Hello beautiful people,
I am going to start sending these out around 8:00 PM ET starting tomorrow. Consistency would be good. :)
Tomorrow’s events:
The Stoic Hustle w/ Peter Limberg. Every Tuesday @ 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM ET. RSVP here. Watch a presentation on the practice here. You can come and leave as you leave throughout the 5 hours.
***
June 22, 2020
I want to be surprised here. I want to feel inspired here. I want to bleed with my words because I want to feel alive here.
Yesterday was tough. I did not feel alive and I was visited by old insecurities. Ones that have not visited me since I started writing here. I want to go into details but I am afraid to go into details. For a period I felt inspired by an otherworldly force, and there was a channeled quality to these journals, and to my life in general. Yesterday that all went away, and those days felt like a distant memory.
My body felt weak and my heart longed for a reality I feel undeserving of. I was alone for most of the day. It was Father's Day and Camille was with her father, and my father was out of town, and I am not yet a father, and that saddens me. It was beautiful outside but I had no gratitude for beauty. All I had was a summertime sadness.
I smoked a joint with someone I probably should have not smoked a joint with, and then I crashed. My body was depleted, and the daemon felt like he left me. All my thoughts were about failure. When I was in my early 20’s I went through a really dark period, and I was pretty depressed, and the subsequent years I felt like a loser, working at an uninspired normie career. It was only until my late 20’s, when I lost my mind and visited hell, that my life started to become interesting.
Those unlived years had a haunting quality to them, and their ghosts came for me yesterday. I feel better at the moment, and I want to pretend yesterday was not the case, and I do not want to write any of this. I sense a caricature of me has formed here. One that is fused with the daemon, who is always full of thumos, and is always creating awesome things. I do not want to write about the truth because I do not want to disabuse you of this caricature, because it feels good being thought of as this caricature.
There is some truth though, as there is an exciting aliveness about the Stoa, but I am concerned these journals have been an impressionistic red herring. I do not want you to feel my ugly side, I just want you to see my awesome side. I wonder how much my desire for adventure and romance and creating awesome things has to do with a simple matter of overcompensation from those unlived years.
I am listening to a Spotify playlist that recommends songs to discover. These algorithms get me, or maybe they are defining me, because at the moment it is one sad song after sad song. They are the type of sad songs that are not too sad, because they hint at better days ahead, and I want to double-click on those better days.
I have a desire to leave here with a sense that there will be better days. This is coupled with a competing desire to keep things unfinished and risk feeling ugly in front of you. There is an emotional knot forming and I do not have the will to untangle it, nor do I know if it needs untangling. I will end with no guarantee there will be better days, but with a hint that we could experience them together.
***
Gift Economy / The Stoa currently operates through a gift economy. We are offering the Stoa as a gift, for people to freely use during these troubled times. If you are inspired to provide a gift to The Stoa, email thestoa at protonmail dot com. Your gift can take the form of money, support, services or ideas. If you wish to gift money, you can do so here or here for ongoing gifts. If you would like to gift directly to our lovely facilitators and featured sensemakers visit this page.
I felt something similar. Partly due to my dads passing in October, I am now a fatherless child... Partly due to my attachment to what has been a very productive and life affirming time in lockdown.I now have go out into the world again with all its complications. I don't want to!!! Partly due because someone, one person out of all the people I teach, came out to me and said they couldn't understand the direction my work was taking. Because of my insecurities I have let this take me down and decided all I do must be crap. But this is a guy I helped recover from cancer and walk again. Plus I know he isn't doing this to hurt but inform...
Bonkers right ?