An Important Reminder

Posted on August 17, 2022 by admin

Me: “Sawyer?”

Sawyer: “Yeah?”

Me: “I don’t understand humans. So much hostility, fighting, hatred, and cruelty. Dogs might have an occasional spat but nothing like what goes on between so many humans. Why don’t they get it? Why are humans so cruel to each other while you dogs are so loving?”

Sawyer: “We don’t have time to be cruel. Humans typically get 70-80 years of life. That’s a lot of time to wander around, get lost, and forget the most important things. We dogs only get 10-20 years, give or take. We’re more aware of death so we focus on living our best lives while we can. No time for drama, especially not cultivating, sharing, and celebrating it.”

Me: “If my family history is any indication, I’ve probably got another 50 years at least to live. How do I remember what’s important and keep from being cruel over that much time?”

Sawyer: “Remember me, along with all the other furry friends and humans you’ve loved and lost. Time is precious and it’s not worth wasting on drama. You never know how much time you have with special people, whether animal or human. Don’t waste the time you do have by being mean. Make your time count. Be loving.”

Me: “I will. I wish humans would learn from dogs.”

Sawyer: “Some already have. Others are learning right now and still others might learn someday. Whatever anybody else does, you keep learning and loving. And make sure to practice all those lessons I taught you.”

Me: “I’m doing my best. Some days are harder than others.”

Sawyer: “As long as you’re doing your best each day, that’s the secret. Even if your best today is different than your best tomorrow.”

Me: “Thanks, this helped a lot. I love you Sawyer.”

Sawyer: “I love you Ian.”

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What Next?

Posted on August 10, 2022 by admin

My dog Sawyer’s death has turned my life upside down. In the nearly four months since I lost him, I’ve questioned tons of things I thought were settled, realized how much pain I still have to heal (both pain related to Sawyer and pain that’s been with me my whole life), and felt terrified to face a world full of mean people without my best friend to comfort me. I’ve also thought a lot about the apparent pointlessness of most modern things and wondered what’s it all building toward.

As many things in the outer world I’ve wanted to see change, I’ve found even more in my own inner world. I can think of at least a few times in my life in which I realized that what I was doing had either stopped working or never worked in the first place. The most notable occasions were 2017 and 2020. Losing Sawyer has brought me to that same realization this year. In the past, I didn’t know where to turn or what to do; all I knew was that I had to stop doing what I had come to realize was making life worse for myself and others. That brings me to my big question: What next?

I wish I had a good answer. There are plenty of small projects I work on each day and even a few big plans I have for the immediate future, but long-term plans or plans for who I want to be as a person? Incredibly fuzzy. I can say for certain, though, that I’m beyond done with the pattern my life seems to have fallen into over the past year or two: endlessly pouring myself out for others to no avail, “socializing” by talking endlessly about shallow things without some greater point to the exchange, and getting drained or dragged around by negative humans. No more of that.

For more than a month now, I’ve been in a phase of hating humans, especially those who make life miserable for myself as well as the few humans and the many animals I love and care about. This has resulted in me mostly keeping to myself at home, along with working through lots of pain. When I do interact with other humans, it’s usually briefly and in shallow ways to avoid the risk of further pain. Fortunately, the few deeper interactions I’ve had lately have been overall positive.

I’m finally starting to embody the fact that I don’t exist to please others and that I can’t pour myself out or endlessly restrain myself just so someone doesn’t feel feel slightly upset or uncomfortable. That’ll either kill me from stress or give me a life so miserable that I’d prefer being dead. I’ve understood this intellectually for years but have been unable to fully practice it until relatively recently. This is both scary as it’s new territory for me and exciting as I’m finally making real progress in an area where I’d always previously felt stuck.

Along with this, I’ve spent the past few weeks working through an enormous amount of rage over how others have treated me throughout my life (from the violence in my early years to the yelling, intimidation, mockery, and other kinds of cruelty in the years since then). I’m determined to put a stop to that. I’m upping my boundaries game, avoiding any and all toxic conversations and situations, and prioritizing those who treat me as I want to be treated. I’m also working hard to refrain from adopting the bad behavior of toxic humans so I don’t sink to their level.

All of that inner work has me feeling closer to where I was emotionally from late March through mid April of this year. Some days, I’m even getting the same sensations I had back in late August through most of September last year. While I’m not feeling exactly like I was during either of those time periods, I am feeling much better than I’ve felt for most of this year. Steadily increasing peace alongside the courage to face even my most painful emotions are always signs that I’m on the right track. That gives me hope that I’ll eventually get back to those places or, perhaps, even better ones.

Despite what I said a few paragraphs ago, I don’t spend huge amounts of time dwelling on the negative stuff. I’m more concerned with making good use of my remaining life so I have few to no regrets at the end. I’d hate to turn out like some people (both fictional characters in cautionary tales and real humans) who doubled down on their character flaws, gradually got worse over their lives, and died miserable and alone. Should that happen to me, even if I were to accomplish most of my goals and attain success by worldly standards, I will consider myself to have been a complete failure. Someone who had small victories in trivial areas but lost in the most important parts of life. I won’t let that happen.

