Essentials

I've been asking myself some pretty big life questions lately. Not the first time, but periodically, I revisit/refresh what really makes me happy.

One of the hardest things about self-expression — and I think this is pretty universal — is that you're always going to offend someone. That's a constant. What's more paralyzing is trying to defeat that fact, which can't be done, and as a result you don't act at all. You overthink.

The reason I say this is because I recently unfollowed 1,000+ users on Twitter and cut ties on other sites. Who were most of these "users"? Largely, an empty load of "social media guru" crap, that's what! I chuckled after a coworker @ LL sent me this video:

Would've been funnier with non-computronic voices, but it drives the point home. As much as I've tried to dabble in those buzzwords, I'm just not cut out for it. Nor do I believe such puffery has much of a useful place in civilized existence. Scams and superstition pollute our higher consciousness. "Social media" BS spawned a type of mental dysmorphia where you're — wait, I'm projecting — I'm constantly questioning what I'm missing and unhappy with who I want to be… when infact things are fine and I had to do the opposite. I had to trash those unpleasant aspects of how technology has amplified (in the worst of ways) human genericism.

As each of us is supposed to be unique.

There's a lot of slop out there. After finding so many variations of human behavior predictable, I now voyage onwards, in my ongoing quest for applied knowledge. Rather than be shallow, my focus is on intense experiences. I'll acquire mood lights to get the most out of the 3/4 of my waking hours which are spent near a computer or equivalent machine. I'll do the Shawshank Redemption pose in the rain as I please.

Any really creative person gets asked, sooner or later, if they're crazy. Maybe it's from a friend who's joking, which is fine. But that gets tiresome, redundant if done too much. Sometimes it's from someone who doesn't understand and doesn't want to, which is useless. I've been called "crazy" on occasion due to perceived eccentricity but I've normalized my behavior. Being ultra-productive is the norm for me. It's like if you're a pro racecar driver, those high velocities aren't surprisingly fast to you anymore. It's just… how it is. And while you want to teach and share so that others may have the same experiences, many will deny that.

(There are many things that are, just how they are. They don't need value judgments, but human weakness that I call "lowmindedness", in what it can't comprehend, will try to assign it some moral color. I'm reminded of the unfathomable terrors of H.P. Lovecraft — it's in our blood to be curious, but there are some things which most of us just can't know.)

I now concern myself with a musical Dream Journal in which I'm confronted by sheer moments of elation, others of a stark and uncaring universe, and others still with what can't be expressed in words, so song will have to do. Where this is going, I don't know. But I do know I must go.

Stripped down, freed of all that extraneous BS in some philosophical hybrid between Fight Club and The Game but devoid of blockbuster clichés, I find myself at the crossroads of interchanging fact and fiction. Treasuring the insights Philip K. Dick brought us, yet lamenting what prolonged exposure did to his soul. But all great artists are risk-takers, and much great art demands suffering to be paid as a sacrifice for its secrets.

In closing, to the essentiality of context…

WHAT IS THE FIRST THING THAT COMES TO MIND WHEN YOU SEE THIS?

I ask because this is a fantastic psychological test. A simple battery of tests can reveal much about you, or any person.

The base (lowmind) response is to accuse the bagger of animal cruelty. If you can't deduce clues, a sager approach is simply to ask: "What happened here?" If you hear back, then you understand. If you don't, then nothing is lost, and your economy of moves is intact, any wasted emotion saved.

The real story is that the squirrel chipmunk was trapped in my house, unable to leave, unaware of doors in their entirety and what they mean to us. (Both literally and metaphorically.) I grabbed a Ziploc, bagged the creature, and set it free in the grass you see.

Sometimes it's that way with life, too. We see ourselves as trapped, when we're infact… en route to a NEW FREEDOM. And this is truely what lies beyond*.

* Stay around for the Dream Journal story on that. More gets revealed.