A Writer’s Return
Today I make a commitment, a vow to take a more serious approach to my writing in 2012. Over the past two months I have been practicing my art, and it has been an engaging experience to say the least. I produced over fifty unique pieces of art, perhaps more concrete artwork than I had ever produced in my life prior. This is something I can be proud of, and I hope to continue to pursue my art as the year progresses. (For the record, you can find all of my artwork on my DeviantArt, Tumblr, or Facebook art page.) However, even as I have been keeping myself busy with art, I have also been (perhaps purposely) distracting myself from writing.
In the months immediately prior to my commitment to art I had written eight chapters, or approximately 20,000 words in a single fictional story. More consistent written work than I had accomplished in a while before then. I was on a roll with my writing, but somewhere along the way I hit a creative roadblock and lost my inspiration to finish the story. So I turned to art and it proved to be a positive alternative for time consumption. But the day when I have to choose between the two is over, I have recently opened up my daily schedule, by reducing my artistic commitment from daily uploads to weekly ones, in order to give me back more of the freedom to choose how to spend my time.
Now that I find myself with little to do in my waking hours, I have decided that it’s time to take a much more serious approach to my writing. Even in the past I have approached the craft in a carefree way, without making any kind of serious commitment to daily writing. Seeing the positive effect that such a commitment has had on my art, I am now determined to allow it to work wonders for my writing.
First and foremost I will be setting some goals for myself, that I will do what I can to live by in the coming months. Every day I will set a written requirement of a number of words, meeting this requirement will amount to a writing “session”. During and before each session I will disable my internet access to serve as a motivator to finish, and re-enable it when the word count is met. There may be multiple sessions per day, and each one will happen in the same way. Also, I’m setting a tentative word count requirement for now, because it’s likely to increase in the future.
No matter how many writing sessions I face in a day, one thing is certain, I will be writing something new every day. Now what this writing will amount to is sort of up in the air at the moment, whether it be freewriting, poetry, or prose, but ultimately the goal is set at fiction. If I am successful in this endeavor than a new goal will open up to complete at least one short story a month or a few chapters of a larger work, by meeting focused weekly fiction goals.
It’s unlikely that I will see immediate results from these goals, at least in terms of the number of stories being produced or finished. But it is likely that having no choice but to write, will force me to be creative again, and eventually result in some rather original fiction. One of the problems I have faced with fiction, having started mounds of different stories, is the feeling that I’ve addressed every theme, articulated every character, or described every setting. It’s a problem that can be found in art and music as well. The feeling that you’ve exhausted all your originality and you’re only be recycling old ideas.
In truth I know this is a fallacy, no matter what the medium. Because the possibilities for creative and original works are truly infinite in probably all forms of art. If it weren’t the case, there would be no music or film industries today. Creation is just limitless, and that’s unlikely to ever change. The trouble of the matter is finding a way to be original within the atmosphere of what’s come before. I believe now that this comes not only with practice, but in some ways with quantity.
It’s true that I’m used to taking hundreds if not thousands of pictures in a single excursion, simply because I know that the more I take the better my chances of capturing something truly transcendent. The same I believe is true in all forms of art, at least in some measure. While one should always strive for quality over quantity, it’s sometimes true that the latter allows the former. I make this point, because it’s an encouraging one. It states that no matter how much rubbish you’ve produced in the past, or how many creative opportunities you’ve missed, there’s always room for the possibility that your best work is yet to come.
On that note I think I’ll bring this monologue to a close. I’m looking forward to pushing myself with writing as I have with art, and if the passion in my gut is any indication, this will be a very good thing for me as a writer. I hope to share with the world what I produce, and with any luck that will be a lot. Thanks to everyone for supporting and believing in me these past years, you enable my confidence.
Sincerely hopeful,
Eric Jordan Mattos
I Have Become The Nothing I So Fought Against
I have traded my life away. All for the essentials. A roof over my head. A bed to sleep in at night. I’ve sold myself off to the highest bidder, and there’s nothing left of me. I have become the nothing I so fought against. My world has shifted shape and form. To accommodate. To facilitate. To cooperate. And now I’m bored. Their blades have run me in. Weapons of mass disintegration. I have been chained to a pole and left to melt in the acid rain of my hollow non-existence. And now I’m liquid. Slurping and slopping my way through the gutters of a world they call normal. So what’s next for me? Would you ask that of the ocean tide? Or the pouring rain? I am nothing more than routine. A man broken and disembodied in parts, none of them fulfilling their true function. Now I’m scattered across entryways and vacant city streets. I can no longer breathe, as I sink deeper into a vacuous ocean of indetermination. My knowledge is a ghost of what it once was. A dissipating specter in a vast sea of emptiness. And what can be done? There’s nothing left to do but sit by and wait for what’s on the next horizon, if it be anything at all. Though in truth I’ll find no salvation, for it has already found me. In the darkest hours of my so-called life purpose speaks to me. It tells tales and whispers remedies. It talks of channeling the darkness, misery and pain into words, and letting them exonerate and liberate me. This may mean nothing to anyone else, but to me these words are a vaccine to a destabilizing condition. They are an elixir to the nothingness that so plagues my life, and after I’ve taken a hit, I can only live for more. The endless hollow forever beckons me, and I have only to state my case against it. Words have always been and will forever be my only cure.
Where I Am Today
It’s been more than a year and a half since I posted on this blog, and I finally felt that was something I needed to change. It’s one thing to go through life without any kind of a record of what’s been happening to you, it’s quite another to go through life without direction; and in some small way I do believe blogging brings clarity and direction to my life.
