CC#6 - Hitting Walls

collective cast number six hitting walls you're tuned to the collective cast agents of the collective strive to fight adapt and grow whether facing the evils of the world or those within ourselves we support one another and leave nobody behind and now here's your host of the collective cast the cryptic chameleon hello everybody this is chris also known as the cryptic chameleon i want to thank you fellow agents and members of the collective for joining me here as we continue our journey to fight adapt and grow both in everyday life and if you're part of my gaming stuff in gaming as well but uh the podcast mostly focuses on everyday life and this episode's going to be a little bit different uh we we can consider this episode kind of a check-in episode so uh i didn't make last week's episode and there's a variety of reasons for that including things that are going on in my life that are difficult to deal with but i'm also finding that the process of internal change takes up a lot of energy and that when you don't have as many things going on in life you have more energy to focus on that and then what happens is you get back into work or at least what happened to me was i got back into work i got uh you know i started working again and for the first week things were going okay i was i was really staying on top of you know making a plan for my week like the seven habits book said i should be doing i was uh you know generally staying on top of my exercise and everything else things were going well and then last week came and last week well actually last week was the first week back from work well anyway that's not the point or back to work the point is last week got nuts last week got nuts so i went back to work on the fourth and i started doing my job which includes four hours of training live training basically during the day and then hour of training for a different region of the world at night which as you can imagine is very taxing on your internal energy stores when i'm training i i tend to speak louder i tend to be more expressive i tend to you know use my hands to gesture a lot more so even though i'm not functionally doing more than eight hours of work in a day i'm still doing a lot more talking and i'm still being more expressive which takes up more energy on top of that last week well maybe i should do a proper coverage of this so for those of you that are listening that don't know or that aren't part of my community online i am in the process of going through a divorce it's you know not a great situation obviously i mean divorce never is now for the person who is my spouse currently you know she and i actually have a better friendship than we've ever had at this point but that's because we never had a real friendship to begin with and uh you know my own internal character defects that i've been talking about are part of the reason for that growing up i was very insecure i am a person who didn't have an easy time trusting people not even trusting people in my own family i didn't even feel like i belonged in my own family even though they showed me love you know they showed me love in whatever way they could in whatever way they knew how to that doesn't mean that i felt that way now part of that's me internally but part of that might be other things as well that i'm diving into so part of the reason why i started going through seven habits is because well guess what you know um i have a therapist and i'm starting to go through it and part of the reason i want to share that with other people is because well one the book recommended it as i pointed out but two i've always loved doing audio and visual things i like podcasting i like game streaming i like doing things where i'm behind a microphone not necessarily because i'm the center of attention but because i do somewhat enjoy the process and yes i do somewhat enjoy the sound of my own voice so this podcast is not just out there for me to share the seven habits of highly effective people with you or to share other resources with you but it's also a very real aspect of my journey in life and sharing the pain and suffering that i'm going through even if it's just almost like as an audio journal for myself but hey you're listening too right i mean if you are listening you're listening and that's a comfort because guess what other people go through this other people go through the hard times of trying to go through personal growth and change and hitting a wall which is what i'm going through right now i've hit a wall and the wall is well the difference between energy reserves first of all time because last week as i was introducing i am going through a divorce we are going through the divorce very uh you know kindly towards each other where we're not getting lawyers involved and all that other stuff and you can go ahead and say oh my gosh you're not getting lawyers involved what's wrong with don't worry about it the point is that uh last week uh monday and tuesday night i had to go through the for my state mandated parenting education classes which were three hours each so that took my monday and tuesday nights out of the picture completely because from six to nine pm i was doing that and on top of that you know my current spouse and i do spend time talking together at night we're still living in the same place we don't hate each other we're not screaming and like making all sorts of threats and whatnot we actually have really deep conversations or at least deeper than i'm used to and no you know she's at a point where she doesn't have a deep level of trust for me and no uh i'm not upset about that because i understand where she's coming from because i have been basically a selfish entitled man child for the majority of my life and it took a lot to realize that and yeah there are other aspects of that that i am not going to talk about because guess what i don't have to share everything with everybody that's not the way it works i can share a good chunk of my life with you but i can't share everything and i don't think that you would want me to share everything either because that would make you uncomfortable you know if i started telling you all the the deepest darkest things of life all the deepest darkest stories