Quote to remember ~ Ongoing, possibly updated more and more, as I find them.

"It's not a bad thing, it's a big thing and big things tend to take up a lot of brain space with their bigness." ~Unknown

"Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor." ~ Alexis Carrel

"The most important step a man can take. It's not the first one, is it? It's the next one. Always the next step." ~Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

"Laughter, like love, has power to survive the worst things life has to offer. And to do it with style." ~ Jim Butcher, Blood Rites

"Nothing can dim the light that shines from within." ~ Maya Angelou

"Stress, anxiety, and depression are caused when we are living to please others." ~Paulo Coelho

"It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop" ~ Confucius

"You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending." ~ C.S. LEWIS

"Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me." ~ Carol Burnett

"Life doesn't require that we be the best, only that we try our best." ~ H. Jackson Brown Jr.

“There were times when I was blown away by the virgin beauty of the land. Kind of like that guy who lost his shit on the internet at the full double rainbow across the sky. Remember that guy? He kept asking what it meant, and it is not so difficult a question to answer. It means that we are loved, like all living things that Gaia sustains. There is a poetry in the canapes of forests and in the gentle roll of hills. A song in the wind and a benediction in the kiss of the sun. There are stories in the chuckle of waters in creeks and epics told in the tides of oceans. There are trees, Granuaile, that seem sometimes like they have grown all their lives just to feel the touch of my hand upon their trunks. They are so welcoming to me. You will feel that welcome in your hands some day. You'll feel it in your toes as you walk upon the earth. I cannot wait to see that love bloom in your eyes....' Tears glistened at the edges of her eyes... She knew precisely what I meant. She understood. And she became almost unbearably beautiful to me in that moment.” ~ Kevin Hearne 

“You,” he said, “are a terribly real thing in a terribly false world, and that, I believe, is why you are in so much pain.” ~ Emilie Autumn

“It will,” Wit said, “but then it will get better. Then it will get worse again. Then better. This is life, and I will not lie by saying every day will be sunshine. But there will be sunshine again, and that is a very different thing to say. That is truth. I promise you, Kaladin: You will be warm again.”

― Brandon Sanderson, Rhythm of War

An update

It's been some time since my last post. Not for a lack of wanting to, just because life has been somewhat busy. There's been good, there's been bad, and there's been the in between. I've come to terms with emotions that I had and faced a self imposed reckoning of sorts. I've given my time to figure out that I did indeed hit "rock bottom" in a sense and was ready to let go of everything in a vast need to just let go of the world.


To begin, I started working out and trying to take better care of myself. There comes a time where you face a reality and horror sets in. Little things you took for granted seem somewhat more far away and distant accomplishments feel like they're not going to happen especially being that I could end up dead at an early age for a lack of taking care of myself. This all set in because I realized one of the greatest things in my life are my friends twins; getting to see the girls grow up and do things with their lives is a huge deal for me right now and a driving force for this change. Tears, anger, a need to beat myself up about it, well, it was all there in the back of my head and it finally got to the foreground.

So I started that journey at the massive ballooned weight of 411 and have managed to dump about 25 lbs since I got going I think six weeks ago now. I was doing a mixture of things and to date I've picked up and kept to running on an elliptical. Honestly it sucks and it's exciting at the same time but here we are, going four days a week to try and stay consistent! I should be trying five days a week but with work only being open till Friday evening, it makes it difficult. I shouldn't complain as I already feel somewhat better, dropping what amounts to a little over 5% of my body weight in 5 weeks. I'm also doing Yoga which has been different to say the least! I do enjoy the little things the yoga is doing for me though. I feel my body is a bit more limber and ready to go in a sense. Being able to stretch things out has been great too, being able to see changes in my arms and feel like my legs are changing too has been wonderful. The main thing is trying to figure out my eating, which admittedly hasn't been the best over the last week, but it's more about making small changes and eating what feels right, rather than pigging out as I was. Did you know that sitting down with a bag of Hershey's nuggets and not paying attention is equivalent to eating 1600 calories? That is nearly a full day of eating for the average adult, and I was killing myself bit by bit doing that sort of thing. Mindfulness goes a LONG way it would appear.

