ED4AW - Stop Abandoning Yourself

30/06/2025 - Intro/Day 1

Welcome or welcome back to my blog!

A couple of days before I start my Each Day for a Week blog run, I'll do a lot of journaling to prepare and make sure I'm getting the best use out of the 7 days etc.

This blog was meant to be about discovering my creative process; a reliable creative method and success criteria for stuff I create. Cool!

It's not clear how this went from a blog about discovering your creative process to stop abandoning yourself, but I've written down everything I wrote down. And I can see how the two things are related, it's just not clear when and where the crossover happened.

I wrote down things like "it's important to have a child-like approach to creativity", and "Doubts are a very adult issue, because you don't know anything really. Only an adult would have the arrogance to think they can gatekeep their own creativity."

I wrote down all of the stumbling blocks and doubts that get in the way when I'm trying to be creative:

• It's going to be shit
• I'm going to be like all of the other tragic people who make stuff that's shit but don't realise
• It's started off shit and flat and underwhelming (I don't want to see the rest)
• I'M NOT SPECIAL
• My emotions are stuck in stasis, behind my face. Can't come out, refuse to be expressed

More from the original blog:

My issue is that I don't trust in my own process, or trust that I can follow through to the end of a process I.  am waiting for someone else to finish the job. 

I don't trust my own process to be successful so I look to other people. 

I feel that someone else can do a better job at making me feel like I am done becoming. 

The best demonstration of creativity is getting a reign on your own creative process.

I acknowledged that I'm way too harsh on myself and need to define success on my own terms. I don't hold space for myself, I instinctively shoot down a lot of things

Everything still felt a bit all over the place, I did this art therapy technique to help align myself but before I did, I jotted some things down:

I have a deep seated feeling that I am wrong and everything I do is wrong and it's almost like the space I live in is collapsing under the weight of this.

I was trying to be honest and confront things about myself..

The art therapy technique I use works by drawing a piece of art, and then interviewing it. One of the interview questions is What have you come to tell me?

This was the response:

Your life has been somewhat confusing and disorganised. You've had to hold multiple versions of the truth at once. One way of becoming more organised is organising your idea of success, not immediately dismissing ideas as wasted time just because don't match preconceived notions of success.

Really long way of saying I need to be less hard on myself.

The first step of having a more organised idea of success, is letting your version of success live, breathe, exist. It's about giving yourself permission to, and not letting it get crushed under the weight of the adult world's expectations.

You treat these small brave creative endeavours the way you would treat a child who is trying something new for the first time (I will be making a lot of references to how you would treat a child in this blog).

And this is how I should have been treated as a kid but I didn't get that, I am now having to make up for the shortcomings of my caretakers. Am I able to separate a child's way of thinking from an adult who knows better?

I feel like I spend a lot of energy trying to keep up with things that aren't keeping up me, that aren't factoring me in, that don't hold space for me. It is very draining!!

Where am I in this? Is not something I ask myself enough.

So I thought about holding space for myself, holding on to my good ideas, seeing them though to the end. There is obviously some inspired action in the beginning, why does this action eventually fall off?

I have a lot of orphaned creative ideas....

I asked myself "Do I have a history of not being allowed or able to stay the course?"

Did some more art therapy, same technique as before. There were themes of trying to keep myself dry, trying to keep myself safe. The response to that piece of art was this:

The whole world can't be dangerous, the whole world can't want to cut you like a knife. Preserve some softness for the parts of the world that want and need you, have faith and optimism in that softness, in the people that will be drawn to it. Nurture and nourish it, make it an important part of what you create.

My creative outlet is music believe it or not!! I watched some videos of people singing, didn't discriminate. I paid attention. There's a full loop happening, these people are connected to themselves.

I thought I must feel disconnected from parts of myself. I am hesitant to commune with them or acknowledge them.

