Ysiad

todo::
* 30 minutes on the programming tutorial Did over an hour
* Day One of journaling about Grief/Sadness/Regret & Depression

habits::
* Meditation – Day 681
* Journaling – Day 24
* Yoga – Day 23

reflections:: 5:06pm. The past couple days have been long and packed. Made some personnel changes that resulted in me being extremely busy. So one of the things I’m proudest about is that in spite of the fact that I was too occupied with urgent matters to journal as long as I’d have liked to yesterday morning, or at all today, that I still journaled each day.

Yesterday was still on apathy, and something I found myself thinking about was how we can increase our motivation to act – so we move in the face of helplessness and hopelessness – by increasing the focus we have on being in the moment and feeling. When we’re reflecting on a past situation, the past stays the same, but when we’re feeling our feelings in the present – even if they’re caused by the past – the feelings change and our temptation to be stuck in apathy resolves itself.

Today is day one of journaling about grief though. I’m curious about the insights that will come from thinking about/ reflecting on grief. Grief is another one of those feelings I have mixed opinions about and avoid.

Why? I’m scared of seeming weak for being in grief about something. Why? Perhaps there were times when I was younger that showing vulnerabilities meant that I’d be teased for those shown vulnerabilities. Perhaps I looked down on someone who grieved and I was scared of coming across the same way. I am sure I can think of times my mom was grieving, since she dealt with depression, and I didn’t want to be like her. Because she would often talk about her problems to people and lacked the social awareness necessary to tell that she was being overbearing. There’s an amount of sharing that’s appropriate. And then there’s the amount of sharing that my mom did. And I could see how being exposed to that would make me averse to sharing myself, since I didn’t see it play out that people would express grief or sadness and then move on. What I saw was my mom get stuck in depression. And since my mom was depressed and kids take things personally, I’m sure there’s a part of that dynamic that contributed to shame just for me existing, but related to this level of state, I could see how I’d be extremely scared of depression and be extremely avoidant of grief and sadness. I just said out loud to myself: “It’s ok to feel grief. It’s ok to feel sad. Regret & depression are things it’s ok to feel scared about.” Now, “There are parts of grief, parts of feeling sad, parts of regret and depression that make life richer. They are a part of the human condition.” As I say those things, I don’t feel the resistance that I anticipated I would feel. I’m finding that quite interesting. OK, time to do other things for the evening. Will go and get a document notarized and then go to dinner.