20 de Julio.
[A Stream of Consciousness Essay.]
I’d asked the universe to be surrounded by my people, and after a night of going to the bars, not drinking, just trying to be out. I was texting my friend from work and ended up in her house. At the front porch shew as smoking with her beautiful friend and I could tell right away that I liked her. We had a long conversation on the couch about Ego Death, among other things. There were about five people there and I had a great conversation with each of them. They told me they loved me, they played games with me, we listened to music and danced and sang. We went to the beach and went night swimming, and then all laid out and looked at the moon. I was playing the music from my playlist “La Luna” featuring all songs about the moon. We decided we time for one more song, so I played “Dancing in the Moonlight” and I got up and started dancing, they all got up and danced with me. After that, we decided to walk along the beach until the sun came up, and we did. It was beautiful. You’re standard fair of pinks and reds, but bright greens and blues shot out in a corona that bounced off the clouds which showed us damn near every color as well. I sat next to that friend I liked, trying my best to just enjoy the moment and no try to hard or not think about it too much. That worked OK. After that, I made us breakfast, sipped some coffee and tried to stay up and enjoy the beautiful beautiful day around me.
I got home around 1 slept all day, decided not to go to the pool with them. I had just enough time to go for a run before cleaning up and getting ready to go salsa. Salsa was fun, but I had a much smaller version of very similar anxiety there. I guess that’s good news, that it’s getting smaller, and I guess I should focus on that, not on the fact that it happened at all. There have been times when I go and I don’t talk to anybody and sit in a corner feeling like a loser. This time, I met up with my buddy and went with him. This time I danced with quite a few people and danced a lot. This time I got rejected by some really hot people and didn’t freak out, just said OK, and moved on. That’s an unhealthy thought pattern I’m noticing. Because when I’m on the edge of the dancefloor I see all these people I’m attracted to and it seems like the universe is saying “OK, I did the work for you, I got them here for you, now you attract.” And I don’t know what to do. It’s much easier to dance with people I’m not into, and there were some pretty cute ones that just didn’t pique my interest. That’s important to remember. We tend to want what is unavailable to us, the challenge.
Luckily I could text my new friends and I showed up and played blackjack, chin chin, and the alphabet complete the sentence game: “Although Beasts Can DJ, Everyone Figures ‘Go!..” etc. But I couldn’t shake that negative feeling, that I was a loser. I talked to that girl at the house we had fun, but still, a part of my inner voice was saying “As if. You can’t have a good relationship with her, you couldn’t satisfy her if you wanted to. You are going to be a disappointment.” If that voice was another person in the house talking to me that way, they would have been asked to leave. So it’s crazy I allowed myself to do it to me.
So I have all these little slips, I’ve gotten far enough to recognize a lot of my unhealthy thinking habits, but sometimes that makes it even harder when I can’t seem to make a change. My most optimistic side of me is saying, “OK, well we just get right back on the horse and try again. We have to. We can’t give up.”
But another side of me is worrying that that is a cop-out, that I’ll always keep saying “we’ll try again next time,” and I won’t make any changes.
And this is the part of the essay where I remind myself of the power of my thoughts. We’ve seen the way they color the world around me, over and over and over again. So this is my reminder to myself to watch myself. Because when I’m “Venting to myself” I’m really creating something. And those thoughts I tend to get late at night when I’m out partying are always things like “I feel lonely” “They would never like me” all this absolute crazy talk. I think another important thing to remind myself is that if you go somewhere hoping to get laid, make a friend, or really achieve anything outside of yourself, then you are subconsciously telling yourself that you don’t have it.
So, since this is a stream of consciousness essay you get to see me trying to change that mindset in real-time. And I don’t want to. I hate to say it but being happy, having a good time, enjoying my life, it all just sounds too exhausting right now? Does anybody else get that way? It’s like if you’ve been laying in bed all day, the last thing you want to do is get out of bed and do things. You would think you would feel well-rested. And I think that’s a good clue into the type of thinking that is going through my head. It’s draining self-pitying thinking. I’m feeling sorry for myself instead of being grateful for all the amazing things around me. In focusing on that negative, I know I’m bringing in more of that. I recognize that this is a habit I’ve been dealing with for a huge portion of my life, so right now in this chapter of my life, I have to go through a little bit of growing pains to adjust to that. I have to recognize that when you are depressed (for whatever reason) you don’t want to feel good. You want to stay in the bedsheets. Wrap up and continue to stay miserably comfortable.