And there must be parts of myself that are almost cordoned off. On an island within an island. And maybe I resonate with people who also don't want to connect with that part. We are avoiding the same thing. I don't know why I'm avoiding myself. I don't know how and where and why the internal breakdown in communication is happening. I've been conditioned to think avoiding myself is NORMAL.

I have been nurturing neglect.

My friend is a psychology expert, I was venting to her about all my stuff. She said it's important to keep checking in with yourself and with your body.

And I wondered, how frequently am I abandoning myself? Micro-abandoning.

I wrote in my journal that I'm discarding myself when I should be holding myself tighter, and bringing myself closer in. I'm thinking about closeness, tightness. Minimising the difference. Minimising the space you think you have to travel. Minimise can also mean reducing the significance of, in this context.

I avoid the world because I'm scared it's going to let me down, I'm scared things aren't as they seem. I find that dangerous about the world. My issue is that the world has let me down.

But when you avoid the world in the name of self preservation, you also avoid parts if yourself. The parts of you that can step up to catch you if you fall. The part that looks less to other people and how they might let you down. When you're always anticipating how the world might let you down, you are reinforcing that you are abandonable or let-downable.

When I'm looking to other people I'm not looking at myself, I'm not close to myself.

When you anticipate what people might discard about you, with fear, you start to avoid yourself.

My issue is that I am subconsciously trying to get closer to people by leaving myself.

And running after runners; I didn't realise this was something I was doing.

I say to myself when encountering runners "I know there's things missing from whatever you're offering me, parts you're skipping over. But I will willingly skip over them with you. Abandon myself. I've told myself that this is the toll for affection."

This is a real issue because why is my first instinct to emotionally grapple with the person rather than walk away?

When I try and paint myself as "everything someone could ever want" I am also, being left behind.

That's Day One over, and you know what I've realised? There is a risk of this even becoming an issue at work, I've just started the job, so expectations need to be set. We will see....

Day 2 01/07/2025 - Always Being Ready to Flee

First day of the month woo! It is super hot today.

This day I thought about honesty and imperfections. Creative success relies on me getting closer to myself and no longer running, I think.

Creative success will need me to develop a more intimate relationship with myself and stop running.

It sounds really sad, but I've always been skeptical of people who don't move in the other direction away from me. Skeptical of people who are drawn to me. Because I've been conditioned to think moving in the other direction is the route to success.

What is out there that I can't get at home? I wonder.

When my first instinct is to look outward, at how the world might respond, I think I am abandoning myself.

I thought about taking a step back from this urge to look outwards and treating myself and my ideas with some dignity. Fairly assess them once they've said all they've had to say. Why do I immediately cut them to pieces? It's like arresting someone without a trial.

And I think I should treat myself less like this as well, not just my ideas. Evaluating things in their own right instead of letting them collapse under the weight of the world.

I think a hallmark of creative success is leaving less and less of myself 'stranded' so to speak.

Resisting the urge to look away, can I fix my attention on myself and my ideas for them to say all that they need to say? For them to be judged in their own right? Instead of abandoning them...

It's a much slower order of magnitude.

And in resisting the urge to look away, to leave myself behind, I will encounter thoughts, feelings sensations that feel new. That's what I think.

Your thoughts, feelings and ideas are very articulate and have a lot to say if you can be strong enough to just sit and listen strong enough to resist the urge to move on.

Too much skipping and running away, not enough encountering.

When writing in my physical journal I realised that I am in another fight, flight or fawn loop. Abandoning myself and letting someone lese finish the story feels like the only clear opportunity to act.

When I outsource the finishing of my story to others, I am leaving myself with nothing. I think this is something that happens before the outsourcing in fact. If you anticipate you may have to leave your home at any moment you stop yourself from having strong attachments to your possessions.

There is nothing left for myself...

And because it's like the wiring in my brain is set up to do this, I am not checking in with myself that I'm at risk of abandoning myself. It all happens so fast. There are a lot of themes in today's post about slowing down and checking in.

