Finally Taking Back My Life

[Emrie]

Introduction

I'm gonna start by exploring that title. I literally just came up with it on the spot but I think it captures the essence of this journal.

In a way I've given my life away, and now it's high time I take it back.

I look at all the failures of my life and think that, yeah, I gave my life away to these things. I gave my life away to video games, to unhealthy food, to movies, TV shows, internet browsing, alcohol, coffee. Trying to make myself liked by people who will never like me and who I don't even like, hiding my emotions from others and even myself. Getting angry at others and arguing with them but only in my head, never for real, that would be insane. Never, ever, cleaning my room and then my own apartment. Not pursuing anything creative in my life and trying to improve the world in some meaningful way, in fact now I don't even know what I should be doing that would have any kind of meaning! At some point I was just straight up depressed, and attempted suicide. So I very much almost gave my life away completely. And ... I have not healed any of the trauma I've gone through my entire life.

So it's over. It's time. I need to take back my life. Some of these things I've already fixed. I've not drunk alcohol for almost a year, I've had a total of maybe five espressos that I didn't finish since early 2020, I haven't played a video game in weeks, and more broadly, when I do play, it's only for maybe a couple hours on like a Sunday afternoon. And also I haven't been depressed for like eight years. I had one experience of very deep sadness that I did consider it depression recently, whereby I was introduced to a group a friends by someone else and they barely even acknowledged me, they just said hello and turned away and talked among themselves. It broke my heart, I'm crying again writing this. I've been exercising pretty heavily for the past few months and I've been going four times a week and for a long time (typically the total workout time actually exercising, including breaks between sets and exercises ofc, is 60 minutes), so I can absolutely say the habit is implanted. Buuuut that's about it. There are a lot of things I really want to improve in my life now that I just haven't been doing.

Friday: The Party

So alright let's get started, let's talk about some of the recent events of my life. Let's take this weekend as an example.

Friday night, there was a big work party, loads of people came. I spent some time with people of my team, with people not of my team. Some people came from another office of the company, I spent some time with them and it was great to see them and hang out with them, they're awesome people. We danced, they drank (I didn't, though they're all hella annoying about this), had an awesome time overall. Took the train home at 5am, literally did the closing. In fact I wanted to go to a night club when I arrived in my home city, but they close at 5.

I think I can confidently say I have fun at parties now. Like it's not that parties were never fun to me, but that, since I wasn't fun at parties, that would both ruin other people's experience at the party, and it would make ME not have fun because I was such an unfun person. That's not really the case any more, I don't think. There are still a lot of things to improve, I didn't approach a single person there even though I definitely really could or even should have, I didn't really have a lot of conversations with people and I struggled to come up with things to say. And that's typical for me at parties but, despite all that, I had fun! And that was a huge improvement.

Someone from my team this morning annoyed me though, and I need to go on a rant. He told me "You really hyped yourself up even though you didn't drink alcohol". There are SEVERAL THINGS that really piss me off about this.

Number 1) He said "hyped yourself up", this is translated from French, but I think, if he meant that I was fun to be around at the party, he wouldn't have used that exact phrasing. Of course, I have very little social skills and experience, so maybe that's what he meant but I don't know. Someone else used the exact same phrase WHILE AT THE PARTY and it didn't feel like they were complimenting me, it felt more condescending to me.
And honestly they can fuck right off because THEY'RE not fun at parties either, but I don't go around telling them and other people they're not fun. And, honestly, they're the people I was talking about at the beginning of this post, people who will never like me and who I don't even like.

Number 2) He said "without alcohol". BITCH! I have MORE FUN without alcohol! Alcohol makes my head spin, it makes me less socially calibrated, it makes me get drunk VERY VERY VEEERY quickly, it drains my energy, it makes me hungry as hell and then I feel sick with all the alcohol and unhealthy food in my system. This substance is just HOOOORRIBLE to me on SO MANY LEVELS!
And I swear the number of people who shit on me so hard for not drinking really pisses me off. These people actually believe that everyone needs to drink alcohol to have fun and even to BE FUN TO BE AROUND. They keep asking me "why don't your drink?", they tell me "life is short and you should have fun while you still can, the clock is ticking", they tell other people "you can't just let me go to a night club with Emrie alone, he doesn't drink!". It is SOOOO ANNOYING to me! Like yeah maybe I'm not too fun to be around right now but I just need to practice it, work on it, have fun with it, and alcohol has absolutely nothing to do with it. Not to mention many of these people knew me when I was drinking and have spent time with me when I was drinking and absolutely know I'm not really fun even when I do drink

There are a few more points I want to talk about in regards to the party. I realize I'm spending a lot of time on the party but actually my social life is my overarching, long term, and very difficult project of my life right now. I am literally talking about turning myself into the most sociable, most fun, just generally super-social person that I can be, so that the people who knew me when I was shit (my family, as an example) can look at me and say "wow you've really changed and you have much better social skills now".

