NO XP WASTE

[MuadDib]

In which I will be documenting my OSRS account progress and stuff.

My beginning levels and XP for each of the skills, having done a lot of the boring early game content and quests just to get the ball moving:

 

 

Link to high scores page: https://secure.runescape.com/m=hiscore_oldschool/overall

I'm not sure how regularly I will be posting progress here or how in-depth my posts will be. Be it simple text entries, some youtube videos with clips of progress over time in various skills, my training ideas and methods for new skills ... we'll work it out as we go along. For now, it's a melting pot. Comments are welcome, also feel free to add me in-game. My username is in the picture above, you can search it in the high scores section if you want to see what I've been up to on any particular day.

Currently, my focus is on money-making, Magic and Agility. I do have some ideas for Strength, Range, Prayer, and Runecrafting... but all in good time. This is a loooong game baby ... and I'm. going. to. win.

 

 

 

[MuadDib]

 

 

Incidentally:

[MuadDib]

This fletcher is a bit of a WILD operator!

 

 

Kinda awkward and slow in the beginning, cringy and juvenile in the middle,,,,,,, but god damn, what a glorious ending. 

... and that's kind of like a metaphor for my life and how I envision it.

I am really taking to this rs journalling idea. I've just been tinkering around, trying stuff out and trying to work out how to fit my training schedule around my job.

 

Overall this week I gained like 250k magic xp and about 30k agility xp.

[MuadDib]

Ok, I can see the path towards the finish lines of some skills now.
More than enough to work with for the next 6-12 months.

99 Agility - My first ever cape and the only one I achieved. I want it back.

 

 

99 Strength

 

 

99 Magic

Murder Grindelwald with Dumby love.

 

 

99 Range

Secret training but I will murder her from far away, no chance of survival.

 

Edited October 13, 2021 by MuadDib

[MuadDib]

 

I'll be online training agility on 80% of days. I have to work very long hours some days, and it's possible that my equipment could break down. From this point on, only death or severe injury can stop me from getting this cape and strutting my big dick energy around the grand exchange.

 

My Strava app timezone was wrong and since my workouts aren't using GPS data the dates were wrong for my workouts. Hopefully, the issue is resolved now. We'll see what my exercise on Tuesday says. (Tomorrow I have a very long work day, unfortunately.)

[MuadDib]

99 Hitpoints

So I was listening to my iPod shuffle which is a musical time capsule to my 10-14-year-old self and I found this old song. It's from The Notebook which weirdly was one of my favorite romance movies back then. I realized today that it literally came out the same year as Mean girls (which I have not seen to this day) but from what I can infer the main characters Regina George and Allie Hamilton are polar opposites. It probably would have been better for me to have watched the latter to form a more suitable foundation of my understanding of the female psyche, lol. Or perhaps both to develop a more holistic picture. Anyways, I remember having this HUUUUUUGE crush on a girl all throughout my early years of primary school. She won this poetry competition we had in the 4th grade by writing about the library. I can't remember how her poem went but I do remember her reading it aloud in front of the class and the line: 

"everywhere one looks,

there are books books books!"

At which point I lost consciousness like a fangirl groupie... After I came to, I spent the next year or so growing a pair and writing her an elaborate love poem. I asked my mom to help me get an envelope and stamps and to take me to a postbox to mail it to her because I knew her address as she happened to live right next door to my best friends place ... even though it was in the city of millions of people, my friend went to a different school which I had attended earlier, and I lived out in the countryside. I just remember going to his place for a sleepover and we were playing cricket in the backyard then daring each other to eat earthworms, which we were in the middle of doing when she appeared there for the first time. Coincidence!? I think not.

Fast-forward, I mail her the poem. Spend about a week agonizing over her response and the possibility of rejection... bitch just ignored me for like 4 months then I found out she'd spent most of that time talking shit about me eating worms because my mom's cooking was so bad. Happily, I moved continents shortly thereafter. When the notebook came out I remember telling myself 'I'm going to find love like this.'

 

Edited October 27, 2021 by MuadDib
I do legitimately think I was born in the wrong century sometimes though. Romance died ages ago man. Also I didn't eat worms, and she added me on Facebook when it was invented to tell me she was sorry...

[MuadDib]

Two weekends ago I spent some time getting some ranged practice in. I've decided to share more next weekend after I've gone through some stuff this week. I know, I know. I said it would be a secret, but I just can't help myself. THIS POOR GIRL DOESN'T STAND A CHANCE!

Earlier this year I went through the LPC and summarized it for easy access to the information.

These are all the videos with exercises and action steps for people who've got it. I've gone through each of them three times several months apart and I'm starting to get a clear direction out of it that feels authentic to me. I will be integrating the ranged training I just did with my results to these exercises this week using magic. I love it when the skills start to work together. 

