(This is an article I wrote in its raw form, suppose to be working with an adviser this next semester at school to make it more readable to a wide audience)

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I have spent an amount of time reflecting and meditating about Alzheimer’s and Dementia. Of course, even wondering what it would be like if I ever developed one of these conditions. Which, the more I thought about it and the final stages of the conditions, the more I felt that it would signify that my soul has left my body, that I have went on to the next life. 

Practicing awareness and mindfulness, I have come to realize the separation of conscious thinking from our brains, which our brains do function much like a computer. But we do have the ability of meta cognition and separating ourselves from our feelings and subconscious and to notice them from a distance. Granted, our conscious is still tied very much to our brains that limit our conscious thinking.  

But, in my opinion, our conscious thinking represents our soul in a way, with limited power here on earth, still beholden to these fragile human bodies. One hit in the head in the right spot can still completely change the way we think… But, abstract thinking in a healthy mind and body is a taste of the freedom of our souls, to feel truly alive and to be your own person. 

Having felt a taste of freedom of the soul and imagining that I have lost control of my mind and succumb to dementia, I assume that I have left this world. That all I have left behind is my damaged computer brain just running and functioning enough to keep my body alive here. For if I have lost my consciousness I experience now, it can’t be me in my opinion… Not truly me anyways, just an earthly part of me that I have left behind. 

It actually makes me worry less about dementia, because I feel somewhere along the way I will have died and left here, the pain that people may feel I am experiencing, I very well might not be. In all reality, it may be one of the least painful ways to leave this world… 

It is just hard to me to understand logically that I still exist after I have deteriorated so far… I don’t understand how that could still be me…

Are people with glasses smarter? I am wondering if there isn’t more than meets the eye to this somewhat common belief… 

I have a theory that it may actually ring true a little bit… My theory is that people with glasses protect their heads better, they don’t want their glasses to fall off or break! So, people with glasses in general avoid activities that could damage their head more than other people. Plus, they then have to find other activities to fill the time otherwise spent on more physically intensive activities. Granted many still do sports, especially running activities, and now that there is contacts it opens up many new doors for them. 

I had even wondered if that wasn’t part of the reason that girls tend to do better than boys in school… that boys are walking around with many more concussions. Concussions can definitely affect your grades and studying skills, in the short term and the long term. Boys just seem to flock to activities that can lead to concussions, which can certainly cause many issues. 

This theory is one of my primary concerns with football anymore… it isn’t just the CTE I worry about… but also what concussions can even do while you are in school trying to get educated. I almost think it is a bigger problem than I even think, that many kids would be doing much better in school without concussions hindering them. We are finding out it doesn’t take much… 

It is just a theory though of course… although the effects of concussions are not a theory…

A little look into some of my thoughts lately… I sometimes refer to these as my therapy sessions… some might think of it as posting a private journal entry… Maybe some of you are in similar situations… 

But, in the not so distant past, I started seeing my brain as having two different operation systems in a way… I have my problem solving/seeking mode, when I don’t just try to solve problems, but will also seek them out for something to do, which this can be at times full of anxiety and things like that, also happens when my brain administers its own dopamine drug… Then I have a more absorbing mode, when I just take in information, which I am much more generally relaxed when I am in that mode and can sit and watch movies and things like that… 

I started to feel they were very distinct from one another… as if there was a switch between them… I was either very much in one mode or the other. But I am starting to wonder if I am not gradually starting to achieve some balance between the two… 

Back in high school & college was very much more in absorbing mode, and lived in my own reality a bit, aware of the world a bit, but it was almost as if I didn’t believe anything in a way, I was detached from the real world… Then, when I hit a certain age, it was like everything I knew was starting to become real in my brain finally, I was awakened, and I very much felt that the world needed to change, and I felt I could have my part in it… I forever reason cannot help but be righteous and a bit of an activist in many regards. 