Beyond that, I've been spending some time figuring out who I am and what I want. Setting little goals for myself to achieve and build upon for the matter of improving myself. I've begun working with my money and not just throwing it away here and there, spending it on silly things or just breaking the bank. I'm trying to take baby steps in order to achieve bigger better goals as I figure out what I'd like. I'm also trying to figure out my convictions and what I need to try and keep close to me, what's really important and the things that mean the most to me. Has that been easy? Not so much! I don't really know where to start with the search. I can identify a couple little things, but it's a slow road of discovery for some reason, maybe because I see other people who seem to have some semblance of "having it together;" they know what they want.

I think the most frustrating thing is having emotions pop up randomly and not really knowing how to deal with them effectively, honestly. Without going into too much detail, I've learned how to put some of them down and just gradually separate myself from them. It's silly, but that's really what I have. I can acknowledge them and move on now and I think that's beneficial in it's own way too! Some people might disagree with me, but I'm finding that it's important to really take a moment to listen to your brain and your heart and find out which one is most correct, it's difficult sometimes, but cold logic can sometimes point out what I really need and I think that's a blessing more often than anything, just taking that third party part of my brain into consideration, like if someone gives us advice :D

All and all, I think it's been a rather interesting thing to try and learn all the little things I'm forcing on myself, but I think too that it's given me a lot to focus on and I think that it's a good thing! The unfortunate side effect of this all happening is that I don't have all the time I would like in order to play and finish games. I mean really I could just learn how to manage my time better, ya know? Who has time for that though? Really though, I'll just take time here and there to hammer out this and that game; "Slow and steady wins the race!"

If I'm frank, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm reaching around in the darkness and trying so hard to just be a decent human being while figuring out all this overwhelming and stupid stuff because honestly I'm lost and I'm trying to keep things straight in my head. I'm trying to form better habits and I'm working on making things stick. I'm trying not to break myself down like I'm apt to do and instead motivate myself like I would a friend. More "Keep going, you can do it!" instead of "Move it asshole!" I'm trying to be more forgiving with myself too. I'm human, I'll make mistakes, but I need to keep in mind that I can bounce back from any weak day and instead push myself to be better the next day. I've been so strong in the past for other people when they need me and I never learned to be strong for myself, it's a really shameful thing, kind of scary too, ya know?

I guess in retrospect and without much else to say for the evening (it's late as I'm finishing this. I think it's 3 AM at this point.) But I want to leave off with a thought: If we went out of our way to smile at a person, to help someone, to give a kind word, at least once a day, it goes a long way toward making another life even just a sliver better, so don't be afraid to show someone else some kindness. To further that, you deserve kindness from yourself too and I think that's an important lesson that some of us lose sight of, I know I did. It's been a hard learning phase in that regard as I haven't had much compassion for myself. So in summary; be kind to others and be kind to yourself, all it takes is a smile to start.


Edit:
P.S. Happy New Year!
:) ~ Eric

Dreaming

I had a fun experience today, or rather yesterday as of the time I'm posting this. I woke up briefly as is my norm and On my way back to bed, I had the thought of something I heard about lucid dreaming. More specifically that if you get into the habit of doing "reality checks" you can cause yourself to have lucid dreams.

For those who don't know, a lucid dream is a dream where you have an abnormal amount of control over it. Your conscious mind becomes aware of the dream state and you can exert your will on it.

So I went back to sleep, as I'm want to do and I find I dream more easily when I go -back- to sleep. I'm not really sure why that's the case, but I fall back into dreaming more easily! Anyway, I'm in the middle of a dream and I was just wandering around a museum, following a floating brain that was I guess... a tour guide? Anyway, I asked myself, mid dream, if it was in fact a dream and everything just stopped, as if it just froze. I was able to check things out, pull the brain out of the air and examine it. Pull artifacts from the exhibits and look at them, so on and so forth. I tried to influence the world and force things to appear in the dream, but for my first time lucid dreaming, I wasn't able to do so.

