How To Be

There is no right or wrong.

See footnote [1] for an explanation of this blog's attempted (dis)organization. First, a note on notes (because of course!): I'm writing in multiple spaces that handle footnote links differently. (As in, badly or not at all.) I am choosing the simplest option of numbers within brackets that you can choose to ignore, scroll to bottom and read, or read at the end.

Repetition helps me to accept the difficult truth that there is no right or wrong. [2]

The beliefs that I am endeavoring to describe are grounded in my desire to flourish. That's a very nice way to put what I could have not-very-nicely said as, I'm trying not to end my life. Mental health struggles are life and death. My current battle with chronic pain is life and death. And there are more ways to end one's life than suicide. Death is not the only way to die. There is also not fully living, living mindlessly. Writing this “mess” is an example of me living. Putting all my energy into a job that I hated was an example of me not living. The realizations that I explore here are how I have kept myself alive.

Let's get small. Let's get tiny. I have to constantly remind myself not to see right and wrong in the tiniest things. The decision to drink tea or not. Hot or iced. The shelf I choose for the iced tea pitcher. I think this writing is the opposite of compelling, because these matters are so very unimportant and uninteresting. Yet my mind will assign moral value to every tiny action if I allow it.

Let's get a little bigger. I suffer from chronic back pain. It's the single biggest obstacle to my productivity right now. How I sit affects this pain. Building core strength would help. These actions are more important than pouring tea. And it seems much more justifiable for me to view maintaining a healthy posture as morally good. I want to take care of myself. If taking good care of myself is the goal, however, then I cannot attack every slouch as evil. Others seem to place stock in tough love self discipline. There's no love in it to me, only aggressive self-division. I am not two (or more) people. I know of no way to come down hard on myself and achieve success. Experience has shown me that love-love, loving encouragement, and even more love are the sources of good results. I cannot write the word love enough. Self care is not enough. It has to be self love.

boy have I gotten off track. this is great! this is what it's about, this site. Rough drafts, getting words out. Editing comes later, if ever. It has occurred to me that I am choosing to work 3 separate projects and— hold on, I'm going to go grab some text to paste in. I shared this earlier on FB:

In 2024 I am channeling my writing output into 3 categories: 1. Memoir of finding peace in a society that's insane. 2. Guide to spiritual humanism. 3. Positive science fiction (solarpunk) set in a happy, functioning, caring world. These categories clearly overlap, but for now I think that it's useful for me to consider these 3 separate projects. Each will take shape in its own space. Let me know if you would like to see updates on any or all as I go.

It has since occurred to me that this blog (Number 1 in the list above) does not have to ... WELL NONE HAVE TO become anything! This blog in particular may be the therapy that enables me to make Number 2 or Number 3, or something else. Maybe the best result of all this writing is NOT writing! The healthy expression I'm currently embracing could lead me to have better relationships offline that are never reflected online. Maybe I download a ton of “excess” thoughts onto these blogs and that frees me to think more clearly about everything else. I simply do not know. For now it does not matter. You know what? I'll also paste in the reply I appended to the post above:

P.S. Now I have to comment that the idea of me writing a memoir, a spiritual guide, or fiction still seems bonkers to me! But. Human beings produce such things. I am a human. I have a keyboard. I am a frequent reader and writer who is comfortable with the English language. So... why not me? At this point I am only committing to trying.

“I'm not doing something I'm supposed to do. I'm doing something I'm not supposed to,” the Violent Femmes' 1991 song Lack Of Knowledge begins. When I hear this it connects with my feelings about there being a morally right and wrong way for me to make tea. I inserted “morally” into the sentence because there can be better or worse methods of doing something that have nothing to do with right or wrong in the context that I mean here. The link between optimally correct and morally correct is surely interesting to explore further. These concepts seem separate yet can be mistakenly entwined. Perhaps that's my whole point? That there can be a preferred, better, optimal, efficient way of doing something without necessarily being morally superior. In truth I believe I'm working to unravel right and wrong even further. When I am doing a task by and for myself alone that has little effect on anyone in the world it truly does not matter whether I do it well. Nevertheless I myself am a person in the world and if I do something poorly that causes me displeasure or robs me of enjoyment then it can arguably be judged as not good. And now we come to the very end of this line of thought: I have power over my perceptions. I may prefer my tea a certain strength while not feeling any sort of way whenever my tea is otherwise. I like steaks cooked rare to medium rare, but those preferences arose over time. I could choose different preferences. Even if I'm served a gray steak cooked to the texture of shoe leather it is still entirely up to me whether to have feelings about it. This point seems incorrect but is entirely accurate. I am slightly sorry to have chosen a carnivorous example, but I think any non-carnivore readers might get the distinction I am making quite easily. For they have chosen to adjust their tastes differently than the majority of their fellow humans. Some may miss meat, but many former meat lovers turned meat avoiders will come to dislike sensations they once enjoyed. I grew from a picky eater into a near omnivore in my thirties.

