Feeling good about yourself
Feeling carefree
with Carefree sugarless gum
Feeling good is sugar free!

Feeling good above a subsistence level is necessary for survival.
Not feeling good above a subsistence level is easily labeled a mental disorder & that makes sense. But feeling good while participating in oppression, or feeling good because of denial, delusion, dissociation often escapes being labeled as a mental disorder. Functionality masks disorder in those cases. Most US people?

#healR

It's messy I admit. I'm a mess. Desperate times. Fighting for survival. I try to love & respect all while keeping my distance. *Of course I could be wrong* but I think my biggest problems result from me stifling myself in the attempt to satisfy the expectations of others. Of course I make mistakes but I prefer them to be my own. I really feel that I have to shut out most outside input to survive this moment.

Who knows how that sounds! Not great, I'm sure.

#healR #moverR

I get tired of saying the same things over & over. I fear that I have nothing to contribute in my current state. Every moment I am ruled by pain & fear. The pain I've explained a lot (chronic lower back pain, no identified cause, no consistent health care with my best interest in mind that respects the urgency that I live every moment in misery, rationed pain relief). The fear is about time running out, & no money-making prospects, & threats to my civil rights if I spoke as I wished.

#healR

The short way or the long way? I'm on the long path—in every way.

My therapist observed in a recent session that I had put myself down numerous times in just a few minutes. It's not that I believe the negative view of myself, I say. It's that I'm trying to head off the criticism that I feel might be obvious. Because I think the "prevailing take" on me would naturally be negative. Whether that convoluted reasoning makes sense, it's still worth examining.

What I'm saying is that I feel the short way to describe me is the negative one. In order to present myself positively I feel that it requires a lot of explanation. That's a problem.

I contain multitudes. At least one of which is a bully. And I think that the narrow minded bully view is the most likely. The world I live in tells me so. The me that I want to be is in opposition to this prevailing world. I think it relates to why I don't feel part of any community. I have rarely if ever found myself among a gentle, caring community. Even the kind people I know still submit to the prevailing cruel world. It's why I so want to escape into another culture that I can respect. I don't believe in a culture of mutual love & respect where I am currently. Even when I'm among caring people! What's that about? Pessimism? It comes down to the pervasiveness of the system. I feel it acutely & want relief. I think the fastest, surest path to lasting relief is escape into a different value system that's closer to mine. I tell myself that I'm not abandoning the kind people within my system of origin. My intention & hope is to escape into an environment that enables me to function better & with love; & from that place of healing I'll be able to transmit art available to my former compatriots. I think the US environment is one of the most dysfunctional on Earth. I want out because I feel better outside. I want to give myself that love.

OK that was kind of a detour. That's why I joined this site where I can ramble. Do I want to go back to talking about the bully in me? The detour wasn't a detour, because my bullying side is my prevailing US culture side. The one who hates me for all the ways I don't conform. I don't know if it serves any purpose to put those hateful negatives into words here. It's easy to imagine. How about this, I'll describe myself without bigotry & I think it will be clear that there are opposing views on these traits:

• Queer
• Sensitive
• Disabled
• Humanist (Atheist)
• Artist
• Abstract, Relativist,
• Leftist anti-capitalist, believing in equal rights for all, cultural diversity, equal justice under law, dignity for all that includes providing a minimal standard of living (health, education, enjoyment) for all
• Respecter of emotion, the path of emotional healing, mind-body connection (so that when I spoke of health as part of the minimal standard of living I include emotional wellbeing, safety, nutrition, medical care, etc.) [In fact many of these traits can be folded within the others. Respecting all is humanist & it all fits into my ideal of an artist, but others have different definitions.]

I feel that the world that I live in is antagonistic to all the above.

This account is where I ramble. I'm avoiding the point that I started out making. It's all related, but it's painful for me to put bluntly into words that...

It takes more energy & convolution for me to express positive values than negative ones. The negative ones come so readily. That's why I lead with those so often. I think that prejudices are the prevailing values in my culture & world. In some sense negativity feels more real. It takes convoluted effort for me to express good values. An apt analogy would be all the times that I hear a U.S. politician praise Martin Luther King; I don't believe that they are in sync with his views. Cognitive dissonance is when innermost thoughts are in conflict. Do I feel that I don't believe in my stated values? I think that the issue is that they feel like fantasy to me. I don't know. I think that I need to think about this more. Can't I survive without the outside world conforming to my views? I guess so but it's damn hard. There are entities who reflect my values. Every one of them is an underdog, so it seems. But I suspect it's the majority! That's the conflict at the heart of the work that I want to put into that world.