I’ve become convinced that none of the ideas I would love to see take place will ever happen on a large scale. Those ideas all depend on enough humans healing their trauma, practicing effective communication, and choosing the high road almost all the time, none of which I can imagine happening now or anytime in the future. All my desperate efforts in that direction seem to have been totally fruitless so I’m going to stop them. I’ll still talk about and encourage these ideas through my blog and my eventual books as I enjoy writing about them, and I’ll still help my loved ones where I can, but I no longer expect any of that to transform the world. I certainly no longer feel the pressure to single handidly solve all the world’s problems and save everyone in the world, which is a huge relief. My only remaining hope is that these changes will happen on a small scale, such as my close friends and family members finding lasting healing, peace, and wellbeing. I don’t know how to get there from here. I barely know my next steps at this point. I simply hope that, with everything I’ve learned over the past five or six years, I will be able to move away from what isn’t currently working and move toward something that does work.

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Innocence: Loss and Recovery

Posted on August 3, 2022 by admin

Innocence is one of the most precious, if not the most precious, character traits there is. The ability to look wide-eyed at the world, marvel at all the grandeur of life, see the myriad untapped possibilities in everything, and treat each day as an adventure. So inspiring. So pure. So beautiful.

Unfortunately, innocence is almost exclusively present in young kids, and not even for very long. So much innocence is lost so early in life. Kids are taught from young ages about the world and all the horrible things in it while many of the wonderful things are left out. What’s worse is that they’re also taught that the horrible state of the world is just how it’s always been, always will be, and has to be (for some unexplained reason). Along with that, they’re discouraged from making positive change, labeled a dreamer, foolish, idealist, utopianist, and other insulting names for seeing the possibilities for a better world. The small amount of encouragement they get comes when they’re pushed to join all sorts of pointless causes that have never changed the world for the better but, in many cases, have made it worse. All of that keeps them from having the time, energy, or money for the actual things that can improve the world, which tend to be the things they’re naturally drawn towards.

This can easily lead to many conflicting voices in one’s head: shaming, encouraging, stifling, uplifting, discouraging, hopeful, pessimistic, etc. All of that comes from bitter, cynical people in one’s life, especially during one’s formative years (parents, siblings, other family members, teachers, neighbors; that negativity can also come later on from bosses, coworkers, romantic interests, etc). Those many negative voices cover over and trample one’s innate innocence in order to preserve the status quo. As a result, most adults no longer see any magic in life and push their negative, cynical viewpoints onto anyone and everyone around them.

This behavior is unique to humans. Animals are too innocent for the cynicism, envy, endless comparisons, and other negative qualities that have infected the human race. I’m convinced this is why animals are so wonderful and why so many humans become so attached to their pets. My dog Sawyer definitely had a sense of innocence about him his entire life. It was one of many things that made him so loving and so lovable. His death has taken a lot of my innocence. I’ve felt much more on edge and distrustful of humans since I lost him. This has gone to unprecedented levels for me over the past few weeks. Despite regularly letting go, I still feel extremely sad, angry, and suspicious of all but my closest friends and family members.

My focus at this point is on recovering as much of my lost innocence as possible. I’m spending a lot of time alone so I can focus on healing. This prevents me from pushing my pain onto anybody else and allows me to be myself instead of getting dragged around by trauma responses when I do interact with somebody. I’ve also been enjoying lots of things I once did as a kid, from ice cream to songs to videos covering some of my favorite childhood TV shows. Inner child work that I learned from Homecoming has also been extremely helpful and pleasant. Lastly, I hope that fondly remembering my life with Sawyer as well as practicing the many lessons he taught me helps me recover the peace and innocence that left me when he did.

I long for quiet company, quality time with animals, watching a sunset in silence, going on nice walks, and other simple pleasures in life. I strive to be pure in my motives, be genuine with myself and others, see the good in everybody, and give everybody the benefit of the doubt until they show me they’re untrustworthy. Perhaps most importantly, I want to give myself all the love, affirming words, support, and comfort I needed as a kid. I’m not fully there with any of that but I’m getting closer. Getting here has been an extremely gradual process. I still feel extremely vulnerable and I trust almost nobody right now. Fortunately, the few personal interactions I’ve had lately have been positive and were either energizing or at least not draining. Doing extra letting go sessions this week has also made me feel much better. If I keep this up, I’m certain that I’ll soon be back to my usual self and, eventually, to my best self. My innocent, childlike self.

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Reflections on Time

Posted on July 27, 2022 by admin

Time is my least favorite thing of all

Especially when it gives my loved ones a call

Looking at fond memories makes me feel blue

Seeing but not touching; I can’t break through

Mocked by Time as I can’t go back

It forces me forward on my life’s track

Always giving me friend after friend

Only to take them all from me in the end

They go away and I stick around

Wondering why it’s not my body being put in the ground

So many regrets from how certain things went

Chances I wasted and Time poorly spent

I can’t change a thing no matter how hard I try

All I can do is watch my past and cry

Can’t even go back for a visit to show

Those dear to me how I still love them so

I’d love to visit my grandfather one more time

To see Sawyer while still in his prime

Only in dreams can I return to the past

For reunions and visits that don’t ever last

This will only continue in life as I age

Losing loved ones fills me with sadness and rage

Cruelest of all has got to be

The difference in lifespans of Sawyer and me

I’m still young at nearly thirty years old

Yet Sawyer a senior dog at less than half my age, so I’m told

He died in old age and went away from me

Now I have to live my whole life without my best buddy

Even if we’re reunited forever someday

I still have a long life to live before we get to play

How can anyone find this all right?

