For a little while there I was getting in the weeds about the difference between being a writer and being a blogger. I started treating myself like a blogger with strict daily prompts and flooding your inbox with regular nonsense. It was as if I was treating Substack like a slot machine to try and get coins out of from strangers. In retrospect that doesn't feel great and I'm sure it showed in my writing as I focused more on trying to "get the sale" than I was just being expressive. I enjoyed having the prompts but I was simply posting too much and I apologize for that. And again, thanks for letting me know.
I suppose I have to forgive myself for that or I'll just keep apologizing.
The mood for me right now isn't a positive one, so I considered holding back from sharing but I suppose that wouldn't be in the spirit of what I've created in DOPEamine, which is to be honest about my experience. I'm learning what that means while still holding emotional boundaries. You don't need every detail of what's been going on, is what that means.
The overall tone is somber, tired, and a little defeated.
My task seems to consistently be one of letting go. Old narratives, old ways, old habits, and the old me. This is proving to be a lot longer and more arduous than I could have anticipated. But I follow each breadcrumb to its conclusion until there is more to deal with. I know at some point I'll realize that grabbing more breadcrumbs also needs to stop.
I have a few important narratives I'm working through at the moment. They can be summed up in a few keywords:
Victimization
Efforting
Scarcity
I've talked about the victim concept on the podcast before but it's a tricky one to be open about. It seems there are strong opinions about victims. Whether that's actual victims, having been a victim in the past, or repressing any notion of ever being a victim. Whatever I have to say about it usually elicits a response from one of those camps. But perhaps the provocation is needed and I'm overthinking my expression. The best I can do is share my story.
I've been a victim of ideals, my brain, expectations, and childhood programming. Those things happened and I can't change them. I have frustrating limitations with reading and writing as well as my cognitive preferences don't quite fit the expectations placed upon me. But it's my clinging to those aspects of me as an identity that holds me back and needs to be let go.
It simply translates to a whirlwind of excuses:
I can't do it. No point in trying. No one will help me. No one cares. There's not enough time. I don't have enough energy. I don't have enough money. I never learned that and it's too late. I'm not competent enough. No one cares about what I have to offer. There's nothing to do. There's nowhere to go. I have too many limits. Etc. Etc. Blah blah blah.
I see myself now doing that everywhere. To what end? What do I get out of having the excuses?
I appreciate Eckhart Tolle's take on the victim identity being a superiority complex in disguise:
Superiority? How could being a victim be a superiority thing? There's certainly a "specialness" to staying the victim and expectation to be looked at or treated differently. The victim is often at the whim of the villain or hero and something about being the target of someone's energy makes us feel special even if it's not positive energy. This is worth continuing to explore.
On the other end, I push through too much. In an attempt to repress my being a victim and still show up as a "manly man," I ignore the wounds and forge ahead anyway. Where's the balance? I suspect the balance is in accepting that those things happened and had an impact but I'm no longer in that kind of danger. For example, if I lost a leg in an accident it's stupid for me to pretend I still have a leg to walk on but also not a great choice to abandon life because of it. There's still a way to live even if it's not the conventional way. It simply involves some creativity, which the victim doesn't want to lean into.
My wife Molly, whom we just discovered is an ENTJ not an ENFP, is truly stepping in to provide care to compensate for the challenges I have. She recognizes the ways I've been psychologically injured and is so incredibly supportive. The letting go process is truly being facilitated by her and for that, I'm epically grateful.
And despite that, I still put pressure on myself to perform. The stress I place on myself to "effort" my way to financial independence and consistency is unnecessary yet difficult to shake.
Just yesterday I found myself saying that I'm so sick of "internet marketing" and the social media hamster wheel. I tried to quit and move on in 2022 and let myself get roped back in. I blamed others for this but I said yes. I did my best but I struggled through it. 14 years of trying to make brands or myself noticed and successful just wears on you. The social media hamster wheel or tossing posts into the ether feels like a bigger picture version of gambling our way to success that I need to admit I'm just not good at, can't keep up with, or am honestly no longer interested in.
