To my good friend V.
Have you ever had that moment of self-awareness when you realize you've been lying to yourself? It's a feeling that hits you like a gut punch, a sudden realization that you're living a lie in the current moment.
Everyone should be honest with themselves, and yet, sometimes, it's too hard. While I believe I'm doing a pretty good job at being honest with myself, I still find myself struggling at times. Whenever this realization comes to me, I think it's not necessarily what I want to do in that particular case.
This is one of the issues with the whole "awareness" thingy. The more aware I become, the more I realize that there are things that utterly suck, and there's little I can do to change that. All of this sounds like a fear of going into places that are hard to exit once you're in. Even though I think of my life as happy and fulfilling, sometimes this weird thing strikes so much that I lose all of my motivation to do anything. Hopefully, I will learn to deal with it better as I experience this state of mind more.
After all, emotional growth for me is about recognizing how my mind works when some shit happens and finding out how to deal with it that works best for me. The problem is it hurts. And it's not really enjoyable in any way :).
Alright, time for some more positive vibes :). Something I like about how I deal with "ideology wars inside my mind" is that everything becomes normal again soon-ish (sleep over it, right?). And I'm already familiar with many destructive patterns that I have gone through during my life. There's lots of room for improvement, though; I'd love to understand what makes me most driven to build stuff and incorporate that more.
Writing blog posts helps, BTW. While I used to recommend journaling as a way to process difficult experiences, I prefer the idea of creating content that can potentially resonate with and help others going through similar struggles. So I blog about stuff that's probably hard to make sense of. I'm trying to do a better job at communicating my thoughts and feelings with each new blog post, but the truth is, I don't fully understand myself either :).
So, if you're struggling with your own stuff, consider starting a blog or a journal. It may not be easy, but it could be a step towards greater self-awareness and a more fulfilling life.
Thanks for reading, and
Take care <3
This may sound weird, but liking someone is not the same as loving them and vice versa. In my experience, liking someone is the will to have conversations with them, hang out, and do random stuff, idk. However, loving someone is more about caring, supporting, and other stuff.
If I love someone, I do not necessarily like them because it takes time to love someone. I can't say I love someone I have known for a week. I can like a person the first time I meet them, though. Also, you can love people for what they've done for you and be forever grateful to them. That doesn't make you want to spend a week with them, though.
That said, there are lots of people I like, and there are some people I love. And I was lucky enough to have people who I like and love. And I'm grateful to lots of people.
Peace and
Lovelovelove <3
I went to a gig today. My friends were playing. Some people were surprised to see me there because, parallel to this gig, a party was themed around a person I had loved for a long time. I realized I didn't care about him a couple of days ago. That was pretty strange, but that's life; you get unexcited about people. I bought a CD; its design is lovely:
I dislike aggression—any form of it. Several people were slamming very aggressively, which was awkward. All the slams I ever liked are the ones that spread love, not aggression.
I also finished rewatching Silicon Valley for the 5ith or 6th time. I love the series. It inspires me to do something good every time. I went to my brother's. He was asleep, but I woke him up because we had planned to meet.
We had a good time. We watched "Funky Monks" (the documentary about RHCP album "Blood Sugar Sex Magik", a few episodes of South Park, and listened to some great music.
I had thought about not belonging to Armenia for the whole day. I saw lots of faces that were very foreign to me. That was a strange feeling. However, when hanging out with my brother, I started considering getting a mortgage to buy a house and trying to close it relatively early. While a month ago, I was planning to move to the Netherlands. I am unsure what global/long-term stuff I want to do with my life. However, I know what I want to be focused on. And I'm doing well. And that's the main thing, I guess.
There are some people in my life who I value a lot. I think about these people at least once in a while. I don't communicate much with most of these people, I am unsure of the reasons now, but overall I'm fine with that. I feel good because they exist. There is a chance that you're one of these people I am talking about. Thanks for existing <3
I love technology. I don't talk about it often, but I love technology. I am delighted to be born in the internet era. I am grateful to everyone who made the web possible—special kudos to Aaron Swartz for fighting for freedom.
I am noticing lots of characteristics come back to me. I was thinking about working hard and smart. I wonder if I can drop the comfort I have created, at least for some time.
Start doing pushups?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
(P. S. sorry for the perhaps unengaging writing style; a stream of consciousness. And I like Blackfield, the band; I think it's underrated)
Peace <3
There was a time in my life when I was into stoicism very much. Even though I wasn't being stoic most of the time, the ideas of stoicism inspired me and made me think a lot. I was so into stoicism that I even got an "Amor Fati" tattoo:
I lived with a friend of mine for a couple of months, and we discussed philosophy a lot. We enjoyed thinking about stuff together. One of the ideas we both agreed on is that assumptions are destructive. There are a couple of reasons, but one of the main reasons is that they are mostly incorrect. Whenever you make an assumption, you're very likely to fail. I think that expectations are a form of assumption. You assume that something you expect will happen, and then it doesn't. And you're frustrated, and it makes you sad. When thinking about what makes people unhappy, I realized that most of the time, it's unexpected stuff. Losing an item that you value a lot is surprising. Losing a connection with someone who means a lot to you is also often unpredictable. Finding out you have cancer is fucking shocking. The list goes on.
