Twenty fourth proof of my existence: Life as it stands

I'm in a band, now. I'm still working at Zia. It's gone up and down, but I think I might actually stay there. I mean, I'm not entirely happy, but it's a solid job and I enjoy spending time with my coworkers.

I'm still lonely, but I'm thinking about different ways to change that. It's nice having the money to survive, too. For the past two months, I've covered rent entirely on my own. I guess that's a huge reason that I'm not unhappy about staying at Zia, 'cause it's cool to know that I can survive on my own- the uncertainty of changing jobs would be rough on my not-yet-established self reliance.

All things considered, I think that I would do better if I found a job that was closer, but I think that I might be able to manage if I can save up for a car and go that route. That way, I can start doing more sound gigs around town, and while I build up that set of skills, I can see about actually recording and getting back in contact with Ralph.

I have been thinking about going to MCC and enrolling. I don't know how things will pan out, but I'm tired of not being in school- I miss having people to spend time with, day by day, that are interested in the same things as I am. Plus, it sucks knowing that most of the other sound engineers that I know have much more knowledge than I do- I'm completely out classed, and I'd really like a chance to make my shows sound as good as they possibly can.

I have been dreaming a lot, too. Dreams of Denise, and Olivia, even a dream about Vic. It's not surprising, considering this is longest that I've been single before I started dating, but it stings, too. I don't even know where to start when it comes to my concept of love. I've thought about my past relationships, and I've always been so... self centered. I don't think that I have ever been "in love", at this point. I think that I've fallen into something very similar, but there's so much more for me to find. Is it possible to be in love with somebody that you've never met? To be in love with the idea of a person?

Maybe I'll have more dreams that will help me figure this out.

Twenty third proof of my Existence: On the Future

No constraints. No limits. The only difference between my present and my ideal future is the amount of effort and patience that I've used.

I'm working at Zia Records. I've wanted to work there since the first time that I ever laid my eyes on the store's interior; I'm guessing that I was around 13 years old, but I might have been closer to 15. I just remember walking in there and being assaulted by so much music that I stumbled around in awe, and decided that I'd work there in the future. Fortunately, I did not forget this thought, and when I had an opportunity to jump on employment there, I did. The best part? I have left work with a smile every single day.

I'm beginning to create a sense of discipline in myself. Having to keep a schedule, unsurprisingly, is helping me stick to the plans that I write out. It's not foolproof, of course, but I'm keeping more of my momentum and losing less to laziness. I found an 11 week discipline journal through my friend Perry; it is giving me a numerical representation of who I'd like to be. That is to say, having mapped out what my "ideal" self would complete within a nearly perfect day, I can then measure myself against what I'd wish to become. It's somewhat difficult for me, because I'd like to hold myself to high standards, and it stings knowing that after I have finished a day, my ideal has stayed so far ahead of me. However, the reverse of this is taking in the knowledge of my self discovery as far as bad faith goes- knowing that I'm not performing to the best of my ability is helping me to strive towards that goal.

Lately, I've been feeling particularly lonely. I've been working a lot, with next to no internet connectivity AND no phone. So while I can socialize at work, it is much more difficult to organize anything after work. I guess it's not really a /i/bad/i/ thing, seeing as though I feel more self reliant when I'm alone (fitting in well with my goal of self discipline), but it's starting to feel as though (forgive how whiny this sounds?) there's nobody paying attention to me. More often than not, I'm alone to my thoughts and whatever task I'm participating in. It's striking to me, really, because for my entire life I've felt like there has been a spotlight on me, with almost all of my elders investing time in my existence, and now… I'm the only one that really has anything to do with it. I'm responsible for how I use my time, and it can either help me or hinder me.

So I planned out my 11 Week goals with that in mind. I've got responsibility and desire, and I have to battle my desire in order to raise myself up to the needs of my responsibilities. Obviously, guitar is the most important thing, so I broke that up into "physical practice" and "mental practice". I've spent a lot of time focusing on the physical side of guitar playing, so I've lowered the amount of points that I get for doing that and raised the amount from mental practice. Beyond that, I'm deciding to work on various things that I have wanted to be active in. I'm aiming to actually brush my teeth, to work out regularly, to cook new meals, and to raise my general level of activity around my apartment. In essence, I'm using these goals as a guide towards what I would consider "adulthood".