So where to begin? Well to start a lot has happened in the last twenty-months. For one thing I found out I’m Bi-Polar, a fact that changes my whole outlook on life and what the future has in store for me. I know I should believe that it changes nothing; I just can’t help but feel that it does. Everything seems different than it did before and in my experience so far there is no going back to the way things were.
Ever since my treatment for Bi-Polar started, my world began to lose its luster. I was happier, motivated, and productive before, now I’m emotionless, lethargic, and uninspired. The fairy-tale is over so-to-speak and I’m still learning to live at a somewhat subdued capacity. You see what happened was I entered a highly manic state for several months back in 2010 and it got out of hand, to the point that I couldn’t sleep for weeks at a time, and had trouble staying in touch with reality. After causing enough mischief for my family I was finally admitted and given medication both to help me sleep and eliminate the manic symptoms. The trouble with this is best said in a friend of mine’s lyric: “Just take a couple pills and the crazy goes away, but I would disappear along with the crazy.” That’s what happened to me. My whole life seemed stripped away by the medication I was taking.
Things are a little different now. I’m still on medication, but not nearly as much, and I’m slowly transitioning to lithium, which should be better for me overall than depakote. As it is, I’m able to write and be mentally and physically active without too much strain; it’s just difficult to find the inspiration I once had. It comes to me from time to time, like it has with this post, but it’s a somewhat rare occasion when it does; and so I spend much of my time now without the ambitions I once held.
I’ve been an adult for some time now, but I certainly haven’t been living like one. I’ve fallen back on my old ways and given into convenience. I don’t work anymore, and I get by on social security. I’d like to find a job in the future but I’d have to find a way to transition my benefits, because I can’t afford to pay for my own doctor and medication. I’ve been in a bit of a rut for some time now, and I’m hoping that will change soon, because in less than two months I will be moving in with my older brother and living on my own for the first time in my life.
Moving out will definitely be a major milestone for me, and hopefully it will mean that things start to change for the better. I’m hoping to find a place in Seattle, a city I have been missing ever since I moved out of my mom’s back in 2004 and in with my dad in Bothell. Now I’m living clear up in Lake Stevens and it’s an aggravating drive just to visit friends and family on a regular basis. Moving to Seattle could very well mean a more active and social lifestyle for me.
I can’t say that things are going great for me yet, but they’re getting better. I still try to write, and I’m starting to experiment more with my own music, but I know I’ve got a long way left to go. Overall I’m a pretty mellowed-out person these days without any grandiose dreams for my future. I just live the day to day now, and attempt to make sense of my own insignificance. Don’t get me wrong, you will see something from me in the future whether it be a collection of short-stories, poems, or an album, just don’t hold your breath waiting for it.
I think 2011 has been a somewhat mediocre year for most people, at least in terms of the economy, and we’ve seen another congress that can’t seem to get anything done; but seeing as there’s an election coming up next year, there may be reason for people to hope once again. I know I’ll be looking toward the future and wishing for the best. Hopefully I’ll be back here again soon enough with something more to say, but for now I’ll leave you with this…
Much of my life has been an uphill climb only to be sent tumbling back down at the onset of my Bi-Polar. But I mustn’t give up. I need to keep marching, keep climbing until I reach a new peak where I can finally take a stand and make my mark on this world. I know I’ll have the support of friends and family along the way, and for that I am grateful. Thank you all for your kind support over the past years, I don’t know where I’d be without it.
Now I’ve got to prepare for the next chapter of my life, and do my best to live up to my true potential. Best wishes to all in this and the coming year.
Signing off,
Eric Jordan Mattos
Another Step Through The Doorway of Personal Progress
In this the eleventh hour of the year, my brain floats to the concept of new beginnings, as I attempt to pace and poise myself for the life ahead. Due in part to our fast-paced technological progression, we can be certain that every new year will be different from the last. That who we are today isn’t all we could be tomorrow.
I reflect on this notion now within my own life and path. It was long ago that I learned that education is something that has the capacity to completely alter and forever change the make-up of my being and consciousness. It’s an invaluable tool in my own personal evolution, and I am always excited when it sits on the calendar ahead.
In less than a week’s time I will be attending classes on a daily basis, which is a feat I have not engaged in for many years, and what this means for my personal growth as a writer and a learner is certainly an exhilarating prospect. In the days and weeks ahead I will be a student again, and I will use that return to academic obligation to deeply explore my own conditioning and understanding of the written word – especially as it pertains to writing fiction.
I have been writing for a solid decade now, and most of that has been with very little formal education on the subject. For the most part I’ve just let my voice out in journals and works of creative non-fiction, and I’ve gotten good enough at it that I can intelligently convey a point of view or hypothesis when I need to, even if the text sometimes takes on a little weight. I have developed my own practical and effective understanding of the writing process, and have written literally hundreds of pages of material in my lifetime.
The thing I have yet to fully tackle, however, is writing a complete book. The material I have composed varies from a wide range of genres and subject-matter, from theoretical and expository non-fiction, to random bats of poetry and freewriting, to varied fictional scenes and settings. Over time I have come to identify several key stories I feel I am destined to turn into novels, and I have been developing and expanding my understanding of these future books over the years, with several scenes and chapters already defined in narrative, or summary – this with almost no practical learning on the composition of creative fiction.
