The past few days I've found it useful to deny certain kinds of self-observations. Like when I feel tired, I don't even let myself feel that idea to consider it, I just deny it and let it disappear somewhere behind me. I've been trying to do the same thing today with thought patterns that it's easy for me to recognize as anxious and unproductive. I wonder if denying these thought patterns will be too dramatic a simplification of self. Maybe what I was saying to Amanda last night was true, that we think about our anxieties because we don't have anything else more interesting to think about. I want to have more interesting things to think about. I want to have constructive and positive things to think about. I fear that I am so disassociated from a positive and constructive state of mind (on some levels) that it will be a very slow and confusing process to inhabit one. Maybe not. Maybe in just stating that I'm inviting that kind of shift to happen quickly and painlessly.

My anxiety today is at a lower level than usual, but it's still there. Why do I feel so uncomfortable spending time "leisurely" writing when I still have obligations I might try and fulfill? Do I just not trust this process well enough yet to be productive? It is very un-concrete. When I'm fulfilling my obligations it's very concrete. In my mind I can cross things off my mental "todo" list and no longer spend any psychic energy on them. I feel like my amount of psychic energy to spend is far greater than most people though. I feel like the issue isn't so much removing drains as creating structures that harness and use my psychic energy in a more productive and constructive way. I think that a lot of my attention and thought is wasted on a day to day basis. But what would that productive structure be? I guess writing and thinking here is the beginning of one.

How does writing here transfer to the rest of my day? Obviously at some point I'm going to have to return Laura's board, I'm going to have to cook dinner, I might even try to clean the downstairs bathroom. It's logical to think that this stuff carries over because I'm not just creating some kind of textual artifact that I can look at later, I'm also creating and processing thoughts. Presumably doing so should benefit me throughout my day. I like to think of thinking as a linear process. I like to think of it as an accumulation where no thought is really negative, it's just a non-linear step that unlocks a broader range of thoughts in the future. This is based off of the idea that there aren't really any shortcuts. Sometimes you just have to think something to get to something more interesting than it because one thought is built on another. This makes sense to me. Do I really think that there's no such thing as unproductive thoughts? I guess I could make some distinctions. There's active thinking which is when I'm writing or having a conversation with someone, or even maybe going on a walk. In active thinking I'm drawing a line, I'm exploring a focused path because that is the nature of active thinking. And then as I explore these focused paths I enter new ambient "thought" spaces. Passive thinking is what I'm doing unconsciously while my mind is occupied with trying to problem solve or pay attention to something actively in my environment. Passive thinking benefits from active thinking because sometimes I feel like a space can be pretty well processed. Once this happens there's a huge capacity to think about stuff, but if the space is already processed, then that capacity is just spinning its wheels. Active thinking is a way of accreting data that I can then gain benefits from as I passively chew on it and transform it into things which are useful to me.

So can I control what passive thought spaces I'm entering? Can I choose a space that will specifically help me with certain kinds of problem solving? I'm not sure how I'd do that, but it would be nice if I could. I don't really understand active thinking because it seems like it follows such a random and twisting path. A chaotic path would be a good way to describe it. Why is it so chaotic and unpredictable? Is that just the nature of dealing with novel ideas and data? Is it fundamentally undesirable for it to be predictable? It seems to me like it would be okay if you could anticipate at least to a small degree in the future because that would facilitate positive behavior since you would be acting under the influence of perceived reward cycles. Of course you would then want to layer the reward cycles as deeply as possible so that it would influence you strongly towards positive action.

How does this all relate to what I need to do every day? There are a couple kinds of things I'm dissapointed in myself for not doing right now. There are things that I "need" to do which I'm procrastinating on. And then there are things that I want to do which I think could be really positive but that I'm not acting on. I guess I'm going to simplify those to categories into "needs" and "experiments." Why aren't I acting on my needs? I think the reason is connected to deep-seated anxieties about myself as a person and my ability to achieve set goals that have existed in me since childhood. One huge thing is that I've always set such lofty goals for myself. I would start to get ideas which I found enormously exciting and then I would never achieve them. Sometimes I would start the project, and I would discover that working to achieve these lofty goals wasn't as fun as I expected it to be. And then I think a part of my mind would click and go "Oh, that's why this beautiful thing that I want to exist doesn't yet, because it's really hard to make." Then I would lose confidence in my own ability to make that thing. Because if the amazing thing that I wanted to make was really difficult to create, then probably all the boring things that "smart people" were working on were really difficult to make too. And maybe then the reason that the beautiful thing I thought of didn't exist wasn't because no one had thought of it before (because, I'm hearing Matt's voice here :), what are the odds of that) but because people had thought of it before and the level of difficulty was just so far beyond all the more mundane things that I seem to be surrounded by that they didn't even attempt it. And if professionals at creating software or clothes or food or whatever could be so easily dissuaded, then what chance did I, as a self-taught amateur, to create something which didn't yet exist? Of course none of this might be true. I think it is far more likely than not that I really do have novel ideas. It's just that the novel ideas I have are so low-hanging to me, so easy to pick, that it's hard for me to understand why exactly no one else has seized upon them.