It's complicated, though. At this point in my life, this responsibility isn't going to leave me. In the past, my sense of duty has come and gone, swaying with the events of whatever my current predicament has been, but now! Now it's a matter of my entire future. I've never felt so much pressure to perform at my best. I can't give my future self the struggle of knowing that my past was all in vain. I want to look back, years in the future, and know that all of the shit that carved me into who I am was actually worth the carving. To know that I am worth something and there's a reason that I wasn't able to kill myself. I can look towards these things with the strictness of my philosophical beliefs, or I can dissect it into my personal symbolism, the "shadow" of my being as Jung would call it; between my yin and yang, I'm finding out what is actually worth my time.

I read my tarot cards, today. I've never really shared them with anybody before, and I am not planning on sharing them, either. It has been a very long time since I've pulled them out; I only answer my questions with them when they call to me. In this case, it's because I've been dreaming about people that I haven't met. I'm watching the bricks to my future fall into place, my cobblestone path slowing developing before me. So in a way, I feel like I needed to read my cards as a tether to this transient and ambiguous greater reality. I can't say that it's truth or the future or anything beyond the probability of which cards find me, but I also cannot deny the intuitive essence, the spiritual resonance, that I feel when my cards are in my hands. I inherited my tarot decks when my mother passed, and in a way, I feel like they are how my mother can share her voice with me again. Imagination, spirituality, and fate; no matter what they are in reality, my experience of them is inherently valuable- to me.

I'm terrified of the hurdles in front of me. I can't afford to stop and quit.

So I'll keep walking forward. Hopefully the bricks will keep being laid in front of me.

If not, I think I'll have to place them there myself.

Twenty Second proof of my existence: On Existing

My existence is a constant struggle against accepting my past and preparing for my future.

I can't say that I'm happy to be here. I find single moments, on occasion, or very rarely, a sequence of moments, that make everything worthwhile; but for the most part, I'm extremely unhappy. It's not so much that I reminisce, more so that I dwell on the past. There are things in my past that I'd much rather forget and move on from, not to mention the thoughts that I'd like to escape.

It sometimes feels like there's another person inhabiting my body, just living to sabotage my entire future, working their way in, one momentary decision at a time, and frankly, I'm both accepting and rejecting this individual every time one of these moments comes up. It's cliché, but I almost as if I'm some kind of walking contradiction, a paradox of success and failure and a disarray of useless thoughts compiled in this mass of poorly developed ideas. I wonder how I've survived this long just about every day, frankly, and with a past rife in suicidal behaviours, I don't think it's unwarranted.

This leads me into some of the biggest questions that I have for the universe. What is fate? What is predestination? Is it possible for free will to exist within the framework of fate? Is fate the same thing as determinism? Do I have a destiny, and if so, do I have any control over it? And perhaps most importantly, can I someday be happy?

Because I'm tired of waking up, minutes before my alarm, talking to friends in my dreams about how inauthentic my reality is. I think it's time to transcend my past, to evolve into the person that I wish I was.

I exist. My past does not, anymore. So why is that such a difficult truth for me to accept?

Twenty first proof of my existence: On Creativity

So a few moments ago, I decided that I was going to write this.  I sat simply, my legs careening over the edge of my bed; my mind blank. That is to say, my decision was made, but I had absolutely no idea what to discuss. This got me thinking, brainstorming what exactly I should write about- and I started to realize that I do similar things (in so far as the act of brainstorming goes) whenever I'm trying to create something.

It's not a clear process by any means- decidedly not, even. It's vague and nebulous and requires this sense of being lost, like the first time a child becomes separated from their parent in a bustling, emotionally vacant mall. When I'm creating something, I grope around the back of my mind for a thread, just the skeleton of an idea. With this thread, I find my outline, and from there, I break it into the parts that create it- be they ink, sounds, or just future plans- and then I see if I can figure out how to improve them.

