Rainy Sparkle

Total time meditated 2022: 76h 25min Total time meditated this year: 10 min *** I had a challenge. I tried to get 100 hour mark by the end of the November. Ended up focusing too much on numbers and the whole point of meditation kinda got forgotten. And I clearly didn't "win" my challenge. New start. No challenges right now.

Total time meditated this year: 74 hours Books read/listened this year: 14

Total time meditated this year: 52 hours Books read/listened this year: 10

I'm looping. My thoughts, actions, everything loop on repeat. When I'm at gym, I don't think who I am or what I am like. Certain limitations might increase creativity/imagination by forcing you to come up with creative solutions. Some thought/association paths are interesting and surprising. Started to have thoughts of meditation being boring and/or waste of time. Heightened clarity of how I use my time Decreased "mystical experiences" during meditations New layer of inability to relax and to let go of things that "needs to be done" encountered Main area of interest of growth and development shifted I treat everything as individual projects and not ongoing systems Total time meditated this year: 46 hours 30 minutes Books read/listened this year: 10

Some days ago I wrote in my diary this: I feel bad about myself. -- I'm aware that it is some kind of emotion now and not the truth. I just want so much that I'd feel good with myself and I've been working on it, but why it most of the times feels like there's no progress? Life goes on, everything is well. But why do I always feel this way? Or do I? With that question, I started to acknowledge the change that in that moment I had some kind of twisted vision of my reality. I might have recognized that there's something weird with my thought "always", which triggered the question. I've since that observed my emotional flow differently. It goes high and it goes down, several times a day, every day. Not news. But when I'm feeling good, I'm feeling good and see the present and look into future with optimism. When I'm feeling down, I look in past, but only focus on times when I've felt down. Today I'm feeling bad. Yesterday I was feeling down. Every day I've felt this way. --> I'm always feeling this way. Nothing is changing. There's growth in both mindsets. The growth is more visible in positive mindset. There's growth. Everything is constantly changing. I'm not always feeling down. Remember. *** Total time meditated this year: 41 hours Books read/listened this year: 9

I've been crying a lot lately. It's like I've rediscovered some emotional layer in me, that I've been trying to deny and destroy, but only managed to hide somewhere deep. It feels so empowering and liberating to just let all that emotional pain come out. See it, feel it. Be present in it. Not all crying has been from pain, it comes from love, too. I've been thinking about this lately and I've come to a point where putting happiness as end goal feels pointless and limiting. At least the way I see it now. I see everywhere statements such as "Don't try to be happy, be happy". And I see the first part of it. But whenever I stop to think about it and ask myself, overall do I consider myself to be happy, the answer is no, I can't say that. I can't find the overall happiness from my experience. Having happiness as my goal, I'm creating baseline and/or contrast to the present moment, because I start to rate how good my life is based on how close I am that happiness instead of just seeing what is. No matter how well everything is in my experience, it's never well enough because it didn't make me happy. What that even means? Do I have to be happy? I'm having a hard time verbalizing my experience around this. It almost sounds like I'm seeing happiness as some kind of bad thing now, but that's not exactly what I mean. Through all my life, I've held a belief that even though I'm not happy now, I can be happy somewhere in future. It's been my dream. I want to do everything I can to be happy. It's been necessary for my survival. It's been my driving force. Even though everything is collapsing now, it doesn't need to be that way always. But right now, I'm standing in a place where that mantra has lost it's meaning and become limiting. It's feels empty, pointless rule. I'm on an edge of letting go of that, and boy it feels scary. I have fears, what if I lose every meaning in life? What if I push myself to a dark place for eternity? What if I lose my will to live, what if I lose my enthusiasm? I feel like that's all I have. It's been my purpose in life, to become happy. It feels like letting go of that leaves me with nothing. No purpose, no meaning, no goal, no (figurative) solid ground under my feet. It feels like letting go of it is like destroying everything I've build. And I I have to start again from beginning. Still, it feels like the leap I need to do. *** She's walking in the darkness Blindfold tightly on her closed eyes She opens her eyes, but still Sees nothing The ground beneath her feet Vanishes And she falls She falls and falls and falls Into never ending void of darkness And nothingness Oh, how I wish I could tell her That she is the light Oh, how I wish I could show her That she's not falling Because she can fly *** Total time meditated this year: 37 hours 30 minutes Books read/listened this year: 9

Total time meditated this year: 35 hours 30 minutes Books read/listened this year: 7

