I’m full of verve. projects. doing. create, create.
Dreams
I dreamed of being powerful. And even though I was hurting other people it still felt good. I forgot almost everything but that feeling of invincibility. A feeling pure and numb, so it feels like nothing can touch it. After I woke up from the dream, I considered recording it, but chose oblivion, as usual.
Somewhere, somehow, I have felt that invincibility before, even if just for 2 seconds. It has great allure, even now as a distant memory. I came here to ponder why in this dream power was coupled with brutality and causing harm. But now I’m like yesss, one could spend their life chasing that feelingggg, nnyess, one could KILL to feel it again.
Makes me wonder. Chasing feelings. Arranging your life so that you feel content\busy\angry and not sad, make it so you wake up in a bed instead of a sleeping bag, sprinkle adrenaline into your week so that it doesn’t seem like such a drag. Chasing highs, fearing lows. A strange bend in the tissue of spacetime around the comfort zone that spacemonkeys like me tend to fall into. And that feeling of power that seems so tied to invincibility. Who of us fragile creatures wouldn’t want to feel invincible? I bet people have been chasing that high for a while. Could it be useful when it’s not compulsive — to feel this once in a while? I AM INVINCIBLE AND I AM GOING TO DESTROY PATRIARCHY, MOTHERFUCKERS, AIIIIIIEEEEEEEEE. But then, how much effort am I ready to spend to learn how to feel it? I might be more of the take-it-as-life-gives-dishes-it-out-type.
But then I remember breathing in bed last night (it was like 4 hours of insomnia. not so miserable this time tho). And feeling something big. There were these spurts of anxiety that I could pretty reliably produce when breathing in a certain way (I’m not sure I can verbalize the pattern tho). But they were just solar flares and I sensed something larger under there, roiling.
I was like, accept, accept this. Don’t try to change it, it’s not gonna go away tonight. The way through this is through acceptance. And so I tried accepting it and let the breathing go naturally, without forcing too much. But something deep — another layer so deep I sense it more than I feel it — really, desperately doesn’t want to feel this commotion, this heat, this tickling sense of something is wrong.
So, doing stuff. I’ve been doing that. Tiny steps, steady pace, balancing myself between projects, necessities and life. This is me living the same day about 5 times a week: getting up at 10, doing the important shit first, making some music in the evening and staying up too late watching X-Files. I feel like I’ve matured.
There is a mix of pain and pleasure, stress and relief that is just about bearable. This morning I’ve been feeling stressed af. I just got my survival-chores done (look for place to live, money to pay for the place) and had 30 minutes before a scheduled call with a recruiter. 30 minutes - a nice little time-window to sit down and process.
Earlier I was feeling the stress, the fear in my stomach and I thought man, no wonder I don’t want to get a job (or do anything involving people) if a simple phonecall can make me feel like this.
It was this moment of understanding: of course I wouldn’t want to feel like this. Of course a big chunk of me wants to avoid feeling this cramped, fearful and flat on a regular basis. Because this is how I’ve felt a lot of the time when it was time to go to school/work/college/the Amt. So, if we want to avoid the feeling, we just have to avoid these things.
I’ve been chewing on a thing for a minute now. When I was getting into the whole #DESIGN thing, I wrote a message to some Telegram groups saying hey y’all, I’m doing web stuff let’s collaborate. A few people responded, we had some back-and-forth but when it came to taking the next step and talking more in person… I bailed.
For the last x weeks I’ve been meaning to reply to these people. The item that I put on my daily todo lists has evolved from reply to telegram ppl through reflect on why I’m not responding to the telegram ppl to give the telegram folks a response, even if it’s no,
I’ve reflected in private several times, but the chats are still as unanswered as they were 2 months ago.
So I come here to process in public, in a hail-mary-attempt to get unstuck and throw this weight off my mind.
I’ve come as far as opening these chats and placing the cursor in the write-something-box. I remember a feeling of weakness and fear overcoming me. Strange how that tiny an action can have such an effect in my body.
They were quite intense sensations: a fear unfurling in my stomach, crawling up to my throat (when I let it). There was heat and tension around my neck and shoulders. I felt stressed.
But the crux of the thing seems to be a sense of being lost. Even after taking time to listen to these feelings, and many a journaling session, I am not clear on what these feelings are telling me and I have little sense of what I want to do.
