3/7/2025:

Made it to mass for Ash Wednesday; 40 days in the desert (haha) incoming. I can already feel my mind slowing down, even after just this week. I have faith that what was destroyed can be rebuilt, that it can be reformed into something even better. The only issue is that I'm going through books too quickly.

Read Adventures Out of the Body by Robert Monroe. I have been doing his Gateway program for about six months. I am dreaming again, or at least remembering my dreams again, but so far that has been it. Maybe that is enough.

I dreamt that a monarch butterfly landed on my chest. It wouldn't let go of me. I tried to let it go out of the window, but it would not leave my hand. Eventually another butterfly, smaller, blue, and with a crumpled wing, joined it. Together, they went into a blue egg and did not come back out.

3/4/2025:

Finished reading two books these past few days- Jesus and the Lost Goddess by Timothy Freke and Mary Magdalene Revealed by Meggan Watterson. Both were good, although I was more strongly affected by the former. It has given me a bit more emotional courage in my gnosticism which I've been lacking after processing some of the negative opinions surrounding it. I can't change the truth, even if other people don't like it.

I'm planning on going to a retreat at the end of the month; it was a spontaneous idea to do a meditation retreat, but the signs that I got immediately afterward confirmed the it's more or less necessary to do this. My wife pretty much insisted. The trip coincides with the new moon and solar eclipse, so renewed purposes all around.

I had a fear that the end of the world was going to happen shortly, but that has passed. It can end if it wants. I realize now that disconnecting is not only something that I can do for Lent, it is something I must do.

2/27/2025:

I don't even want my phone around me right now. It's like a little black altar where I worship absolutely nothing, hailing it over and over. I'm somewhat disgusted with myself. I am so weak and I have made so many mistakes.

We adopted an elderly stray cat last year who kept coming around the house asking for food and attention. He has been throwing up and we'll need to take him to the vet. I know it's an inevitable part of adopting an animal, but it's really hard to think he might be nearing his EOL, as my wife puts it. He trusts us to take care of him and make the right choices for him. But I wonder if I even know how to make correct choices for myself most of the time.

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If gamers hate DEI so much, why don't they just create their own video games populated by nothing but rugged anglo cis cowboys and porn dolls? Is it because they enjoy hating games more than playing them, or do they have no skills?

I don't play enough video games to have any say in the matter, but from the outside the entire thing is pretty sad looking. It seems to be all some people have.

2/26/2025:

Trying not to dwell too much on news right now, although I am seeing some troubling articles. Without seeking out outside commentary it is a lot easier to keep from getting anxiety about everything. It all still sucks though. My wife and I are going to meetings with our state reps in a few weeks, which is better than doing nothing, but of course it's a hard not to feel helpless about everything. I'm sure that's exactly the desired result.

This sense of paralysis is engineered. If they can get us worked up enough, we'll be too afraid to do anything, to disgusted with our fellow men to care; that way they can destroy anything without resistance. I have about 0% confidence in anyone in charge right now. Seeing how self interested the entire lot of them is makes me sick. These evil little toads masquerading as men.

They want us spending money, nursing their economy back to health. They write articles about how the economy is going to collapse if we don't get out there and buy more of their useless shit.

I've also lost confidence in technology, and of course I am aware of the hypocrisy of that statement typed out and shared over the internet. I can't help but believe that it will be used more and more to the detriment of normal people. I think maybe it will always be used to make more money, to enslave, and never to improve human life. I want to be wrong.

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I'm trying to slow down my mind. I'm not sure if it can be simplified, but perhaps more controlled. My mind is so tired from running at full speed for years, trying to catch up with something, or maybe trying to run away from something. But I am tired of running. I want to sit still.

The truth is, running at full tilt through billions of meaningless thoughts has taken its toll on me. My mind was looking for something to entertain, or looking for a solution to a problem that cannot be solved, or looking for an escape from some manufactured fear. But all that running, and now nothing entertains, everything is a problem, and everything is scary. I have turned my own mental landscape into a rat race, and there is no finish line. They finally burnt me out, which is why I'm here, trying to avoid anything that will pull me back into that race.

I don't want to think I've broken something inside of me, because I refuse to be a doomer about my own spiritual state. But I know it's not something that can be fixed overnight. It is going to take a lot of effort and a lot of time.

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This website is not currently very aesthetic. There is a lot of pressure to be flashy and unique. To be honest, maybe I am not flashy and unique. Maybe my entire life has been tainted by a unseen expectation that I stand out when that just isn't who I am. Who doesn't want to be special? Who doesn't want to be noticed? If you don't stand out, you become a background character, you are dehumanized. Perhaps I am overthinking this.

2/25/2025:

This is something simple, as in, a website without anything except those daily experiences, thoughts, and other ephemera, that I come across during the weeks of Lent coming. If this website will continue beyond that time, I do not yet know, but I wish, at least for now, to have a way of recording my feelings as I go through the process of giving up.

I'm not giving up anything physical, although that did cross my mind first. Who doesn't say 'smoking, booze, sweets' every year? But I gave up smoking for the most part these last few months, and nothing else felt right. They aren't the real problem. The real problem is my mind, and what I've let it become these past five years.

You might think the difference is negligible, but to me it is everything. The world is so different than it used to be, but it's also different in the way I see it- uglier now, since I've let the minds of millions of others have their say without discretion, crawling into every silent space I had, hunting out my boredom for sport. The lack of exclusion has cost me the nature of my own thoughts.

I don't trust any of this anymore. There is nothing to separate the ideas of a thinking, feeling, souled human being against a bot built by a billionaire, an algorithm carefully designed to carve me into someone I am not. So that is what I'm giving up- the scroll.

I am trusting a lot to my willpower, so much so that I was scared not to start early. I hate to make committments that I am not sure I can fulfill. This is my little test run against an non-existent audience, a chance to see if there is anything underneath anymore.

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Watched a recording of the Elephant Man stage play since I recently rewatched David Lynch's adaptation. In this version, John Merrick is portrayed without any makeup or special effects, and so it is all up to the actor to convey and to allow the viewer's imagination to do the rest. Without the visual, it is hard to comprehend that kind of human suffering, but it also allows him to be viewed through his words and actions rather than letting his appearance dominate him as it did in his life.

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Just finished Orlando with Tilda Swinton. Haven't visited that book since high school. I never remembered much past the part after Orlando becomes a woman, as it got really boring to me at that point. Says a lot about how I feel about gender in general, I guess.

I enjoyed this version, the music and the costumes particularly (found a cool blog post on that subject here). The fashion is so extreme as to the make the whole thing feel like a dream. Orlando addresses the audience directly; kinda reminds me of Funny Games, in a way.