Now comes the opportunity to expand my understanding through the Fiction Writing course I will be taking this quarter. With deliberate academic practice and exercise in the area of fiction, I now have the chance to gain the necessary conditioning I will require to complete each one of my novels – or at least get me started in that direction – whether books be the final resting place of these stories or not.
That said, I am aware that writing is something that can really only be learned by doing, and to that end I have been working with my stories off and on during the span of this last year. My focus now goes to empowering my craft in the new year, and devoting myself much more consistently and effectively to the end result, which is a book, or several books for my stories.
In all reality this is a feat I am already capable of, but having an academic avenue to apply myself will simply motivate me to truly invest my writing in more fruitful and disciplined efforts. A mandate which will in time leave me with something complete to share with the world. My focus for this coming year is exactly that, to pour myself into real results.
My New Year’s Resolution: More Walk, Less Talk.
I wish us all the best of new beginnings and rededications to purpose in the new year. In the tone of prophecy I can state with certainty that whatever this universe throws at us in the years to come, we will face it head on and continue our march toward progress, and I will meet you all somewhere along the way.
Good Luck. Good Love. Good Life.
I’ll see you in the Infinite.
EJM
Tadpoles Dying In An Etch-A-Sketch
It plagues me to exist. This daily death for some daily semblance of life. I am the gut feeling that everything is destined to be worthless. The shadow that is my only ally, broken and bent by every beam of daylight. Somehow I reject the poise and capacity necessary to be any kind of a vessel. I slowly exhaust and suffocate each immortal ghost, every pilot consciousness breathed into me by the all-encompassing whole drains and withers away, while I amount to nothing real.
Is hope this hopeless? Is meaning this meritless? What of the exuberant cries of my youth? The blistering, burgeoning, aches of the tormented soul, sung awake in every heartbeat. When did I become immaterial? When did my existence fade to black? What is left of anything within me, when all emotion is gleefully spent? Have I reduced my subtle scaling of infinite valleys to a joyous downward tumble? Oh what joy! What joy! This perpetual demise! When will I arise and wake to a purpose restored? I shun the whole and suffer. I disrupt the flow of ghost and soul only to watch my world wither into nightmare.
At the point where I no longer stand for something, I’m too far gone to amount to anything. I am the broken boy of broken boys. Accept my decay as a symbol, all that is left in this world is destruction, all that exists is decomposing, and what has anyone to show for it? Your fabled pursuits of perfection? Inflated emotions and arbitrary connections? I see how every living thing struggles to pretend that their little world has any meaning at all, a greater purpose.
We are the pristinely dying, the tragically removed. An entire species wilting away in our little pond at the onset of an infinite universe. What does it matter what we hold dear? What we accomplish? We’re all just tadpoles trapped in an evolutionary hiatus. Can nothing be our liberation? Can nothing save us from returning to the dirt that bore us unchanged? The only God we know is within, and we’re all determined to abandon ourselves.
And yet…
A still small sentiment stirs within, breathes a hopeful hum into the chaos. It silently suggests that herein lies the essence of everything. That if we can simply acknowledge and endorse the notion that in the larger spectrum of the whole we are nothing, that every bit of ritual, rule, and meaning that occupies our insignificant little sphere is all but a dot in infinity, a portion so infinitesimally ineffectual that the battle to save it is essentially a moot point. If we can simply get over the affection we have for our current tadpole state, and move onward to something bigger and better, then we can finally go from being this soulless speck of insignificance to having an actual purpose in this universe.
Anything that strives for meaning, but rejects or subtracts from our higher calling toward progress is inevitably destined to be worthless. If it doesn’t fuel our transmogrification, it contributes to our demise, because staying the same is every bit as destructive, for everything we are now can be washed away without a moment’s notice. Earth is an etch-a-sketch teetering on the edge of the universe, and unless we become something more than this planet, some random anomaly will come along and shake our existence away.
Email Conversations: Fateweaving and the Nature of the Universe
Dear [anonymous],
I recently sent in an application and resumé for a position at Boeing. It’s entry level, and I would be able to pursue an education in electrical engineering to further my opportunities with the company. I’m going to think positive and hope for the best. Nevertheless, I will continue applying for new jobs as they are posted.
I definitely know what you’re talking about with positive thinking. There are several theories on the subject, but I’ve found the most comprehensible one to be what’s called ‘The Law of Attraction’. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of a book/film called ‘The Secret’, if not you should definitely give it a read/watch when you get the chance. Here’s a link to the Kindle version and another book on ‘The Law of Attraction‘. I haven’t read them, but I have read and learned a lot about the Law of Attraction itself, and I know those are both good primers on the subject. It’s basically what we were talking about earlier. Not only is it Positive Thinking, but focusing on the things you want in your life.
In space, every body of mass has an invisible aura/magnetism which pulls things toward it, or pushes them away, it’s why planets rotate around the sun, and objects fly toward the earth. On earth we observe its effects in gravity, but there is also a lot more to it than that, that I’m sure is covered in one or both of those books. Based on what I’ve learned I’ve concluded that people also have auras, and that the way we can control and influence these auras is with feelings and sentiments. If you are seeing yourself every day as happy, joyous, and content, with specific elements and opportunities in your life, and you are unrelenting in your commitment to imagining and attracting them to you, then the universe around you is able to respond to that magnetism and find ways of bringing those things, people, and experiences into your life. It may sound ridiculous at first, but I justify this belief by saying this. What is God? Many people believe that God is a single entity or being with divine sovereignty over the universe, I however believe that God is the Universe.