The first is that I completely busted the limiting belief I have that I need friends to go out. In January of this year I moved to a big city. I got a very sweet place that's deep into the city center. I mean literally the closest night club is a 5-minute walk from my place, then there are 5 more within 5 minutes. There's an area that's all commercial (read bars, clubs, and shops) that's just right there and it's just perfect. But, I haven't been going out and socializing because ... "I don't have any friends". I was telling myself "join a club, join a sports league, go take some X and Y classes, do things that interest you and meet people similar to you, and you'll make friends that way". And of course I was not doing that either because ... well you see McDonald's and reddit are more important.

This is all bullshit, the bottom line is I need to bite the bullet and talk to strangers. Risk not being fun, risk running out of things to say, risk being kind of annoying to other people, risk being rejected or not even being acknowledged by other people (see the comment above about the group of friends that made me almost depressed). This will suck, but this is necessary. And I will feel sad on some days, I will likely cry. But I need to do it, it's worth it. And in fact it's becoming more and more non-negotiable that I do it because I can't keep putting it off and making excuses, it's leaving me in quagmire, doing nothing, and realistically making me regress.

The second is that this is all so fucking foreign to me. I am SO SCARED. I've never kissed anyone. The most intimate touch I've had with another human being has been a hug, and it's, you know, familial love kind of hug, not romantic love kind of hug. I'm so touch-starved that when someone puts their arm around my neck and shoulders at a party, it just feels so freaking amazing to me, it is truly some of the best moments of my life.

So the thought of even just someone else's lips touching mine is freaking me out so much, I am so incredibly scared of it, I don't know how my body will react to it. Is it going to feel amazing, am I going to have a panic attack because I'll just be so fucking nervous from it, am I just going to have a huge boner from it? Like this shit is so foreign to me, it's insane! And I know that I'm not just going to kiss the first person I approach, it'll take a lot of buildup to get to that and by that time I'll probably be much more comfortable with it all but... I'm almost 27 years old and the fact that all of this is something that I have NEVER EXPERIENCED IN ANY WAY is really fucking saddening to me.

In fact, even disregarding the whole touch thing, the concept of me approaching a stranger and making conversation with them scares the shit out of me. Like I just have absolutely ZERO experience, I have no clue whatsoever how it's supposed to work, what I'm supposed to say, how I'm supposed to handle myself. Obviously I know this is generally pretty common sense stuff, you know, just talk to each other in some sort of coherent fashion, riff off of each other, try and make them laugh, tell them stories and shit, just very basic typical stuff, you know. But I have no experience so I have nothing in memory to draw from, and it fucking sucks.

[Emrie]

Saturday, Sunday, on Monday: The Aftermath of the Party

So Saturday, I wanna talk about Saturday. I went to sleep Friday night (or you could say Saturday morning) at 6am, and then I woke up at 2pm. I slept badly, I kept getting woken up by things throughout the day. Also fun fact, I wake up at 6am when I work the early shift at work. So that's a fun kind of mind-fuck.

On Saturday is when I contemplated the night before and I realized these things I wrote about just above. And I honestly, really fucking wanted to go out on Saturday night and go to a night club, even without anyone to go with. Like I just didn't care. I didn't, in fact, I spent all of Saturday night on TikTok, it was a gigantic waste of my time and I even felt bad because I went to sleep at FOUR A.M!

And like my reasoning throughout it was such bullshit, it's insane! I told myself at first "I can't go out because I'm too tired, I went out yesterday", but then I stayed up because "well I went to sleep at 6am last night, I can't just go to sleep early tonight". And like I was saying to myself "If I can't go to sleep earlier tonight", I'm just going to have a terrible sleep Sunday night because I'll have to wake up early Monday morning regardless!" And like at some point just fucking go to the damn night club, at like 1, 2, or 3am when you tell yourself you can't sleep, just fucking go to the damn night club, for fuck's sake! But I didn't... and this journal is partly to push myself.

Sunday was slightly better. I woke up at 9:30, which was good because going from 14 to 9:30 showed me I could get back to the normal sleep schedule for this week, in fact I went to sleep at 23:30 that night, and slept like a BAAAABY. I was pretty energetic throughout the whole weekend. Like Saturday afternoon (as in, just after I woke up, for a few hours) was a little rough but I wasn't locked to my bed, and then I had plenty of energy through Saturday night, and then plenty throughout all of a Sunday. Today I was also perfect.