So, I felt like all of the world problems were my problems and set out on a mission to solve them… I thought I could figure out everything that needed to be figured out in order to achieve world peace and happiness… I embarked on the mission and would take on each new challenge as it was presented to me, solving and answering what problems were necessary to advance the cause… 

So, whether I did or not… In my head… I have had a big part in helping the world achieve world peace along with many innovative ideas across many different areas of life… I feel as though I have helped answer many of the riddles of life and have given the world a common goal to achieve… 

Being so naturally righteous and what some may call radical in ways… I needed to achieve world peace in my mind to finally be able to relax again… 

Which I have…  

Whether it is real or I beautiful minded it… I have found inner peace once again… at least I am very close… getting much more back to mindset during high school and college… In fact, I am starting to tell people I think I am wired for school actually… it is what helps me find comfort… If I could just make a living being a professional student! 

But, back to the mind switch… I am starting to realize that I don’t need to choose one side of the switch or the other… I think they are starting to naturally mesh into a comfortable arrangement… I think I have a way to go yet possibly with some swings from one side to the other… but there is a light at the end of the tunnel…

While I like the idea of video game leagues and things like that, I do have a couple concerns… 

The first is that there aren’t physical limitations to video games really… In physical sports, even if you are addicted to them, your body can only withstand practicing and performing so many hours a day, after a certain point, it very much becomes counterproductive… Whereas in video games a person can easily spend all of their waking hours playing and practicing, and with a desire to keep up with the top performers, many will do just that… which then it can easily consume a player’s life… I definitely worry about the impact this would have on children and young adults with the dream of becoming a professional video game player… 

Plus… much like chess or anything like that, many of the top performers you are actually trying to keep up with, might very well be some sort of savant or a person afflicted with certain mental abilities that help them perform… So, you may be trying to reach rather unattainable goals at times to begin with… So, time that could have been spent acquiring other skills that would allow someone to flourish in society, would have been wasted… 

Then, the second concern I have is how much professional video gaming relies on gambling essentially, most of these tournaments, if not all, people have to buy into and compete for top prizes. Which this combines two potentially very addictive activities, gambling and video game playing… so that could definitely have some very negative effects… 

I am a video gamer… I get it… I think it will all be much more relatable to chess than physical sports though as far as skills required…  

I just worry about the implications it may have when millions of kids are trying to chase the dream of becoming a professional video game player… Plus, there is so much we don’t know about the impacts of video games on people yet…

This was just a relationship idea I pondered a while back for people going through some issues… 

Especially if you both dealing with stress… not even stress with one another, but personal stress as well… stress that may then spill over into the relationship… 

But I think about those red and green bracelets they use for people with some mental conditions sometimes…. 

I would say that you should set up general rules of what is expected from each other as far as chores and things like that… cooking arrangements… whatever… 

Then if you are feeling stressed and not in the mood to talk, or you feel you may end up saying things you shouldn’t if you engage with the other person… you turn your bracelet to red… If both of you, or even one of you has red showing, don’t engage each other… not even at dinner or anything really… But, when both of your bracelets are turned to green, then you could use that as a time to engage with each other… 

If you or your relationship has gotten to this point, it would also probably not be the worst idea to also be working with a therapist individually to help you get through your issues at the same time… perhaps a couple’s therapist occasionally or one where you only do it as a group occasionally… 

Doing this doesn’t necessarily mean your relationship is in trouble… rather one of you or both of you may just be going through some things individually that need to be taken care of to help your relationship in the long run… 

A little idea anyways… this of course sparks up much more relationship advice in my head… but I will save those for another day!

I just don’t understand why some people can get so mad over the idea of wearing sweatpants around… I think it is probably more they are just mad about other things in life in general, and just want an excuse to get mad or vent about something… which then for some it might turn into a pride issue of being the one that comes out of the argument either right or wrong… 

Why can’t we all just be comfortable? 