13 - Flow (18:54)
16 - Detachment From Outcome (21:25)
23 - Limiting Beliefs (15:53)
42 - Pass 01: Most Meaningful Things In Life (8:21)
43 - Pass 02: Tabula Rasa (7:41)
44 - Pass 03: Master Values List (6:47)
45 - Pass 04: Toxic Values (8:52)
46 - Pass 05: Value Definitions (7:56)
47 - Pass 06: Congruence Ratings (2:37)
48 - Pass 07: 10/10 (9:36)
49 - Pass 08: Prioritizing Values (8:25)
50 - Pass 09: Positive vs Negative Values (14:34)
51 - Pass 10: Negative Themes (10:53)
52 - Negative Values Release (51:57)
53 - Pass 11: Final Adjustments (4:25)
54 - Conclusion (13:09)
55 - Strengths Assessment Intro (5:34)
56 - Strengths Assessment Conclusion (16:03)
57 - Life Purpose Assessment (17:38)
58 - Life Purpose Exercise 1 (16:34)
59 - Life Purpose Exercise 2 (11:00)
60 - Life Purpose Exercise 3 (11:00)
61 - Life Purpose Exercise 4 (9:00)
62 - Life Purpose Exercise 5 (25:29)
63 - Life Purpose Exercise 6 (17:45)
64 - Life Purpose Exercise 7 (7:18)
66 - The Big Leap Process (25:42)
67 - Impact Statement (11:51)
69 - Bringing It All Together (9:56)
70 - The Me Sheet (11:00)
71 - Creating Your Vision (16:14)
72 - Vision Board (12:15)
74 - Dealing With Fear (22:14)
76 - Limiting Beliefs (29:35)
79 - Programming The Subconscious Mind (19:30)
84 - Building Powerful Habits (25:02)
85 - Eliminating Negative Habits (13:27)

I think this movie was the first time I heard that "absence makes the heart grow fonder". Later in life, I came to appreciate this quote a lot more.

 

 

[MuadDib]

99 Thieving

I bought almost all of Eben Pagans programs a few years back but didn't get into them because I had a strong adverse reaction to some of the techniques and mindsets he adopts. It is quality information overall though, and I can't fault him for his accuracy. I will now go through them slowly and pick out all the information I need to start a business successfully.

Starting a business:

• Leading You, Me and We
• Neurolinguistic Programming
• GURU Master class
• Master your Time
• How To Be An Entrepreneur
• How To Build A Profitable Business
• How To Build A Virtual Business
• IGNITION
• Presentations that Pay
• Traffic School
• Turning your Talent Into Income

Growing A Business:

• Advanced Learning and Teaching Technologies
• Accelerate
• Altitude
• Business Growth Mentors
• Inner Circle
• Wake Up Productive (business growth)

Building a Digital Product Business:

• GURU Blueprint
• GURU Boot camp
• GURU Home study Course
• How To Create An Information Product That Sells Itself
• Product Plan
• Traffic Intensive Training

Marketing:

• Copywriting Blueprints
• Internet Marketing 101
• Marketing Master Plan
• Marketing Implementation Boot camp
• Modern Marketing Mastery
• Money Psychology
• Print Persuasion Master class
• Online Relationship Marketing
• Money and Wealth
• Master Your Money
• Money Making Blueprint
• Self-Made WEALTH

Successful Living:

• Master map of success
• Mind Control
• Patterns of Personality
• Clear Communication
• Connected
• How to Be Creative and Innovative
• Power of Persuasion
• Seeds of Your Success
• Wake Up Productive Standard Training

Virtual CEO Course

 

Fuck ethics, wage slavery is sum bullshiiiiit man.
 

 

Edited December 1, 2021 by MuadDib

[MuadDib]

 

 

 

***

 

 

Edited January 3, 2022 by MuadDib
If everyone could please just have themselves a magical year, I would be most appreciative.

[MuadDib]

***

 

1 - Intro & Overview of Pillars, Pipelines & Vaults – Notion Life Operating System

2 - How The Notion Productivity App Changes Everything

3 - Systems Thinking Intro – Notion Productivity Series

4 - Notion Design with Systems Thinking Approach

5 - My Notion Life Operating System Overview

6 - Notion Dashboard Creation - Command Center (Beginner Level)

7 - Notion Widget Embeds – Adding Weather Widget to Dashboard (or other dynamic content)

8 - Notion Task Database for Comprehensive Linked System

9 - Dependent Tasks in a Notion Task Database (aka Master/Sub-task or Parent/Child Tasks)

10 - Daily Data Tracking in a Notion Database

11 - Notion Daily "Action Zone" Dashboard Design

12 - "Task Status" Enhancement to Notion Life OS for Better Project Management

13 - Notion System Design: Create a Flow Chart

14 - Notion Quick Entry Notes & Tasks (Viewer Q&A)

15 - Notion Task Lists & "Do Dates" (Viewer Q&A)

16 - Notion "Alignment Zone" Master Dashboard || Essential Episode

17 - Notion Project Database + Project Workspace Template Design for Powerful Project Management

18 - Notion Goal Setting with "Goal Outcome" & "Value Goals" Databases

19 - Life Pillars in Notion — Aligning Pillars, Goals, Projects & Tasks

20 - Recurring Tasks in Notion + Self Referencing Filter (New Feature)

21 - Weekly Reviews In Notion — Master Level Life Alignment

22 - Monthly Reviews In Notion — Master Level Life Alignment

23 - Notion Content Creation Pipeline with Dashboard + Database

24 - Notion System Updates + Task-to-Content Coordinated Sync

25 - Notion Database Relations & Rollups + System Updates

26 - Advanced Notion Rollups & Formulas for System Automation

27 - Knowledge Management System in Notion – Introducing Vaults

28 - Notion Book Reading Database — The Book Vault

29 - Notion Media Capture Database + Course Database – Vault System

30 - Notes & Ideas Vault Notion Database

31 - Knowledge Vault – Notion Knowledge Management System

32 - Auto-Synced Reading Highlights in Notion via Readwise (Kindle, Pocket, Instapaper)

