Thittato

Started the day with a hot shower that ended with a cold shower. My stamina for cold showers has really been going down even though the weather is warmer. Maybe I cannot cruise on beginner-enthusiasm anymore. But anyways, I usually end my showers with a cold shower, even if it has been getting shorter, because it feels terrible going out from a hot shower getting into my clothes sweat and warm etc, so it is much better to end it with a cold shower. Today I was rollerblading to my job and back home again. That was really fun. I'll probably continue to sometimes use rollerblading as transport for getting to my job. The distance is 2,5 km and it only takes a little bit more than 10 minutes. Yesterday one of the 5 members of our sharing group needed an extra meeting to discuss what was going on with our group. She told what she has been feeling lately, and the other female member, who has often been the social glue between us, was pretty honest about the fact that right now she don't want to be part of any group - so we got our suspisions confirmed that she has been pulling away. It sort of seems like out of the blue, because we were all so close just a few months ago, and there has been no serious conflict between us. We are 3 people that want the group to continue, and 2 who seems to be pulling away. I was quite upset today about this, but now I'm starting to land feeling that it might be quite liberating to just let it go. Something new will always come. The two that are pulling away are much more in the "light and love only" camp than the three of us who wants to continue, and it often feels like if they don't like the energy of someone they will just pull away. There is little willingness to stay with anything that isn't instantely gratifying. From my perspective they are projecting their inner resistance out onto the group. But these things might just be my own projections. But I think that deep down we are not really compatible with each other as a sharing group. We've been cruising on a honeymoon for a very long time, but basically we have just been pleasing each other. There has been little room for the difficult confrontations and I think that has been putting limits on the growth in the group. Actually I don't know anyone as picky as these two people about the energies they want to have around themselves. Personally I'm very convinced that if people are unwilling to do shadow-work then growth is hindered. So yeah, the more I think about it the more I realize it is probably the right moment to let this group go. We will all still be friends, but this formal sharing-meeting once per month will most likely dissolve. I'm going to do my very best to not fall for the temption about confronting them with my view-points. It will for certain be met with resistance and anger and it will only push them further away from me with no good coming out of that. It is better to just allow them to pull away for now and focus on my own purpose and path and at one point, probably sooner than later, we will catch up again.

10 min meditation yesterday as part of a sharing-group on video-chat that I have going with 4 friends. We are a group of 5 really close friends, 3 men and two women around the same age that has known each other for quite some years. Something has been going on in this group lately. Something has been coming between us. So some of us has pulled away from each other. Not sure exactly what has been going on, because there hasn't been any real conflict or anything, but we just haven't been on the same wave-length lately. We usually meet once a month, but it was probably two months since last time. But finally we addressed that something has been coming between us, and that seemed to bring in some closeness again. So I'm really glad this process of addressing this has started - it seemed like the group would just gradually dismantle, but now I think there is hope to bring it back to the same level of emotional closeness that we have shared so many times. I'm also still really glad that this psychedelic period is over for this time, and that also the rollerblading period has calmed down. Haha..... Seems like this pandemic has now made me calm down a lot. And things are slowly opening up again. It was like the whole spring-mania was flattened. This pandemic was like flattening the curve of the spring-mania. Like we were just easing into summer in a contemplative way. Of course I had a lot of reactions to it. Pretty strong ones too. And of course, maybe a second wave will hit. We don't know yet. But we are probably better prepared if it does, like at least mentally. Most of us have now accepted what is going on. Not much formal practice lately, but a lot of spontanous meditation this weekend as I have been working night-shift the whole weekend. In general I feel very settled in myself again. I'm really glad this psychedelic period stirred up so much process again, and it was really engaging to write so much about it here.

Just very glad this brief little psychedelic period is over for now haha.... Feels like my focus is back on daily life again. I needed a little adventure here in this lockdown-period. This rollerblading-period is also over. Not like completely over, I will certainly go rollerblading again soon, but it has been almost two weeks since last time, so that sort of intensity about it is over. I've been really appreciating going for long walks in nature lately. Seems like having various forms of exercise works well for me so that I can alternate back and forth between them and have some nice variation. The forms of exercise I enjoy and alternate between are: jogging, yoga, rollerblading, walking and sometimes a little bit of weight-lifting or body-weight exercises as well. I like that I'm pretty low-key about it but that I'm also pretty serious about my exercise. I think variation and fun really helps keeping it going. I think I've been doing some serious processing and reflection regarding my job as well. And yesterday I matched with a really interesting girl on Tinder as well. I've been thinking lately that I would actually be very interested in a relationship again, but also I'm really scared of going into anything, but I got the vibe from her that she would be someone who would really appreciate me for who I naturally am, so I'm not going to try to put any effort into being someone I'm not, just going to see what kind of energy that is there naturally between us. In general something seems to be going on again between me and women. I feel much closer to them all again, and also much more naturally interested and relaxed around them. With this woman on Tinder I feel that I have already shared a lot of my authentic positive and open energy with her, and I don't feel so invested in actually getting something from her, it is more just a natural chill interest without expectations. Maybe this is some of the side-effects of the psychedelics lately. I needed to rock things up a bit in order to not take myself so seriously - to loosen up again and get a bit humbled as well. Even though this journaling probably seems a bit obsessive and intense at times, I really feel that it helps my growth a lot. My connection with my co-workers has improved lately.

