Meditation

Always flux.  Emotional.  Physical.  Financial.  Sometimes it's hard not to feel that the tides of life are dizzying in the speed and variation of their swell and depth.

I've been pretty productive lately.  It's been a good feeling, making progress.  At the same time, the same old challenges remain.  Personal doubts, anxieties, weaknesses.  How do I crush them?  The goal is clear, but the path is not.  Time flies by, and who you were changes into you are, again and again, every moment.

I'm burning with this fuel.  I need to improve myself.  I need to take what I am train it, constrain it, teach it how to be perfectly ready.  And I need to improve the world around me.

I'm tired.  I need a vacation from being me.  But the responsibilities and obligations are always there.  Maybe a Zen master would say that we are not separate from our responsibilities and obligations.  Of course we are separate, but we are also not separate.  If you did not have your so-called problems, you would not be you.  You would be like water dissipating into the air if you did not have some rocks and sand to bounce off of and flow around.  Our very existence is energy bouncing off energy, and it gives you the illusion of everything that you see, everything that you are.  So do not fight your existence.

Go.  Go.  Go.

Fight.  Fight.  Fight.

Checking In

But what am I checking into?  With whom?  I'm very slowly getting my life together, but as fast as some things get taken off my to-do list, 10 more get added on.  Or at least that's what it feels like.  I'd love to write a lot right now, but alas, I need to sleep.  I need to be better in many ways.

Frustration.

Sigh.

Woof

I was, relatively, super productive today.  But I still feel so far away from accomplishing the things that I actually want.  That's a tough feeling to deal with.  I even meditated not that long ago, which usually helps me clear away some of this angst.  Ironically, I was talking with my colleague today about how important it is not to set expectations for ourselves that are too high, and yet I'm doing that right now.

Stay strong.  Fight fight fight.  Go go go.  Be awesome.

Update

It's been a while.  Life is, in general, on an upswing.  I moved into a new apartment with my old friend.  My new job has been going great, seemingly.  The funny thing is now I have a lot to lose.  If I somehow lost my job, I would be in very hot water, as I'd have to find a way to pay my debts and my rent.  So, yeah, really hoping this continues working out.

This morning I was not feeling super great.  I was in a negative thought spiral.  Interestingly, I just started berating myself about these negative thoughts.  How can you be so negative? I chided myself.  Why don't you focus on what you DO have going for you instead of what you don't?  And that basically did the trick, I started focusing on the truth of my position in life.  My life might not be anywhere close to how I want it to be, but, realistically, whose is?  My life is really good at this point in time.

That being said, I know that I do need to improve.  I need to improve a lot.  I'm not being responsible with my money or my time.  I work hard and I'm not a complete wreck, but my goal is to be very productive outside of work and I'm usually far from it.  Maybe it's not realistic...I imagine most people have an innate need for several hours of relaxation/cool-down time after 8+ hours of work and however many hours of commuting.  Work is stressful.  But I bet there is a way to tune/calibrate one's behaviors and mindset such that productivity outside of work can be rewarding.  It probably all boils down to routines and rules.

It's tough to know how hard I should be on myself.  I'm worried that my Chinese, which was going really strong, is starting to regress heavily (again).  Another thing to add to my list of routines to build.  Sigh.

Anyway, good to get some thoughts down in print again.  It's weird how forming raw emotion into something that is regulated by spelling and grammar is kind of therapeutic.

I need to remind myself to keep improving.  Keep being productive.  Turn yourself into one of the world's most amazing people.  Don't let others slow you down or encourage bad habits.  Be brilliant.  Be awesome.

Overwhelmed...and Life after Non-Existence

I feel very overwhelmed.  There's just too much of everything.  I guess I need to go for a walk.

Edit: Before I let it slip my mind, here's one thing I was thinking about the other day.

I was watching some videos about atheism and hell, and the speaker said that he didn't believe in hell (for good reasons), and that he believes that after we die, "nothing happens."

In terms of how "normal" people seem to classify various ideologies, I think I'm closer to being an atheist than a theist, but actually I consider myself to be a "pantheist".  I'm not sure I believe anything "happens" after we die, but I find it strange when people think that science provides no evidence for life after death.

I think a lot of people who consider themselves atheists and who believe that nothing happens after we die would think it's fair to say that, after death, we are non-existent.  So we are alive/we exist, and then we do not.  But this presents (in my view), a problem, because they would presumably also say that we are non-existent before we born.  So there is a period of non-existence, and then we do exist.  And that is exactly what they are saying they think is impossible.

There is evidence of life after non-existence.  We are all living that evidence right now.