Getting unstuck
I’ve felt stuck for a long time.....as long as I can remember actually. When I was a kid I felt stuck in school and stuck in my city. After that I felt stuck at work and stuck in my routine. Then I left and I felt stuck in my financial situation, not able to go where I wanted to go and do what I wanted to do. Finally I became stuck in my health situation, without any real diagnosis or useful advice from the doctors. All along I’ve felt stuck by social normals which don’t really fit me.
I’ve had some big dreams to go back to Japan and somehow live free from the 9-5 by starting my own “business” there. Sometimes I feel in a hurry since I’m not getting any younger and it’s supposed to only get harder as you get older, plus I’d like to have a family some day so stability is something I wouldn’t mind as long as it’s not forced.
But if I don’t feel unstuck here, what makes me feel I’m going to feel unstuck over there?
life on repeat
Life has a way of throwing the same kind of challenges at you until you learn. Real happiness, like real love, is not conditional. It does not come from outside, it emanates out from the inside. “If I had that I’d be happier” “If I lived there I’d be happier”. This is not how I want to live my life. I want to be a source of inspiration to others, or at the very least create my own experience, rather than following the whims of “what happens to me”. I am not going to be a victim of my life.
So I’m taking inspiration from children and animals. They know how to play. Even in the unnatural conditions set up for them by adult humans, they still have excitement and passion and express it naturally.
I’m going to put any long term plans on the side and find a way to REALLY earn a living doing what I love and in a way that gives me full flexibility. If it takes 30 years (it won’t) and I’m too old to follow the original plan (unlikely) then so be it.
Before I think about where I want to go and what I want to do, I want to focus on feeling fulfilled, inspired and a full representation of who I am, even in my current “unfavorable” circumstances. I’ve been picking away at this for some time but it’s time to face it all head on. I got this! , I will have fun through this process!
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Confessions of the Damaged - a collection of short stories
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by @skyleap
I sometimes think I am stuck in a society where I don't fit and It feels like hell living day to day. Even at my age, I used to want things in a hurry because I think I was too old to not have accomplishments. Little did I know, as I achieved my old dreams, I recalled it took somewhere around 2-3 years for it to happen.
I learn that great things takes time. They won't work out as planned which is why I never make detailed plan of how it all should be, I simply go with the flow, see where the world takes me. Normally I will forget what I want and then it comes when I least expected it.
I know that you might think you're old and you have to do that soon. But it won't hurt to wait a year or two like the children, just play and see maybe you'll get ice cream or candies unexpectedly.
Hahah I often get ice cream and candies unexpectedly! That’s how it works!
Don’t let it feel like hell, it’s all about your focus and framing! I know that feeling well!
I cycle through both stuck and completely unbridled. I can see on the one hand I am a sort of prisoner within society, class, etc and although I have some passes (white, attractive, American, intelligent) that it seems I only get to use my passes to live at the expenses of imprisoning others. Then I also see that this may all be a simulation/construct/dream that I can easily manipultae and mentally manifest precise items/storylines/people. I was both bored with school, small town, disappointed in almost every field I've poked my head into and yet, I'm also always creating within those confines. It's so weird, to be both stuck and unstuck all the time. To know you are infinte and yet for eternity only exist in a present moment of consciousness. I have sort of started to see it as an artifact of- one way to describe it- a left and right brain. One side is always stuck as it has to processes things linearly, creating steps and boundries with which to make sense of stimuli/information one sliver at a time, and the other processing center which holds all things in its hand at once. I also view it like a sine wave, undulating. Each piece of information or experience moves me forward, up and down . i am stuck and then I wrestle through and I become unstuck. I'm am unstuck and I learn more about how things 'work' and then I'm stuck. And in the back of my head I also know that the sine undualtions are also correctly represented by a circle, further cemeting that we are linear and non linear at all times. Bizarre man. I am currently climbing out of stuck and moving into unstuck from a particularly long stretch of what was some excruciating stuckiness. I know soon I will look at my past stuckness with the same disconnect as I have been viewing unstuckness with from within. It is true when we are experiencing one, the other seems alien, and yet I wonder if infinite lifetimes is enough to get a handle on choosing to switch in and out. Onward ho! or, Here we go again! or, Cheers to the exhilaration of unstuck and the comforting stability of stuck! ;)
I honestly don’t think you should see your passes as being what imprisons others. It’s all what you do with it.