Everything that exists, in my belief, is within the whole, which is both God and the Universe. And since God is the Universe, the physical universe is merely an aspect of God, and therefore, the universe itself is a sentient or supernatural entity. This may seem hard to comprehend, or difficult to accept, but it is a staple of a theosophical theory of everything that I have been developing for many years — no doubt inspired by the elusive plot-device used in F. Paul Wilson’s ‘Conspiracies’, which was one of the first books I ever read in-full — I just put the idea of a “Grand Unification Theory” on a much bigger scale. I could go on for ages about this subject, but I won’t, because email is not the best place for an epic monologue, and I would be at it for days. I have every intention of writing a full non-fiction book on the subject later on in life, when I’ve had enough time to settle in on my ideas, and live outside of the ties of Money (aka. Debt). But for now I just thought I’d mention where I am on the subject.
But back to the law of attraction. In a way, I think I have been trying my hand at it for most of my life, mostly because I only focus on where I see myself being and whether or not I’m on the path toward getting there. I don’t let myself become distracted with alcohol, drugs, or the lives of other people, I instead focus on how I need to live my life today, to achieve the life I truly want. I know other people can find it upsetting or rude when I cut myself off from them, but it is in no way a malicious or negative action, and it’s only when people are a negative influence on me, or the current direction of my life makes it inconvenient and/or impossible for me to stay in touch with them, that I truly cut them out of my life, and for the latter, I do apologize. For the former, not so much. I cannot have people in my life who are drawing me away from the things I need to be pursuing and focusing on, and therefore I usually make the decision to ‘go it alone’.
It’s an unfortunate side-effect of a process, which I have come to call ‘Fateweaving’, in which, timing and placement are instrumental, and every move you make contributes to controlling your fate, allowing you to determine when things will occur in order to chain experiences into deliberate goals and ambitions. I intend to write another book detailing in full the science behind this process, when I’ve progressed far enough in life to do so with complete expertise, and I have already begun to write it, as its actualities are made apparent to me. In the meantime, I know that I am working toward something in life, and I’m unrelenting in my certainty that I will get there.
So definitely, positive thinking, and the law of attraction are essential to living a life of purpose and destiny.
To quote my own writing,
“We make our destinies with every breath we breathe.”
and
“The destiny you truly desire is yours to create.”
Looking back on the last few years of my life it’s mind-boggling to realize just how much my two previous lines of work (Theater Installation and Manufacturing) have helped to qualify me for the job I just applied to at Boeing. From a third-party perspective, one might almost say I had planned it all along. But the truth is I wasn’t even all that aware of it, yes I knew I loved messing with Electronics before I went to work with David, and yes I was aware that a job in manufacturing would better prepare me for a job at Boeing, if I was ever to apply, but I had no idea that the two could go hand in hand like that. I guess when I (fingers-crossed) get the job, it will really be a confirmation that every decision up to this point has been the right one.
Of course this job situation is just one example of the many so-called ‘perfect coincidences’ that have shown up in the process of directing my life. While most people would chalk it up to chance, I believe that would be a failure to recognize that almost everything that has occurred in my adult life has been under my control. I’m the one who chose to go to work when I did and where I did, when and where to go to school, when to leave one job for another, what I did with my spare time, what classes I took in school, what I watched on television, what movies I saw, etc, always controlling the influences that weighed against me and affected the course of my decisions and actions. I wrote a blog post on that subject a while back that you might find interesting as well. You can find the post here, and another good book that deals with the basics of this subject through the exploration of Focus and Attention is ‘Rapt‘.
In an automated sense, I feel I have been controlling the direction of my life for years through an intrinsic influentualism, and a determinate focus on the things that matter the most to me, sure it’s taken time for certain events to play out — and opportunities to be fleshed out — but it’s all part of a process I believe in. Which reminds me of another book that’s on my reading list, called ‘Direct Your Own Life‘ — which is written by an actor who got his break as a supporting role in Napoleon Dynamite. I expect it’s very much related to this subject, and that of my future book, if perhaps from a more simplistic, if not more relatable perspective.
Anyway that’s enough babbling. Take your time to read what you are able to, when you’re able to, and don’t worry about the presumed urgency of responding to my emails. Anything you want to reply to will still be relevant when you get around to it. Otherwise, you can always make a short reply now, and a much more elaborate one later. I will get around to reading and/or replying to both when I find the time.
Talk to you later,
E.
Post-script. Given that elaborate written replies are the way I prefer to communicate with people and am able to do so most effectively — guess I’m just wired that way — it would benefit anyone who reads them to do so in the comfort of their free-time, however sparingly and infrequently that happens to come along, and however many hours/years it takes them to finish (see Next Paragraph). I have no problem waiting long spans of time to hear from people, and I never feel like that time in-between was anything lost — because I’m just not a co-dependent person, and I’m inherently, overly, patient.
Now that I think about how natural it is for me to write for a seemingly indefinite period of time, without any loss of focus, or controlled and deliberate concentration on my own voice, I realize how idiotic it is that I am not properly schooled in the writing of Fiction — and non-Fiction for that matter. I can talk through the process of writing endlessly, but it’s another thing to tell a story that you’re making up as you go along, therefore I am determined now that upon establishing a future income, I will firstly commit to finding some form of advanced study in Creative Writing, so that I may begin to inch myself toward writing the many books, novels, and screenplays that lie within me waiting to be unleashed upon the world.
