I journal a lot. If I’m really feeling bogged down, I usually put pen to paper—very honestly—what I’m feeling and allow real, honest questions to rise. Then observe my terrain and patterns to see if any answers emerge. The answers usually become part of the insights that I share here. Last week I had one of those very intense moments.
The photo in this post is one of my very vulnerable journal entries from this past week. The translation is here, and it segues into some insight about it:
“Today has been an eventful day. A hot day. An observatory day. Today is where I’ve had to catch myself several times spiraling and feeling paralyzed. I don’t know if I’m here to stop that feeling or what. But I know I’m constantly trying to get out ahead of it. Much of it is caused by not having a clear financial structure under myself. My accounts were drafted/overdrafted over $500 dollars today. I consolidated my creative stuff to a website that is set up to bring in sustainable income. I don’t know. I don’t want to complain. I don’t want to rush. I don’t feel like it. I need a long hug, a kiss, and felt by someone other than me and the invisible forces that have my back. I don’t know if I’ll ever get that in the way I want it. That’s why I can’t complain. Everything and nothing is happening the way that I want. I feel selfish and entitled. I don’t think I have a reason to be. It just feels like I’m subjected to conditions that make me live in a fantasy of relief while existing in the reality of it. Which isn’t relief, just naming realizations and questions that lead to more questions. I don’t mind but the structure I want, which is the fantasy of relief is mixed in that fantasy. And I don’t know how to integrate it. Maybe I am in some ways. But that’s the problem I never or hardly ever know what’s being integrated until I know. That’s why getting out ahead of things feels logical but also alogical. Not illogical. Just not logical. The invisible feelings are playing a role. But time, external visible time, has its own agenda. And it’s the dominant pace here. It’s hard to change it or influence it to change in real time.
I don’t know when I’ll get money again. Historically, I’ll get it but it’s never enough. I want it to be more than enough. In real time. But my brain keeps saying it’s selfish and entitled. Maybe I need to integrate that. Logically it’s not selfish. There’s some shame attached to having more than enough money. More than enough of anything, really. Like I have to prove that I deserved it or have proof of why it’s necessary. There is an overwhelming supply of reasons why it’s necessary. Much of it can’t be proven with the naked eye. Much of it is energetic and somatic. I feel it in my body.
I’ve been putting in work to prove myself. But I assume that would be a signal for immediate gratification and satisfaction but it’s not. Logically, I know I deserve every good thing I want and the overflow I’m calling in. But when it’s not being met in real time, I feel like I’m being forced to settle. It’s uncomfortable and part of the paralysis. I’ve waited. I’ve moved. I’ve slowed down. Rinsed and repeated. And nothing but extraction, suppression, and glitches. I’m not tired but I’m being pushed to the brink of it. A lot. When will this cycle complete itself? What more do I need to do? What less should I be doing? Where is the calvary? Where is the overflow? I feel it. But I don’t see it and I don’t feel nourished by it. I wonder if my body will feel rejuvenated and energized or depleted and fail. So many questions. Very few answers that are aligned with the nourished feeling. The safe feeling. The loving feeling. And I just need to know. Who am I to know what I need, especially if it’s not nourishing what feels like the larger real-time and future-pattern need?”
I’ve been holding a deep recognition of how people mirror and are mirrored. The cost of maintaining sharp clarity in a scatter-brained world has historically been martyrdom. Martyrdom is what I keep challenging with every word I say and every action I take, as I watch the visible doors of opportunity close in my face. Small provisions are snatched out of nowhere. Economically bullied and forced to engage with people who are just scratching the surface of the work I’ve done on myself with myself.
Yet the systems seem to be getting away with throwing rocks, hiding hands, being silent, and doing it again.
Then, if martyrdom happens, I already understand that the systems immediately open up to offer everything that I’ve archived as a kind of memorial. This becomes a blanket of guilt and shame that people feel while grieving: “He was too pure for this world.” “The clarity was here the whole time.” “We should’ve invested while he was here.” And then, what’s been archived and suddenly revealed after death turns into a coping mechanism that remains unchanged. Just another thing that feeds collective avoidance once again.