In many ways, I think that this is another form of bad faith in my life, because I often do not finish drawing the outline. I think my best examples are with music and drawing- I've got something like 30 separate little snippets of songs, and I'm still not fleshing them out and then I've got 3 or 4 drawings that I've started, but never worked on a second time. It's not that I don't think about it, but I... I get bored of it, and I move on to something else, and the boredom of completion becomes an unseen vision, the sense of future-past without clarity of dejà vu. So I'll look to them, but can't remember what I wanted them to be.

On rare days, I'll be in the middle of a task, but I'll be zoning out, lost in a labyrinth of thoughts- when inspiration strikes. I've noticed that it's frequently when I'm thinking about anything that I'm either extremely emotional about or quite apathetic about, rather than just random thoughts. Regardless, I am struck unaware with a burst of thought in the middle of of the textile's creation, and it is of better quality than most of my other ideas. There's form to these ideas, and it's these that I'm more adept at finishing. It's different, though, than my ordinary process, because I usually cannot just "work" on them in the sense that I just improve the separate parts of the idea, and I'm constantly waiting for another strike of inspiration.

I think my point is that with some discipline, I can start bringing the first realm of ideas, the threads, into the realm that the inspired ideas are in- I just need to finish the outlines, and continue fleshing them out. But... it needs to be when I start. Either that, or I need to learn how to work on my old projects.

Twentieth proof of my existence: On living conciously

Now that class is over, and I've taken a small moment to really browse over my thoughts, I think I've found some of my biggest flaws in my current state of mind when compared to my ideal state of mind.

The biggest one, the most daunting hurdle to my ascent into a lucid existence, is discipline. I must say, discipline is not something that I have a great deal of practice in. For much of my life, I've skirted by in almost every task by completing the bare minimum, taking a sort of pride in this half-planned personal obsolescence; my lack of effort while still maintaining results was my goal, that is, a balance between lazy and successful. But as I've grown, I'm starting to notice that there's no longer an excuse for that. By not having the discipline to maintain some form of active momentum in my achieving my goals, I'm practically taking one step forward and two steps back.

It's not to say that completely without discipline, however. I've made some large strides in my focus within the last few months, and I'm still making some progress. It's just frightfully slow, I guess.

Past discipline, is just the concept of self respect and self reliance. I'm quite prone to staying in, locking myself in my room, and just... melting away and forgetting about the outside world. In the past week, I've laid in my bed watching almost an entire day's worth of anime. I forget to eat, and avoid taking care of myself. Even with this knowledge, I still find it extremely difficult to break out of the habit. I think this is one of the stronger habits that I formed in the past few years, though it isn't as prevalent during my periods of activity when compared to my lack of discipline.

So for now, I believe that my next goal would be to work on taking these thoughts and actually taking the thought into the realm of action. It's one thing to know that I'm slacking off; it's another thing entirely to stop doing it.

I think Kierkegaard said it best:

"But the present generation, exhausted by its deceitful efforts, relapses into total indolence. Its condition is that of one who has only fallen asleep towards morning: first of all come great dreams, then a feeling of laziness, and finally a witty or clever excuse for staying in bed."

I would love to disagree with him, here. I'd love to say that I'm doing everything that I can to reach my grandiose and bold moves for the betterment of myself and society... but right now, it's 4:36 in the morning, and I've yet to go to bed. More than likely, I'm going to wake up and roll over, take a shower, and go back to bed.

This is my life, for now- I'm working on changing it one action at a time.

Nineteenth proof of my Existence: On Existentialism

Existentialism is the act of living consciously, with responsibility and authenticity towards one's self and society, in order to fully appreciate the dichotomy of absurdity and beauty in the world.

That's how I see it, at least. I mean, it's a very mutable philosophy, constantly growing and evolving and morphing and congealing upon itself, slowly becoming that which it is. To me, this as a template for a kind of lucid being is a fantastical concept; that there can be other people trying to look through this philosophy as a lens gives me hope for a world beyond that which I seem to pay the most attention to.