As a teacher of mine once said, {paraphrased}:
“You don’t become a better writer, by simply continuing to write.”
I am no doubt intent on becoming a better writer, no matter how well-versed in the process I already am, and further education will only assist me in my resolution to one day meet it as my true calling, in absolutely every sense. Which is one more thing to note in all of this talk of controlling and directing your life: you can’t do everything you hope to accomplish without a proper and unending education. But that’s the subject of another email.
The Plight of the Everyman
I was born in 1985.
From the moment I breathed my first breath I was an American citizen, and from that moment on every subsequent breath I took cost someone money.
Throughout my life I have been bombarded with allegories and examples of what it means to be an American. I’ve always been told that America stands for something, that it’s the land of the free, and that there is no greater nation on earth. I’ve learned its history, and been taught the importance of democracy.
I’ve read about and witnessed the failures and shortcomings of other socioeconomic systems, and watched how people cite this as evidence that capitalism is the only system that works. I’ve seen how people have been persecuted and exiled for supporting or even suggesting an alternative.
While I am not convinced that capitalism is the all-purpose center of human civilization that people make it out to be, I have seen how capitalistic principles have pulled entire nations out of poverty and into a global marketplace. But no matter how many times I’m reassured that everything that’s wrong with the world will eventually work itself out in a free market economy, I am inevitably aware of one simple fact.
Equality simply does not exist in this world.
I am not a poor man, or a rich one. I did not come from an overly impoverished background, or a wealthy heritage. I come from a typical working-class lineage, like most Americans. While I haven’t exactly always had money in my pocket, I’ve never had to endure a day in my life without some form of food on the table, which is more than a lot of people in the rest of the world can say. I’ve always had a roof over my head, clothes to wear, and every essential amenity. My life has not been one of financial difficulty for me personally; and in spite of the money problems my family has had to face in my lifetime, I have remained relatively unaffected.
Nevertheless, I have always been aware of the difference between having money and not having it, and the majority of my life was spent on the latter side of the spectrum. While I was spoiled on Christmas and birthdays by the swarms of gifts competing for my affection, I knew what it was like to not be able to afford things. I was one of four children that my mother supported on a single income and child-support payments, and I’ve always understood that the cost of living in this country is very high.
As an adult now, I’ve watched the majority of every paycheck go to rent and other expenses, and the rest to whim, and after three years of work, I have no savings of any kind. Though in truth, I am mostly to blame for this. The reality is, I’ve been living beyond my means all along. I spend what I make, and sometimes more. Buying things not because I should, but because I can – and I imagine you’d find a similar story with most Americans.
If you include rent, I have spent 100% of every penny I’ve made in my working life. Why? You may ask. A lack of self-control? An overly materialistic nature? Both would be adequate conclusions, but I would also acknowledge the fact that we are a consumerist society, and that this is all but the norm.
It’s impossible to turn on the TV without being interrupted every ten minutes with commercials for things you could care less about, but will inevitably remember on a subconscious level, leading to an inclination to spend regardless of need. Most people would starve if they didn’t have a local supermarket or fast food chain to fill their refrigerators, and we have to spend out of pocket to eat. Our houses cost us money every hour we spend in them – whether we own them or not – and when we leave them, we have to pay for every mile we travel.
Everything we do in this country has been monetized for profit, to the point, that nothing in our lives is truly free. And we’re told that this is the way it’s supposed to be, that money is the grease that keeps the machine of our existence in operation; and what can we do, but go along with it? We work, we earn, we spend, we consume, we survive; and at the end of the day, we just hope there’s something left in the bank account for tomorrow. But what if life didn’t have to be this way? What if every aspect of our existence didn’t have to have a surcharge? What if people could truly live free?
How, you ask?
Simple. Eliminate money.
(Yes, it’s difficult, but it’s not impossible.)
Find ways of living autonomously. Grow your own food and seed. Develop an alternative energy source to power your house, and use it fuel an electric vehicle without tapping into the grid. Focus on making what you need instead of buying it, and recycling energy and resources to regenerate the things you need to survive.
People can survive without money, but only if they exist outside of the economic system.
The sad irony of this is that the only people today with the means to make the kinds of changes and advancements necessary to create a self-sufficient, money-free lifestyle are those with the money and resources to do so. Not everyone has the land to harvest for crops, or the technology to generate their own electricity, or even the budget to purchase an electric car. To work your way out from within the system, requires money, and this is the plight of the everyman.
We are trapped in a catch-22 of sorts, where living costs us money, and the only way for it to not cost money, is to have the money to eliminate the need to have money. And yet, having money usually eliminates one’s desire to be freed from money, and thus the sick-cycle is neverending. It’s a paradox in its own right, and it’s enough for most to conclude that it’s impossible to live without money.
But the reality is this. Money isn’t what keeps people alive and well, it’s what keeps the system alive and functioning, and us, as pawns in its global machination.
So long as the act of living costs us money, human beings will never truly be free. And that’s the harsh truth of our existence.
While we live in a society of opportunity and possibility, we also live within a materialistic system that will find a way to suck you in, and bleed you dry, draining your every asset until you’re depleted. Do we adhere to the fallacy of a corrupt system, or do we seek to free ourselves from the hold that money has over us?
Change will only come from within.
Each of us will have to choose whether to uphold the idyllic fantasy of money as an absolute cure, or to free ourselves from its tyranny.
Can you survive without money, or are you enslaved by an insatiable thirst for it? Are you so controlled by it that even when presented with an alternative, you would continue to perpetuate its control over everything in your life?