Great day at work. Glad I decided it was time to have a pause from my brief intensification of my psychedelic studies. My psychedelic periods is like a thirst that suddenly arises and then after a few trips the thirst has been quenched and then it is time to just return to normal focus and integrate these experiences. Feels like my psychedelic thirst has been solidly quenched for some time now. Perhaps most important at all was this experience on Peyote that my preference for the psychedelic state over the normal state is not really there. I could just as well just be in a normal state. Nice with some variation every now and then, but not really such a big deal. I think before I was much more addicted to altered states of consciousness. It is the same when I go deep into samadhic states when I meditate - nice while it lasts - but not really something that I give much priority (although I might at some point because some of my teachers has really mastered those states and strongly recommends doing so, and for me they are only accessible occasionally when the mind naturally inclines itself towards stillness). Maybe my ideal these days is the ordinary mind of Zen. Nothing Special.

So after this pandemic and lockdown started I have done 3 psychedelics trips (lsd, ayahuasca and peyote) and smoked weed 4 times. Usually my drug of choice is alcohol, and only occasionally do I do these other things. Now I think I will have to establish a boundary again and tell myself I won't do these other things again until I have thoroughly processed all these new experiences. I like to always have a good overview over my life, and if I trip too much I can easily loose that overview so I need to spend some time to really digest it. The most important process going on right now is this crisis regarding my career choice. Seems like I will have to go some rounds on this one. It is really strange how it can alternate back and forth so strongly between feeling so right and feeling so wrong. Today it felt really wrong again, and then I allowed myself to feel all those perspectives as fully as I could, and then suddenly it felt really right again. I think my career choice was made in so much chaos, that I just found something "decent enough" to cling onto in the midst of 10.000 existential crises going on in all directions. Of course it very often felt wrong, but sometimes it seemed like the best that I could find, and I think I was trying to cling onto some "positive thinking" in this process not really being honest about myself how it really felt, and also clinging on to some notion that it would somehow work out one way or another. So behind this "false self" (which I didn't really manage to establish at all because hahha the storm has always been way too heavy, but still I tried to deny this storm and just cling onto this notion that it would somehow work out), yes behind this "false self" there is a lot of suppressed feelings and perspectives that I will have to feel fully in order to clean up this mental chaos. I feel there is hope in the fact that whenever I allow myself to fully feel whatever is there it seems like I land even some more where I am right now, and I get more mental access to the actual possibilites in this situation, instead of just focusing on the limitations and trying to suppress this painful feeling that I'm in the wrong place. If this is actually the right place that I'm in, I think this process is leading to a more steady course that can handle some turbulence. And in fact, being a social worker, I think I will totally have to do a lot of continous inner work in order to be a steady empathic presence for those that I work with. It is like really working with the darkest and most chaotic aspects of humanity, and not really in a situation where someone is commited to deep inner work - very often that motivation is totally lacking. I was getting very interested in soccer this last year, and especially I became a fan of Manchester United again as I was for a brief period when I was a kid. It was very interesting to see the process of how the manager was trying to establish a stable team, and how for a long time they seemed quite bi-polar as they would suddenly win some really impressive matches, and then they would suddenly loose to the lowest ranking teams. Like they were all over that place. I like to compare that process to my own mind. How I am trying to make my mind into a stable team for myself that can handle some blows. I imagine this stability only comes from experience. I've seen a lot of people try this type of job for only a year or two. In such a short amount of time you can make a good job by will, but suddenly you will get caught up by some huge process that will take some much deeper work to process enough to go back into the field with re-newed empathy and belief in humanity. For a long time I couldn't really handle being social outside of my job, because the job was so emotionally draining, but now it seems I actually have a very good capacity and sense of joy in being social without getting emotionally drained neither from my relationships at work nor outside of work. So I think I'm actually on the brink of really nailing this. I think there is a deep-rooted pattern in me that when I actually start to land somewhere then I get into panic mode and try to switch things up again in order to embark on a totally new project. My chaotic childhood was like that so it is a well-known dynamic that people with such a background continues to re-create their chaos over and over. Lack of chaos apparantly triggers all the alarm-systems that starts to signal that something is very wrong because lack of chaos is so unusual. This whole thing must be a very common PTSD pattern. People with PTSD lives in a chronic pattern of chaos where the pattern of old chaos contributes to even more new and fresh situations of chaos, and it all just feeds on itself in a vicious positive feedback-loop. And even if something totally else should actually end up being the answer at some point, I totally want to milk this process for as much learning as I can totally get out of it. It is a very interesting parallell process going on between my own psychic struggeles, and the psychic struggles that I see in the patients that I work with. Fortunately I have good tools and good support-systems to deal with my own stuff, because if I hadn't, hahaha, then I would probably had been someone who needed psychiatric hospitalization myself, but I hope that this parallell process can help with giving the people I work with a sense of being understood and validated for how they feel - hopefully much more so than for someone who has only studied these things from a textbook and who unconsciously keeps an energetic distance towards actually feeling these things deeply within their own body. In gestalttherapy they used to say that if you haven't worked through your own story, then you will unconscisously reject your client in an energetic way. Another thing that pops to my mind is that I have never really considered myself mentally ill, allthough I do think there is some mild combination of bi-polarism, BPD and PTSD going on in my own life, but not overwhelmingly so, and in general I seem to have much energy and a positive outlook in life - but I also think there is that phenomena of the spiritual process in my own life called The Dark Night of the Soul, which many has described, and that is simply that all this trauma we all have stored in our bodies gets actived when the meditation process takes you down into the body instead of just living in your head disconnected from your body as apparantly most people do if we are to belive what the meditation teachers says. So embodyment takes a lot of work. There is also another saying that says that the psychotic drowns in the same water that the mystic swims in - so there are some interesting parallells here between mental illness and the spiritual process where it is not so clear-cut to sort out exactly what is what.

