Flipping Feelings

After watching a TED talk about how unhealthy it is to believe that stress is unhealthy, I've been wondering how many negative feelings are really just the malperceived counterparts of some positive emotion that we can take advantage of and be fulfilled by.  If redefining how you look at stress can physiologically change the body's stress response to one of courage, then how many other responses are there that can be perceived in a new kind of light?

Another thing I've been wondering is if there's some convenient way to transition from one emotion to another, leapfrogging from feeling to feeling, to lead one's self out of a state they wish to escape.  It's nearly impossible to think away a feeling, and going from something like misery to ecstasy is just unfeasible for somebody who's crippled by longstanding unhappiness.  But maybe it's plausible that I could work out a strategy for making myself bitter instead of depressed, angry instead of bitter, indignant instead of angry, and courageous instead of indignant.  I am coming up with various things to do during the good spell that I'm in now.  It's so much easier to think of solutions to problems like these when you're not experiencing the problems.  And by now I realize that the weeks of normalcy have no meaning to my chronic disposition.

I'm curious to flesh out this hypothesis.  I'm sure that there are meditation techniques for doing this kind of thing?  Perhaps.

Current feelings:

~A good week.  I've noticed depressive auras nearly overtake me, and I've certainly been agitated because of deep-seated frustration about my lot in life.  But I've been able to numb my mind just enough that I could block the thoughts which depress me.  I haven't been indulging in spontaneous, spurious feelings.  So that's been okay.

~I take solace in seeing myself as not merely an animal with feelings, but an agent with dreams.  I have things to do and I have time to do those things.  I can't nearly fit all of the things I want to learn into my 4 years of college, and I have to delay the experience of certain aspects of my youth until I simply have more time to explore what I should have while younger.  I have to accept this and simply let it be.  I want to make my college experience a positive stepping stone for a life of learning what others have discovered and exploring the universe on my own terms.

Honesty

Part of me wants to be a completely honest person.

Another part of me looks at all of the cases where reality is too dark.

I used to look in the mirror and understand what I saw.  I could read my eyes, see my emotion.  I knew exactly what was looking back at me, and not because I was monitoring my internal mental state, but because my face was legible.  My eyes were telling.  The window to my soul was ajar.

Now, when I look in the mirror, I can't read myself.  I'm so covered up by complex experiences and emotions that the sheen over my face, especially my eyes is opaque.

It's disconcerting.

What I Need to Eliminate

What is worth noting today...

This is just random babble, so please ignore everything contained on this blog post.

I have a habit of getting caught up on things, and letting them fester in my head for a really long time.  I keep thinking about the same small selection of things in a tiny little cycle.  I guess I keep thinking about these things because it's important that I do something about those thoughts.  But then I end up with too little time set aside to do any of those things.

So where is the fluff?  Where is the time that I'm wasting?  What am I doing to take away my productivity, my efficiency, my happiness?

Why Furries Are Good and Who They Are

This has taken me a long time to post, partly because I didn't know if I wanted to post it, partly because I was not sure about what exactly I wanted to say on the subject, and partly because I wanted to say something very particular.  Most of all, I think it's important to explain a facet of our world that is really quite foreign to many people, but is very much a developed and interesting subculture.

I'm motivated to describe it in a very clear and descriptive fashion because I think that it's easy to put the subject into a box and label it as some sort of weird novelty.

I went to FurAffinity United this summer, August 16-18.  It's a furry convention.  To properly discuss this adventure, I need to define a few terms for the layman.  And, as a student of neuroscience and linguistics, I don't play around when I'm defining terminology.  So what you hear here is as precise as it will get.

The noun 'furry' can be used in two ways.  It can be used to describe fictional characters that have the appearance of human-shaped animals, which are less colloquially called anthropomorphic animals.  Bugs Bunny is a furry.  The term 'furry' is also used as shorthand for a person who considers themselves a fan of subject matter that depicts furries.  The adjective form of furry is used to describe things that pertain to the furry fandom.  There's also the term 'fursona', a noun used to describe a nonhuman persona that a person identifies with or acts out.

Furries in art: "Harbinger", by Blotch

The term 'furry' is incredibly loaded.  It means a lot to people who are familiar with the fandom because of all of the preconceptions and stereotypes there are about the demographic of people who frequent the online hubs of the community.  It also means a lot to many people well-versed in "Internet culture", if there is such a thing.  The furry fandom is certainly a diverse community, but because most of the community frequents the same small number of hubs, it's easy to characterize the way that those hubs work and be turned off to any of the main characteristics of those particular places.

Translating: People to Characters

I really want to write a webcomic or graphic novel or anime or something.  I'll probably do something that only requires a writer and an artist, because I can be both of those things.  What's most important to me is that I get a set of characters, a set of ideas that I want to convey, and a really compelling plot that helps me express what I want to express.  Having a large readership is a really useful tool in getting across a message, so I need to make my story engaging to the demographics I want to reach - which should initially be the layman, but which should have a lot of appeal for the people like me and the people who can bring about the changes that my work calls for.

So right now, I'm starting to compile characters that are inspired by people I know in real life.  These are people whose motivations I well understand, and I hope to use what I know about their ways of living to guide the characters' decisions.  I want to make the story believable and fluid, so I want to put the right people in the right situations for the right reasons.  It's interesting, thinking about what would be needed to make a certain event happen, and which characters need to interact for a certain debate to be had in a way that doesn't seem like a writer's soapbox.

I've been thinking about this for a while, and I'd really like to get it on paper so I can get really writing a long-ass story and draw things to match up with it.

Prayer of Hope

Fire
My Spirit is Fire
Deadly
Contained by my body
The force of my nature

My spirit is
Pride, Fear, Love, Vengeance,
Unhindered Desire, Elegance,
Despair, Suffering, Wisdom,
Imagination and Infinity.

Spirit,
Be driven by my hope.
Fire,
Be driven by my hope.
Earth,
Be driven by my hope.

Hope,
Let me guard you,
I will protect you and guide you,
My body
and my mind
and my desires
and my decisions
and my actions
and my success
will keep you safe,
will give you form,
will give you strength,
will light your way,
will set you free,
will give you peace.

Fly!

Fly!

Fly!

Let the fire of my spirit
Be the wind that supports you
And save my soul
From fear and despair.
Bring light to the world!
Extinguish the miasma!
Bring respite to the Damned!

Hope,
I will hold you dear,
And my courage will propel you.

Populating Meaning, ?%

At this point in my life, my interactions with other people start to mean things.

I am no longer complaining that my existence is banal and trivial.  My life now has significance.

Safeties off, as I've forgone the nets that I could always return to.  I'm far too proud for that.  I refuse to accept any role that takes away my agency.  I am avidly the expression of my soul.

There is a lot more gravity in life than I am used to.  Fiction expands the horizons of my mind, and exploration in the knowledge of my own world grounds those shining imaginative comprehensions in the world that I can affect.

I am far too sensitive to that gravity.  I process my perceptions deep in my soul, perceiving events and circumstance at my core, internalizing the events of the world as the events of my world.  I am not separate or distinct from the world that I witness.  I am not a bystander, and I cannot evade responsibility.

Now, as I begin to enter the adult world, I feel the weight of everything that I can see, as if I have to find the golden bullet to cure all of our ills.  I can't separate myself from the future that we can so easily predict.

I want to know everything so that I can do everything.  So that I can save the world from the evils we agree are evils.  So that I can absolve the damned of their cruel fates.  So that I can find a way to escape the vicious cycle of hate.