On Sunday I actually did two things I'm genuinely proud of. I actually cleaned up part of my apartment. I spent like two hours in total and I barely cleaned the kitchen. The stove was like super dirty because I was never, ever cleaning it after cooking. Now I wasn't cooking all that much but that shit accumulates over months and months. I spent two hours trying to clean it completely and honestly some of this stuff is hard to get off. I'm actually afraid some of it is just kinda stuck there forever. I think, once I've gotten my apartment in a somewhat acceptable state, I'll get a proper deep cleaning company to really finish it all off because it is really THAT BAD.

And then I also did laundry. Now, cleaning my clothes is something I was already doing because, when I go to work, I have to be completely clean myself. Clean teeth, clean body, clean clothes. This is absolutely necessary. But I did something that I honestly almost never do, which is cleaning my bed sheets. I'm pretty sure I hadn't cleaned these sheets since I had come in to this apartment, eight months ago. It's insane. I think they'll need a few more cleanings because again, it is that bad.

And this ties back in with my previous point of it all being so foreign to me. I am SOOO FAR DEEP INTO THE RABBIT HOLE, I can't even clean after myself.

And now here we are today, I've spent pretty much the entire evening writing this. This has been really good. I've enjoyed it very much, I definitely won't be writing this much every day. I might do something like "okay here are all the things I did today" type of stuff but I also really like this format that I had today. Giving myself time to do meaningful things and looking back over a few days and saying to myself "okay, here is all the stuff that's actually important that's been happening and my feelings about them".

[Emrie]

I've been considering going to a therapist. It's so I have someone to talk to about some stuff that I really reaaally don't want to keep to myself, but also I don't have anyone to talk to.

Like I'm going into this thing where I'm developing my social skills and my dating life and what I really need is some kind of support system. Someone who I can confide in and be vulnerable with. Because I know it would be a safe space.

So yeah I think I'm gonna get myself a therapist.

--

In other news, I've been breaking out of my comfort zone. Like ... it was so bad you need to realize something, here. I have a hard time talking to people in the most basic, most casual way possible. I would pass someone I know at the cafeteria and wouldn't say hello, I would go to the same goddamn grocery shop and checkout and see the same goddamn people and wouldn't say much more than hello and goodbye. It was that bad.

Today and yesterday I made a point to properly have an interaction, "hello, how are you doing, alright I'm gonna go, have a nice day". VERY VERY VERY BASIC conversation and I wasn't even doing THAT! Someone smiled at me today for doing that. I felt proud.

[Emrie]

Some really positive and good news heading into this week, feeling great!

So first of all I've decided to be 100% vegetarian for the week. No meat whatsoever. And it feels really great! For example, today's meals were some mushrooms, some eggs with some olive oil, salt, pepper, and fresh rosemary that I picked from my parents' garden yesterday at lunch time. It tasted amazing and fresh and I felt full after. I did have several protein shakes throughout the day, 5 in total, one pretty much as I woke up, one some time in the morning, one at lunch, one in the afternoon, and one with dinner. The shakes are made with whey protein (which I'm going to switch to plant protein but I need one that doesn't taste like vomit), unsweetened cocoa powder, and some maca.

With dinner I had a large salad with some tomatoes and more eggs, and plenty of seasoning again, it tasted amazing and fresh again. And the lack of meat didn't feel bad at all, I really don't miss it in any way.

In total I had around 70g of fat, mostly from the eggs, 90g of carbs, mostly from the maca, 40g of fiber, mostly from the cocoa, and like 150g of protein, from the shakes and the eggs. I do need to eat a decently large amount of protein because I'm working my muscles a lot, I'm going for around 150 because that's about 2.2x my lean body mass (I weigh 85kg and have 20% body fat, I know 20% is a lot but I'm hoping to just build my muscles to get the percentage of body fat down, like instead of burning fat and increasing muscle, I'm just increasing muscle and that'll get the proportion of fat down, I'm also just not eating any high carb foods so that should help with the burning).

--

Some other good news is I've really been contemplating the whole "Energy of Life v Death" that Owen Cook talked about, that Leo linked in his blog. This has been really amazing, I've realized how I've been sooo deeply connected to the energy of death and how that's really been making me miserable as hell. And I've completely reframed my life to be connected to the energy of life instead. And it's been absolutely amazing, I feel much happier, much more energetic, much more confident, and just much better as a whole!

