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falling0ff0fcliffs · 2 years ago

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Not sure if I should delete this page

As I get older it dawns on me that having a secret blog where I post my unfiltered uncensored thoughts is a bad thing. Especially as what I say and think starts to affect more and more people. The older I get the more responsibility I take on, the more my actions matter. I don’t view it as a bad thing, I take on more and more burdens in order to contribute to the world, and be someone who’s useful to others. In that I’ve found contentment. With all that being said, I live in a whole new world compared to the one i made my last post in. The last two years I’ve attended a small bible college in upstate New York. Despite it being a small school, I’ve made it my goal to be as theologically educated as possible, and I believe I’ve accomplished this. This month I’ll be graduating and i have a job waiting for me when I go back to Chicagoland. In my personal life I’ve done a lot to detox from social media. I’ve started reading more, and focusing on my game. I started to realize about a year ago that I am unable to create what I want without more technical skills. So I decided to learn how to code. Along with that my art has improved significantly, and I’ve started to put something together that looks somewhat professional. I realized that if I had put all the time I did into video games into my education I’d be significantly more capable. Here I am now after months of trial and error I can finally say that I’m an amateur programmer, but a programmer nonetheless. In this process of my expanding skill set I’ve changed my persona. At school people started to recognize me as the guy who reads, programs, and exclusively listens to classical music. This is an extreme contrast to the guy who i was before. I still hold on to bits of my old self. At the Fourth of July party I turned on Indi music just to find out everyone else stopped listening. I still go through spouts of YouTube addiction(although the majority of what I watch is theological discussion), I still play rocket league from time to time, sometimes too much, but I don’t let any of those things define me anymore. Being in New York has changed me but it’s not New York that did it, New York simply gave me the chance to change. Socially New York has been a huge learning experience. I’ve made new friends but it wasn’t easy. I used to not want to be friends with someone unless it was a really close friendship, but I’ve realized not everyone can be your best friend. It takes time to develop that, and it’s not fair to expect someone you’ve met a year ago to be as close to you as the people you grew up with. I also used to want other people to be interested in the same things as me, but I realized that is foolish as well. I learned that I had to mold to my environment. Pick up new interest, make new types of jokes, and embrace change. I still have who I was, but I could not remain unchanged if I wanted to make friends. Now that it’s been two years it’s bitter sweet. I’ve built all these relationships with people who I’m inevitably gonna leave. I may not see them again. The last thing I wanted to talk about was marriage. After 3 years I can honestly say I’ve fallen more in love with my wife. It’s not always easy, but it’s not about doing what’s easy, its about growth. Together we have grown a lot, and more importantly we had a child, which makes me a dad. I’m still processing that one so I won’t say to much about it, but I will say it’s a lot of fun. It’s helped me to understand the differences between my wife and I. My strengths and weaknesses are balanced with hers, which is good for my child’s development.

In the last two years I’ve made friends, I’ve gotten my degree, I’ve learned to program, became a better artist, and more importantly became a better husband and a father. When I go back home I hope that my wife and I can be impactful. Life is really just starting, and for the first time I’m enjoying becoming older, wiser, and content with life.

Ps. After reviewing this I feel I left a lot out, but I am too impatient to fill in the details at the moment

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falling0ff0fcliffs · 3 years ago

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Each digital photograph has a binary code that has always existed and was always going to produce that image. If you somehow had the foresight to predict that code, you could generate photos before they’re ever taken. In a way, you’re not just taking a photo, you’re unlocking one that always existed

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falling0ff0fcliffs · 4 years ago

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The worst its ever been

I haven’t updated this blog in a long time, mostly because I couldn’t think. It’s hard to put it all into words, but 2021 wasn’t my best year. The end of 2020 resulted with me moving away from my friends and family, a pandemic that doesn’t seem to end, and a presidential election that made me fear for the worst. Anyway my anxiety was starting to get to me. This is that story...

Growing up in the assembly of God denomination I had always heard that the end times were going to happen soon. This belief is mostly based off the rebirthing of Israel after WW2, and the technology boom that took place with the internet. If you ask me now I have no idea if the end times are coming, but growing up I was convinced that I wouldn’t graduate high school. My hope was that I could get married and than it wouldn’t matter. I’ll just fall in love, get married, and when the world ends at least I'll have love.

