JOURNAL. July 2024.
reading (31.07.2024)
Finished Anti-Oedipus today. Will get around to journaling it later; was far too tired to do so today, as I stayed up to watch Dario Argento's Phenomena, which is a movie that has been made. Looney toons hijinks in a horror movie that wants to take itself seriously, a narrator with one line, absolutely so much happening in the last half hour of the film, the abandoned fly plot thread. Really funny. At any rate, the book was very interesting; I'll have to move on to A Thousand Plateaus soon.
I've apparenlty displayed "strong" psychotic tendencies since a "relatively young age", which is not particularly surprising. It's not something I feel necessarily bad about, as these tendencies have played a strong part in my creativity and the "specific way thinking" that my professors seem to find so academically promising. Unfortunately much of the strength was in my own self-effacement. I go dead in my interactions with others. Even my apparent good-naturedness is often nothing more than not wishing to go through the effort of engaging in confrontation and believing it serves no purpose anyways. It's easy to rot away inside oneself this way.
oops (27.07.2024)
Finally got back around to reading Anti-Oedipus. Very much better to read after having gained more familiarity with psychoanalytic discourse. I intended to update my journal for it today; instead, however, I just spent an hour searching for my phone, worried that I had lost it. I had somehow gotten it stuck between the couch and the wall. I may be stupid...
Yesterday I went to do my final resit for epistemology. Not necessary, as I had already passed; however, the written exam was brutal enough that only half of us passed. The professor then is at least generous with offering oral resits to students who passed the written exam but wish to improve their grades. I think that she may on some level be doing this out of a desire to talk even more about epistemology; I was not much smarter in the oral resit than when I wrote the exam, but was able to correct my grade to a 5. Of course, in a conversation, there's a way to be led back on track which is not possible when writing on one's own. But nevertheless... She likes explaining things which she didn't have space for in the lectures. When I did oral correction for the winter exam the previous week, she ended up explaining a whole epistemic theory of justification to me which wasn't even mentioned during the lectures. This is okay because she explains things in a clear manner and is not boring, so I think she can use this opportunity to infodump if she wants. This is not really anything I ever expected to say about epistemology, of all things.
good? (24.07.2024)
Three book read so far this month, and should finish another tomorrow—we're so back. Preparing also a writing piece for a friend's creative project, which is exciting. Hopefully once my epistemology oral resit is over Friday (I already passed, but wanted to improve my grade; the written exam is brutal) I won't have to study for that any more, and have more time to work on other projects. I've had the idea for a poem I'd like to share here cooking in my mind for a while, and I really need to return to my novel...
I've been trying to kick the habit of wasting so much time on the internet, which is difficult and of course not immediate, but seems to have been going well. Studying in its way has been helpful, as I've needed to just sit down and focus without giving into distractions, and I've realized how little pleasure those distractions actually give me. I left a certain space not too long ago as it was making me paranoid, and found myself much more able to focus on things I actually care about. Even just playing video games has me feeling better than wasting time on social media; summer has afforded me a blissful near-solitude in which I only regularly meet people twice a week, any neither for particularly very long (psychoanalysis and my writing group). I remember how much I enjoyed summers in my early years even spending them entirely at home except for being dragged to church. Somehow I have forgotten this.
There are of course certain benefits to spending time actually in the academic environment. If I miss one thing, it is my Japanese language classes, as language is very much difficult to learn on one's own, especially when it is one so radically different from English. Nevertheless, keeping to myself is overall quite relaxing. In another world I would have been an excellent hermit.
Having mentioned analysis, yesterday I finally addressed with him something which had led to a months-long episode of my being nearly psychotic. There are certain things which are incredibly embarassing to explain to a middle-aged straight-married man. But there was no issue. So that is good. It was interesting to hear my inability to refuse people described as an issue of my safety, although I am sure it is.
Lately in my life the lesson seems to resound that I need to embrace my solitary nature more. This is not to act as a total misanthrope; implicit even in my running this site is some sort of genuine desire for engagement with other people. However, I do well largely left to my own devices and certainly do not do well with social intensity, as well with generally being "gazed at". Social media is terrible for the latter! I do enjoy discussing things with other people, and creative relationships (see above on contributing to a friend's project), and there must be some manner of integrating this.
I did, today, finally hear back from my tutor on the essay outline I sent. Two and a half weeks later, after he promised to initally try to respond by (he went on vacation this week). I had originally been planning to complain about him in this entry before I got his response. Anyways, the outline is fine. So there's that. Now I have to try to write the essay and finish in time so I can get a native speaker to proofread it.
