Good Enough

In my striving angst for imagination, I should say now that I feel good enough for society's expectations. 

I am educated enough, and likely to achieve my MA. 
I have lived a hedonistic life at times and lived to tell the tale. 
I have travelled to the major countries of the world. 
I can play music good enough live. 
I have miniatures good enough to play and paint. 
I have a partner who is kind and loving. 
I have a good enough financial situation. 
I am good enough at my job. 

I am good enough in the eyes of society. I do not feel I need to invest more of myself in that.

I want to explore my creativity and my imagination. 

How to explore my imagination?

For the past couple of weeks, I feel that I have not experienced my imagination. When I close my eyes, I experience a limited 

Blaming myself for this might lead to me not experiencing my imagination, at least if I blame myself too much. 

I play three-minute chess. It is a way of connecting with other people, of being real. However, I feel maybe it affects my imagination, stopping me from focusing by dissipitating my energy like butter spread too thinly on cheap bread. 

______

For several days I have stopped my chess and warhammer, removing the temptation of the addictive hits of quick games from my addled mind. That space from the sugary hits of quick games melts into the delightful space of being off work. I have space for imagination. 

I should point out that I am enjoying some pillars of eternity as well. That invigorates the imagination. 

_____

Last night I suffered the family dream of a home invasion in the insecure experience of my Hull home. I woke up early, played some games, and watched a horror film. 

Imagination? 

Imagination should not be optional

For a good number of weeks, I have played multiplayer of Total War Warhammer after work. 

Most of the time, even when I win, I do not feel the imaginative power of that experience. Instead, I leave vexed, and often with food still to purchase, leading to an unnecessary scrabble. 

When I am closing my eyes these past days, I wonder what halls of thought I really have. I have struggled with this meditation. I want to be happier exploring again myself, or the essence that has been manifested or unmanifested in various ways. 

Imagination + Sanity + Spirituality = ? 

Can the energy flow in different directions?

The energy often flows into my head. I wake up this morning feeling difficult, with a dry mouth and a fuzzy head, my inner-body misty with undefined essence. 

It has been a long time since I opened doors in my halls of thought with purpose and intention. Instead I often flit from thought to thought, not living with or accepting what I could be. 

I have experienced some overwhelming emotions recently. COVID has made the experience of exam classes worrying. Last year was much easier in comparison, let's be honest. And that was fortunate. 

I feel things should have their space, and time. 

I have done enough 'life' now I think. 

It is time for me to walk about consider how the week ahead might go. Whilst I have 30 tasks, that does not seem impossibly hard. 

Things should have their place. 

____________

Today feels the start of a better week because I have some space. Things that need to be done were focused on the weekend. I feel some genuine pomodoro-a-day work will be enough. 

In another forum, I would be scrabbling for work to complete, like in Beijing. 

This does not mean things are perfect or easy. But I can enjoy a perfect ease if the stars aline and my body responds. 

Alcohol affected me yesterday, thanks to the drinking the night before that, making my head groggy and my stomach sensitive. I do not think I want that again soon. 

The distance I experience from the massless pain of essence last week is real. 

I want to be with myself more this week, and certainly over Easter. 

Some thoughts

Hello all, 

I am here. With a week left until I experience Easter, I am here. 

The choices I have made will still be owned. 

Marking literature essays is difficult because of different approaches. 

Analysing language is really about 'understanding' the text. That seems to be the approach of my colleagues, and perhaps many markers. 

The ability to go beyond that to the ideas of the text seems a distant possibility. 

Can I begin to annotate 'what the text means'? Some multiple choice possibilities of how to interpret a text? That if you 'know' different contextual elements, then it unlocks different interpretations of a quotation? 

Worked Hard - Too Hard?

I managed to work hard over the past three days, completing IO preparation, some Year 11 planning, Year 11 and Year 8 marking, and some ToK marking. 

This is the kind of work I did during the busiest Dubai days. I also do so without stressful music playing. 

I think the mindfulness of the marking might ramp up a little bit (so... x6 a week rather than x5?). 

