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.

The Stars Above

Tonight I came home from work and found myself with the sudden and inexplicable desire to star gaze. Perhaps I can blame my friend, Jenn, for that and a talk we had not so long ago in which she advised me to go for a drive, or spend some time laying in the grass watching the sky, among other things, but I found myself with a supreme sense of peace.

Peace is something I find lacking in my life in a very real sense, between work, and gaming, trying to accomplish things either for the job or for another person, or even for myself, I find that I can't find a moment of silence. My brain is always on some twisted avenue of thought. Not always a bad thing, but for the most part, I'm worried about this, that, or the other thing! It's a very hard place to get to where I can just sit in silence both literal and metaphorical.

Tonight I found that for 15 minutes, though if I'm honest, it would of been infinitely better had it been warmer out! I walked outside and I laid down on my deck, I took a deep breath and let my eyes adjust to the dark (which it needs to be stated that as I live in a rural area, light pollution is almost nil,) and I took in the starscape while music played. The darkness of the sky held onto me and I drifted among the stars, enjoying their twinkling gaze passing across me as I was bathed in moon light. I just let myself breathe in slowly, my heart slow down a bit, let go of my thoughts and found that I was free from the harsh words of that critical voice we all seem to have.

See, I initially planned to turn this into something silly about faith, it's been on my mind a lot, but I think I want to save that and instead ramble a little bit about something else, and that's belief. I've come to the idea that it's a skill more than anything else, something we have to learn to do. Whether it's believing in a higher power, or believing in a person, or even just believing in yourself, which I know can be a hard thing to do.

So to start it off, I believe in a couple different things, some of which others might find a little unorthodox even, but I have arrived at this point through trial and error and figuring out what makes most sense to me. Some of those things I've pulled from media even, and I want to share one of my favorite quotes from an Anime. It's something I like to tell people, even if it has no frame of reference: "Don't believe in yourself, believe in me, believe in the Kamina who believes in you!" - Kamina of Gurren Lagann, given I substitute his name with "me" but you catch my drift.

I think too that I've been learning about belief as a skill and how it can play a role in other things. They say that breaking a habit for example, or forming better ones, doesn't take place without the ability to believe in the changes a person wants to make, believing that a person can change, for better or worse, that we have the power to make changes in ourselves. I think that as I sit here thinking about this, accepting it, believing it, I feel a weird metaphysical change happening, an odd thing to state, but you feel it in your core.

How does this play into the stars? I laid there and as my mind drifted, some little things popped into my head. Goals, ideas, things I'd like to start working on. I did something I can rarely do and that's giving the thought a second, acknowledging it, and letting go. I believe that I'm a bit more in tune with the night, with the moon and the stars. They're always there, but having them in sight, it calms me. In those moments, I could believe in myself and the things I wanted for a moment and it lifted me up.

I look at health as three different branches of one greater tree. Mental health (My bane,) Physical health, and Spiritual health. I managed to take care of two of them tonight. My mental health and spiritual health were taken care of, and I don't mean spiritual in a religious sense, although perhaps for some people that's how they achieve it, but for me, I choose to believe in myself along side other things, gods, angels, etc. I give myself my belief and I persevere. Tonight, gazing at the stars, listening to music, and just existing peacefully, it filled up my "spiritual chalice" and as I sit writing this, I'm calm, I'm collected, and I'm, in a sense, giving the other two branches some much needed nutrients through that spiritual well being. This may be an obscure idea, but one of my other friends told me that for us to be in balance, we have to have these three things be in good standing.

It's an odd idea but it's something I wanted to touch on for a future post, perhaps this is a primer for an even more obscure discussion, or really just me using this as a place to list what I believe and chalk that up to "The Faith of Eric." Yeah, I like that. Perhaps that's the title too?

Regardless of anything that comes along in life, the hardships, the good, the obstacles you're given, or the victories you earn. Believe in your power, your strength, in yourself. If you find that difficult, as sure as the stars are in the sky, know that I believe in you.

Growth

It's been a while!

I've been thinking about getting back into blogging (or more over, just writing my thoughts down somewhere,) and I think I may just re-use this blog for the time being. I'm honestly surprised I was able to access it again. I'm just gonna keep to what I assume was younger Cire's primary objective (5 minutes after publishing this, I checked. This next bit wasn't my primary goal to some degree, but oh well. [Cire, 4/15/18, 3:17PM]) That is to say, just get my feelings and emotions down maybe? Maybe that wasn't my main reasoning back in the day, but regardless of that, I've decided I wanted to start writing things down.

