LastThursday

This is only part of the picture. Depression is a systemic problem. It involves the mind, physiology, hormones and environment. These all feedback on each other maintaining the depression in a kind of equilibrium. Exercise helps because it pushes the system out of equilibrium, but so does affecting hormone levels (e.g. taking SSRi's), or talking through the mental aspects (therapy).

You're right in a philosophical sense. But you're conflating the ability to choose with the option to choose. Being depressed takes away the ability to choose, much like a tired person finds it hard to choose anything other than being tired. Being depressed also puts you in a state where you become blind to the options available to you - hence the need for external intervention. Much mental illness is like this: you could choose from an outside perspective, but you don't or can't from an inside perspective.

Only if the option is available. You can't choose what you don't have. That is the problem of depression and mental illness, you're unable to choose because there's nothing to choose from. That's why outside help is often needed: to make acceptable options available and "visible".

Thinking you're different, broken and misunderstood.

I second that, his channel is superb and I haven't found another like it for quality.

Consolidation II Yes Guillermo. But notice the irony. You are already pretzled by having to maintain a mask. Your mask has holes in it any case. How do you escape this double bind eh? Hmm? If anything mate this masking business has got worse over time: you've actually got more bi. You pretend not to look. You brush off your friendliness towards some men as just that, hoping it doesn't get noticed too much. If you're going to mask do it fucking properly or don't do it at all. Much love @LastThursday

That seems like stating the obvious to me. How specifically?

@Joseph Maynor what is your take on the meta-physical aspects of depression?

This is exactly true. For me there was a large physiological component to it. I felt very detached somehow. My vision become washed and out and nondescript, with a strange blue hue to it. I had a very distinct feeling constantly like it was winter inside my body - very odd. Existentially I was completely restless to the point where I wanted out. I wanted to run far away and hide from everything. Nothing I did could shake any of those feelings. It was also very existential depression though, less about my circumstances and more about my place in the great scheme of things. I felt literally detached from existence itself and wasn't sure I even wanted to be re-attached.

My neighbours take their shoes off and leave them in the communal hallway, can be kind of pungent at times. Taking your shoes off just to enter a home can be a PITA, especially with laces or boots. As long as you clean your floors regularly it's not really an issue hygienically - you have an immune system for a reason. I will usually take my shoes off inside because I find it more comfortable barefoot.

@Lyubov there is technicality and originality. If you're having to compete in a market place then you're jostling with other creators for eyeballs. You choose a niche and then try and stand out in that corner of the market. You can produce content for its own sake because you have some latent ability or drive to produce a particular type of content. For example maybe I like to create music because I'm good at it or enjoy it, and just want to share my creations. This can work because your talent or enthusiasm comes through in your creation. Someone out there will enjoy consuming that. But this can be hit or miss in a market. You can actually explore the market and work out where the empty niches are. Maybe you see there's a gap around some idea like "history of manga". It feels interesting enough to you to start researching in that area, and you start to pump out videos around that subject. Over time you build up a fan base. The idea is original because nobody else thought about it before. The idea is good because you don't have competition in the market (think Leo Gura). You can also just imitate existing content but just do it better than others. If you do a lot of work in one area then you can continuously strive to improve your creations. This is technicality, you polish the production of your music, or make your videos tighter with better lighting and sound. I think this naturally happens if you do something a lot, but you can consciously work on technicality too. This is probably good for people that are not super original, but do like to compete against others. There is a difference between just being creative and original for its own sake and being creative and original for an audience in a market place. Originality comes from actively choosing things that others haven't done before. Creativity is the constant desire to be original.

I'd say it depends on what paradigm you want to choose. This stood out: Seen from this point of view unconsciousness is non-existence. My logical process would be something like this: How comes then things come in and out of consciousness? What "maintains" those things when they go out of conscious awareness? Maybe it's like a computer game where characters become live when they need to, but at other times go dormant as data on a harddrive. Maybe unconsciousness is like a dormant non-existent state in some sense. That begs the question, how is it those things that come back into consciousness change with the passing of time? And that opens up a whole can of worms, for example, is my mother today the same mother I saw yesterday? What does same even mean? Also if a thing "goes dormant" how comes it changes when you're not consciously aware of it? I would say there is also a problem with the scope of "unconsciousness". If unconsciousness is the sum of all things you're not conscious off, does that then include most of the universe, is it your unconscious any more? It's much easier to argue for possession of conscious experience, somehow its narrower and more well defined. I'd move the goalposts and say that there is conscious existence, and unconscious existence, and they're different in some way.

