Establishing common patterns

[trenton]

I had a break off of work for a while, but my hours are stacked again.  I am going to note the differences in my behaviors.

When I have a lot of time off of work, I pour a lot of effort into becoming a better chess player.  I have a lot of energy and I channel it into studies, books, videos, and so on.  I organized career counseling during this time and it is scheduled for the 30th to help me find a way out of wage slavery before it becomes a serious problem.  I think it is insane that the majority of Americans live paycheck to paycheck such that one medical or legal emergency can screw you up forever.  I currently don't make enough to live on my own away from my family, and I am doing what I can to accomplish that while doing something that I can enjoy.  I become so focused on achieving my goals that I forget to eat sometimes, so I have to eat on schedule to remind myself even when I don't feel hungry but in fact am hungry.  Maybe one day when I get away from my family, I can organize my own spiritual retreats to see if they really work or I could test psychedelics.  This is harder to do without financial independence, hence I am looking for ways to build a better career for myself.  The thing that bothers me about psychedelics is that I have epilepsy and the lights might cause a problem, so I may not be medically able to do that without a serious risk to my health.

Now my hours at Kroger are stacked again and I am full time.  I started having problems with sleep, pain, and energy.  I move a lot at work and seem to have more energy than most employees who start slacking sometimes.  Sometimes I break little rules I'm technically supposed to follow so I can do my job more efficiently, but it puts me in the look out to not get in trouble somehow.  Once home, I eat something sweet and then lay in bed.  I then start watching entertainment on YouTube for which I used to look at myself like I'm wasting my time. As I do this, my mind starts to gravitate toward spirituality.  This originated when I used to watch Ben Shapiro, but I compared it to the value I get from watching actualized instead.  That is when I started watching 3 hour long philosophy lectures over Ben Shapiro. My intuition told me that although Shapiro can win debates, debates have more to do with persuading people you are right rather than actually seeking the truth.

Once I get bored of cat videos and such I switch to actualized again.  This gravitating toward spirituality reminds me of my life purpose which I think is to help integrate overlooked insights into society, allowing it to grasp the significance of emotional mastery in our overly secularized society.  I think the impact I am looking for is something even greater than that.  I want to be the best person I can be, and then I start writing about my selfishness and immaturity.  I start posting on this forum even though it can become a distraction or another time sink like YouTube.  I try playing some chess games, but not as many because I'm exhausted. 

Overall, I become more self critical and I feel less happy with my life. It can lead to suicidal thoughts. That could explain how I get drawn to spirituality because of how I sense I am tearing myself down through my criticism, although well intended so I can be a better person. I want to be good and I knew this for a long time, but I have had varying interpretations.  It makes me cry as I see myself doing my best in spite of my ignorance, foolishness, or selfishness.  I am always trying to be good in the best way I know how and I can't really blame myself for the inability to live up to high ideals.  This reminds me of how everybody is good and it made me cry.  I then see myself easily falling back into selfishness by turning it into an excuse.  I am seeking the beautiful thing that I manage to glimpse for just a moment every now again that leads to various insights about the nature of reality.  One thing I focus on is the instinct to create excuses in order to get away with selfishness.  Rather than blaming myself I look at the instinct and wonder what I would be without it.  I would probably be more peaceful with less tugging at myself to not me selfish.  I can see a reason to drop this tendency and I wonder how my life would look if i never made any excuses for anything.  It would probably be awesome.

What should I make of these patterns?