33 - Capture Podcast Highlights Into Notion with the Airr Podcast App

34 - Enhanced Mind Expansion Dashboard – Notion Knowledge Management System

35 - Hot & Cold Knowledge Topics – Notion Personal Knowledge Management

36 - Software Tech Stack, Skills & Services Research & Tracking in Notion– Vault System

37 - Master Tag Database for Notion Life OS & Personal Knowledge Management

38 - Pillars Expanded — Notion PPV Life Operating System

39 - New Command Center V2 for Notion Life Operating System

40 - PPV Outside of Notion – Notion Life Operating System

41 - Implementing Habits & Routines in Notion Life Operating System

42 - Timelines for Projects in Notion Life Operating System

43 - Planning Your Day in the Notion PPV Life Operating System

44 - Time Blocking with Google Calendar + Notion PPV Daily Plan

45 - Google Calendar in Notion Dashboards + More Embeds

46 - MINDSET In Notion – PPV Life Operating System

47 - Notion Bullet Journal Daily Planner – Notion Life OS

 

***

 

 

Teal Swan - Containment - What a Woman Needs From a Man in a Relationship

 

 

Teal Swan - What Every Woman Should Know About Men

 

 

***

 

 

Driving Test Report

 

 

Did 15 hours of lessons and about as many hours of theory after New Year's. Took the practical test today to upgrade my license and add it to my growing list of machinery qualifications. Fully licensed and unrestricted big rig operator now!
Nice challenge, good adrenalin.

 

Notes

 

 

***

 

 

Very Naughty, Very Mischievous

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

Edited February 16, 2022 by MuadDib
Happy valentines!

[MuadDib]

 

***

 

***

 

Love and war are not so different

 

[MuadDib]

 

[MuadDib]

Circumambulation

***

 

 

***

Perfect blossoms are a thing.

[MuadDib]

 

 

[MuadDib]

***

• An entertaining but toxic clip I internalized years ago
  • My deepest awakening to date

 

• Banter
  • Banter ctd.

 

 

[MuadDib]

***

I watched rocky, while stoned and drunk.
 

 

[MuadDib]

 

***

 

The nursery was very busy over the last few weeks as April is full of public holidays so most of the work that had to be completed was compressed into shorter weeks. The total workload also increased as Mother's day is around the corner. Adding to all that, a significant portion of the staff (lynchpin type people) were quarantined with covid in the last week, so I have put in more than a few 15+ hour shifts this past month. I didn't have the time and energy I needed to devote to my agility, magic, and prayer training, I did make some progress overall though. [update journals later]

I spent the month contemplating drug and alcohol abuse, addiction, and my experiences with that as a young(er) man, especially in my late teens and early 20s. A guy in my circle of concern died of an overdose last month and I doubt he will be the last. The prejudice I have sensed after exposing my alcohol consumption in this journal (during a brief period of emotional upheaval after the end of a 4-year long intimate relationship) speaks volumes to some of the ignorance that surrounds these issues and I suspect there are many people, on this forum and within a broader self-actualization community, who may be wishing to grow as individuals in both a practical and spiritual sense who are afraid to bring their struggles to light for healing and resolution.

I preface sharing my experiences here with the statement 'as a young man' because I want to share what I believe to be some of the contributing factors that young men in particular face, not at the expense of the female point of view, but simply for the sake of greater understanding and integration that I believe will be to the benefit of both genders. I will be speaking largely from my own experience, with information that I believe is indicative of the experiences of young (heterosexual) men as a whole in today's society, but I am by no means making generalizations that apply to all individuals. I am writing this to a younger version of myself in the hopes that it will prevent unnecessary suffering, anguish, and wasted time.

I listen to a lot of YouTube videos, podcasts, lectures, and audiobooks, as they are the forms of media that are most easily consumed while I am out and about doing other things. I realize that they're not the most accessible forms of information and can take quite a lot of time to get through relative to the amount of useful information they contain. I will be sharing some of the videos/books that I've consumed and I believe to be relevant with very brief comments on their contents as they relate to my perspective, I wish to say, however, that just because I share a video doesn't mean I agree with ALL of the content expressed within or all of the content related to it such as an entire YouTube channel or community, as people seem to assume.
I'm cautious to preface my post with some of these disclaimers as I know how polarising gender issues can be, especially after glancing over the dating and relationships section of this forum. Gender-related content is mired with both damaging and constructive information.  The emotional atmosphere of the month also meant that I ended up listening to quite a lot of standup comedy.

Pics as a teen

Here are some pics of me (age 17) with a haul of booze that I took to one of my best friends' place for a standard weekend, and a nice thick tulip I puffed on beside a canal on a lazy summers day… again a pretty regular recreational activity of mine at the time. For the sake of anonymity, I'll refer to him as 'Paul'. I used to cycle 10-30km between friends' houses with crates between my legs come rain, hail, or snow (hence the mop hairstyle in this instance). During that time of my life, it's safe to say that I fell into the gang of 'stoner kids' at one of the schools I attended and we all had similarities that extended beyond our leisure time occupations. Three months before I arrived in that country, Paul's mother had died of terminal cancer. His life had turned upside down, as anyone would expect, and I (with my own fair share of baggage at that point) became very good friends with him and the other 'stoner kids'.