Are people still doing this? The thread has been so silent lately. Some days ago I challenged myself to meditate ~5 hours in a day. It's part of bigger challenge. I'll tell you, it wasn't easy. But I did it. I cut the whole time in smaller parts and completed it during the whole day. I did last parts before I went to sleep. And when it was completed, I felt like I just did something impossible. I mean, I knew it is possible in theory, and I believed I'm able to do it in practice, but my mind was the challenge. Meditating itself wasn't mostly that hard, but turning away from everything else I would have wanted to do. And it was harder and harder every time. The last 30 minutes were hardest to get done. It was getting late, I was tired, focus was shattered. It is funny how there is so many other things where the finishing part is most challenging mentally. For example walking long way home. When I lived in my last apartment, I used to have a certain point in my route where I was about 15 minutes away, where I started to feel like I'm done. I did second version of the habit tracker. There's so many spots that are not completed. I don't feel like the fault is in my tracker, but obviously I'm not sure. I feel like it's been more about the ability to use my willpower to choose to start doing certain things. It's like the willpower "muscle" is exhausted and cannot lift even a light weight. But what is interesting, I have done a lot of other things, and have been able to use the willpower to finish things. On Saturday, I changed the order of living room furniture. On Sunday I cleaned almost my whole house. It took the whole day. It was mostly rousing/exciting (I'm unsure about the correct word), but I really had to push myself to finish it. Well, this gives me again a subject to contemplate. Have a nice week everyone. <3

Total time meditated this year: 30 hours Books read/listened this year: 7 *** Dear teenager Rainy Sparkle, I am crying as I write this. By telling this, my intention is not to say that what ever I'm feeling now is more important than what you're feeling. But if that's how you feel about it, it's okay, and I understand well why. I just want to tell that I've understood that it is okay to show emotions, it is okay to cry. I'm here to tell you that you will get through everything. It is hard to believe. You're living in a hell, completely alone. I am so sorry that I abandoned you. I'm so sorry that I wasn't there for you when you needed me most. I was the only one you had, but even I turned my back on you. I understand why you hate me. I understand why you're so angry at me. And it's okay. What I did wasn't right. I suffocated your inner shine. I suffocated your dreams, all your inspiration. I suffocated you. I never appreciated your talent, your passion or the depth you had in you. I see it now. There's a lot I could learn from you. You are being more true and more authentic than I am. You are closer to the truth than I have ever been since. You're just lost and so alone. I hope you can forgive me, but the path is yours. It's about your emotions and not mine. You have the right to be angry at me. I don't want to force you to change how you feel. But whenever you're ready, If you will be, I'm here. I understand that it's hard to trust me after all things I've done and said to you. You don't have to prove me anything. You don't have to prove me that you're valuable and that you deserve love. It is me how needs to prove you that you're valuable and lovable as such. That you can be loved unconditionally. Because I do love you.

The gym membership and first time in gym done yesterday! I feel so brave. It hurts everywhere in my body now, but I feel good. Can't wait to go again. I also planned a habit tracker for myself for the next week. This is something I've done several times in past, doing trackers, planning routines, etc. But I haven't been patient enough to start from small and focus on building the foundation first. Last time I did this, I tried to take into account this and not take too big piece at once. I started from writing down what were my current routines, and did minor changes to them. Good idea, really, but I still ended up trying to change too much at once and everything fell apart. So, here's the habit tracker for the next week. This is the beginning and my plan is to refine and develop this from this point.

Drew today after a long time. I'll go for a walk next and after that I'll start cleaning my art & random stuff cabinet. Been procrastinating doing that way too long.

Minor cleaning today, body weight & dumbbell workout + some osu! practice today. Been walking ~71km this week. That's surprisingly much, I haven't often reached even 50km lately, even though I have felt like I've been walking a lot.

When you feel like some is acting disrespecting/hurtful towards you and when they say things like "But it was meant to be helpful for both of us/you", it feels dismissive. It feels like you've being told that you shouldn't feel bad, because my intention was good and as long as my intention is good, it doesn't matter if I'm acting hurtfully. Keep an eye to your own thoughts of that kind. There probably are some. *** Total time meditated this year: 28h15min Books read/listened this year: 6

That is progress, and that is what should be seen. I think it has been necessary for me to understand that there is no such thing as reaching best possible outcome, because you could always do better. But what I meant, is that if you don't recognize the growth you're doing now, if you don't see that you're doing better than before, it's easy to get trapped to only see that you're doing worse than your ideal. This has been crucial for me to understand why it is silly to define being/doing good, when I reach point x. Because when the point x is reached, there comes new point, which defines when I'm good. With this kind of mentality you can never be good. Obviously though, there are some things, that are limited to best scores by default, like school exams. Any of this isn't meant to claim that aiming higher or better results, or seeing that you could do better is bad. The point is that if it's being used as only tool to measure progress, there's a risk to become blind to the progress.

I don't really know, how to express myself in a way I want. I'm afraid of that I sound wrong or that I'm trying to argue or somehow dismiss what you said. That's not the point of my message though, because I totally agree with that. I am probably way more capable than I can even image right now. I just wanted to say that the potential I see, might become limit as well. That is when I forget to notice and give credit to work I do in present moment and fall into staring too intensively into future. It easily turns back to "I am not good enough". But there's no point where I could reach "good enough" point with bettering my results and pursuing my potential, because the limits go further. Therefore I am never good enough. I'm always behind. I can never reach my potential. Seeing that while being in some kind of negative emotional state can become unmotivating and paralyzing. I admit, that I'm very sensitive to thoughts of not being good (enough) and that's one of my mental work areas. I don't know if anything I said applies to anyone else or not.