... the shed got painted. Now where was I? Oh yes, I was outing myself. Things in general continued this way. But some people noticed the way I was around others, and I was asked outright by my manager (of all people) if I was bi, I was probably about 30 at that time. That really took me aback at the time because it had never even occurred to me that that could be the case. I was so innocent about the whole thing that I wondered "what exactly made him think that about me?". I outright said no, but a seed of awareness had been sown. There were a few gay guys in one of the departments in the college I worked in, and because I flitted between departments (gathering software requirements) I would talk regularly with a lot of folks. I think my general demeanour and interaction with those guys must have been noticed. But, it was also well known that there was a woman in the finance department I crushed on badly. Hence 2 + 2 = bi. That characterisation bothered me for a long time. Firstly because I'd been so unconscious about "how I was" around certain people, some men in particular, and secondly about how I would be perceived by women. It broke through the bubble of my innocence. You see it's very hard to see yourself from a detached point of view, how you feel and behave is largely learnt and expressed unconsciously. It's like having a funny walk, you yourself don't think you walk strangely, but it's as clear as day to other people. That question about being bi, forced me into awareness and made me consciously try to pull back on any behaviours that made me seem "different". I felt a strong need to man up and conform - I just did not want the label no matter what - I'd already spent most of my life feeling different and didn't need any more of that thank you. It was a very difficult process to sort out for me and took many years of watching myself and being aware of my behaviours, especially around men. I mostly succeeded in being more masculine in my expression overall, but I can still slip at times especially with alcohol. Drink responsibly kids. For a long while also I've found myself cross-dressing, secretly trying on a girlfriends' clothing in their absence. Tights are thing for me for some reason. And if I could just shave my legs and present as a full on woman in public when I was in the mood I would. My face is too masculine for it though, although I'm a bit of twink physically. Women get to wear some cool shit! Is no fair. So. I know I'm attracted to women definitely. But am I attracted to men? This is a question I find super hard to answer with any certainty. I'm in general not attracted to men's bodies as I am to women's. I am more attracted to pretty looking men, for a flavour of that: Keanu Reeves, Brad Pitt, David Bowie, Johnny Depp etc. But I can also appreciate a good physique in a man, muscular but not overly so: Bruce Lee. But I'm not gushy about it like I would be with a woman like Zooey Deschanel or Nicole Kidman or Zhang Ziyi. Whether I've overly repressed my attraction to men or not I don't know at all, but I do know it's currently very asymmetric as compared to my attraction to women. Would I outright want to out myself as part of my process in the next month? My immediate gut reaction is no, but I may have to shed that in future and take the consequences. This is mostly in the name of authenticity and releasing that tension around suppressed expression. I do know that things are far more accepted now than they were, but it still isn't necessarily easy. My life is built around presenting as a het male, even if I go to that coffee shop just to see that guy. Shrug.