45 min meditation today. Some resistance and grief that I had to go into. It helped a little bit. Been quite social these last days as society opens more up again. As I'm spending this day alone I'm noticing these feelings of feeling stuck in life are still here. But the choice is simple: Either change something, or see if it is possible to go beyond this need for change and just continue with life as it is right now and try to penetrate through these feelings with my meditation technique.

Peyote-trip Peyote-trip yesterday. Feels superfluous to say much about it. It was simply perfect. As always. But even as perfect as it was, the most interesting observation I had was that I simply have no preference for being on a trip compared to not being on a trip. Life is life. But it felt very complemantery to the ayahuasca trip I just had. Ayahuasca has a very distinct feminine quality. Peyote is very masculine. They complement each other perfectly. I went for a long forest walk this time. 6-7 hours. Nature is so damn awesome. If there is one thing that I'm going to be grateful for because of this pandemic - it is that I have discovered nature on a much deeper level.

30 min meditation this morning. Very nice, chill and centered meditation. The Ayahuasca is still working in me. I had a very intricate and deep dream this morning, which I remember nothing from except the ending, but I was totally amazed when I woke up (when the memory of the dream was still fresh) how intricate the story had been and how strong and lucid it all had felt. The dream ended with me drowning inside some medieval ship that was getting filled up with water, probably from sinking, and when I realized I wouldn't be able to escape drowning, I decided it was probably best to just surrender to it, and at that point I was filled with peace and woke up.

Hmmmm..... yeah, direction in life keeps nagging me. Everything seemed so fine before this pandemic hit. Seemed like a good plan to continue in my job and to grow in that role. Now I'm wallowing in chaos and nothing feels right. Is this some vulnerability and process that has opened up because I have been tripping on psychedelics lately? Is it triggered by the pandemic? Or both? Or would I not have been satisfied with my direction in life deep down as it is right now and it is just good to have it triggered so I can have a closer look? One thing is for sure and that is when I'm wallowing in chaos like this it is difficult to enjoy the possibilties in my current situation. I'm focusing on the limitations and not the possibilities. I could just view it as a state of mind, and then use my meditation to work on this mind-state, and then at the same time establish some strategy for how to get the most out of my current situation. If this is the answer I should probably have a much more defined strategy. Right now I'm a leaf being blown around by the wind. Not a good feeling. I'm also wondering if the rollerblading has been part of triggering this. It seems like such a waste to invest so much mental energy into something that is not going to be useful for anything else outside of itself. In general I'm spending way too much energy on my "fun things" and way too little on my core values. That is what makes me think there is some sort of escapism involved. The same with Chess. It would probably have been ok to spend much time on my hobbies if my more important things were settled, but when they are not I have some work to do to get my priorities into balance.

45 min meditation today. Still going some rounds regarding purpose and direction in life. Seems like I have some more balance and honesty in my mind which helps me keep these questions in mind without freaking out. There has probably been a lot of denial and chaos around this for a long time.

The 21th rollerblading session today. Me and my skateboard-friend were back at the halfpipe we usually go to. This is the 3rd time this week we are skating. Some progress for both of us, but we both were also tired. I'm probably going to take a few days rest now. Today I'm tired and a little vulnerable, probably from the intense forest walk yesterday combined with ayahuasca. But it was nice to squeeze out a few hours of rollerblading. Tomorrow I will take a full relaxation day just to integrate everything that has been happening lately. Something also feels really good today. It is nice to just live as intensely as I have been doing lately, and then just to feel like fully expressed and just needing to relax and restitute without having to chase new experiences. This has been a really awesome week.

Amazing day! Started the day with 20 min of vinyasa flow yoga, then I went to meet a friend who I was going to go on a long forest walk with. He had a surprise for me which turned out to be a small bottle of ayahuasca. So we both micro-dosed on ayahuasca for the whole forest walk. We were walking for 7-8 hours altogether, with lots of pauses. So nice. I took a spoonful of ayahuasca each time I microdosed, and I was adjusting it throughout the whole day. But on my way home, I decided to empty the bottle, so I had four spoonfuls, and after an hour, haha, I suddenly went into ceremony-mode. Fortunately I was at home by then, so I was putting on some nice mantra music, and laid down in my bed and went deep into some amazing blend of the music mixed together with all the fractals and geomtric patterns going on inside my head - so much creativity! It was pretty cool to cruise on a microdose for the whole day in beautiful nature, and then at the end of the day to seal off the trip with a good nice journey into the juice of the spiritual fractal jungle. Ayahuasca feels so natural and healthy. It seems like I have a much greater capacity for letting go off control when I do ayahuasca now compared to when I started. There is a genuine sense of trust in the process. But that can probably be challenged if the dose get high enough haha.... Before, to me, ayahuasca was so much chaos, but now when I can let go into it and just let it do its thing, the whole thing is so much more fine-tuned. It feels like fractal patterns of healing and jungle-juice and creativity just working its way through my whole being, just opening up everything in order to pour in vitality and life. Of all the things I have tripped on, ayahusca is probably the substance closest to my heart, because this is the only substance I have been part of a tradition with. I do ayahuasca ceremonies every now and then with a lineage within the Santo Daime church. Now it is 1,5 year since last ceremony. But this was a really nice re-union with the substance. A little bit like coming home again. Maybe I should choose to go deeper with this substance again. Like make my psychedelic adventures a bit more goal-oriented and specific again. Ayahuasca has such a sobering effect on ones life, so I think this can easily be integrated with living a normal life - probably much more easily than jumping back and forth between various substances. The whole vibe it has around it is just spirituality and healing. It is simply not possible to use it as a recreational drug because it almost always brings up some psychological material that one has to work through. I'm wondering if now I'm ready to do a full ceremony-dose all by myself. I will have to think about that for some time, though. Regarding my job and my purpose I was using quite some time processing all my feelings and thoughts around this. Even though I'm restless for something else, and I'm dreaming about a more exotic life, I think it is the right thing to just continue to stay where I am right now. This has really gotten to a point where I'm just way more safe and robust in my role - and we often have to deal with very violent people - but the more safe I get regarding the boundaries that we have to establish and maintain as an institution, the easier it gets to show some genuine human warmth and compassion within these boundaries. And somehow I just love all the processing I have to do in order to get better at this. So for now, this is a process that I will have to get fully baked in, so that whatever I do next, if at some point I'm going to do something else, then I will leave this job with a sense of "mission accomplished." Maybe there would be a way where I could do this processing more professionally. I have often thought about getting some kind of coaching on it. Something like that would certainly increase my job-satisfaction. The more engaged I can become in this process, the more I will get into a sense of purpose and flow. I'm noticing there is always a lot of passion being stirred up when I talk about this process. And maybe ayahuasca is the answer, or part of the answer, regarding how I can make my life more exotic again. Haha. It doesn't get more exotic than that, in many ways. But in more mundane terms in many ways it is as simple as going back to my church again. Going back to my church in order to get more in touch with God again, so that I can bring more love and passion into everything that I do.

