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@experienceitself
Alexander
New Yorker/Marylander, Noahide Bahá'í Catholic Quaker/Huang-Lao Taoist, Vajrayana Buddhist and Kashmiri Shaivist, cishet man, born 1999;
philanthropist, pilot, board professional, driver, mangaka, artist, ice hockey forward;
this blog exists for:
self-organization
documenting travels
exploring & recording thoughts
presenting art
personal insights on scripture, literature, & practice
daily life bulletins
Establishing Sleep Schedule
What has been most inhibiting to my goals has been the lack of a proper sleep schedule. Tonight, I will attempt to begin easing myself into a formalized sleep schedule that is designed to grant me about 8 hours of sleep every night. I anticipate this will be the beginning of a new era in my life – where sleep is prioritized and treated with the great respect it ought to be treated with.
Upon beginning this project, I remembered what I've learned about sleep many times in the past: sleep relies on cycles.
The ideal, to me, is to wake up at 5:00am. This is to prepare me for a lifetime of early mornings – I anticipate that I'll serve in the military, become a father, start businesses, and manage teams. To do this properly, I will have to wake up earlier than most. Hence: 5:00am is my non negotiable wake up time.
Given that I'd like 6 complete cycles before I'm fully awake, I'll have to get into bed by around 7:30pm, and be asleep by 8:00pm.
All throughout the week: asleep by 8:00pm, awake by 5:00am – this is a schedule that will certainly cause enormous changes in my life.
The most difficult aspect of this kind of schedule will be integrating my part-time job, usually worked as a double shift on Sundays. The sleep schedule from Sunday-into-Monday is an extremely rough one: I'm usually not off from that job until around 10:30pm on a normal night.
So, it seems, for Monday mornings, I will have a slightly later morning. The suggestion given to me by Gemini is to "let Monday be the exception to the rule" for now.
Letting Monday be the exception of the rule means going to sleep by around 11:00 or 11:30pm on Mondays and waking up at 7:00am. This is at least a little risky, because I have to be at my main job on Mondays by 8:00am.
Still, to wake up at 5:00am on Mondays despite getting into bed around 11:00 or 11:30 is extremely troubling. I'd likely have to take an afternoon nap at some point, which is unfeasible in the current environment. The very idea of taking a nap in the middle of the day is just not something that comes to mind for me as desirable.
So Sunday-into-Monday, that glorious transition from the beginning or perhaps neutral weekend day into the first day of the week, will be a slightly later morning than most. Not letting that get in the way of my momentum is sure to be a slight challenge, but I intend to push through.
Like all things, much easier said than done. It's 6:33pm right now. I had agreed a while ago to meet my friend at the gym every day at 7:00.
What is more important to me is ensuring that I begin to get on track with this sleep schedule stuff. However, there's no doubt that, tonight, I'm not going to fall asleep around 8, and tomorrow morning, I won't be getting up at 5. It's just not happening.
My current fall-asleep time is probably extremely skewed, likely around midnight. Wakeup is probably around what it was this morning, which was, say, 10am when I finally got out. It's completely atrocious and out-of-whack.
Gemini suggests that I go to bed at 11pm and wake up at 6:30am. This seems to be doable.
Nope. I went to sleep at like, 1:00am last night.
Establishing Sleep Schedule
What has been most inhibiting to my goals has been the lack of a proper sleep schedule. Tonight, I will attempt to begin easing myself into a formalized sleep schedule that is designed to grant me about 8 hours of sleep every night. I anticipate this will be the beginning of a new era in my life – where sleep is prioritized and treated with the great respect it ought to be treated with.
Upon beginning this project, I remembered what I've learned about sleep many times in the past: sleep relies on cycles.
The ideal, to me, is to wake up at 5:00am. This is to prepare me for a lifetime of early mornings – I anticipate that I'll serve in the military, become a father, start businesses, and manage teams. To do this properly, I will have to wake up earlier than most. Hence: 5:00am is my non negotiable wake up time.