I remember then, the intense moral judgment that was passed onto us by adults and some of our peers, people whom we naturally deflected in rebellious spirit, but not with the sense of being 'young and a little bit dumb'. I think, for the most part, all of us were 'fully' conscious that our choices were running our lives into the ground. It's something I still feel to this day to some extent whenever I hear the typical 'Ehrmergherd, why are you drinking? Don't you know it's bad for you? Don't you know you could be more productive and happy without it? How could you be so stupid?' responses to alcoholics and other substance addicts. It's clear to me such people aren't very aware of what it's like to be a person who makes choices like that in life and how off-putting the advice is. This is a sentiment that I never really saw expressed in broader popular culture until I saw this Lois CK clip.

 

 

He gets to the crux of the matter pretty succinctly with the question "How do you compete with drugs?". In this instance, I believe he alludes to young men. I started thinking that in order to answer that question there first needs to be an understanding of what needs drugs and alcohol fulfill and how those needs can be met in healthier ways or transcended altogether. It wasn't until I saw this ted talk by Johan Hann that I began to see the underlying thread of isolation/loneliness that connects all addicts, irrespective of a traumatic background or not, and then I began to see how young men are at a greater risk of that (after reflecting on my own experiences), and consequently greater risk of developing addiction and of suicide. I believe the suicide rates and deaths from drug/alcohol-related incidents are 4X higher for men under the age of 25 in the western world compared to women. It's sobering to keep in mind too that for every young man who kills himself there are probably a dozen who are quite close to doing it. (need a source)

 

 

• Consideration of renaming addiction to bonding, meaning when the need for connection isn't being fulfilled it is being met through surrogate means.
• Isolation being a huge driving factor for addiction in all addicts.
• Standard approach, legally and culturally to treating addicts by threatening their connections and social integration by viewing addiction as a moral failing is likely severely misguided.

 

The loneliness epidemic we face in western countries is on the rise with the advent of technology, social media, and prolificity as the primary emerging mode of identity construction. I have a playlist that can be viewed here containing some videos I collected around the topic a long time ago.

Playlist on Loneliness

• I recommend the Vsauce videos to get a sense of how painful and damaging isolation truly is.

I don't believe addiction is as simple as  "get friends and all your problems will go away". There are many other factors that can contribute to relapses such as environmental cues, availability, and the social aspect of being an addict with other addicts itself; these are things that the typical exemplar study of heroin addicts from the Vietnam war fails to take into account. After all, I personally was part of a group of guys who all shared a common interest and had a good time together, it would stand to reason then that our need for connection was being met.

Reflecting on my experiences during that time, it saddens me to say I believe alcohol and drugs became the means through which we were able to connect with one another as young men, entrenched in a culture of masculinity that forbade vulnerability and emotional expression both with each other and with women who (although well-intentioned and sincere in their remarks in finding vulnerability attractive) didn't reward such behavior in practice. This is a sentiment that I thought was beautifully articulated in this video by Matthew Hussey, who is a dating and relationship coach that specializes in helping women attract a partner.

 

 

This core issue of 'strength' being valued above all else, being rewarded by women and other men for doing so is at the heart of the distress and tumultuous period of life that can be faced in youth as a man. It's a lose-lose scenario, where being vulnerable opens you up to being attacked by other men, and being rejected by women who will unconsciously find it repulsive. But keeping your struggles to yourself leaves you vulnerable to mental health issues, and an inability to regulate your own progression through life as much of your mental and emotional energy gets diverted to maintaining a façade of strength akin to pseudo-stoicism.

Alcohol and drugs seem to provide an avenue for expression between each other that is socially acceptable. That time you spilled the beans about your mother dying of cancer and how much it affected you wasn't a moment of weakness ... you were just incapacitated by the exorbitant amount of intoxicant in your system. If you're amongst friends a silent understanding is formed, if not, other guys will weaponize vulnerability against you if they can. e.g. 'My daddy died three years ago and yeah, it sucked but I'm fine, stop being a bitch and pick yourself up, just be better, be strong for everyone around you.'

The story Matthew Hussey told in the previous video of his plane malfunction reminded me of Bill Burr's skit which ran through a similar vein.

 

 

I was also reminded of this group discussion on toxic masculinity with a bunch of guys in their early 20s by HealthyGamer which revealed that everyone loses in the masculine game chads, betas, sigmas, and every other pseudo-scientific category of man that is newly emerging 'pill' communities propound. While passively listening to it I realized that I could relate to every single one of these guys and their experiences of masculinity, how it affected them and how it helped them because at various points in my life I had been in each of their shoes, so to speak.

 

 

I believe a lot of the toxicity that surrounds pickup, red pill, black pill, and other similar communities stems from the bitterness that young men feel from this catch-22, both with women and with each other. While I personally haven't really delved into these communities to any great degree I can say that I genuinely believe they have value to provide young guys, so long as that value is kept in appropriate proportions. To date my views align quite closely with this giga chad:

 

 

• I can't get over the fact that he has 117m total XP on Runescape (0:51 timestamp)... fuaaark dude, how am I supposed to compete with that!?

