What lies beyond the fringe of the woods?

[tom rAy]

Hello fellow travelers! I am Artyom from the north of Russia.

I've come to a point in my life where I'm planning to go full stage orange so I want this journal to help me with sticking to my goals.

For about a year I've been struggling with depression and being stuck, and now many areas of my life just seem dysfunctional: I don't have any consistent income, no relationships, almost no friends in the city where I currently live, no strong  passions or sense of purpose and direction. I feel like I've had enough and for now I just want to handle the basic things and stop the downward spiral.

My main occupation is music.  I have a project that I recently started with releasing my first song. My way of making money right now is just busking on the streets of Saint-Petersburg. So part of my plan revolves around that.

So I have this plan for the next 30 days, starting tomorrow:

Meditation for 1 hour everyday.

Going to gym 3 times a week.

Listening to audiobooks when commuting

Busking 3 times a week.

Learn 2 new songs a week.

Finish one new  song for my project.

Eyes exercise in breaks.

Reporting about my progress in this journal every night.

Also questions  that I need to think about: What kind of content I can create for my project other then music itself to keep it consistent? How do I learn to market it better? What actions I should take to develop my social and dating skills?

But it's not about plans only. I'll share my insights and interesting experiences here, I think it's the best place that I can find for this

Btw, I titled this journal with a quote from a song cause this line  gives me some truly mystical vibe.

Edited June 23, 2019 by tom rAy

[tom rAy]

Woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't sleep more - decided to meditate. Some drunk untermensches outside were making lots of noise distracting my focus. They probably were the reason I woke up in the first place. But I sit through the hour.  Then I heard the rain outside and spent some time watching the skies dawning. 

In the morning I finally begun cleaning my flat, cause I couldn't sleep. Practiced my repertoire for a  few hours. It put me in the flow. Though waking up I felt slightly negative, most part of the day I spent in pretty  good state of mind. Few days ago I wasn't even able to cook anything for myself.

I decided to stick with nofap for a while, just  because  it allows me to sleep less.

 

[tom rAy]

woke up about 1 to 2 a m again, meditated 1 hr, drawn a banner for my busking, went to gym as soon as it opened. Then I continued with cleaning the flat. Almost finished. A friend came over, after hanging out for a while he accompanied  me when I went for busking. After 2 hours of performing I earned very little amount of money and couple of subscribers, made some vids also. Plan for tomorrow is to learn a new song and go busking again in the evening and if it's rainy - spend evening recording\ arranging my songs. 

[tom rAy]

Yesterday I let myself slack off a bit. The day before I stayed awake and active for 23 hrs. So I felt low energy and fell asleep 9 hrs after I woke up. Still I meditated the first thing in the morning. And my no-fap is becoming once-every-six-days-fap.
I still can't sit still and straight  through the whole hour of meditation. I have to move and stretch my limbs and spine  from time to time. I consider doing some physical exercises before meditation may help with that. I'll try the next time.

[tom rAy]

Meditation right after waking up - done.

Working out in the gym - done.

Also recorded some guitar parts. Learned a new song, or rather an old one that I forgot. 

After starting this journal I see lack of order in my life. And lack of strategy. I have an intention now to change that.

I had some cool and crazy dreams today. I want to document the most memorable part.

" Winter. After running away from something  I was walking by some  club with stairs going down. A girl in that club (or it was her friends, can't remember) calls me and asks me to fuck her. I don't mind it. So we go with that girl to her place. On our way we talk about something. Then she says that she doesn't  want to have sex with me that much anymore because I'm too cool for her. I say I'm cool with that, you can decide if you want it or not later,  we can just hang out, I don't have anything to do anyway. So we get to her place. It was like a dorm room, with few beds. Another girl was leaving there and I said hello to her. When she left the wanting-to-fuck girl says it's bad that she saw us cause she will tell everyone.  Then we discussed some girls there while sitting on beds in this room and the scene ended.
The next scene started the next night by the enter of the same club. Now I descend in there. The girl was there. And I knew she had a birthday the day before. There was a policeman wearing uniform in the club. So I walked to him and ask him to give  a birthday speech. I shouted something to get everyone's attention. Music stopped. The policeman pulled out a piece of paper and gave his speech wishing happy birthday to that girl. I think the girl was happy about it but anyway she and her friends decided to pissed on the policeman. So a few girls knocked him  on the floor, then two of them, one of them being having-birthday-wanting-to-fuck cute girl, they stood over him spreading their legs and were about to start pissing on him. I doubted for a second but then I pushed them off the guy saying something like "I've got some honor too", then I thanked the policeman and everyone left happy."
Also had a dream where some psycho guy was trying to cut me with a big knife. 

