Day 1, 16/02/2026 - Intro
Hello, and welcome to my blog or welcome back.
This week's topic might be a mix of several topics. I will work it out as the week progresses. The first angle then, is this:
"Be objective about the things and resources in your life. Treat yourself like you would a sim, or a pet. How would you optimise for happiness and satisfaction?"
The second angle: "Treat yourself and pour into yourself the same way you do for other people. You are also people."
The final angle for now "People have made it hard for you to see yourself, you need to see yourself more objectively. Stop downplaying your gifts and your skills. Stop letting people walk around in your authority, stop giving it over to them."
One of the common themes with all of these is that it's one rule for you and one rule for everyone else... and worst of all this isn't even done in your favour. You could probably do this in your favour, maybe that a good thing. Maybe that's the other end of the spectrum... extremes are usually bad, moderation is usually good.
Another theme is seeing clearly, or clearer. My vision is blurred. I think of myself and it's unclear symbols, so much of when I look at myself is other people. I set it up this way on purpose as a coping mechanism, but it also makes me angry that so much of my identity is surviving other people. I don't think you can see clearly that way.
It's Monday morning. This is a great topic, I think. I don't know what I'm meant to be doing though.
Some art therapy, trying to understand why I can't see myself and how this started.
I am choosing the colours, black and dark blue. It's an octopus, under the sea. Okay!!
Let's ask the art some questions.
Who are you? I lurk because it's safer, I'm formless and unseen because this works better for me. I do not need my identity anchored in anything.
Where did you come from? Life did this to me, this was the best option.
What do you need? Maybe for someone to recognise, that not being tethered down to an identity, is an identity?
What have you come to tell me? Fortunately, or unfortunately, the nature of your internal world is deep and obscure. This is a fact. Maybe there's something about meeting yourself at these depths (or re-meeting, as this is something I used to do when I was younger). There's something about meeting yourself at these places instead of handing it off to other people. There's something about becoming curious about it. They won't understand what it is. You're expecting to bond with someone over something you saw in each other's dreams, that's not how things work.
I want to say this links quite nicely to the 3 angles I mentioned before:
"Be objective about the things and resources in your life. Treat yourself like you would a sim, or a pet. How would you optimise for happiness and satisfaction?" - This is practically, how I would go about meeting myself at all my depths and what I should be optimising for when I do it.
"Treat yourself and pour into yourself the same way you do for other people. You are also people." - When you see the best in people or whatever, it's actually revealing and intimate part of your own inner world which you need to get curious about and bring colour to.
"People have made it hard for you to see yourself, you need to see yourself more objectively. Stop downplaying your gifts and your skills. Stop letting people walk around in your authority, stop giving it over to them." - You lack clarity so you try and see yourself through other people's eyes. We ought to see ourselves through our own eyes.
Dark, hidden, lurking. I don't want to see myself. it's safer to see myself through other people. It might be the case that I'm dragging people down to depths which I have not encountered on my own yet. I don't know, before we hope to take people to the depths with us maybe we need to give these depths language, meaning, symbols. Maybe we'll realise we don't need to be with anyone with us to see them clearly then.
I need to try trusting my own eyes, when it comes to how I see myself. This 'ability' may have been terrorised out of you; distorted pacing and ruined internal clocks, patchy memories, over significant on the wrong things, under significant on the right things. I believe change can happen; it's only day 1.
I was going to save the rest of the writing for tomorrow, day 2, but I write about this stuff to feel better and I need to feel better right now unfortunately. Something I wrote in my iPhone notes app:
"Thinking about depth; for a feeling, a wound, a trigger, to still be relevant all the years later, it has covered a lot of ground to finally reach you. Why and how is it still showing up now? This wound probably doesn't have words to get to you with. It is up to you to give it symbols, colour, dimensions, things it did not have at the time of its inception."
Sticking with the underwater theme, I pictured myself as that octopus at the bottom of the ocean. Something pushing me to make contact with the world above the sea. That octopus is maybe a younger version of me, me at my most raw.
Why have you covered so much ground to meet me?
I can't pull people down to the depths, I can't say to people "meet me here".
But I can meet myself. Part of me just wants someone to walk with them along the journey. They want someone to see how we got here and see that the journal is valid.
So, when do I start optimising for happiness and treating myself like a sim? When do I start putting in the work so I can see the world more clearly? I don't know, that's enough for day 1 though.
Day 2, 17/02/2026 - It's Over Before it Starts
Broken clocks and broken routines. Need to correct them, that's what this sim needs.
Because somewhere in my mind, it feels like all has been lost before we've even had a chance to start.
