Month: January 2022

Good evening ladies and gentleman

So, all this talk of the omicron variant of COVID spreading through central Europe and now the country is stirring once again as another lockdown looms. Now i’m not one for politicising what i write, satire is best left to the comedians and not something i wish to throw my hat into the ring on. What i found more interesting is the symptoms of the new variant. The list of ailments that if you have them together, the likely scenario being that Omicron COVID wreaking havoc within you as the bodily defences go to war once again.

There were the usual things. Night sweats, sore throat- the sort of thing that would make you genuinely feel and think you were unwell. More interesting were the next two, headache and tiredness.

Tiredness… (symptoms can vary slightly this is just from my research)

So now if you didn’t get enough sleep you have a symptom of COVID. It made me think how i am tired almost constantly, trying to get enough sun in this bleak midwinter as you try and eat at least one of your five a day while trying to drink enough water and never getting there. Then as you work to get through the day doing without even seeing the sun through a window, let alone a moment to yourself you wander. You wander why you carry on, or even how, without getting stressed and worked up over something that you cannot control.

COVID is making you tired. What i think is that it’s a lot simpler than that. Life is more tiring than ever, in a world of noise, so much going on, constant and persistent stimulus being poured onto the surface of your consciousness at a near constant rate, it surprising we keep up at all.

Control is king. I’ve always believed that. Control everything and no outcome can curveball you to the strikeout you believed impossible. I feel like we have been bought up as a collective to believe we are supposed to control everything, because everything outside of your life seems so out of control. This constant overthinking, the persistent overstimulation of every synapse in your brain constantly trying to understand and overcome everything while trying to run your life, avoid misery, drink enough water, eat healthy and get your exercise in.

“Stuff to do” can very easily slip slide down the mountain to a “lot to do.” From that a lot to do becomes too much to do.

This is where tired comes in. Trying to do everything at once- it gets so overwhelming, ironically when you’re out here trying to make so much happen at once as it kills you mentally, it means you’re getting less done. All this control, but no result. From this you start wandering why it’s not happening, so you rest less, work more, pile it on more, less fun, see less people. Resulting in a run down one path to burnout.

You remember when you were a kid you see them clowns spinning plates? They would do 4 or 5 and blow your child like mind away at the feat of magnificence in front of you. Astounded by 4 plates and here you are trying to keep 20 spinning at the same time. No wander you’re so tired.

So. Control is king, but what you’re trying to control is the issue. It took me years to figure this out but you then realise how much you are capable of. It’s not about controlling what happens- its about how you react to it.

You choose how you deal with your life. One of the most important things to remember is that life- in all of its connections- is a one player game. You remember that your feelings and your decisions are yours. Everything you do is your choice and yours alone. Its not about controlling everything, it’s about how you react to things you didn’t expect. Understand you can’t change everything and can control even less. The world is happening around you right now, whether you’re lying in bed reading this or stood at the top of a mountain. Your friends are doing stuff other than hanging out with you, some people love you, some can’t stand the sight of you and others have no idea you even exist.

And you know what? None of it matters. Not unless you want it to.

When you put your emotional energies towards things and beings that make you feel good and will be able to offer that same energy in return, you will find yourself getting less tired. You’ll spend less time tossing and turning, more time resting. I honestly believe we have to conserve emotional energy and give it to what can bring you joy. Focus on what can provide you something positive, because focusing on everything is just making you so, so tired.

It isn’t a life if you’re too bleary eyed to enjoy it.

with love, as always.
D.R x

Good afternoon ladies and gentleman

What is it when the monotony of life gets at you? What happens when you feel like your stuck in an endless cycle of daily tasks and the same conversation with the same people- the sort of people that say so much and nothing at all?

People will tell you, society will tell you that it’s life and you just need to suck it up. Life is painful and you just have to deal with it- just like the rest of us. Why do you think the drug problems are increasing at an exponential rate and have been so for the last 3 decades, why the pubs and bars seem to be more and more full come the weekend and the fear of the next lockdown is driving anxiety levels in the country higher than ever before.