Give your thoughts dignity

• If you are always rushing you don't grow attachments to your belongings
• Your thoughts and feelings are very articulate if you're strong enough to resist the urge to run away
• It's a much slower order of magnitude

That's minus points for wanting to run all the time; it rushes, and it skips steps. 

If I slowed down, abandoned myself less I could think a bit more about:

• Is this even worth it?
• What is so bad at home that you have to leave?
• What about all the things you're leaving behind?

I need to practice encountering myself...

I thought about being a bit more radical about how I encounter myself. Why do I always need to be ready to run? Why do I need to always keep my options open'? Where did I learn that was the best way to go about things? I'm not missing out on anything by closing some of these options down. 

I read this article written by the school of life. You can't stop running away from yourself, or the world, if you struggle with trust. I mentioned that my issues were caused by feeling like the world let me down. 

Learning To Trust Again - The School of Life

Day 3, 02/07/2025 - Cutting Corners

This day I thought about how one of the most dysfunctional things about abandoning yourself is that it rushes forward and cuts corners.

You aren't paying attention and you aren't checking in. I assume it's a nervous system thing. I've written a lot of blog posts about cutting corners, and not paying attention; oversimplifying.

One thing I do a lot which might be doing more harm than good is taking the moral high ground. This is good, this is bad, this is right this is wrong. I wonder if this sort of black and white thinking is what makes it so easy to flee from myself, what makes it feel normal. 

Everyone is living life for the first time, and will I die if I'm actually like 'this person is just doing the best they can with what they have?' It triggers me because I treat people as the light source in an avalanche, but perhaps there are better ones?

Maybe this moral high ground stuff is also contributing to parts of me being left behind....

People aren't good or bad everyone is somewhere on a continuum. 

Always being on the run from yourself is a horrible state to be in. Nothing should make you want to flee your own home, but it all happens so fast. There isn't the headspace to kind of 'calculate' if fleeing is even the best choice. It's like how animals in the jungle don't second guess fleeing too much. 

I'm not sure the issue is wanting to flee from myself, I don't think it's that I can't sit with myself. I think what makes me panic and not want to sit with myself is a type of social blindness?

It's like you're trapped in the snow after an avalanche and you don't know which way is up or down or out. And then someone pokes a hole and a bit of light comes in, but the light I'm using to know if I'm going in the 'right' direction has been self deprecating. 

Day 3 was kind thrown together, on to the next one.

Day 4, 03/07/2025 - Call, Response, Reward

It's so late as I'm writing this I'm super sleepy.

4 days in,  do I feel less like abandoning myself? I definitely feel like I' m taking it more seriously.

There is a 'structure' in music called Call and Response. One part plays, another part responds to it.

I feel like a lot of what we do and why we do it is an exercise in call and response. I could say it's dopamine, and your brains reward centres etc but I want to put more focus on the fact that it's kind of a dialogue? It's an exchange of information somehow. 

Like my call out into the world is that I am willing to leave behind a lot of things about myself if the price  is right, and the response I'm looking for is someone else acting as a place of refuge. 

This obviously sounds messy and messed up, but the main issues are that it's outdated and it actually doesn't work for me. 

Maybe a better approach is making it more internal, what are the calls and responses that are going on in just me? How do I signal to myself that I'm going in the desired direction?

Things that are outward facing and meant to make sense to the world tend to be a lot more on the nose...shallow. Maybe a more inwards facing process consists of icons, images, feelings sensations. When you are always abandoning yourself you're less likely to even be looking for these.

It's hard for me to associate anything good with being self referencing, but that might mean it's something to explore. 

Day 5, 04/05/2025 - You Have All The Language

From my iPhone:

Just don't ignore yourself, especially in favour of paying attention to other people. If you think they've got something to say imagine everything you have to say to yourself. 

Right from the source.

All intimate. 

