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[spiderwrider]

~Dear Haley: III~

4.21.22

I am noticing something about doing hard things. I am seeing how, while your body might be telling you that danger is ahead when embarking on a new and unknown path, that there is really no good reason to not proceed simply because you have this feeling of dread or anxiety. Instead, this feeling might be a good indicator that you ought to proceed. I am finding that as I continue along difficult roads, that a variety of factors can suddenly come together that make the internal heartache and struggle make sense. Those are good days indeed, but simply because every day does not "make sense," does not mean it is not worthwhile to continue.

Am I repeating myself? I think I want to emphasize the fact that our bodies and minds even are not great at telling us at any given time whether we ought to proceed. Both are usually bent on self-preservation, and self-preservation is just pride. This pride wants to stay alive as long as possible and push out other good, better choices and thoughts. But we must not let it. We must keep showing up. I think the reason that the saying "99% of life is showing up" is so wise, is not because you receive some magical reward for showing up. I think it's because "showing up" is diametrically opposed to staying in your comfort zone. And staying in your comfort zone keeps you from seeing that the alerts your body is sending you have very little to do with anything useful to you.

I think I have become too abstract here, but I am slightly distracted by a Lego video.

I am going to make breakfast now.

Much love,

Emily

[spiderwrider]

~Dear Haley: II~

4.20.22

I woke up in a panic to the sound of my alarm this morning at 6:00AM. I am not used to waking up that early. I was at first very excited that I was actually out of bed at that time. My mind immediately started racing with all of the things I could do with my new hours. And this is exactly why I do not wake up early, because of the sheer potential to get SO MUCH DONE. Who wouldn't that burden and terrify?

So at one point I had to tell myself, "What's the easiest thing you could do right now?" This happened to be putting on a jacket because it was chilly and if anything keeps me in bed it's--well it's crippling anxiety--but beyond that, it's the frigid cold of the early morning. But that did help me to lower my expectations at least a little bit for the morning and to start small. Sometimes, though, I overwhelm myself with the very potential to overcome my nagging thoughts that are telling me how much potential I really have.

If Steven Pressfield is right and this is Resistance, he should have said how similar this feels to a demonic attack. But this is indeed taking every ounce of willpower I have to keep writing instead of crawling back into bed. I can feel a yawn at the back of my head and an arresting anxiety from my biceps to my stomach. Yesterday's entry felt much more fun to write.

But speaking of "fun." I was reading in Screwtape Letters just a few days ago about "feelings" and how much they actually matter. Here's what Lewis says, "Whenever they are attending to the Enemy himself, we are defeated, but there are ways of preventing them from doing so. The simplest is to turn their gaze away from Him towards themselves. Keep them watching their own minds and trying to produce feelings there by the action of their own wills. When they meant to ask Him for charity, let them instead, start trying to manufacture charitable feelings..."

I am going to conclude by saying that apparently when it comes to results, feelings do not matter that much. However, I will say this: I do think it matters what we think about our own feelings. For instance, if I were to blatantly dismiss my feelings in favor of acting, I think I would start to feel bitter and resentful towards action. I would start to resent action and question why it is such a dictator that my feelings must be ignored or suppressed or stuffed in favor of it. Our hearts are too clever to be convinced by "ignoring" that something is the better option. So, I think the important thing here is to get right your own thoughts on what you actually desire to worship, to glorify, and then to see how feelings fit into that equation in a way that makes sense for yourself.

I'll stop there. I didn't let Resistance consume me this morning, but it sure doesn't let you forget its own misery at being fought against. Perhaps, with time, it will subside.

All my best, Emily

[spiderwrider]

~Dear Haley: I~

4.19.22.

Dear Haley,

I just wanted to write to you to say that I was just reading a book called "The War of Art" and it kicked me in the butt. I only got to page 33/163, but I learned something. What I learned was that, the disease I am suffering from is Resistance. The author of this book, who is a sweet genius in my estimation--Steven Pressfield, said that, "When I began this book, Resistance almost beat me. This is the form it took. It told me (the voice in my head) that I was a writer of fiction, not nonfiction, and that I shouldn't be exposing these concepts of Resistance literally and overtly; rather, I should incorporate them metaphorically into a novel. That's a pretty damn subtle and convincing argument. The rationalization Resistance presented me with was that I should write, say, a war piece in which the principles of Resistance were expressed as the fear a warrior feels." That entry was called "Resistance and this Book."

The really crazy thing is that this entry is speaking to me exactly where I am. I think nonfiction is probably more my thing than fiction. Resistance has been telling me that I should try to convey my experience through a young adult non-fiction novel. But do you know how crippling that has been for me? It has been sleep on the floor, leave the lights on while I sleep, eat a peep for breakfast (and sometimes for dinner too) crippling. Okay, I am exaggerating a little, but not really.

Resistance is telling me now: "What are the odds that you would happen upon an entry in a book that speaks to you exactly where you're at and would inspire you to write the first entry of something that might un-knot you for the first time in probably you're whole life? The odds are 0, which means that this is just ONE MORE THING that you will read that will try to help you but won't actually help you. You'll leave this project behind like all the rest. You'll keep searching for your calling until you're saddled with one and you have no way out because that's how you want it to go. And that's how you were taught. You won't choose a calling, it will choose you, and you will truly hate it."