Consolidation I've never openly talked about my sexuality with anyone. How is it I've gone 53 years without ever discussing this with anyone? To my mind there a several confounding reasons why I've never been open about it. The main one is that my internal world is sovereign to me and has absolutely nothing to do with other people. I don't want my inner world warped by other people's prejudices and labels or even advice. There's a strong sense of defiance and self-worth involved in that stance. My fear about being out is exactly that stigma this attached to being different - I have a strong need to fit in without having to defend myself constantly. Other reasons are that even if I were to be open about it I would still get "pigeonholed" into one category or another, and I would forever be pretzled into that shape. I would very strongly need to maintain my flavour of sexuality against that conformity. Thirdly, I don't have a strong mental model of what my sexuality is. It isn't something that I've thought about to any great depth. Its expression is fully in the realm of the non-verbal, in other words it is hard to think about. But here I am trying to do just that and hoping that some clarity about what I should do comes out of it - if anything. Most of my early years were spent around females. The prominent people in my life were my mother, my grandmother and my female teachers in school. My father whilst I looked up to him was only constantly present in my very early years, and was and still isn't very masculine in character - he wasn't my role model at all, not consciously. My default working mode was feminine in character. This sort of thing is fine young kids they're mostly not inherently strongly gendered in any case, other than that being enforced through clothing and stereotypes about what a boy and a girl are. I grew up in the 70's and 80's when gender conformity was a lot stronger and expected than it is today. And that is a salient point, that delineation into boy and girl is embedded into my psyche, and so was never a point of contention for me even into my 30's. However. Even into my late adulthood I was somewhat more unconsciously feminine in some of my character traits. When I was young, say five or so, I would often get confused as a girl by my mother's friends and she would often have to reiterate that I was a boy. I suspect my mother always wanted girls and wasn't much interested in boys, at least she had my sister! But I'm pretty sure this had a subtle effect on things in general, and others were picking up on that energy. And possibly that energy also ingrained itself into my young mind. One of my best friends at high school turned out to be gay. In many ways it was an odd friendship, totally non-sexual mind, but he really was a social butterfly and I was the straight man (in both senses!) being mostly very introverted and somewhat out-of-place mostly. But whatever, there was some underlying tacit knowledge there between around sexuality. At that point I don't ever remember being conscious of fancying blokes. I was (and still am) very much into girls, and was hung up on several of them at school, mostly just crushes. But there was an unspoken underlying current of enjoying faces in general, male or female. I've always been very curious about and attracted to faces, above all else. There is a very fine line between curiosity and attraction. I think my underlying feminine traits were often picked up on as an adult, and variously interpreted. At university my sister was convinced I was gay for while, but I just didn't know it. She "arranged" an encounter with kind of friend of a friend of the family. That was my one and only - so far - interaction with a man. But whatever at that particular point in time I was not into this guy in an particular, and there the matter rested any my sister gave up insisting. My half brother is gay and possibly this is where my sister got the notion from. He used to run a cabaret in a pub in London and do drag. My father and I would visit him at times doing his act, and I would get very noticeable attention from gay men, my father would "defend" me saying I wasn't gay. Hilarious. I suspect I just gave off feminine vibes at times. I laughed and smiled a lot, and flirted with anyone, very unmanly. Sheesh. I must do lunch and watch a friend paint his shed (my life has come to this). To be continued...

Do you think you could land a plane? This video made me think about all the sometimes impossible situations that life throws at you, and makes you realise that in the moment you will react very very differently to how you think you would. I once watched a person being run over and thrown up in the air like a ragdoll, what did I do? I froze like a rabbit in the headlights. The lesson is that it's ok to not know what to do sometimes, things can get beyond your control or abilities and you're not a worse person for it. The other lesson is that it is possible to cope in nearly impossible situations, humans are resilient. Could you land a plane? A jumbo? Absolutely no chance without help, and nearly no chance with help. A small plane, possibly, if you know the controls already:

I'm going to splurge out some thoughts this morning. I'll write till I run out of steam. Thinking about some of the posts on magick in the forum has made me realise that instead of consuming ideas about it or cogitating over it, that I should actually just do it. It's not something I've ever consistently dabbled in. So since I've got large expanses of free time on my hands, I'm going to spend the next month actually practising what I know. Typically, I'm attracted to Chaos Magick since that effectively involves a pick-and-mix approach to things which is me all over. My sole intention is to use it on myself (inwardly) rather than to affect people (outwardly) - self-change, but if this causes changes in my externality then so be it. I want to employ ritual, as well as more mental aspects, working with entities or whatever comes. However despite my general randomness in approach I need a mythic (metaphorical) approach to give things some structure and to bypass my doubting Thomas of a chattering mind. On my walk this morning I came up with several phases: Consolidation - reappraise myself, my past, my connections with people, my current circumstances, my history, the structure of my current psyche. Highlighting any emotional tensions, resentments, regrets. Thinking about what I want and what's needed in future. Death - letting go, severing and saying goodbye to those things that are holding me back, restricting me, not serving me well. Remove any psychic blockages, anything potentially being imposed (supernaturally) from others, mental obligations from others being imposed on me from afar, removing ill will past and present. Creating a circle of protection from any future incursions into my psyche. Creating a tabula rasa. Opening - probably the most vulnerable part of the process. Opening up my body's energy to the universe. Heightening my awareness. Being more receptive to my externalities. Being outward facing. Allowing myself flexibility, fluidity of thought, character and appearance. Being open to new experiences. Pushing myself out. Letting my latent talents, abilities and core character out and giving them all breathing room, acceptance, allowing. Rebirth - letting the new things bed in. Getting comfortable with any new changes. Taking stock of the process so far and if more needs to be done. The above stages are WIP and may change in order or character, don't know yet, I may have to just roll with it. I won't document my process as I do it, for fear of disrupting the work. But I may well document things afterwards if there's anything I think will be useful to others that I've learnt. Watch this space. I start tomorrow.