Positive aspects to things like the red pill are succinctly captured in this line:

8:01 "it makes sense that women would want a man who has a purpose outside of her, who is loving and protective, who is strong, who is confident with his emotions, respects other people …"

Many young guys need to be taught how to do these things because it often doesn't come naturally which is something I don't think many women appreciate when they see the negative aspects of these communities, such as the blind objectification, manipulative techniques and emotional insensitiveness that the undercurrents of bitterness and resentment fuel.

As a young guy when you're on the cusp of adulthood your confidence is at its lowest point, your self-esteem is at its lowest, your life experience is at its lowest, you haven't had much of a chance to develop gravitas that makes you attractive to both other men and women in the traditional sense. As you move through life you feel the subtle social ostracisation pressure that begins to drip on your sense of self-worth as a human being from both other men and women to be something that you're currently not being, which ironically actually makes you feel quite objectified and dehumanized. The default tendency is to be needy, non-assertive, overly nice, and placating for a lot of guys OR to adopt normalized views of what it means to be 'masculine' at the expense of your own inner voice and authentic self, which will be rewarded but ends up becoming a hollow victory as Shea (the chad in the healthy gamer stream articulated with Dr K. and the virgins ... ALL of this is exacerbated by traumatic life experiences and other things such as disabilities, mental health issues, socioeconomic status, racial prejudice and the like, which you're unlikely to seek help on as a guy because you've been indoctrinated into believing that seeking help makes you weak.

10:40 He makes a great point about the dangers of overdosing on the Redpill at , which is something I believe extends to self-actualization as a whole. If you are trying to improve yourself based on a feeling of insufficient self-worth you are doing it all wrong. This is a conundrum that needs to be resolved counterintuitively because it's almost a given that you are going to have a feeling of low self-worth when you attempt to begin a self-improvement journey in some capacity. This will also be harmful to dating and relationships as a whole as he points out by saying that if you believe you're only going to be worthy of connection, love, affection, and intimacy (be it with other guys or with women) after establishing yourself then your behavior until that point will be socially regressive.

TBC: When 'Paul' almost died, drunken fall from Marcus Aurelius' statue, the rocky movie marathon and how I began to claw my way out of this shit.

 

For now though I have to catch some sleep before what is hopefully my last 12hr shift for the month.

[MuadDib]

Continuing where I left off…

Above is a picture of me, planking the Marcus Aurelius statue in Tuln, Austria. I was reading the Meditations at the time and although my views of stoicism and what it meant to be 'masculine' were warped and misguided, I did find a strange sense of solace in his writings. I fell off the statue to the concrete below, dislocating my knee which required surgery to remove cartilage that sheered off the two condyles of my femur. I was drunk at the time. I was grounded for a couple of months as I couldn't cycle to my friend's houses anymore and was forced into the beginnings of some self-reflection. It wasn't until just recently that I learned Marcus Aurelius's writings together with stoic philosophy as a whole were the inspiration for cognitive-behavior therapy, the leading evidence-based form of modern psychotherapy. I should note that I am not at all familiar with either stoicism or CBT beyond a surface-level understanding, although I believe I managed to develop my own understanding of what it means 'stoic' as my life continued to unfold from that point on.

A few months later was my 18th birthday, after my injury the gang and I were eager to make up for lost time. About 20 guys came to my place absolutely loaded with every type of gear you could imagine. I don't remember much of the night, except a few moments where 'Peter' was dishing out liquid MDMA with an eyedropper, 'Pat' was munching on dry shrooms in a corner with some of the other lads who were tossing up between the shrooms or succulent brownies baked to perfection, 'Patrick' was definitely smelling his keys with a little too much enthusiasm, and EVERYBODY was drinking as dubstep blared into voids that our souls had vacated for the night. I woke up at the bottom of a staircase amid a sea of bodies to the faint smell of vomit which penetrated my spitting headache and summoned me back into the land of the living. As my eyes slowly focused I could see the spew next to my head in a small puddle, but oddly it wasn't mine. I traced its origins to the step above, and then the one above that, and then the one above that to the top of the staircase where 'Peter' was laying.

At this stage of my life, I had developed a compulsion to put everybody who was passed out onto their sides with their legs and arms in a particular pattern that I had learned to stabilize them in that position. I had learned somewhere that the majority of alcohol/drug-related deaths stem from people vomiting when passed out on their backs and then suffocating on it. With the fear this might have happened to 'Peter' I hauled myself up the steps and shook him with some frustration, after doing this for a while I realized he wasn't breathing, or at least my dulled senses couldn't detect any signs of breath. With a surge of adrenalin, I called an ambulance and rode with him to the local hospital, where I found out that 'Paul' had been admitted the night before with alcohol poisoning and had had his stomach pumped, totally outside of my awareness. It turns out 'Peter' was suffering from a touch of serotonin syndrome, brought about by his mix of antidepressant SSRIs and the MDMA he was lovingly dishing out the night before.

My first day as a legal adult was probably one of the most shameful of my entire life. Two of my friends could easily have died and I became a scapegoat 'drug kid' to most of the adults around me from that point on. I felt trapped in an impossible conflict, either keep abusing substances to dull the pain of my deepening ostricasion and its consequences … an ever-worsening future which admittedly was already feeling quite bleak for me at that point as I had my own version of a doomer mentality kicking around my skull, or forgo all substances altogether and have absolutely no pleasure or joy in my life and nothing to really live for.

