A nothing day.
Creation-ish sitting streaks
- Breathing exercise ❌
- Giant journal writing ❌
My life is undergoing a complete reset. This is what I call it when my life changes so completely that everything that comes after the reset turns into a “new game”—one with a completely different set of rules.
In-between complete resets, mini resets might occur. But I think this one is a big one, the one that is happening to me right now.
And a reset (of any size) really happens to me, because fundamentally—very truly deep down—I don’t choose its timing or its nature.
A reset involves a combination of the following:
- a big move
- a sudden, inexplicable sickness
- a new job
- a new hobby
- a sudden inclination to consume/partake in certain foods, creative endeavors, or sexual activity (Yes, they’re pretty much one and the same for me. Food = creativity = sex.)
- a new calling
- and other key life events
I don’t believe that “owning what happens in my life” equates to “controlling my life.” In so many ways, I have ZERO control. Some things just happen to me, period.
- ex: One day, I craved a burrito. So I decided to eat one. But why did I crave a burrito at that particular time and place? I will never know.
I can decide to act on a desire or refuse to act. But fundamentally, I never know where the desire comes from.
- ex: Say I decided to go to a school called XYZ. But why did I choose XYZ? No, really, why? Beyond the measurable, explicable, “logical” reasons about employment rates of graduates, the expected income, the city where XYZ is located, etc—why did I choose that school above other schools with just as great numbers?
- Was it because of the weather? Why do I like a particular kind of weather more than any other weather?
- Was it because it was close to home? Why do I want to be close to home, or the opposite? Why do I want to be away from home?
- Why did I want to get higher education at all? Did I really want it? Or was I just operating from the inertia expected of the people of my generation in this part of the world? Because resistance to higher education takes more effort than just getting the damn “education”?
- What if I hadn’t gotten accepted? Would I have said “No” to all the other schools where I got admitted so that I could attend XYZ, specifically? If the answer isn’t “Yes, I would have,” can I really say that I wanted to go to XYZ? Or did I just want to obtain whatever XYZ represents, or what I think it represents?
- If XYZ represents something to me, what is it and why do I care?
- Why was I built to obtain that which XYZ represents through XYZ, and not through some other means?
The chain of questions can go on endlessly. And at the end, there is always, “I don’t know the answer.”
Thus, fundamentally, yeah, things happen to me.
I’m not saying that my core is immutable or predestined to be the way it is. In fact, I’m saying the opposite. After any given reset, I get a different core. (A new set of rules, remember?)
But while I have a specific kind of core, it seems that this core has a will of its own. Meanwhile, I don’t know if what I think of as my free will is actually mine or my core’s. Or neither’s.
Even if I were to make a habit of not listening to the stuff that my core surfaces to the conscious, what I do would still be a reflection of desires that I cannot comprehend.
- ex: If I were sick and tired of feeling the urge to eat a burrito, and refused to indulge my core’s hunger, that doesn’t make me more “in control.” I can never escape from the inexplicable urges of the core, unless, the core were separated from me—taken out from inside of me. But then, I wouldn’t be me anymore, would I?
I’ve spent the past ten years or so trying to maximize the time I spend on doing things I must do, because if I don’t, I get physically sick.
- ex) Writing. I get physically sick if I don’t write for a prolonged period of time. Literally my hair falls out and I get rashes and I cannot live with myself. So far, “prolonged period of time” has been about 3-5 days. (It depends on why I am not writing.) Anything over that and I get angry, in a similar way that a person who is hungry might get hangry.
I don’t know why I need to write. (Or why my core needs to write.) I only know that it is about survival. This is why & how I do not pay much attention to external factors, when it comes to writing. The only thing I care about is whether I wrote on a given day and whether this cure succeeded in making the sickness go away.
I could attempt to start a chain of endless questions like the XYZ school example above, but what’s the point? Unless I want to quit writing, I’d say it’s a pretty futile exercise.
It’s much quicker to just write. I don’t mind using a quick panacea for my life, because hyperanalyzing the root causes of my desires might only lead to some other version of a “problem” that needs “solving.”
I mean, if I weren’t writing, what would I be doing instead? The answer is, “I don’t have a fucking clue and whatever the options may be, I don’t see how they are inherently better than writing.”
And thus I write. I am just one of many who do this.
The last big reset in my life was the above: me accepting that maybe I should just write.
This was after the rashes, the hair falling out, and in general, being miserable for no “scientific” and “medical” reason. No doctor could have possibly told me that the solution to my sickness was writing. It was just too out of the blue.
But one day I just knew. “Oh gosh darn. I should start writing.”
Yes, really. That’s how it happened.
Maybe all things fundamental—all things very truly deep down—happen this way. Basically, if there’s any kind of love, I don’t know how one might explain that love logically, scientifically, medically, rationally, measurably, analytically.
And the resets, big and small, are basically the big coming and going of love. In hindsight, that was what the resets were. They were a reconfiguration of my core, for love.
Anyway, all this, because the next reset seems to be coming. Maybe in a year or two I’ll know for certain.
I’m just glad that this time, my hair is most definitely not falling out. In fact, it seems thicker and darker than usual? Why? No clue. More exercise from all the golfing might be the surface reason. But why did I suddenly, after all this time never making any serious attempts to partake in any sport, suddenly start golfing? No clue.
Listen, I failed my middle school gym class once, because I refused to do backward rolls. I just couldn’t see the point, and there was definitely no love, because the PE teacher was a grabber and I didn’t like the idea of rolling backward in front of him. So I just refused. My core was telling me, fuck this guy, I’ll take the F.
I think that was the only F on my transcript, ever. But I mean, who fails PE?
Me.
But now I am here, having overcome that F (!) and with my hair healthy and long. Also, no rashes. I think this is the healthiest I’ve been all my life, even with the sleeplessness. In fact, I used to sleep A LOT when I used to be sick. Sleeping tends to be my go-to medicine when I’m truly stressed.
Maybe my current sleeplessness is a way to compensate for all the time that slipped through my fingers back then. Maybe, overall, I’m just too excited? Looking forward to the next reset? Whatever it might be?
Anyway.
Yeah.
Wow, this was a long excuse for a nothing day.
#daily #health #writing #2022archiveQ3
🌊 Call me Ithaka. Everything I do is organized here.
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