This piqued my curiosity. What is Artistry to you? What would the Artistry section be for, can you elaborate a bit on what you would want to see there?

It's interesting to me to see how to try and use metaphorical language effectively. I don't think this is particularly natural to most people me included, even though English is full of metaphorical phrases and sayings such as the goose that laid the golden egg. It's a little bit of a complex idea but I'll see if I can explain its usage. The first time I encountered this sort of thing was about twenty years ago when I did several NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming) courses back-to-back. NLP is a hodge-podge of techniques garnered from different experts in the field of therapy around the 1970's. One of those experts was Milton Erickson who mostly used language and metaphor to hypnotise his patients into recovery. It's a bold claim that this is even possible, but Erickson was by all accounts very effective. The founders of NLP, Richard Bandler and John Grinder, essentially mimicked these experts in their mannerisms and use of language and found that they too could perform the same miracles with patients. They went on to deconstruct and turn their findings into a coherent picture. Erickson's shtick was to use stories about seemingly completely unrelated things as a vehicle for recovery. For example in one instance there was a patient, a florist, with a malignant growth who was in great pain (more here: https://www.ericksoninstitute.it/en/38/palliative-care/one-day-at-the-time/). He used a story about growing a tomato plant as a metaphor for their patient's real-world facial growth, to give them pain relief. There is the canonical series of books on his techniques: Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Milton Erickson (I and II) for more information. The main thrust of (Ericksonian) metaphorical usage is that it mimics something concrete or mundane and turns it into a story. The Hero's Journey is an archetypical metaphor which dresses up something mundane like "getting things done" as a mythic quest. The genius of this is that our brains latch on to stories a lot more easily than a series of instructions or a procedure, but we are also extremely good at interpreting metaphor and applying to ourselves. In some sense it flies under the radar of our normal day-to-day reasoning, and allows something to be absorbed with less friction than it would otherwise. The ancients used story telling as a vehicle for memorisation and transmission of culture, think of the Icelandic sagas or Greek epic poetry. I'm reading The Master and His Emmisary at the moment, in which Ian McGilchrist explains how the two halves of the brain actually work (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pvr_gubcWUk ). He argues that the left half of the brain deals with categorising and deconstructing the world, and the right half deals with the world in whole, its context, and it understands humour and indirectness - one half narrows in, the other expands out. Whilst story telling has procedural elements (left brain), it's the right brain that interprets its context and relationship to everything else, it's the right brain that understands metaphor. So in a strong sense Ericksonian hypnosis largely bypasses the left brain and targets the right. This way of transmitting information is extremely useful and effective. I'm reminded of Buddhist Koans which work in exactly that way, and politics runs largely on storytelling and "ideals" to excite the masses. Now, I don't go around hypnotising everyone with my language, that would be ridiculous. But it has made me much more aware of when others use metaphorical language and get confused by it. The confusion occurs because they take the metaphor for reality rather than a description of reality, they really become the hero on a quest. This forum of full of this sort of thing, this-is-that metaphorical equivalences, because essentially we're trying to describe something that isn't describable. We're describing right-brain holistic views with left-brain categorisation and metaphor is the bridge between the two. I've experimented with injecting more story based and somewhat poetic and metaphorical stuff on occasion here. I'm not sure it lands, and it's hit and miss as to whether what I want to get over is actually understood, but that is the case any way with normal prose. I'll persevere and experiment as it fits in with my theatricality, and its fun!

Ha! Us short men must use our wits. Stick together my brothers, fight the good fight! 🤣

I'm reminded of Prince. Wear heels. Wear a hat. I guarantee both will attract attention. If you really want to pull, go around with a small happy dog.

I really enjoyed both interviews @Vido @Davino @Natasha Tori Maru, it's always good to put a face to a name. We could learn a shit ton just by listening to each other. GIVE US MORE. Second that! But it would definitely need some structure to stop chaos (@Vido).

Short poetry: I couldn't love myself So I looked somewhere else But it wasn't good enough Never quite right However hard I looked Despair was easier Self-love is harder I am whole