Prs to be making me less broke? Financial Follies

[Blarg]

[ QUOTE ]
Your ideas are intriguing.

However, in a step for the sort of fearless self-exposure to mockery for which I am surely famous above all else, I will say this:

The idea of driving around in my car (see? CD player. I need it) listening to someone on permanent loop telling me to feel good about myself strikes me as very, very silly and ridiculous.

That said, I do know exactly what you're talking about, as you well know.

It's a killing fog. It stifles cognition, creativity, will, clever ideas, pleasant memories, good feelings and avenues of escape almost as fast as they appear.

It's a [censored] glutton. It wants your whole life if it can get it. And it is so [censored] hard to rally from under. I can only do it for a few hours at a time, and every time it comes back it washes away everything you came up with. The Waters of Lethe. Those of you who've never experienced it have no idea how much it makes you forget.

Drags you baaaaaaack. To motionlessness.

Fear? I'unno. Maybe. Phobias regarding incompetence and missing data and looking foolish have always played a powerful role in my inner life. I don't think that's the proximate cause, though. I got here as a direct result of walking straight into the teeth of paralyzing terror. Probably the bravest thing I've ever done.

Anyway. I've sought treatment. I believe I've mentioned that. Spent last winter checking out psychiatrists as I'd been urged to do. Settled on a guy, didn't think much of him, seemed like your standard cynic's shrink - just an oblivious dope-pusher. Took what he prescribed me, and headed out to LA. Couple months later my hands shook all the time, I couldn't get my nut, I spent most of my day in a mental coma and I was trying to decide whether or not to jump off my balcony, so I wrote an emofied thread and quit taking the stuff. Temporary relief ensued, like a sick man turning over in bed.

"Ruled by your habits." [censored] yeah. Ruled by your imagination? Hell yeah you are. I still don't understand quite why it follows to just imagine fluffy bunnies 'n' [censored], but that's just as likely as not to be the death fog talking.

I mean - catch me at another time and I would drop a vociferous arguebomb. It would prolly go something like this - "The whole idea of deliberately trying to alter your thoughts & emotions is ludicrous, indeed sickening. Even if it works I want no part of it, because if it does, then there is no such thing as authentic experience - only 'what you make of it.' And if that's the case then who gives a [censored] about anything, it's all fake.'

Now, I still believe in the core of this sentiment. On the other hand, I can't imagine that having your mind sucked away by the Noonday Demon is a particularly 'authentic' way to have your perceptions filtered, either. So as I said to begin with - your ideas are intriguing.

[/ QUOTE ]

You're not as alone as you think in these feelings, if it's any comfort.

As I've mentioned before, I'm a big fan of acting, not just thinking more and more. You already know where your thinking is going to go. If you get yourself involved in positive activity -- it could be anything, it hardly matters -- you can begin to have your mind conform to your new reality, not the other way around. Which is what is killing you.

Burlap is right about incrementality. Life is not ever "solved," and certainly not in one fell swoop. There will never be an end to worry and doubt; there's only learning to live with it and bring other things into your life. Those things can gather terrific cumulative force. But cumulative means being built up in increments. A song isn't a single note, a novel isn't a single word. To be on the receiving end of any large amount of goodness, you have to create at least one small good thing, and then another.

To bring in a metaphor from martial arts, as you are a fencer and can probably relate, didn't you have long periods where you felt your abilities lay fallow somehow, even though you were testing them to their limits? Where you piled on earnest spirit, time, and physical sacrifice and got nowhere, week after week, month after month? And then suddenly found yourself, seemingly without reason, able to do something you never could before? Sometimes progress is invisible. It even seems negative, because you try and try and get no result, only fatigue and disappointment. Then things change and you don't know why. It's as if it's all random. Or, for the religious perhaps, god-ordained? But it's not. It's the natural unfolding of the result of cumulative effort, on a schedule you could not possibly predict. It's as real as anything, because there you are doing it. But though it feels sudden, it wasn't. Though it feels incomprehensible, it was quite ordinary. And when you understand and admit how these things work, it was actually to be expected. You may have put the work in and thought it all came to nothing, and was perhaps foolish, hopeless, and deluded. Surely your limits were written all over this endless stasis, fatigue and disappointment its only accompaniment. But your limits were being exceeded on a schedule unknown to you and that would brook no interference from your ego and its expectations. The work paid off, in its own way. The proper type of work has a way of doing that. A whole life can have a way of doing that. But it can be invisible when you're in the middle of it, and all you might feel in taking those initial steps, and building up that momentum, could be negative. Yet things take their time to build and unfold. That can't be changed. But at least the result is near inevitable.

Given the alternatives of not trying, or mulling over what and how to try living anything forever so as to avoid fear, uncertainty, or simply to avoid work and moral courage, and taking small humble steps one at a time, isn't the more authentic, fully human response to give whatever life you have your best shot? Instead of trying to outsmart God, or life, or fate, or reason, by saying the game is rigged and refusing to play? You can build up one chip at a time. That's how most people do it. It's not because they're dumb or hopelessly unimaginative. It's because it's quite do-able, and that, largely is how it's done. Lay your foundation one stone at a time. You may be able to make the most beautiful, dreamy parapets in the land, caressing the clouds and piercing the heavens. Because of your intelligence, chances are good you can build up a life worth a second glance. But you might have to go down on your knees to lay a few bricks. Don't mope and don't make that any more of a big deal than it really is. You've got better tools than most, but they're useless if you keep them in the box of your own overheated noggin. You can only miss your success by perversity. Do you want something that limited to your definition?