So I guess it’s important to remind myself that anybody who’s been remotely successful in anything, has gone out of their comfort zone and that the most successful people tend to run toward their discomfort. I think there are so many clear steps I can take to feel better, to feel more secure in myself. To get a solid budget and savings plan set up. To budget, go grocery shopping, look for a place with kids to live in, get all of my freelance work done, continue to meditate and read and write and play music, surf whenever possible. Clean the apartment. Clean the car. Switch over your health and car insurance to NC. Get lost in your work, and let play take up a healthy amount of time in your life.
I can remind myself here and now that if any of these things make me cringe a little bit, then just recognize that that means that they are outside of my comfort zone so that means that once I complete them, I will feel better.
As always I think doing anything because I “should” do it is the surest way to hate it. That’s the funny thing because of all that “adult” stuff, sounds really fun because I know it will make me feel less like a bum and walk a little taller. That sounds fun, going out to the bars to meet a stranger only sounds fun in the ideal, and it’s hardly ever the ideal. By definition, it can’t be. The ideal is not allowed to exist.
So whether he’s intending to do it or not, when my uncle insists that I go out every night and take another beautiful girl home, he’s selling me the ideal and thus ensuring that I’m disappointed. But he can’t help it, he’s a car salesman at heart and good at it too, that’s what got me out here on the east coast. So I need to remember that things could never be the ideal, and that chasing that is not only idiotic but a vicious cycle. It’s like chasing the horizon. Because our potential as humans is unlimited, which means being happy only when you get there will only mean you’ll never be happy.
But that’s so easy to say, much harder to do. Because I can know that “OK, I need to be happy right now, at this moment, as I’m typing this” but putting that into practice is so much harder. Why? I think part of me feels like I haven’t earned it. Because I masturbated and I’m trying to stop doing that, or because I still feel like a loser from last night for some illogical reason, or because haven’t achieved what I wanted to so far or something. I think the “not being proud of myself part” is important to remind myself to always do things that make me feel proud of myself because then it will be much easier to stay happy. But to also remember that happiness is the main ping here, and I’m only human, so I’m going to make mistakes, I’m not going to live up to my ideal, and so I need to learn to forgive myself. To not be so dramatic when I do fail and say “OK, that’s no issue, I was gonna mess up and fall back into bad habits. I’ve been binging on sugar, masturbation, attention, self-pity, and sadness for over ten years. And that’s what I’m up against as I try to make these changes. Don’t get so disappointed in yourself when you fail against these things. Get proud of yourself that you are fighting this dragon of a habit. Go into with the foolish abandon of a warrior fighting a dragon he knows he can’t beat. Start swinging fast and hard. Or maybe not. Maybe that’s what we’ve done. Maybe we’ve been going into the battle like the knight who’s decided he’s going to die, and gets his wish. Maybe we should be precise, like Azula. Knowing that we are not as big or not as strong as our enemy, but knowing that with the right hits at the right time, with the right discipline and control, we can beat everyone. Cold emotionless in our attacks, sticking to the process.”
Maybe people will love these flowery little essays I do. Maybe they’ll hate them. I think either is good for me because they must love them if they can get through them to the end. And if they hate them, then they won’t get to the really juicy parts anyway so I’m protected.
The good news is that I do feel better after writing this. And now I’m wondering what is the root cause of me feeling so bummed out? Well, I think we should remember that I always feel better when I stick to el processo. That the reason I have laid out in my journal that I want to play music, meditate, read, write, do freelance work, exercise, and practice Spanish, is not only because my ideal version of myself is the person who does those things, but because those things make me feel good. If I get a voice that says I should maybe stay home to do those things, then maybe I should listen to those things.
I reminding myself this because I shouldn’t do anything from a lack mentality. When I go out because I want to go out then that’s a different story. When I go out because I feel like I “Should” go out because I don’t want to miss out on my Youth, then that’s when things start to get bad. I’m approaching the whole process from a point of lack and then lack is what I get.
