Taking a break from the forum. Thanks for everything!

[oak]

Hi friends.

I am taking a break from this forum.

I say this because I’ve known for some time that most of what I post would be more appropriate for a blog or journal.

I’ve made a note in my calendar to revisit this in the new year.

In the meantime, thank you for all the kindness you all have shown me!

[manuel_moe_g]

All blessings and all strength to you, Oak

May your new internet digs treat you well

You will always be welcome back, Friend and Brother

I will hold down the fort…

[Mental Fairy]

Will miss you my friend, hoping the break does you good.

[oak]

Thank you, my friends!

I have a lot to face this autumn/winter/spring, so I’ll check in, in about six months or a year.

In the meantime, I hope you all, individually and as a collective/forum, continue to well. Take care!

[Beany Boo]

Stay,

If you need to express privately to get something hard done though, then, respect and full encouragement.

[snoringdog]

Hello Oak,

I’ve known for some time that most of what I post would be more appropriate for a blog or journal.

Could you maybe pop in once in a while with "the other stuff"? You've added quite a bit of helpful info and good comments to the conversations along the way.

Work on yourself and your blog/journal first, for sure, though.

SD

[oak]

Thanks Beany Boo and SnoringDog.

Yes, I found my social media consumption (this forum and Reddit) not as bad, per se, but compulsive. I’d check both 10-20 times a day, while ignoring more pressing issues (see below).

Both this forum and Reddit are good: I was not using them in a good way (good servants vs poor masters, as they say).

Meanwhile, lately I am not facing the serious financial, health, and social issues I have on my plate: the rest of 2023 is pretty make-or-break.

Speaking of that, I’ve made a note to pop in here with an update in between Christmas and New Year’s.

See you all then!

[oak]

Hi friends.

A quick update of my late 2023.

My 2023 was hell: no major crises, but lots of downers, and few reasons to smile.

There's a saying: "It is okay to spill some milk, as long as you don't lose the cow."

That is my 2023 in a nutshell: very few reasons to smile, horrible luck all year, but also I have everything I need to succeed in 2024. I haven't lost my cow (stable job, housing, and transportation), but a big part of having a cow is milk: I haven't lost everything, but I have few reasons to smile. Is this any way to live?

Friends, this not so much a grim Christmas for me, but a downer one.

I think I can admit it to myself, and here. I can mourn today. I can also pick myself up, starting with barre class tomorrow.

I can't have another 2023: I can't be so broke and lonely. I hope we can stick together and have a better 2024.

[oak]

Hi friends.

Though I promised to take a break of "about a year", here I am three months later.

In addition to saying hello to all my favorites, I am here especially to hopefully send encouragement to our good friend Mental Fairy, who is facing a difficult time indeed.

Like I mentioned a few months ago, my social media usage was/is compulsive: Reddit (avg 25 hours a week), and I'd check this forum 10-20 times a day. I've lurked since February, but decreasingly so. I think checking in once every three months is a healthy use of this forum for me.

1. In the last three months I am doing better.

2. I also realize I want/need to change the orientation of my life. I am broke and lonely, and repeating the same behaviors as I was thirty years ago. I want to earn more, make friends, move to a more vibrant city, and get healthier. I've made progress in each of those since getting sober in '08, but now I realize how far I have to go. I believe anxiety about finances and friends have caused me to grind my teeth, which has exacerbated my tinnitus. The terror of this, which our good friend Troebia knows first hand, has inspired me to redouble my professional skill-building (so I can escape this financial hell and reduce my anxiety, which will hopefully reduce my tinnitus).

3. My father's death understandably troubled me early this year. At that time I also learned to only have one crisis at a time: In addition to a dying/dead estranged father, I had accompanying twin crises of lack of friends and lack of money. Though I made it through okay... this time. My advice: only have one crisis at a time.

4. My finances have temporarily improved, and before they go south again I've gone dancing and found a possible "third place". I've been dancing, and someone new has caught my eye. This someone has options, and if I want to win someone like her, I'll need to do the same things suggested by my dietician, kind boss, friends here, and my own conscience: all wholesome things like improving health, finances, and fun.