Just had to do a little night-session of rollerblading to brush of the mania from the skatepark today, so I cruised through my jogging-route of 4km just now. So that was my 20th session. So nice to go rollerblading next to the ocean and the river in the silence of the night. Damn I'm going to get fit from all this, especially when I combine it with yoga. This is especially a point where I shouldn't really worry about my exercise routine because it certainly already is plentiful.

So I also went rollerblading in a skatepark in another city 1 hour away from here together with a really good friend today. This is the 19th session so far. Two of his friends from this town, it is his home-town where he grew up, also came and joined us. At first it was challenging, adjusting to a new park and a new environment and I didn't really feel good enough for these new challenges, but then it was getting really awesome as we warmed up to the process and were getting to know the park and its possibilities. Things are just still getting better every session. Now I better understand what is going on with me. When the pandemic hit I lost many of my tribes. Both my chess-tribe and my sauna-tribe down at the bath-house. These are both two really interesting groups of people, and even though I have many long-term friends, there is something about that energy to meet really often and go deep with our activity that only happens when one share whatever is ones main-passion at that particular moment. There was always someone I could play chess with, or someone I could talk with in the sauna, that was also part of the larger social picture of our city. So these tribes where a huge part of my networking-strategy for having a fun and interesting life and feeling connected to society. It is not the same going for a walk together for instance. It doesn't stirr up that "Hey, lets do this again as soon as possible -vibe." So anyways, what I'm obviously doing with this new passion for skating is that I'm building a new tribe while this pandemic is going on, which is also somehow related to our culture at large, so it is a new way to connect with people that I'm already connected with, and I can carry this connection with me when society returns to normal, while also improving on a really cool skill. Rollerblading is a really awesome way to explore the city and see it from a new angle, both physically and socially. I'm meeting many people I already know when I'm out rollerblading, and it connects me with society again. Some repetitions over the same theme there, hahha..... So anyways, I don't feel something is wrong with me right now because of this thing, like it is an immature obsession and I'm getting too old for it and I should rather focus on more important things or whatever. It is a fun and useful hobby, and it was the best that I could find to serve many of my needs that was getting neglected because of this pandemic. I've been in a crisis ever since this thing hit us because so much of my life is about living my life out in caffees, pubs, concerts, art-exhibitions, parties, etc, so it was a huge shock when this was all taken away. And in order to cope with that I had to re-invent myself as a skater and start building a skater-tribe. In many ways skating is like hanging out at an art-exhibiton, because there is a lot of really cool graffity all around, and we just hang out in a really chill way while we focus on our activity. When I came home I did 35 min of yoga. Gosh I have been getting so stiff lately because of all this rollerblading, so it was really about time to do some yoga, and it was sooooooo damn goooood. Gosh, yoga just totally rocks. And it rocks even more when it feels like I have really been using my body a lot since last time I did it. Then it is not just a self-serving bubble doing it for its own sake, but I actually get to use it for something. Like a knife one is sharpening, but one doesn't cut anything with it, so why keep sharpening it? Feels much better to sharpen it when you know you put it to really good use.

30 min meditation yesterday, 45 min today. Didn't feel like yesterday's meditation had much effect. I've been very clogged up with mental and emotional chaos, but today, when the meditation was over, I felt calm again, and my mind feels much more spacious.