Or sleep soundly while this weighs on them each night?

I don’t have the answers; all I can do is my best

To live a good life before it’s my turn to rest

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2018: My Favorite Year

Posted on July 20, 2022 by admin

Of all the years I’ve lived, 2018 was by far my favorite year and the best year of my life. I’ve thought this for many years now, including during 2018 itself. Although it contained some troubles, 2018 was mostly a super easy year for me. Almost everything that could have gone well did exactly that and the rest mostly went in a good direction. It was a nice break from the hard stuff in life, especially after 2017, which was one of the hardest years of my life.

All through 2018, I had my dog Sawyer, he was in good health, and we spent a lot of time together. Even with a robust work schedule, lots of hobbies, plenty of day trips, and several trips lasting a whole weekend or even longer, Sawyer and I still got a lot of quality time that year. As with every year I had him, he improved all the wonderful things of 2018 and reduced the pain of the hard things. Since I hadn’t yet developed even a fraction of the emotional intelligence I have now, he gave me a lot of love and comfort during my few struggles that year. All the wonderful time I spent with Sawyer in 2018 is a huge part of what made that year so great.

My skills as a dancer improved tremendously in 2018. This I attribute to a number of things. Perhaps most importantly, I went out swing dancing two to three times a week for most of the year. This included two regular dances and a third dance that came after a weekly lesson. Regular practice alongside weekly instruction took me from a near beginner to at least intermediate level quite quickly. Plus I put a lot of effort into getting feedback from instructors, going into great detail about things I could improve, and spending lots of time working on improving all the small things. Additionally, I went to my first two weekend dance workshops that year. I danced for many hours at each of those, learned a lot of new stuff, got way better at lots of old stuff, and took extra time to visit with one of my closest friends during the second workshop. Plus I learned Balboa in February of that year. As my familiarity and skill with Balboa increased, it soon became my favorite dance and remains so to this day.

I loved hanging out several times a week in 2018 with people close to me, whether we met to dance or do other things together. I had plenty of meaningful and fun experiences with dance folks even outside of dancing. We had lots of beach days, went blueberry picking, hung out in Itchetucknee Springs, and enjoyed lots of parties, evenings out, and other smaller events together. Some events were ones I hosted or made possible. These included a beach day, an Airplane! watch party, and the juggling event that I started that June and still host once a month. It had been many years since I regularly hung out with people just for fun so this was a wonderful feature of 2018 for me.

Additionally, for much of 2018, I talked to one or more of my best friends on the phone almost every night. We’d often talk on my way home from work. Mostly about things going on in our lives, plans to visit each other, fond memories, and other comforting subjects. That was a wonderful way for us to keep in touch, enjoy our time together, grow our friendship, and be there for each other when one of us went through a hard time.

My life outside of dancing was also wonderful overall in 2018. It helped a lot that I left a job I hated in early 2018 and continued the one I had started in the latter half of 2017 that was much more tolerable. A better work schedule gave me more money and more time to spend on cool things. This also helped me rebuild my finances after many financial struggles in 2017. Although it was a highly physical job, I still had plenty of energy to dance, juggle, go to the gym, and do lots of other physical activities. All of that meant I could go out more often with more people to more cool places and do more fun things than I ever had before.

Although I officially started my personal growth journey in 2017, 2018 is when the rubber truly met the road. That’s when I started reading regularly again. After some early inconsistency, I settled on reading at least one chapter of a book each day and stuck to that pretty well throughout the year. Most of the books I read that year and since then have been self-improvement books focused on emotions, communication, making positive change, developing good habits, etc. Getting back into the habit of reading regularly and reading so many useful books built much of the foundation for the incredible personal growth I experienced in 2018 and beyond.

Additionally, I started blogging in August 2018. For a little over a year, I put up a new blog post every day before switching to a weekly posting schedule in early 2020. This blog has been a wonderful way to get my ideas out there, help myself and others, piece my thoughts together, improve my speaking ability, inspire a lot of creative work elsewhere in my life, and improve my writing more than possibly anything else I’ve ever done. It’s one of several wonderful things I started in 2018 that is still improving my life to this day.

The third big step I took in the way of personal development in 2018 came when I started unicycling on Christmas Day after being gifted a brand new unicycle. Although I couldn’t do much at all with it in the final few days of that year, I did start practicing with it the day I got it and every day since, thus starting the habit that paved the way for my current skills. My unicycling journey has shown me that even seemingly impossible tasks can be accomplished with enough persistence and practice (and some useful pointers from people who unicycle better than I do). It’s also greatly improved my balance, allowed me to immediately pick up rola bola, added numerous skills that I can use for fun and performance, and given me some regular exercise every day since I started.

I can only think of two majorly painful experiences during 2018. The first was being turned down romantically in the spring. Even though she was as kind and gentle as possible and we were still on pretty good terms afterward, I still felt a lot of pain from that. My emotional intelligence was basically nonexistent back then so it took years before I even started properly working through that pain. Once I did, all the pain went away and our friendship has never been better. The other painful event came in December. That’s when I learned that all my friends are acquaintances but not all acquaintances are my friends. I learned that the hard way and it took a long time for me to get over that pain. Important lesson that I’ve carried with me ever since. There were a handful of much smaller painful experiences in 2018 but nothing like most of my years before or since then.