If you don't know the Tik Toker Justin Scott, get to know. I'm going to reference two of his videos for Day 6, it's like they located me just so I could write this blog for real:

Trigger warning, if you're sensitive and not ready to unpack emotional trauma idk maybe you want to skip these or not watch the videos... I don't know !!!

Rescuing Your Childhood Self is Not Love - https://vm.tiktok.com/ZNdPrR96v/

You are trying to reparent yourself through someone else's suffering...

You don't want a partner you want to win the moment that broke you.. 

Looking for redemption for your childhood self...

People were never meant to carry the weight of your healing...

You will always confuse collapse for closeness..

Stop mistaking your pain for your compass..

Until you address your issue you'll keep encountering yourself (the same story)…

You've been serving as other people's emotional basement...

A lot of hard truths, but my main take away is that when we're running from ourselves we're really trying to get back to ourselves.

Stories of Invisibility - https://vm.tiktok.com/ZNdPMKEo7/

Love just feels like being good at not existing.

Presentable and not present and somewhere along the way you forgot the difference.

People aren't holding you they're holding the version of you that's tolerable, the one who knew how to disappear just enough to be kept.

You were never loved you were just managed. 

You get good at disappearing on time, at meetings on dates, in the mirror.

You weren't raised to become someone you were raised to endure someone else's fear of you.

Stop performing the version and honouring the silence beneath the silence... you will return. 

You don't need the lights (attention from others). 

An Adult is a child that remembers

And obviously playing invisible is  a way of keeping distance from yourself.

So good...let's continue.

When you're running away from yourself you can't be in dialogue with yourself. 

I wonder what someone who's in regular dialogue within themselves, speaks, sounds, acts like. 

This dialogue needs to be taken seriously and treated with reverence. 

And it's important to witness yourself without judgement. No added fluff or baggage. An absolute view instead of relative. And you do it like it's your job because it is your job.

I like the word dialogue, it has positive connotations. Two things meeting in the middle, understanding and encountering each other. Those things  are your intentions and how you end up executing on them. 

Things have been quiet/one sided for so long...

Speaking language dialogue is so important for today's journal post. Do you need other people's language to understand  the world? Can you be strong enough to use more of your own?

It's not even other people's language, it's mine with a filter. The filter is thinking What Would Other people think? |how might I minimise myself so that people can keep me? So that I am less of an intellectual inconvenience?

I don't want to run away from myself, or towards anything actually. I don't want to be unnecessarily in a hurry.

Day 6 05/07/2025 - Is Anything Going to Change After This Week? 

If we circle back to Day 1, I started this week because I wanted a more consistent creative process, or to be better able to follow through on ideas. I feel like I'm a bit better with that... I'm better at noticing the urge to look a way. I see my work more objectively I think.

I will sit with whatever I am...

And I'm willing to find out more about what that is. I am more committed. 

Ironically, I think being eager to nail down a consistent creative process might also be a from of running. Trying to save myself from something. The creative process part is fine and normal, the urgency though.. I don't know,  it feels like putting the running shoes on.

A more consistent creative process so that I have something to share with the world, dialogue with the world. I should be thinking about dialogue with myself first, then we'll see what's left for the world. 

When you take out the urge to run you can have an even, tempered dialogue. I wrote a song on the spot but on my first ever guitar and one of the strings will always be out of tune, so.. I don't think it's good enough to share. But I'm glad I was able to make it up on the spot and I'll get better at this. 

The song was actually called I will sit with whatever I am... and writing it, interpreting it, thinking of my experience of it, did feel like a back and forth, a dialogue, when I committed myself to not looking away.

For example, I say I will sit with whatever I am rather than whoever, this means I'm able to hold space for big big question marks about my identity... not even questions, just things that feel missing. Some of which are hard to describe with words.  Some of these things are question marks because I abandoned them (amongst other reasons),

Abandoning yourself leaves you poorer not richer, don't take refuge in others meanwhile you've left all your belongings somewhere else. 

