Childhood

There comes a moment in life when one has to go back to his childhood and look for what's right, what's close to him, what is truly his, what is truly him.

... I even think there's more than one of such moments in life.

Me, on the contrary - I need to take what's best of my childhood and bring it to my present and my future. Then say good bye to the childhood. The roots will stay - they need to, but general setting will go.

Sun + Music

A sunny day and some good drum and bass is all I need for happiness.


Actually it would be probably a bit more than that but the mentioned ingredients are doing the job.

Thunderstorm

I'm in the middle of a thunderstorm here. I love thunders. Especially these big ones. Lightnings, thunders, wind, rain... It all calms me down. It does. I need a thunderstorm from time to time... I feel safe in a thunderstorm regardless of whether in a tent or in my apartment or in a yacht cabin when belayed somewhere. I love it.

Absence

Wow, it's been a while... I am wondering why... Guess I made a lot of entries in my camera diary at home so did not feel compelled to write anything here.

Anyway, currently I am playing Battlefield 2142 on-line (currently popular FPS game) most of the time. I like it. It may be considered not an optimal way to spend your free time, especially at age of 30 but hey, I don't have kids and yet have some time and money to spend on me so why not. This will not be so forever. So I'm using it to my pleasure.

In connection with playing this game, and I have returned to on-line playground after quite some time (actually because of my girlfriend who wanted to play Quake with me (sic!)) I bought a gamepad keyboard - the Zboard Fang (very cool), the Logitech G5 Laser refresh mouse (even greater) and an icemat (glass mousepad for laser mice).

I suppose again its something about my childhood again, but I just love to play first person shooters(especially these army-related and not some freaky monster shooters) because it relieves me of any stress whatsoever.

Why are we so powerless and helpless with ourselves? It seems sometimes as if we were like dogs chasing its own tail. Wanting constantly to be yet better, to fix some things within us, to deal with issues which we think we are capable of fixing, dealing with, solving. Yet most of the time seems to be passing on identifying them and living the change while after some time, it seems from a perspective that we did not fix the thing we wanted to after all but fixed accidentally completely different one and actually profitted on it much more than we would on the original task. We do get better, we see the change and to the better but the process itself is very hard. Very tiring, exhausting and time consuming.

Why am I so helpless with wanting to change things within me. I am not a deviant, not a criminal, don't want to rape anybody, kill anybody, steal from anybody or anything. I am a physically and mentally healthy person, having a regular relationship, physically active in all aspects, having a job I like, having great friends, knowing interesting people, going to movies, theather, going to vacations like everyone else. It is just this god damn childhood which seems to make the whole problem.

Why the fuck a period of one's life which has ended ages ago has such a power that it sort of even manipulates your everyday life? I wasn't raped, sexually molested, beaten, cursed at. Went to school, had friends and relationships, went out to play, had some nice holidays, had a loving family. There were two, minor one could say factors: my parents were divorced very early and my mother had a depression (bipolar disorder) which ended up with her suicide later.

A disturbed relationship with my mother. OK, but why this has to be so substantial and weighty in tis consequences. It feels unfair.

The Dark.

I feel the dark part of me is beginning to take over. The feeling of not being loved, cared about wants to dominate again despite clear facts to the contrary. The power of a learned scheme or behavior is enormous. . . All you can do about it is try to weaken the god damn phenomenon each time it happens. Why does it have to repeat itself? Why by sheer understanding of our own history and by discovery of meaning of various events in our lives we can't get rid of these awful "reaction schemes" that we learned during our lives to defend our psychological systems from what the life used to bring us? Why isn't the knowledge of these mechanics enough to say goodbye to these phenomena? Why simple things just by means of repetition get embedded so deeply in our heads that it is so difficult to un-learn them? You know what it is. It is how the nature made us. It is intended to have positive effect of survival actually. If you observe/come up with a resolutive behavior to a stressful situation you want to repeat it as you see it was helpful with the stresses you've sustained in the past. Then you just repeat it and it becomes a habit to react to the same or (worse) similar situation in a certain way. The way which helped you once.

It though becomes a problem when the original stress along with its original circumstances which originated your specific defensive reaction fade into the past. . . There is no original problem nor original circumstances. You forget that both actually took place in your past. What do you do then when a similar stress comes along in your adult life? Most of us will repeat the defensive reaction to the situation though we are in a totally different circumstances which do not at all require us to apply the same defensive mechanism that we used to apply to the original repeated stressor. It is our smart brain who recognizes in this new stressor an analogy to a well known previous one and begins its run-or-fight routine by an automatic application of a set of reactions which it once learned helped to survive. What do you do then? Let's say you even understand the mechanics... Nothing -you're fucked... You're helpless.

Getting on with life.

Well: I didn't get my dream job, applied too late for my dream rock climbing course in Tatry mountains, the mirror in my camera locked up itself and I still don't have a bike....

Anyway, I need to get on with life. Need to get a bike and apply for a Accelerated Free Flight course - a parachuting course (my other dream). I need to get that camera fixed 'cause I still can't afford to get the dream digital one (like Nikon D80 or even D200). I'll also need to find a vacation substitution for this climbing course. I don't know yet what it would be but I need to find out soon.
Surprisingly I do not feel very down because of the lost job opportunity and this lost climbing course. Maybe it's the age or simply experience. I don't know. Important is that I am happy - I am! And I'm happy that I'm happy. It is a sign that I must be going the right direction. It calms me down a bit. Eases up my analytical thinking and edginess. The first thing about aging that I observed is that at some moment (I guess that only for some people - I'm speaking for myself here) life becomes a kind of a schedule divided into years. It will of go how and where you "schedule" it. If you plan this and that this year, you'll most probably do it. If you can't then you might wanna have a backup plan for such instances - something that you want to do equally eagerly. If you don't have a plan your year it simply drips through your fingers and it might be happening year after year if you don't notice soon enough. But I think that such kind of planning requires you to be prepared in terms of knowing what you want, what can be resigned from in favor of something else which is more achievable but achievable. You first need to learn to choose in agreement with what is really important for you. Sometimes it might be a category of things and not necessarily specific, concrete things. This allows for choice and preference. If you'd never think about things you want and never think deeper into things that you want and are important to you, you would not have anything to choose from. So if you'd have just only one thing that you want to do this year there is a risk that if you don't achieve it you'd feel very bad about yourself.

Always have alternatives. Have various hobbies and interests. It helps to live a happier life.