This is exactly why I don’t like the term “white priveledge” it’s not a privilege that’s been given to some, it’s a right that has been stripped from others. And we should use it to rempower them without any feeling that we need to disempower ourselves or feel guilty.
You have great ideas, It’d be nice to brainstorm with you. I personally find that I become unstuck when I “give up”. It’s not really me giving up, it’s my ego. The more it pushes for freedom, the more captive it feels. So it’s really just about changing my perspective into one that’s deeper than my ego.
Yeah, interestingly enough the wrestling with stuckness always leads to letting go and then you remember that is the answer lol
Also, although you are a pinapple I assume you are white because your kind meaning senitiment on privilage. Looking at it as you say is not wrong but it still steals the perspective away from POC. Trying to word it correctly because its nuanced and a very emotional subject. The description is indictive of a perspective, and from the perspective of somebody who is the victim of predjudice it IS a privilage. By saying no, its a right, just some have had it stripped, you are now explaining it from YOUR view, which is sort of like mansplaining , you are correcting someones perspective and telling them to replace it with yours. Which is, of course, the very thing that whites and males are said to do. It doesn't make you a bad or thoughtless person, it just shows how much work we have to do, even when we are kind and sympathetic, to allow others to speak and to accept their voice as valid <3
Your sentiment that we need to empower not disempower is the more positive view, but it would be like if as a group who had a king and we all wanted to become a democracy : the majority would say we need to remove the kings power and create an equal sharing and the king would feel like that was a negative thing and say " we can make us all kings" but the very word king implies a power relationship, which would be gone so the semantics arguement is just the king not wanting to feel predjudiced against . Normal aand understandable, but not particularly empathetic, which is what is needed if solutions ae to be found.
From over here, mansplaining and white privledge are all pop culture terms being forced upon us by the dominant culture, regardless of whether we are white or black or orange or man or woman or potato. I’m not forcing anyone to see it my way, I’m just sharing my truth in the way everyone else tries to, and doing my best to make it soft and open to discussions.
Not as this or that but as someone who stays away from television, Hollywood, social media controversy, and memes, I feel like these words basically seek to achieve equality through disempowering whites and males. If this is someone’s method of achieving equality and it doesn’t change at some point, they can expect an endless struggle, and at best women and non-whites will be the tyrants of the future. Yay for equality.
I see others as equals. If others do not see themselves as equals because they have had some kind of struggle that I was notnforced to endure, I don’t see any benefit in lowering my own self value in order to help them. I DO see value in listening and showing compassion.
I recognize our experiences create different challenges for us and I’m empathetic, but these buzzwords words imply that I deserve less than i have and that My opinions are somehow less valid if I’m a white male. One reason I chose to be s pineapple is precisely because I don’t want my gender or skin color or nationality to define me any more than the world has forced it to. If it still does for some people, it will be hard to spend much time discussing things with them because they are seeing what they have identified me as rather than seeing the actual me.
I want to spread abundance mentality. That doesn’t ever come from perpetually identifying yourself as a victim, even when such a viewpoint is justified. I’m happy to listen to other people’s stories and needs and dreams and do what I can to help them. But I’m not really interested in any kind of popular sentiment that says that anyone else should disempower themselves in order to make others feel better. Pop culture has us working against each other with these subtle nuances of non-inclusiveness and perpetuating victimhood.
If you want to talk about YOU and think I’d benefit from hearing YOUR story (especially your experience as a female, or a potato), or how I say something that makes YOU feel uncomfortable, I’m happy to chat about it. But now so many people are trying to represent an entire demographic and in a way that is against some other demographic. So much of it is fed from the top by people and organizations which benefit from keeping us separated, I find it extremely counterproductive to engage in it, and my social circle is able to grow harmoniously and diverse without being too swayed by these sentiments, so like, come join the party if you want.