A few weeks later I was at Pauls for the weekend, and we were having a few quiet beers and some green when he stumbled on his rocky movie collection. We decided to watch the first one. The film was very boring and predictable from the start, but both of us were captivated by it. Eventually, it crescendoed to the final fight leaving us both full of cathartic emotion that drove us to watch the next one. The pattern repeated with the second film; a dull storyline that almost lulled us to sleep before the most epic finale that left us drenched with the energy and enthusiasm needed to watch the next … and the next. After a few rounds of this in the early hours of the morning, our sleep-deprived minds required a little help as our resolve to finish all 6 films back to back was now set in stone. Paul decided to make us coffee. He left to go to the kitchen for what felt like an eternity and he returned with some of the strongest caffeinated soup I've ever had the misfortune of consuming. My teaspoon could almost stand up in it! We drank it and ended up pulling an all-nighter finishing all the films.

I'm not entirely sure what happened to me that evening, but it's interesting that last month (nearly a decade later) after reaching out to Paul's brother for the first time in the hopes of reconnecting with him in light of recent events, this was the response I got…

 

I sensed within the Rocky stories a way out of my predicament. Even if I couldn't fully articulate what it was, how I knew it, or how I was actually going to execute it, I knew it was there buried somewhere in those simple stories of the supreme underdog going the distance and overcoming the obstacles in front of him. This was when I began visualizing my walk across Australia. In part, I felt like running away from everything, but I also sensed deep down that I was running towards something that I needed to learn and understand on a profound level if my life was to have any hope of going anywhere. There were a few other things that I was contemplating and realizing in parallel with all this during this phase of my life and during my subsequent attempts to walk the continent when I failed twice before my eventual success 3 years ago. I was captivated by David Goggins when I found out that the rocky movies also had a huge influence on his mindset in some capacity. Something that really resonated with me when I listened to his first JRE interview many years later where he discusses the rocky movies with the line 'I just wanted to feel something other than defeat.' and being able to visualize like nobody's business.

 

 

I found this edit somebody had made about this moment in the interview and I wanted to make some points about the subtleties of what I believe happened to him, his mindset, and what I can personally relate to. I noticed a lot of similarities to Cameron Hanes's story about how he began to run ultra marathons, starting from a similar place in life in his early 20s. In here Cam says something along the lines of 'I felt shitty all the time, there was just no success.' I don't mean to imply that I've reached a level of physical prowess that both these guys have... I'm mediocre athletically but I can certainly relate to both of their storylines on a level that I don't think people appreciate when they see someone engaging in physical challenges and calling them 'mental pursuits'.

 

 

I think one of the first things that has to happen that is critical to growing out of a place like this is some element of surrender, both to yourself and your present circumstances. I personally felt at this point that nothing really mattered anymore and not in a nihilistic defeatest sense. I was at a point where my behaviors and choices didn't matter, what people thought of me didn't matter because things couldn't really get much worse for me ... or at least that's how I felt. I'm recently revisited Mark Manson's book 'The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck', where he elaborates on this idea and its subtleties of it much more clearly. His opening exemplar of Charles Bukowski and his stories of his own troubled youth and his superhero disappointment panda made me laugh. You can't give a fuck anymore about what anyone thinks, or about the possibility of failure or of who you are relative to others.

This pain of comparison is something that is exacerbated in modern times with the advent of social media in a global attention economy where we have the 'tyranny of exceptionalism'  (a good chapter in the book) haunting young people from the get-go by flooding their screens with subtle messages that they're not good enough in almost any domain in life. When you Google how to get better at something your browser is immediately bombarded with examples of people at the peak of success in their lives in that specific area, giving you a warped sense of what you should be able to accomplish and warped views about realistic expectations for yourself. If you haven't learned the art of surrender, the subtle art of not giving a fuck, and the art of accepting yourself in your present insufficiency you will be doomed to failure before you even begin trying to improve as the ideals you set for yourself will be so far removed from your present reality that you'll drown in thoughts and feelings of inadequacy and low self-worth during your first, tentative mediocre steps in the right direction. This skill becomes even more critical later on as you begin making actual progress and you begin to encounter haters, trolls, cynics, and the like online and out in the real world who won't hesitate to attack you, harass you and make every attempt they can to try and bring you down.

From this space of surrender and indifference to the opinions of others or from social validation as feedback for your inherent worth as a human being, it becomes possible to construct a vision for yourself that is meaningful to you from somewhere within yourself.  In the case of David Goggins, he wanted to become the guy who could endure almost anything life threw his way. Cameron Hanes wanted to become a good father to his newly born child. For some ungodly reason, I wanted to walk from Sydney to Perth. This was a vision I kept to myself for a few years, guarding it like a life-sustaining secret, and every day I spent some time thinking about it, visualizing it, contemplating how to make it possible. When you focus on something for long enough, you begin to tap into mental and emotional resources you didn't know you had latent within you, and crucially, in your state of surrender and acceptance of the present moment you are able, to be honest with yourself, your shortcomings, the obstacles in your way and slowly discover what you can realistically expect to accomplish.