of life and whatnot you'd be like this guy's over sharing he's just trying to get attention i'm not trying to get attention here the point that i'm trying to make is that last week i was unable you know i did my planning for last week i thought i was on good track but then i started falling behind on things i didn't get a bunch of social media posts pre-posted like i wanted to uh which i try to do you know i'm trying to boost my social presence online for the things i care about such as the game stream and this podcast i'm trying to pre-post things that might draw interest so that um you know i have a group of people that are supporting me and what i'm doing it feels good to be supported in what you're doing uh even if it's just by people watching or listening you know it makes you feel like you belong to something and yes that's part of my problem is that you know i haven't really felt secure in just belonging in of myself and feeling like i could belong anywhere but i don't do any of these things to become popular i wouldn't stream two hours on saturday and sundays and put out a bunch of youtube videos and currently only have 18 followers if i was doing it for the likes and for the follows i wouldn't you know i would be extremely frustrated if i was doing streaming and you know had one to two solid viewers most of the time and i was thinking i should have hundreds or thousands i do it because i enjoy it but that doesn't mean that i don't want to as part of who i'm trying to become and uh learning who it is that i am and trying to be more of that person that i don't want to invest the time to do more social outreach and things like that so that was in some of my weekly planning and it didn't happen this week my weekly planning hasn't happened and last week this podcast didn't happen for reasons you can definitely uh imagine at this point and you know to be honest i did read the next chapter in the seven habits book and i can't remember what it is that i read and it doesn't mean it's not meaningful it just means that i haven't had the mental energy or capacity to go through it and that's not your fault and it's not really my fault either we can only deal with what we can deal with my issue is the guilt that i feel around that sometimes you know i really felt strongly like i want to get this podcast out and you know this is this is part of something i'm doing for myself and i need to do it and then i couldn't do it and it hurt and that's the problem or part of the problem in this journey of self-growth is that we set goals or i i set goals i set milestones and i'm like yeah i'm i'm going strong i can keep this up i can keep this up and then something changes and i can't keep it up and it is so hard to accept that because being compassionate towards others first of all is a skill that i'm still learning but secondly being compassionate towards myself oh well that's that's a whole nother ball of wax you know oh my gosh self how could you miss these these goals how could you you know not not want to you know do these things that you love and it's not that i don't want to do them i just didn't have the throughput to be able to do it and that's that's hard and even tonight as i'm recording this i know for a fact that like i'm not gonna have the transcripts ready because i'm not gonna have the youtube version ready because i just don't have the time but i wanted to get something out i care about still doing this i care for me because it's a log of what i'm going through but i care for others because if you're hearing what i'm going through chances are that you or somebody else that you know has gone through it and maybe you can take comfort in that you know none of life is easy for anybody and if anybody tells you life is easy they don't know what they're talking about i always thought life was easy for me because i buried myself uh away from feeling the the pain or the loneliness or any other negative feelings i didn't want to feel them so i ran from them and the ways that i ran from them were unhealthy you know it wasn't uh it wasn't alcohol or drugs luckily but i we all have our own drugs and we all have ways that we might treat others that act as a way of us dealing with coping with our own inability to deal with the pain that we experience in life at least that was the case for me you know i was an angry person maybe not physically violently angry but angry and i was easily annoyed i still get easily annoyed at times i've gotten better but that doesn't mean that i'm great you know it's a process and as i'm saying this out loud to you whoever you are that might be listening i'm saying it to myself i don't say this from a place of strength i don't say this from a place where um you know i'm an expert i have to learn this lesson over and over again you know i think i'm doing great i think i'm uh you know on the right track i'm i'm hitting these different goals and yet then i find myself you know further from the goals than i i thought i might be and it's hard and it's hard to live in this moment and to feel this emotion but i have to and we all have to because if we run from it if we run from the pain if we try to douse the pain in youtube videos food uh we try to douse the pain in whatever way that we want to douse the pain yeah it feels like the pain goes away but it doesn't i have to accept the fact that yeah i miss some goals that i set for myself and that's okay that's the thing that i have to work on is being okay with it because it's going to happen life isn't perfect life is not a especially in terms of character development in terms of correcting deep-seated things that a person has dealt with for a good chunk of their life it doesn't happen at the pace that we wanted to it doesn't happen at the pace i want it to i would love to snap my fingers and have it be done you know and i i will always say this if you could give me a pill that would make my problems go away i would take it in a heartbeat because i'm impatient and that's one of the things i need to work on i also put higher standards on myself sometimes than i should but i also put lower standards on myself than i should in other areas of my life and those are hard things and you might be listening to this and saying wow