The smoking, of course, has made me feel a little lethargic. Important to remember. I’m doing better and better about not drinking and only smoking when I really want to, so that’s a lot to be proud of.
And if a huge reason I’m feeling low is because my attention has shifted away from all the things I have to be grateful for, well then lets start focus on it right now. On this table are the remains of a delicious Poke bowl, an acai bowl and a beautiful dark roast pour over called “el Diablo” all of which cost more than some people make in an entire day. The coffee is just beautiful sweet. I’m in a beautiful coffee show, with a lot of effort put into the hanging lights, and the lamp, and the couch and the poster that says “Pray for surf’ and the soft grey-blue paint on the walls. I have a fully functioning and strong body. At home, I have that sketch-pad I’ve been thinking about buying for a long time and in my head, I have all these ideas for new stories. I’ve gotten what I asked for. To be prolific. And I am. I have the entire road trip series taking hold. I have a lot of business and sales coming to me. I have a lot of friends. I get to go salsa dancing, I live super close to the ocean. I have beautiful friends across the globe too, and a wonderful family here in NC and back in California. Thank you for all of that. I have all this music coming out of me. I have all these stories I want to put down on paper and share with the world, getting better every time. I have a powerful mind. I have a hard-working, personable personality. I’m very fun to be around. I attract fun people. I attract adventurous people. I attract nymphomaniacs. I have really good connections with people no matter where I travel. The other day, at the bar, someone told me that you wouldn’t recognize yourself if you saw yourself walking down the street. I like that idea, I think I’ll put it in a story.
Thank you for what a dream living right now is compared to the life I was living just at the beginning of this year. They say change is slow, and it is but for how slow it is, you have been very generous with speeding up the process universe, so thank you! All the leaps I’ve taken have shown me that all the leaps I’m going to take are very very possible, and they’re coming to me. So I can chill :) all I have to do is get through today. But not even that. I don’t have to get through today. I get to enjoy everything that’s going to happen today. And all these things I get to do are very exciting because they are going to bring a whole bunch of goodness into my life.
Thank you for the feeling I have right now I just riffing on the keyboard, not thinking too hard and just letting the words fly off. Thank you for how fast I can type, thank you for the fact that I am getting better at this, that I am doing it every single day and learning a little bit more about myself and the craft every single day, and that all those little things are adding up into one fucking badass, well versed, well rounded, jack of all trades kind of storyteller who can do a lot of different things with his writing. Thank you for the magical element of this, of giving me a healthy way of escaping into my mind and my thoughts and my imagination for a while. Thank you for the fact that I keep stealing glances at the clock because I’m having such a good time doing this. Thank you for the business of my life right now, and thank you for teaching me how to handle it and handle all of this shit and attract more goodness into my life. Thank you for the reminder that the more you give, the more you get, and how much it pays to be a generous person. Thank you for getting to spend time with someone as cool as Yana. Thank you for my beautiful apartment. Thank you for all the work I’ve been able to produce in these months. Thank you for the fact that TWATI is nearing an end. Thank you for the challenge of that final sprint that I’m going to need to get through in order to finish it. Thank you for Voodoo festival. Thank you for New York and LA. Thank you for all the times I”m going to be on an airplane visiting and spending real ass quality time with my family. Thank you for my great job that really is a lot of fun. Thank you for everything it’s teaching me about myself, about sales, and thank you for all the great stories it’s giving me. Thank you for the fact that it gets me out of bed and gives me a sense of urgency.
Thank you for the fact that I am a surfing, athletic, artistic entrepreneurial human. Thank you for the fact that I dance, and have good ass conversations with my friends, that I approach each day with a sense of purpose. Thank you for the fact that I am concerned with the well being of the world and what I can do to make it a slightly better place. Thank you for the knowledge that I have of the power of my thoughts on the world around me. Thank you for that cresting knowledge that has now started to break through my old ways of thinking and is bearing new fruits. Thank you for everything I’ve gone through to teach me what I know now. Thank you for the challenges ahead. I welcome them because I know that I can handle them. Thank you for my beautiful and healthy body. Thank you for books, thank you for art, thank you for all the beautiful people I get to share time with. Thank you for my healthy sex life. Thank you for my adventurousness. Thank you for my fearlessness. Thank you for my security in myself that nothing really bothers me.
Thank you for today.