The ADHD-embracing manner in which I'm writing here at H2B [5] is repeatedly leading me to feelings akin to Wile E. Coyote realizing that the ledge is no longer beneath his feet. I go off on tangents then question where I find myself and why on earth I let myself roam without paying attention to where I was going. And again again again that is the point of what I'm doing. If there are any readers here, I am not defending myself to you. The person I am trying to convince is myself. Today is Day 2 of this project. I anticipate that I will learn how to be comfortable writing drafts.

Not too long ago I was defining anxiety as worry about future things we can't control and depression as despair over past things we can't change (and ADHD & mania as hyper-fixation on the now). Speaking of the now I actually feel like I'm off the cliff now, writing to write, so I may stop. It's not that I have no interest in where this is going but it's not current inspiration. I choose to return to attending to my impulses. I'm not required to define all those terms. I'm not required to understand them. And labels are not required to accurately fit human experience. I often write in this way of saying: counterfact, counterfact, counterfact... now here is what I want to say! I don't know why I do that! It's as annoying as the text preceding an online recipe. And many times I have let the preambles distract me from the amble. Amble is walk. I like to take walks. I don't want getting dressed and putting on shoes and deciding on where to walk and thoughts of past walks to prevent me from getting to actually take the walk. So, while I'm perfectly content letting my ADHD loose [6] upon this project, the behavior tendency I want to curtail is the urge to please. In both instances I described myself as having strayed from my intended path to the extent that I went off the cliff. If I think about it the 2 types of wanderings are opposites. Wile E. Coyote looks at the audience and that's when his own reality ends. Until he looks at himself through our eyes he is able to walk on air! So this is just me talking but I feel unsettled in my stomach when the impulse to please others is the cause of my disorientation. When it's my own thoughts that have gotten me lost, I don't feel sick. I just stop. I laugh. I blink my eyes and “look around.” I think. I can usually retrace the path that I took. I can choose to go further out or back whence I came.

Both are forms of automatic writing. That much they have in common. In the self directed variety the executive editor is on a break during which untested thoughts flow freely. The disorientation is when the editor comes back online and says, “What's all this? I didn't approve all this!” [7] Maybe the new construction [7] is not what we originally had in mind, but the primary purpose at this time is to get ideas out. Self indulgent wanderings are therefore a part of the process. The drive to please others produces automatic writing that I do not desire here. Again the executive editor is out and in his [8] absence words are flowing anyway. Yet in this instance I'm not transcribing my own nascent thoughts. Instead I'm probably regurgitating stock phrases. Having been a reader for nearly a half century I can too easily make an article-looking article or an essay-sounding essay. Like AI in the human brain, my own large language model can produce subpar garbage too. This paragraph has been a struggle. The point is out there. Revision tomorrow, comedy tonight. [9]

A funny thing happened on the way to the fediverse. Except that's not right... A funny thing happened by way of the fediverse. A funny thing happened. The ways of the fediverse. Revision tomorrow, H2B tonight. Push on. The way of the fedi

The start of the previous sentence sent me on multiple side quests, including asking on Mastodon whether anyone knows of any spoof “Return of the Fedi” images. I'm still on subsequent side quests, about... oh, I'd say 3 or 4 deep. I'll be back... So, I am back and here's how self directed thinking after an interruption works for me. I reread this entry up until now. My feelings tell me what to write next. The multiple side quests that began at “way of the fedi” were prompted by a desire to get away from doing something I did not like. “Revision tomorrow, comedy tonight,” leading into, “A funny thing happened on the way to the fediverse,” is too cute. Forced. Labored. I like it, but I do not like it. I do not like it for here because, as I have been getting to, my intention here is to share as close to raw thoughts as possible. Not fan service. This isn't a conversation. It's so easy for me to slip into conversation. It even sounds rude for me to say to any reader that I can't let myself think about you. These are my rules. Artifice enters into content that is marketed to an audience. Like how measuring changes that which is being measured. There are plenty of other times in my life when I enjoy performing for others. This cannot be one of them.

So where was I really? (That may imply that some of this is not valuable and I think that it all is elucidating.) I know at some time earlier I said the main point was down in a footnote. Lemme go check that out. [6]

Whether or not something is right or wrong is for me to decide.

I just gazed to my balcony where my four metal chairs are slightly rearranged. One that I can usually see is not visible. I imagined that it was not there. Where could it have possibly gone, I thought next. Well, there is a meter high railing beyond which lies a vastness into which a chair could go. So then I pictured myself throwing (yeeting?) a chair off the balcony. Now that would be wrong. Isn't that an example of something universally wrong, or wrong because others say so? Either way it does not seem up to me to decide whether it is right or wrong. For context I live on the 10th floor and the chair in question is a quite heavy old-school metal chair. But I'm not referring to rules or laws, I'm referring to my own beliefs. I get to determine my beliefs. It is tiring to break this down so simply. It's just that I really do think the prevailing messages on things like this are wrong. [11] I saw someone just today talking about “no matter what system we live under people will always have to do things they don't want to do.” I believe that all is a matter of perspective. In the case of throwing heavy objects off tenth floor balconies, it is possible that in a momentary flash I could “want” to do that. Resisting such an urge is not submitting to the commands of others; it is the result of connecting more deeply with myself. I do not want to be someone beholden to every impulse. I have learned that what I really want is to think before I act. Usually once I think I realize that I do not want to follow the dangerous and destructive impulse. Some of the reasons might include that I'd “get in trouble” but that too comes back to what I want for myself. I do not like to cause harm and destruction. I have done it before, sometimes accidentally and sometimes in moments of acting on momentary impulse. In fact, I have thrown a chair from a balcony, when I lived in a 2 story house. I also threw a step ladder. Right now I cannot remember all the details — embarrassing things get blocked out — but I'm fairly sure I was angry with my partner at the time. In those days I was sad, frustrated, and angry quite a bit. I have done many things due to impulsive feelings that I later regretting. Most of those things did not lead to punishing consequences. The reason that I regret those actions comes from me. That's the point I'm making.