5. One thing that helped me move on, mostly to indifference were I to be honest, about my father's death was that he visited me in a dream three weeks after he died.

If you'll indulge a brief retelling:

a. He and I were walking along an ordinary road, in this world. He asked me if I wanted to see something, and I said yes.

b. Turning off the ordinary road, away from this world, he took me through a beautiful garden or park, up a gentle slope, and across a land bridge (this bridge is very important).

c. He was as healthy as could be, and probably 25 to 30. He could run, just for the joy of it, with a childlike exuberance.

d. Coming to a clearing in the garden, perfectly situated in a hill was a beautiful building where he spent most of his time. "Teaching hospital" is the closest idea in our world, but there everything is effortless, and just where it should be. It is not exactly work, as we understand it in this life with all its strife and whatnot, but he spends his time with his friends, and the focus of the "hospital" is healing and learning. But mostly healing.

(The building was perfectly tasteful, like a mid-20th century building you might see in New England. A prominent, but tasteful sign read "Kent". I went to Kent State IRL, and "Kent" is my psyche's shorthand for any learning experience; said another way: he is at a place of learning.)

e. He took me inside, where I met his "coworkers". They were getting ready for a big effort, and they offered me brownies. I saw someone buy a fruit juice with a debit card, and they had a stack of dark red 5k t-shirts with a logo based on the land bridge we crossed earlier. Then I woke up.

All this is clearly archetypes of heaven. My main takeaway: while work in this life is filled with strife, and communication is difficult and coded, in this heaven-type place everything is effortless, and just where it should be. There is nothing to defend, so communication is simple and clear; no one has anything to prove, so like everything else communication is effortless. Stuff we get upset about in this life, quite reasonably, doesn't matter there: while they like learning, healing is important above all.

Edit to add:

Immediately after awakening, I took notes in Google Drive, and here are two things I had forgotten from our time in the hospital, which I’ll paste below and offer brief thoughts:

“A few young staff were about, including one young man in semi darkness.”

Could this have been my brother, who died young thirty years ago? The mind boggles!

“My father went to buy a soft drink, and returned with two VHS tapes of the history of the hospital. One of the identifying handwritten marks on the shell read “85”.”

Enigmatic!

[troebia]

Yes Oak, we are all hoping Mental Fairy makes a speedy recovery. I am always waiting for news from her, as if she were part of my inner family circle now over there in the antipodes.

So glad you are feeling better now, and I'd like to comment on some of what you say, either because I coincide or because I differ.

Using social media compulsively isn't such a bad thing imo, if it is rewarding and soothing. There are some corners deep online that have stimulated me and pushed me forward, while others are like junk food for the brain. But I feel a lot better about my internet use since I began to "compartmentalise" myself: one part is dedicated to intellectual "rational" thinking, one part is pain and anxiety management, one part stoic indifference (regarding MIL), one part is sexual satisfaction, one part art, one part alcoholic sloth and so on. Hell, now I even feel different as a person whether I'm sitting down or standing up. And I now refuse judgement, because I've realised I'm this unique, crazy little person and I'm trying to move forward in art. Stillness and surrender (to tinnitus, among other things) is death.

Sometimes there will be a sudden flash, like maybe you experience dancing with that special person, or like me in an abrupt moment of proximity and synchronicity to a woman I have worshipped sexually online (see a recent post). Or something in the landscape and the sky just comes together for some reason, like for me once, suddenly weeping in an Italian garden and then an unknown woman coming up from behind, also weeping with pleasure...an extreme aesthetic inebriation. In a corner of that garden at Villa Cimbrone there's a plaque with these words by Omar Khayyam:

Ah, Moon of my Delight who know'st no wane,
The Moon of Heav'n is rising once again:
How oft hereafter rising shall she look
Through this same Garden after me—in vain!

Onwards, my friend.