That's why people demonize the systems. But I challenge demonization as well, because the systems are just mirroring and reinforcing the collective avoidance pattern. The real culprits are the humans and bots perpetuating it. As a result, I’ve got to deal with the pain of what they’re suffering through while trying to model and hold joy while I’m still here.
There is a paradox here. The overlooked point is that there is no clean paradox.
People with economic and material wealth often attain it through various forms of self-avoidance. They’ll claim contentment and real joy, but it’s offset by extraction patterns they don’t examine. Their joy is real. Their contentment is genuine. They’ve found ways to feel better about themselves that allow them to experience genuine happiness, but they’re benefiting from systems of exploitation they’re not facing or actively processing.
People meeting themselves and dealing with material scarcity, however, is a manifestation of real grief work and real suffering with no offset and no escape. The work is clean. The suffering is real. The body faces actual ailments without enough resources to support recovery and healing. But it’s honest work nonetheless.
Both are real. Neither is false. Yet, that’s what makes it not clean.
I’m caught in the middle of this equation. Holding joy while meeting myself, living on a perpetual edge around people holding contentment while avoiding themselves, and living in accumulated wealth. They’re able to afford what I offer, but investing would require them to face how they attained it and redefine how they generate it. Those who are meeting themselves aren’t able to afford what I offer, so I have to find ways for them to gain access while using a paywall. Everyone is genuine, and no one can actually rest, but it’s for different reasons and in different ways.
Please recognize the math here. As frustrating as it may seem, the math is math-ing. Avoidance culture doesn’t resolve anything. It just redistributes the burden. New system, same patterns. In other words, if you’re pushing for matriarchy rather than patriarchy, but your unprocessed parts are still running the show, your suffering just ends up wearing different clothes. You may have the resources to pull it off, or you may not.
I’ve been modeling something while most people in my line of sight are still choosing the contentment that comes with self-avoidance. I see them. I know what they’re avoiding. And I’m still inviting them to do the work while they’re still throwing rocks.
The loneliness of holding clarity in an avoidance culture isn’t a problem to solve. It’s the geometry of the work itself.
I feel like I’m in a hybrid of algorithmic suppression and neutralized desperation. This, to me, is actually the cleanest place to be. Not suppressed enough to be invisible. Not popular enough to trigger active policing. Only visible to people actually looking, and invisible to the algorithm’s amplification.
But the clarity I’m holding doesn’t reliably translate into sustainable money. The algorithm that would amplify me into financial stability is the same one that would compromise, twist, and distort what I’m saying. So I’m stuck in the gap of real work, real audience, real engagement, but not real provision.
Eleven-hour money isn’t sustainable rest. It’s functional survival that’s been behaving as a provision.
The answer, in the avoidance work, is to cultivate a real-time balance between the two extremes. Choosing to meet yourself fully will have you living at the perpetual edge and the clarity of grief work because clarity in an avoidance culture requires exactly this tension. I can’t resolve it alone. You can’t resolve it alone. We can only hold it cleanly. Individually.
People’s self-avoidance will keep them in self-avoidance. No one person can calibrate that for them. We can only keep modeling what it looks like to face and process it. Some will see it now. Most will see it later, if at all. Some will never see it.
I’ve built my container. I’ve consolidated my work. I’m resourced enough to keep going by the joy I hold, even when the tangible evidence (money, doors opening, people showing up differently) remains inconsistent.
The real question isn’t “when will conditions change.” The conditions probably won’t change in this current century of life. The real question is: How well am I treating myself in the midst of this?
I’d personally say I’m doing pretty well. Everyone’s answer is always different. Honor what makes you different.
In doing the nasty work of meeting yourself cleanly and honestly, everyone’s body reacts differently. There’s no clean answer that works the same for everybody forever. But what’s clear is that avoidance culture makes avoiding oneself acceptable, and rather than resolving the root of the concern, we end up dealing with multiple reformations of it.
I’m choosing, moment by moment, to resolve something. Not for the systems’ sake, but for myself, and for the people courageous enough to do the same.
In the meantime and in between time, please be kind and gentle with yourself, as I do the same.
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