Being Self-Critical and Fight Club

Just a short one (probably. That's the intent at least.) One more in service day tomorrow, Monday, and then school starts up, and classes start up. Working on not being nervous about it. And on getting all the essential things done and ready. Most of my room and work area are set up and organized. Things seem pretty good in general.

I keep being reminded by people, by the universe, that I'm really hard on myself, and it's not a good thing. I was reflecting on what need that fulfilled--being hard on myself--and I think a large part of it is protective, counterintuitive as that may be. You see, as bad as ripping myself apart may be, it pales in comparison, in my mind, to other people criticising me. We're not talking about little pointers, which are fine, but the idea of someone really laying into me about all my problems...you know, actually it doesn't seem so bad, now that I think about it.

Anyways, if I preemptively tear myself down, there's nothing for other people to do. I suppose it's like being surrounded by some menacing thugs who are about to beat me up and responding by beating myself up. They will probably just leave me to it, as long as I'm really going at it. And then at least I'm in control. I can avoid the really tender areas. I don't have to worry about something really bad happening to me, as long as I'm hurting myself somewhat.

Makes me think of this scene from Fight Club: (just the first 10 seconds or so from where this link cuts in:
https://youtu.be/eCKRI2wEw7I?t=1m43s

(though I found this scene first, which is also similar):

To be clear, I'm not saying I think this is a bright idea. But that seems to be much of the subconscious impetus.

The other element has more to do with self-love. And by that, I guess I mean self-appreciation. Self-worth. Unconditional acceptance. And not being able to do that so well. At the root of it is the question: am I loved and accepted, as I am? Even with all the parts of me that I think are not so great. The parts that go on Netflix binges and procrastinate my most important actions. The lazy parts, the callous parts.

Intellectually, I am clear that the universe, or God, as I call it, does indeed love each of us unconditionally, totally. But... on a heart level, a felt level... well, I don't feel that way. How does one change that? It's not something that can be answered intellectually, perhaps. I have to find it, feel it out, within myself.

It's like being blind in a room with an exit somewhere. I can intellectually think about what I've been told, for exiting the room. But ultimately the best that can do is give me strategies to try, or directions to try. Straight up directions won't necessarily work since I don't know what direction I'm facing. I have to start walking around, bumping into stuff, getting the feel of the layout. Maybe then some of what I've heard will make sense, "Oh, that's the chair they were talking about. That's the fridge. I guess I'm in the south west corner, I need to head left then?" And I can eventually feel out the door and step through it. Like that, I've got to feel around in my own heart and experience for what radical self-acceptance and compassion and forgiveness feels like.

But it's clearly important. So I guess I'll focus on that until I've got the hang of it.

With love,
-IO

Light as a feather, heavy as an anvil

I have arrived back at my apartment, and my subconscious understands that this means I am truely getting close to school starting up again. I feel the demands of time hammering down on me. Homework. Preparation. People to contact. Getting the apartment ready. Time sensitive odds and ends. And that familiar anxiety that accompanies being a new teacher. There is so much to do. So much. I have no hope of doing it all, and I'm ok with that.

What troubles me is when I find myself focusing on some minor task that is really more of a distraction than a useful thing. The problem is that my environment is surrounded with objects that call out to me to be fixed. As if the objects in the room were truly animate and had small, childlike physical voices that are calling for my attention. Asking to be moved or have their problem resolved. I sit down to get started on one task, and in the middle I am distracted by a second. And in the middle of that one, I'm distracted by a third...

After having just come back from the sweet, relaxed, feel-good experience of Fairfield Iowa and hanging out with my longtime friends, this feeling is starkly contrasting. I like a slower pace of life. I like being surrounded by community.

My protection is a little piece of paper I carry with me and write down these things so I won't forget them, and so I can go back to work, with that particular voice, quieted.

On my morning run/exploration, I saw a feather in a parking lot that was floating in midair. Not rising, or falling, or moving left or right. I marveled at it. tiny, fluffy, as if held in place by an invisible being. I wondered what could account for it, and then slowly it started to descend, straight down, not even swaying side to side. I put out my hand, took a step or two forward, and let it fall into my outstretched palm. Magic.

Brattleboro is all sorts of interesting. Just on this one morning walk, I found more intriguing places than I can count on one hand. All of them closed, since it was both Sunday and early in the morning.

I had an interesting set of dreams too. Unusually lucid and vivid. In one, I was kissing an unknown but pretty girl, enjoying the intimacy and warm fuzzy feeling of the act, but then I remembered that I needed to find a girl with whom I had that warm fuzzy feeling via just talking and interacting, and I set out to try and have a conversation with her and see if we were compatible personality-wise, as people who could become best friends. My brain seemed to have difficulty generating such a situation on cue, like when I try to read books in my dreams, and I think I woke up. Shows where my mind is at. Being best friends is one of the things to look for in a potential romantic partner, so says some of books I'm reading. The problem is, it becomes so much more difficult to just be myself and find that out, when I'm in the awkward position of trying to 'date' somebody. It's like trying to act natural while you pay rapt attention to everything you are doing. Possibly impossible.

