#dear jen

[heyjenny]

01-Aug-2021

Dear Jen, I read a story in which the main character wrote letters addressed to his future wife. I thought about it and I want it to be addressed to my 30 year-old self. That's 3 years from now seeing that I am 27 this year. It would also my way of manifesting, practicing mindfulness and gratefulness, and being a better person in a whole.

So I manifested goals I want to achieve this 2021. I know I can do it and I just have to believe in myself and work hard. I wanted change in career, being more financially adept, and better psychologically.

I'm going to read now on law of attraction and gratitude and maybe other helpful stuff, too. I'm also to review my CV, finalize the list of companies I am going to submit it to tomorrow, and read a little on interview questions.

I know I'll accomplish them today. So let's start.

Just to add, tomorrow I must fix my finances: Crypto and stock accounts, and continue to learn while working.

[yourfavoriteknightmare]

The things is, I don’t feel it. Not the way I used to.

But. I want to walk into your office and cry. I want to cry until there’s nothing left in me. Instead of this curtain covering my grief. Like somehow hiding it makes it disappear. I’m tired of feeling trapped. Tired of having to state change into believing in change then sobering up to feel nothing. Or. To feel anxious about the curtain falling. But. The problem is I’m comfortable with hiding and still scared of disappointing you.

What would happen, you’d ask.

I’d shrink into the size of a pill small enough for you swallow. Something that makes my presence worth the money my insurance pays you. Something that makes you think twice about canceling on me.

Maybe one day I’ll feel worthy of your conciliatory praise.

Plus. The reason I can’t cry in your office is because you’d have to cancel on the poor soul(s) who expect to see you at 5. I don’t think I would have to willpower to shrink or hide anymore. And you would have to call someone. And I wouldn’t see my dog that night. And I’m scared of what grew behind the curtain over the past few years. So I want to cry, right now.

But I won’t because you’re not here to help me figure out what to do with it. And honestly the last thing I need is to waste my tissues on preventable symptoms. So. I guess I’ll wait for now. Because at least I don’t feel it the way I used to anymore.

[yourfavoriteknightmare]

I don’t know what to talk about.

It’s a loathsome answer to a question I feel you ask at least 5 times a day—often to people who have a lot more to say.

So, here it goes...

Dear Jen, I suck at mindfulness.

My professor in my Sexuality in Society class referred to all queer people as “gay” and he hasn’t updated his lecture since Obergefell was decided. My queer soul is in pain.

Sometimes I feel equally behind in the times, but at least I don’t look like an idiot.

Still. Who am I criticize or judge what people do with their lives while I still feel so insecure about mine?

Everything is too peaceful right now. The other shoe is ready to drop. Except it won’t because my life has become comfortable and cookie cutter.

I live in a fancy high rise in a gentrifiying neighborhood with my wife and a fur babe. We have 3 pools. I work for a professional sports team making solid money for a flexible part time job with people I like and who give me the time to focus on my studies.

I’m a straight A student in a joint masters program. I kick ass in school because I’m smart, well-prepared, and influenced by my incredibly bright and future lawyer wife. Like.

Jen, why am I here? That’s the real question I want to ask sometimes. Why does it feel like everything is more than fine one minute, but also like the next is about fall out from under me? Why am I still depressed and anxious and hard on myself? Why am I unhappy?

Why is it, when you look at me, you knock over my sandcastle life into an hourglass that always slips away too soon?

Why am I stuck in this cycle of unconvincing logic and grief? Judgement and ignorance? Anxiety and exhaustion? Why am I crying?!

There. I’ve summarized our session so we can skip ahead to more interesting topics later.

You’re right, I’m still not sleeping well.

Guess I’ll have to work on that harder next week.

[takkynoko]

Songs

So relaxing, and a bit sad. It's pretty easy to feel like a failure sometimes. This song's from the podcast Mystery Show, which needs more episodes:

"Go Far" by Emmy the Great https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e99n4plz0E4

Another sad one, this is the theme to Wolfenstein The New Order, surprisingly enough. Was this the tone of the song that you thought you'd be hearing after blasting away a million Nazis?:

I believe by Melissa Hollick https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltFpxLTozS0

[takkynoko]

Movie review: The Game

So our new library intern recommended this to me. And it was a solid recommend. Well worth checking out.

Basic synopsis is this businessman type played by Michael Douglas lives his rigid businessman life. It's his birthday so his goofy younger brother forces him to call a number and sign up for something called The Game. He eventually goes through with it, and they do some psych tests and whatever and let him go. So he forgets about it and goes on with his businessman stuff, but then he finds a figure of a clown on the ground, where his dad committed suicide by jumping off the roof. In the clown's mouth is a key, and he's given a message that there'll be more keys, but he won't be told when to use it, and that just gets the ball rolling.

I came away from the movie with two thoughts.