This sim needed to do some breathing exercises before they woke up because they felt panicky. This sim is used to feeling panicky in the morning because they dreaded every day and no one was ever there to protect them and make it easier; I realised this when I did the exercise from yesterday about threads tethering my past experiences to my current reality.
This sim needed me to get up and sit at my laptop for a bit instead of going straight onto my phone.
Being loved at great depths is not something someone else can do for you, and you can't easily do it for other people. You need to do it for yourself.
This sim needs water.
I had a dream about a friend of mine in my house. Dreams about people I know in my house often reflect my relationships with them, and where the person might feel vulnerable (I think).
I've been having a lot of dreams recently about trains, transit, going places. This one also had this. but I was getting a bit lost, I guess.
I think this dream was trying to tell me to preserve some mental energy for myself in my relationship with this person. There is a risk I'm getting sucked into their stuff.
And what does this have to do with looking after my sim and optimising for happiness?
Scrawlings from my physical notebook:
I tell myself "I'm getting sucked in but I can handle it". I must insist to myself that I can handle it otherwise I'm weak. Otherwise.. I'm scared of what it could mean otherwise.
I could have had something I wanted really badly, if I was just stronger. If I was more competent at handling hard emotions.
"You just don't want it bad enough."
But in love and life you must acknowledge when the price isn't making sense anymore. When the uncomfortable feelings and wanting to withdraw are reasonable.
Therefore what might I have gotten wrong about looking after this sim?
First of all, taking a 1-dimensional, oversimplified view of things. Why take shortcuts?
Love requires seeing things fully, and clearly. Love also makes it easier to see things clearly and fully. I don't think you are acting in love unless you do this. I believe you are instead trying to bend reality to your will. It's probably fine in other contexts, but not so much in our relationships with other people and ourselves.
Attempting to bend reality is one of the few ways those of us who have been left helpless at some point, know how to feel like we're having any influence on reality. That we aren't completely at the world's mercy.
I saw a video that said if you just stay in one place things will come to you. This probably works well if you're a street vendor, but I am a human and I want to be moving and keep moving. I don't want to wait. I don't want to strip the richness away from life so that I have a still image to focus on, some sense of control, so that I eventually encounter the subject of this image.
I want to see things clearly and love fully. I want to see things fully and love clearly.
This sim needs to consider all sides of a story not just the convenient or familiar ones.
If you feel that someone can't meet you somewhere, make sure you meet yourself there. First by acknowledging that your feelings are justified. Meet yourself there, don't expect other people to come down to meet you, and don't attempt to drag them down to these depths.
It's a subtle shift from "I should be better at dealing with difficult emotions" to, "things would be way nicer if they were this way, but more importantly I understand why I want them to be this way". This way you're meeting yourself, you aren't alienated from your own feelings.
Does the suffering come from internalising the idea that you don't deserve for things to be nice how you would want or expect? Or perhaps it's your fault that they aren't?
The struggle isn't from not getting the things I want. The struggle is from wrangling with the idea that our fault we aren't getting the things we want so we have no right to be bothered by this.
It's especially damaging when we take this kind of responsibility for things completely out of our control.
This sim needs to hear that they don't need to be okay with everything.
Day 3, 18/02/2026 - Seeking Out Sunshine
Each morning, this sim is searching for its own personal sunrise. Thinking about the nature of light, how it behaves. Sometimes I project this search onto things that don't even emit light, hoping they start to.
Looking for light bright enough to reach me at all of my depths. Looking to be led, looking for guidance. Something to turn towards.
Maybe these are traits that I really want for myself. Leading is risky, leading is vulnerable. Leading requires being brave. Leading might make you sad and lonely. It's not something I want to do. I admire people that do it anyways. I admire people who do not force but allow this trait to well up in them naturally.
I think about the stories people tell themselves that allow this to happen, I think about how I've lost touch with my own.
Leadership leaves an impression, leadership is being able to make people pause. Life is always moving but leadership provides a static image, an anchor. I need to recognise this trait in myself, lest I over-recognise it in others.
Day 3, I don't know what I'm writing. I feel like total crap, because of the state of the world. It's getting to me on day 3. I'm angry.
This week is also about getting familiar with all my layers, like someone would get familiar with a book they'd read a bunch of times. The chapter I would direct myself to on day 3, is something around this:
Yes, you feel like you have all these layers. You feel like different parts of you have been packaged off and given to all of the world, you're wondering how much of these layers you personally have for yourself. Perhaps you've told yourself that other people would do a better job with them. But everyone's doing a fuck all job and I'm absolutely fed up with it. I'm not blaming them, I gave myself away, I take responsibility, not blame, but responsibility.