I named this blog "There is a potential universe in which I exist." because there have been times in my life that I did not believe this. It is a statement of personal choice, as I am attempting to create some form of consistency for myself, though it initially served as a grade. I've kept a number of half-journals through the years, as a sort of tether to the world- when I descend into a state of unhappiness, I sometimes browse through my journals, trying to find some half finished idea, or some memory that can pull me back into reality. It's not really fun for me to live with my head in the clouds anymore; now that I've felt the ground underneath my feet, and coincidentally realized that I might actually be capable of creating happiness, I know that while it's not easy to live consciously, the results are worth the effort.

In the past few months, I've had to confront many my personal demons, with varying levels of success. I've struggled with my focus, with my family, with finances, and fulfilling myself as a lucid being has fallen to the wayside, for much of it. There have been a few times when I've considered just packing my stuff and leaving, not looking back. Just as an escape, really, to avoid facing the things that are brooding over my horizon.

But right now, I can't help but feel excited for my future. It's going to be difficult, and there are going to be many facets to what I need to work on. I know that I'm living in bad faith, in multiple places, in my life. I'm far from true to who I want to be and I have a lot of work on the path towards self respect and honesty. But... knowing this is new. I've never gone this deep, so to speak, into why I've acted this way, and why I've felt this way.

So more than anything else, existentialism, to me, is a way to feel comfortable in my skin. It's self respect and responsibility, to myself and to the people around me. I've lived in a bubble for a long time, and I still have a lot to work on- and now I know that there is a world out there.

It almost seems trivial to me, but these realizations are already making huge changes in how I perceive my life.

Eighteenth proof of my Existence: On bad faith and lucidity

In class today, we discussed a thought experiment about a "good-life" salesman; selling the ideas of how to best live one's life with two choices- living a life of avoiding bad faith and living a life without worrying about bad faith.

I didn't really think too much of this in class today. Lately, my thoughts have been extremely convoluted; I'm worrying about money, I'm worrying about music, I'm worrying about my family, and everything else has kind of faded into the background. It's been mostly to my detriment, by sleeping in and missing class, I feel like I have deducted points out of some imaginary "existentialism" piggy bank, and lost out on a meaningful discussion that could, with time, make a huge impact on my life.

Fortunately, I didn't miss the day on bad faith, and that kinda woke me up into a state of lucid consciousness again. I've taken the past few days with a grain of salt, and I've paid attention to some of my habits. Since everything in my life tends to point me towards music, I'll use that as a foil to explain my thoughts on Sartre's bad faith.

I said in my last post that my guitar practice has been a source of bad faith, and I stand by that; today, however, I inspected it a little bit more closely than I had before, and I think that it's worse than I thought it was. That is, I know that I've been slacking on the practice, but more than that, I'm not paying attention to what I'm playing. So in a very real sense, I'm not lucid of my decisions while I'm doing the one thing that frees me from what Sartre would call my anguish, but I'm instead wrapping myself up within it- I'm basking in it without even noticing how ignorant I am of my playing, of my note choice, of my melodies.

I spoke in class, today, and I said that I'd rather know why I'm sad than not know why I'm happy; and now that I have a clear cut, personally dear issue to really case my argument, it makes a lot more sense. Because when I pay attention to my music, when I really take the time to swim through it, rather than just gliding along with my head lost in the clouds, I appreciate it more. I can play my melody with conviction, knowing that it's going to highlight and support the notes of the chords underneath it, rather than just dancing all over the fretboard, ecstatic but blissfully ignorant of how mechanical my playing is. When I play with the conviction of my lucidity, when I consciously choose my notes and control my future, it's not just happiness that I find- it's a very real sense of self actualization.

So yes, I have lived without worrying about bad faith- as my happy and aimless love of my music has carried me through my life many years- but now that I know the difference, and I can hear my own, unique voice flourishing with my awareness, I don't think I'll ever go back. I can't imagine going back, when this is so much more fulfilling.

I think I'll have to go with avoiding bad faith. It has made me appreciate my life a little bit more, even if only for moments at a time.