I can already feel that after I finish writing I’m probably gonna reply to these people (edit: I have). I will apologize for the delay and ask if they’re still interested in meeting. Something in me is sighing. I sat for a while trying to understand, but nothing answered. I’m left not knowing what’s going on with me and my body, feeling the numb distress of a cramp in my solarplexus.
A more fundamental confusion mixed in here: what do I use as a compass, if I can’t read my body?
Addendum: A muddy stuckness
I’ve been here before. The pattern I see so far:
I isolate myself from people, staying in my comfort zone.
optional: I catch myself thinking strange thoughts about the futility of relationships. I wish to retire to a mountain cabin for the foreseeable future.
I start feeling lonely. I get sick of stewing in my own little world. I want to break out.
I reach out and talk to people - old or new.
After the initial wave, I start feeling… overwhelmed? Some kind of discomfort gets the upper hand.
When I’m not down and out, I generally do a lot of things. Projects, plans. Dreams and ambitions. Things won’t just pursue themselves. I wanna make sure I’m there to pursue them all, living a life of unrealistic expectations, always on edge and a little frustrated: I could have done a little better. Or a little more. Or a little faster, I’m sure
Doing things. And between and around these things a constant sense of pressure. Rushing from one pomodoro to the next. Always thinking about the next item on the agenda, that problem that I didn’t solve in 5 minutes or that awesome idea I wanna do when I finally have time, or or or…
While I’m working, eating, working out, pooping, watching a movie, riding my bike. It goes on and on.
Such days can get quite busy and this busyness can easily reach from 10-23h, occupying a good chunk of my waking time.
By an algorithm that no one has ever explicitly taught me (more on that later, maybe) almost every thing I do is balanced towards generating more energy, better results… I’m not even sure what, exactly. But the ultimate goal doesn’t seem to be about happiness. Work smarter, play more beautifully, rest more efficiently. Every ship taking route: optimization.
In this scheme a meal feels like a chore. I’m chewing on whatever while yearning to go back to work. A bike ride seems like scheduled relaxing time. Better recharge my batteries! Playing music becomes another thing I have to do.
I think this feeling has been with me for a long time, but recently I’ve been feeling it more and more. It’s so pervasive, so deep a part of me and my day that it’s taken some time to even notice it. I wanna explore it and see what’s in there.
Symptoms
I feel it in my stomach. A dense heaviness, a fear. A heat of some sort.
Around it a fear, anxiety, sometimes. A desperate something? A frustrated kid that can’t have it all?
There’s a sense of jumping from one thing to the next. The project is dead, long live the project! I think this could be a sign that I’m choosing the wrong projects. But maybe it’s also about how I approach them.
Each project seems to assume this significance that’s kind of out of place. I easily start obsessing to the point of having difficulty sleeping. One idea chases the next. Always in that problem-solving-mode (or is it problem-making?). My mind seems fertile, but so are weeds, man.
This happens even with music. I catch myself tensing up when I play or produce. I feel a tension around it, too - better make some music today, stay in shape, keep practicing! It’s a tension that squeezes all the joy out of the thing.
It seems like a sort of emotional over-investment. Things that I started doing cuz they were fun and interesting have grown into these all-consuming behemoths, casting heavy shadows. Places that I sought out to find peace and wonder became gyms and institutions to grow and practice.
Everything is practice.
Everything I do I do to become a better person.
Everything I learn can be used as an asset.
Next Time
Time
as in: running against it
as in: if every day feels the same, things get kinda wonky
I’ve been feeling depressed. In a hole, paralyzed. Desperate for rest, I watched movies all weekend. No desires, except leave me the fuck alone - don’t wanna deal with people, projects or myself.
Feels like a sort of burnout. Too much stress. Too many things to push forward, manage, organize, keep track off, improve, not fuck up, process, explore… When everything becomes a chore and a challenge, it’s too much. Obviously.
There’s biochemistry, too. And things going on in my apartment complex. I have thin walls and a nightowl living (pacing, rumbling…) above me. Me and my body, we get triggered by the noise. And after each shitty night, I wake up with a little less of me each day. - Scooped out, until feeling completely hollow, like this weekend.