I'm trying to reach the bottom of other people meanwhile I'm describing myself as a whatever, not trying to be harsh but it is something to think about. It just means you can't go as far of a distance with yourself and within yourself.

Day 7, 06/07/2025 - Conclusion

Abandonment, execution, reason to act.

So 8  days later, what has changed.

I'm noticing the urge to want to run off and leave myself behind, and that I actually have a say in whether I follow it. I'm noticing it in small things that I otherwise might not have picked up on.

I'm seeing it in things I used to let people get away with. And you know what it does take strength to no longer let things slide. 

I'm noticing whether my motivation to act is something that is pushing me towards myself or pulling me away from myself.

I'm less inclined to abandon myself because where would I go?

I thought about this tweet and how it covers off a lot of things I wanted to cover off this week:

When you're abandoning yourself, it's in a rush. It's an urge, it's an impulse. You're not thinking about what's going on.

You are desperate, desperate in the same way as someone who has fled their home and not had enough time to collect their belongings. When you have nothing you are desperate. 

Arriving somewhere has a certain amount of planning and intention behind it. You can't plan and be intentional if you cut down everything about yourself before they've gotten to make a case. Slow down, pay attention, treat everything about you with reverence, form a dialogue. 

That's it, if you reached then thank you for reading. 

 

ED4AW - Leaning Into Masculine Energies

 

Intro

Welcome back to the blog! Or Welcome if you’re new.

This topic feels extremely random, but my blog is all for experimentation and if nothing happens as a result of this I wouldn’t have lost much.

I’m going through a pretty terrible time at the moment. Mental health, terrible. Physical health, not great and also part of the mental health stuff.

I just felt stuck somehow, I couldn’t articulate the specific cause. I did some art therapy to peel back some of these layers.

A picture of a globe; or what appeared to be a globe, but with the land and the sea grouped into neat little boxes and buckets.

Is that why I feel so stuck? My idea of the world is that everything can go into neat little buckets? Everything can be described by sweeping associations?

It might be.. I thought about what could be happening in the gaps, and why I haven’t taken the time to explore this.

I’m missing out on all the colour and texture that exists there.

Then I thought “Exploring the gaps isn’t something I do, where do I even begin?”

It could start with me, I never ever think about the colour and texture that exists within me in secret.

I’m so busy simplifying, compartmentalising, putting things in boxes, making it ever easier to run on autopilot.

And not be in touch with things about myself.

A box is a boundary, a limit. Nos and nots. It’s more important to know what you aren’t than what you are.

Dominance, a more masculine trait I suppose, is not allowing yourself to be limited by a life of No’s and Not’s.

Thinking more about what you have rather than what you don’t have.

Instead of living a life where everything is sorted into neat little compartments, allow the sorting to be less neat. Let things flow like a current.

By the end of the week, I might realise that this hasn’t been an exercise is leaning into masculinity, but something else completely. It’s the first theme that comes to mind for now though.

Sorting things into boxes always requires a layer of abstraction, what if I want to experience things first hand? Especially things about myself. Why does it need to be put into a category that can be recognised by the world?

It loses some of it’s potency that way.

Day 1, 16/06/2025 - I’m No Better Than a Coke Addicted Rat

This wanting to sort everything into buckets is a compulsion, an urge. It isn’t very masculine to just give in to compulsion. It’s involuntary, I’m not expecting myself to change anything, but I’m getting better at noticing when it happens (it happens often).

What I will say is that empowered thoughts feel better, and are a better use of thinking. How your thoughts make you feel and how you would like them to make you feel has always matters. Be in touch with your body, resist the urge to take shortcuts by sweeping everything into large, overarching categories.

Encouraging yourself to be a bit less fatalistic about things… maybe this doesn’t need to go into this category, maybe there is another way. Keeping yourself open to possibilities. 

