And a Box Full of Beer
Sep. 1st, 2021 01:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jakebe
Today is the first day of a month-long challenge for me. I've set myself the task of spending at least 30 minutes writing in this journal every day for 30 days, because boy howdy I need to actually start writing again. No more of these fits and starts, and no more of this being afraid to articulate what's on my mind. I can't promise anything about the next 30 days, even that I'll succeed. But I need this right now.
I've also set myself the goal of "hitting the rainbow" in my Bullet Journal for the rest of the week. That means:
+ at least 15 minutes of meditation
+ at least 30 minutes of writing -- on a specific project
+ at least 30 minutes of reading
+ at least 30 minutes of exercise
+ showering, brushing AND flossing
+ at least 30 minutes of self-directed learning
Overall, that's 2.5 hours of stuff that I really want to get in the habit of doing. And with this journal, I suppose, that's 3 hours. Shouldn't be too hard, right?
I'm putting it in this journal to keep myself accountable, for one, but also to actually write out the goal to see what it looks like. One big thing I've rediscovered over the past year is that you NEED to make some things more concrete in order to deal with them. Back when I was trying to do the Morning Pages for The Artist's Way earlier in the year, so many anxiety and depression thoughts that seemed heavy and intractible were revealed to be...wow, kind of messed up when I actually wrote them down. It's surprising what you'll let live in your brain simply because you haven't been able to take a really good look at it for a variety of reasons.
If I hit the rainbow today, Thursday, and Friday, I'll be able to have an edible and spend the evening playing video games. :) If I don't -- well, no edible for me and chances are I'll spend the night wrestling with Inkarnate so I can (finally) make a world map for my Dungeons and Dragons game. Either way, it's looking to be a fun night in.
I call it hitting the rainbow because of the way my Habit Tracker is set up in the Bullet Journal. Each habit has a color, and if I do all of them there's a nice little rainbow for the space in my monthly spread. It's a little thing, but I love the way it looks and sometimes that's incentive enough to push me into doing that one last habit. Like, I'll be kind of mad at myself if I miss out on Friday night sloth because I couldn't be bothered to floss one of these nights.
Right now, the easiest habit to maintain has been meditation. I have a free subscription to Headspace through work, and I've been taking meditation "courses" that lure you in thinking you're doing one thing while really, you're learning basic meditation techniques and applying them to a specific context. So, the course on "Self-Esteem" (which yes, I did take) actually teaches you to notice when your brain starts to run off into thinking. That way, when you fall into the habit of negative self-talk you actually have the tool you need to stop and examine the loop. Another course, for anxiety, basically has you paying mindful attention to your chakra points in rapid succession to create a "flow" of better energy. None of the lessons are couched quite in those terms, and it's not necessary to believe in chakras to get the benefit out of it. But if you know, you know.
Almost everything else has been harder. Reading on a regular basis is getting easier, mostly because I've found it really helps to ground me for work in the mornings. Right now I'm moving slowly through "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison, which is a lot stranger than I remember it being. The titular narrator talks about the way his life has been a series of molding himself to fit the image thrust upon him by those in power. First, the awful rich white men in his small town funding his college education; then the revered dean of a Southern US Black university, who quickly reveals a duplicitous nature; then, a local Communist chapter agitating for awakening and revolution.
What's interesting to me is how -- especially now -- I can see parallels to my own life and the lives of so many other Black Americans. We spend so much time being obsessed with how we're received both inside our own culture and out among the dominant culture. For so many of us, it's a matter of survival because our livelihoods, shelter, and relationship depends on fitting the image that someone else has assigned us. We must never express certain emotions. We must never say or do certain things that might make others uncomfortable. We can't exist as full-fledged humans; only "model" citizens can get by without much trouble, and even then all it takes is one bad day...
The narrator has a pathological desire to please the people who've assumed ownership of his development, and I see myself in that. So far he's bought into the philogophy that these folks are peddling, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that. But he also mistakes the person who introduces him to the philosophy as the authority figure for it. I don't think it's falling in with the crowd that causes him so much pain throughout the book -- it's not thinking to question the people in control. It's not establishing the boundaries you need to be an individual within that group.
That's my time for now. See you tomorrow!