Hmm........ Been feeling stuck again lately in a life that doesn't go anywhere. Feels like the same things I'm talking about in this journal as when I started it. I get this kick on various things, and then they pass and I search for something new to get a kick on. Feels like my sense of purpose is very weak. I'm very confused about my purpose. Been day-dreaming much about living a very different life in another city or country. When I was in therapy I reached a point which they call "the impasse" which is sort of like a gridlock in your life that you can't figure a way to get out from. Feels like this impasse is back. I did 3,5 years in gestalttherapy, and the last two of those years was done as part of the education to become a gestalttherapist. The education is 4 years, but I decided that I needed a break because I was close to burned out from doing these really demanding group-processes we had in that education combined with a demanding job in a psychiatric hospital. I figured all I wanted was that self-development that we were focusing on in these 2 first years, and it felt like I had gotten what I wanted out of therapy and that now I could go on living a normal and functional life finally. I quit the education beginning of last summer, and it hasn't felt like this impasse-phenomena has been here for that period. At first I had this desire to become an artist come up veryh strongly again, and then I did a studio-collaboration for 2 months with a good friend of mine that lead to an exhibiton, and after that I felt that I had gotten it out of my system for this time, and that I only wanted to focus on my job as a social worker - like stop self-sabotaging with always dreaming about something different than what I currently do and just settle down with my normal job. But these days, this feeling that nothing is right comes up very strongly again. Of course it is triggered partly because of this pandemic. But on the other hand I think I was escaping from this feeling when it was easier to distract myself with fun social stuff. I basically just wanted to immerse myself in cultural and social stuff when I was finished with all those heavy therapeutic processes. Like those people I had been "forced" together with in this class and had to bond really deeply with through these therapeutic processes was stealing my social capacity and also the time I could use on those I really identified with and wanted to bond with. Maybe I just needed to immerse myself a lot in social life again as much as I could, and everything else I had to immerse myself in, but now it feels I'm back to this sense of a lack of purpose. Doesn't feel like my life has any direction. I'm just floating around acting on very random impulses - basically just whatever I'm inspired by in the moment. Right now it is skating and rollerblading, and suddenly my social life is about building up a crew that I can skate with. On thurday we are going to a different city where they have this really awesome skate-park. I'm very glad when I'm thinking about this - but still - this is just how I life my life - just some random inspiration popping up leading to some temporary projects that are not meant to last. Right now skating is my new purpose. And my purpose just keeps changing all the time. Underneath this all there is this impasse-phenomena. Maybe I need to go back to therapy to work through it. Always when I'm in this situation I start to obsess about my art again. The only clear things I felt in my life regarding purpose was when I wanted to become a buddhist monk, and after I had been a buddhist monk for 2 years, I wanted to become an artist, and then the artist vocation was activated and I went home and started hanging out in the art-scene, met some really cool artist-friends, made an artist-group and had quite some underground art exhibitons, one of them actually entered into a very recognized art gallery. But I was doing a bachelor degree in social work at the same time, was in two relationships after each other that was pretty challenging, and then I also did a lot of psychedelics, joined a ayahuasca church, and it felt like I was all over the place, and at some point I went back and finished my licence as a carptenter which altogether was 3,5 year in apprentice, and then I started this gestalttherapist education, and yeah I've basically just been all over the place, but this art thing always comes back. Maybe I've never settled down well enough to actually concentrate well on it. Or maybe it is just my go-to escapism-fantasy whenever I felt stuck and when I try to translate the fantasy into reality it actually sucks way more than what it does in my fantasy version. Part of these phases is that at some point this all seems just crazy and meaningless, and I just need to go deeper with my meditation instead of being lost in all this content. And then, usually, I get a very strong sense of purpose simply from just focusing on my meditation and experiencing the sense of flow that periodically gives me. But then eventually I hit a try spot with my meditation, and my focus usually starts floating again. I could just say to myself: Just push on through with your meditation. Or: Just push on through with your art. Or maybe I should have pushed on through with the therapeutic process in order to become a gestalttherapist. Or maybe all. Or none. Or maybe I'm just basically freaking out because I have this pattern of always moving on when I'm finally starting to land somewhere, as I was feeling I was doing in my current job right before this pandemic shit happened. I was really really enjoying my job at that point, and now it feels like it totally sucks. But that is because we don't have any patients. Our department is turned into this stupid corona quarantine shit, where people who need psychiatric hospitalization and quarantine at the same time can come. But there are none, so basically our department is empty and we are just sitting around idle. And those few that come are usually quickly clearified as not infected, and then we send them somewhere else, and even if we had patients we would have to lock them up in their rooms which also totally sucks. So no meaningful therapeutic work being done in this situation. No chance to actually make a difference for anyone. In normal times, when I start to loose touch with why I work with this, usually I'll encounter a patient that I have really good chemistry with and that I can be there for and support them when they go through something difficult and then I remember how meaningful this feels - like deep in my heart - and all that other obsessive stuff going on in my mind is totally cancelled out for a while. I'm probably addicted to being a helper. But it can be extremly meaningful and go very deep when it really opens up and love flows between helper and the one being helped - it flows both ways. It is really amazing when it happens - it is one of the most beautiful things. I should probably suspect that during a crisis-situation old patterns are triggered again. I'm pretty sure they are. Yesterday was my 18th session of rollerblading, by the way. I brought with me 2 experienced skaters, and 2 un-experienced who are not really into it. The session was a mix between all the great inspiration I shared with the two who are experienced and how much it actually sucks when the group energy is sabotaged when everybody does not share the same dedicated focus towards the intention that was meaning behind actually meeting. I was pretty angry at one of my buddies. I've been so lately. But I didn't want to be a grumpy dude who told him how to behave, so I just kept it to myself, but damn how much he was talking and bringing people out of skate-mode. He didn't really give any energy to our activity, but he sure as hell brought a lot of energy out of it. I wonder if I have been angry at him lately because he has some kind of dishonesty about him. I don't think he is authentic, he basically just goes around smiling and laughing all day and everything is a joke to him. And then he always have this subtle cynicism towards people who are actually trying to do something authentic. I guess he is a typical "nice guy." I've been triggered a lot by nice guys lately. I was one myself before - but now - whenever I have a nice guy friend I actually become very suspicious. They don't tell what is really on their mind, they go along with anything because they act as if everything is fine to them, and eventually they will stab you in your back when they've been adjusting too much for too long. I've done all of that myself. It is probably a good thing that I don't like it anymore. Perhaps one of the feelings I'm most strongly in touch with these days is my anger. I seem to be angry at almost everybody. Never been this in touch with anger before. In that sense skating is a good thing. Seems to be a lot of aggressive energy around skate-culture. Perhaps that is the deeper meaning why I'm into it again - some angry masculine energy that needs to work itself through my system. Everything makes a little bit more sense now. It always helps to journal. Just got to keep on' keeping on. Some way or another this thing will get processed. I just need to be really honest with myself about what is going on in my mind.