Despite some painful experiences, 2018 still feels like the song “Everything is Fine” by Josh Turner. I had a deep sense of contentment throughout that year. So many enjoyable things happened and more than made up for the few painful things. I’m still dependent on enough things going well for me to feel good, though not as much as I was in 2018. Despite having that dependency to a greater degree and also having even more emotional issues back then than I do now, enough things went well for me that it was an incredible year. I still say it was a better year for me than any year since, even though I’ve gained way more emotional intelligence and let go of a ton of negativity the past several years. I don’t know how much I’m romanticizing 2018 but, as far as I can remember, it was a wonderful year in almost every way possible.

This is not all in retrospect; 2018 seemed amazing even while it was occurring. I and at least one of my friends noticed how wonderful everything was as we were experiencing it. There’s a saying about wishing there were a way to know you were in the good times while they’re still happening. In 2018, that’s exactly what occurred. That year was so golden that some of us recognized it at the time rather than only realizing it after the fact.

As much as I miss 2018 and wish I could relive it, I know that it’s not coming back and that there’ll never be another year exactly like it, even if almost everything returns to how it was back then. Even if there’s regular swing dancing three times a week at the same venues that I frequented back then. Even if everyone who danced regularly during that year comes back to dance regularly again. Even if I get much more time with my loved ones once again. Even if most things were already in a great place or start going in the right direction soon for most people. Even if there’s an underlying sense of easiness, peace, and lesiure to everything. Even if all of that and everything else I haven’t mentioned about that wonderful year comes back, I still won’t have Sawyer. The best year of my life was made even better by having my little best buddy with me through the many sunny days and the few cloudy days. As much as I hope to have years as good as (and even better than) 2018, I know that they’ll never be as good as they could be since Sawyer won’t be with me in any of them. Him being gone reminds me that I can never go back to the good times, except in my memories.

As you can see, there was plenty of stuff that made 2018 a wonderful year for me. Although much of what went well for me that year was outside my control, I did do quite a bit to contribute to the excellence. Avoiding lots of previous destructive habits, developing positive habits, spending more time around good people and less time around bad people, pursuing enjoyable activities, lifting weights regularly, working on myself almost every day, etc. Sometimes it seems like 2018 was just a beautiful dream. So much was enjoyable and so little was painful. Everything seemed chill and relaxed that year. Nobody close to me seemed in a rush to get to a certain place in life, everyone seemed much more present than in later years, kindness abounded, and there was an easygoing feeling surrounding everything. I miss all of that. I miss the calm pace of that year. I also miss having lots of time to have a full schedule while still taking great care of myself and loving life. Now it seems like I have hardly any time for anything, especially my loved ones, my hobbies, and my own self-care. I don’t know if I’ll ever have another year similar to 2018. I hope I do. With how my life has gone the past several years, I could really use another wonderful year soon.

Posted in Adventures, Getting Along with Each Other, Inspirational People, Life Hacks, Personal Freedom, Self-Improvement, Swing Dancing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 2018: My Favorite Year

Healing Deep Trauma

Posted on July 13, 2022 by admin

I still have a lot of pain from being mocked, shamed, guilted, yelled at, hit, intimidated, and otherwise punished, hurt, and traumatized when I felt afraid and asked for help early in life. Even now, that often leads to me feeling overwhelmed, freezing up, and not knowing what to do. I don’t want to fail and I also don’t want to be punished for asking for help.

Some people who constantly work with customers say they’ve gotten used to people being hostile to them. I never have, despite all of my jobs having a huge amount of customer interaction. All I’ve gotten from repeated exposure to that hostility is more guilt and shame, which makes me feel even worse about myself and makes it even harder to handle the next hostile encounter. That’s why I so appreciate the people who use a gentle approach with me, like a loving parent or grandparent would take.

This is why I still feel upset at times with how people talk to me, even in small ways. For example, I might say I haven’t watched a certain movie or TV show and someone almost inevitably responds with “You’ve never watched it?!” Regardless of their intentions, that comes across as hostile to me and can put me into fight-or-flight mode, especially when I’ve already been feeling stressed for extended periods of time. Similarly, when someone makes a point emotionally in a difficult discussion, adrenaline rushes through my body and I tend to freeze up as I think they’re feeling upset at me and will lash out at me verbally, physically, or both. This isn’t because of what they say but how they say it as that fear response doesn’t happen if they make the exact same point calmly instead of emotionally.

I have to be careful what movies and TV shows I watch when I’m feeling real bad. If I’m already feeling stressed, I don’t want to add to that stress by seeing lots of hostile, dramatic exchanges between people, even if they’re fictional characters. I’ve wished since I was a kid that there could be more works of fiction in which things go well and we get to explore other worlds without running into the same problems that exist in our world. As I’ve gotten more knowledgeable about those problems and why they exist, I often come up with solutions to problems that regularly appear in fiction; that has been useful for improving my own interactions, either by getting them back on track or by preventing them from going off track in the first place.

It’s also hard for me to avoid assuming that I’ve said or done something to upset someone close to me if they go a long time without reaching out to me or returning my calls and texts. Even though I’ve often been unable to respond to someone for any number of reasons that don’t involve feeling upset at them, I still fear the worst when I’m on the receiving end of extended radio silence. That’s why a brief message that from someone saying that they’re unable to talk for a while puts me at ease; at least then I know that I haven’t messed up and that our relationship is fine.