Edited June 27, 2019 by tom rAy

[tom rAy]

Meditated in  the morning 
Learned a new song

Went busking in the evening. Earned just enough to eat for a day but still twice more than the last time. It pissed me off when some guy was asking me for some cash seeing the money I earned. Gave him half of what he asked.
Feeling tired and getting a feeling that I'm using the wrong strategy to go around my goals, and I should rethink it, and also make the goals themselves clearer at least in a short term. 

also tried listening to an audio book while in metro as I planned  but couldn't hear a thing with the loud noise there. Listened to Leo instead, 

Edited June 28, 2019 by tom rAy

[tom rAy]

Had some insights and realizations while meditating today. Here they are:

Whatever happens to me nothing affects Me. Things affect my thoughts, emotions, feelings, mood, but  Me stays unaffected.

Whatever I do is done by my thoughts, my feelings, Me has no control over them.

Survival is a dance. Life is an ultimate sophisticated dance of different ways to survive and it's purely beautiful

A question came up about how do I balance pursuit of consciousness and letting go of everything with daily  matters of survival, money etc. And the answer that came up was that I should just let go of this  worry  of balancing, because my thoughts and my ego will find a way.

 

[tom rAy]

Meditation and  working out - done, besides that it was lazy day of rest. 

Today the first week of my journaling has finished.
I completed most of my  weekly goals. Daily one-hour meditation, 3 workouts in gym, but I busked only 2 times instead of 3 that I planned. 
Didn't work much on creating. I thing making a goal for a month or a goal for a day is not an efficient way for me now, but making goals of daily and weekly actions, or goals for a week, works better. 

The journal really helps. I've got more thoughts concerning  my goals and moving forward and less thought and feelings about misery and meaningless of my life. And it helps to see some structure and stay accountable. 

This week felt longer then any week of many weeks before, weirdly.

I want to change my plans now to focus  more on creating music and other content.
So my goals for the next week are:

1. Finish writing and record  all the guitar parts for the 4 songs that I'm currently working on  

2. For this purpose  work at least 8 focused hours a day at least 5 days of the week. With breaks of course. 

3. If I'm done with guitars - start recording  vocals and other instruments.

4. Learn 2 to 4 more songs and go busking on weekend once. Probably on Saturday.

5. 2 gym workouts and 1  running session

Also not doing audio books on the metro, may watch videos instead or better just chill. 

Everything else on the initial plan stays the same. 

There are some things that I already started contemplating this week and need to contemplate more: what do I really want now? how do I become more creative? how do I make things I do  effortless and resistance-free?

 

Edited June 30, 2019 by tom rAy

[tom rAy]

This should've been yesterday entry. 
Meditation - done
Running - done
Spent only about 40 minutes recording 

[tom rAy]

Today I spent few hours recording and composing songs. The planed 8 hrs were too much for me now,  obviously.

I went to sauna in the evening to relax this body. I should do it more often. Overheated myself a bit and felt sick. Intensive breathing effectively helped with that.

Meditated in the night.

[tom rAy]

Meditation sometimes feels like exorcising demons.

Today I was struck by feelings of apathy and flushes of anger in the evening and night. I didn't have any desire of motivation to do anything, except the desire to hit things and scream. So I engaged in that a bit. And since I couldn't do anything I decided to meditate through those feeling. Had thoughts of desperate actions  like crushing and breaking things. Almost cut myself with my own nails when scratched my forehead really hard. After meditation and hitting some walls I had desires to get drunk or watch porn and jerk off, but I didn't act on them, jut was sitting and listening to some  music. In half an hour I suddenly felt very high energy and motivated to work and make money. Used this motivation to do some more recording. The high didn't last very long. Was back to apathy later, but it wasn't that  bad now. 
Only had one meal in the morning, and few cups of coffee and tea throughout the day with cookies and some chocolate. Just wasn't able to cook.
Last week I was planning to do nofap cause it allows to sleep less, but now I think nofap is bullshit because fapping helps to sleep better and more 
Today I spent couple of hours recording. I even had to have a break in the afternoon cause my finger got sore cause of playing guitar. But I'm still dealing with the first song of the four planned. Anyway it sounds pretty good. 

Edited July 4, 2019 by tom rAy

[tom rAy]

Another not very productive day. Today I felt better but still some apathy and low energy. Woke up from some awesome dreams. Spent half of the day chatting with a friend online and streaming in publicly. Seems to me like it's a good way for improving some conversational skills.  

Meditated at night. Now I'm listening to classical music cause I've gotten bored of all the other types. 

[tom rAy]

Meditated after breakfast.

Starting to see how many false assumptions I've got about how things are supposed to be, shoulds and  shouldn'ts, how things work etc. 
And I see how it creates misery. Like how I feel bad cause I assumed that my life should be different now. But there's literally  nothing I should do or should be. I owe nothing to myself or to somebody else.
Ain't I putting to much pressure on myself? Worrying  about things that don't matter. Worse than that is worrying unconsciously,  without knowing that you worry. 

