More by: sock

Tonight I had a furious experience, and I learned a valuable lesson about fear: fear of the unknown is almost always worst than the actual experience. Your mind can eat you apart, and I don’t feel like I’m alone on this; I hope I am alone and that no one else gets duped like I do and maybe now I’m just catching up to everyone else, but I have been distracted for a long time! I tend to build things up and cause myself to look at this mountain in front of me and it is harmful. I’ll be specific in two ways; The first fear was this Halloween party/fundraiser for the Muskegon roller derby team, and I was supposed to juice at it. I fucked up my robot costume and worried all week if I would have time to put together a rad costume as opposed to buying a costume at some lame halloween/party store. I worried all week how I would afford all the fruits and veggies, how the money would come back, if people would dig it, etc… And I generally thought that I as a person expect too much, and am too ideological, maybe setting myself up for disappointment with my huge goals, in this case, me thinking that by serving fresh juice, I would invigorate people, initiate conversation, and get people taking care of themselves more. As I write this out it is quite simple and makes more sense, and it is one thing I’ve learned, (over a long period of time and tremendously in this week) is that writing puts my scrambled brain in order. My anxiety levels went waaaay down after I started eating raw, but I still worry more than I should. Because I worry some. You shouldn’t worry at all! You are going to plan and act, so what is the point of worry? Not only is there noooooo point, none at all, but you are causing stress on yourself, compounding your worry, and you are creating a hole you have to climb out of in the future to get back to a level playing field and then to work on going up, building and creating. When you/I write, things are simplified and look doable. My worries are some abstract source of stress that I allow myself to wander into. It’s a comfy blanket, that is heavy and disease ridden. We all love to feel sorry for ourselves, and it is very tempting to slip into the self pity mode. As I see this, and I see the negative effects of this mode, I have become intensely curious as to this process, why it happens, how to avoid it, and a lot of the ideas surrounding this subject, as I have gotten mega pumped to see sense in this area that has always been so furiously frustrating! Some things are becoming more clear, and new habits must be formed. One is writing everything down. Above, when I was beginning to remember what my worries were in the past couple weeks about the juicing thing, I began typing and was struck by how silly it seemed to be stressed at all about something that, when written out clearly, didn’t seem so insurmountable! It’s this vague idea of something going wrong that kills (not “kills” like “Assuck kills!”, but “kills like “dead” or “fail.”) Also, my doubt of my goals and dreams is something I know is wrong, but I think I let myself be negative about my high hopes because 1: i’m not usually around huge dreamers who turn their back on the norm and really really shoot for what is in their heart. this is super hard to do and i want to be there and be there with friends, peers, my neighborhood. it is a project of mine. we have to dream gigantic and really really believe it. not just have the words come out of our mouths and have our minds not believe it. this is shit talking, and i don’t buy it or want to participate in it. i’ve done too much in my short lifetime. 2: because just like the vagueness of “something” ruining my dreams and goals, when the ”something” isn’t anything specifically that I can identify, and thus, imagined, and non-existent, the vagueness of my positive aspirations, the lack of a clear and definitive battle plan, leaves me unconfident. BUT, when I write these goals down and they materialize onto paper, magic happens! I have already moved to action, and taken a big step. Dreams shouldn’t fizzle, and this is a way I have found to make my dreams, which are simply my paths for my life, my existence, become reality and be believable and exciting to me. This is the shit that allows me to sleep 4 hours in a night, and wake up, and JUMP UP out of bed, fucking stoked as hell for a new day to breathe, run, play, share, and do everything I want. Your favorite 5 things. Do everything to make those 5 things happen. We/I forget what my dreams are. See how fucked up that sounds? When I write that, everything is SO simple, but letting that simmer around in your head, it just plagues you and you are poisoned from it. But typing it out or writing it out gives you power because it is much easier understood, clearly defined, and all the stresses and unnecessary worries (which is ALL worry) are dispelled and you take a step towards liberation. Write, define, strive for goals. Give yourself a break!  Oh, real quick; my other experience of stress was setting up this new store at my job, where it has been slow moving and mega stressful, and it involves setting up shelves, which there is an insanely confusing pile of different parts that someone else took apart and aren’t around anymore and no one has any idea how they go back together. It has caused lots of stress and complications, and two days ago I began with the simplest pieces, determined to conquer the mess, and only thought of putting together the simple pieces I was sure of, and not letting myself look ahead at the huge mountain in front of me. Focusing small like this, I began making super fast progress and figuring out everything, and have rapidly nearly put together a whole half of a store in a few days, and the project became fun instead of work, and has inspired me incredibly. I actually really needed to type this out and maybe I will write it in my journal too as an important reminder at how much our lives are ours and what we can do to change aspects to our liking. This project had two totally different faces; the first of misery, frustration, and it made me lethargic and grumpy at times. The second put bounce in my step and made me really excited to come back to work to see my progress and turned a chore into a fun project!