like this guy is really getting down on himself and and you know this is really a stream of consciousness and you're right right now this is a stream of consciousness because i wanted to get out here and talk about what's going on i can't fake it i'm not gonna sit there and be like hey yeah i'm your guru of uh the seven you know habits of highly effective people let me pretend that i know everything let me pretend that my life is perfect and you know what i pretended my life was perfect or my life was what um i imagined it to be for a good chunk of my life i'm not doing it i'm not going to do that and i'm not going to do that to you i'm not going to do that to myself it's hard and it's hard because self-improvement is a continuous journey and even when you get to one ledge on the mountain of change as you're going up it there's going to always be another one it's an endless climb until well eventually you die you know it's an endless climb to deal with childhood things that you've never dealt with it's an endless climb to deal with attitudes in yourself that aren't healthy towards yourself or others it's an endless climb to get through even like little niggly behaviors that are so small uh that you know only you notice that they frustrate you when you do them or only people within your closest inner circle around you understand that it's frustrating when you do them relationships with others and correcting internal attitudes that you might have towards others that prevent you from having the relationships you should have those are difficult to deal with too so there's a lot of work to do for all of us myself included especially myself so i never speak to you as an expert and i apologize for not getting a podcast out last week and i do feel bad about it i do but at the same time i also need to be compassionate towards myself and need to see that life happens so are you going to get one of these endless rants every time i miss a podcast no that's not going to happen you're not going to get an endless rant every time i miss a podcast in fact i think it's better to set better expectations around the frequency of these podcasts so for example i may only be able to guarantee a podcast every other week that doesn't mean that i won't try for every week i really do want to do something weekly it's great to do something weekly i just don't know that where my life is right now i can guarantee that to all of you and again if all of you is just me hey i can't guarantee that to myself that i can do a podcast every week that i could do what needs to happen with it every week i can't guarantee that i'm always going to be the most in touch person when it comes to everything that i'm doing on twitter and on my different discord communities you know i i think my my bandwidth is my own discord community and one other one that i'm part of right now and that's about it and even then it's a couple times a day jumping in saying hi those types of things in terms of twitter my goal is to you know post a bunch of tweets at the beginning of the week and then occasionally jump on and react to people uh as they're saying stuff that i'm interested in or um when i care about something they're going through one other person that's been very good about sharing their journey online in terms of difficulties they've had in life is someone known as the demented raven and she can be found on twitch but she has two different uh twitter accounts one that is her kind of twitch facing account it's her her you know gaming persona but she has one that she just created to talk about mental health things that she's struggling with and to put them out there and it was in part because she wanted to separate out the issues that she was struggling with uh with depression anxiety whatever it might be from the quote unquote fun of her game streaming world and so that's something that um you know is really something that i i applaud her for because of the strength that she showed in doing that so i think the point is to be real and that's what i'm going to do i'm going to be real i'm going to be real to myself and i'm going to be real to you just like the demented raven is being real to her audience and so you know i appreciate you growing with me and fighting adapting and growing with me i really appreciate it and i appreciate all the effort that you put in to being part of the community and to encouraging one another it's still my goal to whenever we can to try to set up something for the end of each month so that we could share in each other's journey together as part of the podcast if you're part of the discord community so that i can pull you into a chat room and we can all sit here and talk about life for a half hour or so and be able to you know help each other along in our journeys and so that's something that i still feel strongly about and want to do i have to put it on the calendar still for this month and i will be doing that so please join the discord so thank you for listening to this rant if you found any value in it whatsoever please by all means uh i believe in the value for value model so if you like what you're what you're hearing here or if it resonates with you by all means share it with somebody join the discord uh that is always in the show note links and um you know if you want to toss me a couple bucks on paypal i appreciate it because it as i mentioned does take time and energy and effort to put all this together but that being said you know i appreciate you being here i appreciate you listening and if you could share this with someone else that you think might enjoy it or might take something away from it that's great and uh i i'm excited about that so next time hopefully we'll pick up on the seven habits of highly effective people i'm in the transitional chapter between the uh what do you call it the personal victory and the public victories so i'm going to reread the chapter and take some notes and we will hopefully be back on track in a week or two here again guaranteeing new shows every other week but hopefully trying for every week in the meantime i want to thank you for being part of the collective and joining with me in our journey together to fight adapt and grow we'll see you next time take care you