I’m not running around in my underwear, my legs are covered, and I think some sweatpants are designed rather fashionably anymore… to me if worn right, sweatpants are a very nice winter/spring/fall look… Makes the town almost look like a ski town or a pleasant town up north… a welcoming feeling in many ways… 

I do understand the argument about the way you dress affecting your work attitude… I think it helps a person role play the position they want to fill in many regards… That is all a lot of us adults are really doing anyways, we all got to a certain age and started roleplaying different characters… Some of us roleplayed so hard we forgot who we are… 

To take a quick quote from the new testament…“Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven”… Which of course we still need to be adults and be vigilant against evil forces and things like that, we have to work and make the world go around… but, perhaps you get the gist of what I am saying 

But I am wondering if we are getting to a point where we don’t need all the extra stuff to dive into our character’s ya know? Part of me thinks that the changes are already in motion, and that each generation will progressively get us closer to the maximum level of comfort while still remaining vigilant… 

Maybe making ourselves more comfortable at work and getting a bit of that home feeling may actually make us more productive and friendlier? Give people more of our home personalities rather than our work personalities… Maybe in the proper environment some people would want be there all day and even hang out after! 

I don’t know… if everyone still likes going the extra mile to get into character, that is fine as well… I actually had an interesting idea when we achieved world peace if certain towns would want to adopt a theme to roleplay or something like that? Why not have a medieval town somewhere that functions within society? Old Western Towns? Greek Towns? I don’t know… we may just have way too many different personalities to ever pull off something like that… plus what are the effects of a child raised in a roleplaying environment? Maybe we should wait until heaven for that… a fun thing to ponder anyways… could be possible if the world was ever in a good enough place economically and mentally… 

I have a feeling some restaurants may always have dress codes… always have are little role-playing environments where we can feel classy and things like that… But, just realize that is all you guys are really doing in those places… role playing! Hehe 

Maybe it will get to a certain point some day when it is just like certain nights at restaurants… classy night… casual night… ball night… medieval night… etc… 

Can we all accept one day that we are all just actors and learn to embrace roleplaying different characters… It can be so hard for people to break the current character they are playing… Society also needs to accept that a person can change or act like something else as well… 

I personally at times just feel like I am rather just one of the world’s greatest actors… This is more me writing, but I can get into different characters and give people what they want for different situations… (“Schizophrenic thought?”: Like for me, to be king, is just a position I roleplay from time to time and give people what they want, I am a great method actor, I can fully embrace a role and become what you want, but when I am myself, I am not a king in my opinion… I have fully embraced that role for so long, it takes some time to take my mind out of it though) 

I can’t believe this turned into a 750 word+ post… I just wanted to make an argument why I should be able to wear sweatpants without catching any flak for it…

Deciding to try and get The Eclectic Schizophrenic off the ground, has led to an acceptance of trying to navigate in two different worlds a bit… 

To try and make this work is to enter into an illogical world in my opinion… I just don’t believe that some of my ideas, posts, etc… don’t spread throughout this country and world like wildfire. I don’t believe in a logical world that my parents, psychiatrists, mental health professionals, etc… wouldn’t try to convince me that everything in my head is delusion, try and snap me out of it, if they thought I was truly out of my mind… (Which, it has gone so far and become too airtight in my mind now, that there would be no going back now, even if everyone tried, it would just make for bad relationships at this point). 

Where, I am trying to go with this… Is that throughout the last 10+ years my mind has followed all of its own paths of logic, through life experiences, conversations, and everything really for that matter… It created an entirely different world in my head than is directly presented to me, anymore I just feel like I am walking through a screenplay in a way… Everyone is acting in my opinion… at the same time, getting me some information here and there to the reality of the world… 

So, trying to make this Eclectic Schizophrenic work, is to try and navigate an illogical world, and it can get stressful… When you think things should happen faster or expect news to travel fast, or some idea to come together… and they don’t… it is very depressive and stressful. Mainly so because of my disability and the idea of trying to do anything else for a living makes me want to kill myself… It gives off a feeling of, that my life depends on making this work out… It is not a good feeling at all, I will most likely be very anxious until this either takes off or if I get accepted into disability… I always feel like the clock is ticking on my current situation as well, which I have come to be at least a little comfortable in, but can’t be completely… If I start to get a little comfortable or a little happy, I will inevitably be met with some news that at least makes me question my future arrangements… I can never be too comfortable in my current situation. 