People cannot reach me at these depths, maybe I am trying to position them or act like they're not as deep as they are, but I am left unsatisfied. People can only meet me part way, this is no one's fault.
What does this sim need?
To be told it's not too far down. To believe that I don't need someone else down here to prove it's hospitable. I'm down here.
But it hurts down here, it's lonely. It's vulnerable. These sound like the traits of leadership I described earlier.
People can't meet me down here, I have to be with myself, at all these layers, every single day. Present.
Day 4, 19/04/2026 - My Sim is Precious, but I always forget
You are precious, this life is precious. The things that have hurt you the most in world are conscious of this, somehow.
I want to be non-reactive but I don't know how. I want to decide what is special enough and important enough. I would ask this sim, can you leave anything alone?
No one ever makes me feel important enough. Maybe this is because I don't consider anyone important enough, including myself.
I don't need anyone to hold it because I'm looking after it.
I don't have to give it away if I own it myself.
Not sure what 'it' is, hopefully I find out what it is before the end of this week.
I spoke the day before about leadership, and it's coming up on day 4. We don't see what leads people, it's mysterious. That's why it's alluring, it's like a question mark, and the brain doesn't like leaving things unresolved.
Maybe this question mark is somewhere we just can't meet people, maybe we need to meet ourselves and find our own. Get more acquainted with what leads us.
This sim needs to be reminded that you don't lose anything when you stop romanticising things and see them clearly, because nothing belongs to us. Love wants to own nothing, love wants to see clearly, love doesn't ascribe more worth to any particular part of the story above another.
Speaking of seeing clearly, I thought of reality as a type of antidote. The antidote to the affliction of romanticising things.
Speaking of romanticising things, I'm thinking about fasting. Fasting is about identifying false idols. False leaders. It made me wonder what I'm actually hungry for. It made me wonder, if I'm fasting now what was being previously fed?
Fasting means you're swapping out false idols for a daily dose of presence. It's meant to remind you of something we ought to have known all along, that this presence is actually enough. It's meant to be anyways.
Fasting, being non reactive to something, to what? I wonder what is starving now? What was previously being fed? I don't know, it's time to do some art therapy.
I have drawn it, no idea what it is. Just colours and shapes. As a reminder, this art was prompted by the idea that terrible feelings of feeling unsafe, and unstable, are actually feeding something. Some part of my brain wants more of it.
Who are you? Dance, play, colours, light, motion. Things you've incorporated into your life, all your life.
Where did you come from? A conflict that part of you keeps daring yourself to resolve. Taunting. You said this would be enough, you said you would build a life that is enough, you keep doubting. I will never stop calling you out for it.
What do you need? To not mind looking like a fool. To acknowledge that there will always be a risk that my life might mean nothing or be completely bowled over, but choosing to engage with dance, play, colours, light, motion anyway.
What have you come to tell me? You need to starve that part of you that says, "it might not be worth it, then what will do you?", I wouldn't have lost anything. I will still have everything. I believe in my ability to have everything, I believe that all I need is my daily dose of presence. Life is beautiful and I will fight to recognise this everyday, and if I'm not great at doing this right now I will believe in my ability to get better at it.
Day 4 is feeling a bit all over the place like spaghetti. I think I need to fast my fear of losing. That is what's being fed when I engage in "What if what if what if" or wonder if what I'm doing in my current reality might not be enough because "there may always be better choices to make".
All over the place like spaghetti.
If I can lose it, I never needed it.
Day 5, 20/02/2026 - I don't know, do you?
When I can slow down my mind, I have way better ideas about all this stuff. Here is what I wrote in my physical journal, might have some embellishments but pretty much like for like. It still explores themes of encountering your depths, accommodating them. Giving them shape and language, acknowledging that people can't meet you at all of your depths.
My biggest area of development is not impersonating people enough.
Instead of thinking "it would suck if I fell", after seeing someone fall. I ought to think "how would it feel for this person to fall, if I was them instead of me".
"What would they say about this from their own point of view?"
I give myself a voice all the time, but never other people.
I wonder, therefore, how I've ever been able to relate to anyone or their projections; how they want to be perceived. What they're putting out. Consider that play is a very important developmental milestone for children.
A type of awareness that allows you to imagine yourself as another. I think of people in images, I never imagine what they're inner monologue might sound like. I know not every person has one, but I do so this is how I should be relating to people.
I normally have 3 'flavours' of internal monologue. Good, bad, and 'like myself'. Bad is giving fear, especially fear of the unknown, a voice. Wondering what it might say, giving it a voice over other actual people that I know. I relate to it because part of me feels there is something in common with this fear, something true about it, part of me feels like the truth of this fear is a core part of its identity.