-_- (17.07.2024)
>go to the park to read
>find nice place to sit
>take out book
>it immediately starts raining on me
I am the most tormented person on earth.
schemas (14.07.2024)
My analyst's thought is that my social disturbance is due to my not posessing certain schema. For example—my belief that I cannot care about other people. I really have no concept for what it might mean to be cared for or to care for someone else. Is this the same as my being actually unable to "care"? Perhaps not. I remember having gotten my sister a gift in celebration of an achievement of hers, which she had really liked. She posted a picture of it, and I was struck by the comment someone had left saying "your brother loves you!" Love was simply a word I never would have thought to apply to myself in any direction. Generally it remains that way. But the fact remains that it can occur that I do something spontaneously and at cost to myself simply because I think the other person would enjoy it. But how to differentiate such cases...?
Like my tutor, he now seems to have gotten into the habit of stating that I am not obligated to anything. Unfortunately likely necessary in my case, even (perhaps especially) when saying that I am not obligated to certain social behavior. Probably I would be suspicious of him were he to leave his statement of the problem as my non-schemas without adding that we will work to determine "how to proceed without them" (I am frankly a schema hater).
Disconnecting more from the internet in order to manage my paranoia and remembering interest in things. I had something like this during the exam session when I was studying all day and forced to actually Engage with Things instead of cycling between Sites, although this also faced the significant damper of my doing this for grades and not having time for respite. I've realized I've been keeping myself even from simple pleasures such as games by wasting so much time online. Spent some time the past couple days just playing Tears of the Kingdom without youtube in the background and frankly it's a much more interesting experience. Christ, I've really wasted so much of my life online. The Dreamer Is Still Asleep... not much time left for these escape attempts
.
I heard that song again lately and it took me over. I feel that way—or at least I have such fears. Never escaping, not waking in time to see the sunset... Trapped within myself. Dying without ever having been really born. I listened to it on repeat for over an hour. And yet I find that I cannot believe that this is me. I have only very recently in my life taken to seriously engaging in anything. The start, of course, is shaky (why yes! why not choose sociology as a second degree program based on not much more than having liked Baudrillard's Consumer Society?) But it has worked well enough. Starting anywhere is all right as long as one does not remain stuck there. The important thing is to start and then not stop.
Good to be reading some things again as well. Perhaps a somewhat insufferable combination, but it's all right. I'm glad to have found some topics I can take a "deep" approach to, finally. I can, in fact, know what I am talking about.
I took a walk today in the park not very far from my apartment. It's shocking how long I've lived here without exploring it. Plenty of nice areas and interesting things. All so close to me... How did I forget that the world is something I can have a relationship with?
Really ought to try getting into a proper bedtime and morning routine, even in the summer. I've found even just not touching my phone for a while after I wake up means I am less tempted by the internet throughout the rest of the day as well. Which, as I have observed above, makes things in general much more enjoyable.
exhaustion (09.07.2024)
Overwhelming fatigue. No inch of my body escapes. A certain tiredness after the end of the academic year and a brutal exam load is to be expected, but it's really awful this time... I fear falling into a horrible depression. At least exams are over. I seem to have passed everything, although I'm still waiting for results back from one of them... I still have a statistical report to finish. I really don't want to. But it's the last thing for a while. Except for the essay I have to write by September... I sent my tutor the outline yesterday, so I'm waiting for his feedback on that.
The essay has ended up much more psychosexually weird than originally planned. I hope he doesn't mind that. Although during the meeting in which we agreed to his becoming my tutor, he asked if my interest in sexuality was about its relationship to technology to which I laughed and said yes, after which he told me that he "likes learning about psychoanalysis and various fetishes", so it's probably fine. My life is a bit funny, I think. Of course now I am back to the old problem of waiting for his terribly slow email replies. The wonders of academia!
I mentioned in my entry last month that I would probably begin to fear my analyst more as he became more real to me. That may already be happening; I had an unpleasant dream involving him last night. But I have no particular distrust for him yet, which I can't say would be the case if I were in therapy. I'm okay with going to a Lacanian mainly because they are very insistent on their analytic process not being therapeutic. I would much rather understand myself in order to work with myself rather than be "fixed" according to a certain standard.
Of course I am also becoming suspicious of other people again. A joke? Surely a sign I am being mocked and toyed with to see how much more miserable I can get. I feel so isolated. How is it that others simply manage to find people who will take them seriously? I get so envious seeing this and yet it's not as if I am a social creature. Whatever fasinates me fascinates me alone. I have always had to entertain myself and now I don't know how to do anything else.
On Saturday I went to a birthday party. I really cannot stand being around other people for seven hours. Even alcohol couldn't really save me. And there was nothing particularly unpleasant about the event itself, but I simply experience very little social pleasure. I feel strange and even sad being told "I'm very happy you'll be there". I can't feel the same way about other people. This causes many difficulties. I tell myself I should, I try to, and—disaster.
I'm exhausted of all this as well.