pentagoat [he/him]

if I can offer whats worked for me on the meditating bit, you don't want to fully "blank your mind" of thoughts. You can't train your brain to stop thinking in the same way you can't really train your heart to stop pumping, it's just what it does. Instead, you train your ability to spot intrusive thoughts, to realize "hey, that's a thought my brain just had," and to simply let it go on its way.

Find somewhere comfy to sit and close your eyes. Breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth. Focus on the air passing through your nostrils, down into your lungs, and back out. The feeling of your clothes against your skin as you inhale. Your breathing is your anchor. As thoughts intrude and attempt to disrupt you, you simply acknowledge these thoughts as what they are; ideas your brain just haphazardly threw together and served up for you. Let them pass by, and return to your breathing. They might come back, and that's okay. You're floating high up and your thoughts are just clouds passing by; your breathing is the wind passing over you. If your attention slips, just refocus on the physical sensation of the air moving through you. Thoughts are impermanent, fleeting, and undefined; a memory viewed with rose tinted glasses, a dream of success that precludes how to get there, or a fear of failure that presumes other people's intentions. More importantly, they are not an intrinsic part of you, in the sense of the self. They're just ideas in your head. By training yourself to not engage or react with them in a safe and controlled setting, you better equip yourself for dealing with them in new and unfamiliar settings.

Try 5 minutes a day. Set a timer and sit for the whole thing. Don't start over or beat yourself up too bad if you can't keep your head quiet, just acknowledge what made you lose focus and return to your breathing. As you get better at maintaining steady meditation, you can sit for longer and longer. YMMV ofc but I had really negative thoughts and anxieties when I was younger and this is what has worked for me

fat F

Literally though. I just watched the ep where comic book guy marries a Japanese girl, he says to the girls dad "I used my degree to get a real job at Springfield Phosphate Works." Lisa goes "but they're heavy polluters! But also the CEO is a woman, hmmm..."

I dont think theres a hidden Marxist on the writing staff, but they seem to (at least in the new episodes I was watching) use Lisa as the capital L Liberal punching bag. A lot of jokes about being unlikable despite having popular policies, thinking she knows better than others, about being proud of losing. Felt like i was being dogwhistled too, but might just be looking too hard into it

Woke up this morning to no heat or running water. Landlord moved out of the downstairs unit (presumably due to winter incoming) and I have a gut feeling he just shut the heat off entirely, so now I get to sit in my -15C living room while he finds the time to respond to me.

Thankfully he put a lockbox over the thermostat so my partner and I don't turn the heat up too much :)))) would hate for him to incur any extra costs with all the risk he's taking as a landlord :mao-shining:

update used the gf's bobby pin to get through the gaps in the cage and turn it up, but nothing is even turning on :| like the radiators are just dead. going to a friends until my guy answers his phone