:: The Headache Diaries (Retired) ::

:: The Headache Diaries (Retired) ::

:: 6.28.2004 ::

I think my brain is starting to come back together...

Before I go on and on about fear and everything else, let me just say this: IF I MAKE A MISTAKE SO BE IT!

Uh, I really don't know what I am saying so forgive me.

Anyhoo, I am trying to get back into the swing of things. The only problem I am having is snagging a certain job that will help me clear up a lot of crap that needs clearing. HELLOOOOOOO! AM I GETTING HIRED OR WHAT? SHEESH!
Yeah, besides that, I am perpetually frustrated that I had wasted lots of time and money trying to get a CNA position only to get no responses yet. I have a feeling that my resume made me sound overqualified. How annoying! I should have misspelled stuff or something. I should have put I never went to school. Maybe that would help.

So the new plan on my road to sanity is thus: go back to CCNY to finish my bachelor's for cryin' out loud (my good friend from Lehigh has just completed his masters in EE. Talk about envy!) I think I have wasted too much of my life to have that hanging in the air. I have a few secret missions I would like to complete before I graduate and may help determine what I do after, saying all goes well. But I don't want to give that too much thought because I dont want to jinx anything I may have going for me. I need to keep this small amount of momentum going that I was able to muster up a few weeks ago. It's like keeping a little ball rolling very slowly with your foot... you'll watch it to make sure it doesn't stop but you wont give it that big kick, if you could that is. So basically, I'm waiting for the right moment to give it a nice kick or just get a new ball or something, preferably one that is bigger and fancier and can run over stuff I don't like...

In the meantime, I am trying to do some "distract work" like I used to do. One of the most important distractions was my webpage... well, I don't know if any of you noticed, but it hasn't been updated in quite a while. I do have a bunch of stuff that was waiting to be posted but it is mostly pictures. I havent come up with any good ideas for anything. I guess I haven't been into it. I thought the nursing classes would stimulate me beyond end but it didn't turn out that way. Well, another distraction was bike riding. I used to ride my bike and take pictures. I don't even carry my camera anymore. Yeah yeah, boo hoo. I guess after the holiday, I should get into something. It's pretty boring sitting around all day (esp when you have no TV) when I guess I could be out riding my bike, even if it's not as furious as I used to ride it.

Well, if I decide to change my plans I will let you know. I will also try to finish that post about fear and all that.

Goodnight

:: Jane Dee 8:27:00 PM [+] ::
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It's certainly time for an update

After a brief hiatus, things are not back to normal, but I have been able to function more like a human on the appropriate level of consciousness. My depression has subsided for the most part and I can feel my brain "waking up" and searching for knowledge and decisions. This doesn't mean I am back to bike riding again, but I have been wanting to go outside and have done so with encouragement or "excuses" (i.e., post office, laundry, the need to purchase a mango...). Many things have come out of this seemingly harsh ordeal.

I learned that I am in need of a larger space. My mind is actually a dynamic machine that, although confined to the cranium, has the ability to expand within itself. Sort of like the shadow of a hypercube in our three-dimensional world. I was unaware of this before. I had realized this only when I started saying "I used to be so smart. What happened to me?" At first, I answered "I must have became stupid." which is absurd given that I have not had any blows to the head or suffered any kind of brain damage or developed dementia (as in the case of Alzheimer's Disease... we will all miss Ronald Reagan). So what could it be? I think I have been suppressed for too long. Not only that, I realized that the only way I can live up to my full potential is to let myself be. However, this requires alot of space.

You are probably thinking "now I KNOW she is crazy!" but let me try to explain. When I was in high school, I felt smart for the most part. I felt larger than life only because I was allowed to do whatever I wanted. Everything was offered to me and I took everything. It wasn't an obstacle course, it was a jungle gym. I had high hopes in life. I was to be the greatest thing I was to be, whatever that was. I didn't have the pressure to look smart to anyone because I was smart. I graduated very happy. College was going to be easy.

That idea soon slipped away as I realized I was all alone. See, you have to understand something. I don't come from a "loving", "supportive" home. I come from a place where, well, you were on your own. I had learned to be self sufficient. And became more and more stressed. Bad things happened here and there but I wound up getting an associates in mathematics. That was to be my "stamp of smartness" for all the world to see and now I could be happy. Me and math had a love-hate relationship. I had developed that for physics, but that is another story. Now here is where the confinement begins.

"Jane, here is your list of requirements." I'd imagine in my head.
"Number one: you must look smart at all times." Why? well, you are a strange person Jane. You know people do not respect your intellect based on your looks. Lets face it. Without the smart stamps, everyone will think you are another dumb bimbo." Rule number one has been the norm for a long time. Not only does rule number one mean I had to be learned, it meant that I had to be learned in specific fields. Unless it was engineering, physics, math, or chemistry, it was not an option. Why? Well, I will refer back to the "invisible parents" I had mentioned some time ago. I was trying to impress the parents who didn't care either way. "Ah! If I have a degree in EE, then I can feel better and they will accept me." So there I was on a wild goose chase, going through all the majors I had either absolutely no interest in or could not see myself getting a PhD in. This plays into number two.

"Number two: Your only options lie in the physical sciences, but you are not allowed to major in astronomy." This was an obvious attempt to please the invisible parents.

"Number three: since your options are so limited, you are likely to be unhappy, but you are not allowed to show it." No one is going to care if you are sad because they have their own problems.

"Number four: College is no place for creative writing, art, music, or any other classes that may channel your creative side in a meaningful way. You will be wasting your time." Despite the fact that I am extremly artistic, I chose to suppress that side of me so I could 'be more focused' and not look like im padding my transcript.