There's a fight within me for my positive values to overcome deep-rooted programming that I now label as dysfunctional. Every day I get hit with attempts at reinforcing the negative programming. Those are pervasive, whereas positive & healing messages are the ones that I have to seek out.

I haven't finished discussing this topic, but I will pause here & post, to return to another time.

#healR

Gonna stream soon on a nature walk at https://humanissome.org

Topics: alt tech, my physical & mental health journey, community

#healR

I overshare
I know that
It's my process
And I hoard
I over-save
It's my process
Computers are my enabler
Thing is, it's ok.
I'm not demanding response.

I save open tabs. And many bookmarks, of every type & stripe. Drafts. Notes. Watch Later videos & about 12 other playlists too. I'll probably return to very few of them. Am I driving you crazy? It's ok. It's my process.

When I was in school I didn't like to review. I swear that the act of taking notes reinforces learning whether those notes are ever looked at again. Is it perfect? Of course not. Did I do well in school? Only sometimes. And yes I sometimes studied too. I see myself perusing a curriculum at all times, and only some of it is "respectable." By which I mean that I take seriously all sorts of learning. Random Wikipedia dives. The restaurants and back roads of my college town. Access to art and nature everywhere is imperative.

I'm working through stuff
In addition to my various pain treatments I'm "in the middle of moving"—neither of those are going so well, but they ARE going. Any progress is progress. Part of the curriculum.

Lately I try to take walks every day that I can. To give me nature. Sunlight. And time to think. Oh and exercise too, but that may be the least of it. Because I'm doing so physically poor. I sometimes hobble, walk very slowly, short distances. It's ok.

Often I live stream on these walks. I do it to twitch. I don't like twitch. And that's ok. Moreover the twitch app doesn't work so I downloaded some awful 3rd party utility. Awful because it drains my battery so fast it must be doing tons more than I want it to. I don't trust any for profit enterprises anymore. At least not thriving ones. A food truck maybe. A street vendor in Mexico definitely. Most everything in Mexico. But international corporations NO. And no internet businesses except FLOSS. wikipedia: Free and open-source software
Said it before & I'll say it again, I didn't start life as an anticapitalist. They made me. No internet companies can be trusted without severe scrutiny. Most are unacceptable. Most all US commerce is unacceptable. I am trying to quit ;)

https://humanissome.org is the address where my live streams embed. I'm in the process of learning new computing ways. But it's arduous. And that's ok. I'm too tired to describe everything so I'll do a kind of telegraphic speech: Mac terminal. Command line. Old macOS. Problems. Install pkg. problems. Learning. It's ok. Simultaneously shareware reservoirs. Not really shareware, just old apps that I'm trying. Looking for certain abilities. Are these affordances? Would be nice to learn that word. Also I'm doing physical therapy at home. Many types. As well as once a week with guidance. Also medical stuff. But back to computing. Managing music. Adding new music. Clearing files. Trying to manage the gigs and TBs. I double installed the command line package. And I don't understand pkg's. Or much of anything. So now I have a wasted duplicative GB. Grrr. And I don't think it's going to even work. I'm trying outdated things. Why? To see if I can learn to manage websites from mac terminal. Someday Linux maybe. Someday Owncast maybe (that's fedi streaming). But keep in mind, no money. And none forthcoming. Ever. Got to make do with what I have. For now that's an old macOS on an old MacBook Air that I know how to work by heart—except for the new stuff I'm trying out. I love the machine & the OS. I hate the company. Of course. So I know that eventually I'm gonna be on Linux. I will try various distros.

So I share hours of videos. Post on multiple fedi accounts on several platforms, including about half a dozen blogs. Two websites, at least. And they're all bad! Sloppy. Lacking direction. And it has to be ok. It has to be, because this is the best I can do for now. I'm sharing my life as it happens. As I pursue my curriculum. I don't expect anyone to follow it all. I don't expect anything. Sharing adds an additional layer of action, like the note taking in college. I share to facilitate my process. Some day I may make something digestible. In the meantime I record one human life.

#healR