It was weird because during the whole thing, nothing felt.. odd, then I just felt the pause as I broke into the dream-scape. Absolute silence fell through the dream as the people around me just went absolutely still and it was almost eerie but I just had no issue as it were.

I dunno, I think I wanna try it again if I can get to that sort of awareness during a dream. I would love to experiment with it more!

Love?

7-30-18

I picked up crochet recently and it's been an interesting method of finding myself as far as thinking goes. Often times, my mind if a blank slate, ready for problems, ideas, or what have you, to present themselves so that I can deal with them as they come at me. I find that while I work with a crochet hook and create this pattern over and over again, my mind fills with different thoughts of its own. Little things that happen around me might trigger a response and I'm suddenly flooded by memory.

In the last couple of days, I've found myself dwelling a lot on love and it's many benefits and downfalls, as it were. I've seen a loving family, gotten to share some of my time with them and found myself broken due to it, wishing I had it, and the logical part of my mind knows that with time, I may indeed have it, or I may not, and this brings a strange sort of comfort to me.

On the other side of that coin, I've been dwelling on my past relationships, more so my previous real one, the one that I had with Chloe. I've found that there were many red flags I ignored that I should of taken into extreme consideration right out of the gate. From a guy named Ben and the things I found out they liked to do together (that never sat right even though I kept hearing nothing had gone on after we'd been dating for a while, I was later proven that it was crap,) to being called Garret on multiple occasions, the stories of many "dates" with people in the interim of our break, all while being told I was loved, to the final straw that broke the camels back, which was 2 months after we had gotten engaged, a phone call in which I was asked about the desire to have an open relationship.

In retrospect, I was stupid. I let my desire to be with someone really come between myself and happiness. There were many times in which I was miserable, hurt, or just in general felt less than worth a damn. After three years (roughly) and a proposal at Disney World, I finally reach a point where I'd had enough. It's a real joke and really, three years isn't a lot of time, but it still sucks to have wasted that time, even as small as it may of been. My nerves frayed and my heart in a weird place, I opted to end it for my own sake. I let myself dwell on it and through some foresight, I realized if I stayed in that relationship, I would of been divorced later down the road.

I realized that it came down to someone not wanting to grow up and get their shit together. They were dedicated to the idea that they didn't have it in them to commit to a relationship, and I get that some people can't, but you end up potentially stomping a path through people, and that's exactly what Chloe did. She went on to get engaged to another gentleman who she told she had no real desire to be with, but he supported her, they got a place together, and when they called it quits, he stuck around and supported her in her pursuit of another guy, who she couldn't have out of the gate because of reasons.

This isn't a witch hunt or anything of that sort. It's an idea and a brief moment of reflection. It's a note of habit that lead to multiple people being used as stepping stones in a sense. I don't want anything to come back on Chloe, in so much as that's not even her real name. That said, I needed to put this down so that I could acknowledge the pains, bruises and cuts left on my heart, and begin the process of healing, even if it's going to leave scars. I know it's left me a bitter person, and it's left my heart closed off to a lot of the world, it's left me with a perpetual scowl for all it would seem.

My hope was that I could one day have a family, a wonderful wife, a kid or two, and now I realize that, if that happens, fantastic! It may not be the case though and even though I wasted and have wasted much time in the past, even chosen the wrong partners, I still have time to find what's right and good for me. I've also learned that people have their own problems, fears, and issues that they need to deal with and need support through, and that's okay. The best people to surround yourself with are the ones who are willing to see their own issues and make the steps to change those issues.