That leads to several of the reasons I treat other people well: I know what it’s like to be treated poorly and don’t want to make anyone else feel that way, I fear what someone will do to me if I even unintentionally treat them badly, and I hope that my treating them well will result in them treating me well. The third point doesn’t always work as lots of people have treated me poorly even after I’ve treated them well, whether I did so out of genuine kindness or out of fear. Generally, however, people I treat well also treat me well, and vice versa.

I’m still working on healing all that trauma so I can be more decisive, ask for help as needed without feeling ashamed, and no longer be subject to a tsunami of internalized negative feelings when doing something even remotely confrontational. I also want to get better at voicing my concerns early on while the problems are still small. That’s when they’re easier to resolve and less likely to result in huge conflicts. Holding my tongue out of fear only leads to mounting frustration on my part, a chance of exploding when I’ve had enough, and problems sticking around instead of being eliminated.

More than anything else, that’s why I wish everyone would heal their trauma and communicate kindly. I hate the thought of having to deal with hostile people who make me feel in danger; that wouldn’t happen if everyone worked through their issues and treated each other well. Since I’ve learned repeatedly over the past several years that I can’t make anyone else heal, be kind, or communicate effectively, I do my best to heal myself, communicate as effectively as I can, spend lots of time with kind people, and spend as little time as possible with hostile people.

I’m still having a hard time trusting people, especially new people. These days I’m mostly keeping to myself and the few people I already know and trust. Hard to do otherwise since I’ve been burned so much the past few years by people who said they loved me while consistently treating me like garbage.

Much of my time is spent avoiding the urge to verbally blast people or get into fights, especially over things that don’t matter. Though this can still be difficult, it gets easier the more trauma I heal. I find going at my own pace to be helpful. I also like to pause before responding, avoid speaking until I’ve gathered my thoughts, and steer clear of simply affirming what someone else has said without adding to it, going somewhere with it, or disagreeing if I do genuinely disagree. All of that makes me less inclined to respond or act with hostility, less interested in the egoic payoffs of a fight, better able to see peaceful paths, and more inclined to follow them.

I’ve spent most of this year working on healing all of this trauma. I still have a long way to go but I’ve made lots of progress already. It helps that I worked on some of the trauma in 2020 and went much deeper in 2021. Getting a head start before things started unraveling for me late last year gave me a big advantage. It made the end of 2021 and all of 2022 thus far manageable, even when it felt overwhelming for most of my waking days. I can’t imagine how I’d be feeling right now if I hadn’t worked through so much before 2022 started.

All this healing is even more difficult without my dog Sawyer. I don’t have my little best friend anymore to comfort me after interacting with hostile people, remind me what love looks like, encourage me to be the best person I can be, and help me be that person. I’m glad I healed as much as I did during Sawyer’s life; I wish I had done even more healing before he died. At this point, I’m hoping that my improved communication abilities will allow me to avoid most of the hostility that could arise from interacting with people who consistently choose the low road and that my increased emotional intelligence will finally let me shrug off hostility when it does occur. All I can do is my best, and my best gets a little better every day.

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Rest, Recovery, and Growth

Posted on July 6, 2022 by admin

I’ve noticed some people want to grow continuously. They undergo a number of challenges and stressors (often going out of their way for them) in the hope of reaching new heights as a result of growing from each one of them. Here’s my take on this.

To start, constant growth is impossible. There are limits as to how much anyone or anything can grow physically, intellectually, emotionally, and in every other way. Aside from that, nobody can grow without appropriate amounts of rest and recovery. It’s not the pain or challenge that makes you grow but how well you recover from it. Dedicated athletes understand this well. As intensely and consistently as they train, the successful ones know that they have to be equally as committed to their recovery if they’re going to make it in their chosen sport. That’s why they prioritize good nutrition, quality sleep, sufficient amounts of food, effective stress management, and a variety of other aspects of self-care before and after an intense training session. If they don’t, then they risk slower progress, regression, injury, and losing to their competitors who prioritize recovery.

What doesn’t kill you may traumatize you. If it does, it’ll take a huge amount of time and work to heal from that trauma. Some things build character and others build trauma responses that can take a whole lifetime to heal. This brings us to the fight-or-flight system. That’s another name for the sympathetic nervous system. It’s intended to get us out of dangerous situations by diverting our bodily resources to wherever they’re most needed in an emergency. While the sympathetic nervous system is meant to turn on only in dangerous situations, it remains active constantly or almost constantly in many people who have undergone a great deal of trauma. This can result in chronic anxiety, depression, digestion issues, sleeping trouble, mood swings, poor decision making, and a host of other problems.

There is also the parasympathetic nervous system. This is what activates after the danger has passed and allows us to resume a state of calmness. It can be activated through a number of calming activities: floating, letting go, meditating, listening to soothing music, watching a comforting video, etc. Relaxing physically and emotionally allows the body to heal in ways it can’t while under the endless stress of being in constant fight-or-flight mode. When one system is active, the other is inactive. Good health requires regularly deactivating the sympathetic nervous system and activating the parasympathetic nervous sytem.