I've also set myself the goal of "hitting the rainbow" in my Bullet Journal for the rest of the week. That means:
+ at least 15 minutes of meditation
+ at least 30 minutes of writing -- on a specific project
+ at least 30 minutes of reading
+ at least 30 minutes of exercise
+ showering, brushing AND flossing
+ at least 30 minutes of self-directed learning
Overall, that's 2.5 hours of stuff that I really want to get in the habit of doing. And with this journal, I suppose, that's 3 hours. Shouldn't be too hard, right?
I'm putting it in this journal to keep myself accountable, for one, but also to actually write out the goal to see what it looks like. One big thing I've rediscovered over the past year is that you NEED to make some things more concrete in order to deal with them. Back when I was trying to do the Morning Pages for The Artist's Way earlier in the year, so many anxiety and depression thoughts that seemed heavy and intractible were revealed to be...wow, kind of messed up when I actually wrote them down. It's surprising what you'll let live in your brain simply because you haven't been able to take a really good look at it for a variety of reasons.
If I hit the rainbow today, Thursday, and Friday, I'll be able to have an edible and spend the evening playing video games. :) If I don't -- well, no edible for me and chances are I'll spend the night wrestling with Inkarnate so I can (finally) make a world map for my Dungeons and Dragons game. Either way, it's looking to be a fun night in.
I call it hitting the rainbow because of the way my Habit Tracker is set up in the Bullet Journal. Each habit has a color, and if I do all of them there's a nice little rainbow for the space in my monthly spread. It's a little thing, but I love the way it looks and sometimes that's incentive enough to push me into doing that one last habit. Like, I'll be kind of mad at myself if I miss out on Friday night sloth because I couldn't be bothered to floss one of these nights.
Right now, the easiest habit to maintain has been meditation. I have a free subscription to Headspace through work, and I've been taking meditation "courses" that lure you in thinking you're doing one thing while really, you're learning basic meditation techniques and applying them to a specific context. So, the course on "Self-Esteem" (which yes, I did take) actually teaches you to notice when your brain starts to run off into thinking. That way, when you fall into the habit of negative self-talk you actually have the tool you need to stop and examine the loop. Another course, for anxiety, basically has you paying mindful attention to your chakra points in rapid succession to create a "flow" of better energy. None of the lessons are couched quite in those terms, and it's not necessary to believe in chakras to get the benefit out of it. But if you know, you know.
Almost everything else has been harder. Reading on a regular basis is getting easier, mostly because I've found it really helps to ground me for work in the mornings. Right now I'm moving slowly through "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison, which is a lot stranger than I remember it being. The titular narrator talks about the way his life has been a series of molding himself to fit the image thrust upon him by those in power. First, the awful rich white men in his small town funding his college education; then the revered dean of a Southern US Black university, who quickly reveals a duplicitous nature; then, a local Communist chapter agitating for awakening and revolution.
What's interesting to me is how -- especially now -- I can see parallels to my own life and the lives of so many other Black Americans. We spend so much time being obsessed with how we're received both inside our own culture and out among the dominant culture. For so many of us, it's a matter of survival because our livelihoods, shelter, and relationship depends on fitting the image that someone else has assigned us. We must never express certain emotions. We must never say or do certain things that might make others uncomfortable. We can't exist as full-fledged humans; only "model" citizens can get by without much trouble, and even then all it takes is one bad day...
The narrator has a pathological desire to please the people who've assumed ownership of his development, and I see myself in that. So far he's bought into the philogophy that these folks are peddling, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that. But he also mistakes the person who introduces him to the philosophy as the authority figure for it. I don't think it's falling in with the crowd that causes him so much pain throughout the book -- it's not thinking to question the people in control. It's not establishing the boundaries you need to be an individual within that group.
That's my time for now. See you tomorrow!
no subject
Date: 2021-09-02 04:31 am (UTC)I have read Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, although by accident; the school's reading list intended Wells's Invisible Man and I was, that summer too young and far too suburban-white-kid to understand what was going on. However, I do remember reading the bit in the paint factory sequence, about how people try to make the whitest paint by taking out all the black bits and that's just wrong, and realizing: oh. This is symbolism, this is not literally about what the words on the page mean. So I hold it up as a breakthrough moment in my ability to parse a text. I admit this isn't elaborate symbolism but, like, I was twelve and barely read anything that had depth before then.