Some version of the reasoning above can be applied to most everything. For some reason a lot of folks like to present limitations on actions as being externally imposed, when I just do not see it that way at all. And by choosing to see things the way that I do I'm also less susceptible to feeling angry and powerless. I choose my actions. If I choose to face whatever the possible consequences are then I can do anything that I am capable of doing. The fact that there are a great many things I choose not to do is a result of my preference. I show love for myself by choosing what feels good to me as much as possible.

So does this mean that there is no right or wrong? Haven't I decided that throwing a chair off my balcony would be wrong? Only in context. There is no absolute right and wrong. Everything is subjective. If I were living in this building alone (post-rapture haha) and no one would be endangered (including myself) then there would be nothing wrong with metal chair yeeting. It could be fun. If the rest of my city had turned into flying zombies (have there never been flying zombies? that seems like a huge oversight in the genre) and I was protecting my life from an airborne attack then I would feel justified in throwing the chair with intent to harm someone. Even to kill them. Because inflicting harm and even murder is considered on a sliding scale.

There never has been.

There is only free will. And consequences. And human emotion.

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1. I'm figuring out how I will organize disordered writing in this online space. The victor in the organizational debate for now seems to be titling each entry by number, and rearranging the contents later as I wish.
2. The bizarre They Might Be Giants' song XTC vs. Adam Ant contains “There is no right or wrong” in musical refrain. I would link or embed it, but YouTube and I aren't speaking right now. If anyone seeing this [3] does not know the song I trust you can find it. Incidentally, other than this refrain it's not one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite bands (and the band I have seen perform more than any other, a very low number, perhaps 3). The TMBG song I've been playing in my mental jukebox the most lately is Doctor Worm, a really cute & fun one.
3. An insane idea in itself!
4. promoted back into the text above
5. I like calling this project How To Be, How2B, and H2B.
6. Somewhere in something I wrote recently I spelled loose when I meant lose — no, I think it was choose when I meant chose. I think it's either a Mastodon post or recent fedi-blog post, all of which are editable. And yet??? Does that matter? I can choose whether or not to care. Even when something I do is “wrong” I still have the ability to choose my reaction. THAT'S the point of the current writing session! Buried here in footnote 6! So perfect.
7. Yes, mixed metaphors abound in my drafts.
8. As of now I identify all my homunculi as male. And yet as soon as I say that... 🤔
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Funny_Thing_Happened_on_the_Way_to_the_Forum
10. ⧖/⧗ Designates a time break
11. It's not easy being pedantic! Saying something is “wrong” in a post about their being no right and wrong was entirely predictable. I could have changed the wording to erroneous or incorrect, to skirt the issue. But the issue is real. It reminds me of the “tolerance of intolerance” spiral. Here the confusion is due to applying the same words right and wrong to moral and factual cases. Incidentally while typing this I did think of a “wrong” way to make tea; and that would be to put a tea bag into a cup of sand. There's no moral implication in the act, but it is quite wrong. Tea would not be made. My opinion of the prevailing views about right and wrong (and so much more) is that many people are putting tea bags into sand. And unfortunately it's even worse than that, for many who hold incorrect beliefs are also causing a lot of harm to others. The people doing this do not see their actions as antisocial [12] because of their delusional beliefs in objective right and wrong that they think came from a supernatural being. It gets complicated.
12. I could write a lot more on my opinion that antisocial behavior is “wrong.” Right now I'll just say that it's still subjective.

⧗ ※ ※ ※ ✦ Some days that amount (this page) is all I have to say. I have to be willing to save and move on if this is to work. Forcing myself to push forward thoughts beyond inspiration produces writing I dislike more than like. Trust

✼ ✲ ✧ ❖ Accepting the above is a journey in itself, not the fork . for me, and probably the central point of my mental wellness re-centering. I sometimes sing the above truth to help me accept it. key revelation in my landmark milestone It may have be the

Beginning steps on the path to thi lens than it was in a moral framework than it is for myself every time I slouch

One's attitudes towards sex are likely another area in which widely experienced area

I'm not required to define all those terms. I'm not required to understand them. And labels are not required to accurately fit human experience. We err in trying to make it so, I think.

At the end of both wanderings I Our very own AI inside every I could say that the subpar material I don't want to

is a way to see it so that everything as