It worries to feel this flat and empty. I wonder what I would do if I had to go to work today. Because when I’m this down and sleep-deprived, I am a husk. I don’t do conversation. I don’t really feel like a person - someone with a past and a future, emotions, stories to tell, opinions, inclinations… (Or maybe these things become a sort of dark matter in the psyche: influences too diffuse or too different to be easily noticed. I’m certainly my grumpiest self in these states.)
Feeling sad. Sad and burnt out. I’ve been feeling like this on and off for weeks. It strikes me that this mood seems to come into the foreground whenever I manage to get a decent night of sleep in. I’ve often been totally zombified and brain-dead because I can’t sleep very well in my current apartment. When I do rest a bit - I seem to wake up in this mood. It feels like there’s a veil of sadness over me and it weighs a 100 tons.
Makes me wonder about moods…How do they stay so consistent, for days, weeks, sometimes years? I wake up and it’s like my mood is already waiting for me, pre-made and laid out for me to step into it.
It feels like there’s me and then there’s this mood. It is envelopping me. I’m the object, being suffocated, dragged down. It’s weird, a little like losing bodily control: a leg falling asleep, a tired muscle giving out after a work out… That little friction coming between will and flesh jolts me into realizing: I’m just a driver doing his best to steer a lagging vessel. - Lift my leg carefully to make a step, catch my balance, or try to get shit done while being dragged to the bottom of the ocean.
Feelin under the weather today. I might have pushed my body a little hard with the long days and uninterrupted staring at the screen. We are a pomodoro household, but I’ve been happily ignoring my timers, gritting my teeth and wanting this thing to be done today. Probably not the healthiest approach. Wish I could do it more low and slow, sometimes.
Adding things to my 100dod bucketlist. I don’t even know what design means to me. Have I mentioned that before? Part of this is going to be figuring this out. I hope it gets philosophical. I feel like I’ve got at least one post about the meaning of the word ‘design’ in me. uuu, also - affordances.
This text talks from the perspective of a dark place - feelings of frustration, hopelessness and a sense of being trapped.
The link in the text goes to a quote that can be felt as life-negating.
If you’re in a bad place right now, maybe skip this post.
a feeling of i’m running around like a madman. mad as in angry, stressed, peeved, annoyed. am i running from something? i woke up at 3am with indigestion, i think. it made me feel hot and queasy - and not in a good way.. dark shit churning in my stomach. a hole with no hope, no visions. i am disturbed realizing that i’ve trapped myself.
a sense of i will get a job. i really WANT to get a job. well, i WILL want to job. i MUST get a job. there is no other way. I don’t want to stay poor and i’m not gonna start stealing cars at 34.
part of me wants to go out on foot and walk Jacob’s path to Santiago de Compostela. leave my phone and give a giant fuck you to the world. i’m just gonna be walking by myself for a while and you can shove your expectations up your ass. in my life plans i’m either a bum or a rich techie, whatever gets me the farthest away from humanity.
the thing is, i don’t even feel a longing for nature. i can’t relax enough, maybe. i just want to get out of this shithole and i need money for that. so i focus my energies: networking, writing applications, getting shit done. another project completed enough to put on my cv. dump some more ‘professional experience’ on everybody. polish thyself, even if you’re german. move things along, reply to emails, scheduled relaxation, no time for fun.
and i feel myself hardening. and after a few weeks of this i even start to think: maybe it’s good for me to harden a little. maybe i was too soft. but then it crosses my mind that maybe this is the dark side. not some clear choice where i say yes, I choose the evil thing! maybe it’s simply me struggling at the edge of frustration telling myself that this is the way, the inevitable. shutting out more and more the love and care that just don’t seem to jibe with this hussle. each day a little more focused, eyes fixed on a far away goal as the horizon grows narrower and narrower. maybe i’ll even get really good at it. always ‘moving forward’. ‘goal oriented’. proud of my dedication.
and as I commit to this struggle, because whatever options and dreams of alternatives there might have been have long since faded away (a powerful illusion), I become entangled… enveloped… and as I look down one day to see my skin as thick and hard as the bark of a tree, I barely give myself enough time to think huh, when did that happen. it didn’t even hurt, before staring into the dimming light again, just disturbed enough to notice the wind touch the treetops on the slope before me.
IMPORTANT:
What follows is a description of what goes on in a certain kind of depression. It doesn’t try to be hopeful or encouraging. Please be aware of this and take care when You continue.