I’ve known several people who were regressing rather than growing because they faced endless challenges without ever taking time to recover. They took out their pain and stress on nearly everyone around them (even people they claimed to love) due to never getting enough time to rest and heal. They were always in fight-or-flight mode and often chose fight even in casual situations. Some of them intellectually understood all of this and even knew multiple ways to activate their parasympathetic nervous systems but they rarely, if ever, practiced what they preached. That was also the case for those who knew how to communicate effectively but almost never did. That showed me that it’s not just about knowing what to do or understanding this stuff intellectually; actually putting that knowledge to work on a daily basis is what brings good results.

So many people seem to be addicted to challenges. They’re always looking for something stressful, whether it’s a difficult sport, verbal fight, physical fight, and so on. What kind of growth are they looking to get from this, and to what end? When they do complete one of their many challenges, they don’t even get to enjoy the good feelings that come with that accomplishment before moving onto the next challenge. As a result, they always appear to feel restless and unsatsified in life.

Even if biting off more than you can chew doesn’t traumatize you, in can still hurt you in other ways. It’s easy to get hurt by taking steps that are way too big. Plenty of people end up with lifelong injuries from lifting way too much weight, running far too fast or far too long, getting into the ring with fighters way above their skill level, etc. Any good weight training program for new lifters will involve starting light and gradually ramping up the weight as strength increases. The Couch to 5k running program starts off with short bursts of running in between long stretches of walking; the amount of running gradually increases and the amount of walking gradually decreases as the runner builds up endurance over time. And a quality fighting instructor will start out by teaching new fighters the basics and only take them to the next level once they’ve mastered the previous one. Doing things once you’re ready for them prevents injuries, learning bad technique, and other issues that can come from rushing instead of progressing steadily and resting as needed.

Additionally, I disagree with the popular notion that growth only occurs outside of one’s comfort zone. I’ve experienced plenty of growth from within my comfort zone. I’ve also grown through gradually expanding my comfort zone instead of instantly exploding it open. That’s how exposure therapy works. You start off with a bit of interaction with something you fear. Once you feel comfortable at that level, you slowly add more interaction over time until you no longer fear that thing. This is how I’ve been successful at nearly everything I’ve done. I start by building habits around what I want to do. These almost always start off slowly, such as by spending a few minutes a day working at a particular thing. Once that thing becomes a daily practice, my focus on it expands until it fits in nicely with my other routines. This is a much better approach for me than jumping fully into something, immediately feeling overwhelmed, and then backing away from it for a long time if not forever.

I enjoy a combination of intensity and relaxation for a sustainable, enjoyable life. There are days in which I do lots of physical activity: my monthly juggling event, helping someone move, doing manual labor for someone I know, etc. I often feel better as a result of the increased activity; I tend to sleep better, feel more inner peace, and shrug off things that would normally upset me. All of that, however, depends on me getting a break to rest and recover after the activity is over. If I get that break, then I can enjoy a nice meal, stroll, or conversation. If I don’t get it, then I’ll feel even more exhausted, stressed, and irritable. I may also get sick if my body is so busy attempting to recover from too much activity that it can’t fight off a disease I’ve picked up.

I make sure to give myself extra time to rest and recover during challenging times. Since I lost my dog Sawyer a few months ago, I’ve been pursuing comfort as best as I can each day. This includes getting enough sleep, spending lots of quiet time by myself after being around people, releasing a lot of painful emotions every day, and avoiding negative situations whenever possible. Making time to rest and heal from this and other painful past situations is allowing me to recover and enjoy life again.

Recently, I had two hard weeks in a row. These consisted of tons of emotional pain, many nights of rough sleep, and feeling on edge each day. I needed a good week and, fortunately, that’s what I got in the final week of June thanks to much more letting go, consistently good quality sleep, avoidance of negative situations, and quality time with people close to me. All the rest and recovery I got that week did the trick. I now feel better overall than I have in a long time.

Although I can’t know precisely what would have happened if I’d had three bad weeks in a row, I do know from past experience that I’d have gone to a bad place. Whenever I’ve been unable to catch a break for that long, I’ve felt like a video game character who gets knocked down, starts to get up, and then gets knocked down again before he’s fully back on his feet and stable. I need time to get up, dust myself off, and then carry on. Those times when I couldn’t do that were always extremely painful, draining, and demoralizing, and it took me a long time to recover from them once they were over.

If I have to do something quite stressful, I’ve found a comfort sandwich to be incredibly beneficial. A comfort sandwich is where I do something pleasant followed by the stressful task and then finish with another pleasant activity. That’s much nicer than having nothing but stress all the way through or having a stressful ending to an otherwise pleasant experience. A bad ending can totally ruin my day even if I enjoyed everything else about it up until that point so I do whatever I can to make each day end on a good note, especially during stressful times.

In general, I prefer to enjoy what I’m doing instead of constantly challenging myself to get better at it. If I’m hating activities I do for fun rather than loving them (which can easily happen if I focus too much on practice and too little on fun), then I change how I approach them so that I can enjoy them once again. Sometimes I enjoy doing something super easy for fun, rest, and relaxation. This is extra beneficial if I’ve done a lot of difficult things and failed at several of them; at that point, I just want something simple that I know I can succeed at fairly easily. That small sense of accomplishment always makes me feel better and allows me to carry on with other, more challenging things. Sometimes it’s good to simply play and have fun instead of constantly practicing and attempting to get better.