A lot of weird self discovering and evolution has gone on recently. Between cutting ties with people and just trying to move myself into a better frame of mind, trying to clean up everything that could be bothering me, it can be difficult to really find a quiet, peaceful moment to work everything out. I've been reflecting on a lot of things lately, re-assessing my values (that which I hold to be important anyway) and I find that my life tends to be more in balance if I'm a proactive person. Making sure fires can't happen as opposed to having to spend my time putting them out, but as with everything, it's a difficult transition to go from reactive to proactive when you've been the one for so long.

I'm 30 now, versus me at 24 and there's certainly been room for growth in there somewhere and as I'm sitting here now, I've come to realize a great many things and by that notion, I've become more wise. I've learned from issues in the past and I've learned what I do and don't like. I've learned that I should avoid people who present certain qualities to me. Fake people, over dramatic people, folks who can't help themselves or choose not to listen to the advice of others when they ask for it (In so much that they just outright disregard it, stop, think about it, consider what you've been told.) In general "Shady Shit".

One of my new favorite authors wrote “There is a simple realization from which all personal improvement and growth emerges. This is the realization that we, individually, are responsible for everything in our lives, no matter the external circumstances. We don’t always control what happens to us. But we always control how we interpret what happens to us, as well as how we respond. Whether we consciously recognize it or not, we are always responsible for our experiences. It’s impossible not to be. Choosing to not consciously interpret events in our lives is still an interpretation of the events of our lives. Choosing”- Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counter intuitive Approach to Living a Good Life.  I've found that in my own experience, I don't grow unless I deal with some trauma or issue. Through this growth, or at least what I perceive as growth, I want to begin writing again. Jotting down thoughts here in a blog, venting in my own way. If people want to read that, fantastic! If not, that's okay too, because this is in essence my personal place.

Now I know what you or someone else might be thinking! "I don't grow that way" OR you could of gone the other way in that "This, isn't really a private place, you should be careful what you put on here." To the former I say this: We aren't the same person and through that, whatever your method, grow, flourish, blossom, and become the best version of yourself you know you can be!

To that latter thought I say this: Fuck that noise! I'll put whatever the hell I want on here. This is my home and I'll put whatever I damn well please in it. Colors might clash! Designs might not work together! In one statement I could be Bohemian, in the next I could be throwing Industrial everywhere, then by tea time, I'm settling into Urban Modern notions and designs. What does this mean? In the greater context, it's really just a warning, but if you feel that my views aren't in line with yours, we can certainly settle in and discuss it!

I'm having a hard time getting the creative juice flowing and I think it's partly because in the back of my head I have this voice that says "Why are you bothering? No one will read it." Given, I've had two people ask about it already, so I'm not sure what that little shit [voice] is doing there, and in that, I've found yet another understanding. Six years ago, I never would of understood that thing there and even though I have a better handle on that, sometimes that little, poisonous person still wins out over me. I think there a HUGE victory in knowing that it's there though and knowing that in the end I can and do sometimes beat it down and go on with the things I want to do.

It's been insanely nice to just sit here with music playing in my background and just write this little piece, this not so flowery introduction. It's nice to really have my own personal forum that maybe others can find some light [understanding] in. I want you... yes YOU to read this and maybe you take nothing from it, but my hope is that you reflect a little and start finding the means to grow a little bit too! It can be a painful, uncomfortable process, but sometimes it's something we need to do, and you know what? It's okay for it to suck, it's okay for it to hurt, growing pains are a thing! You may cry, you could realize something about a friend or loved one, you could resent someone briefly in your moments of reflection!

To that I pose this idea: With anger, with resentment, with the pain that you deal with, take a breath, take multiple breaths even, and as you let them out, push out those dark feelings, envision it leaving you with each breath. The growth comes with learning from the things that put that darkness into you. "This person did X to me, I should avoid being around that person because they make me feel Y." and that is absolutely okay! YOU need to do what you feel is best and sometimes I stumble, but in the end, as long as I'm doing what I feel is in my best interest, it's okay. (That comes with this caveat, that I'm very much a live and let live kind of person. If I'm not hurting anyone, and no ones hurting me or others, it's all good!)

I think I'll wrap this up here because I would really like to go do something for a little bit, maybe read, maybe play a game, maybe just sit and enjoy some peace with a friend. It doesn't matter as long as it quiets things down for a little bit and I can just... breathe.