The trouble with updating your journal is that your comments get reset to zero on that pink (grey? my color vision isn't too hot) box in the right corner there and you feel all lonely again.
more on standing in your own way
thing about me is that I REALLY don't like to do anything that requires any effort whatsoever. i haven't pursued a career in photography because it would mean really trying hard to do something. breaking out of warm comfortable nothingness.
yesterday i tried developing some 4X5 negatives that i'd had lying around for a bit and they came out blank. i think it was becasue the developer was old and nonfunctional. the reason that happened is that i mixed the developer 14 months ago and it's been sitting around for all that time because i basically never do anything. i call myself a photographer and mostly that means I buy a lot of photo equipment that i hardly ever use. the one exception in the past year has been my little digital camera which has developed a pretty beaten up exterior from acutally being used. because it's so fuckin easy and cheap to use.
i've noticed that i use the word "because" a lot more than other people do. actually i think someone else noticed it for me one time. a lot of it has to to with totally not believing in myself with respect to what i think the judgement of others about me would be, I feel everything I do needs to be justified and accounted for. Now I recall it was my shrink that said that. I have this fixation on trying to think and act according to principle that most people don't have, and it makes very bad at making a lot of adjustments that people make. When I was a kid i thought i was going to hell for sure because i wasn't doing all sorts of things that catholic doctrine says you have to do. I didn't have the courange to walk downtown 4 or 5 miles by myself when I was nine to go to church. My parents sent me to CCD where they taught me that not attending mass was a mortal sin, so why the fuck did my parents send me to school to be told that and then not do it themselves? the answer is that most people adjust to the common banalities of your average joe blow's behavior and don't actually think about much of anything that they actually do compared to what they're supposed to do. They would have no way of understanding that I don't operate that way. I was really tortured and fucked up about this, and i still have a deep well of anger about it. It's like a gas well. The pressure blows out now and then. I'll almost break my foot kicking a machine that eats a dollar and doesn't give me my parking ticket or whatever. People tell me to get angry about things that were done to me but they have no fucking idea what anger is. Or rather they do but they don't get that what I have is rage. As in grab people by the hair pull their heads back and slit their throats from ear to ear type rage.
I propbably shouldn't have typed that last paragraph. It's not like I'm about to go postal on anyone. It's more that if i see some tv show that has a little kid getting bullied by a bigger kid I have to not watch it. I cannot watch young people being victimized by violence and aggression, who can't strike back without getting in trouble with authority figures who cannot be bothered to protect them from bullies in the first place,because it stirs up deep emotions in me that reallly just need to stay turned off.
anyway, i did say this was about standing in my own way. I guess that the plain fact of the matter is that deep inside i have this putrefying swamp of negative feelings. when I wake up in the morning i've dissolved into a mess of dread of the things i face: work, loneliness, boredom, frustration with myself for not having the courage to try really hard to do the things that I love that are not easy to do. I kind of reasssemble my functional self as they day wears on. I am actually not as insanely negative as i used to be. I can see that the box surrounding me is largely imaginary, but I have so long been sitting rotting in a box that it's hard to bestir myself to move, each day i have to re-teach myself that i have the freedom to try things, i seek new ideas that can make me feel ok about myself for a day or two before they euphoria of feeling free wears off and i break down again into a stinking heap of negativity and feelling trapped my my limitations and the expectaions of others and the demands of making money.
well, i'm not so pathologically negative all the time anymore but it's still there, so there it is. I shall have a go at being today. too bad the weather's so crappy and rainy. I hope this wasn't do disagreeable and/or incoherent for anyone who may have actually bothered to read it.
aleikum salaam
djv
more on standing in your own way
thing about me is that I REALLY don't like to do anything that requires any effort whatsoever. i haven't pursued a career in photography because it would mean really trying hard to do something. breaking out of warm comfortable nothingness.
yesterday i tried developing some 4X5 negatives that i'd had lying around for a bit and they came out blank. i think it was becasue the developer was old and nonfunctional. the reason that happened is that i mixed the developer 14 months ago and it's been sitting around for all that time because i basically never do anything. i call myself a photographer and mostly that means I buy a lot of photo equipment that i hardly ever use. the one exception in the past year has been my little digital camera which has developed a pretty beaten up exterior from acutally being used. because it's so fuckin easy and cheap to use.
i've noticed that i use the word "because" a lot more than other people do. actually i think someone else noticed it for me one time. a lot of it has to to with totally not believing in myself with respect to what i think the judgement of others about me would be, I feel everything I do needs to be justified and accounted for. Now I recall it was my shrink that said that. I have this fixation on trying to think and act according to principle that most people don't have, and it makes very bad at making a lot of adjustments that people make. When I was a kid i thought i was going to hell for sure because i wasn't doing all sorts of things that catholic doctrine says you have to do. I didn't have the courange to walk downtown 4 or 5 miles by myself when I was nine to go to church. My parents sent me to CCD where they taught me that not attending mass was a mortal sin, so why the fuck did my parents send me to school to be told that and then not do it themselves? the answer is that most people adjust to the common banalities of your average joe blow's behavior and don't actually think about much of anything that they actually do compared to what they're supposed to do. They would have no way of understanding that I don't operate that way. I was really tortured and fucked up about this, and i still have a deep well of anger about it. It's like a gas well. The pressure blows out now and then. I'll almost break my foot kicking a machine that eats a dollar and doesn't give me my parking ticket or whatever. People tell me to get angry about things that were done to me but they have no fucking idea what anger is. Or rather they do but they don't get that what I have is rage. As in grab people by the hair pull their heads back and slit their throats from ear to ear type rage.
I propbably shouldn't have typed that last paragraph. It's not like I'm about to go postal on anyone. It's more that if i see some tv show that has a little kid getting bullied by a bigger kid I have to not watch it. I cannot watch young people being victimized by violence and aggression, who can't strike back without getting in trouble with authority figures who cannot be bothered to protect them from bullies in the first place,because it stirs up deep emotions in me that reallly just need to stay turned off.
anyway, i did say this was about standing in my own way. I guess that the plain fact of the matter is that deep inside i have this putrefying swamp of negative feelings. when I wake up in the morning i've dissolved into a mess of dread of the things i face: work, loneliness, boredom, frustration with myself for not having the courage to try really hard to do the things that I love that are not easy to do. I kind of reasssemble my functional self as they day wears on. I am actually not as insanely negative as i used to be. I can see that the box surrounding me is largely imaginary, but I have so long been sitting rotting in a box that it's hard to bestir myself to move, each day i have to re-teach myself that i have the freedom to try things, i seek new ideas that can make me feel ok about myself for a day or two before they euphoria of feeling free wears off and i break down again into a stinking heap of negativity and feelling trapped my my limitations and the expectaions of others and the demands of making money.
well, i'm not so pathologically negative all the time anymore but it's still there, so there it is. I shall have a go at being today. too bad the weather's so crappy and rainy. I hope this wasn't do disagreeable and/or incoherent for anyone who may have actually bothered to read it.
aleikum salaam
djv
VIEW 8 of 8 COMMENTS
But again, thank you. I simply needed to hear other people's opinions, and you came through.