I spent the day at the library yesterday reading books on astronomy and geology. That's the stuff I loved as a kid. I convinced myself that I could never go in that direction because we were poor and it would be so much school. I hated school and so I remember being discouraged. If I could track a moment that changed it all for me it was that thought process, which is a symptom of the Victim Identity at such a young age (8). In high school, I defaulted to tech and design because that's what I was presented with. Maybe I saw a tech as a way into something more but I knew I had given up on any clear direction a long time ago. Sitting in the library reading those books felt like a chance to talk to that little boy and say "It's not too late" and perhaps it truly isn't. And it's okay that you felt that way. I understand.
When I came home I across a YouTube video highlighting an astrophotographer who shared some photos of the sun. Have a look:
Isn't that the most incredible thing you've ever seen? It reminds me of a time, it may have been my early twenties or late teens...I'm not entirely sure, I went to The Franklin Institute in Philly where they had a large telescope pointed at the sun, and in real-time I was able to see the flares and movement of the sun. It was an awakening experience for me and probably to this day one of the coolest things I've ever seen in my life. They had to pry me away from that thing. The sun is just ever-dynamic, shifting, life-giving, and magnanimous. A truly abundant source of everything we've ever experienced.
I remember a George Carlin bit where he talked about worshipping the sun. Let me find it...
I wouldn't mind worshipping the sun a bit more. I've dug into astrology a bit lately, so I suppose that's fitting. But the literal physical sun is so easy to take for granted. It's always there even when the clouds are covered or our side of the planet is facing the other way. It's consistent, it's powerful and steady.
What the sun does for me is remind me of a healthy abundance and brings me into the moment.
I won't act like it's an immediate easy process to be in this moment, however. I tend to get overwhelmed by abundance. My mind goes immediately to the moment the sun will die, a whole 5 billion years from now, and goes into a bit of nihilism. There's a limit and end to everything, which is true in the sense that the current iteration of things will end but assuming there's a total end is hubris as most of the time we witness life being cycles. Birth and death and birth again. The universe demonstrates this over and over, my ego just doesn't like being one of those things that die.
I look at a library full of books and I don't immediately think "Amazing! Look at all of this creativity!" no, no, no...I think "I'll never be able to read all of this." and "Look at all of this panic to get ideas out into the world as if our thoughts are going to last forever" or "Egos everywhere amidst these stories, everyone knows they're dying"...that last one highlights the superiority complex a little more doesn't it? I'm the all-seer knower of the great mystery of everything judging people for taking advantage of their limited time or perhaps not even seeing it that way and just living their lives. I see envy in that.
I can't remember a time when I've never known that I'm going to die one day. Whether or not I believe that is a different story. But I do remember pretty quickly that I forged a belief that if I'm going to die then what's the point of doing anything? There's that nihilism again, something I used to make fun of people (particularly INTPs) for having. What a lovely projection. Perhaps that was just reasoning I needed to keep myself small in response to my circumstances. I lacked the imagination to see how I could be someone consistently successful, make discoveries, be at the leading edge of ideas, write books about my life, and have happy stories to tell. I do remember feeling this same defeat at a young age and perhaps that's when the victim identity formed.
Being a victim and being creative seems to be at odds. I couldn't imagine a better way so I let myself whither. Even now I feel like I'm expressing how I'm a victim of my victimhood. Poor little me.
Here's a poem I wrote about that:
Oh big old little me
I'm so important
Oh big old little me
I've got wounds
Give me everything
I was hurt one day
And I'll never let it go
Not because I want to
But maybe because I don't want to
Who am I without it?
Where does life go from here
if I'm now my own person and I deserve to be real
Life is now mine to take
And I'm terrified at the prospect
Of witnessing life fully
And cherishing every aspect
Even if I fail now
It's all on me
A very important person
Oh big old little me
So, I see these three ideas attached: Victim, Efforting, and Scarcity. A root limiting belief that I attached to for some reason. And what I need to explore is what I get out of it. As Eckhart Tolle said, it's like a false sense of superiority that I logic my way into. I wasn't going to let myself be small and fail psychologically despite what I perceived as a no-go path. Instead of creating my destiny I overly submitted to a default fate.
"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate" - Carl Jung
At some point, I have to recognize that I get something out of being this way. A secondary reward for holding onto these wounds.
It clearly shows up in my writing, my actions, and in my leaky tears as I write this. Who am I if I let this go? I do sense an abundance of energy beneath these beliefs. So why am I still here? What now?