Gosh. What an insane day. First I was watching the semi-finals in the online chess tournament by Magnus Carlsen. He was in the semi-finals against chinese Ding Liren, and it was so damn nerve-racking to watch, but eventually he won, and now he is going to meet Hikara Nakamura tomorrow in the finals. I mean, the whole thing, it was just beyond description. It always is with Magnus Carlsen. It is the same intense drama around him all the time, his victories are rarly easily won, but still he is the guy who always wins the most. After the intensity of all that, I just had to go rollerblading. I couldn't find someone who could go along, so I just went alone. It is never the same going alone, it doesn't give me the same energy when there is nobody there I can expierence that inspiration together with, but going alone is a nice way to just enjoy some cruising. It went up to the halfpipe I usually go to, and did some simple things back and forth, didn't challenge my self, but it was nice just to stay in touch with what I have alreay learned. On the way home, however, I met some friends who were hanging out by a park, and we decided to drink some beers together later tonight. Things are getting less strict in my country, and people are starting to meet again in small groups. So we were 4 guys who met home at one of the guys, and they were smoking pot, and I felt tonight was the right night to join, so I smoked together with them (haven't smoked since New Years Eve). Holy schmokes. That was just so nice. Everything. The music, the conversations, the inspiration. One of the dudes has challenged our group-chat on messenger to report back to the group how many push-ups we do each week. None of us were really very intrigued, except the guy who started it. But tonight, this challenge really catched fire, hahaha. So in between everything that happened, we were constantly challenging ourselves with push-ups. So funny. My totals reached 105 for this evening. I was pretty happy with that given that this is my first day. Then after I left them, I just had to go rollerskating again. So I was going for my 16th session, while I was stone. Oh my gosh, that was just beyond. Skating down by the beach. They have made this concrete path that goes just right next to the beach, with street-lights especially for the atmosphere. It was just so crisp and smooth, skating next to the sea on that smooth concrete path while the wind was blowing in my face and the silence of night was just surrounding me. They also have a little skating-park next by the beach. That was so smooth as well. I totally didn't challenge myself, just did some easy crusing, but it was just so magical. Made me see the whole thing just totally from a much more philsophical and mystical point of view. It is really like this old art-form invented a long time ago which is passed on from one generation to the next. And it doesn't take much to take part in this art-form at all. Just trying sincerely to nail a few simple tricks, and one has already paid deep homage to the tradition. Smoking cannabis is like a psychedelic trip to me. I have to approach it the same way as that. I can only do it on very special occasions, but when I do, and the set and setting is right, it is really just something that I seriously need to check in with on these very special occasions in order to remember a very important part of myself.

Just came home from a little night-session out rollerblading. So sweet. Only half an hour, but great flow. This is my 14th session. I'm counting them as a way of keeping track of my progress. I've had two really nice days at work now (I left with a good feeling even though I was in a lot of process at the beginning of each shift) and this weekend is off, so I'm just going to watch the semifinals and the finals in Magnus Carlsen's online chess tournament. I'm also working on a new drawing I'm pretty excited about. Right now I feel pretty landed in myself, but I've been in a lot of process these days. I'm suspecting the LSD-session I did 26th of March triggered a lot of stuff, probably in combination with the pandemic, and just life itself. Funny how my mind goes back and forth between total trust in the process of life, and total distrust on the other hand. Today I was obsessing a lot about moving away to another city, but now life feels perfect again just as it is, but I might still consider moving after summer. Edit: Was checking when I did the first session of rollerblading, and that was 1th of April, so one month of rollerblading now. Pretty cool.

Wow. Thanks. Interesting questions. They provoked a lot of thoughts and feelings. Not sure exactly when this idea that I had to have "a thing" appeared, but it certainly did at some point. I guess I'm chronically searching for "my thing," and it often feels like I find it temporarily and then I'm sort of hooked on the novelty of this "new thing," and then I sort of rotate between all these different things that give me this novelty feeling to groove on. Many of the things are things I return to again and again, but I also try out totally new things all the time. I alternative between two different points of view. One is that I should really make an effort to actually find my thing and stick with it. The other is to just totally let go and let this process figure itself out - like just indulge in grooving on as much novelty as I could possibly do - trusting that there is some kind of intelligence behind this all that is evolving as it should and if I try to freeze up my experience and lock into some mode then I will not let the flow of life take me to my highest potential. Is my notion of finding "my thing" just my ego trying to find an identity that it can cling on to which would ultimately lead to stuckness? Or would deciding on finding my thing, or sticking with a thing, create some healthy boundaries for my development so that my development doesn't just wander around haphazardly "all over the place"? Are these two different programs that mutually exclude each other, or can they be integrated and brought into balance? Is this process of uncovering and questioning all these various layers really "my deepest thing," so that my thing is in fact a meta-thing - like a process where I turn the process back on itself again and again - so that I don't actually ever buy into the content of whatever my mind is producing but I just keep on trying to dig into whatever pain and clinging is there which I could potentially let go of as I uncover deeper and deeper layers of stuckness? Today "my thing" has been art, so that is what I would choose to specialize in from the point of view of today. My whole world today has been filtered through the lense of someone who likes to make art. Tomorrow, or a few days from now, it might be another lense. Am I going into some kind of avoidance by philosophizing so much about these questions without landing on something? Underneath all these questions there is definitively a vulnerability that I'm in touch with right now. It feels like I'm more back into my body when I'm in touch with this vulnerability. My breath is deeper now then when I started writing. I can feel my feet. My fingers dancing over this keyboard. My eyes looking into this screen. This mystery of just sitting here. Vulnerable and safe at the same time. I feel currious about you. I wonder what kind of person you are - what kind of life you have. I wonder how these questions affect your own life and how you navigate through all of this yourself. I feel amazed by this whole journaling process. Mostly I just go on and on by myself, but occasionally a connection appears, and I feel really touched when someone gives me something, or if I'm able to give something to someone else. Thank you.