It’s taken me almost three months to heal as much as I have from losing Sawyer and I still have a long way to go. Most days I still take it slow, even slower at times than I did in the earliest days after his death. That has allowed me to continue healing and feeling better even as I go out to visit, play, help, and do other meaningful things with other people. If I had thrown myself right back into my work or anything else without dealing with the strongest emotions while they were still overwhelming for me, I doubt I’d have healed at all these past few months. If anything, I’d probably be feeling even worse due to all that pent-up stress. That very thing occurred in 2020 with intense pain (though still less intense than what I’ve felt this year) that I ignored for more than a month before I finally started working through it. I don’t go for the approach of putting my head down and burying myself in busyness. That’s never helped me feel better. Feeling through the emotions is the only thing that’s ever given me lasting relief.

Even before Sawyer’s death, I’d been taking lots of time this year to rest, recover, and heal from pain, trauma, and other negativity, whether from early in my life or earlier this year. The remainder of this year and each year after will be much better without all that negativity weighing me down. This is the most rest I’ve had in any year since 2018. That extra rest is allowing me to finally heal the deep-seated pain I’ve carried with me for most of my life. I don’t know yet where this is taking me but it’s already taken me farther than I ever imagined possible. I look forward to seeing where I go as I continue to heal, rest, recover, and grow.

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Adding the Positive

Posted on June 29, 2022 by admin

Last year, I wrote a post about removing the negative. I still find that to be the most effective thing for relieving stress, overcoming obstacles, and enjoying life. Lately, however, I’ve realized that adding the positive is also extremely important.

I started doing this a while after my dog Sawyer died. The first few weeks I mostly spent alone at home working through the worst pain I’ve ever felt. While I did go out occasionally and do some things with a few people close to me, I kept those jaunts to a minimum. I hated being away from home for more than a few minutes, I barely enjoyed anything I did, and I broke down a lot throughout each day. As I’ve continued reducing the pain through daily inner work, I’ve been able to go out more often, stay out longer, be around more people, and better enjoy whatever I do.

The past few months, I’ve gotten through several firsts without Sawyer in my life: going to my favorite restaurants I enjoyed during his life, seeing people I met after I got him, going places I regularly visited before his death, etc. Each first visit has been painful since I no longer have Sawyer to tell me goodbye before I go or greet me when I return home. Despite still being painful, the second time I’ve done each of those since his death has so far been overall easier than the first time. I hope that continues.

Most positive experiences come with a certain amount of distraction. When the experiences end and the distractions decrease, the pain becomes apparent once again. I often notice it in quiet moments during a fun event or when I experience something that reminds me of Sawyer. I still have to work through the pain even on my most distracting days. As I continue doing that, I remember more activities I enjoy doing, including things I enjoyed doing during Sawyer’s life. Having less pain makes it easier to enjoy those activities again and find them almost as satisfying as I once did. Doing enjoyable things also makes it easier to work through the pain; lots of positivity allows me to get down to the deep-seated negative emotions in ways I can’t when I’m barely getting through the day. As long as I have enough time to myself on the days I do a lot of fun things, I can work through a lot of pain and feel much better than I do on the days in which I seem to just be killing time until bed.

Adding the positive is a wonderful complement to removing the negative. In fact, I see them as two sides of the same coin; neither can truly be done without the other. Pursuing positive experiences and welcoming positive emotions lets me see that life goes on, even if it is different or less enjoyable for me than it once was. Avoiding negative scenarios and eliminating negative emotions allows me to enjoy the nice parts of life and better handle the rough parts. Sawyer was such a huge part of my life that it’s been a struggle to find new life for myself. That gets a little easier the more I work through the pain, the more I pursue past enjoyments, and the more I find new things worth doing. I look forward to adding even more positivity to my life and seeing what that does for me.

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Review of A Grief Observed

Posted on June 22, 2022 by admin

A Grief Observed is a short book by CS Lewis. Despite its brevity, it covers much of Lewis’s journey through his grief over the death of his wife, Joy Davidman, whom he calls H in the book. There’s lots of great stuff in here so let’s take a look.

The book starts off in the early days after H’s death. Lewis discusses everything in present tense as he recorded his emotional states and thoughts as they came up rather than reflecting on them later on. His writing covers grief, anger, fear, frustration, and a general sense of not knowing what to do in life outside of his usual work, which seemed to be largely unaffected.

There are three chapters of intense pain followed by one chapter of apparent relief. Lewis may not have been completely out of the woods by the end of the book but he seemed to be feeling much less pain than earlier, along with a renewed faith that he could carry on even without H. At times, he expresses remorse and perhaps even embarrassment at some things he felt, thought, and said earlier when the pain was more intense. Despite that, he doesn’t seem to be too hard on himself for being human and struggling accordingly.

It surprised me to see Lewis, a man best known for his strong defenses of Christianity in a number of other books, question and criticize God’s existence, power, and love in this book. That his grief was so strong as to bring up those feelings, thoughts, and words speaks volumes. I appreciated his courage in stating how he truly felt and how he saw things during the earliest stages of his grieving. Even though this book was originally part of his personal writings and was later published under a pseudonym before finally being republished under his own name, it can be hard to be honest even with oneself about the most painful feelings and the most controversial ideas, plenty of which Lewis included in A Grief Observed. It was wonderful to see him hold nothing back as he described a lot of the painful emotions that he experienced after losing H. He accomplished what few people are willing or able to do in private, let alone in a book made available to the general public.