My imagination is also interesting. Maybe I can begin to use some online meditation? 

Today is a day to pull back a little bit. 

The Magic of Pomodoros

This week I have felt the magic of pomodoros. My spirit has been roused to complete some 'too difficult' work, but still I walk and complete some hobbies. 

The marking I need to do is not impossible. It just needs the time allocated to it, which can be 4 pomodoros a day. This is doable and feels like a righteous event. 

I dreamt of again the awkward colleague and various shark-infested waters at work. Things are not like that but the metaphor remains: without completing the marking, life will be tricky. 

As a professional adult, I need to complete my professional obligations. 

Yesterday I noticed two things in my gaming: 

a) Firstly I beat some newbie ladder guys. Meh. 

b) I was disappointed in another ladderguy that chose a hard counter to my army whilst speaking about style points. I removed him as a friend, which is a shame perhaps, but inevitable. 

I also looked for a pen with the intention of being more mindful in my hobbies after work... let us see!

Waking up, knowing that intensity of work I used to do

Did I use to work intensely hard? 

In Dubai my mark load was immense. 175 students, essays on at least a weekly basis. An industrial workload. The idea that I would mark for 25 minutes only per day would be a dream, a relief both physically in terms of time spent sitting and spiritually with what space might open up. 

Lessons in Dubai would be difficult too, often needing teacher-directed work every lesson, leaving less time for marking. 

Yesterday felt tricky, with my stomach and mind unduly riled, like a tipping of a rusty oil barrel into a small river. I could not walk slowly during my break, my attention no longer focused on noticing. It felt irksome and upsetting to lose my calm. 

Perhaps for many years, I worked on this fast violence. Each day waking up and smashing lessons. The energy of my students kept me going, something I dearly miss now. 

Today I need to mark, putting in the time I used to do. 

I have been smart about my job - the excitement I feel does not need to consume me. 

How is your week looking?

The kind of question I ask myself has just been asked to me: how is your week looking? 

My week is looking less busy than it would be in Dubai, with fewer assignments, less irksomeness, and just general ease in comparison. Even with exam expectations, life feels easier and better in comparison. I have a green garden to walk, and feel cared for. 

I slept poorly apparently. 

I sit here with moments to go until I see my Year 8s. They will largely just write their essay. Then I have a free lesson until 10:30am. 

Time exists to write some materials etc. 

I find myself here, in a seat, waiting for something. 

Yesterday I thought in a little more depth about what I need to do to find a vision for my lifestyle. Money and position is important, but I really want to consider what kind of lifestyle I want to have soon, and how that lifestyle might look until my death. 

Emotional awareness? Intensity? Memories reside inside my gut and my legs.  

On the weekend, too much chess or crappy horror films leaves me listless, with little imagination stimulated. Engaging more directly in imagination is my desire. 

A barren field of tortured souls

Yesterday I did various things to... 

My imagination should be enough... 

How to reimagine different memories, views, to integrate? 

Which partners... 

S R:

B New:

Sop A:

T D: 

AR: 

To experience memory is a privilege. To experience these halls of thought... why would I want a lesser version of that? 

Time. It is not linear. I should be able to detect the privilege of imagination. 

The pain of the above memory is useful, but it is still limited. Decide where your pain would be felt. 

That rotting man wants the child, but that field is not a place for children. The kingly part of me can recognise that domain, and the desire of the flayed king for soverignety. The child will not remain, at least not in essence. But a manifestation of the boy with no essence, boundaried off in a humble form of sacrifice, a husk of dried flesh stretching to nothing, might remain. 

I remember SR, of the tears on the sofa, the sobbing sorrow-walk home. The adult part of me looks at that young man and holds me in his pain, no questions asked, just acknowledgement that the pain is real. The Everchild laughs at the absurdity of missing someone who does not want me, and chirps up that her friends are the friends that I want myself. Or at least better friends than I had. 

