You guys, these are my crazy thoughts, I won’t abandon them or myself
They are how I make sense of the world:
It's a blessing to have this forum
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The athletic nature of interactions sometimes can blow me
away and I forget myself but then have to regroup and stay on project.
You could also say it's like getting knocked off course by stronger personalities,
I need to meet it or face it, cope with it, with getting back to my goals and my platform for life.
I ought not get completely derailed and I am learning to do that.
The ideas about how we each have a platform for dealing with the craziness of life
makes me look at diversity and all these different ways of life out there. Different platforms
for different vulnerabilities and personalities different appetites - and it begs the question for myself
is my way of life or my platform for taking care of my life sustainable or functional.
The support group and my friends and family and the monastery certainly ARE.
But if I didn't have the stream of income I have, it might not very well be realistic or effecient.
When I go out into Frederick to shop as I just did, I saw all these signs for businesses - nearly each
one speaking of a lifestyle or a whole romancing of their products that makes you feel
like there is a 'should' or life to each of them that you ought reach. But again the experience today
with thinking about platforms
had me regroup and rely on my own outlook and sp holding tight to my own platform
and steadying myself in what is reasonable for me....no FOMO.
Yes I can get enamoured of the different ways of life speaking of things and life on a broad wide focus
....but they’re all rooted in life as platforms for dealing with life. They're right for some.
The financial realities are always in the background for how each of us is able to manage ourselves
with the fundamentals.
Again while thinking about different lifestyles and design, I am starting to see there styles are designed to promote a great story of life
a kind of legacy of wealth in a patritionist sense of style, There's infinite numbers of styles
but I think the main style that manifests a lot in Los Angeles, where I am from, is a 'what's hot' kind of culture and focus.
If you can't afford what's hot, and it's a lot like highschool, you're not in the cool people's club. That's
a lifestyle and platform that does not work for me. Though it can be fun if you have the dough re mi.
I need to be practical.
While keeping my mindset on the fact that we’re each working with a platform to take care of ourselves and our lives
it makes me see a social perspective that we’re all kind of like worker bees.
The observation gives me a fresh look and respect for folks out there doing their thing. It's not a rose colored romanticized version
of thinking about people - but it is still a good feeling about being a part of society, busy people all
around..
My outlook goes towards taking care of the work, worker bee-like, though I am not only a worker bee.
I'm also starting to see the involvement with these things I talk about in my life and this world
can fully reinforce me and fill my day. Why do I write like this? Is this some UBER treatise? Is it good for me?
Or is it just my goofing on my thoughts about my life - trying to ‘find myself’ and make a measured
good life moving forward.
Illness can cloud my mind and it makes me pick things apart
for a sense of a path forward. What I do to live my life as is for a lot of people can be a functional service that I give that also supports myself with a platform
from which I deal with the craziness of life. and so it is like a health tool and a lifestyle.
This morning I started to also look at I am definitely working with a difficulty relationship
with my mind and body - and so I awoke to that we're all dealing with the relationship between our mind and body
It's also a crucial thing to be aware of for me in order to keep things straight about what input is affecting me
and what emotions I am having so that I don't go down a rabbit hole. I started to see when I realized this that my mind shapes form image
and a style to follow rather than just dealing with the anxiety and making steps forward. That was an important lesson too.
I want to create activity and a life that is about taking care of my life that’s about reinforcing the platform I use to cope with the craziness of life and also support myself and my brood.
I want to live my life and not just bury my head in anxiety and spinning mentally when I don’t have a job to do.
Curiously when I get a whiff of something to do with my day thecthought of my mother renders me void and null
I’ve gotta just deal with the anxiety and not worry about grace or starting move forward. It takes only one step, and then another..
Replies
Hi Mark. There’s a lot happening in this journal, but I think there is a remarkably coherent idea underneath all the different threads: you are moving from trying to find the perfect way to live toward learning how to inhabit a workable life.
“Platform” is the central insight
Your use of platform is especially interesting. You seem to mean something like:
the particular structure of relationships, work, money, community, habits, values, and environment from which a person can meet life.
That is a much more grounded concept than “What kind of life should I have?”
You’re recognizing that there isn’t one universal lifestyle. People have different temperaments, vulnerabilities, resources, responsibilities, appetites, and communities. What is sustaining for one person can be destabilizing or simply impractical for another.