I’m sharing this one because I have a hunch that my experience is not unique. Maybe a stranger will recognize a part of themselves in these words and feel alleviated, knowing that they aren’t so strange.
Sitting down to work at 13:30 — a success after two days of utter avoidance, reliving the deepest phase of my depression. I’ve spent a good portion of my twenties like this: nervously napping at my desk the whole day, youtube in the background, reduced to an uncomfortable heap of flesh by some kind of panicked physiological override.
The behavioral pattern goes something like this:
feel exhausted, flat, brain-dead after waking up
seek comfort: turn on youtube
continue watching in the same pose past breakfast
start nodding off
wake up, tap the screen to restart the video, nod off
rinse and repeat for x hours
switch gears in the late afternoon. go into doing-mode
The “empty” hours of lethargy feel pretty intense, funny enough. My body fills with dread and anxiety, my chest tightens, knots form in my gut — that sort of thing. The resulting state does not lend itself to verbal analysis. Over the years, I’ve tried to decipher the feelings with mixed success. It’s hard to do subtle introspection while my adrenaline gland is screaming at me.
Here’s what I’ve been able to piece together. The vibe of the pattern goes something like:
I am clearly tired, but I can’t allow myself to embrace that. I shouldn’t be tired, I should be “working”. But since I can’t work, I will at least punish myself by never truly resting. My body doesn’t deserve a position to comfortably relax — it should be contorted at all times. I won’t stretch out in bed, I will bunch up in my office chair and my head will be dangling the whole time. I certainly won’t accept I’m exhausted and admit that I might need a day off (or a week, or a month; or some help).
Instead, there’s a sense of shame — a vague but cutting feeling of failure for not doing anything “productive”, not “getting ahead”, not looking for a job, not adding to my pension fund, not following an ambition, not honoring a talent…
It seems like I have it pinned down when I write it out like this, but the issue still feels fuzzy and obscure — some part of it always hidden, unreachable. I never got a narrative that would feel like a satisfying explanation, just one motif: I am wasting time. And this is bad
(Here, I see a fork in the road: we could detour through Heidegger’s concept of anxiety, or take a roundabout back to my parents and their devaluation of any activity outside of capitalistic work. I’ll just keep plowing ahead for now.)
This is already analysis and post-facto introspection — it’s not something I consciously perceive when I’m sitting in my chair and trying to lean my head against the edge in the least painful way. No inner demon is berating me and telling me to get up and work, at least not in fully formed human language. I just feel my heart pounding ever faster.
The feeling worsens as the day progresses: the anxiety accumulates by the minute, clogging up my chest; the knots in my guts multiply; my voice disappears. There are moments of feeling truly vile, hollow, utterly broken, mad with stress, alone in unspeakable shame. Strange fantasies bubble up — visions of bursting into tears. But I’m too paralyzed to actually cry. (Writing this piece has felt cathartic more than once.)
This can go on. Sometimes, after hours in stasis, I stir, fueled by a sort of frustration. I jerk myself free. The mood is frantic. It feels like I’m whipping myself into counter-action. I just wanna do something. I might tidy up, make something to eat, take a bike ride, exercize, work on a project. A walk to the supermarket could be my chance at redemption — “at least I got this little thing done today”. After being repressed, a creative energy can also burst out in excess: I stay up late and give tomorrow’s vicious circle a jump start by waking up extra tired. There’s a haphazard yearning to make up for lost time in all these actions.
Rising up from inaction doesn’t feel like a success. The lost time remains with too much ghastly obviousness. The wasted hours have seeped through and accrued into a source of perpetual regret. Something in me lives just to remind me that the failure is irrevocable.
This cycle of lethargy is hard to talk about, even to close people. It warps with shame and inflates, overshadowing the rest of life. All expression is stifled. There is something wrong with me and I have to hide it at all costs. Human interaction can feel like a series of careful maneuvers: do some small talk, act cheery, say nothing, don’t go into details. Anything to avoid sight of this ugly thing and my desperation.
I’ve spent years suffocating in this state. (I’ve opened up about it since.) Life became barren. Every other capacity all seemed utterly eradicated — my hope, my humor, my pleasures, my grit… This abject anxiety is what I am now. There’s just enough left of me to be stuck here in muffled suffering. All love went cold, the myriad possibilities of a human being converged to zero, and any memory of ever having thought or felt differently vanished.