Lewis talks about his fears of forgetting H and remembering a faulty idea of her rather than she herself. Alongside this was the difficulty of not having her there anymore to dash any incorrect ideas he has about her. I have had similar fears and difficulties since I lost my dog Sawyer. Recently, also I felt fear and frustration over occasionally imagining another dog in his place when recalling some memories from our time together. I wonder if Lewis ever briefly forgot how H looked in his recollections.

I don’t know how long it took Lewis to get to the peace he described in the final chapter but it was encouraging to see him arrive at that point, especially after a long period of him not knowing if he ever would. I’ve had similar experiences with my own grief over losing Sawyer. All the emotional work I’ve done these past few months has given me fleeting moments of peace that, I hope, will become longer, deeper, and more robust as I continue healing.

A Grief Observed is the first CS Lewis book I’ve read in several years. It’s been the most relatable to me of all of his books I’ve read thus far and I’m glad I read it. Reading it once gave me a lot of comfort and I’m planning to reread it soon. I think it could help a lot of people who are struggling with grief and other painful emotions, especially after losing a loved one. I even think it would be helpful regardless of whether or not one agrees with Lewis’s views on Christianity. As with Lewis, it looks like there will be healing for me even in places where it once seemed impossible, and I look forward to that.

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My Take on Endings

Posted on June 15, 2022 by admin

From November 2019 until November 2020, Mark Fischbach and Ethan Nestor-Darling hosted a YouTube channel called Unus Annus. They put up at least one video every day for a year and then deleted the channel. This was their plan from the start as a way to highlight two of their ideas: appreciate what you’ve got while you have it, and endings are what make things special and meaningful. Those ideas made up the underlying theme of their channel even if they didn’t talk about them in every video.

While I completely agree with appreciating what you have while you have it, I completely disagree with their notion about endings. I think it’s too simplistic and ignores too many important things. Endings by themselves don’t make things special or make us miss things once they’re over. After all, lots of things end without being missed: abusive relationships, diseases from which someone fully recovers, wars, boring conversations, etc. Plus the people who say that endings make things special and meaningful have no experience with things that last forever, so how can they know whether or not they’re correct?

Rather than making things meaningful, endings just make us miss the things we love once they’re gone. Effort, consistency, and love make things special, meaningful, and worth doing. The best relationships are the ones with the most consistent commitments to love, not the ones that end soonest. I have many relationships in my life that I absolutely love, whether they’ve been going for a short while or as long as I can remember. I also have had many bad relationships that ended and I’m glad they’re over. If endings made relationships special, then I’d miss the bad ones that have ended and not care as much (or at all) about the wonderful ones that are still going.

The longer a relationship lasts, the more love grows and deepens and the better both participants learns how to love each other (as long as they both remain committed to love). I know how to better love someone after I’ve known them for many years than I did when we had only known each other for a few months. I don’t see why that couldn’t continue without limit. I’ve never known two people in a committed, loving relationship who have said that their love was worse after many decades together than it was when they first started. If love continues to grow and relationships continue to improve without limit, then relationships that lasted literally forever would continually grow deeper, more loving, and more meaningful.

Even if there is any truth to this idea about endings making things meaningful, endings would still only be one piece of the puzzle. Another necessary piece would be the knowledge that whatever one loves will someday end. After all, lots of things end before someone becomes aware of that fact, if they’re ever aware of it at all. Plenty of little kids lose family members before they learn about death. Yet despite having little to no concept of death, young kids still want to spend time with friends and family, play games, watch TV and movies, etc. Their lives don’t lack meaning for the first several years and then suddenly become special and enjoyable once they learn about death. Why? Because they put effort into what they do. Even with the knowledge that something will end, effort and love are still needed to make it special.

All of the above plays into Unus Annus. Mark and Ethan didn’t simply put up slapdash videos for a year and then delete the channel. Hardly anybody, if anybody at all, would have cared about or missed the channel if that’s all they had done. Instead, they (and everyone else on their team) put a ton of time and effort into every single video they posted. They took time away from their own channels and lives to create the best content they could for Unus Annus. Content that showcased their personalities, humor, creativity, and hearts. As a result of all that effort and love, plenty of people who watched the channel while it was around miss it now that it’s gone, including myself. That wouldn’t have happened if it had simply existed for a while and then ended without ever including any effort or love.

My life with my dog Sawyer was special and loving even in our earliest days together. I rarely thought about his eventual death as dwelling too much on death can lead to desperation on my part, which is not love. It can also make me worry to the point that I miss out on a beautiful relationship while it’s still happening. Our love grew and deepened and strengthened over our 11 years together, even while he was still in good health and had many years of life ahead of him. I don’t believe that our relationship would have been any less special if it had lasted longer or if it had continued endlessly. I hope I’ll see Sawyer again someday and that we’ll be best friends forever. I don’t see why that would ruin our relationship or make our love for each other any less signficant; I actually find that notion appalling, along with the notion that our relationship was only special and meaningful since it was finite. That completely ignores what each of us did for each other and puts our wonderful relationship on the same level as every horrible relationship I’ve had. I hate that my time on Earth with Sawyer is over, I hope to see him again, and I’m grateful that we made our time together so wonderful, special, loving, and meaningful. I hope that my other relationships can get to a similar level if they’re not already there.

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