The first time David Goggins ran he made it a quarter of a mile before grabbing a milkshake and walking back home to cry on his couch. Cameron Hanes signed up for a 10k run and didn't have the drive to complete it, even poorly … dude just quit mid-race and walked away. The first time I secretly went out to see how far I could walk in a day, I made it about 15km before my legs turned to jelly and I had to catch a bus back home where I nursed some newly formed blisters. This is when your inner demons, insecurities, negative self-talk, and self-doubt will all start coming up to the surface to be dealt with. The beginning is always the most difficult and the most painful part of moving towards something you truly authentically value. The perks start coming in quick and fast though, everytime you make incremental progress towards that big vision of yours you get hit with a little dopamine kick, in the case of physical pursuits, every workout or run will leave you with an endorphin rush as a reward. You now begin heading down the path towards eudemonia.

I thought this video by Casey Zander did a pretty good job of explaining the difference between the pursuit of hedonia (pleasure) and eudaimonia (joy), which begins to illustrate a reward pathway and approach to life that can begin competing with drugs and alcohol.
 

 

The keyword here is purpose. You want to become someone who is living on purpose, even if that purpose is an arbitrary and meaningless construct. I was fully conscious that hiking to the other side of Australia was a completely meaningless and useless endeavor in and of itself, but it didn't matter. I had something to get up for each day, I got the dopamine spikes as I progressed towards my goal. When my flaws, insufficiencies, and insecurities began surfacing and I slowly began to clean them up, I gradually became a stronger, more grounded, more honest man, rooted in 'reality'. Being vulnerable, step by step begins to incrementally make you stronger, you iron out the chinks in your armor one at a time. Was I always perfect? consistent? dedicated? on task? Hell NO! But two critical things began happening to me:

1. I started to view myself as a process, not a static entity that was doomed to remain in a particular state for the rest of my life, and
2. The progress that I made physically enabled me to self-reflect on all my erroneous beliefs and assumptions about myself mentally, who I was, and what I was truly capable of.

The first time I ever completed a double marathon within a day and reflected back on that first 15km dismally painful hike where I kept telling myself 'this is impossible, you're never going to do this, this is the dumbest idea in the world' I was forced to begin reconsidering all those other beliefs and assumptions I had about myself and what was and wasn't possible for me, because I had demonstrated to myself, beyond a shadow of a doubt that something I believed to be true about myself was wrong. I accomplished this first through my physicality, but at the time I was also contemplating beliefs themselves, language, thoughts, emotions, and how they connect with the body. I began to discover other examples of how a person could accomplish this without necessarily going out and having to do something physically strenuous.

As part of my process of combating my limiting beliefs, I began looking for inspirational examples of people who had already accomplished what I was hoping to achieve, or something similar. That's when I discovered the film 'The Rabbit-Proof Fence' which tells the absolutely insane true story of 3 girls aged 8-14 who escaped a missionary camp after being forcibly removed from their homes and walked 2400km through some of the harshest deserts in Western Australia while being hunted down by authorities without any outside support. That completely annihilated any doubts I had about the reasonability of my own success. While researching their story and during my other contemplations on language I found out that some Indigenous language groups in Australia have features like absolute direction baked into the language which in turn led me to realize that the very language you speak dictates to some extent what you are or aren't able to conceptualize and changes how you perceive reality.

My guy seems to have caught onto the radical implications of this:

Here he makes a critical point about emotions being real trained reactions to knowledge that you've accumulated. The knowledge you have is arbitrary and much of it is false. With this understanding, we can begin to understand what true stoicism is. To be a 'stoic' man is not about being able to suppress your emotions with willpower. It's about using your emotions as a source of information that can help you to adapt your beliefs, assumptions, and opinions about yourself and the world around you in a continuous process of refinement as you move towards your vision.

With this understanding you go full circle to realize that you were always enough, you can do anything you set your mind to within the laws of the universe and you can continuously align yourself closer and closer to them to reach greater and greater perfection. When you live in this way, naturally people will gravitate towards you and you won't ever be alone again. Critics are your allies as they can help you to eliminate errors in your thinking and reasoning to help you move closer to your vision, cynics can bring you no harm as you will know they are misguided or dealing with their own flawed perceptions of reality and the peace and joy that will naturally descend on you will mean there will be little pain and suffering left for you to dull with drugs and alcohol.

If you are an addict, and if you are a young man who is going through some of these difficulties. I don't mean to imply that your struggle is easy, that your pain isn't real, or that your problems aren't serious, but believe me when I say, there is a way out and on the other side of your pain are vistas beyond your wildest fantasies. Also, for people with serious addictions and traumatic backgrounds I recommend seeking professional medical advice if you decide to take the courageous first step to get sober. Effects of serious withdrawals are no joke and you may need medical supervision as you go through them. I also do not mean to imply that I am a perfect person who has moved beyond all this. I'm still very much a process, in the process of getting better. I've actually struggled these last 3 years from having a lack of purpose after completing the hike and I'm currently figuring out what my new 'big goal' is going to be. I hope that this could help someone out there avoid some of the mistakes I've made, and take away some of the wisdom I've gained through my own struggles and journey.
 

***

Edited May 8, 2022 by MuadDib

[MuadDib]

 

***

The first half of the year was a major crash and burn, overall. 
I'm not sure if I want to write about it all publically, I might edit in some details here over the weekend.

I am picking up the pieces, using some of the new insights I have garnered and I am going to try again to escape the gravity of my suffering, shortcomings, ignorance, and insufficiencies.