In the long twilight of Germany’s winter, a confluence of factors creates an extra peculiar state of disassociation. In these times I feel closer to death than to anything else, and I don’t mean suicidal ideation. The sky turns cloudy. The hostile cold confines my movement. The walls of my room grow stale. Sometimes a week passes without seeing the sun. As the eyes relax in the darker surroundings, I notice the city’s electric glow — the uncountable shiny screens, sickly street lamps and supermarket neons mushroom into the foreground, dousing a world of concrete in their humming haze. Something in me gives and the fine chords keeping a sense of coherence slacken, just a bit.
The system reacts. Some kind of psychological boundary turns a little more porous. Outer experience becomes, how to say, a little less solid. Things become a little surreal, especially in the habitual absence of human contact. Perception scatters. I am not quite dreaming, but not fully awake.
Old memories hover behind my eyelids. The past draws closer, fills the canvas. Passing through this narcoleptic twilight is a physical feeling, like moving through another, denser medium. But you don’t go anywhere, you’re buoyed up, suspended in a strange space, hearing the locals rouse in their nests. Nothing left to do but hope for the sunlight to stream in through a crack somewhere, once again.
I sit on the balcony with the wind moving through the trees. I hear the leaves, a thousand points of friction, rustled by invisible force. Sitting in silence is enough. Things want to be felt and seen; echoes want to reverberate.
A vision of a rupture on a black canvas: a gash of colors and lights, like a nebula, where stars are born. I feel like I’ve been sitting under the stars on a warm summer night, in awe. That has been sort of the mood here.
***
I sit in the kitchen and smoke. The dishwasher is running with a soothing rhythm. Pumping water, probably. Spraying the dishes, I imagine. Nobody can say for certain. The dishwasher performs its function behind closed doors. Nobody has ever seen what goes on while it’s on (same as with fridges). It lives a life of unseen service. I like to think it is content, nonetheless, to do its job well and renew our culinary paraphernalia to be clean and fresh, again.
I wrestle with what to convey to You, what to send out through time and space (see the paragraph above). A parade of cliches, metaphors, images and comparisons rolls through my mind. I toy with phenomenological reports, intimate analyses, (not so) subtle externalisations, vague tangents meant to transcend the issue like a home-baked Zen koan.
I spend time making music, playing guitar, singing. It feels right: this is needed. I had a moment yesterday, composing in a medievalish vibe, where I realized how alone I was there, in the realm of that music. I am deeply grateful that I ventured there, on this monday, because I had been scared to go there, afraid of this aloneness.
I sense strength and courage, springing from a fresh source I have no word for: I’ve tried hunger, lust, yearning (for life). But it feels less ego-bound, more bountiful: curiosity, interest, awe, love, joy, gratitude. Somehow I feel the urge to be extra careful with putting this feeling-place-something into words. Maybe I see the futility. Notably, the attempt also brought the words cosmic and sacred to my lips, the latter of which isn’t really in my personal vocabulary.
In a sense, I feel as naked as a baby, my little heart aflutter, surrounded by everything, in quiet awe, alive.
***
In the kitchen, again. Surfacing for a moment from the stream of 10000 things. I dived into the old hussle, swam among my issues, dealt with problems. The Feeling changes, softens. I do not lament it (yet), recognizing that it is futile to hold on to it in this way. But now, when I surface and try to come back to it, it is still here: in the silence. I am grateful.
I had a conflict today with my roommate. I handled it poorly in the beginning, then I did pretty well. In the end, we were talking from softer places. It brough us closer. You came up. I feel insecure now, thinking back about how I talked about You, our meeting and what I’ve been feeling since. I used a vocabulary of superlatives… I-have-nevers… explosions even. But I think it’s ok for me to flail a little. I have worked hard to let myself act on the deep desire to describe how I’m feeling.
I hear people singing, choir-like. I’m reminded of something I read: The pose of the writer has an effect on the words. I sit inside, and look out into world. (Nietzsche, apparently, said he could smell the stale farts and stuffy unaired rooms in some philosophical writings, or something to that effect.) As I listen to the sounds, I imagine being among the singers, but apart, never fully belonging, caught in a melancholy which has been in the Feeling as well.
