#smallishthoughts

[aspen-and-the-starscapes]

Thought Dump

Linebreak'd for length. No drama, I promise.

When I was young, I knew for a fact that I wanted to make videogames and comics.

As I grew, I realized I had an amazing knack for counseling, even though my habit for "playing therapist" with my schoolmates usually got me into more heartache than it was worth. I thought I should become a psychotherapist, and at least get paid for what I seemed unable to stop myself from doing anyway.

A few months ago, my mother finally got her Masters Degree, and is more impassioned and fired up than I have ever seen her. She has thrown off her inhibitions and run toward her dream, in spite of many obstacles. Her passion inspired me to think bigger about my own goals in life. I thought about how I might best use my skills to better the world around me. If I'm good with the mind and with calculations, then surely for every person I could help as a therapist, I could help a hundred as a neuroscientist? It seems to me that greater scientific progress and scientific literacy is vital to solving a very large number of the world's most dire needs.

...And today I am considering tossing all of that aside starting a company to develop and publish video games. 

I know deep in my heart that if I have talent, if I have power, if I have privilege, then it is my responsibility to use it to raise up and enfranchise those who have access to less. No matter what I do, I want to die knowing that my actions helped increase the odds of the survival of our species, and/or made the those lives more enjoyable to live. I am not satisfied with merely my own satisfaction. I am not here to have a good time. I'm here to help.

I do not know where to place my hand. 

I hope that I can find some wisdom that will lead me to that thing that I can do. I am not satisfied with some small life that only serves to perpetuate itself, and perhaps the agenda of some retail company. I am not here to be a cog in a machine. I will have my hand at saving the world.

I suppose we'll see.

[aspen-and-the-starscapes]

Got my first Porn blog follower. ....yay?

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That moment when you're a pre/non-op transfella and you want to check out the kink community in your town, but you know no one who will go with you, so you don't know if you'd be safe in mixed or all-male spaces, but you also know you don't belong in women's spaces so you're just going to have to stay home or deal with being unsafe. ...But I guess that's life?

[aspen-and-the-starscapes]

There must be Order

Dear Reader,

Okay, so I struggle with Anxiety. It comes out as OCD, just like my dad and his dad. I'm learning that I /absolutely/ must have a planed daily itinerary. It must be as consistent as possible from day to day and week to week, and month to month. Deviations are okay, but they come at a cost that I have to recover from somewhere else. 

I've been experimenting with this for 5 days, including today. The hardest part, I have found, is making sure I go to bed at the same time every night. I struggle with this not because I struggle to fall asleep or have other things I want to do, but because I have a lot of friends who are night owls and who are used to seeing me around at night, and they want to call at 10:50 when bed time is 11, etc. 

I worry that this means I have to leave my friends behind in my pursuit of health. It makes me sad to think about.

But I don't have a choice. I /must/ change my habits or I will not survive. This is not a 'should' or a 'want'. This is my life now. I am dedicated to my own survival above my friends' happyness, no matter how much I love them.

I think I'll be okay, though. With luck, the best of my friends will pursue me into the daylight hours, and perhaps I might even inspire them to add structure to their own lives. That would be cool.

So that's my life lately. One new healthy habit at a time, and one by one the demons in my mind fall down, and I'm not as scared anymore.

With hope,

Aspen

[aspen-and-the-starscapes]

Self-Shaping part 1: Manifesto

So I'm reading a lot of blogs lately about life, and blogging, and minimalism, and just listening to as many wise people as I can find, and I'm starting to think about this concept of creating the character that is "Aspen." (Pardon the third-person self-reference.)

I'm thinking about the person I want to be in the future. Of course, I understand that there will never be a time when who I am is a completed project. I'll always be growing and changing and accommodating those changes with more growth and change. In the past I have allowed that thought to stop me. "But what if I don't like what I've made out of myself later. I better wait until I'm older and know more."

I think I've done enough waiting. As of now (6/8/2014) I am going to be more mindful in shaping my own character. 

[aspen-and-the-starscapes]

I do not Speak

I have always been the listener-- not just in that I more often find myself listening to others than speaking, but also that I identify with the role as a part of who I am. My mother was a very chatty person, and often could hold both sides of our conversations for hours while I just nodded. 

My story, if I were ever to tell it, would be mostly an internal one. The landscape of my mind is much richer than the landscape of my external actions and accomplishments. 

But then, it seems so much easier to think than to act, that again I am embarrassed into silence. My nagging desire to tell a story bows to my desire to avoid the shame of telling a story not worth telling.

I write this confession in the hopes that defining it and dispelling it will be one and the same.