Friendship is just another social construct.  I feel like I'm being attached to this construct like it matters more than it is. 

[tom rAy]

People don't exist 

I couldn't sleep last night till it was almost noon. Consumed too much coffee probably.
So I was contemplating some things. Was thinking about my negative feelings towards some people closed to me. Then I see that those feelings are towards the images of those people in my mind. And the images are based on their actions and my perceptions. And their actions are not who they are. The actions are molecules stumbled upon each other.   And this image is all there is to a personality of any human from someone's perspective. So the person doesn't exist. Which makes me think the same about myself - I don't exist as a person, I'm an image in someones head. I'm also an image in my own head based on, besides other things, images of me in the heads of others. 

If all people around would be just robots looking and acting exactly like humans what would you do? How is it any different from what is going on?  

Most of actions and decisions in people's life and the therefore life itself are  shaped by false assumptions. But what if  false assumptions  can be good if they lead to some positive results.   Either way it's important to be conscious as much as possible about all assumptions you have to have control over your life.

The thing that ruffles me too much is how I seemingly wasted a whole last year of my life, with very little productivity, very little experience and very little joy, with most of the days  being all the same, not feeling life. Distracting myself constantly to not feel miserable. And every time I feel like it's getting better I'm soon back to nothing. And the  being just feels pointless. But it's my responsibility to drag myself out of this. 

This day I slept through half of the day, went to gym. Going to meditate before sleep. 

I spent last 2 days watching the last season of Stranger Things. It was totally  awesome. This is how a great modern show should look like for me.
 

[tom rAy]

Yesterday I woke up late and didn't  have any sleep at night mostly because I was composing brand new song. Meditated before going to bed, after 20 hrs of being awake. So I had to meditate through drowsiness loosing my focus to hallucinations and being uncomfortable from time to time.  

 

[tom rAy]

Most of my thoughts and concerns are useless distractions, now I see.
The problems with energy and motivation are  caused by lack  of presence. Thoughts and emotions are leaching out energy when you are not present to the moment.

Yesterday I woke up 9 pm and went to bad 3 am. Done some composing and meditated before sleep.

Had a lucid dream for the first time in a while this morning (was like 2 pm morning). I realized I'm dreaming cause of part of my flat looking differently.  Was asking the characters of the dream about what is the good way for me to make money. One woman said something reasonable. She told me to start with some small like 1 dollar sale, so I would get the feel for profit and then it will grow and the business will gain momentum. Also I was trying to have sex with several  woman characters but every one of them would disappear completely as soon as  we were about to begin. 

So know the second week of my journaling is finished and this week was week of backsliding, junk food, flushes of anger, depression and apathy, but taking it more easy and realizations at the same time.
Most of my plans are not getting done this time, so I'm not gonna make much plans anymore and I'll focus on 2 things:
1. Keep meditating everyday  for an hour and making daily entries in the journal.
2. Producing and recording the album.
Whatever it takes I have to finish it as soon as possible.
Everything else is distraction. Concerning about fitness, diet, girls, money, health, relationships etc  are all distractions. 
 

Edited July 9, 2019 by tom rAy

[tom rAy]

Yesterday and the last night  were super productive, made a lot of progress with many songs. The vision of how the first album are gonna be are getting more clear and I'm getting excited about showing this music to the world. 

Meditated in the morning before sleep. 

[tom rAy]

The biggest obstacle's to achieving  dreams are in one's head 

yesterday was a short day of mostly meaningless  entertaining, 
I haven't been eating so much bread in one day for long time!

+ 1 meditation  

[tom rAy]

another day, another meditation done
The production work progressing, but slowly.

Now it's been 3 weeks since I started meditating 1 hour daily. 
I want to make it more focused now. cause my thoughts are all over the place most of the time. Tomorrow I'll start doing   a  few minutes of concentration practice everyday, ideally before meditation, but any time of a day will be alright for now. 

[tom rAy]

yesterday, or rather the day before I stayed awake longer then usual in order to put my sleep cycle back to normal, I almost succeeded and woke up 11 30 p.m. + 1 hour meditation that day
When  I woke up I meditated (+ 1) and spent the night mostly watching videos, meditated again for 40 minutes  in the morning, cause I was like tiered of the noise.
Tried concentration exercise. In a form of staring at a small black circle on a piece of paper. After few minutes cool visuals appeared: the surface of the  wall around the circle started moving in waves. 
Decided to have a nap but slept till the evening.

I've drastically reduced use of social media this week, now I only check messages from time to time, but almost no scrolling through feed.