Not dragged in, optional, a choice. 

Today I thought about dopamine, reward, expectation, disappointment. My sensitivity to all of these things.

How a low prevalence of good things happening to you can rewire the circuitry of your brain.

I think the reward centres in my brain are set off by the sorting of things into buckets, or maybe the reward centres themselves are in buckets.. oversimplified.

When things don't go to plan, this reward system comes crashing down.

It's like suffocation.. suffocating your body's reward system. 

I have to try and not pool things into buckets, but instead let things flow as a constant stream. Like a drug addict, I have a physical dependency on this bucketing process. I may not be able to fight against it, but I can make sure to notice it. 

Day 2, 17/06/2025 - I Can't Take This Anymore

The world is very harsh. 

This day I was thinking about being truthful, and how accommodating another point of view is not 'delusional' , but actually truthful.

I also thought about a version of the world where certain things don't bowl me over, where there isn't such a strong pull to categorise and oversimplify things in a way that is compulsive and harmful.

What makes that version of me different?

I told myself I need to forgo making sense of the world, forgo grouping things into neat little buckets. Because the bucketing is leaving me with hurt feelings honestly... it makes me less likely to accommodate a more helpful perspective. 

Powerful perspectives like..

• This too shall pass
• Why should I let this bowl me over
• My brain is not used to feeling empowered so I should anticipate this being difficulty and give myself grace
• There is a lot of depth to me, and hence a lot of depth to accommodate a more nuanced perspective on things (rather than just positive bucket, negative bucket). 

On this day I wrote down "I have to be strong".

This day I thought about that quote "a chain is only as strong as its weakest link". 

This compulsion to put things into buckets, and fixate on them (this is a big deal and very very bad) is like focusing on one link in a chain at the expense of all the others. 

I thought about how its important to not spend too much attention on any one link. Don't let one bucket/link dominate the whole system. 

I also have to acknowledge that due to my life history, some buckets are bigger and have a larger drawing force than others. My only job is to acknowledge this and work on healing and repair. 

I still don't know if "Leaning into Masculine Energies" is the best name for this blog still, but I will say being dragged this way and that way, compulsively bucketing, conceding to this bucketing process, is not very empowered. It's not very masculine. 

Thinking back to this chain analogy, and being truthful. The truth does not pick favourites, being truthful means there isn't an immediate draw for something to go in any particular bucket.

When you stand in the truth of what is, rather than being drawn into any particular bucket you can ride the wave.. or something..

Day 3, 18/06/2025 - The Truth is Impartial

Yesterday I spoke about how my dopamine receptors are strongly tied to social mastery (or lack thereof!!!). The high of managing to bring someone who seems out of reach into the fold is incomparable. I don't think this is something I'm doing on purpose though, writing things out just allows me to see things for what they are. 

And I'm all fucked up now because in one way or another, these people are out of the fold. The process falls over a lot. This is the problem with oversimplification and putting things into sweeping buckets. You've categorised someone as being the hit that changes everything.

Because they are out of reach.

And when things fall over it's like setting off on a 100 meter sprint and having your eyes knocked out of your head mid race. 

Life doesn't work in sweeping categorisations and oversimplified association. But my brain is wired for life to work in that way. It's a coping mechanism, a way of managing a complexity. 

These sweeping association make it difficult to accommodate nuance. 

The Truth has multiple faces....If you reject the bad you also reject the good. Accepting that two things can be true at the same time is important, but that sort of thinking requires a certain level of mental headroom.

I feel like the capacity for nuanced thinking comes from not giving any one thing too much attention.. Not letting some buckets get too big with too much pulling force.

One way of seeing it is not just filling your mind with positive thoughts, but seeing negative things as the toll for positive things. You can't have the bad without the good. 

This is a more balanced way of seeing things. More balance means less huge buckets taking up all the head room.