I need to encounter this part, accommodate it. Give it shape, texture, colour. Acknowledge its backstory as real, and valid.
The part that related to those fears, doesn't always have words. It's intimate... and not everyone can meet us at that place.
And speaking of inner monologues, and parts of us resonating with fear... The feelings are real and justified in the moment, as much as possible yes, but the moment will pass.
This process, feeling a fear. Knowing this is probably internal monologue coming from an unknown source. Fear is often fear of the unknown. This unknown source reflects a part of me that I've become alienated from, that doesn't have a voice. "I want someone to relate to me", it says. I think the work is to tell its story and being open to all mediums.
Day 6, 20/02/2026 - You Will Always Have Problems but You Need New Problems
Straight from the iPhone notes, maybe with some embellishments:
Healing doesn't mean never having problems, but maybe it means being able to overcome new ones. I'm in a revolving door of past problems and maybe I'm sick of it.
I want to go through a door to somewhere else, choose a new model, a new paradigm.
Revolving door; part of me wants unequivocal evidence that I have evolved enough, and feels it isn't getting it.. and back through the revolving door I go, it never quite feels enough like a win.
I said to myself "I could try assuming I've evolved enough and recognising new evidence, maybe."
Deciding to be biased towards x and against y... but I'm scared, I'm hesitant, I'm not ready.
What does this sim need? To not let myself roll into oblivion, to know that when it comes down to it, people around me will not allow that to happen.
I acknowledge that this was allowed to happen when I was younger, but those times are over. I wish I could pass through a normal door instead of going round and round through a revolving one.
Day 7, 22/02/2025 - Conclusion
Part of me fears there's always a sinister plot to diminish me, that I have to fight to be human. This has felt like a type of violence, this is a feeling I've been familiar with my whole life.
Today I'm thinking about leaving things alone, I'm thinking about signals. Does leaving things alone with grace signal to your brain that you've on from the revolving door to a door you can actually pass through? Maybe it's all about trust.
It's been a long week but also a very short week somehow. I had to go to the top of this blog and remind myself what I was even meant to be writing about:
- "Be objective about the things and resources in your life. Treat yourself like you would a sim, or a pet. How would you optimise for happiness and satisfaction?"
- The second angle: "Treat yourself and pour into yourself the same way you do for other people. You are also people."
- The final angle for now "People have made it hard for you to see yourself, you need to see yourself more objectively. Stop downplaying your gifts and your skills. Stop letting people walk around in your authority, stop giving it over to them."
1.
"Be objective about the things and resources in your life. Treat yourself like you would a sim, or a pet. How would you optimise for happiness and satisfaction?"
If I'm honest I could have done better with this, or been more consistent. But then maybe I should be less hard on myself. I am the best care taker I'm ever going to have. I thought about meeting myself at all of my different lengths and layers. Some of these feelings have travelled a really long way to get to me, I try not to make rash decisions based on the very intense ones. Especially, if the intensity doesn't quite match the situation. This is a signal in the dark for me, that I need to sit and listen.
- It's a chore to stay connected to me
- Everyone leaves.
- No one will let me in.
- I have to fight to be considered human.
They are true for some part of me, this part wants to speak its truth. This story has travelled a long long way otherwise I would have left it behind. I have left many stories behind.
How do I respond as the best caretaker I have ever had and probably ever will have?
I have to do something I have never done in my whole life; be the adult role model I didn't have.
I was stuck in circumstances I hated and wasn't sure when I would get out of, and part of me still feels trapped or in some sort of prison.
I’m technically writing this on day 8, and I’m thinking about time travel. If there’s a version of me that feels stuck, how do I get in touch from the future?
Two ideas that helped me think more constructively about this;
That sometimes, time can travel backwards. Didn’t they confirm this at CERN or something?
I have been sending my past self a care package from the future, that’s what kept her going. That was her source of sunshine, when things were dark and bleak.
“Intuition is memory from the future”.
2.
The second angle: "Treat yourself and pour into yourself the same way you do for other people. You are also people."
I must acknowledge that this week, I did not make too much progress on this point, because it is hard. I am alienated from myself. Yes, I am people, but I am people that I want some space and distance from. My feelings around feeling like I'm not being taken seriously, feeling like a fool, feeling like someone doesn't have a stake in whether or not I feel diminished, is a violent, and angry feeling. It has sharp fangs, I want to get away from it. I suppose it's very human to have parts of ourselves we want to get away from. I let it come, I let it leave. I don't break my life into pieces about it.