I also feel much more motivated now. Like previously I would tell myself "oh I should cook dinner and eat healthy" but that was like "work" and all I wanted to do was just "relax", so I'd go and buy some junk food and waste my evening on social media, video games, and TV shows. Well NO MORE! Now, all of this stuff is just energy of death and it's not real life, real life is cooking and eating a healthy colorful meal, real life is going outside to a park and walking, real life is going to sleep at a reasonable time to have a great night, real life is having a clean apartment that doesn't feel bad to live in! And it's completely effortless!

--

So yeah I'm really hopeful for this week and I feel really well right now. I can't wait to keep this momentum going and having it snowball into bigger and better things!

[Emrie]

I've been getting into a bit of an evening routine to get myself to sleep and relaxing and it's been great.

So yesterday I spent some time on here; then had dinner and cooked lunch for today, then had a bath, read a book, and went to sleep. I had a really nice sleep. Gonna do it again tonight, hoping to get it to a proper habit.

That'll mean I have good exercise, good diet, and good sleep. At that stage I think I'll have my whole health figured out and locked down, so I'm generally happy with that.

[Emrie]

I'm going out tomorrow night

One of my work friends has his wife and daughter gone for the weekend and invited me to go out. So we'll go out. I'm pretty jacked and really pumped to get into it.

Tomorrow's gonna be crazy hectic, I have like ... waaaay too much to do and way too little time, though.

I have to clean up my apartment, at least to a somewhat okay state. This will very likely take more than like 4 hours. My apartment is SOOO dirty. Then I really want to get a run in, because it's unlikely I'll be able to do one on Sunday after going out Saturday. Or I'll just be super tired. Blargh, maybe I just postpone to Monday. Also I need to get some rain running gear because it'll rain tomorrow, so there's that. And then there's also going to be the meetup at 4pm. Which is going to lead into the going out with my work friend right after. OH! Also I have to buy food for next week!

So yeah I have to do all of that by essentially 3pm tomorrow which is just SUUUPER early.

Knowing myself I'll end up half-assing the cleaning and skipping the run. I'll try to go for a run on Sunday, worst case.

[Emrie]

lmao crazy how quickly things change.

So I didn't go out yesterday because the guy in question had fallen ill. I was half-tempted to go out alone but I'm still too scared to do it.

The apartment is cleaner. It's not completely clean, there's still a decent chunk to do but it's generally okay I would say. It's never been this clean in months, and it's really nice having it in such a clean state. Can't wait to have it completely clean and feel great about myself.

My evening routine is working brilliantly, I'm sleeping like a baby.

I've also made the resolution that every I gotta do some kind of cardio activity. So today I'm going to walk on the stair-stepper for an hour, tomorrow I'm going to be commuting to work (and possibly back home, if I feel strong enough) by eBike (it's 35km), then Tuesday I'll be doing another round on the stair-stepper on top of the upper-body workout, Wednesday I'll be running 5k, etc...

[Emrie]

Insomnia right now. It's 12:45am. I need to sleep but I can't.

I made the resolution I was going to work by bike tomorrow. That's 35km by bike. I have to wake up at 6am.

I think I'll have to skip the bike because I don't think I'll be able to cycle this much on this little sleep. But also I want to challenge myself and do it anyways.

--

Anyways I want to do a thought experiment tonight, imagining tomorrow in a High Vibration vs Low Vibration state:

If I'm in High Vibe state, I'll wake up at 6am and cycle to work. While cycling, I'll breathe well, stand upright on the bike, and take in the environment completely. Then, at work, I'll be doing my various tasks always coming from a mindset of "how can I provide the most value to that person". At lunch, I'll be eating with my colleagues and be present to the moment, relaxed, and not worrying about whether or not I'm cool and interesting for them enough, I'll just be me, be there, listening, joking, and in flow. Coming home from work, I might cycle again or take the train. My grandmother will have arrived and we'll spend some time together.

If I'm in Low Vibe state, I'll wake up at 7am and take the train to work. Once at work, I'll just do the bare minimum to call my tasks finished. At lunch, I'll worry to always have something to say and that'll freeze me up and we'll end up with moments of silence. In fact I'll probably end up taking out my phone and just browsing that for a while. Even though I removed all social media, I'll probably just end up reading up this forum. Then I'll get back home from work and engage as little with my grandma.

[Emrie]

One of the scariest things about our society is how easy it is for people to just never cultivate any real relationships in their lives.

[Emrie]

Y'all it's not hard to replace "his or her" with their, come on.

[Emrie]

I've had a random thought that kinda made me laugh and also questioning, like I need deeper inquiry on it.

I think that I've gone so far into communism that it's even affected my sexuality.

Like my bisexuality is like "well no I'm not gonna limit myself to just one gender, that's unfair and discriminatory, I'm gonna give everyone a fair shot" -- which is kinda socialist right??