Well, off to do more work.

-IO

Sweaty palms and teenaged awkwardness. Wisdom from the love lab. Dovetailed endings and beginnings.

Short post. It's been super nice to spend time with dear longtime friends in Fairfield. I've been thinking a lot about relationships lately. I feel like my many-year voyage of getting myself on track with the whole job/work element of being an adult is past the hump part. It had been my main focus for the last several years. At least five or six years. But I finally feel like the train has been lifted onto the appropriate set of tracks, and now the main work is just maintaining the engine with coals and following the turn signals.

So now I'm turning that stubborn and relentless (but slow) focus towards relationship. To that purpose, I'm doing what I always do when I want to get good at something: I look for the best possible teachers in the field and get to work learning from and implementing what they have to say. (Though the first step, which at least from my current perspective seems like the biggest one, is the initial stages of just finding, identifying, and getting to know someone who would be a good fit. A process that seems unreasonably intimidating.

In any case, one of the cools experts I've found is John Gottman, and here's pretty condensed video about his whole shpiel:

Furniture assembly, home appliance reviews, and entering doors: more interesting than you'd think

Well, I'm mostly done moving my stuff into my new apartment, which is to say most of my stuff is set up and placed on my book shelves etc and the rest is in boxes of unsorted disaster under my new loft bed. My room is small, so at the suggestion of my dad I went to Ikea and got a loft bed, which is like a bunk bed but for adults. Or college students, at least, if not adults. There is something deeply satisfying about being up high. It makes my bed feel kind of secret and protected. Like a tree fort.

In any case, it was quite a to-do, getting the enormous boxes of mettle into my car, out of my car, and then putting the whole thing together. On the first page of the instruction manual was a picture like this:



and I began to feel trepidatious but determined. My housemate is moving in this Sunday, and she is having family and friends help her move in. I thought about the difference between us. She was relying on the power of friends and community to help her when help was needed. I was stubbornly trying to do everything on my own and would probably end up with a hernia or concussion, unconscious on the floor, with no one to help me or call the hospital. A bitter, self-imposed isolation, like some love-child of Thoreau and Oscar the Grouch.



Anyhoo, as I was banging around, trying to hold the seven foot mettle guardrail perfectly level and guide it into place with one hand while attaching it to the bedposts with screws at shoulder level (I wonder what my upstairs and downstairs neighbors thought of the hours-long deafening sounds of metal crashing against mettle and furtive grunting.) I had a brilliant artistic and business revolution:

Xtream Ikea Assemblies!

The show would feature professional or amateur assemblers, taking on, by themselves, projects that instructions say require two, three, or, in the elite rankings, four people. Contestants would be ranked on speed and efficiency, with extra points for style. The professional assemblers could do some truly remarkable things, rigging up pulleys out of the cardboard boxes to hold things in place and remotely adjust their position. The amateurs would be hilarious as they sweated, tried to hold up things with one leg while screwing something in elsewhere, and cursing themselves for missing a step as they struggled to undo things with similar levels of acrobatics. (I was practicing the amateur version as I assembled my bed.) The whole thing could be a promotion for Ikea, who would likely never agree to the idea because of the legal ramifications of endorsing utterly unsafe assembly practices.


The other brilliant entertainment idea I had came while thinking about how to overcome my stinking, toxically mildewy carpet. Apparently, it had already been gone over with a carpet cleaner, but if that's true, it must have left the carpet wet and then re-mildewed in the process. In any case, I was thinking about getting a dehumidifier. And then thinking about how ironic it was, that in the summer we try and dehumidify, and in the winter we try and re-humidify. Then the idea hit me:

Consumer Reports: Blood Sports

Instead of namby pamby point by point comparison and standardized stress tests, machines would be pitted against each other in a single elimination round, no holds barred fighting tournament, similar to battle bots:



except with common household appliances.

For example, humidifiers would be pitted against dehumidifiers, put into a small, sealed room, and run continuously until one of them broke down or (hopefully, for ratings) exploded like a knocked over fire-hydrant.




Finally, I'm staying with my parents at a nice b&b, with a porch I can walk out onto. However, the second door is one of those giant glass ones, with nothing but a huge pane of glass surrounded by a kind of three-inch frame with a door handle. Except there's no glass in it, so it's simpler to just step through the opening. Despite having tested it with my hand, every time I step through it, there is a clenching sensation in my lower torso, as if it's tensing for impact. My eyes refuse to believe my mind. Perhaps the situation is calling up previous times I've banged into glass not-portals in the past and looked like a prat.

So I took advantage of the situation and now step through the door with gusto, fully intending to crash my way through a glass barrier like some kind of crazy person and/or action hero.

Up, up, and away!
-Isaac