Human beings in this day and age are not slaves to a socioeconomic system that cannot be removed, we are enslaved by our own desire to remain a part of it. We want money, and we want to spend it, even if it will leave us with nothing in the end. And what can be done?
The system works, or so we tell ourselves, and regardless how much of our lives we have to surrender to it, we keep on coming back for more. We are conditioned to it, salivating at the sight of every dime, anticipating every purchase and expenditure, and we’re content to watch our lives slip away in service to the system, as we cash every paycheck and devour every spoil.
We let ourselves believe that money buys our freedom, ignoring the fact that it’s the very thing that keeps us enslaved. There is no substitute for freedom. Living a life free from the need for money, that is true freedom. But so few of us grasp the necessity of this, and so we are enslaved by our own submission.
It has been said that money is the root of all evil, and we have listened to this truism our whole lives through, nodding our heads in agreement, shaking them in denial, as we down our smoothies and frappuccinos, never realizing that with every dollar we spend, every penny we earn, we become deeper entrenched in its hold. It becomes a part of who we are, we become inseparable. Our blessing and our curse.
We are only as free as our money can buy, and this is the folly of our existence.
Will we ever wake up and free ourselves, or will we always inevitably accept enslavement and forgo resistance? It’s an unwinnable war, or so we believe, and so we cease to fight. We surrender and let money govern our lives, and believe that freedom is within reach if only we had the money to pay for it. This is our struggle, and to an extent, this is the way it has always been.
I like to imagine a day when people can truly be free. When having, spending, and gaining money is not the focus of our lives, but living them is. A world where your whole purpose for living isn’t engineered from the ground up to turn someone a profit. I dream of a future where humans are truly free, and I know the road to getting there is thick with fog, but I pray that in time we will find our way. I’ll try to be a beacon to light the path, but I know it won’t be easy.
To change the way we live our lives, we have to change the way we view life itself.
Is having an income, accumulating possessions, and spending money the focus of your existence? Or is making a difference in the world, and doing something of real consequence with your life, your purpose for living? If we can free ourselves, we can finally pursue the things that give our lives true meaning.
Money is the illusion of a solution to our problems, it’s not the answer. We are the answer. People living lives of real worth and significance, that’s the center of human existence. It’s up to us to free ourselves, no force in the universe is going to do it for us, and as long as money is a part of our lives, we will remain enslaved by it.
Free yourself, or be enslaved. The choice is yours.
The Significance of Influence and Repetition in Controlling Human Behavior
Everything that exists is a product of all the things that came before it. While we all go about our lives with the certainty that we are experiencing things all on our own, the truth is, there is little about our modern lives that is not inherited from a centuries-old cultural-psychological machine.
The language that filters your consciousness, and gives you the means to define the world. The daily habits of the collective – eating, sleeping, and acting on a cyclical schedule. Everything we do, everything we are, derives from somewhere. Whether it’s the sun’s absence that spurs an inclination to sleep at night, or the barrage of commercials that solicit us with everything we don’t yet have and persuades us to want money – and to spend it when we’ve got it.
We are all products of the many influences that weigh against us.
The universe itself is a macrocosm of influential forces, each one both independent and interdependent on one another. Like it or not, you’ve been plugged into a world of influence from the moment you learned to interpret meaning, and it’s been controlling the way you live your life ever since.
What are your likes, your dislikes? Your hobbies, your habits? Where do they come from? Are they each an inalienable aspect of who you truly are, or are they simply a product of your environment and a psychological repetition of your experiences? The latter is much more likely the case. All your affinities, inclinations, revelations, and inhibitions, are all a result of the things you’ve experienced in life. The life you know is simply the sum of what you have focused your attention on most consistently, and the individual experiences that have impacted you the most.
Maybe it was how nothing you did in life felt like it defined you until you wrote that first piece of fiction, sketched that first portrait, recorded that first track, or ran those lyrics off your tongue with raw emotion. Somewhere along the course of living your life, the things you love now were brought to the forefront. Your working life, your favorite type of video game, your love of film; there were moments in your life where you were imprinted by the emotional gravity of events enough to allow those experiences to influence your thinking for the rest of your life.
We are also influenced by the lives and experiences of others we are exposed to, and can become indoctrinated with affinities and sentiments that we cannot always control. Maybe your family watched a lot of scary movies when you were growing up, and you now find yourself desensitized to fear. Maybe you felt like no one was listening when you talked, so you became prone to silent thought.
Some influences are even ingrained in your biology. Like having parents that both loved reading books, and finding that you inherently identify with written language on a deeper level than most people in your generation. Or having a father who grew up listening to Led Zeppelin, and finding that every one of their lyrics is instantly familiar and invigorating.
These kinds of influences are unavoidable. We become predisposed to things from our own experiences, and from the experiences of those who came before us. However, we are not simply empty vessels to house our disparate influences, we also have within us a capacity for free thinking and free will. We have some say over how the events in our lives will impact us in the long run, and what motivations we will draw from them. We can choose which external influences we will remember and focus on, and how they will affect us.
If your parents smoked and drank their whole lives through, you can use that as an excuse to do the same, or you can meet that truth with the determination to never depend on a substance. We have the capacity to control our lives, but only if we’re deliberate in our actions and holistic in our convictions.
