Victim No More

I've lost sight of my goals and my desires so many times. And far too often I blame the things that happen to me. Of course, those things do effect me. But they effect my mind, and that is the true ruling factor of my life.

I have been a victim of my mind my whole life. I've let it lead me away from the things I truly want. I've let it deviate my course, cut me down right when I begin to see the beauty of success, and I have no one to blame but myself.

Such strange creatures we are. A bag of chemicals and electrical impulses sharing space with this strange thing we call consciousness. And yet, our consciousness has such limited control over those chemicals and electrical impulses. They do what they were made to do, and sometimes that is much to our detriment. Consciously, we see what we want and do what we can to get it. But our minds, they are such fickle things. I often wonder: of what use is consciousness, if we do not even understand what we are trying to control?

But I digress. The point is, our own minds are usually our greatest enemy when it comes to the quests of the soul. I want to be and do so many things. But my mind and body keep getting in the way. Is there a way to bring these two things into balance? A way to synchronize what I want with what I have?

I'm determined to try. Dear readers, if you're still out there, reading this, I want you to know: I haven't given up. My vision of how to get where I want to be has changed quite a lot since I last posted here. Even some of the idea of WHAT I want has changed. But I'm still here, working away, trying to change, and make myself into a better person.

I'm only human, and that's something I'm going to have to come to terms with. But, somehow, my conscious mind is going to make this bag of chemicals and electrical impulses follow this quest to the end. It may be a twisted path, but I am determined to walk it.

A Cold Kind of Anger

I am descended from two very messed up bloodlines. My father's side is what I call pure evil. And my mom's is crazy. Me, I'm a very nice person who is passionate and loving and good.

I'm also just a little bit crazy and a tad evil.

Not a lot. Not like the others in my family, that's for sure. I talk to myself, I live in imaginary worlds, and I tend to freak out in crowds. That's about as crazy as I get anymore. And I'm not very evil. I don't like to hurt other people and I don't plot to take over the world.

But I do have a very cold, calculating side to me. It usually only comes out if I sense a threat to myself or others, but it's always there, beneath the surface of my soul.

And it's always scared me.

This side of me adds up the universe in cold, uncaring sweeps, and looks at the world and sees logic and math, not people and lives. It sees probabilities, and how to use people to get what I want. It's never hot, never passionate, and it is achingly patient.

I recently commented on YeamieWaffles blog, and I said some things from that side of myself. I told him about how to destroy a person using social connections and how simple it was if you just did it subtly. And I used that side of myself when I was raped. I calculated how best to handle this potentially violent man and how to get away relatively unscathed. This side of me did not care that if I followed through on this plan, I'd lose all chance at prosecuting him for his rape. It only cared about survival.

Now he's free to go on raping other women. Nor does he realize what he did was even rape.

That is the consequence of my choice. But that side of me still doesn't care. Because it was the best way to survive, and that was all that really mattered.

The man I told everyone about yesterday has always scared me, too. Not because he's dangerous. But because he reminds me of this side of myself. That evil little piece inside my soul that can destroy a life. He revels in that side of himself. He's everything I am in that segment of my heart and that scares me.

Because I don't want to be like him. Or like the other evil people in my family.

I still care about others. I still hate hurting people. I will never be a violent person. But I do have a strong vindictive streak. And I hate that this side of me is so alive and active right now. I'm sure it has to do with the anger I'm feeling.

I wish anger was hot and terrible for me, like it is for other people. That it flamed as high as when my mom loses her temper, and then fizzles itself out when it runs out of fuel. My anger is cold. It feels like my emotions, usually so alive and active, just die inside me. Like all the heat of my soul is extinguished beneath a glacier of uncaring anger.

It releases from me in one of two ways. Either it builds until I explode and use words to tear a person into shreds. Or it slowly and systematically strips a person of everything they care about in the same social destruction I described to YeamieWaffles.

It scares me. And yet it has saved me many times. Rarely do I allow my anger to do what it wants. I've seen too many people do irreparable damage both to themselves and others by indulging in their anger. But I do allow it to save me when I need it. Like the rape. And when I was stalked by a guy at work. And when that girl followed me home from school and threatened to throw a knife in the back of my head. And when my mom and dad get a little too abusive.