What am I going to do when I go downstairs? Now I feel like I have a lot of things to passively process that are interesting to me. The upshot might be that while I'm trying to cook or clean or whatever, I will feel antsy to get back to writing, and in thinking about all this stuff passively, I'll be distracted from what I'm actually doing which will make it a lot less enjoyable. It would be less enjoyable because I won't be able to focus fully on it and leisurely try to understand what I'm doing. Maybe it'll be less enjoyable because instead of having an excess of psychic energy to complete the task I'll have to be wrestling psychic energy from other considerations just to have the bare minimum to get whatever I'm doing done. I wonder if there's an easy way to layer considerations? An easy way to layer consideration of any arbitrary intellectual consideration with carrying out any arbitrary problem solving task. It seems like through synchronicity there should be some kind of dialogue of meaning between the two, where as I'm cooking it will have the ability to metaphorically comment on the other stuff I'm thinking about, but that can be really hard for me to recognize sometimes. Especially when I'm not very clear on what I'm trying to think about and just have a general sense of "excitement" bubbling in the background. I think that's part of the reason that I would desire so much to get back to the computer, because that's when I can focus my thinking and return to something really productive which is thinking about whatever it is that grabbed my attention or that I managed to uncover through active thinking. So does that mean that I have to become more effective at passive thinking? Probably. I think this would actually help me on a lot of levels because it would have the potential to make mundane "life" tasks feel more relevant because I would still be doing potentially interesting and relevant thought as I carried them out.

A big question to me, is what happens if I do think of something interesting? Presumably the fruit of any kind of intellectual pondering of any kind of intellectual or practical question is concepts, metaphors and ideas that can permanantly be used as tools in further thinking or in practical life. Say I'm cleaning the bathroom and I think of a tool: what do I do if I can't write it down? Say focused thinking on it would more likely than not lead me to a bounty of useful tools, what if I'm most likely not even going to remember that tool far enough into the future so that I can spend time actively processing it when I have a chance. Doesn't that make passive thinking dangerous? Because it creates opportunities that then cannot be capitalized on because of the nature of the situation in which they arose? Honestly I don't think it's that big of a deal because I don't think that thoughts are finite. I think that I'm going to be able to think of something relevant to work on when I'm actively thinking whether it's something that I specifically remembered to think about from earlier or if it's something that I'm just thinking of at the moment. But it is really interesting to me to try and look at the roots of that anxiety and understand where they come from. For me I think it really comes from wanting to be able to share things about myself that I feel are special that other people might also recognize the same things as special as well.

I guess that maybe for a long time I've wanted validation in the ways that I think I'm a unique and valuable person (not even going there, but "unique and valuable"? What's the significance of those two words?). It's hard because I feel like a lot of those things are somewhat hidden qualities, and I also feel like they're so specific and hard to understand without a background in certain kinds of concepts, that most people don't get them. So instead I'm recognized by the people around me for things that to me feel completely beside the point of the core of my identity. Like instead of being recognized for being somewhat of a genius philosopher (*cough cough*), for my optimism, for my perceptiveness, for my courage, for my common sense, for my creativity, for my patience, for anything like that, I'm thought of as "crazy" because of my hair, for instance. I'm thought of as "out there" because I don't know how exactly I'm supposed to introduce really complicated topics into casual conversation and so sometimes I just drop them in "randomly." I'm thought of as irresponsible, naive, lazy, God knows what else. Some things have something to do with my behavior, some things are just completely projected on to me. So the consequence is that I start to have trouble trusting my own perception of myself. But a lot of my philosophies and plans for my future are based on my own understanding of my own capabilities. So just by trying to achieve what I feel is important to me, I'm inescapably put into situations where I have to have some relationship to my own private self-understanding. I think then a lot of times I try to escape the situations where it feels like my sense of self might be furthered battered or undermined, and that leads to avoident behavior, because I'm trying to avoid being disappointed in myself. How I don't know. Probably just by getting further input from my environment that I have to try to muster the strength to disregard that I'm something which I feel like I'm not.

