Personal Diary / Journal - art, addiction and a whole lotta love

2020 Mar 13 Friday

Today i started out with half an hour between puffs but resumed the 20 minute cycle for the morning instead, mornings are when i feel the most intense desire for cigarettes.

Today is shower day. I hope there's hot water.

The scale is showing the same weight for a few days, even though i'm keeping within my 1970 calorie limit. Must be the lack of exercise. I should be doing 10k steps. I normally did like 2-3k but now in this self-imposed quarantine, not so much. I should be using the stepper but i'm not. Anyway, i think the scale needs a fresh battery, it's impossible to weigh the same for days and days. I noticed it works in larger increments.

So much for boring the crap out of you, but this is what's up with me right now, so deal with it. It's a diary, not a well-composed work of art.

Time to watch some dance videos.

[..] turns out i'm not in the mood for dance videos. Let's see if chess works out better. Hmm, or better yet, some pure waiting. I'm a bit restless, which would point out to some mind/body practice while waiting. The restlessness i think comes from a desire to touch myself and the smoking discipline. But i've been on this road before and pleasing myself doesn't relax me in these situations. On the other hand, spending some sexy time with Baby Love would.

She says sitting around the house doesn't make her jittery yet, but she estimates it will, sooner or later. We are prepared to go out at night, when there are no people around. We'll see. Now it's time to do nothing in particular. You know what that means, right folks? Mind/body practice starting from scratch since i'm not in the mood to move. Let's see what becomes.

[..] i showered and listened to some of my recordings and danced a bit. A restlessness persists. I guess it's the cigarette sparseness that causes it. Some of the anxiety is having to smoke at fixed times, it's tiresome to have to get up over and over again with no real drive to smoke. I have to implement the option to skip, or develop a system where i can have more time in between puffs, but no less than 20 minutes. How to do this in the simplest way possible? Maybe using a stopwatch? Yes, that'll do the trick, not the timer. Thankfully, i have both on my phone, i don't think either eats up much battery.

[..] started the stopwatch game, we'll see how it goes. I would like a separate device for this, but my phone will have to do. I have the desire to do stuff, listen to an audiobook, read, play one of my musical instruments, all the things that are permitted before 2pm, but i have a strong suspicion, knowing myself, that none of these activities will bring much satisfaction. So i want to do none of them, just sit or lay down and listen to some music so that i don't become needy of silence. This is somewhat of an effort to make myself get used to some constant level of anxiety and not want to hole up, be addicted to peace and quiet. Even though i have no job or children, my life is somewhat full of small challenges, i like to push myself and get better, and hopefully not go down the psychosis road again. For this i need to be able to find inner peace, even in stressful situations. Like now, when i feel restless. Writing makes it easier, allow me to sit for a while and see what this anxiety is all about and how to tackle it.

[..] normal music made me feel uneasy, so i switched to field recordings. I decided to start a series of field recordings, although now that i say it, the amplitude i think is a lot smaller, i just put my recorder in the living room and let it record everything, with the window open so will seep in some sound from outside. Maybe tomorrow i'll place it in the middle of our home to pick up sounds from both rooms equally. I don't think i'll make these long recordings public, just post them privately for our own listening pleasure. I think it's appropriate during this time of quarantine. Maybe it would be appropriate anytime, even going out and recording stuff on the street. Maybe these practical sounds are even purer than music. I think so, anyway.

Some feeling has come back to me, some normalness. I think it was the 20 minute cycles. Implemented the stopwatch thing and it's much better. Turns out Baby Love was right.. :) are you reading this, Baby Love? I wove you wevy mush! She reads all my entries, first thing in the morning. I feel like dancing a little bit, or at least my mind/body practice. I wonder what mode shapes it this time. Let me go check.

[..] i guess still "uninvolved observation" is the start. The awareness of movement and position. Is this the regular start of my mind/body practice? And from this all the other modes stem? Too soon to really tell. There's also "abandon" and "no focus". Are they really the same, these three? Why did i delimitate them? I guess "no focus" is where i don't even know i'm moving, i'm not doing it consciously, then "abandon" is where i let go and stop trying to control my movement, let it go wild, and "uninvolved observation" is where .. i guess it's where it's not so wild. Just normal.

[..] it would seem my concentration level is wavering, in the context of my mind/body practice. I wonder why i can't concentrate. Then it's off to "no focus" mode, so the practice goes on. Movement without concentration. Although.. i want to bring my concentration up to par, one of these days, i believe yesterday or the day before, i couldn't concentrate, same story. Let me begin with some breath concentration.

[10 minutes later] i was able to do it no problem, even doing something with my hands, thinking about something else, and still keep track of the breath. So concentration is fine.

I wonder if the very difference between not moving and moving is the issue. Aware movement that is. Because i am very used to focus on my breathing from when i was doing zen all the time. Maybe this focus on movement is more complex, and i'm not used to it. I think i should try to move constantly, even when i'm laying down. Move some part of my body. This way i'll become accustomed to moving all the time, and maybe the power of observation will follow, as it does with breath. Who knows.. let's see how much time has passed since i last smoked. 31 minutes.

I'm slowly cozying up to moving my minimum time between smokes from 20 minutes to 25 minutes. In my mind it seems like a big leap. Even though since implementing the stopwatch feature, i don't think it happened twice that i smoked before 25 minutes. Hmm.. i don't want to push myself too much, this is still new to me, better cozy up to this stopwatch thing first.