Danggg....Resistance is mean. But I have been searching for a source of my suffering for quite a while and this answer makes the most sense. I have been resisting my calling, resisting inspiration, resisting sharing what I know and have learned over a short life filled with poor choices and making less-poor choices and then some good ones.

Resistance has eaten me up for over two decades, or maybe for exactly two decades. I am inspired at least in this moment to write this to you and that's more than five years of therapy ever inspired me to do.

Of course, it's not for me to say how I happened to arrive at this moment, in this timing, in this way. There is so much at play here. Therapy has helped me in ways I probably don't realize and has allowed me to be open to this moment in a way that I might not have been if I hadn't gone through it.

Overall, I am feeling grateful to be writing something. This is a start and I can maybe even feel the sickness subsiding the slightest bit. My chest is a little less tight, my stomach is a little less turned inwards, my mind is a little more relaxed.

Part of me doesn't want this to be the start of something new because I cannot really figure out exactly how I got here. But that's probably just resistance again. Did you know that being able to name pain with a proper title actually reduces the pain? you may call it a Placebo Effect, but this feels quite real. Resistance, I have named you and I can feel you shrinking backwards. I won't miss you. Go away and never come back. I am glad to be doing something, anything. Thinking has been so lonely.

Hope you're enjoying your trip,

Love,

Emily

[spiderwrider]

The Way I See It: Meaning

Do you really believe that you will become nothing when you die? Do you?

Most people walk around with these assumptions about their lives: who they think they are, what they want, what they stand for, where they will go when they die. But most people do not give more than a few hours time to sussing out what they really think about these things. So, how is it possible for anyone to have strong convictions about anything? How is it possible that there are that many people walking around not having given proper thought to what drives their decision-making and goals? I suppose what makes this possible is the same thing that makes it possible for "Baby" by Justin Bieber to be the most viewed video on YouTube. Why wouldn't a video titled, "The Meaning of Life" have just as many views? To give a comparison, the first five videos that come up when you type in "The Meaning of Life" on YouTube have a combined total of under 25 million views. The total views of the 'Baby' video are 2.6 billion.

Life does not operate the way it "should." In other words, what drives the world is not propriety. If propriety is what drove the world, then we would still be in Eden. But we live in a sinful world. People do not do what they know is good for them, mostly because most people do not even know how to define goodness for themselves or for others. People demand to be treated a certain way, they even demand that they treat others a certain way, but they do not demand that they have a good reason for doing so.

So, it ought not to surprise us that in the modern day classroom, prayer is outlawed, the word and idea of "God" is attempting to be eliminated from the Pledge of Allegiance, and teachers assume that their students believe the Big Bang introduced and made possible all of life today.

People do not care about living consistently with what they *say* they want as much as they desire to feel as good as possible about what they are doing for as long as they can. If you observe the modern man, he seems quite willing to come up against his flaws eventually, when it is convenient and the moment calls for it, like when his wife demands to know why he insists on leaving his toenail clippings on the bathroom floor. The problem is that by the time one is confronted by his frailties, it is usually too late to change them. This is not because at any one time any man is precluded from choosing to change his ways and pursue a better path. It is true that by the grace of God, any man can choose to change his ways at any time. Rather, what I mean to say is that, if a man has been choosing from early on in his life to put off this so-called "meaning of life" discussion and understanding, then he has been preferring one thing over another for quite a long time. A man who chooses to think about how to confront evil in himself later in life, has a sturdy reason for doing so, whether he is aware and/or honest about it or not. And any man who confidently goes on choosing the lesser good, over time, ends up in a very sour place.

And yet, we go on interacting with others and living in a certain way and doing certain things, in order to get what we want and to act as if what we want is innately good and true beautiful. To be fair, 'Baby' is also the most disliked video on YouTube, so this at least might be evidence that there is something innate in all of us that recognizes a good thing and an ugly thing. And yet, without a deeper glance and pondering over ourselves, we will all keep clicking on "Baby" over and over again and padding ourselves on the back for disliking it.

[spiderwrider]

The answer to your question is no, jason said to layda as he threw his freshly caught trout onto her stomach. Hey, she said, playfully. She was used to jason treating her like a man and took his antics in stride. What was my question, i forgot, layda asked. He said, 'remember, you asked if you could have some of my toffee?' oh yes. i remember. layda yawned. It was sundown and she was getting very sleepy, even though she had been lying on her mat for the better part of an hour. Well, anyway, jason said, you want to play, jengel? sure, layda replied. Jengel was a rock stacking game, where each player tried to build on top of the other player's rock until the pile crumbled. It was a simple game but required a hyper-focus on detail, something Jason and Layda both enjoyed.

[spiderwrider]

I like seashells. I guess you could say that I love them. I love how they curl back in on themselves. Well, some do. Some are open and welcoming, but I prefer the ones that seem to have something to hide. Perhaps that is because I have something to hide as well. I am not from here. I grew up in the atmosphere of Saturn. I existed as a thousand different droplets of dew until I was sucked down into earth's atmosphere on Saturn's 300,000th lunar year. Iam not human; I am astral droplets congealed into a human form; but I can do human things and I can think too. That is how you're reading this, because I thought it first and transposed those thoughts to this page. That is where our similarities end.

[spiderwrider]

David looked out the window and only saw his own reflection. He was tired of seeing himself in everything he looked at. He wanted to get outside of himself. He wanted to see things how they really were and not through his eyes only. But just as that thought crossed his mind a bird flew straight into the window where his eyes had been peering out. He lurched back in shock.