This is not a fancy blog or one meant to be read by anyone but me and a few significant "others", interested in my personal journey...yep, just a journal and place to bookmark information for achieving long and short term goals . So, if you stumbled here by mistake...not here to entertain you , just sayin .
At the beginning of 1990 , I decided to change the whole direction of my life..."go to hell, go directly to hell. do not pass Go, do not collect 200 dollars ." By stopping..... using chemicals, and sex and cutting myself, and dreaming of suicide......as an escape from the pain of being in this world . I did not decide that I was no longer an alien stuck on this planet by mistake , I did not stop feeling the confusion of interacting with most humans or end my own self-loathing .
What I did do, was make a decision that I was going to stop listening to the "professionals" who wanted me to focus on all that crap...and just try and live as best as I could, while on this planet .
Sounds much easier then it was, believe me . It took a couple of years and a lot of help from some very caring professionals who taught me some useful skills....
_ Think about who you were before you started escaping the world and go back to the things that made you feel alive and happy . For me that was animals, plants, learning ,creating art, using my body for good not evil=exercise, (yoga, weight lifting, hiking, biking, dancing). You can see that the glaring thing missing from that equation is one that would be at the top of most folks list...."People"..(more about that some other time, it is still something I'm working on )
_Everything you think about how awful humans are to themselves, each other, the world maybe true, but if you keep focusing on that, at the exclusion of the things you love about the world...you will get depressed again . Being dead wont change any of that bad stuff . So, do what you need to avoid being sucked dry by the negative . When you feel strong, fight the evil you can, but changing yourself IS changing the world, so start there . Selfish is better then dead .
_Grow up a little . Take responsibility for your own needs .
Really look at your weaknesses and see which ones you can improve .
Find hero's and learn from them .
Get organized (personal weakness due to ADD), keep lists or other tools to help
Stop saying...."it's not fair"...It's not fair ! But no one, especially yourself, needs to hear that .
Ok, so this is just a bit of what I recall from my couple of years of transitioning from escaping the world to trying to learn to live in it . 30 years later and everything is not perfect but I still embrace most of the same principles . I did get help with a low thyroid, (can cause depression) and take a low dose anti-depressant because some things are chemical and my family are poster-children for depression and suicide . I did us alcohol again about 10 years ago, without escaping to much, but it is still something I prefer to avoid , especially if I am only using it to escape instead of as a tonic for sensory issues(more about that when I blog about my Aspergers) . It is a chemical depressant after all, and can be used for good or evil in my opinion .
After being sober for 10 years, I promised my newly sober self...to take another look at my life and reassess if all this work was worth the effort . Did I still think being in a physical body held more pleasure then pain ? If not, 2000 seemed like a nice round number to stop "being" . It was round and I would be 36, which is my birth year reversed "63" . Not that I'm into numerology, just liked the art of all those numbers together . Well, it happened that things were still not great but not horrible and I decided to give myself a bit more time.....the great thing about being an indecisive/procrastinator is that you can always kill yourself tomorrow . (unless your brain damaged or physically unable but I decided to risk that and just put it off a bit longer . )
It's now 2013 and I had an epiphany last month . One that I find very funny to have not thought of before .....(isn't it always like that with these things). Turns out that in my working towards not killing myself, I sort of forgot to actually embrace life , I was setting the bar pretty low, in my opinion . That is probably where I needed to set the bar 30 years ago, but the closer I get to not having a choice about dying...(getting old here), the more I think I should re-evaluate that bar . As things were 30 years ago, accomplishing some of my dreams, were also much less access able because the tools I needed were not available but that has changed . Number one change.....
The computer and other people who share my interests . We still maybe in the minority, but what seemed to be something infested with "pot smoking" wantabe hippies that got on my last nerve , now seems to attract other nerds interested in alternative life styles, liberal politics and self sufficiency . (In my "day", we had the same group of "hippies" but they were called punks and though they espoused alternative life styles, were really more interested in getting drunk, breaking shit and getting laid ...yea, your 20's can kind of be like that ).
I know that some of these new trends are just that, "trends", but there have always been a core of people that try and find an alternative to what they see as a "dead life" and those folks will be around long after this trend moves on . I want to be a part of that , and with the missing link of the internet.... to buy, share information and resources with like minded, and a market to sell and barter....I think it is finally doable . Do not think, that I think, this is an easy life, but if I can use a cycle to cut grass, dig ditches and take care of 114 dogs at one time...I think I'm not afraid of hard work as long as my body holds out .
Yea, my body, that is one of those possible weak links in my plans . It's not that I'm in "bad shape", especially for my age (almost 50), as they say . The problem is that many of the things I want to do will take physical endurance, flexibility and strength . It seems to me that in Western society, many people see old age as making a concession to let yourself fall apart .(I think it is just a slow form of suicide for people who are actually depressed and wont admit it to themselves) Never felt much pain until the past year after a car accident....fuckin drunk texters get off the fuckin road !!! Most days it is tolerable but recent yoga has made me feel more optimistic about being able to reverse some of the problems in my shoulder/arm and change of life style in general, I hope will help with the rest of this problem .
It's worth while to me to do a bit more fact finding about other cultures who are forced to do physical work into their later years . How are they doing that, what are they eating, using for pain relief, etc . I think we have been brainwashed into believing that our lives should be spent on a treadmill in our youth , then in a chair behind a desk in middle age until we retire to a wheelchair. Not much to live for in that scenario .
Some of what I have seen about "reversing age, living stronger,etc.. in our culture, has been tainted with our consumerist way off life . It has turned it into trend/gimmick to make us buy more things to try and run away from death . (I see this on a lot of the best places to get free information, they do so, to lure you into buying their...."whatever" . So what , more power to them, a lot of of the oils and herbs are still better for our economy then cheap plastic crap you would be buying at Target and some are actually small family businesses that I want to support . It's just good to keep in mind when your checking out such sites .
So, what the hell is this blog about anyway ? One of my weaknesses....a huge obstacle in being my most effective , is getting and staying organized . Yep, it's the twin super powers of Aspergers and ADD that I blame for this in me . They are a huge assert in finding information and staying focused to read it but....I get so focused on every little vein in one leaf of the tree tha,t I do not see the eagle swooping down to peck my eyes out because I am disturbing their nest . I'm hoping that between this blog, pinterest, and facebook, I can finally find a way to gather and organize all the leafs, to see the tree as one piece ....do-able ? I don't know, but I think it's worth my effort and I actually love learning, so seems like a win/win .The majority of the things I'm interested in are past interests, so I already have a foundation of information but now I finally have a way to get it all in one place so can put the puzzle together .
I will be adding ....in an organized way,....working from the roots up.... my attempts to grow this tree, this dream, this life I have decided to finally embrace . This IS the seed .
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