What it really comes down to is, the people who talk about white priveledge are trying to fix the system, while we would like to move outside of it with and help anyone else who is interested.
I 100% agree that the idea that with the dominant mentality of 'fighting' for equality creates constant struggle, and that it will just end in new tyrants in the future. My personal experience that I guess brought me to that comment was that I have seen that some of even though i am being my extremely thoughtful loving self, that I wasn't really internalizing what other people were saying. I went to Standing Rock and had a few pretty humbling moments when we were hanging with our mixed group odiscussing the pipeline, and the reservations etc. One of the Sioux guys said "If you want to help us, go and tell your goverment to take down that condescending grafitti in our backyard" meaning Mt Rushmoore. I never thought of that, and honestly haven't thought much about Mt Rushmoore except to think it was a pretty cool feat of art/engineering. Not that it was a sign of dominace in the backyards of people the governemnt had made treaties with to imply mutal respect. I'm already with you, on building the kind of inclusive abundance mentality, and in my daily life that's what I've participated in also, with whoever was on that page with no thoughts about any other factor within my social circles besides the ones that make good friends and cocreative partners. I also agree that most 'kings' in the examples of 'white privilage' are just paupers and slaves, just like many of the victims are kings in comparison to th evast majority of the people in the world. I grew up in a trailer park, both sides of my family are blue collar with only a few cousins and my siblings who went to college. I'm completely suffocated in student laon debt that I can't even pay the interest, I see my aunts losiing their teeth because they don't have the money for root canals or decent dental work, and my uncles getting throat cancer from working in a paper mill filled with chemicals. I don't mind the word white privilage because i know that all factors being equal- intelligent, looks, charisma- there are at least three jobs I can say I know I wouldn't have gotten if I wasn't white, and I've only been slighted a couple of times for being white. I also have experienced so so much weird sexual shit being a woman in male dominanted spaces, but can also say that for most of my life, a majority of my closest friends and work partners have been men and don't see anything inherently different between the kindness of men and women, and have seen people all over the world act like entitled assholes and mistreat others, so i don't think there is anything inherently noble about any descripitive factor. And for the future, I'm glad to know we both know aren't attacking eachothers ideas- just working through them logically. My favorite thing about social media has been the ability to draw all of my most intelligent friends and work through ideas. I do have several good friends on facebook that I've never met, but for the most part I have. Obviously Steemit is different because almost none of us know eachother outside of our writings, but it also gives us an opportunity to really branch out and find more minds. Cheers ;) Also, I'm glad you slowed down the direction the no bid bot thing was going- something also rubbed me the wrong way with what was happening, even though I only came on saw your idea and then saw a little bit of what was happening.
I want to reply to this but I need some free time first.
And what if the king stopped calling himself a king and shared everything he had, at least sharing his so-called privilege? And the Kings you refer to are generally not actually Kings but just other peasants who have it just a little bit easier.
Not trying to attack your viewpoint, just trying to share another perspective on it.
Soooo, I didn't hear back the last couple of comments and it dawned on me that you might have been offended by this conversation, or felt that I was attacking you or being rude. I sometimes say things in a somewhat rude sounding tone that's not meant and I ususally engage completely honestly with people i respect intellectually. So i hope that isn't that case, but if it is I'm sorry, I didn't think you were being a jerk, i was just trying to walk through the changes in language that perspective brings (peace emoji ;)
No no no, I’ve spread myself a bit thin at steemit and I miss about 10% of comments on posts, I’ve got to do a long check of my replies page and check to make sure I don’t miss any more!
I’ll go read your comments! Sorry about that.
Oh no worries haha. It just wouldnt be the first time i accidently offened someone so I always assume that's what I did lol
Also, I use steem world since it shows all comments replies votes etc in a single timeline, since I also never would click on the 'replies' part. i'm not that organized ....
Kinda reminds me of that saying - the grass is always greener...