I wrote down in my journal "so and so is ignoring me because I'm a non-entity and a dead end according to them, but what is also truthful, and related, is that I am great person."

This sounds crazy but feels correct...

Maybe bucketing was not helpful because it involves divorcing things from each other.. but I think that not only are these things not-separate, they are linked (are not-separate and linked the same thing??).

Bucketing and sweeping associations mean a lot of detail gets lost in the cracks. 

A more balanced view, acknowledges that the good and bad are not only not-separate, but they need each other. Things are not one sided. 

When you feel you are not appreciated or seen by others, remember this is married to ideas such as:

• You knowing you deserve a better life. 
• You knowing that you deserve happiness. 
• The uninitiated will not see good things about you, but you can do a better job of recognising them yourself. 
• People aren't going in the same direction as you.

When you spend less time dragging things into overarching, and sometimes harmful categories, you realise there is a lot of depth to yourself. Day to day we get glimmers of this, but many times we forget. When you acknowledge this depth, you don't need things to go a certain way. There isn't a dominance of one bucket over another. 

These lazy associations, and oversimplification, drain everything else. Leaves it all so empty. 

You end up still chasing that high because you think, I gotta make this work it's drained resources from everything else.

We gotta try and remember that the truth is impartial, everyone can join the party. Everyone get s a fair shot. Rather than pooling into buckets, there's an even stream.

Day 3 feels a bit like verbal diarrhoea, but if I had to summarise:

• When we compulsively put things into categories, sometimes in ways that harm us, it is almost guaranteed that smaller things, more helpful things (but without as much drawing power), are being overlooked. 
• When we're grounded in the truth of what is, we're less likely to think in huge, sweeping and unhelpful associations. One way of staying grounded in the truth of what is, is seeing the negatives almost as a toll  for the positives. They go hand in hand. they need each other, they explain each other. 
• If your brain's reward system is messed up, it's an physical thing. It's why some buckets have a big, strong pull. Give yourself the grace and compassion to work through this. 

Day 4, 19/06/2025 - An Invitation... An Opportunity!

Looking in my iPhone notes app, I can see I've written "I'm tired of wondering what's missing". 

Everything gets sorted into big sweeping buckets, overarching associations, most of the time not in my favour. And it makes me feel like, "What's left for me? What have I got?".

I wonder if this big feeling of something being missing, is a signal of some kind, a call to action.

I've been telling myself that positivity and negativity are twins, two side of the same coin. It goes both ways. 

The tension, the struggle, the reason I'm writing this is that there are parts of me that are demanding attention. That feel they deserve attention. When certain buckets are being given all the attention and mental resource, they are signalling to you that they are deprived. They need you to acknowledge them. 

Your worst enemies know this, if you've ever pushed against adversity you know this. The good and bad are welded together. They wouldn't be able to give you grief if you didn't possess greatness.

The world will not do it for you. The world is not good at looking after people actually. 

If something negative is drawing all your attention, there are positive things that you demand back your attention to nourish. I think it's a type of aggression, it feels like a masculine. Call back your power, and recognise you're strong enough to hold on to it. 

That's day 4, the week started off with me realising that it's not helpful to give some things extra attention, especially if it's hurting me. Today I realised that I have to demand my attention back. No one is going to do it for me.

One bucket is definitely holding out for someone to save me, but I have realised:

The world does not have a good track record of looking after people. You are worthy, you are powerful, you are loved.

Day 5, 20/06/2025 - Don't Let Nobody Trick You Out of Your Spot

Focus on the places and things that leave something for you, not that stuff that takes everything and leaves you with nothing. These are bottomless pits. Or pits that gear us up to think there is something when really there is nothing or very little. 

The automatic categorisation and bucketing and not considering the in-between is something I do a lot. I'm too busy looking down bottomless pits, for other people to give me meaning. For evidence that I am done becoming. It means I'm not seeking out meaning for myself. 

