Ch-ch-ch-changes!

OK.

This is it.
It's time to change. Time to change my life, my habits, my negative behavior patterns, all that. Not all at once, though. But I've been wanting this change, craving it for so long now, that I see no other way out - and I'm so looking forward to getting started! I have started a little bit, by excercising every week together with a friend, and I love it! And better: it relit the spark in me, that desire I feel deep within to be the best that I can be, to make my life better, one step at a time. So now, change is coming, and I almost can't wait! I'm really excited, but I'm gonna be careful and not fall into the many traps and pitfalls. Leo on zenhabits.net writes about things to avoid when changing habits in this post.

OK.
Goal #1: Become an early riser. Starting tomorrow, February 23.
--One premise for this is zero or next to zero alcohol. I should also quit smoking, but one thing at a time.

Yay! :D

Irony in the Night

So, for some reason I wake up at 2 AM, unable to get back to sleep. That happens sometimes, to everyone i guess. I lie in my bed for a while, trying desperately to sleep, but around 3 o'clock I figure there's no use. My eyes are wide open. I try to shut them, they glide back open. No position is really comfortable. And I'm so hungry I don't know which basic need to focus on: sleep or food. And it's strange that I'm hungry, because I ate right before I went to bed. As I lie there I figure it must be because I've begun working out. Yup.

So, I get up and fix myself some food and settle down with the laptop to read the news. My internet connection at home has been dead for a couple of days, but now it's back, and I quickly see there's a lot I've missed. North Korea are toying with the big bombs. Google has bought YouTube.

Oh well, the world continues. So, I go the MisticRiver forums (MisticRiver is a web/fansite for various iRiver MP3-players) to see if there are any exciting news in that part of the world. After a little while I stumble across the signature of one guy: "Do you know what it's like to care too much, 'bout someone that you're never gonna get to touch? --Eels - Hey Man (Now You're Really Living)" And this little quote kinda struck me in the right place. Because yes, I know what it's like. In any case, I went to a torrent site and searched for "eels" to try and find this song and check it out (I don't know if I even like Eels), and after a little while the irony was overwhelming. Here are some of the search results: "Kacper Powtaski - Powerful Sleep (Secrets Of The Inner Sleep Clock - Nlp) pdf" - "Sleepless in Seattle (1993) [ENG] [DVDrip]" - "BBC How To Sleep Better Xvid"

Ironic, eh? It seems this search engine also searches for the reverse of your search term (eels backwards = slee).

I thought it pretty weird at first, seeing all those results about sleep showing up. But hey, a lot is weird this night...

What gives you the right to these sensory pleasures when I'm down?

[Post in Norwegian!]

Hurra, det hagler. Det er midten av mai, og det hagler. Riktignok er dette Norge, ja, men likevel.

Nåvel, det gjør ikke stort i dag egentlig. Det er en kjip dag uansett. Jeg vet ikke helt hvorfor, eller, vel, jo. Det er vel det samme som alltid, er det ikke? Du ser jenta du er litt betatt av kysse kjæresten du ikke visste at hun hadde, og så er det downhill from there. "It makes me drink beer (...) It makes me drink more", synger The Magnetic Fields, dog om en litt annerledes situasjon.

Kjærligheten. Jeg er jo egentlig dypt og vanvittig forelska i ei anna jente, men i perioder tviler jeg på om jeg egentlig virkelig faktisk er det, eller bare vil være det? Kanskje jeg bare tror jeg er det? Joda, hun er perfekt og vel så det. Hvis hennes skjønnhet kunne strekkes ut i en fysisk dimensjon ville den rekke til evigheten og forbi, og jo, jeg er forelska. Dubito, ergo amo. (Jeg beklager hvis det er feil, men jeg er ikke helt stø i latin...) - Jeg er i det minste ikke likegyldig. Jeg tviler, derfor elsker jeg.