I think that it's better to have the mentality of - that is what I want, what do I need to do to get it?
I mean, children don't care that the grass is greener over there, they just want to get to the top of that climbing frame or have a go on that swing. They see what they need to do to achieve their goal, and do it.
I hadn’t thought about that cause that expression generally refers to comparing with other people but it’s not too different actually.
Sometimes the road forward isn’t so clear and there is no conceivable way to get OVER THERE at the moment. But if we enjoy being HERE the chances of one opening up are higher.
"Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass, it's learning to dance on the rain"
Vivian Greene
I carry this with me constantly.
(but since I work outside year round, I guess I need it!)
I believe you do have it!
Very true words. Rain is romantic though. Headaches and snot not so much, but they work the same way haha
Rain comes in many forms...-:)
This is key @whatamidoing
So here's a question for you . . . if the implications of that are true then why would you:
If it all comes from inside then why would we need the outside to be different?
💙 💛 💜 💚
I guess that’s a good point. I think I’m just in the process of bringing my focus back to the now, not only in this now but in all future now’s haha one step at a time I guess.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having a goal or a vision, and by keeping the vision closer, I think it’ll be easier not to get lost in circumstances.
I've had this comment open all day, waiting for a reply to come to me @whatamidoing but nothing is forthcoming.
Except today has been an invitation to really live in the now since I was intending to do a lot of Steemit stuff but, instead, ended up going to the beach for a picnic with my daughter and the grandchildren.
I now have a couple of hours before going to Yoga and am practising letting go of what I was intending to do here today . . .
I hope you've had an "in the moment" kind of day and it has unfolded beautifully for you! 💙
Wonderful! I have felt stuck before. I get inspired by youth living in the now. Mindfulness.
I like the realization that you won't get unstuck with any other external situation, you'll only get unstuck by yourself.
It reminds me of a great saying: "Wherever you go, there you are!"
Hahhaa that saying sounds so ridiculous but I actually like it a lot. Thanks for bringing it up haha
Well I've had that stuck feeling again for a few years now. Ah comfort is really such an experience killer.
But I just try and do what I can everyday. Sometimes it's like the more you chase it the farther away it gets, but other times a certain goal is achievable.
Life can be weird... 🙄
Life is a mirror! Just treat all of these complications as knots that your subconscious is trying to untie by showing them to you
I totally get you buddy. I have felt this so often in my life in so many different places and situations. If you ever manage to be able to feel good wherever you are, you have mastered a skill that few are able to reach.
Studying children and animals - and how they are being able to be in the now all the time, is extremely helpful. Having the 2 and 4 year old kids of my sister around, who - even right now are trying to drag me back into the now - definitely does the trick. And you know what, I am still observing animals, mainly insects, on a daily basis, with and without these kids.
Great post and - no matter how long it takes - I can't wait to be in the now with you, face to face. For now, I will focus on being in the now without you, though ;>)
Have a great day my friend!
Vincent
Be awesome fest 2019?
I’m getting back to art that interacts with the people around me, hopefully this will allow me to travel more ornfind some convenient ways for friends to visit. We should come up with some collaboration for sure!
I went to the mountain yesterday and had a fun time imagining how scary stray dogs would be and then having a stray dog come up to me and rub itself against me hahaha
Awesome!
I'm sure we will be able to work something out eventually. Who knows, 2019 might actually be a realistic goal, although 2020 sounds even better ;>)
Hi whatiamgoingtodo! You are wasting your life just by pondering what you’re going to do? You are a complete person, you are whole and you have to be thankful for that! You have a brain that can analyze situations, why do you think you’re stuck? That’s the most ridiculous notion you have! Live day by day because we don’t know what tomorrow will bring. We are just passing through this place! We plan but it can’t be done sometimes, don’t think of negative but instead do what you want to do Day by day and you will be happy! There is a saying: ‘Man Proposes, but God disposes’! Come and join us at SteemSchools at: https://discord.gg/uuTxHcC, see you there! I am Hongkong&Philippines there!
I never said I was wasting my life, did I? :-o
But I know what you are saying.