20 min vinyasa flow yoga today. My body felt really beaten up after 5 hours of rollerblading yesterday, but that makes the yoga extra nice. As a 36 year old I probably could not have started skating again without the yoga, but yoga keeps me young. Amazing how it opens up the body and makes it strong at the same time. And all the stuff about compensating for not having gotten got enough at rollerblading and snowboarding while I was a teenager is totally gone. Now it is just for fun. No prestige at all. No apparent lack from some previous times that I now have to fix. That was just an energy that needed to exhaust itself. Maybe that is sometimes where my mania comes from? When I have some inferior complex about something, and then suddenly I catch fire and it seems within reach to achieve some kind of superman version of myself and then the mental masturbation goes crazy about how cool my life is? Well, it seems to get into balance by just applying oneself to the discipline of whatever one is doing, then one quickly has to accept ones position in the hierachy - it is like syncronizing with reality through actually grinding up against the physical limitations of whatever one is doing. It was the same when I started playing Chess. I started romantizing about devoting my life to Chess and becoming a Chess-genius. Unfortunately there are already 800 million Chess players in the world, and many of them have been playing for waaaaaay longer than I have. So now it is just a fun and nice hobby where I can challenge myself against other hobby-players at my level.

Today was my 12th session of rollerblading. It was so awesome. Now things are really starting to loosen up. I'm just glad this intense process I go through when I get a kick on something new has landed. First I become really manic about it, and then when the mania is over I get disgusted with the whole thing. But now it has been over a week since last time I rollerbladed, and I have not thought much about it since, and it was just really nice to be back with it today without turning it into a huge thing in my mind, even though it was still very awesome. Now it is a nice thing I can do whenever I feel like it, without having to make it into something that my whole life is going to be about. I had to squeeze out running while I was getting established in rollerblading again, because that is how my mind works, I pit things against each other in an other / or type of dynamic. But on saturday I was out running again, and it was so nice to run in the sun and with the spring feeling. I'm not going to go on a program to improve my running and strive for new records and stuff like that, and neither am I going to do something like that with rollerblading either - I'm just going to do it whenever I feel like as a nice, chill and pleasant hobbies. Here is one of my friends from today - getting back into skateboarding :-D

20 min running today, then a warm shower ended with a cold shower, and then 25 min of yin yoga. I'm working night-shift this whole weekend, and tonight I felt much better at work again. I felt much more relaxed together with my coworkers and all these strong feelings of alienation had calmed down. Obviously just something that had to be released from my system. Energetically/spiritually speaking I just view this pandemic we are going through as some kind of cleansing that humanity is going through. I don't like conspiracy theories or far out New Age theories, but practically speaking, at least for my own sake, this is what this pandemic is turning into. After that conversation I had with my friend yesterday, I have found a lot of inspiration in social work again. Finally I have found the book which sort of sums it all up what I believe in. It is an old book I've had a long time that I rediscovered yesterday. It is about secondary trauma, the trauma and burn-out inflicted on the helper who has to deal with so much human suffering, ie. the trauma of others, and that if one doesn't deal probably with this it will lead to bitterness, burn-out and cynicism, but if one learns how to deal with it it will lead to a lot of deep personal growth, and this personal growth can be a huge motivation for going deeper with working with these types of issues.

No practice today either, but I had a really nice conversation on the phone with a friend of mine. She is a mindfulness-instructor, who is trying to establish her business with mindfulness-courses, but she needs a second job for some time now, so she has started doing social work with people with autism, and she said she has been very inspired by my take on social work, so now she just had her 3 first shifts in the new place where she is working, and she was in huge shock regarding all the suffering she had had close contact with. It was so nice giving her some support. It became much clearer for me exactly why I'm in this field. First of all my co-workers fucking sucks, and that was something she had quickly felt. Conventional people working in this field goes into the meeting with these groups of people with an energy of rejection and alination. That is something one easily does to protect oneself when in close contact with all this suffering. It happens to me a lot as well. But I'm aware of it, and I have a process take on it - meaning I'm working consciously trying to process all the different energies happening inside of me in reaction to this job. So my friend, as well as myself, had felt intensely this conflict of getting into the energy of rejection herself, while also feeling opposition towards the energy of rejection coming from her coworkers, while also aspiring towards more love and deeper meetings with the group she was working with. Basically a lot of really intense social processes going on. That is how this field is - if one wants to go deep with it. I'm so much triggered in this field, but every time I work through it it feels like I'm doing something very meaningful and intensely satisfying. Very interesting after I felt so like trash as I felt yesterday that today I could give inspiration and support to someone else working in this same field. If I hadn't worked through what I had to work through yesterday I would have probably said something along the lines of "this shit fucking sucks, lets both find something better." But instead I had found new inspiration I could share. Hopefully at some point I will be able to help with some kind of revolution or reformation regarding this field. I think there is a collective neglect going on regarding how caretakers behave towards their children or their patients or whomever they are supposed to take care of. There is somekind of deep-seated energy of rejection in most of us, because we reject ourselves so heavily, so the whole of society is under this spell in some kind of way. I think it leads to almost all of us not being fully in touch with ourselves, and most of us probably have some degree of posttraumatic stress going on, but most people are functional enough to behave as if they are normal - hence the tyranny of normalcy going on. The only way to work through this stuff is through meditative/spiritual process-work. And my own job is to try to translate this work I have been doing on myself into this field I'm working within, and try to give the clients I work with love and support. Ironically the most difficult obstruction towards this is my own coworkers. Not because they necessarily try to consciously obstruct me. In fact not. Many of them are inspired when they see me having a good connection with a patient. As I am inspired when I see them having a good connection - which they often do - this isn't black or white. But the social field among us is so heavy and slow and restricted. The energy is really dense. And it is really hard to feel free and open in this dense energy.