Given that I'd like 6 complete cycles before I'm fully awake, I'll have to get into bed by around 7:30pm, and be asleep by 8:00pm.
All throughout the week: asleep by 8:00pm, awake by 5:00am – this is a schedule that will certainly cause enormous changes in my life.
The most difficult aspect of this kind of schedule will be integrating my part-time job, usually worked as a double shift on Sundays. The sleep schedule from Sunday-into-Monday is an extremely rough one: I'm usually not off from that job until around 10:30pm on a normal night.
So, it seems, for Monday mornings, I will have a slightly later morning. The suggestion given to me by Gemini is to "let Monday be the exception to the rule" for now.
Letting Monday be the exception of the rule means going to sleep by around 11:00 or 11:30pm on Mondays and waking up at 7:00am. This is at least a little risky, because I have to be at my main job on Mondays by 8:00am.
Still, to wake up at 5:00am on Mondays despite getting into bed around 11:00 or 11:30 is extremely troubling. I'd likely have to take an afternoon nap at some point, which is unfeasible in the current environment. The very idea of taking a nap in the middle of the day is just not something that comes to mind for me as desirable.
So Sunday-into-Monday, that glorious transition from the beginning or perhaps neutral weekend day into the first day of the week, will be a slightly later morning than most. Not letting that get in the way of my momentum is sure to be a slight challenge, but I intend to push through.
Like all things, much easier said than done. It's 6:33pm right now. I had agreed a while ago to meet my friend at the gym every day at 7:00.
What is more important to me is ensuring that I begin to get on track with this sleep schedule stuff. However, there's no doubt that, tonight, I'm not going to fall asleep around 8, and tomorrow morning, I won't be getting up at 5. It's just not happening.
My current fall-asleep time is probably extremely skewed, likely around midnight. Wakeup is probably around what it was this morning, which was, say, 10am when I finally got out. It's completely atrocious and out-of-whack.
Gemini suggests that I go to bed at 11pm and wake up at 6:30am. This seems to be doable.
Establishing Sleep Schedule
What has been most inhibiting to my goals has been the lack of a proper sleep schedule. Tonight, I will attempt to begin easing myself into a formalized sleep schedule that is designed to grant me about 8 hours of sleep every night. I anticipate this will be the beginning of a new era in my life – where sleep is prioritized and treated with the great respect it ought to be treated with.
Upon beginning this project, I remembered what I've learned about sleep many times in the past: sleep relies on cycles.
The ideal, to me, is to wake up at 5:00am. This is to prepare me for a lifetime of early mornings – I anticipate that I'll serve in the military, become a father, start businesses, and manage teams. To do this properly, I will have to wake up earlier than most. Hence: 5:00am is my non negotiable wake up time.
Given that I'd like 6 complete cycles before I'm fully awake, I'll have to get into bed by around 7:30pm, and be asleep by 8:00pm.
All throughout the week: asleep by 8:00pm, awake by 5:00am – this is a schedule that will certainly cause enormous changes in my life.
The most difficult aspect of this kind of schedule will be integrating my part-time job, usually worked as a double shift on Sundays. The sleep schedule from Sunday-into-Monday is an extremely rough one: I'm usually not off from that job until around 10:30pm on a normal night.
So, it seems, for Monday mornings, I will have a slightly later morning. The suggestion given to me by Gemini is to "let Monday be the exception to the rule" for now.
Letting Monday be the exception of the rule means going to sleep by around 11:00 or 11:30pm on Mondays and waking up at 7:00am. This is at least a little risky, because I have to be at my main job on Mondays by 8:00am.
Still, to wake up at 5:00am on Mondays despite getting into bed around 11:00 or 11:30 is extremely troubling. I'd likely have to take an afternoon nap at some point, which is unfeasible in the current environment. The very idea of taking a nap in the middle of the day is just not something that comes to mind for me as desirable.