Thoughts and feelings also have a directionality in time. This feels like joy for the future but also some kind of sadness — maybe over the simple fact that I’m not with You physically. I can’t quite figure it out, but the sadness ends with a smile.
I imagine myself in the future, thinking back to the two nights with You. This brings a sense of being a child, funny enough. Little children, all of us — naked and furious, often scared, living on heuristics. Stuck with this process of making sense of confusion, sifting, distilling, combining. Clarity? Catharsis? Transcendence? I’m not sure about any of them. Here, and there, maybe, in grams. I don’t buy them wholesale. Now, in this image of future recollection of our loving and connection, I feel a visceral fear: there is nothing in this but what I make of it. Transience and responsibility in loving. Sad and terrified knowing that an end is there, to everything; sensing that there is a task — maybe the most important task — to ease suffering, to spread love, to remember, to remember as long as possible and to act on it against all odds; and a deep insecurity: I can(not) do it.
***
After a scorching day of labor, every vein running dry, I’m left with sadness and the wish to sleep and regenerate. I imagine your face. A sliver of a smile. Love (what better word?) breaks through the miles of ocean, echoing, bubbling up, suffusing and soothing me. You and my other Lover, smiling at me gently. I am grateful. Somewhere, I know that everything will be alright. And somehow, thrumming underneath it, an echo of an ending. Almost always I rub up against this when I ponder my loved ones. It seems to be woven into these thoughts, or into me.
***
Late sunday morning. Hungover, pressure in my head, flesh and spirit tender. I woke up distressed. heavy and tired. last night i caught just enough sleep to feel how tired i really am.
I make a tea and have a journaling session. I put on music, get a little distracted. It helps, I feel lighter. At least for a minute. I stir and find my body shifting back again, seemingly reminding me: I am supposed to feel stressed and worried. I try to figure it out. My attention drifts away. My life seems messy. Like a big, unsolvable problem. — Obviously, a stressful perspective. I sense in me a fear of this messiness, the loss of control, the dashing of expectations, the clash of desires against reality. I truly want to learn to deal with this fear.
I go through this letter; I add and cut — roughly, because I want to get this done today; I try to let the words take me back to where they were written — to feel once again, what incited me to write them; they take different paths — but it’s like the terrain stays the same; I find yet a new song for an ancient sorrow, add a line to the old poem whose meter I seem to be stuck with for now; I try to stay true, to highlight the signal in the noise and yet own the noise; I try to shed away concerns about form, grace and what might and might not be palatable for You…
The editing process seems like the chaotic trying that is life itself. When I see it, it hits me, and I cry. When the snot comes, the baby-thesis feels palpably, mostily proven. I giggle and get up to make lunch.
I just browsed through July’s journal entries. This made me chortle.
Context: At the time of writing, I had recently joined a band.
(I already quit.)
and it goes deeper: there’s something about finding my voice in this group of people. and bringing myself in, and changing these songs to be my songs as well. and failing to do that (which, i am struggling at least), makes me feel extra vulnerable because it’s like no, if i’m not a leader, i’m a loser, and then another, even nastier voice: it was always like that with me and it still is, (so it shall always be, it seems) — me never influencing anybody, always being influenced by. when in reality it’s much more complex.
it’s good that i wrote this out, i didn’t know i had these attitudes in me. but yeah, something in me feels like a failure when things don’t exactly go my way. either a leader, or a loser. when what i’m interested in (or at least talking about) is collaboration. and being part of a group, i see now, means a much more messy assessment of ownership and leadership. things are messy, uncomfortable, in flux. people don’t dance to my tune they have their own agendas. there’s always tensions. my vision will never be fully realized.
i get up, work, eat, do chores, stretch my legs. when everything is done (haha) I’m left with this peculiar energy: my body is tired; my mind is tired; but i have things to do, grooves to play, words to say. sometimes i sit down at the piano, and kind of practice, kind of make music. kind of too tired for more than a kind of. sometimes i’m just done and want to turn off. then i binge: food and videos. i’ve been doing this for years. lately, i wonder: what’s the thing — the feeling, the thought, the realization — that i’m trying to drown out with these binges? what part never gets a word in? what words do i leave unspoken, day in and day out?
