Sandman's Personal Blog

thathomestar

george-louis-costanza

I think I’ve hit a point in my life where I’m able to put a lot of the fucked up shit that’s been going on from 2015-2022 behind me.

And since that’s a long stretch of time til now, I should mention the “fucked up” has varying degrees:

Can’t get employed after college? Fucked up
Some friends turned out to be kinda shitty? Fucked up
The fun and unique culture of the city you like is slowly dying because tech and real estate bros like to gentrify and ruin everything they touch? Fucked up
Worldwide pandemic and finding out the US has always had a fascism problem. And the best you can really do is just buck up and survive this shit? Fucked up
Your State continues to decide to do jack and shit about any of their problems concerning electricity and water and you have had 2-3 winters where you had to go 4-5 DAYS without either water or power? Fucked up (fuck February in Austin)
Existential dread paired with depression, aging to my 30s with seemingly nothing much to show for it, being broke AF while your rent was suddenly raised by 50%, realizing you probably had ADHD this whole goddamn time, and thinking every part of you is broken in some way? Fucked up
Things that are more fucked up than that that I’d still rather keep to myself than write about here? Fucked up
You finish a day at work and go straight to Home Depot to cut through 80 feet worth of 1 1/2” pvc piping into 2 and 2.5 feet segments with a hand saw to finish building your new vocal booth that you have been waiting and planning for months to make, and there’s no heckin way you’re going to cook dinner after doing all that so you go pick up some Wendy’s on the way back. And you said no mayonnaise on your double cheeseburger to the guy at the speaker TWICE and they kept you waiting at the drive through for 15 minutes just for them to finally figure out that what that really meant was to SLATHER THAT SHIT ALL OVER IT, but at the same time you understand and support the concept of acting your wage and goddamn do fast food workers get paid dogshit so you don’t think it’s all that productive to file a complaint? Fucked up

But anyways, I’m gradually making it to the other side of these things.

I’m in a place where rent isn’t trying to starve me. I’m saving LOTS of money after paychecks. I’m at least in a career-adjacent job even though I’m not mega thrilled about it (could be worse, could be fucking up someone’s goddamn double cheeseburger). I’m definitely getting together a “bucket list” for Austin while I’m still in the mindset that I’ll try to give this place at least 1 or 2 more good years before I think it will be a good time to try and move elsewhere. I’m taking shit tons of classes to refine my skills, now that I have both time and money to do so. I’m genuinely building so much better of a foundation than I had 6 years ago, which I will use as a jumping off point and give my my work from home freelance careers in Voice Acting and Video Editing new leases on life. And I recently discovered yoga nidra in a class and while it’s no cure for ADHD it’s a treatment for sure!

One of the big takeaways that I’m keeping in mind lately (thanks to the yoga) is this:

“I am whole. I’m living a full life. And while it’s not how I wanted things to be, and while there’s some fucked up shit, and while it looks nothing like how a typical life would go, none of that shit makes me a lesser/broken/incomplete person.”

This was not a part of the class. This wasn’t taught. This is just what I ended up finding after I tried to figure out the deep seeded beliefs where all of my issues stemmed from. This realization has brought such a stillness to me in the past 48 hours that I can barely describe how I feel right now. But it feels good. There are only a few other places where I could have felt this, and coincidentally, it was not during the fucked up dark timeline that was my 2015-2022.