Feeling distinct from other people, might come from not accepting my own feelings as normal-human-feelings, and outsourcing the work to other people. There was an urgency to outsource these feelings, to reject them. To leave them behind and go be with everyone else away from them. How could I begin to treat myself like everyone else, whilst in this mind frame? Very difficult I think.
Is this a long way of saying "You can pour into yourself the way you would with everyone else by just rejecting yourself less."? Too easy.
Anyways,
Part of me said: "This feeling cannot be allowed to exist."
And another part of me said "Well it does lol."
Part of me said "There's no way I can feel this bad without something being immediately done about it."
I listen... I want to take these more insecure feelings seriously, but I don't want to lose access to reason in the process.
Things that diminish us, make us doubt our perception of reality. They corrupt our pacing, our interpretation of pace. I wonder how these more vulnerable parts of me, these rawer feelings, would react/respond if I reminded them:
"You have more time than you think."
"No one else is here, we are safe right now, and we aren't on anyone else's schedule."
I would have loved to feel like I had more time to deal with stuff back then, but it was unstable all the time. I felt like a marble on a piece of card, everything was conspiring to tip the card over and allow me roll into oblivion, and it was urgent and pressured and awful.
The problem isn't any of this stuff, it's feeling the same despite my circumstances being different. Despite me investing many years and a lot of hard work to make my circumstances different.
I had to overreact, I had to go into my own abstraction of the world, I had to make sure none of that stuff never happened to me again, lest I roll off the world into oblivion.
3.
The final angle for now "People have made it hard for you to see yourself, you need to see yourself more objectively. Stop downplaying your gifts and your skills. Stop letting people walk around in your authority, stop giving it over to them."
My first thought about this, is seeing me and my normal-human-feelings, as a town or a commune. Things work how they're meant to, work all together. Yes, there are things we wish were different, but we make improvements where we can and accept everything else as they are. This made it easier to be in the posture of accepting myself, seeing things clearly, denying the urge to act and break and change and disrupt.
Corruptions in pacing, distortions in time, also probably make it hard to see things clearly. I'm working on my career, but I still feel like a kid. I encounter a new situation but still am scared it will be like situations from the past.
I think this point relates well to becoming more familiar with or my depths, not immediately offering these depths up to the world. Not everything about me should be up for consumption, and I don't need anyone else to taste it to know that it's safe. I'm down here, it's safe.
It's been a lot of writing this week, so after reading back all 7 days this is what I have to say:
Scared of encountering myself, I feel dangerous and like I'm too much or chronically not enough. But this signals to what I should practically be doing to optimise this sim for happiness. I need to encounter myself at these depths before offering up anything to anyone else or considering what anyone else is doing.
Love is accepting my 'town', my life my reality for what it is.
Don't overcomplicate articulating what these depths are, surely you can ask the question. What is bothering you? Optimising for this sim's happiness means becoming a better listener.
A more attuned listener, when I try and pick out which of these depths need attention, thought like this come up:
- I make bad decisions
- I don't deserve nice things
- I am delusional
- I might look like a fool
I'm thinking about how much any of this correlates with reality. Perhaps they correlate with something else. Another place, where does reality physically live? Ids this getting too abstract?
Maybe that's why EMDR is so effective, it works by tracking where your eyes look when you're recalling memories or something right? Anyways, too abstract. The best I can do for this idea, is acknowledge again that feelings are real and valid and perhaps intense in the moment but the moment passes.
Love is plain, clear, lets things pass through it. Love doesn't hold things up. Love is fine being this way.
I want to get away from myself so bad. I was like to myself "You have more time than you think." and this allowed me to feel safe enough to acknowledge that I don't want to be with myself
Encountering your different layers is a continual practice. Are some of frustrations coming from thinking that doing it a couple of times is enough and to leave it at that?
I don't want to be anywhere near you - now we can start encountering some more layers.
I see this feeling: "I don't want to be anywhere near you"... but I also see a part that insists on living its life with dignity regardless of everything. Resilience.
One part says: I don't want to be anywhere near you".
Another says; "lol you're not going anywhere".
"Encountering myself at all these depths." - the key having something to offer myself, or respond with when I get down there. Sometimes this is just acknowledging that the difficult feelings are valid. Walking side by side, down the path it look to go from the initial industry to your current state, This is in addition to acknowledging this is a continual practice. I can offer myself resilience, someone to trust, someone who offers acceptance. Encountering yourself at all your different layers means bringing together two worlds a concealed one and a bold one.
Maybe being neglected makes you forget this is a continual practice.
I don't know. No more writing now.
If you go this far, thanks for reading.