The simple truth is it’s far too easy to relinquish control and allow your life to take off like a plane without a pilot. Without the willful and deliberate direction we can give to our lives, we’re just the shells of beings inhabited by the meaningless repetition of our learned behaviors. We can be easily swayed by influences both intrinsic and extrinsic. Subconscious reiterations of past proclivities. Always-present stimulus from familiar sources – new content in a video game, another show on television, one more hit from the pipe, the next meal from the fridge.
You can shut down your willpower, and surrender to your inclinations, and your body will just keep on going. It’ll wake up each day, find something familiar and easy to do, and waste the hours of your existence away. You can kid yourself that you’re in control, that you’re doing exactly what you want to be doing, but the truth is your just letting yourself be controlled by the habits and inclinations you’ve picked up throughout the course of your life; and perhaps worse, you’re opening yourself up to be controlled by outside influences.
Whoever controls what’s influencing your behavior has the potential to control your life.
If the whole world’s on autopilot, absolute control resides with the people and organizations that can steer the endless masses. We become cattle, trotting along, doing only what we feel inclined to, feeling lost and empty without the sense of order and belonging that surrender to an external influence instills in us. We forget what it truly means to be human, to live our lives for something meaningful and worthwhile, instead living for the eternal repetition of our learned behaviors.
True freedom is self-control.
Being the iron hand that guides and governs your life, and not outsourcing your daily agenda to a third-party.
You can slump through life, believing you’re in control, slowly marching toward death, as every opportunity passes you by, or you can refuse to let your influences control you. You can be controlled, or you can wake yourself up and take control, being above all influences
You can seize control of what life you’ve got left, and put it to good use; but only if you’re willing to make that choice. If you choose to let the world direct the course of your life, and steal your focus, you’re surrendering your existence to forces outside of your control. They will strip you down and leave you wanting more, and you won’t have any say, you’ll just go along with it.
The key to breaking the cycle is to end the repetition of detrimental behavior, and to reject the influence of harmful and manipulative stimuli. Kill the television, unplug the internet, hit the treadmill instead of the fridge, go for a jog instead of lying around. Combat your bad habits, with the repetition of positive behavior, and develop better habits. Reject the influences that would steer you away from good behaviors, and focus on things that are both worthwhile and important to you.
Don’t be controlled. Be in control of your life, or you will watch it pass you by from the passenger seat, with nothing to show for it at the end of that long journey.
The Nature of Dreams
When I sleep, most of the time, my dreams fade from memory long before I’m cognizant enough to wake up. On the occasions that I do recall my mental liaisons, they generally fall under one of two very distinct classifications. Most people are content to call these distinctions dreams and nightmares, but to me they are not so completely separate. I feel that grouping things into these umbrella categories of good and bad, leaves far too much room for oversimplification.
I’m hesitant to even endorse the use of the term nightmare, as such a label is cause for most to claim that these dreams are of some malign force, and are to be hated, feared, and forgotten – believing some external influence is responsible for their emergence. I however, would argue that things are not as completely black and white as this. I don’t think we should treat the two variations as fundamentally good dreams and undeniably evil dreams – I know I’ve experienced dreams in both these lights – but overall I’m more interested in saying that they are both simply dreams, with varying reflections of a single double-edged element that I can only call Hope.
It is in my experience that the dreams I come to classify as good tend to elicit the quality of hopefulness in overall tone and relative subject matter, playing on personal wishes, desires, ambitions, and so forth to appeal to more positive sentiments, such as the ideal of goodness and happiness. While my so-called bad dreams thoroughly employ an element of hollow hopelessness, whereby I am so completely distraught by the atmosphere that it is as though no hope can exist.
Now having toyed with both the positive and negative sides of the emotional dream spectrum, I have come to the somewhat simplistic conclusion that both are essential aspects of what I would only refer to as the human condition. Basically, when we boil the whole scope of human existentialism down to its root perspectives, we’re left with these two overarching themes, whether there is hope in existence, or if all hope is completely lost. The central factor in this being our own mortality.
If we are born knowing that we are going to die, then we’re born knowing that there is essentially no hope to existence, and yet we discover bits and fragments of hope over the course of our lives, whether in our beliefs in a cosmic afterlife, the pursuit of our ambitions and desires, our family life, or whatever else. We give hope to our lives in the way that we live them, and yet, we are ever-aware of that eternal void in its absence, where everything is inevitably marching toward death, and therefore nothing has meaning.
These are the base contrasts of human existence as I have come to see them, and this is where I believe we derive our sentiment for dreams. As each dream can be looked at as a miniature representation of existence, so also does each one project a perspective on hope. Now this doesn’t begin to evaluate what the individual meaning of each dream may be – I do have my own theories on what dreams mean which I will not go into in this post – but the outlook provides a basis for classifying and defining the inherent nature of dreams that to me is much deeper rooted in reality than purely theological sentiments of good and evil.
On the surface, this may not mean a whole lot for the way you look at or interpret dreams, and maybe it shouldn’t, but to me it’s important to understand that the presence or absence of hope in life is a fundamental aspect of what it means to be human, and in this sense, our dreams are a testament to our internal scuffle. We are, for better or worse, venting our feelings on our own existence and on humanity at large, on a nightly basis.
The battle raging within is not between some cosmically inflated notion of good versus evil, but about whether or not life has any meaning at all. Whether everything is destined to answer to the same empty fate, or if we can hope for more from life than our inevitable culling by the infinite emptiness of the universe.
