Happy New Year everyone. My hope is that your 2025 is just right.

I’m just over here, keepin’ it dumb ‘n fancy, thanks.

I thought I’d do some life-ing here on the blog ‘o war, insofar as life hits me as an expressionist activity right now.

I’m just gonna express myself, and here we go.

2024

2024 was a hard year, then a difficult one, then a challenging one, then in retrospect, something of a transitional year for me.

It was a year filled with new experiences. I made a lot of art. I published new information that didn’t exist before, and even got to invent a couple of things that helped me out a lot.

Still, while working on all that, plus the new technical forays, the consulting, the project directing, the business adminning, the coaching…I held lots of questions inside.

I was treasuring those questions, as if I thought they’d sort themselves out, and I’d get to watch as it happened. I was excited about ALL of them.

And nah, nope. So many of those questions practically rotted away inside of me, and I hated that feeling.

So one thing I’m thinking about 2025 is: I don’t care if I have to write a million words just to get one of them into that worked-on, processed state. It’s better than the alternative.

This Blog

About this blog, I wondered: Keep writing as much? And if so, write about which of the million topics that come to mind?

Which one?

But today, I think I get it: Let me just share this one, whatever it turns out to be.

I felt somehow dry inside, in some aspects of last year’s experience. Worn out, at times, by a strange sense of more new, troubling dichotomies to explore and reconcile.

And not even that they were painful to think about? But that I felt I could bring new perspectives to bear on them.

So this dryness and rot definitely set in when I kept seeing and thinking about the same old topics over and over, and I didn’t find the time to stop and explore all of them and apply my latest thinking to them…

…or probably more realistically—I experienced and explored other important stuff, and during that time, those things didn’t happen.

(Rest in Peace, Mom)

(And as a politically-charged year, 2024 was not helping with this dry part at all, either)

(Rest in Peace, Watson the Cat)

Discussing it With Us

This dry situation needed discussion. I felt blamed, somehow, internally.

I discussed it—so to speak—with my internal archetypes.

There was a stalemate. The voices of reason and progress were halted, temporarily, by considerations from a new source of inner critique.

And, aside: The inner critic can look like anyone, or anything.

Maybe we can say that, in your Internal Family System, or whatever model of “theoretical people inside you” that’s fairly constructive—it’s whoever picks up the mic and complains?

Yes, I’d say: Your inner critic is whoever picks up the mic and complains, is really getting at it.

And this seems more true, the more persistent and regular the complaints they make.

This time, the complaint I was hearing was about this tug of war between accomplishment and ultra-energy.

Which, WTF is Ultra-energy

Ultra-energy is the future you, probably. I don’t know. It just felt appropriate to write.

(Some people think being excited about future-potential is way too fancy, and corny, and BOY am I holding back, so if that’s you, please show yourself out or shield your eyes a bit, just in case more escapes below.)

And here’s how it goes:

You can make huge amounts of progress, and reach new milestones. You can enjoy it and feel great about it.

But this is, still, in some ways, the opposite of having another life that’s more fun, carefree, and also exploratory, creative.

Your future self wants to be more of those things FOR SURE.

It is NOT SO SURE, on the other hand, about whether it wants the goals you are working at right now.

And if you continue to fall behind on the fun, on the exploration…then one day, that fun, carefree, laid back person inside—or their babysitter—might become the voice of your passionate inner critic!

Ouch.

The Most Painful Critic of All is Probably Super Laid-back

The normal critic—the Healthy, Developed, Experienced Critic—is not really that harsh of a critic.

You know? Like a really experienced movie critic you might watch on TV or Youtube or something…

That particular Critic is probably really good at measuring their words, they think about their audience’s needs, they allow some nuance in their conclusions, and they keep an open mind.

They might even have a sense of humor!

So yeah, it’s actually the PERIODIC or INEXPERIENCED Critic , someone normally very laid back, even—that’s just painfully annoying to deal with.

THAT critic thinks in black and white terms, they don’t seem to measure any words, they are angry, they want what’s theirs while not exactly giving you what’s yours, either.

I had a talk with this Critic, and I journaled my way through that, and realized:

This doesn’t mean they don’t have a point

Their inexperience and anger may seem annoying, but they may still have a really good point.

The point might be better described by looking at their archetype or their role, though. You might have to look past their language.

And so I realized that this critic was protecting my deepest values.

They were trying, I realized, to nurture a new me.

Oh no.

I thought about my thinking-environment, my day-to-day, and realized: It’s not that kind of environment.

I couldn’t nurture a new me that way. Not there.

New You Needs an Environment?

“New me needs an environment?…Huh!”

This particular thought really struck me as so different from the normal stuff we all think about. Still does.

At any given moment, a new you is taking shape.

Maybe it’s your inner child, or inner toddler, inner baby. Who knows.

But that inner being is often all of these things:

• More innocent about / unplugged-from some things the “real life you” is involved in, so that it can focus on new experiences
• Less protected from the current set of things you deal with on the daily, (so be careful about exposing it to that noise)
• Just different, in ways that are probably really exciting to you, if you can see them and feel them.

This is good stuff. I can’t even describe how much I love all of that.

Creating the New Environment

I understood that I needed to create a new environment for this side of me. (This aspect, this inner person, this idea, this philosophy, whatever you want to call it.)

I looked around, too. I shopped for environments.

I didn’t find anything out there.

I found people, I found discussion groups, I found platforms, chats, forums. Training, certification. Theories, books, documentaries.

But they were all hitting so different, compared to what I could feel was needed.

I Went Outside

Last month I went outside on a sunny winter day, around lunchtime, and sat in the sunlight.

I felt the sun heating my back until I felt like I was too close to the heater. I needed to take off a layer. Maybe put shorts on today?? Wow. I’m warm!

It was 62F, in December.

This perspective felt so different from the way I had been treating the season so far.

That particular outside location was, until that day—and even at 62F!—a cold reality, merely a hallway I would pass through on my way to a working context, or to a resting context.

But maybe while I was going to work, or to rest, I was passing through an interesting, dynamic, exploratory context?

Could I Find AND Make a New Environment?

Was this the environment I wanted?

I could accept it: It presents itself to me, or my mind, as an exploratory realm. OK. It is in a state of accepting acceptance. It feels like it is ready to accommodate me.

I could work on it, in it: I thought about myself as a sculptor, architect. I already know how to work outside, to perform with and to palettize its elements to some degree.

I made a simple bench once. I made a pole saw with a super long stick and a swiss army knife. I made a hammer, I made a wooden gutter-cleaner.

This is not counting all the ridiculous stuff I made as a boy scout, either.

Was it that though? Outdoorsy…hands-onny…get out your saw…

Nah.

It wasn’t, and it isn’t, some creative-bushcrafting exercise. It’s not about connecting with nature.

It’s going to be about newness, and I am holding on to that.

What is New, Anyway?

I ask myself what’s new. What is really new, for me?

The unknown. That’s what’s new.

I’m on the Starship Enterprise, and so are you, and so is that person over there.

We’re explorers.

The outside is just a way for me to remember that. It’s just a different place.

Different place, different thoughts, unknown thoughts. A highway to somewhere, sometime, or even a highway to never.

And then:

You bump into something.

I realize I’ll bump into some things. I’ve done this before.

Some topic, you know? To explore.

Some of those old questions I didn’t explore already died. Some are still alive, and some are yet to be discovered.

Hopefully it’ll be fun, creative, interesting.

Err, I mean:

“Make it so…?”

I act, I charge into it all, and then I’m acted upon, and I’m nothing, and also maybe some things.

Let’s see how it goes.

Music: Duke Dumont – Ocean Drive

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