Love #2

Earlier, I wrote about love. This post. Considering the last post, it clearly didn't work out. It was, however, a hallmark difference from previous relationships. As much as I pursued a relationship, she felt happier just 'fooling around' and would readily end up in bed with me.

But in the long run, it was just going to stay a fling, sleeping together and me going home afterwards. Not really what I was looking for. Eventually, I broke it off. For the first time in my life, I stepped out of a relationship because it did not give me what I wanted.

Previously, I thought the hurt of being dumped was mainly that : being dumped. But I failed to see that the one breaking of the relationship is usually the one that sees that the relationship just fails to fulfill needs. In that way, it still hurt like hell when I broke it up. But I did. I drew the line, kissed the girl and left, like some sort of man I never thought I'd become.

Later on, we did fool a bit in bed, she's still attractive and we're both just human. But the relationship was over. Being able to walk away when things don't work brought me into a strange power parity. It's had an effect on my current relationship, where we both know and feel we can just end it and walk away when we want to.

Which seems to have cured me from my "Oh-God-I-don't-want-to-be-alone-please-please-don't-leave-me"-itis. I don't play chameleon as much anymore. I do the things I want and so far, she seems thrilled to join me on the ride. That's growth right there.

And the strange thing? She's happy. She likes it that I lead, that I choose and do what I want and that she feels she can trust on me to do the things I find important. It has only increased her attraction to me.

Taking inventory of 2013

Hello there blog. A few big things happened:

• - I got a "9-out-of-9-most-definite-here-are-your-pills" diagnoses from a pretty awesome psychiatrist.

• - Started dealing with some of the shit in my life (the usual, mainly)

• - Read a lot, spent a lot less time online (Which really help cut down on my analysis paralysis. I'll write more about that later)

• - Got a fulltime job that actually requires me to put in work ánd be bright, not just one of the two.

I've been itching to write down more of my feverish (and now clearly pretty standard ADHD) thoughts so let's see how far we can go. The problems in my life are still the same

• - Haven't gotten a diploma

• - Used to go from temporary job to temporary job (Though it did net me a nice amount of IT-related experience that made me a lot more employable). The job now is nice, one of those rare gems on the cusp of both being practical, idealistic and challenging. It's a small company that's gearing up for bigger things and feels like a start-up. That and the boss is awesome. He sent everyone flowers for us doing well, but waits for valentines day to do so. Heh. But I disgress

• -  Make a mess out of my home

• - Unable to plan

• - Still overweight

• - Still too willing to please / looking for acceptance. "Good boy"

A few things have started to work better though

• Moved to a nice place. An appartment of my own. This has really given me an opportunity to grow as a person

• - I've started studying with a practicality and effectiveness that, far be it from being a perfect and optimal student, surprises me and gives me hope that I can finish this.

• - I've seem to have broken my habit of getting into dysfunctional relationships with dysfunctional people. It's still early, just 4 months now, but let's see if we both actually turn out to be relatively stable and positive towards eachother. So far, so good.

• - I'm slowly creeping away from my sense of dread towards humanity. I'm getting more and more aligned with the ideals of the Human Potential Movement. This might require some eludicating, but I used to feel that humans were mostly barely-conscious biological machines that used intellect as a tool and where self-determination is mostly a psychological construction to keep us sane. A pretty bleak view. Not that I've fully abandoned it, I'd call us riders on a wild horse. An analogy that grew from being a victim to the impulses of the horse into a more seasoned rider. Able to distinguish the path to take and how to gently coerce the horse to ride in a direction that benefits both. 

• - Relationshipwise I've changed from a chameleon-pleaser into more of a man. I'm less afraid to show who I am and have become better able to 'see' how attraction works and how to keep it going in a relationship. Mark Manson gave me the much-needed boost to leave the  bitterness that becoming game-aware gave me. Athol Kay has shown me how to build healthy relationships and to prevent the pitfalls. (In short : Improve yourself. If there would be one advice that helps one better their lives, in sex, love, business, social life and such, this is it.)   
• Got me a new cycle. Riding half an hour each day. My fitness is increasing slowly but steadily (as my partner remarks in the bedroom) and though there is little weight loss, I seem to be getting into a slightly better shape)

At any rate, my mind has been rambling and I've learned a lot of things. I'll start using this blog for my assorted brain-farts and to see if I can give myself another journal to keep me on track.

Rent-seeking

I've posted about intrinsic economic value and was struggling with the nomenclature, untill I ran up into this article on wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

Basically, consider the economy to be a big pile of value, with more value being added by those who find new resources, invent new technologies and offer new services. In short : People who add stuff.