I wonder if I'll ever learn to trust this side of me. Or at least accept it. That would be a change I'd like to see.

Distractions

I remember when I first started this life change and people continuously told me that they had tried to change their lives, but "something" always got in the way. I decided that that "something" was always yourself.

Of course, I had to go and prove myself right.

So I've been distracted lately. I don't do my routine as much as I used to, and I miss it. And each day I choose to stop letting myself slide and get this change back on track, "something" always seems to happen. That "something" always varies, from boy problems to sickness, but it happens every time.

Which can only lead to one conclusion: "something" isn't getting in the way; I am.

It's so funny to me how each of us can be our own worst enemies. And how do you win a war against yourself? No matter what you do, you're going to lose.

Lately, my goals have been losing and my need for distraction has been winning.

Am I looking for something to distract me? Sometimes. Sometimes I just need to forget reality because it's getting too intense for me to handle. That's actually how I get some of the greatest ideas for my novels. I get lost in my head for days, weeks, even months on end, and come out with entire stories planned inside my mind.

It's also part of what makes me a better writer. Writing every day is all well and good, and I definitely want that to be a regular part of my routine, but living life is just as important. If you're experiencing life with friends and romantic relationships and adventures and problems, you're going to learn far more about writing and storytelling then reading a book or sitting at a computer all day could ever teach you.

So what's my point? Well, my point is pretty simple, actually. Distractions are bad, because they get you off track. But they can also be useful learning tools, if you view them correctly.

In light of those facts, I have to make some changes to my life change. I need to stop using excuses and get back to my routine again. But I need to accept that my routine needs room for distractions, too.

Not to plan for such things can only lead to failure.

Meeting Expectations

I read a blog post today entitled You Can't Be Anything If You Put Your Mind To It today. At first, I hated it. The author tells you, straight up, you have to accept that you can't be the richest, most athletic person in the world. The only thing you can be...is you.

I found it very demoralizing. But I let it percolate in my mind anyway. All because of some advice I gave someone recently.

I told my friend this: You don't owe anyone an explanation for why you can't take their advice, but you do owe yourself a chance at taking it.

So I took my own advice and thought about what this author said. And I think I finally got his point, though I still disagree with how he delivered it.

Being a billionaire, being an Olympic athlete, being on the NFL, none of those things are really about being you. They are external, not internal. Those things are things people strive to attain because other people told them it was something desirable.

You can play football without being on the NFL, and love it. You can do any of the Olympic sports without competing in the Olympics, and love it. You can be financially stable and not be a billionaire, and love it. Those things are attached to a need to show the world that you have MADE IT. That you are accomplished and great and important.

When, if you truly were any of those things, you wouldn't need to show it to the world at all.

And, if I'm being perfectly honest, I have driven myself to succeed and show everyone I'm something incredible my entire life. Not because I need to be a famous writer or need money or things. But because I want to prove all the people who doubted me as a child wrong. I want to show the world I'm worth something, because there have been far too many people who have tried to tell me I'm worth nothing.

I'm also driven by an internal need to write and share my stories. And that internal need has driven me to succeed far more than my need to prove something to the world. By seeking to be myself, I have gone much further than if I'd concentrated on the need to prove others wrong.

Internal motivation works much better than external motivation, in other words. And it turns out the author of that blog post was quite right. I completely disagree with how he states it, but his point is valid. We should not strive to be what other people have told us is right. We should strive to be what we want to be, inside, the person that is the truest form of ourselves.

So, if anyone else out there is striving to meet expectations of others, even indirectly, maybe you should read that blog post, too. You never know, it might open your mind, just as it did mine.

My Superpower

I was thinking to myself on the way to the hospital to see my mom and I realized something. I have an incredible superpower.

Unfortunately, it isn't something cool like telekinesis or technopathy.

I have the amazing ability to create worlds and characters and stories in my head. I can go anywhere I want to, just by thinking about it. I can feel any emotion I want to, have any relationship I want to, be any person I want to, just by imagining it. I'm incredibly creative, and my brain never stops wanting to create something else. It churns out ideas at an unrealistic rate.