It’s easy to feel like your losing it. I often think part of this feeling is in the balance society is trying to strike towards our obedience. About how we are supposed to just “suck it up.” They communicate what they want us to believe, to feel, to love- and we obey. Chase this thing, work towards that goal, make sure you’ve done this by then, if you don’t do that there must be something wrong. And so on…

This is the way the world communicates these days. Either through shouting and telling you that you’re wrong without offering any sort of explanation, or just not at all. Fuck up and i’ll come and tell you how much of an idiot you are later. It often feels like the latter is used more, because it feels as if your life has been written out for you before you take your first breath.

“Have this by then..”

“why haven’t you done that yet?…”

“if you haven’t done that- what have you been doing?..”

It goes on, but even thinking about it is just draining. The world doing all it can to weigh you down and write you off, this pursuit for you to be nothing more than a statistic, to not cause problems, to do as your told and tell everyone how great it is this way.

So what is it? What makes this feeling that something is missing when you find yourself just going through the motions? As i understand it, at the heart of it is a communication breakdown. Between you and society? No.

Between you and you.

The part of you that is presented to the world, the conscious aspects of your personality are very easily influenced by the pull of the “easy route,” of the pull that is “falling into line.”We are pulled to this because we look at other people and think they are happy- so will imitate them in an attempt to get that good dose of happiness we think we want so badly. We think moments will rectify our lives, the achievement of that goal will mean life can really get “started.”

Yet, in the vast chasm of our obsessive consciousness, so lost in trying to figure out to be happy, be rich, to have women in your bed or keys in your pocket, there is something else, a calling, a voice, a niggle you are just unable to ignore. Some call it a soul, a voice inside your head, or perhaps in contrast to consciousness, the unconsciousness.

I know this is a vague term. Frankly- all three of them are. What is that feeling though? Things are going well, your job is manageable, you’re trying to be sociable and as present as you can. You continue to work towards your goals and have a general idea of how you intend to progress and eventually achieve them. As it stands, you have nothing to feel upset, sad or depressed about- from the outside. From the outside people would and do assume your happy with how things are.

I’ve waxed lyrically about all sorts of things over the years, but this has always played at me. Like a voice in my head screaming, shouting, doing all it can to attract my attention. A persistent and sinking feeling i was missing something, so close to me yet so far away, hidden just beneath the surface of what felt familiar.

It eats at me, however hard I run, it persists- just behind my eyes. It’s corrosive.

Except it’s not. It’s a communication breakdown.

The person you want to be, the way you want to feel, what you want to achieve and the legacy you want to leave lives just beneath the surface, the aspects of your unconscious personality you don’t think the world should see because you’re scared the world will try and take it out of you, that you wont have as many friends or because you won’t be accepted. You fear the opinions of others, so keep your true nature locked away, hidden beneath the surface and do all you can to break ties, to breakdown the communication between what you see and all that you don’t- even if its mentally exhausting because the alternative doesn’t bare thinking about.

Take music for example. If a guitar string isn’t properly connected at the top and bottom of the instrument, would you be able to play that instrument properly? Would the great musicians and lyricists of the last 5 decades or so be able to sing of the pain, torment, love and sadness they feel so powerfully without the added level of communication that a well played guitar provides? The guitar is an extension of their personality for it provides them with a connection to themselves that words cannot express.

It is the same here. Your conscious and unconscious mind need to talk, they need to communicate. That information flow needs to be consistent and moreover than that persistent. The breakdown can be repaired- more than that it has to be for you to gain true knowledge of who you are and what you are capable of because in truth its so much more than any of us can possibly imagine.

That voice inside your head, the very nature of your being is calling for you to be brave. The communication breakdown is a difficult thing to fix, the repeated and constant assault on your senses throughout daily life in society is becoming a much harder thing to combat. Someone i know once upon a time told me a story about persistence. She talked about consistently working a plan to the same method, over and over again proving to give no result. So simply put- do something different.

Offer that olive branch to yourself. Tweak that guitar string- hear the tension rise and see if it sings a note that feels like you- unfamiliar but you all the same. Nobody is expecting a full solo straight away. Start on that path with a single note. A breakdown isn’t the end of everything you are.

You can rebuild and come back stronger.

Learn to recognise that person in the mirror. And listen to them.

Yours, with love as always.

D.R x