Finding myself in college was an emotional experience, but I came through pretty happy with who I was becoming. I liked the clothes that I wore, I liked my hair, my friends were cool, I was going to a nice to look at college campus, a promising career, and I even started skating and getting into Gaming PC’s. I lived my life driving down country roads listening to Indie1 songs I hope you’ll one day hear, and I felt like I was pretty cool too. It was about this time that I realized that I had a few options in the area of romantic relationships. Romance was something that I always dreamed of So I was ready to dive right into it. At this moment I met my wife which is a story for another time, it was two years ago now. While we were dating there were times where I would get an unbearable amount of anxiety when thinking about our future, not because of her, but for a reason I couldn’t really explain at the time. This went on and culminated at the funeral.. her grandpa’s funeral, who had just died of covid.

That day at the funeral we were driving to the burial and I felt like I was going to throw up. The amount of anxiety was on a level I had never experienced. Now that I reflect on the situation I believe my fight or flight had kicked in, and I wanted to run. My world was about to change, my body knew it, but I didn’t. In my mind I was excited for marriage, but emotionally I wasn’t prepared for the events that were unfolding right in front of me. There I was looking at a dead man, the first man I had ever known personally to die in my 21 years of life. I couldn’t help but think I could get away from all of this if I just forgot about my then fiancé and went back to my happy life in north west Indiana. I ended up pulling Kenzie aside and told her how I really felt. I wanted out, or at least I wanted to get away from the anxiety that at the time I didn’t realize I was having. I would hate to know how my fiancé felt at the time as she was there at her grandfather’s funeral and her boyfriend was telling her he wanted to break up with her. It definitely wasn’t a great move on my part and the truth is I didn’t actually want to break up, I just was feeling an overwhelming amount of stress that I couldn’t identify or explain. So the two of us talked about it and I told her I’d think about it for a week, I knew that the decision I made would affect me for the rest of my life.

After a week of talking it over with my family, my marriage counselor, and my friends, I decided I wanted to be with her forever.

The day after marriage I was hit with another heap of anxiety that rendered me unable to eat or drink anything, and tbh I still had no idea why. I tried to suppress it, but eventually it manifested in other ways. This is where rapture Anxiety set in. I realized that my whole life I said I was going to get married and then the end will come. Well here I was married, and I was not okay with the end coming, but what could I do, we were in a global pandemic, and the election of a life time was ongoing, and everyone and their mother was spouting conspiracy theories on social media. I then spent multiple days laying on the floor shaking in fear as I began to not trust reality anymore. At any moment I could just be gone, or worst, everyone I loved could be gone and I‘d be left behind. This began a process of filtering our all the negativity in my life.

First I had to get off social media, I didn’t want to hear anything else about politics or war. It consumed my thoughts and my conversations, and it never came though with any sort of benefit other than I ‘d argue with my friends who had different view points than me. Next I had to reevaluate what I had been told my whole life about the end of the world. This was difficult as all my friends also believed the same thing. It was even more challenging because questioning that belief forced me to question all my other beliefs. It was hard to sleep during this time, I lived next to an airport and every air plane to me sounded like a bomb, I even became irrationally afraid that a meteor would hit the earth, but other than that I did fine though the Holidays.. after new years things got much worst.

At the beginning of every year I fast and pray, I try not to eat any food for a couple of days and just pray as a way to build myself spiritually, and usually It yields pretty good results. This year I tried to take it very seriously, I was evaluating all my beliefs so I wanted to really try and get as close to God as I could. After about 24 hours of not eating I was feeling very tired, I went to my in-laws house, I went up stairs and laid on the couch without taking my coat off and basically just rested, but I was very warm. When kenzie signaled for me it was time to go I went downstairs and saw that there was some left overs from a hibachi grill. I couldn’t help my self and ate a decent amount of it breaking my fast. Immediately afterwards we went outside in the freezing cold weather, and drove home where it took a while to warm up. I was in the passenger seat, while on the highway I started to lose my vision and blacked out. I stayed conscious but I was not sure what was happing. Kenzie gave me some mints which brought back my vision, and i broke out into a cold sweat. Then we stopped at McDonalds where I got a burger and fries. Between the fasting, the over heating, and the sudden increase of fats in my system, it might make sense that I blacked out for a second, but I had never experienced something like that.