Jeg tror jeg sitter litt fast i et mønster. Eller en forbannelse, eventuelt. Møter jeg en jente jeg liker eller blir (veldig) forelska i, så har hun selvfølgelig kjæreste. Hvis ikke, så er det som nå: Hun jeg vil ha er sannsynligvis den vanskeligste jenta man kan prøve seg på. Det vil si, hun er kanskje umulig å bli sammen med, for alle. Men, man må satse på det umulige. Og det er viktig å ikke være redd. Ikke være redd for kjærligheten, ikke være redd for livet, ikke være redd for det man elsker. Jeg siterer den fantastiske Dr. Magnificent Bastard:

"Love is different than passion. Passion is the short skirt and high heels that smells like spring and says, "Hi." Love is making children with her and eating her bad cooking and holding that same woman's hand ten of fifty years later when she dies. (...) Love can be heart-wrenching or life-affirming or sweet or light or poignant, but it is never boring. It never feels like death. It can be tremendously therapeutic to have a woman infer that you're a cunt. It is then that you realize that your masculinity is weak not because you're not interested in surgery or making gobs of money, but because you're afraid of your own life. You're afraid love will be too hard, but only a cunt is afraid of love. What goes into being a man is the same as what goes into being a woman: owning up to responsibilties that come from love."

Når man tenker over det, så er ikke alt så ille som man gjerne vil ha det til. Jeg prøvde å skrive en sang i dag, men det ble ikke noe av. De første linjene gikk noe sånt som "I've been looking for a reason to be sad / It's been a while now, a couple of days" - men den ble bare for teit, for sutrete og tåpelig.

Jeg håper jeg kan klare utdannelsen som barnevernspedagog og få en jobb jeg trives med. Jeg ser for meg å hjelpe hjemløse barn i New York eller rusmisbrukende ungdom i Oslo, jeg vet ikke, men jeg tror jeg kan klare det og være flink til det. De "egoistiske" sidene mine kan jeg pleie på fritiden, skrive bøker og det der.

En annen ting jeg må slutte med er å prøve å gjøre altfor mye. Tusen store prosjekter, samtidig. Så klart det ikke går. Lær å prioritere.

Så, fremover, prioriterte oppgaver:

• Lese til eksamen
• Lese andre bøker (bli ferdig med Prozac Nation etc.)
• Jobbe ferdig romanen.
• Jobbe med musikk.

Yay!

Men - fortsatt den følelsen; hva er galt med meg? Hva er det jeg gjør galt?

oh well, what the hell...

A passing blue cloud?

I am neither a doctor nor a psychiatrist, but today I diagnosed myself with mild dysthymia. Differential diagnosis is a "passing blue mood", I'm not sure yet. Or perhaps it's a touch of cyclothymia. I've got enough self-insight (I think) to know it's not that bad. It feels bad nonetheless. "Not just bad, but weird and sad", as one of my favorite bands sing on their new album. Couple this with a light paranoia and a fair amount of anxiety, and we're getting closer to the core. Then there's the psychotherapists wet dream (pun intended): my parents. The vegetables.

This time the releasing cause was a conversation with my mother on the phone. She's the uncrowned queen of making you feel guilty, of giving you a bad conscience, feeling worthless, scared and stupid. The worst is that she's most likely not aware of it herself. In any case I have been a bad boy myself. My mother got diagnosed with malignant breast cancer, has gone through surgery and is right now about to start chemo therapy. Myself, I've been trying to not think about it, push it away, don't care. The prognosis for full recovery is good, and I don't want to think about the possibility that everything goes to hell. I've been trying to do something nice for my mother, but I fear that no matter what I do it's not good enough anyway, and in any case it's easier to not think about it. It's just a passing black cloud, right?

Stupid me. A phone call now and then would make a huge difference. So why can't I do it? I'm fucking scared to death, and most of the time I'm a nervous wreck for days after talking to my mom. When I've been home and visited them, the nervousness lasts longer.

On top of it I'm desperately searching for the meaning of life, or rather how to find meaning in a meaningless world. I'm an absurd mind. All my life I've wanted to do creative stuff. I wanna be a writer, a musician on the side, visual artist on my spare time. Bohemian. Free. My parents would never understand that. And that's a quite egosentric occupation, isn't it?

I recently found myself facing two choices: 1) The egosentric, fuck-the-world road. 2) The non-egosentric, help-people-in-need road.

I'm 99% positive I'll head down road #2.

It's too late for me to start med. school or become a psychiatrist, unless someone decides to pay for my life the next 10 years or so. 5 years, at least.

So, I'm heading into Child Care. I want to help children and youths, help them not become fucked-up, make a difference, be good. 3 years in school and I'm done, with the possibility of taking a Master's degree later on.

I mentioned this to my mother last night, and was like "Well, good, it's about time you get a real job, you useless crap [well, that was not her actual words, but my interpretation of them]. You can't study forever, because you can't afford it." Screw the money! It's not important! At best it's convenient, and of course necessary. But not important.

Enough for now.

Tentative diagnosis: F34.0 Cyclothymia? F34.1 Dysthymia?