Our dreams may not tell us everything we ever wanted to know about ourselves, they may be open to so many different interpretations that to attempt to define them only serves to insert the meaning we desire to deposit, but overall, what our dreams say about us is that we are a species that is in an eternal shuffle to give meaning to its own existence, to surpass the nature of the void and prove that life matters. To hope when no hope exists, to face the damning emptiness of death, and the death of hope, without flinching, and to keep on living.
In truth, dreams are merely an extension of our consciousness. Sort of a daily dress-rehearsal for our lives, who and what they’re composed of, is virtually infinite, much in the same way that the possibilities in life are infinite, and, as with life, we take our dreams as they come. Maybe we love them, maybe we hate them, maybe they don’t mean anything to us after the fact, but dreams are a part of who we are. We can’t know what we’re going to face in life, and I think in some small way our dreams can help prepare us for this reality of unpredictability, not by what they show us or what they imply, but how we react to what we’re faced with and how we deal with the emotions that they evoke in us.
Hopeful or hopeless, life is ever-present. We face struggles, new and old, day in, and day out. Dreams simply serve as an allegory to our natural existence. They too are ever-flowing, and must be dealt with as they come; and when we rejoin the waking world after every fleeting apologue, we ought to be reminded of what we are assaulted with in life, and how all we can do is face existence head on and hope to survive. Hopeful or hopeless, dreams are a part of the human experience. Whether they have meaning or not, what matters is who we are when we wake up.
In a sense, it’s our dreams that set us up to face reality. With every miniature reality we face in rem, we are reminded that we’re alive, and that the only thing we can do in life is go on living, whether we like it or not. Whether you’re suffering or salivating, life is there until it’s not. As with a dream, we’re only along for the ride. We have experiences, feel feelings, think thoughts, perform actions, and then it’s over, ending as abruptly as it began, with no grand synopsis or scoreboard, just the experience of living while it’s happening.
It’s simple enough to say that life is like a dream, and an equally simplistic argument to make, that dreams are a lot like life. The nature of the dream is experience, as it is in life. What and how we experience life, it seems, is little more than a footnote to the overwhelming principle that life is experience. Dreams are merely a testament to this cosmic nature of existence, experience for the sake of experience, and when you strip life down to its bones isn’t that all it is?
Dreams may not tell us everything we’ve ever wanted to hear, they may not show us the future, or give us vast insights into our deepest worries and desires, but they do tell us one thing, that we’re alive, and maybe that’s exactly what we need on a daily basis, a little reminder that the heart’s still beating and the clock’s still ticking away on our little span of infinity. Good or bad, pleasant or painful, dreams are a part of life. Whether asleep or awake, we’ve been dreaming from the moment we we’re born. Like it our not it’s this simple truth makes us all the more human.
The fact that we can close our eyes and still be living just proves that we’re alive.
So dream, experience, and know, no matter what happens there’s always a new reality to discover, and all it takes to get there is a little movement of the eyes and stirring of the emotions, and no matter what life throws at us we can always seek a new reality, if we can simply learn to open our eyes and wake up.
Daylight Gone
I woke up today at 2 AM, wondering where the day went. Lately I’ve been too caught up in my own world, and I’ve had to watch the world around me continue to tick away, as my savings slowly dwindles. I’ve been out of work for a little over a month now, and it’s starting to get redundant. It seemed like the perfect solution at first, to disconnect from the world of paid-slavery and focus on my writing. The problem is, my writing has become less and less my focus, and as the days disappear, I continue to ask myself what it is I’m trying to accomplish in my summer of absence.
While I’ve written more fiction in the last two months, than the previous sum of my life, I’ve had a hard time controlling the passage of time. In the beginning it wasn’t much of an issue, I’d get what I could done, and drift off to sleep whenever I felt tired. But all of a sudden it feels like I’m completely out of touch with the rest of the world. The writing has become less abundant, and not as disciplined, while the sleeping has become more scattered, and less insightful.
When you wake up to nothingness on a daily basis, it starts to eat away at your sensibilities. I feel like I need to be doing something to keep myself in check with reality. It’s one thing to focus on who you are on the inside, it’s quite another to completely erase any semblance of living. I think I need to get outside, maybe take some pictures, and focus on making the most of the daylight while I’ve still got enough of it to spare. The world is a beautiful place, and I can’t really expect to capture it, in prose or otherwise, if I’m not out there experiencing it.
I believe a bike ride is in order today, or maybe a drive. Hell, I need to do something to make sure I’m not losing that vital connection to humanity that is so essential to keeping us grounded and inspired. One thing is certain, life is something that happens outside of any four-wall building, inside is just where we talk about it, reflect on it, and watch it pass us by. But writing without living, is hardly a healthy formula. It’s time to start doing things in the daylight again.
The world of fluorescents, liquid crystals, and diodes isn’t much of a life. Maybe plants can survive on artificial sources of light, but I believe humans were born to harness the sun. It’s no good being stuck in a cubicle your whole life, whether constructed by the powers that be, or built by your own attritional detachment from the world. The world around us was meant to be embraced and used to the advantage of all things. Though I’ve always known this, it hasn’t stopped me from holding back, and missing out on life.
The important thing for me to remember, is that this is something I want in my life. I don’t mind being trapped in my own way of thinking and seeing the world, but it’s important that I’m actually seeing it, and not just filtering it through books, films, television, or the internet. I have to live it to capture it. I have to harness the daylight, to power my mental ambitions and creative potential. It’s time to let the light shine through, or, like a plant without a reliable source of light, I’ll wither and decay in its absence.