But I don't do anything with it.

I spend most of my time inside my imagination, creating and pretending and building inside my mind where it does no one, not even me, any kind of good. I read books and watch TV in a strange attempt to direct my imagination so it doesn't go directions I don't want it to. And then I do puzzles and play games so that my brain's too busy to create, just to turn it off for a while.

But I never use my gift, my superpower, to benefit. I've tried writing, tried to make it direct my imagination in a constructive fashion. And I fell head over heals in love with the method. I found that writing opened up my imagination in ways I never dreamed. And it directed my focus, so that my mind didn't wander.

But then I grow bored. I want to move onto something else. And the book is never finished.

When I started the series I'm currently working on, I determined that wasn't going to happen this time. And it hasn't. It's been around 2-3 years since I first started designing this novel and I haven't allowed myself to get distracted yet.

I've decided, though, that the only way I'm ever going to see my superpower benefit myself and others, is if I direct it towards my goals mercilessly. I can't allow myself to imagine and create whenever and wherever I want. I need control.

Control is one of the few things I don't find easy to create.

Small periods of control are easy. It's the long-term that I can't seem to manage. But this new life change is all about changing that. Shaping my mind and my life the way I want them to be.

So that's my next concentration. I'm going to continue on with my goals (drawing daily is my next goal and it starts on 4/25), but I'm going to do so with an overall thought in mind: I want the ability to turn my superpower on and off at will.

I refuse to let it rule my life. It's time for me to take control.

Daily Stats:

1. Exercised, stretched, meditated, and worked on my writing twice today.
2. Wrote in my journal, stayed on budget, and wrote a poem today.
3. Posted on my blog.
4. Made my bed and did some laundry.
5. Kept to my diet.
6. Made pizza and lots of vegetables and fruits for lunch.

The Lesson of Goldilocks

Many of us have heard the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. It's a common children's tale retold for countless generations.

I never really gave the story much thought, though. The only moral I ever got from the story was that you shouldn't break and enter into someone else's home, and that Goldilocks was awfully picky.

Turns out, though, that Goldilocks was one smart gal (minus the whole breaking and entering thing). She wasn't picky; she had an innate sense of proportion. And I have recently been convinced that this sense of proportion is something all of us should cultivate in ourselves, as well.

Just because I read one book: Drive (If you'd like to discover more about this quite enlightening book on motivation, click here).

In that book, Pink (the author) talks about something he calls 'Goldilocks tasks'. These are tasks that are not too much for a person to accomplish, creating stress, nor too little, creating boredom, but are just right in the time allowed.

I loved that term. And the more I thought about it, the more convinced I was that Pink was on to something.

And not just for tasks. This lesson could be used in all aspects of life. Because the true lesson of Goldilocks, the one I missed all along, is balance.

Goldilocks knew what was too hot for her to handle. She knew what was too cold for her to digest. And she knew where the perfect balance between those two extremes lay. More than that, she acted on that knowledge.

And the more I looked at the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, the more I saw that impressed me. On top of everything else, this simple children's tale points out a common misconception we all seem to have in our perception of balance: the right balance is different for each individual. Papa bear fit in the big chair just fine. Baby bear fit in his cute, little chair perfectly. But Goldilocks didn't fit right in either one.

The same is true about other things. What is a good boundary or point of view for someone else, may not hold true for you. Massive changes may not work for you; taking it too slow may kill your progress. More than likely, your balance will lie somewhere in between a rapid change and a slow, progressive change. And that's okay. As long as it works for you.

I've experimented with how to change most of my life. And this plan right here is working for me better than anything else ever has. But the balance I've forged may not work for you. The best way to find your own balance in your change is to be like Goldilocks and try each method on for size.

I might be alone in never realizing the true lessons of Goldilocks before now. But each of us could use her innate sense of proportion in our lives.

At least, I sure could.

Daily Stats:

 

1. Exercised, stretched, meditated, and worked on writing twice today.
2. Wrote in my journal, went $17 over budget, and wrote a poem today.
3. Posted on blog.
4. Made bed, did laundry, folded laundry and put it away, and picked up floor in room.