Now I face the task of letting go of the feelings in my heart now so that I can move on from them and try to grow. So that I'm not struck by emotions at a random moment and it leaves me dumbstruck. I'm putting myself back together, piece by piece, but I've found that some sort of crem has grown around the edges and keeps them from sticking together as well. So it seems I'll be shaving off some of the extra things I've picked up. I'd really like to say I'm okay, because that's what I tell everyone, but really, I don't think I'm in the best place and I'm just so cold that it doesn't get expressed.

I'll grow and I'll heal. I will. I've put myself into so many projects where I can create, that it's a matter of time before I'm whole again. I spent so much time building these little internal walls to protect things, that now those things are suffocating, rather than being nurtured like they needed to be in the first place. I think that's my biggest regret right now is that I let myself try to hide. I should of done better, but who really knows what's best for them at the time? It's all hindsight and that's always 20/20, isn't it?

I'll end this here because it's time to go to work and I need to take a moment.

Have a good day.

Disassociation

It's an odd feeling when you're sitting there, you're okay, things are fine. You're listening to friends playing games, or just derping about, and the world is as it should be, that is to say, okay in that moment. Suddenly you feel a supreme disconnect. Things go grey, color seems to leech out of everything and in the blink of eye, you feel more like a machine, sitting there just existing. You're not emotionally tied to anything happening and you feel like you're watching everything behind a glass wall.

I think the it just happened to me. I've spent the last 2 (and a half?) hours laying in bed, thinking about this. Thinking about how I feel (or the lack of feeling I suppose,) and wondering why I just became a machine. I'm genuinely not concerned about anything, I don't have any kind of emotion to speak of floating around in my head. Now before I go too far into this, it's not depression. That is a very real thing I deal with and something I'm well versed in dealing with, it is however possible that this is a byproduct of having dealt with depression before.

When I emotionally disassociate from myself, it feels very much like something in me has just all together shut off. The vast majority of the machinery is just firing away, processes are taking place, things are getting done, but there's no one there at the control panel to make it all happen. The worker... stepped away. It's like my emotional side and my brain function independently from one another and a thick glass wall has, for whatever reason, separated them.

After the fact, it really does bother the hell out of me that I do it. It doesn't feel right that I do this. I know that I can't help it, I know that it's some kind of a defense mechanism that, if I'm honestly dwelling on, I don't want to let it go because it is useful. I just don't like the descent into this logic driven beast of a man. The image in my head right now is a man, screaming at a mirror, but the mirror is just staring blankly back at him.

I know with a little bit of time, I'll come out of this and be right as rain, but in the interim, I'm just kind of useless to everyone around me. More so, it's difficult when someone who I care very deeply for comes to me to ask if I'm okay. I've lost something at that point and not even noticed it myself when she can tell something is off with me right away just in the way I say goodbye for the evening. I don't like to make people worry about me so it's kind of a punch in the gut when it happens. Bless her, I don't want her to read this and think that I don't want her to call me out on something like this, I very much appreciate it in fact because it gave me the desire to really start trying to figure this out in the last hour.

A giant pane of glass is all that's separating me from myself and it's just such a frustrating thing to deal with that, I would like to scream, but the greater part of my brain knows it's a futile effort and it doesn't mean anything. It's literally a fight of "what's the point?"

I'm gonna stop this here and go sit out on the deck or something, watch the stars (if that's possible at the moment) maybe take in the heat wave we're under for a bit, perhaps reset my bodies thermostat so 70 degrees feels like it should.

If you read this, thank you and good night.

Painful Memories

Hiding behind cheerful eyes,
a heart locked in chains,
made from logic's chilled lies.

I've tried to repeal the mind's bitter law,
to heal the pain and force a thaw.

Waves of torment cascade from the past,
 oceans of pain, so ancient and vast.

