What to do with feelings

I remember in kindergarten and first grade, we would follow the teacher making art out of shapes of construction paper, drawing step by step, or making an illustrated book. I remember in second grade, we would have a journaling session in class every day, and I would fill up an entire page. I remember in third grade, I would make tons of origami. And in fourth and fifth grade, my best friend and I would write and draw comic books together.

Thinking back on those times, particularly kindgarten to second grade, producing that extreme volume of work seems outrageous to me now. Especially considering how little I was and how little I knew. It shows how I could have no skills, yet learn by example and put out whatever I could, and produce massive results. I think it could be attributed to the classroom environment of always producing work, even if it wasn't good. To keep on doing that and improving. I want to apply that here too. Write whatever I can, whatever the quality, and the quantity will improve the quality over practice.

My baseline feeling is kind of restless and keep needing to do stuff to live like eating or whatever and hard to concentrate and do work. And the time just passes and I don't know where it goes. Energy and time is non-fungible. And it's not good because I have a lot of stuff I need to do and haven't been doing. Once in a while, I have a very unsettling feeling where I don't really have enough energy to do anything, but I need to get that feeling out or understand it somehow. I would play the piano, read a book, or find something online to read or watch that makes me what to try to understand that feeling, and maybe quiet it a little.

I want to read To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. It's a modernist stream-of-consciousness book with themes of loss, using art to feel better, and how experiences and relationships are complex. It was mentioned in Excellent Sheep by William Deresiewicz about the reality of being very human, and the main character's favorite book in the movie Nerve (2016). I feel like I would relate to those themes.

Youtube channel Crashcourse made a video about To the Lighthouse, and I wandered to a video called "How and Why We Read" about using language to communicate our feelings to people across time and space and a way to understand one another. And using techniques to better do that. That was one of my takeaways from The Fault in Our Stars by John Green - the intimate feelings of people can come alive even after they are dead like when Hazel reads the eulogy Gus wrote for her after he dies, and using writing as a powerful way to perserve whatever is alive in us for the future.

I guess I'm trying to communicate how I feel. When I play piano during that unsettling feeling, I feel sad tightness in my chest and it doesn't really go away. Even after I keep on playing for a very long time. Or whatever I do really.

Some people say anxiety is the way your body tells you something is wrong and you need to do something to change. I need to change my environment. Especially the people I'm with, or making friends, or community building. Kind of like the feeling I wrote in "544 Days thoughts." Because I feel like I don't have anyone to actually talk to. Whether to listen or understand or discuss or build. Makes me think about Visa trying to build communities.

Visa came out with a book today called Introspect. Similar to To the Lighthouse, I want to use this book to better understand something. I'm not sure. Myself or my situation or fix something?

I also want to watch Sound of Metal (2019) to understand the sense of loss and being a part of community.

I get good feelings when I think of past times when I feel a sense of community. Creating something with friends. Being together. Being in nature. Running. Living together.

Having an awesome roommate must be the best thing ever. It's like always being with a best friend. Or an awesome sleepover. I remember sleeping over at my comic book friend's house. There was a fingering guitar CD playing as we talked, played games, and fell asleep on a bunkbed. I woke up the next day super early at like 5am (sidenote: apparently other people have woken up early at a friend's house from the excitement) thinking it was already morning, and woke my friend up too. And we ended up sitting on the small couch not really doing anything, but it was a great memory.

When your roommate is not awesome, it's not very awesome. And very lonely. I've noticed that I change based on the people around me, so being with awesome people is very important to me.

I've noticed that people experience the world very differently from one another. For example, I feel bad when I sit down or look at a screen too long, I stop doing it, whereas my roommate plays video games continuous for a couple hours. Like the feeling that tells you you need to change. One night, I asked my roommate if the meat he made was brisket at 2:40am while I was trying to sleep with his bright light on his phone on, and he answered with "It's 2:40am." He usually doesn't engage when I engage with him, but he gives me hope that he's a little interesting when he talks to other people, like his video game friends. But expects me to engage when he engages me, which I do enthusiatically, but it's weird when he goes back to doing his own thing mode right after. The morning after the 2:40am thing, he's talking to his sister on the phone and talks about how weird I am, like asking him a question at 2:40, screaming at night (night terrors? idk), and standing over his shoulder while he's watching a lecture. I could see how we each could view each other as weird. Which is weird.

Well, now I got to go to sleep and push the work I needed to do yet another day. I can't believe 1000 words came out of me that fast. And I won't be scrolling back up to reread and edit or anything, so everything here is straight from my mind. Hope it doesn't get weird like Aaron Swartz. Oh yeah, I did yoga today, and it was good. And another thing, just wrote the title, and it reminds me of Mr. Rogers.