First, as a viewer, you always know that the reality of the movie is fiction. And you're told from the beginning that this guy is signing up for a game... but you're never quite sure. And in that uncertainty, the movie does a brilliant job at making the viewer as disoriented as the protagonist. Sure, you as the viewer will never think you're in The Game, but having your surrogate in the movie never quite sure what is reality and what's The Game does a great job at conveying the discombobulation that the character is feeling.

Second, it spoils nothing to say there's an amazing level of manipulation that goes on in the movie. And as unrealistic as it is, it does an awesome job at displaying that our human limitation is whatever our brains are. We can never be more than the sum of our current programming. We can learn, we can create new thought processes, but if someone were to learn my every thought process, my every reaction to a situation, then they could manipulate me however they want. Essentially, your brain is your fate. You can't control anything external. In life, all you have control of is the decisions that you make (hence why some cheeky philosophers argue that every death is a suicide, since every decision you made leads to your death) and the decision you make are all limited by your brain.

[takkynoko]

Is there an objective truth?

Pretentious right? AKA, is there one truth or are there many truths? We were talking about Sherlock Holmes at work, so I asked my co-worker that question. She thought about it, and ultimately settled upon multiple truths. I asked another co-worker, and she said it’d depend on context, and seemed to lean on multiple truths too.

Isn’t it Detective Conan who said, “There is only one truth!” as his famous catchphrase? I think that there is one objective truth. Yeah, something in your head may make the color blue look different for you than it does for me, but that blue in the world is that blue in the world. Our perception of reality may change, but that perception doesn’t flow backwards and change reality.

At least, that’s what I believe. Maybe the nature of reality is more chaotic and random than I give it credit for. Maybe some of us really are from a reality where Berenstein was spelled Berenstain. But what good does believing that do and how would anyone prove that?

No, I have to believe that the reality outside of me, that connects me to other people, is a single reality. It’s that consistency that gives people a common ground to share ourselves.

I generously reacted to my coworkers by saying, “There are as many worlds as there are people.” But all those worlds live in a single space. One reality, one truth. Even if that truth is impossible for our mortal minds to comprehend, I have to believe it’s there.

I wish I knew what your reaction to this question would be.

[takkynoko]

Stuff I saw on Youtube this week

Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared 1-6 Playlist

Robot Chicken: Misery / Peanuts

Sleeping Sun MV - Nightwish

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PmPlSC-3o8 (Live)

Every 90s Commercial

Spider Dance Animation

Weight Loss Program - Cyanide and Happiness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wb7U3beXPI

Walküre Attack! sung by Hina https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pG_FQIG35eM

Game Theory guy's reason for giving the Pope Undertale (and what it says about gamers) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8St9oOnkGU

[takkynoko]

Movie review: Anomalisa

A puppet drama that tells a story about the mundanity, isolation, and loneliness of life. It's does some neat things at the end that make really good use of the medium, but the poor pacing and the disrespectful of the viewer's time over the 90 minutes makes this hard to recommend. 

So I'm just going to spoil it. The movie starts with the same group of male voices talking, laughing, and ends the same way. Michael Stone is off to Cincinnati to give a speech about his book. Everyone sounds the same to him, his wife, his son, his old girlfriend, everyone in the world is voiced by the same male dude. They all have the same boring male face. But in the middle of the movie, he hears Lisa. A female voice!

He searches frantically and finds her. He eventually gets her to his room, where it's revealed that her face is different too. He admires even the dis-figuration on her face, because it's different from the same boring face everyone else has. They have awkward conversations, sing, then sleep together. He names her Anomalisa because she's an anomaly and her name is Lisa.

In the middle of the night, Michael has a nightmare that everyone in the world is the same person. Same voice, same face, they're all in love with him and hate Lisa for being different. He stays at the Fregolli Hotel named after the Fregoli Delusion which is the delusion that different people are the same person in disguise. 

He wakes up, tells Lisa he's in love with her, he wants to leave his wife and kid and yadda yadda. In this sense, the movie does an amazing job at capturing the spark that happens when you meet someone intriguing for the first time. But then during breakfast, he becomes irritated with her because she'd talk with food in her mouth. Then as she talks about the same boring conversations that other people talk about, her voice started to change into the same male voice.

  It skips ahead to the speech he gives. He's going through a breakdown and talks about how alone he is and how he has no one to talk to. The camera pans to the audience and Lisa now has the male face that everyone else has (I didn't notice this, I had to read about it later). So he goes home to his family, and his wife and ungrateful son are throwing him a surprise party. But he doesn't recognize anyone, and he asks who they are, and who she is. And his wife gets angry and counters "who are you?! who is anyone?!" 

In the epilogue, we see Lisa driving home with her friend. Lisa's face is back to normal and she's writing a letter to Michael in her normal voice. At the end, the camera focuses on Lisa's friend, who also has a unique face that wasn't previously seen. So whatever is going on with Michael is all in his mind. 

Again, the movie does an amazing job of making use of the medium to convey something from the human condition. I initially countered the male voices as being just a cost saving measure. (I didn't notice the same facedness of everyone). But they waste too much time establishing how mundane life is, something we're all too familiar with. The 90 minute movie probably could have been a tight 30.