Sometimes, these unexpected things aren't something terrible. Sometimes, you want something and don't get it. Or you plan something, and it doesn't happen. Very often, it's caused by things you don't control. That's what makes them so unexpected. So what can we do with that? Not that much, actually. Stoicism offers a way of overcoming such unexpected issues. According to it, you just deal with it and try to learn something when possible. However, often it can be pretty hard emotionally. It's hard to be okay with betrayals or the death of people you have loved for some time. It's okay to feel bad and cry, but what you do after that matters a lot. Do you make your conclusions and move on, or do you just continue being upset and sad about something? The choice is yours. I'm trying to move on as soon as possible because, otherwise, life will feel like hell. It's not always easy, but it's always the right thing to do, in my opinion. And something good for your mental health and life in general.
Obviously, I didn't stop making assumptions or expecting stuff I wanted to happen. I don't think I'll ever be able to. However, I can rely on assumptions less, avoid being upset about failed expectations, and chill.
Thanks for reading, and
Peace <3
That's what I sometimes think when smoking on the balcony at night, seeing how the wind softly makes trees shake, making strange sounds while going through holes (what is a hole?), making me think it's an airplane while I'm not noticing any airplanes in the sky. Will I continue standing still and injecting more nicotine into my body, thinking about how it will increase my chance of getting lung cancer and dying without making all the stuff I wanted possible? Maybe. Or will I? I don't know. It's one of these questions where your actions may differ significantly from what you think you would do. So does it even make sense to think about it? Oh no, just like anything else. Is this next-level self-awareness or a warning from my conscious mind that my nicotine addiction is terrible as fuck for me? Perhaps.
I once had a dream where planets were falling apart, colliding with Earth, making beautiful visual explosions. And I was still alive, still looking around, noticing how Moon softly fell into pieces, how the light was disappearing, and the world was turning dark. But I'm still alive. Why? Because I was in a dream, I guess. But life is not a dream. Or is it? Well, that's probably not something we will ever find out. At least not in our lifetime. But does it matter? Not really. I'm still alive, for whatever reason. I still enjoy life, I still find nature beautiful, I still find humanity and the progress it made terrific, and I still feel, experience, make, and love stuff. So yeah, I'm glad that I'm alive. And I'm so happy I'm writing this piece of text you're reading right now that probably doesn't make sense, but for whatever reason, you made it this far. And I'm happy to have you in my life, even if I don't know you, even if you hate me. Even if you're a robot, scraping this text for whatever reasons. I'm happy.
Happiness is strange. It's not something I experienced that much. Finding out I was happy at certain times was always, in retrospect, rarely immediately. And it was probably caused by my hating what I was doing at that time with my life. Overall, I'm happy I experienced what I did. I'm delighted I was born where I was. I'm glad I had the parents that I had. I'm glad for the people who surrounded me for doing that. And now I'm here, enjoying the sound of my keyboard while typing this post before I go out and fill my body with some more nicotine. Please don't start consuming nicotine; it sucks.
And as always,
Peace <3
Some people discussing the idea of relationships, attraction, and love with me should've noticed that I was mostly negative about relationships. While I'm not saying that everyone should break up right now and there aren't couples that fit together very well, most relationships that the people surrounding me and I had were just bad and weren't going to last. I'm an asexual, so if you take away sex, then the difference between friendship and a romantic relationship becomes even stranger. There are several problems with "classical" relationships. First of all, the over-obsession. When people fall in love, they usually think of their love subject as someone very special and meant for them. They even sometimes think that the person they like is perfect. All these thoughts that will probably change in the future come at the cost of disappointment in people (and maybe in life 😉). After some time, you realize that you don't even have much to discuss because you're different and should've never been together in the first place. Or you get friendzoned and don't understand anything, even if it may be good for you. FYI, Vsauce has an awesome video on the "friend zone". I dislike the obligation to communicate regularly with people in relationships. Sometimes, I don't feel like talking to anyone while being perfectly fine, seeking some alone time. It's worth noting that this obligation is present in non-romantic relationships too. However, it's easier to get back to a friendship after not seeing and talking to each other for a couple of months than a romantic relationship.
So why bother? One might ask. Well, I didn't have the answer to that question. I literally couldn't understand why I would ever want to be in a relationship with someone. Seeking relationships for the sake of it is pretty unhealthy, in my opinion. As far as my experience goes, this behavior often comes with insecurities and feelings of loneliness (not including people who are "alone" but pretty happy). So, if you see someone chasing a relationship, try to understand why they do that. The answers may seem obvious, yet eye-opening :). After this internal conflict of not seeing the benefits, I started getting closer to aromanticism. I was even considering myself an aromatic person for some time. I never really stopped finding some people attractive, but I had no desire to build relationships with anyone and just wanted to be happy alone (at least for that time). I still wanted to have kids and a family (that will hopefully eventually happen), so I was pretty sure that my views on this whole thing would change someday. And that happened today. It's not like I think everyone should be in a romantic relationship now. No. People with personal issues need to fix their stuff before letting someone be a significant part of their life (remember Unintended by Muse?). So what's the deal?
I was enjoying my evening while my mind was wandering. I realized why relationships could be a good thing. The answer is intimacy. It's something we all need, but not everyone has it. Intimacy is a good thing. I didn't give my thoughts enough time to develop to understand why I think it's important, but I feel it is. Okay, but can't you reach the intimacy you want with your friends? Perhaps you can. Maybe not to the level you can with romantic relationships, but still doable. I think it just feels different. Can you form romantic relationships that will last without changing to a level where you hate yourself and realize you just spent several years of your life to please someone you don't care about anymore? Perhaps. But it's hard. It requires people with certain qualities. Will I get the intimacy I'm talking about someday? Maybe. I don't know. I've been very happy the past couple of months, and I want it to continue this way and eventually become the norm. No more mindfucking.