I finished a 50mile ultra marathon at the end of May. I was hoping to do a time trial to get into the 100mile BVRT race that took place on the weekend of the 17th of June this year. I was also in the middle of an emotional breakdown under the weight of a lot of contributing pressures. During the run itself, I reached a rock bottom point of pain and suffering in the last 20km. I was running in the middle of the night, it was very cold, and dark, it was raining, I had long since hit the wall (muscle glycogen was gone) and my feet were in agony after having run/hiked in wet shoes the whole way. Blisters had formed and popped all around my heels, the balls of my feet and under my toes, and on their sides.
No part of my conscious mind wanted to be there anymore. I was just so done with everything, everyone, and the planet at large. I was literally stopping every now and then and saying to myself, "Stop the world, I want to get off". 

Something happened to me out there though that I doubt I will ever be able to fully explain. Something within me announced itself from the depths of my being buried somewhere deep within. It flooded up through me from what seemed like the bottom of my navel, up through my chest, and out the top of my head obliterating all the bullshit whirring away in my heart and mind. "You're better than this" "You deserve to do the work" "You owe yourself a good life" "You have suffered enough, now there is just pain" ... these were things that began speaking through me. I finished the run and went home.

Over the next week I noticed the pain in my toes wasn't subsiding, my nails were loose and beginning to show signs of infection. They also hurt like a motherfucker. I went to see a doctor who referred me to a podiatrist who removed them for me. There was quite a lot of pain for the next week after that for me to contemplate, after receiving valuable insight from a wise member on the forum here, that clearly showed me there is a natural inclination to contract and retreat from pain and discomfort on a micro level with every passing experience of it. I began to notice how this pattern of running away from pain, has played out over the larger course of my life, from childhood, in a feedback loop that has led me to become chained down with depression and fear of the outside world.

I also began to feel the life-affirming realization that consciousness can expand and grow in the face of pain and that this could become habituated if I practice it for long enough. I began to feel the dimmest glimpses of hope descend upon me as I winced and then centered myself in equanimity, then felt that deep well of spirit reverberate just a little bit more throughout my being as I went about my mundane work days.

 

I had a lot of random breakdowns at home alone, I just started crying for no reason and let it pass through me. I also began to feel myself centering in on drive, as distinct from motivation, to begin moving myself forward in life. I watched this youtube video of a kid who studied 12 hours a day for over a year where he explained the difference between drive and motivation. I could relate to him in many ways, especially when he broke down crying as he talked about the things he felt were driving him. I also gained a deeper appreciation for Goggins who expresses many of the same sentiments through his life story, not only in terms of drive but also in connecting with spirit.
 

 

I figured out I likely have CPTSD after reflecting on some of the rougher periods of my childhood and adolescence and speaking with a therapist who seems to know what they're doing. I have been watching, listening to, and reading some of the following resources which I have found to be incredibly insightful, affirming, and vindicating in many respects. I really hated the label at first and hated admitting to myself that I have issues, wondering if I was just playing out a victim mindset etc. but the more I got into it and the more I related to the content and realized that it would be possible to heal the less I cared about all that.

• Complex PTSD Explained
• This Is How It FEELS When Your Brain is DYSREGULATED from CPTSD
• Do People TRIGGER You? CPTSD and Why We ISOLATE
  • Childhood PTSD and Loneliness -- How to Begin Healing
• Complex PTSD: From Surviving To Thriving by Pete Walker
• The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk

Probably the biggest insight I got into some of the experiences and perspectives I've gained over the last 2 months came when I watched this video where Dr K talks about CPTSD from an eastern perspective with regards to healing. He gives a brief overview of Pancha Kosha theory and then explains that most people don't heal because they don't realize that CPTSD is a spiritual issue. A lot of things started clicking for me when I heard that simply put. I realized that in many ways my entire spiritual journey has stemmed from the desire to seek resolution to injuries I have sustained here. What I felt on my run was a connection with spirit, and I felt resolution beginning to draw nearer.

 

 

Looking back to the goals I had in mind at the inception of this journal, (and trying not to cringe at the cringey posts shortly thereafter to the cringe here and now that I will likely only appreciate in the future) ... I realized that each of the initial Runescape skill goals I created for myself centered around a specific issue from my past that I've unconsciously been trying to resolve. I will continue working towards them with greater refinement and integration now, hopefully with better odds of success. If not, I'll surely learn many new things that will only bring that day closer. "I owe it to myself"... that's something I am not used to saying.
 

 

Edited June 30, 2022 by MuadDib

[MuadDib]

 

• Drawing deep and profound inspiration from Netflix, I've designed a new rocket integrating all the failures and insights from the last 6 months and I'm going to be building it out for the next 6-9 months.  I hope to escape the gravity of much of my past and I'm going to take ya'll to space with me, some of you further than others... This one might blow up as well. Good. That will keep bringing me closer to where I want to be. Healed, connected, on purpose, free of shame, and courageously synchronized with a higher purpose that can live through me for the rest of my days.
• Here is the blueprint I've drawn, each part of the image below links to a separate construction area in my journals. When all the parts are complete I'll bring them together into something greater than their sum. 99, Ranged, Strength, Agility and Magic + some ancillary skills for good luck!

 

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication - Leonardo da Vinci

Edited June 30, 2022 by MuadDib