Those were my original set of conditions that have been plaguing me since high school. The year before my clinical nursing classes, I had abolished numbers two thru four and modified number one to "you must FEEL smart at all times." and that has made a huge difference.

And that is precisely what drove me to drop the nursing... for now at least. I wasn't feeling smart. In fact, I was feeling confined. I felt like my mind was being entered by some external force and shutting down all my expansion routes.... there was no room for any of my previous knowledge except some math. I was being led down a dark corridor that would close in on me more and more with each step. Pretty dramatic, huh?

Indeed it was. I had never experienced a mental shut down like that in all my life. I did not know the mind was able to take over like that. It literally separated itself from my conscious control. Most of the things I did felt like they were done by a puppeteer of some sort. I was impossible to fight it. It had control and it was not relinquishing until I listened to its demands. And I'll tell you, eventually, you will succumb. You cannot stay awake when it says sleep. You cannot walk when it says sit. You cannot breathe when it says "NO!"

This experience alone helped me to understand this: I am but a device to this world for my mind. My mind will actively seek and find what it wants. It will give me the energy to acquire the info it needs and will exert its authority when I am making it learn something it does not need or want.

Great. Now I have the tremendous task of finding "what it wants." POO! Why can't it just tell me!

That is the hard part my friends. I have found the key to problems like this. It is not the fact that you can't figure it out. It is that you do not know how to listen to your own mind. I have developed this device to help me "tune in" to my mind:

Imagine yourself in a room that no one has access to, but you have the ability to control the world in that room. This room would be similar to the room on Star Trek's Voyager that can be programmed to be anytime and anyplace in full color and dimension. Basically, you are God of this room.

Now imagine if you will, all the things that make you happy. Right now, you imagine what comes to mind... chocolate cake, comic books, whatever it is you think makes you happy. I know these can be totally unrelated things but just try to remember the main things. Now, erase the images in the room. It's dark again and now we want to take the things that make you happy and put them in order. You do that like this: start with the smallest things and draw outwards. I will use an example of chocolate cake, grey cats, the color pink, sunshine, a motorcycle, and a cool, rushing stream. First, draw your cake. Now draw a grey cat now put them in a place that they can go together. I'm going to draw a kitchen. The cake is now on a table and the grey cat is standing on the floor... well, now hey, my chairs are pink! COOL! I turn around, whoa! suddenly my mind drew a whole fantasy house! Wow, a living room with cool painings... and a velvet couch! And it's pink! Hm, I think the shade needs to be opened... hey it SUNNY outside... and wow! check out that cool, rushing stream not to far off my expansive lawn. Hey and over there is my hog! AND ITS PINK!

I laid it out like this because some people may have a hard time with the spacial properties of active 3-D imagery. However, your mind will be able to do it faster and better if you do this more. No pens and papers -yet- because we want our minds to do all the work.

Okay what the hell am I making you do? Chocolate cake has nothing to do with how you can figure out what you should do with your life. Well, look at it this way: You can't decorate the cake if you dont have the cake. And you don't have the cake unless you've got the flour. See, all these bits and pieces that seem not to fit together (flour? eggs? OIL?!) have the possibility of making a whole (MMM! CAKE!) and becoming something spectacular (CHOCOLATE FROSTING!!!). I know I am probably starting to sound like a motivational speaker, but this has been the only thing that has helped me thus far. No, not chocolate cake (I've been losing weight sadly), but LISTENING TO MY MIND.

I know there is some slogan out there "The mind is a terrible thing to waste." Personally, I don't agree with their use of waste. If they are referring to the inner city kids who cant go to school or are deprived, I can't see HOW they can waste their mind. Where is it wasting to? To me, wasting the mind would be engaging in useless endeavors. A good example of "wasting" a mind is someone who uses their brain power to cause harm or destruction. Like a well thought out bank robbery. All that wasted energy and logical thinking only to get arrested sometime in the future. Or shot. Whichever. The point is that that logical ability and time management skill could have been used to manage a buisness or land planes in an airport. Now that is a waste. Using the same ability to do something stupid rather than smart. Now that is different from a smart guy working the cash register. Why? Because the "skills" he is using to work the register are not those that can be used to do something meaningful. He just hasnt used his smartness yet. So just because inner city kids arent doing anything smart doesn't mean they are wasting their minds. In fact, I think its the opposite. They are stagnant.

Stagnation is not a positive thing either, but my point in all this was to show you that we think we may be doing the right things for all the right reasons. We waste our minds all day long. We may not go to the extreme of robbing banks, but maybe you, like me, will put our energies in places that do not yield any benefit. How many people do I know will major in something at school that they would rather not do? I'm no stranger to that phenomenon. Then what happens is that later on in life, we start to regret things... and that leads to all sorts of problems. Not only that, it starts to create this cesspool of self-doubt and all of a sudden, life becomes unmanageable. Or a mirage! We become further and further from the voice of the mind until we can't hear it anymore. Now comes the part where we create these "choices" that seem so great and that hold the key to our happiness. Meanwhile, you have no idea where these ideas came from. I bet you can honestly say "Gee, I don't remember ever wanting to be _______. Hm"
Here is where I sat for hours thinking about that last sentence. All I could say was "wait a minute, when did I say I wanted to be an engineer? and WHY the hell did I say that?" Friends, if you are able to ask yourself this question, you are on the right track home.

I need to go to bed, but I will continue with this later on:

Home is where the mind is, and it houses many a strange thing. Including fear....

:: Jane Dee 6:29:00 PM [+] ::
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