack up one day (hopefully soon but you know)




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