Now imagine I had a small bit of that pile and threw that away to take more of the big pile into my hand. Sure, I get richer, but essentially, the big pile just became a bit smaller and all the other people became a bit poorer.

And that's basically the problem with about everything, isn't it? Actors that maximize their own profit to the detriment of the total system. A bit like the Tragedy of the Commons.

I'm more and more convinced that to actually build a society that is stable, it needs to have the expectation of adding to it as a basis. And for those so entitled : Merely being alive isn't adding to the world, you have to actually add something.

todo

I met an ex of mine yesterday. In a way, it was nice and we had a fun time. She's changed. Grown even. I had the feeling I was doing the same, but as the evening progressed, I felt that she was keeping a distance.

Logical, considering she just had a new partner and since there was a chance we'd end up sleeping together if he wasn't in the picture. In a way, that's a compliment, somehow I'm 'dangerous' or at least attractive at some point.

But there's something wrong in the way I'm dealing with emotional stuff. As the evening progressed, I felt rejected. Something that made me go back into my needy mindset, meaning I couldn't enjoy myself anymore and got sad.

It's not that I'm desperately in love with her anymore, it's been over a year. There's something else wrong that I still have to fix. I guess I'm afraid of rejection, like every other guy, but somehow it makes me act irrational and emotional. I need to get rid of this if I'm ever to get into a healthy relationship.

*click*

Stuff is starting to click. Life is on track and I'm adding things because I want them. It's funny how actively starting with a new way of living gives you a chance to completely rebuild the way you live and by extension, the person you are.

I like this. A new year of affluence and growth, coming up

Boundaries & reflection.

After some asian enlightenment stuff i've been talking with a good friend about why some people seem to get somewhere in life, where others seem to lack the faculties to get there.

I get the feeling that the ability to get ahead in life partially relies on the ability to reflect upon whath appens to you.

And I remembered something about boundaries. We put a boundary between ourself and the rest of the world, isolating ourselves from the world outside and vice versa, isolating the world from ourselves inside. Alan Watts has some nice points about this.


Though classifying people is a bad, bad thing to do, as it is mirrored in the way you look at yourself, I do wonder if looking at this boundary between yourself and the world leads to different types of people.

It should be easy to divide people into four categories:

Non-reflexives, or those that do not look at themselves or the world.
World-reflexives, or those that reflect upon the world but not themselves.
Self-reflexives, that reflect upon themselves but not on the world around them.
Full-reflexives, (Bi-reflexives just sounded..bad) that reflect on themselves ánd the world around them, applying the reflections from the world on themselves and vice versa.

I'm going to look at this for a while, and update later.

cynism

In every cynic, there's an optimist who is afraid that they might be wrong.

Elements of personality

There seems to be a transition in my thinking. More and more, it's simply doing what I want and less trying to appear like something I feel I should be.

In my theatre classes, we used something called the theory of elements to determine our playstyle. Fire, water, earth, wind. All of these were explained in terms of a cowboy walking into a saloon.

Fire walks in with zest and flamboyance. He's not afraid of anything because he's faster on the trigger than anyone. Anyone shoot at him, he'll just shoot them first. Balls first, loud, full and sure of himself.

Water walks in like a cyclone that embraces the entire saloon. If he gets shot, he shows and shares the pain with those around him, so they can see that shooting him is a bad thing. He's like a little vortex drawing out the emotion in people.

Earth, ah. The stoic. Earth would simply stand quietly. Walk inside without saying anything. Earth would get shot and look at the gunshots and think "Hm. I appear to have been shot" without changing his demeanor. He's unshakeable but within the confines of himself, where fire is so outside himself.

Wind is the neurotic. His eyes dart from point to point, always looking for dangers, threats, planning, adapting. If someone goes for their gun, he'd outsmart them by always being prepared. Hands fidget, thoughts jump from point to point. Always prepared and always reacting to everything.


These are characters you use on stage, but they have their merit in knowing yourself. I used to be water with a lot of earth and air mixed in. Now I'm starting to become more earth. More grounded in my own choices and less reliant on the outside world to determine my behaviour.

I've got a girl whom allows me to simply be, instead of proving myself all the time. I'm choosing my own path and starting to plan the rest of my career or at least my life path. It's not a sudden epihany, but a slow change creeping in your every day behaviour. I'm not sure if it was actions or thoughts that made me change first. But they're both aligned more now.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a superman, but something is changing. I like this.