When you have a history of being dominated, you look everywhere else for meaning. You look compulsively. Everywhere but within yourself and where you currently are. 

I thought about the word sovereignty, it means to reign above. It is something that we think of as being more masculine. Don't get dragged into the pits, and don't let anyone distract you from what belongs to you.

I thought about other things that belonged to me, my anger. I didn't let it get pulled into pits of meaning and compromised. I realised I wasn't annoyed enough about a situation. When you pour everything into puts there isn't much left for you. 

I was annoyed because I put someone on a pedestal. I  firmly believe that when we see good in someone we're really seeing the good in ourselves reflected back to us. That made me angry. 

Mistaking an imposter for the real deal. I was thinking why am I going the long  way round when I could experience this directly? Imposter, trick etc are the key words here because as you're bucketing and oversimplifying, you're leaving yourself with nothing and hence you kind of feel like nothing. But this is not true.

I went to my friend's art therapy exhibition, many art therapists work with non verbal patients and it was a refreshing way to be reminded that even when it seems like there's nothing to someone, there's something and more.

This is a key trait of the human spirit, to always push through. To always try and communicate that there is something here...

I'm thinking about the word sovereignty again. I want to keep it separate from the word autonomous, or self sufficient.

I wrote down in my iPhone notes app that happiness is a choice, but you have to make it easier to make that choice. What makes it easier? Reigning above, not getting dragged down into pits with nothing at the end of them. 

Day 6, 21/06/2025 - Some of These More Helpful Buckets are Other People

"Everything makes sense here, because I've got it all with me". This is something I wrote in my iPhone notes app, I think it's again making a case for not getting dragged into bottomless buckets, just because it's something my brain is used to. 

I also wrote down "All parts of my story belong to me." Probably related. 

I thought about the impression I leave on people, positive ones. What's left to pour into those buckets? I am asking the important questions now. This is a work in progress.

I went to a party on Saturday, and my friend was telling me how our other friend was going to nominate him for an award. I was smiling so much I could feel it in the back of my head. What about that bucket?

My other friend was telling me about how I left a good impression on some people she knows, they saw and recognised me. That was nice.

Maybe instead of chasing bottomless pits I should respond to things that respond to me. Things that actually hold an impression upon being pressed. 

Maybe for a time I was blind to myself, maybe I still am. I was perhaps feeling my way through everything, not getting or expecting a response for long stretches. I don't know.

Day,  22/06/2025 - Conclusion (You Need To Be Witnessed)

Leaning into masculine energies.. do I do feel this is an appropriate name for the blog? Maybe, it is definitely about feeling like something is missing but at the same time knowing I have it. Could be a consequence of being single for a long time, I don't have a man but I'm half a man or whatever. I felt like I was missing something right before my eyes. Maybe I am the other half that I've been looking for or rather, I've never actually needed to look for it. This might be a blog about feeling whole.

Maybe this blog has been about recognising myself: nothing moves as gracefully as something that recognises its own weight.

Avoiding the bucketing gives you more to pour, and more to pour into (more helpful things too!).

But the bucketing and oversimplification, makes you shallow about other people. It makes you shallow about yourself especially. 

You tell yourself "if I can't put it in a bucket it doesn't make sense and it doesn't matter."

It causes like a monopoly of power, certain parts of yourself don't get  say. This is the same issue that non-verbal, and marginalised people may face. If the world can do it to these groups, people can do it to themselves. 

Every part of us has a story to tell, even the overlooked ones., 

There is an urgent and suffocating quality behind not having a voice. It forces people to oversimplify, and over categorise, and lose all the colour and texture that happens in the gaps of our lives. 

You need to be your own witness, how else will we be able to articulate the colour and texture that happens in the 'gaps' of our lives? We need witnesses, and it hurts when there aren't any. It hurts especially when we refuse to be the witnesses to our own lives due to trauma. 

That's the end of the blog! If you got this far, thank you for reading.