Then of course the two worlds can overlap in many ways, making it all the more confusing… 

I am really working on diving into this illogical world and figuring out the rules though… trying to figure out ways to be happy and achieve happiness within it… I am cautiously optimistic… It is hard with my disability, because it limits me… 

At times I feel like I can see the light a bit though…  

Going down the rabbit hole… may be much more applicable to entering and trying to live within the illogical world… What is presented to me as the “Real World”. 

Perhaps it was a bit of a good omen today that I went to the Mad Hatter Café and Co-op for the first time today… was even presented with the rabbit hole… Perhaps it is a sign from the universe that I am on the right track… time to really dive down this rabbit hole…

Been thinking about heaven a bit extra the last couple days… When I start to get really depressed, I tend to start fantasizing about heaven, and how I would much rather be there at the moment. I have sometimes told myself, if there was just a button I could push and be painlessly whisked away to heaven, I would push it without even making a second guess… 

I think a lot has just been going on in my subconscious lately, because I really wasn’t consciously thinking that negative over the holidays, but I just think old habits die hard… that my subconscious is still dealing with those old thoughts, keeping them at bay and deleting them… So, hopefully this will be my last holiday season where I have a bout of severe depression… getting there… just have to remind myself that I will be happy again and these feelings will go away… 

But, besides that depressing introduction to this blog post… a recurring thought about heaven popped up again… In my opinion, pretty much everything is possible… I think when we get to heaven and want to go on adventures and have experiences and things like that, that we will be able to immerse ourselves at whatever level we want… For instance, say you wanted to be Super Man, I believe you could go into the zone (dream world) and act and look like superman but still be consciously aware of your separate existence… Or I think you could say I want to actually be and think I am really super man for a year or for whatever length of time. You can go all the way in an experience like that if you want…. 

Which then I think of Lord of the Rings or Everquest… and I think, how much would I really want to be a part of that world?… that world is absolutely nuts when you think about it, can you imagine actually seeing and fighting a real orc or some kind of monster? With a sword for that matter… It would be so intense, I would think we would have to build up over time to a certain level of immersion… baby steps… then maybe eventually fully immersing… maybe… 

It is just crazy and fun to think about anyways… Harry potter, star trek, star wars, super heroes, etc… I think it is all on the table… 

I think for eternity I will always still play MMORPG’s on a computer though… to me, a game like EQ2 really is a little piece of heaven, it will be so much more fun when I can actually enjoy it with other people and see my various ideas come to life… I definitely don’t need to always be overly immersed in something to enjoy it… actually fighting an orc or living in that world would seem like overkill for prolonged periods of time… I definitely like the experience developed from behind a computer…  

Some thoughts on this day anyways…

I have always been somewhat skeptical of the like button on Facebook. I think in my case it is especially true because I am a rather empathetic person. I personally feel if I like one person’s post, I need to like everyone’s post as to not exclude someone. Or if I like a friends post, I have to be sure to like them all as to not make them feel bad… things like that… 

It is especially true in my own little world where I think I am King of the World and everybody is watching me, I have a heightened sense of the importance of my likes, or the disappointment of my likes… but that is beside the point… 

But I have pondering it in depth more lately, I tried to think, exactly what are we doing when we like something? What is the end game? Aren’t we in a way trying to alter our friend’s behavior in a way to get them to post the things we like? We reward them with a like when it is something we find pleasing, and punish when we don’t like it… By that logic, isn’t the goal to eventually to produce a news feed that we should technically hit like on everything we saw? 