Same with polyamory like "I'm not gonna limit my love to one person, we're not gonna claim ownership of each other, we'll spread our love to as many people as we can, it's stupid to limit it"

-- Of course I know these things are much deeper traits than just political views, but yeah, kinda made me laugh.

[Emrie]

One of the biggest mindset shifts I've had now is Journey vs Destination.

Every day I take a cold shower, and every day in the cold shower I pretend I have a conversation with other people about cold showers and every day I tell myself that I just do it because I like it. I don't care about the health benefits, I just like the cold shower itself.

And today I realized how I apply this same mindset to literally everything in my life. I do everything I choose to do because I enjoy it, not for any supposed results. I eat healthy food because I like cooking and eating healthy food, not to keep myself in good health. I exercise because I enjoy lifting heavy weights and sprinting, not to have big muscles.

So yeah, pretty cool

[Emrie]

I gotta be real fucking careful, holy shit.

At work today, thankfully my boss wasn't at his desk, someone from another team asked if there was an opening in our team jokingly, because he loves our team so much.

... And OMG I answered so casually and so unironically that, yeah there's probably going to be an opening soon, and I didn't elaborate further. It was VERY MUCH IMPLYING that I intend to leave.

People in the team were honestly super suspicious but I could definitely feel that it was obvious I had essentially outed myself.

I was not careful there, I didn't realize what I was saying while saying it.

[Emrie]

Got my guitar and I'm in love. Like holy shit. It's so good!

I will be making music like hell and it's going to be fantastic.

[Emrie]

Got hit with the "Am I too old?" today...

I mean I'm 26, super young. Definitely not too old.

But also I feel like I'm at level 1 in life. Like I just have NOOOO real experience in anything,

I have zero experience in social, romantic, and sexual life. Zero experience in my life purpose. Zero experience in spirituality. Basically I'm almost 27 and I feel like I should be 15.

If I were 15 and I started trying to make friends and get better social skills, trying to play guitar or even finding my life purpose, starting meditation, it'd be a whole different story. But I'm almost 27...

I'm almost 27 and I've only started exercising early this year. I'm almost 27 and I never had any friends. Actually I watched a TikTok of a girl saying "here are questions you should ask your dates to look for red flags" and the first was like "tell me about your best friend!"  ... and it hit me like a truck. I'm almost 27 and obviously you can tell I've never had any sexual or romantic relationships either, and I'M BISEXUAL!!!! At this point idk if I'm bi or so fucking touch-starved I'll even give other genders a chance.

-- And now I'm really in a situation where I'm like ... am I too old? Like legit won't people expect good social skills when I try to interact with them? And inevitably end up trying to disassociate with me when they realize that I just don't have any! And then how am I supposed to get better if people don't want to talk to me and .... *sigh*

Of course this is all fear, insecurity, and it's doing me a lot of harm and not helping in any way, but fucking hell, I just wanna express my feelings. I wish I had someone to say this kind of stuff to.

[Emrie]

Being bi, poly, non-binary, and just generally leftist, I think I'm just a depressed communist.

[Emrie]

Ho--kay so this is uhh ... this is bad, it happened twice in a week, which is really bad.

You know how when someone asks you how you're doing, you're supposed to just say you're doing well? Like they don't want you to dump you negative emotions on them.

Well TWICE this week I said I was doing well and they could tell I wasn't.

First time it was someone who asked me if I was doing okay today and I just said "Yeah, yeah..." but with the worst possible tone ever that just screamed "no, no...". And he totally got that I wasn't doing well from that.

Second time, with a completely different person on a completely different day, I answered "Yeah I'm doing well, more or less". And she answered "more or less? What do you mean?" And again she totally got that I'm not doing well.

Like it's bad because, typically when I'm not doing well, I can still hide it enough when people ask me how I'm doing. But now I'm really at a point where I'm doing sooo badly that I just can't even.

[Emrie]

If I'm honest, I've been treating someone at work differently simply because of their gender. And by differently, I mean better.

Like, I shouldn't, right? I look at them differently, I'm nicer to them, I ... I just, we have a different relationship and it's only because of their gender.

Gender equality should mean I treat everyone the same, no one gets special treatment only because of their gender. And yet, here I am.

It's good that I'm aware of it at least, and it's something I'm going to work on. But it kinda bums me out because I thought I'd moved past that but I guess I haven't.

[Emrie]

Decided to just be a full-on Communist now. Objectively better system to capitalism.

[Emrie]

I'm at a stage in my life where an ideal date for me would be to seize the means of production, overthrow the patriarchy, and rise up with my fellow workers to take back what is rightfully ours.