This event made me terrified of passing out which I then spent the next week having a panic attack every single day for a week scared that it might happen again. At this point I didn’t know what that meant, all I knew is that I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t leave the house, and everything terrified me. I even went to the emergency room but they told me I was fine. Than I called my dad who for the first time told me, “steven your just having a panic attack” This was the first time I and ever heard of a panic attack, I thought that was something that cringe girls' in high school would have. And besides I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that something was wrong with me. Anyway the next month went by with not much issue at all. Unfortunately I had not dealt with the issues that were at hand.

A month later Kenzie and I were driving to a meeting with our pastor and I felt like I was going to pass out again, accept this time I didn’t, and instead I just had a panic attack, yet I wasn’t convinced that it was a panic attack, I thought I was diabetic. Of course its diabetes, my mother is diabetic, I’ve been eating a lot of carbs, its so obvious! So then I started having panic attacks every day about having diabetes, constantly taking my blood sugars just for them to be normal every time. I went to the doctors who were worried It might be my heart but did an EKG and found everything was normal, they did a blood test and found nothing. They told me it was anxiety. What! I don’t have anxiety, there’s just something wrong with my health, at least that’s what I thought. SO I spent the next two months having panic attacks almost daily. During this time, the storming of the white house took place, and I did a lot of thinking.

The worst it got is one day where I told myself, I just don’t want to suffer any more and I had a sucidal thought, it terrified me that I could even have a thought like that, and I decided to fight against this with everything in me.

Without over simplifying the situation, the reason for my anxiety was, besides the state of the world, that I didn’t want to grow up. I wasn’t ready to commit to someone for the rest of my life, I wasn’t ready to get older, honestly I didn’t think I’d ever get older, but there I was. After realizing that the rapture wasn’t a guarantee, I also realized I was terrified of death. That fear along with my hypochondria mixed together and I became afraid that I had a brain tumor. I convinced myself I was going to die, and seriously could not get over it. First things first I had to realize that I was not dying, this took a series of spiritual and life changing events that are too long to add to this already long post, but I’ll add it in another post. These crazy events lead me to deciding to move to new york where I live now, and to attend a bible college. The day I visited the college is the last day I had a panic attack, and over the summer I fully recovered from my anxiety escapade.

The most important part of Recovery for me was the relationships with the people around me. My parents poured into me constantly, my friends were always there to make me laugh and play a game, and Kenzie was always there to make me feel loved. I started to enjoy music again, I started to go outside more, and on top of that I really started to make strides in my business. I recommend that if your going through a hard time that you seek the creator, consult with those who love you most, and most importantly really start to deal with the things that give you stress, fix them , or learn how to live with them if necessary. You’ve got this, and if you have no one I promise you’ll find someone. I know this advice isn’t the best, but tbh anxiety goes deep, and yours might take a series of long conversations with yourself to get over, you might need to go on an adventure, or you might even need to restructure our whole life...

So after that I moved to New York which will be my next post. I’m currently living well and I’m very happy. More importantly I’ve learned to feel a full range of emotions and appreciate every one of them, without letting any of them control me. It is crucial that you react to the world around you properly, don’t allow yourself to be dead to the world as one day you will die, and won’t get the chance to pretend anymore.

#anxiety

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falling0ff0fcliffs · 5 years ago

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I've had a lot of life changes, me and one of my best friends got married, (to women not each other) I honeymooned on an island, and i moved to Indianapolis, loving life might move to ny soon..

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falling0ff0fcliffs · 5 years ago

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Skating is way harder than it seems

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falling0ff0fcliffs · 5 years ago

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Recently been learning to skateboard, getting back into painting, and hit champ 3 in rl, it’s cool to see progression and to try new things. I’m getting married soon and I’m feeling everything you could possibly imagine. I am certainly taking a leap of faith, but I could never do that if I wasn’t as happy with my life as I am. The one thing I’ve learned from becoming an adult is you need to put time into things if you want them to be awesome, and so far that’s what I’ve been doing. <3

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falling0ff0fcliffs · 5 years ago

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