I want to grow, to break down these walls
to run far away from these ancient pained halls.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is something that I've been sitting on for a while. I hadn't found quite the spark to finish it and just randomly opened it up today because I wanted to post SOMETHING, but really it doesn't matter because I don't hold up any kind of schedule for writing. I wanted to get back to writing something... artistic, creative, I don't know. I honestly think it just draws eyes to the fact I'm a bit of a mess internally, but I find that's okay. I did find a journal the other day that I've been thinking about long form writing in for whatever reason. Either just to have with me everywhere I go or some place to write down thoughts, ideas, recipe ideas? A junk book, if one so wishes to call it. I'd like to have something like that with me everywhere, since I can't always be connected to this beautiful place known as "The Internet".

I think perhaps it's good thing though, that I don't have the ability to be on the internet always. Seems like a pretty bad place to lose ones time, and I mean sure, meaningful things can come from these interactions, from the strands of web we tread across in our ever expanding exploration of what could be the worlds greatest resource for knowledge and information, but none of it matters all that much, does it? Friends seem to come and go so rapidly, it's like a morning mist being lifted by the rays of a dawning sun. I'm finding that the people we can hold on to, that we can sink our "hooks" into are far more real. It's those people who I find myself so very in-debt to, because for as little as it seems to be a big deal that one hangs out, or one cares, or someone just... appreciates your company, those sorts of things do mean something on a grand scale, at least I find that they do to me.

None of that means necessarily that the relationships on the internet that I've found aren't real. In fact it's many of those people that I owe a small something too, but it seems that things happen, or people get busy, or life throws obstacles at them, and they disappear. This happens, I get that. I don't hold anything against those people, and in fact I've gone out of my way to make people disappear from time to time because of the toxicity of their being around me, but as someone who deals with a voice that wants to sabotage most things, a voice that causes discord in my own soul, that pierces my happy thoughts to plant seeds of paranoia (that logic usually always wins out over,) it gets very hard to be at peace with when certain changes happen...

In fact change is a hard thing for me to deal with and it really flips things upside down and makes me uncomfortable. The easiest way to really explain it is that you're a person who doesn't go out on boats much, alright, with me so far? Hard to deal with walking across a churning, roiling boat, but add to that choppy water! Might as well stay in your seat and just enjoy the ride as best you can if at all possible. Eventually you'll gain your sea legs and the water will settle, but it's going to take time. This is essentially what it is for me, and I feel like I might want to get sick because of change, but usually things turn out.

I'm gonna end this post now because I feel like I've rambled on long enough. Whoever you are, if you're reading this. You're amazing, you're wonderful, and I hope you have an amazing day today, tomorrow, and every day after. This world is better because you exist. <3

~* The stars Above pt.2 *~

So I did it again! I went out and sat under the stars and just relaxed, but with one minor difference, it was somewhat warmer and I brought a pillow so I could be a little bit more relaxed, because you know, laying on a hard wooden deck does well for the neck/back of the cranium. The Ambient light from the moon left the sky a bit more lit up, and it was cloudy, but it was nice to watch stars wink out briefly then come back to life as the fluffy wisps of moisture drifted by.

I don't like sitting in the silence of night outside, not in Vermont, where things like owls and foxes (gosh they make scary noises...) are, so I decided to take my headset out and just listen to things on my phone, let music carry me along on my journey with the sky. It was good to just hang out for a while and all in all, I ended there for 30+ minutes. Like those clouds, thoughts would drift into my head and I put into practice something I've been trying to learn, which is to see the thought, acknowledge, and let it go. It's been an odd winding road with that because really, I've never been good at it, but I digress.

I felt that calm I spoke about in my last post really hit me and peace descend on me again. It was a wonderful feeling to spend the time out with the stars and recharge my battery in a way, but then again I've always felt more at home during the night, like things aren't as hectic, the world is just quiet, there is peace and tranquility everywhere, and you have all these twinkling, happy little friends you can tell all your secrets!

That said, I'm gonna wrap this continuation of my previous post up! I hope that whoever you are reading this, that you go on today to do amazing things. That you're productive, that you smile, that you laugh, and I sincerely hope that you know you're loved.