Tags: #sadness, #savor-your-emotions, #notes-app, #transforming-feelings [[0005. FOMO is a result of scarcity mindset]] | [[0007. the romance of returning home, and the fear of leaving]] I've been feeling sad lately. Sad because I’m tired of work, sad because I feel guilty about being tired of work, sad that it’s fucking dark at 5pm, sad that another holiday season approaches and I feel less and less joy from Christmas every year, sad that i’m aging, sad that my parents are aging, sad that no matter how much we all try to stay connected we’re still like these isolated little islands floating past each other that can never truly know each other, sad that it’s impossible to truly hold on to anything one loves forever. But we strive on anyway bc humans are masochistic little fuckers. That's what we know to do. To strive. I think a lot about the mom from [[Inside Out]]. The premise of the film is that everyone is controlled (or at least directed or influenced) by 5 emotions - happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust. There’s a mini control panel inside each human's head that the 5 anthropomorphized emotions control. As a baby, one starts off with just happiness. As a child, most are controlled by happiness. As one gets older, happiness is joined by the other emotions, and they learn to work together to direct the human. But one of the emotions becomes the de facto leader. For the mom, sadness was the leader. For the dad, anger. Simplistic, perhaps, but it gets the point across. When I first watched the film in 2015 I was 18. I remember thinking how unfortunate it must be to have sadness lead. Now, I realize it's neither a positive or negative thing. it just is. It's more about how one, as the human, respects the emotion that leads them, and how they encourage collaboration between the different emotions in driving their decisions. Sadness drives me. I derive an odd sort of pleasure in sadness. I don't know if that's healthy or not. I enjoy the deep melancholy that keeps me company during the winter months. I feel more honest when steeped in sorrow. Crying brings clarity. Crying makes me want to write poems and sing my heart out and explode. Have you ever felt the sheer fucking delight of a good cry? It’s delicious. --- I'd written everything up to this point a few days ago, and then while watching this Netflix Mexican telenovela called [La Casa de Las Flores](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8387348/), I heard a song that captured the exact idea I'm trying to articulate. I've been in a bit of a binge fever dream watching this series, which is infrequent (but not necessarily uncommon) for me. I enjoy several shows, but usually I find it difficult to get this invested. Might write about this at some point, but for now I want to continue discussing the sadness train of thought. In S2E09 - Pansy, Micaela sings [El Triste by José José](https://open.spotify.com/track/6HgUhIiqCepGzgb4nuses6?si=805531cbe750433c). It's a song about saying goodbye to someone you love and learning to live without them. *Qué triste todos dicen que soy, Que siempre estoy hablando de ti. No saben que pensando en tu amor, en tu amor, He podido ayudarme a vivir, He podido ayudarme a vivir.* *Hoy quiero saborear mi dolor, No pido compasión y piedad, La historia de este amor Se escribió para la eternidad* **Translated in English:** *"What a sad one", everyone says of me, That I'm always speaking of you But they don't know that by thinking of your love, of your love, I am able to help myself go on, to help myself live.* *Today I want to savor my pain, I don't ask for compassion nor pity This love story was written to be eternal* [https://lyricstranslate.com/en/el-triste-sad-one.html-0](https://lyricstranslate.com/en/el-triste-sad-one.html-0) Hoy quiero saborear mi dolor. Today I want to savor my pain. That's exactly what I mean. When I say that I am sad, and driven by sadness, I'm not asking for compassion or pity. I am savoring the feeling, because it helps me live. When we're heartbroken, why do we listen to sad songs? Watch sad movies? Consume things that make us hurt? Because savoring the pain feels good. Intoxicating, even. Reveling in sadness is part of what makes life magnificent. This isn’t meant to be a masturbatory ode to indulging sadness, although it might come off that way. I think I was that way a few years ago. Being sad felt good. Being sad was the only thing I knew I could count on. Not that I wasn't happy. But happiness was fleeting and sometimes elusive. Sadness I could always return to at night. There was always a class or boy or never making my parents proud of me or the inexorable fear of underachieving or a lack of clarity about the point of life to be sad about. I once believed in this image of myself as someone ruled by pure logic, not by emotion. I tried to project that image, at least. No petty human feelings here. I wanted to be known as a smart person who could always be counted on to make the logical decision. Which is funny now because when I think about it I'm not even sure I know what logic is, or how to think at all. I'm pretty good at seeing patterns in behavior, making connections between experiences, ideas, concepts, making sense of sequences of events, but what about any of that is not colored by my feelings? I don't think thinking can be divorced from feeling. Which makes me realize now that although I'd convinced myself I wanted to be a being of pure logic, ***what I really wanted was to not feel ***. Instinctively, I think there's a lot of smart people who have this desire because when they're young, emotions don't make sense to them. We like to think that we're above it all. Above making emotionally charged decisions. Above needing love and support from others. And when we believe that, we don't realize our capacity to hurt. We also don't realize how much we're hurting. I've already come to terms with the fact that I'm a flawed, sensitive human being who makes emotionally directed decisions and needs love and support from others. Savoring my buffet of emotions --- recognizing them, allowing myself to feel them, reflecting on them --- makes me a kinder, more earnest person. I hurt people less, and I hurt less than I used to. I'm happy about that. So I think what this whole sadness and feelings rabbit hole is really about is me becoming aware of how almost everything in my life is downstream of my emotional state, and I want to figure out how to make use of that. How to make my feelings work for me in a way that's respectful of them? I have all these things I want to accomplish. I want to be a great designer, I want to build software that is art, I want to sing and learn piano and perform for a crowd one day, I want to be physically fit, I want to make new friends and nourish the friendships I already have. I've improved at being kinder to myself, and I genuinely think I'm moving in the right direction on accomplishing these things. But sometimes I get furious with myself, because my brain knows I want to do all these things, I'll be on a good streak, and yet inevitably I have one particularly bad, tiring work day, so I doomscroll and go to bed, telling myself I'll pick it up again tomorrow. But then the next day I don't. Nor the day after that, nor the day after that. Eventually I remind myself, fuck motivation, you need discipline, and so I make To Do lists. I've tried GTD, I've tried meditation, bullet journaling, waking up at 6 AM, using the Agile methodology on my life (please don't ever do this 🤢) and I'm able to keep up with my plans for a few weeks, maybe even 1-2 months! But then something happens, and I get anxious, or sad, or afraid, and I stop. Consistency is so hard, man. How can I project manage my way through my feelings? I don't know if that's possible. I feel like something's wrong with me when I read about people who get up at 6AM every day, write or code or make art before work, go to the gym. I give in to my fears too often. But I refuse to give up, and that's why I'm here, writing about my sadness. I want to practice transforming my emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and whoever else is up there, I'm talking to you!) into creative energy of some sort instead of pacifying it with social media. This is a good start. --- Created: November 20, 2021 Last Modified: November 21, 2021