I remember the Kingly part of me taking myself into court, stepping through a door into the halls of thought. Here a hall of men drink with me, for the sweet pain of a woman marks me. It is not the pain that I feel for a woman, but it is pain I feel of vulnerability and imagination, of the necessary scars it splashes on me. 

Finally, I remember the experience as a metaphor: of a bright yellow light simply clashing with an ebbing blue orb. There cannot be reconciliation between the two. But they did not destroy each other. 

 

Stress Needed - muddied soup or sparky fuel?

Yesterday I found work slightly easier because I felt a sense of 'stress'. This stress motivated me to focus on my work, and the passed somewhat easier than I expected. That sense of my slouching gut drags me down, sinking across the ground as a muddied soup instead becomes fuel for a sparky jet engine, firing me throughout the day. 

Today I feel tired, emotionally and physically. In comparison to Dubai, the demands on me are not too difficult. But they are more than nothing, and I feel tired in comparison to being on holiday, for sure. My sleep pattern is apparently excellent, although I do not feel the effects today. 

Yesterday I sat in a meeting without emotional pangs. My emotional investment in my work before has not helped me, coming with the angst and pain of professional divergence, a remarkable frustration. Like dancing with awkward partners, our genres diverge. My desire for a professional voice remains, a sense of who I might be, of how I might be experienced by ears out from this apartment into the wider world. But that will not be found in my department. My department is limited in that way. 

More importantly, they are each kind in their own ways. We might enjoy a mature working relationship whereby we support each other logistically without challenging values, without rattling cages. Issues like no reading lesson in Year 7, or no support for coursework in Year 10, will remain unchallenged and unresolved. The vocational limitations - or likely our different genres - need not make us unkind. 

How did I feel in that meeting yesterday? The doors remained firmly shut in my halls of thought. No unwanted essence from others was allowed to penetrate. Essence previously gathered acted to manifest my understanding of what was occurring outside, its shapes clear enough to interpret the actions and thoughts of others, allowing me to do my job. No disrespect or ire was needed to defend me. Instead just the firm shutting of my halls of thought. 

These halls have often been open. It is not just the doors but also the windows that might open. Essence creeps in many ways into the bastion of my being, residing itself in the various objects that comprise the place. The halls of thought are not static, although they can form recognisable shapes and pleasing decor. 

I want to explore my imagination. It is not simply a cerebral thing. It is the way that for this time, I experience the world. 

 

Stress and Demand at Work

Today might be a day that pushes others to stress. My heart and body have felt the stress of this week, the psychic worry of others compounded by my own unresolved angst. 

I have not always been able to integrate my fears. But each week I experience multiple times where fear need not overtake me. 

Today I am busy with many things, but none of them impossible to complete. A few moments of listening to my body is given, of looking upwards and downwards at myself. 

The Everchild looks at this day with wonder, protected by his own guilelessness. Elements of The Everchild have protected me, but they can rest. The Everchild, that form of essence most fundamental to the imagination, need not be an organising adult. 

Let others experience that undue stress. I realise the pointlessness of it. 

Imagination - The Detection of Essence

In my early 20s, I experienced 'essence', a kind of malleable mist that came from outside the halls of thought. Through the guidance of memories and experience, it can be shaped, lucidly or organically, into anything. 

I close my eyes now and feel the presence of essence inside the back door of my hall, that door that opens to whatever needs to be opened. I want to explore my mind because there is enough richness in the essence that exists in the rooms to be reformed into shapes. These shapes can be repeated moments of emotional intensity, of a time of embarrassment or joy, of fury or refinement, and experienced again in a non-linear fashion. 

I do not have a cohesive structure through which to experience this reformation of essence into relived experiences. The behaviourists would see it as entirely trapped inside our heads, of essence being a metaphorical construct. The cognitivists see it as a manifestation, or at least as a manifestable being, a mist that becomes corporal and colourful as needed. 

The experience of daily life at this time is at times one of distraction. I will walk soon to see how I might experience something of my mind. 

To be with me is not easy. The busy and emotional nature of my work can make that challenging. But time is not linear. 

I will walk now.