So Sunday-into-Monday, that glorious transition from the beginning or perhaps neutral weekend day into the first day of the week, will be a slightly later morning than most. Not letting that get in the way of my momentum is sure to be a slight challenge, but I intend to push through.
Nobody is Grace. I'm free to be as indifferent to others as I please.
I've missed New York. Whenever I return to Long Island, I find myself feeling a strange sense of needing to come back here.
I went to Brisas del Mar, a pupusería that my family would frequent when I was a kid. The whole vibe of the interior design had changed, and I believe it had gotten a paint job. The layout and location were all the same.
I drove around some earlier. I felt strangely free. I enjoyed myself. The highways on Long Island are compact, and more orderly than one would expect. It was a great contrast to the wild chaos of driving in Manhattan earlier.
In fact, I'll even reach out to you one last time. For your own good and mine.
Ticino, Switzerland
But I'll still talk.
There isn't anything to say to you because I'm certain I'll see you again, and it is infinitely more interesting to me to see what you'll say upon your return than it is for me to break the silence between us with my anxiety-infused grasping.
The experience of losing you has emptied me and left me a dried husk. I don't want to eat anymore. I fill my lungs with burning plastic and nicotine. I demand direct discussions with God, like Job, but fail to interpret the responses. Because the injustice of meeting you, having you, loving you, and losing you is so intertwined with everything else that isn't you.
Why can't I talk to you?
I have placed my faith in Jesus Christ when it comes to you. Jesus told me you would return. And since my relationship with you is, somehow, still the ember that won't go out in my heart, I have to believe it.
Because what else? What is the alternative for a man who has truly fallen in love? I have thrown up my hands and said, "I never needed you," more times than I can remember. Then something happens, somewhere, somehow, and I'm always brought back to the sublimity of my life when I had your presence.
But I barely remember it. I'm really beginning to lose track of who you are to begin with. Years of never hearing from you while believing I'm meant for nobody else but you have collapsed my sense of, honestly, everything. I don't even care about this post anymore.
Copper postcard commemorating the 100 year anniversary of the Statue of Liberty
What do I really care about?
What things are really important to me?
For a very long time, I only cared about one thing: keeping myself in a state of being in love with one particular person who I believed I was supposed to engage in the Sacrament of Matrimony with. I had believed that I met that person, that Jesus Christ had guided me to be together with that person, and that my behavior needed to be based on this fact – even though it was only a personal conviction, not an objective fact in the world, that she was meant for me. So, if I asked myself that question, I nearly always answered with her name.
But times are changing. I no longer care much about that person whom I once claimed I was in love with. Not because I don't believe we would be a good couple, on the contrary, I believe we'd be great together. It's because I have come to feel disrespected in some subtle way by her lack of response to me in all this time. No, nobody owes anyone communication in this world, that may be true. We are all endowed with the freedom of conscience and of consciousness that entails the potential for painful outcomes in relationships. Though I was deeply spiritually confused by the outcome of this one, the confusion produced a new kind of clarity that beckons an even greater outcome. An impersonal one not based on the behavior and activities of others – especially women I have been attracted to.
I fell in love with the person I fell in love with because I had believed that we had a deeper purpose to our relationship than simply being romantic partners. I had believed we were destined for a family. To make matters worse, I had previously held the exact opposite conviction before meeting that person: I used to think, I should never have a child, never bring them into a world in which macro level problems are becoming more chaotic and unsolvable. And then suddenly, this person who my mouth had no words to describe was in my life. With her, everything changed.
Without her, everything changes again. I'm now beginning to very seriously orient my life in directions that discount her reappearance in my life. Again: she's taken too long. And in the time she's taken in, essentially, ignoring me and forsaking our relationship, while I literally had a Catholic level of commitment to our relationship, I've decided that I'm not as committed to this, either. A fine conclusion, I believe. I have given my worry about our relationship to the Cross. Nothing was wasted.
