I just went on a rather substantial walk, for me that is. The back of my knees hurt, I can feel my thighs, and my toes are slightly painful. I'm hypermobile, and pretty weak in this aspect. I'm feeling quite good. I do get a mood boost from exercise, but it's often subtle, mostly just having an effect on my motivation. Nonetheless, most of the time, the boost can't overcome the sheer exhaustion I feel afterwards. But man, certain forms of exercise are completely addicting. In particular I mean tag-and-chase games I played in elementary and middle school. That and fencing. My god fencing. I loved it. I should really do that again. Anyways, with the passion (motivation) renewed in me, I feel like I could write. I've been struggling with my media consumption these days, too. I've been feeling like I need to have some video playing at all times. I mean, to do most anything this past month I've needed a video, usually youtube, to help stimulate my will, but lately I haven't been able to not watch a video at all, unless I'm with others. But I need time to myself, and I really want to be creative, but I can't split my mind like that. I can't watch something and think, really. To be clear, podcasts work too, in particular, I like audio dramas. I was listening to the first new one I'd started in months. Maybe even a year?? I listened to exclusively "The Magnus Archives" before on a whim I started "We're Alive". It's been a while with just those two, but—also on a whim—I started "Tower 4". Binged it. Listened to a couple seasons in a couple days. I would certainly say I was hyperfocusing on it. It really reminded me of the videogame "Fire Watch". Man, their beginnings felt so similar that it was like, eerie. I kept having visual flashes back to the game, how beautiful it was. That's what everyone else thought of the game too... I felt. Really. I cannot say how I felt at the time during which I was first exposed to the game... But I do know that listening to Tower 4, thinking about Fire Watch, I was overcome with an extreme desire—yearning, I called it in my head—for a Fire Lookout experience of my own. Of course, my little exposure to the subject meant I certainly had—in some sense—the wrong idea about what it's like. But in my head I envisioned this scene of extreme solitude: No outside contact except maybe fellow fire workers, adjacent lookouts; Completely surrounded—enclosed even—by tall, tall pines... Dwarfing me on the forest floor, and the sheer magnitude of the forest-scape dwarfing me from my cabin-on-stilts; Going out everyday to hike in nearly assured isolation for miles and miles and endless forest and endless terrain and endless nature to study and absorb I mean my GOD. The thought of it is actually intoxicating. This vision I've constructed is—it feels necessary. Like i need it I need it. I cannot express the intensity of this craving in polite terms... It's almost physically painful to think about. I get the sense I won't feel safe anywhere but that forest. That cabin, the foot of it.
Got distracted. Honestly I was getting too worked up and started feeling the need to move my body... which... I don't do that shit. I drained myself. Not entirely, but... I feel as though most of my motivation leaked out the back of me without me noticing. I'm sad now. Granted I did take an extended bathroom break on my phone, watching a yt video where this dude makes this gorgeous castle in minecraft. I feel, despite the deep security watching these videos or shows or podcasts brings me, they're detrimental to my creativity. And like yeah, big shocker here. But I think it's a lot more complex than it seems on the surface. Mostly it's that, engaging with content in that way puts all my processing power and attention in this one thing, and I become so engrossed that I naturally dissociate. This allows me to functionally dissociate the days away. Which can be so, incredibly helpful if I'm depressed and barely have the power to keep myself awake, but the inertia of it... It can almost lengthen the depressive cycle. It keeps the time moving, which I'm grateful for. Sometimes the need to fill the time can get overwhelming—I mean my god I have to be doing something forever, doesn't that sound daunting and exhausting? But, it keeps me from genuinely being with and processing my emotions. Which, my capacity for doing so depends on my overall energy. Sometimes I just need to make it through to the next day, sometimes I have the energy (?, unsure if this is even the right word...) to open myself up, to experience, to hold open the gates for long enough to glimpse myself through the dense fog. To feel myself in the darkness. To feel. But that's exhausting, and a hell of a task... Trying to regulate myself, trying to make myself regulate myself. It's fucking difficult. It's hard to describe my relationship to grounding myself. It's really complicated... It's euphoric, the best I've ever felt, it's a concentration of my will to live, it's pure joy and love and excitement and just thinking about it could bring me to tears and it itself has brought me to tears; But it's so deeply gutting... Painful and devastating. I sealed myself up for a reason—opening up means dealing with those reasons. I think a lot of the time I lack a sense of security that makes opening up just feel too risky. I know I need to—eventually—find that sense of security within myself... But I think I really need it in other people. Otherwise I just. I mean. On my own I perpetuate the belief that I'm alone in the world and other people are inevitably antagonistic, but more than that, I think I'm waiting for someone to imbue within me the permission to really be. I still fundamentally, to my core, find myself a failure. I still forever hate myself. I cannot say it enough: It is truly basal to my soul, my spirit, that I hate myself. It's like, my thing. And I still feel the need to do so. I lack the safety in which I can let down my guard and maybe start to be okay with my basic facts of my being. Wow! This sure got exciting. I think... I think I've written enough for today lol. I'm... going to upload this. Yay... I'm excited.
"Interstate Vision" by Lomelda on Bandcamp