Oh gosh, just a little session this time, but I'm breathing deeply down into my abdomen again, which is always a sign something has been released. Ok, if this stuff continues to appear, I know gestalt self-therapy exercises can help me release it. Been a long time since I've been triggered like this, but good to know I still have my tools from those times I was more frequently triggered.

No meditation yesterday, but today I sat for 45 min again. Today has been one of those days where everything has felt wrong. It used to feel like this very often before, but now it is a long time since I've felt this way. Some painful feelings of everything feeling wrong and then some desperate scrambling to make things feel right. Been sleeping the whole day. Guess I was very tired. When it feels like this the most painful part of it is feeling that I have no direction in life. The sense of mastery I had in my job is totally gone. Before the pandemic I was in a really good flow, but when the pandemic came it was decided that our psychiatric instituation was going to take all the patients in the southern part of our country that was in need of psychiatric hospitalisation and who were also having the corona-virus. So far I think we have only had one patient who actually had the corona-virus, and a few who were suspected of having it, so our instituation is basically empty of patients these days, while usually it is pretty crazy. So now I'm just stuck with hanging out with my co-workers all day long without anything to do, and no feeling of job-mastery, and because they are so fucking mainstream and I would never choose to hang out with them voluntarily if I wasn't forced to through job, it pretty much sucks and I'm getting very weary of walking around all day long trying to strike up conversations with people where there is no natural flow. All the cool people who only work part-time are also gone. So usually I can hide from the these terrible dry conventional people among all the busy work that we have to do, and I'm also getting some cred from them for my ability to deal with the most challenging patients, and it also feels very meaningful when I can help and support someone in a difficult situation and often it feels like I can make a difference. But now all that is gone. Well, I'm pretty sure this is difficult also for my co-workers, and everyone else. This is just my version of it. And then all my social life is also gone, which makes it even worse having to hang out all day long with these people I don't vibe with. There was a much better balance between everything before this shit happened. So old issues are flaring up again. Before, when I was into pick-up and social skills and stuff like that I would have seen this as a challenge: How to create social flow with boring mainstream people? I'm living in a very conservative part of the country. I think people here are especially closed-minded and not very currious about the larger culture. When I worked in almost exactly the same type of institution in our countries capital I used to think I was very lucky who could go to work and spend my time together with so many amazing people. They were interested in me, and I was interested in them. Here it is exactly the opposite: They are not interested in me, and I'm not interested in them. Except for the few ones who are actually a little bit open-minded. And this stuff really flares up really heavily now that we're in this situation. I'm really not recognizable in this situation. When I'm together with people I feel free together with I'm so free, open and spontanious, but when I'm with people I feel restricted with, I become this really shy and invisible person. So among other things I'm dreaming about moving back to our countries capital again. And it feels like my whole carreer is just totally wrong I'm fantasising about the bohemian life again, and it feels like everything I do is just some loose ends in all kinds of directions with no larger plan behind and everything is just random and accidental and I feel envious for those I know who have managed to establish a career working with art and culture. Feeling like everything is "blown up" like this and I'm in some sort of panic scrambling to find some kind of direction, that was how it used to feel very often before. Almost like it had finally landed, and then this pandemic came and it flared up again. I guess it is pretty normal that old patterns of behaving and reacting are triggered in a crisis-situation. My number one inspiration in this situation is actually our head-doctor who is in charge of our institution. He is far from mainstream and boring, but at the same time he is so social and good with people. He can chat with everybody, and he has such a good sense of humour as well. Feels like he makes everybody feel appreciated and seen as well. It is interesting with a work enviroment like this. You have those who add energy to the group, and then you have those who takes energy from the group, and then you have those in-between. Ideally speaking I would have wanted to be someone who added energy and who contributed with a feeling that it is safe to be yourself here. I can have that effect on other people, and actually in direct contact with the patients I work with, but in this group I just find it so hard. If this was gestalt-therapy they would have just seen this energy I'm here describing as something inside of me that I'm projecting on to the group. If I had owned this energy inside of me, then I would not have felt restricted by it. So yeah, I'm very triggered by something here that it is probably very possibly to come to terms with, but right now I'm reactive about it. One way to take ownership of ones feelings in gestalttherapy is just to say out loud in a meditative contemplative way exactly what one feels: "I feel very insecure among my co-workers." "I feel very restricted among my co-workers." "I don't feel good enough among my co-workers." I tried the first one right now. There is obviously a lot of charge here. It felt good just to express this feeling. I'll go on and do a session of just expressing everything I'm feeling about this situation right now. Been a while since I've done a gestalt-self-therapy session, but now there is obviously a lot of stuff that needs to be expressed.