I feel like this might be the key to my problems with impulse control. What are the impulses I'm talking about? Escapist behaviors. Eating cookies, eating out, smoking cigarettes, looking at pointless websites, going for a walk instead of handling the practical tasks in front of me. I think they all come from, to some degree, me wanting to preserve a sense of myself by avoiding certain kinds of disappointing situations. The other thing that I associate with this is my childhood and teenager experience of starting to become "too excited to sit still" when I started to get to certain degrees of revelation in what I was thinking about or writing. I think that has to do with a transcendent idea of creation. I'm afraid of having good ideas past a certain point because to me having the good idea is almost the same as creating it, because deep down I really believe that I have the capacity to make anything. So I try to avoid developing ideas past a certain point because the blow of disappointment when I "fail" to create them and other people's perceptions of me are reinforced would be too great. I call this perspective transcendental because it's based on the belief that there are these sharp moments of consequence when either through thought I will make something incredibly awesome or that I will suffer a very hard blow. I guess this could correspond in science to the concept of "eureka!" moments. The funny thing is that this perspective no longer really accords to my current perspective of creation, which isn't to say which perspective is right or wrong. My current perspective is that everything is process. Yes there can be dramatic shifts, but they are always analog, there is a path that they come from and there is a path that they continue to follow into the future. This is opposed to the idea of digital "state changes" that are abrupt and then lead to confusion as one is left, disoriented, to try and figure out what to do next.

Honestly I think that a lot of this might come from symptoms of mild Asperger's. I like routine. I like things to be predictable. Indeed my "perfect future" is one in which I have created a routine which is perfectably adapatable and thus indestructibly predictable in its nature. At a certain point I'm quite simply afraid of change. And so I'm drawn to predictable comforting things like smoking a cigarette or eating or going for a walk, because they calm down and sooth the part of me that becomes agitated when I feel like my interior or exterior world is being rearranged. I'm not saying that this is bad. But I think it does lead me into practically annoying behavior patterns. What is a better perspective for me to take?

Do I have to just "bite the bullet" and accept that past a certain point I can't predict what my behavior or experience will be in the future? I think the fear here is that I'll be left half-way. Because this idea that the future is going to be permanently different is to a degree transcendent. The problem is that the feeling fades, and then as I settle back into normal routine I experience a feeling of disappointment or depression, which makes me more distrustful and afraid the next time I feel the transcendental feeling. So I could actually say that part of me craves transcendental and permanant change, which it does. And that this part is constantly let down by my own attempts to make that kind of change which leads to an undermining of my faith in myself. Is there a different set of expectations that I could have which would be more realistic? Something that would allow me to hedge my bets and just feel this feeling without having it knock me too off-balance? Or is the whole paradigm I have to understand what's going on wrong? What other paradigms might there be?

What is the fruit of introspection and self-inquiry? If I don't remember specific details of what I'm writing, if it doesn't change my experience of reality permanantly somehow, if my day to day behavior is still to some degree predictable, what is the fruit of self-inquiry? I would say that the fruit of self-inquiry is fundamentally unpredictable. Especially once you get past the point of the daily doubts and whatnot that seem to accumulate like plaque and you're really digging into territory that you have never travelled past before. I would say that the fruits are unpredictable.

Well, can I accept that the fruits are unpredictable and then abstract the situation in some manner so that I might take best advantage of these unpredictable fruit? What if the fruit is that it destroys my interest in the ordinary? I think part of the reason why I have an urge to go smoke a cigarette as I write this is that I want to go see if I still can. I'm afraid of losing that urge permanently. But such is life? And if I really want to be open to harvesting any kind of possibility, I should be open to any kind of change that doesn't go against my fundamental principles of who I want to be. The scary thing is that the change can be so permanent. What if I just stopped smoking? What if I just stopped eating meat? What if I just stopped drinking? I have such a black and white mentality in certain ways, which I have no problem with, and at a certain point I can't understand what this kind of writing is going to do beside institute permanent behavior changes. Am I willing to pay that cost? Not really. I like smoking, I like eating meat, I like drinking. I have complicated and nebulous relationships with each of them, but the only reason why I would try to eliminate them is because at a certain moment I would have "perfect self-control" and I would use that moment to become what I "always wanted to be," a perfect reflection of what I can rationally defend being to society. Of course I'm afraid of that happening because it's such a huge negation of self. I think that's part of the reason why it's so hard for me to use my "self-control" very effectively, because I'm not even using it to my own benefit in some situations I'm using it to become an object of societies pressures on me. Which is definitely not what I want to be.

This feels like a good stopping point, and I'm glad that I reached it. I would like to slowly "dismount" from this writing stance, back into a non-writing stance, and I would like to go outside, try to smoke a cigarette, and yet somehow feel like I'm not trying to avoid or leave behind all the energy and feeling and thought that I have unlocked through this process of introspection. Because I want to understand that this energy is positive, and that it isn't in the service of some kind of manic dissolution of self. Honestly, I wonder if that's part of the reason that I have such problems with exhaustion? That I'm worried that if I had more energy I would in some manner destroy myself and become an object of my shallow societal environment? That could very well be. And it'll be interesting to think about it in the future.