So then: what do I really care about? In a word: Christ. Another word, just as fitting, may be: Presence. I care most about the quality of my life and enjoyment of that quality. I care most about actually being here to experience this world and enjoy the experience.
But presence is not a physical thing, and neither is Christ. So, as the question pivots to, "what things are really important to me?", I need to begin considering what, specifically, the words Christ and Presence mean to me.
My body is really important to me. It is the medium by which I experience the physical world, which is the medium by which I experience anything. My mind is really important to me. It is the medium by which I experience my body, both concrete and subtle, which is the medium by which I experience anything at all, whatsoever. So – my body and mind are very important to me.
Zazen is very important to me. Through the practice of zazen, I've gained a deep appreciation for the world as it is. And I'm always ready to let go, too. These are two hard-fought insights that I likely never would have come to, especially as readily as I've come to them, without all those hours on the cushion.
Maintaining positive personal traits, as well as maintaining positive personal relations to others, these are also very important to me. The lack thereof produces suffering.
Beyond these few things that both the focus on Christ and Presence are intended to benefit: my body and mind, my practice, my relationship to myself and perceived others, there is very little else I "care" about. I have greatly varying interests. I don't really have any material goals. This comes with the understanding that all that I see on the outside, all that my senses interact with, are all essentially impermanent – as experientially real as any passing dream. My body and my mind will one day disappear, there will be a day when I can no longer practice zazen as a result, all of my relationships to others will end one way or another.
To this end, sustaining all that I encounter with positive and creative energy for as long as possible is my supreme goal. Treating others as manifestations of God and all that this would entail. Seeing the Self as part of the great mystery, intimately. Letting go of outcomes except for those which I'm actively experiencing in order that I may savor them for all that they offer me: the Kāma of life.
What is important to me is my experience of Dharma, Artha, and Kāma. I do not have any idea of what an experience of Moksha would be like, so I do not concern myself with that.
As far as I understand it, my Dharma is to practice Zen Buddhism, Taoism, Roman Catholicism, Quakerism, Kashmiri Shaivism, and Southern Baptism with authenticity. I genuinely believe that a dedicated and constant integration of ideas and practices from these particular sources of collectivized knowledge will lead to peaceful outcomes, both for myself and the world that apparently surrounds me.
My Artha is to own many properties and invest in projects that promote the wellbeing of all. I'm a very good steward, and my careful but disciplined hand is going to ensure that whatever beauties this consciousness has produced for itself, it shall produce those of equal or even greater measure for those whom support this consciousness. As I believe all is One, I seek to prioritize projects that will, simply, benefit all. In keeping to my commitments expressed in my understanding of the Dharma, I do not seek to directly hurt others, even those widely considered to be evil actors in current affairs, in pursuing my Artha. I only seek to help others and to help myself.
Finally, the Kāma that emerges from all of this is perhaps what I consider my "crown jewel." Above all, what matters to me, what I really care about, is my own comfort. Am I feeling okay? If I can answer that with an emphatic, "yes!", then I'm following my Dharma and Artha, and I'm properly engaging my Presence, properly following Christ. Am I completely satisfied, both mentally and physically? If I can confidently and genuinely say yes, then I must be doing what I'm supposed to be. To that end, my sexual vitality, propensity to practice zazen – yes, Suzuki-roshi, because it feels good – the quality of my relationships with perceived others in my life (friends, family, coworkers, etc.), the quality of my physical experiences in the world, all of these are important to me. These are the "things" I really care about.
I may edit this in the future, but I think I've made some good insight on myself today. To summarize: what I really care about is following Christ properly and being present in my everyday life. That means the things that are really important to me are the careful management of my activities in Dharma, Artha, and Kāma. Practicing zazen, paying mortgage bills, and ensuring that my sexual partner is completely satisfied with my performance – these are the kinds of things that, respectively, fall under these categories. These are what I care about and what are really important to me.
In my solitude
My restless gratitude
I'm reckless within sight of you ...
And in my gratitude, I might ...
Make too much noise for you
