2023-02-03 Journal Entry

🍃 Season: ❄️ Winter 🔆 Weekday: Friday 🗓 Date: February 3, 2023 📅 Week: Jan 30 – Feb 5, 2023

Goooood morning San Francisco. A bit of a later start than usual, but I’m honestly kind of distracted at the moment. I made the grave mistake of opening my work computer before anything else, and now I just have work on my brain way earlier than I’d like. I’m writing these words in this very moment for little other reason than to, hopefully, dispel any of that from my brain. Let me think not of the future but right now. Right now, right now.

That said, I don’t really know what all I’ve got to say about right now. In fact, what I wrote in my notebook last night was to write back about my childhood. I think I might just brain-dump memories this morning.

That said, my memories from childhood feel pretty sparse. I remember some images of the old house, of Megan the schnauzer, of the little living room and stairs that went up to the bedrooms. But it’s mostly just images of those places, and they may be partially constructed by having seen footage and photos later. I remember playing first base in First Grade baseball. The Pirates, Nick Fowler — the biggest and slowest guy on our team — hitting an inside-the-park home run that year. I don’t really remember anyone else on that team or what all happened, but I remember the little trophies we had for winning both the regular season and the tournament at the end.

I remember playing basketball for far longer than I really wanted to. The Jets. Yo, the Jets. The number of times I heard “just one more year” from my parents despite never actually wanting to play on that team. How much I still disliked JD Kubiszyn, both from being on that team with him but mostly more into high school. I think I just disliked him because I could witness first-hand the way he pandered to teachers and authority figures while just being incredibly lazy and manipulative to other students (read: me). I think one of the reasons I hated basketball was because at that time, I had no real control or awareness of my emotions, and basketball just drug up all the worst ones: anger, hatred, and so on.

Soccer did that too, although to a much less degree. I can’t really say baseball did that at all, although in all honesty, I never really enjoyed playing baseball and still believe (half-jokingly) that it’s the lazy man’s sport. It’s all about the atmosphere! Another childhood memory: going to Birmingham Barons games. Nowadays they’re in that nice stadium downtown, but when I was a kid they were way out in the middle of nowhere in that concrete hellscape that was Legion Field. A lot of those trips were for Dad’s work events, but I think we went to some of the other events there as well. They sold soft serve in those plastic cups shaped like Barons batters’ helmets. We used to go to the SEC baseball championships out there too. I don’t remember any of the actual baseball that happened out there. I think that tells you about all that I needed to know about baseball.

I do remember enjoying soccer though! Club soccer was probably the only sport I played out of my own volition, although later on I did stop to focus on music more. I loved playing goalkeeper, although given where my birthday fell, I played with guys all the grade above me, so I was by far the smallest there. When we moved up to full-sized goals, it just became impossible for me to reach the top of the goal, so that was sorta the end of that. I probably would have continued to like soccer more if I had kept playing goalie, but oh well. Some choices are made for you. I also remember going to a USA vs Mexico game in New York when I was 13. Dad took me, and I just remember being surrounded by Mexico fans. The US is pretty terrible at (men’s) soccer, and even though it was a close game, a 3-2 loss surrounded by Mexico fans meant our ears were shattered and our clothes soaked with beer. But I still remember that trip being fun, going up to NYC and hiking out to the Giants stadium.

Man, sports were not my thing. I think it’s telling that I was the one tugging on my parents sleeves asking when I’d get to play the piano. Piano was certainly not for me — I hated sitting alone in our living room with our shitty old piano, playing exercises that felt, well, like exercises — but it was setting the stage for my later endeavors.

Man, I just have no motivation to be writing this morning, if I’m being honest. My brain jumped to work and now my alternative to doing work is not reading or writing, it’s dissociating by watching YouTube. That’s a pretty fucked up realization, I have to say. That work makes me so anxious and I have so few skills to realistically deal with that that I simply turn away from it. I think that’s the same thing I’m currently doing with Ayden though, I must say. They texted me totally out of good will two days ago and I haven’t responded because I’m a terrible person. Well, not because I’m a terrible person, but because my strategy so often is to dissociate or to just plain ignore people. It kinda goes back to what I was thinking about on the metta retreat, that my first inclination with so many people is to treat people as if they’re static images, not real people. Even treating myself as a real person, as I’m doing right now by digging up and rooting around in my childhood, is kinda painful. I’m realizing just how much I don’t remember it, and how the parts I do remember are kinda painful. I always say “oh they’re not that bad” because comparatively they’re not, but it does point out just how much of my childhood was avoiding people or things I didn’t like. I ran from sports, I ran from the church, I think the only thing I really ran towards was music. And even then, in some ways music was dissociative. It was abstract, it was a world all my own. Reading could sometimes be that way too. It’s strange, to run from life and yet spend most of your life yearning for more. There’s still more work to be done here.

Sometimes I wonder whether these morning pages where I get mildly depressive are a form of wallowing or a form of purification. There’s always a bit of unearthing the pain before you metabolize it; maybe I just need to be clear that I’m metabolizing it instead of shoveling it back down a hole. The process of purification and the development of real insight is a bit of a painful path, but no pain no gain as they say. It’s not so much that I feel like I have a ton of baggage to get through, it’s that I feel like there’s a light inside me but it’s surrounded by layers and layers of thick concrete. I can’t see the light so it makes it hard to get there.

OK, so my day is starting now. It’s time to be gentle to ourselves. Work is starting and you’re on run, but you’re not beholden to anyone. It’s a Friday, be happy and joyous and experience the warmth in the world. It’s a rainy day, so that may just mean having a nice cup of peppermint tea or something (god peppermint tea is delicious) and reading late into the evening. The book will come, the job will sort itself out. Don’t worry too much about all of those things.

It’s 7:20 almost, which means its the perfect time to take a shower and grab some breakfast. I’m trying to be friendly and compassionate towards myself today, just because I feel like I’m intentionally pulling up the dregs this morning. That’s a good thing — you need to get the scum out of the pond to see through it — but it’s gross and unpleasant. Writing is the greatest form of therapy, they say. Let’s build compassion not only for current me, but for younger me. I know it was hard. But we’re okay now. Would younger me be proud of current me? I think I’d be different than what they expected, but I’d still be the kind of person they’d like. The kind where the words themselves aren’t what makes you good, but rather the way you carry yourself. Good day, I love you. You’re not inferior to anyone. I’ll see you in the morning.