It is a bit unrealistic to think we have the time or energy to hit like on every post on Facebook… but that is what the logical conclusion of what we are doing is, as per the relationship, as a friend posts what he knows you like, he or she would expect to get their like in return… By entering into the like relationship and process, that is part of what you are signing up for… but the logical conclusion will never happen and always leave people disappointed when they think they have given the people what they wanted and aren’t rewarded for it… Even if people just didn’t see it, you will be disappointed thinking that they saw it and didn’t like it… 

Part of me thinks that we all just get more jaded as well, that we demand ever increasingly more thought provoking or funny posts in order to receive our likes… We always withhold the ultimate gift of liking everything someone posts, what we all want in a way…. It is a bit of what happens with the internet in general with our ability to like or follow something… 

You can compare it to what happens in a capitalist society in general… Likes are like the dollars of the relationship market… our like dollars… 

In a capitalist society and with the way our mind works, we do grow increasingly more jaded and jaded as the initial excitement of something wears off… we are always demanding that next rush as we become less and less happy with life, everything starts to seem so boring and mundane… Nothing seems to make us happy anymore… 

Psychologically it may be something that everyone goes through and must learn to become aware of and work on… It is part of our mental process, like any drug addiction… we need more and more of something or something new and exciting… 

We need to become aware of this and retrain our brains, we have to learn to enjoy the simple things in life again… It is almost a continuous process to bring ourselves back to center and be happy with simplicity… I think something like mindfulness and meditation can be very important to achieving this… 

Don’t get me wrong, I have enjoyed the Facebook like addiction at times, it’s like you start to get into an agreement with some people… you like all of my stuff, and I will like all of your stuff, and we will both get our fix… 

I just think the system is flawed logic with unattainable goals… the logical conclusion is to eventually like everything you see, except almost none of us have the mental drive to commit to an effort like that… it always ends up with sporadic likes and disappointed people… It hurts when you think you have given everyone what they want and you get 5 likes ya know? We have all felt it… 

I was almost wondering if it wouldn’t be better to just have a meter to show how many people saw or read your post? Then at least you know people saw it and are still following anyways… It would seem that might be enough… then you still get some of that social influence, and the societal impact of altering behavior achieved by a social media platform by Facebook. 

Or do we need our like addiction? Seems a little too illogical and unsustainable to me… 

I could maybe see like a special occasion post that could receive likes… a list of special occasions that when posted could receive the different emojis and things like that… 

Some things to think about anyways…

Another Journal Prompt I found…

It has gotten less significant over the years for me. There was time when it was very significant and held a great deal of stress. It was one of the times during the year when I use to think that my situation would be over… So, I would have mixed feelings leading up to it, whether excited and believing the bet was over or wondering if it would be another year come and gone, then the disappointment and depression when the New Year would come, and my situation showed no signs of improvement. 

But I have come to find more peace and happiness within my situation and am learning not to wait for my happiness… that it would only be when this initiation/bet is over. Plus, I have no clue when this will end…. when I am 40? 50? Etc… 

But it is gradually becoming more just another holiday or just another day… the days off from work are a bonus! 

It does remind me to look at our universe on a bigger scale though… Another trip around the sun… That we are just on a giant biological ball floating through space… pretty mind blowing! You can start to zoom out light years away from our planet and just see it as another little dot in the universe… 

It is right behind our birthday as a reminder of our mortality of life here on earth, the two are obviously closely tied together… another reminder of another year come and gone. 

It certainly makes for a mind pleasing way of keeping track of time and using our calendar system. It is cool to see how it is all based around our relation to the sun and our orbit… pretty cool and a fascinatingly logical way of doing it! 

Lastly, I think I still feel a little of that potential for a fresh start… it is a good time of year to reflect and realize some things and try and get down to business, reinvigorate or reinvent ourselves… Make some new goals or try and keep up with old ones.  

We may not always keep up with our resolutions, but at least we get some nerve to try and take a shot every year… for some it’s a little like revving the engine a little bit every year until the ignition finally turns over one year and we really stick with it… trying every year can still be crucial to finally succeeding at some point, keeps hope and the fight alive!