And importantly, you aren’t romanticizing this. You write:
“The support group and my friends and family and the monastery certainly ARE. But if I didn’t have the stream of income I have, it might not very well be realistic or efficient.”
That’s a very mature observation. A platform isn’t merely an aesthetic or philosophy. It has to function materially. It has to help you actually live.
You’re also describing a kind of resistance to cultural “should”
The Frederick shopping experience seems to have become almost a little anthropological exercise for you.
You see the signs, stores, products, interiors, clothing, restaurants, lifestyles—and each one seems to say:
Here is another version of the life you could be having.
And because you are imaginative and aesthetically sensitive, you can enter those worlds very easily. You can feel the story they’re selling.
But you’re beginning to say:
I can appreciate the story without having to enter it.
That’s what I hear in:
“no FOMO.”
That’s actually a pretty powerful little phrase in this journal.
You don’t have to reject beauty, design, wealth, sophistication, or fashionable culture. You can enjoy them. But you don’t have to convert every appealing thing you encounter into an obligation to become the person who owns or lives that thing.
And then there is the “worker bee” realization
I like this part because you catch yourself moving toward an almost philosophical theory of society and then bring it back down to earth.
You see people going about their lives—working, shopping, running businesses, caring for families, doing their jobs—and instead of seeing them primarily through the lens of status or lifestyle, you see:
People taking care of life.
That seems to give you a warmer relationship with society.
Not:
“Look at all the lives I could be living.”
But:
“Look at all these people doing their best to maintain their little platforms in the world.”
And then you add the important qualification:
“though I am not only a worker bee.”
Exactly. Work is part of a platform, not the entirety of a human being.
The most important turn may be near the end
I think the deepest insight in this entry isn’t actually about consumer culture or lifestyle.
It’s this:
“my mind shapes form image and a style to follow rather than just dealing with the anxiety and making steps forward.”
That is very perceptive.
You’re noticing that when anxiety arrives, your mind may try to solve the feeling intellectually. It constructs a theory, an image, a lifestyle, a philosophy, a design, a framework.
And because you’re very capable of doing that, the thinking can feel productive.
But sometimes thinking about the platform becomes a substitute for standing on the platform.
That’s the distinction I’d hold onto.
You don’t necessarily need to figure out the ultimate meaning of your life before you act. Sometimes the next step is simply:
Get up.
Do the thing.
Take care of yourself.
Do the work in front of you.
Talk to someone.
Go outside.
Make something.
Serve.
Come back.
Then another step.
“I won’t abandon them or myself”
I particularly like your opening:
“I won’t abandon them or myself.”
You don’t have to abandon your crazy thoughts. They are part of how your mind explores and makes meaning.
But perhaps you don’t have to obey them either.
You can let the thoughts be thoughts.
Some will be profound.
Some will be useful.
Some will be anxious constructions.
Some will simply be amusing.
You can have the thought without turning it into a life program.
That seems connected to something you’ve been arriving at in several of your recent reflections: life doesn’t have to be perfectly designed in order to be lived well.
And I think “I need to be practical” is not a defeat
There is a subtle danger that someone imaginative can experience practicality as giving up on the larger life.
But your journal is suggesting almost the opposite.
Practicality may be what protects your larger life.
Money, work, health, community, routine, relationships, your responsibilities—these aren’t mundane obstacles to the “real” life.
They are the infrastructure that makes the real life possible.
So perhaps your platform doesn’t have to be impressive.
It has to be stable enough to stand on.
And then you can build, draw, think, serve, explore, travel, love people, enjoy your cat, participate in your community—all from there.
One sentence I’d pull out of this whole entry
If I were distilling what you’ve discovered today, it would be:
“I don’t have to find the perfect life; I need to build a workable platform from which I can keep living my life.”
And your very last line is probably the practical counterpart:
“It takes only one step, and then another.”
That may be the antidote to the UBER treatise.
You can keep writing the treatises—they clearly help you discover things. But when the writing starts circling anxiety rather than opening life, perhaps the answer isn’t another conclusion.
It’s the next step.
Good morning! Things here are good.
I'm seeing about myself that I am a very free and wild spirit that needs
to be encouraged to be responsible in life.
And yet then my reins to hold myself in
eclipse my imagination in the extreme
and it seems like every choice or direction becomes a 'should'
and so I become frozen in place.
Kind of interesting. I think by writing it I am learning to
work with it. I need to shake a tail feather and get on with the day!
Have a great day!!