Baby, I feel not good enough.
I can say that I know with near certainty that my current inability to perform is due to chronic back pain. I can talk about potential causes & solutions [1] but I can also say there's always been something [2] preventing me from performing. I can say that it's ultimately how I am. If I want to I can say, “Baby, I feel not good enough.”
What I have always worked towards is emotional healing. My visual art and my online posts and the books I dream of writing. My current practice is streaming to organize my thoughts. I started this by saying, “Baby, I feel not good enough,” because I have been streaming a lot without feeling able to say what I want to say. I am creating for emotional healing, yet not even feeling well enough to get better. Today what I had on my mind to stream about was what I've written above and in notes 1 & 2, below. Then something happened.
Last night:
Today:
I'm still terribly sad about the meat fail, but I might be happy with the stream about the meat fail: I process emotions; I use an immediate and vivid personal experience as a possible means of examining the human universal (YMMV of course); art helps (Sarfraz Manzoor's story published in The Moth anthology A Point Of Beauty); and it all happens in “just” one hour.
- Within the first minute I've acknowledged my difficulty keeping streams focused on topic & I've divulged the meat disaster
- First 20 minutes are me unpleasantly describing my unpleasant feelings about unpleasant difficulties. I'm snarfing my nose & throat. I'm frustrated about the state of my home. I'm despondent over the meat (still am & spoiler: I ate some). I describe how my frustration management negatively impacts concentration & relationships.
- Story Time! If there weren't such things as money & YouTube & advertising & intellectual property then I would proudly link more info on the story and its author. As it is you'll have to look it up yourself if you're interested. I want my content to always reflect the culture that gets me through life — humanities / humanism / human existence. I hate advertising & I consider myself a nonprofit. (I do seek patron support.) I only use commercial sites for the free space. I dream of hosting all my content ad free myself some day.
- aside: What is love? · The story raises questions about the nature of love. I break to reflect on my experiences and understanding of love as a child and today.
- back to story
- loud noise distracts my attention from the story, after which i feel sad about the meat again. A benefit of my “public life with no pretense” is the recording of ordinary human existence. My theory of being centers attention. Recording daily events like this offers evidence of how the mind (my mind at least) functions. It's clear that I am enjoying myself as I read the story. An unexpected noise disrupts my attention, causing natural alertness. Immediately my concentration returns to the sadness I feel over the lost food.
Behaviors often labeled ADHD are normal mental functioning, in my theory of mind. [3] It's beneficial to rotate focus frequently to maintain awareness over multiple things. The noise jolts me from my enjoyment, likely causing adrenaline to turn my focus to threats. As there is none from outside, I turn inward and remember my sad experience of the day, possibly spoiled groceries. At this point I can choose to return to my pleasant activity, but I decide to gather more information on the potential threat. Deciding what to do about potentially unsafe meats is a threat. If I choose one course of action I may threaten my health; another course inflicts damage to mood, ego, and the very limited time, energy, & money available to me these days to perform basic functions. All my decisions take these facts into account.
At 42:55, returning from the field trip to gather data on meat storage temperatures, having learned disappointing results, I take my shirt off to ease physical discomfort. I am not making this point a link because I am not operating a partial-nudity only fans (yet). My views on distraction extend to physical comfort — innumerable physical and mental sensations being processed by the mind at all times. I couldn't ease my mind about the meat safety. Instead I took my shirt off. (All of this makes complete sense to me.)
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[1] I can talk about my attempts to manage the pain {doctors' visits, medications, physical therapy, yoga, walking} and I can talk about offers from loved ones to pay for new treatments. I can talk about difficulties with US medical culture. I can talk about my life history that impacts my attitudes and motivation towards diet, exercise, stretching, medicine, and money.
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[2] Starting at birth: No dad, angry & depressed Mom; I'm alienated and weird, gay but not knowing it, just feeling different, longing for a place where I could find "people like me" ... I pour my intention on getting to a good college where I'll be able to feel good; I go to Princeton; I feel good briefly then all crashes down. I'm still alienated & different, still gay but not wanting to be, not wanting to see that, still having trouble making friends, still feeling like others do not share my values. At this point I really begin to understand that I care about underdogs and that means equal worth, rights, and opportunity for all – and that most people do not seem to care about those values or are hostile. I pour my emotions into art & therapy. On some level I still want to try to fit in because I feel that is required in order to survive. I'm tired of typing this. ... Basically then comes inheriting money & distractions that came with that; and then a serious boyfriend who becomes family who I thought was a life partner. International economic collapse and my partner being a liar and cheater become the next causes for my inability to perform. I get bad jobs and then I can't perform because my energy and time is being drained into barely subsistence work that makes the world a worse place. While being taken advantage of by a series of rich people, then Covid hits. I change my attitude. I say I'm going to devote all my time and energy to creating, no matter what. Quickly run out of money. I don't do health care because I can't afford it. Now I have bad teeth, bad back, and more. The back pain is the current reason I don't achieve my goals. *But it's easy to see that there is probably some NEW excuse just waiting around the corner, right?* That's what my lying, cheating partner would have said, did say. My current lover is lovely and loving so that at least is a step up. I didn't want to write this, so that's why I stuck it down here. I'm going to lower the font size. Some reason I had to get all this out BEFORE saying what I wanted to above, because these thoughts are often with me. The idea that I don't have conditions impeding me; but that my problem is that I am me. Phew. Having said all that I am going to go back to the top and partly annotate my most recent video stream.
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[3] I have a lot of theories, evidently. I mean, yes it's true & also I'm writing more, more quickly, and fretting over editing less. It's good.
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