I started the move from the thumb drives to the new personal blog. Turns out a vast majority of the posts that I thought I had (I had xml imports and json rss feeds) were excerpts — which is why I hate when a blog theme doesn’t allow for infinite scrolling. I did find 144 posts and poems (mostly poetry)
Reading back on some of those last night was nostalgic. Damn, I was opinionated before everything happened. I knew who I was, what I was about — even without a set purpose, I had a sense of direction in my life. “They” were still doing their shit. I was working on my alcoholism (I really didn’t want this to be an issue, still beating myself up over it a little bit), and I could tell that I had myself surrounded by good people. Before I went into the recovery unit in 2014, and during (this is when one of “them” moved someone into my mobile home at the 500 acre farm and I ended up in the house where they basically trapped me for 10 years, causing me to lose everything including two custom PCs that I built and my $7,000 worth of camera equipment + all the images I’d taken at all those football games and sporting events + the pics I took all around Denver and the mountains up in that area, not angry at all about that…), I had friends. I had friends and a CBT instructor who was on my Facebook, my FB friend list was at 5,000 and I knew most all of them personally from some place and time in my life. I was introverted but social. I was active in sports. I was depressed, I remember, but I was also upbeat because I was managing it.
I remember at the time, I was less willing to sit at home and cry so much or look for people to reassure me. The internet wasn’t my one-stop shop for things that remedied neediness. I had a decent job that covered everything and then some. I got down, I’d take myself to the Starbucks by the Mall and bang out some one shot fan fiction on my laptop over a “venti white chocolate mocha, quad espresso, extra cream, extra whip.” I was frequent enough that the Baristas would say “Seth’s here!” and they already knew what I wanted. It was a time where, despite my flaws of being prone to drinking too much and being hella hard on myself, I was emotionally self-sufficient. I rarely had to self-advocate, because I was so confident that it didn’t matter. People knew what they were losing when I walked out the door. And the people who had me in their corner knew how valuable I was — because I valued myself.
It made me feel more positive about where I am at present, because a lot of the things I was doing are things that I’ve been longing to do, but I’m not allowing myself to do, now, because of the fear I learned when I was in that house for ten years.
I was also an active Christian. Speaking of opinions, holy shit…which I appreciate that about myself. Discernment and apologetics were two fortes of mine, and I could pick duplicitous people apart before they had time to speak a full paragraph. I mean, I was like that outside the church as well. And I wasn’t afraid to speak my mind. People would try to put me in my place, and I remember asking them where at God’s table is my place? Same level as yours, I believe. THIS is something I am looking into, I was a lot stronger with a foundation of faith under me.
That’s not to say I wasn’t practicing Eastern religion as well. Buddhism, as I interpreted it at the time, was capable of being overlapped onto Christianity with respect to the “no god” belief. I never saw God as a “supreme” being, but as the universe, even literally. Which some Christians would lose their minds over that sentiment. If you consider that the universe ultimately controls itself, and is the biggest thing we currently understand to exist, and based on the Big Bang, theory, what if it wasn’t an explosion, but something even bigger than us letting out a breath, and we are merely the particles within? Ok these gummies…[FOCUS] but no, what I’m saying is that I feel like the universe controls itself. I’ve always said “I don’t believe in Law of Attraction, but it happens to me every day.” I’ve always felt it was because the Universe listens. If you think on it enough, it’s bound to happen. Hoshin Kanri. It made sense to me, that the Universe can hear us. It knows our thoughts, knows our intentions, our motives, and acts accordingly. It doesn’t control us, but it can set things in place to grant or deny our desires or goals. Like the ultimate Dungeon Master. With that philosophy, it was easy to be Christian and also practice Buddhism. It was also really calming and serene.
Anyway…I need to work on these blog posts over there. All I have left is the jumble of 184 posts over here that are all dated January 13, 2025 (ugh). I’m low-key hoping I can see where certain things went right and wrong the past few months so that I can correct and adjust them.
On a side note, I have to make a confession. I feel like a lot of my social media interactions have been a vain attempt at feeding ego, and I took a huge step back so I can sort that out. Feeding ego is something a friend says. If you keep pandering to people and you’re not getting the results you want, you’re only feeding ego. Meaning you’re inflicting mental anguish on yourself. People take you for granted when you do this. “Oh that’s just Admo.” Meanwhile Admo is experiencing an emo music video in his mind over it. So I need to step back for my own sanity.