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Viewing 19 - 27 out of 102 Blogs.
I’ve heard three people lately say they are trying to “find themselves”, and countless people have proclaimed this vague need about themselves in the media (usually talk shows) and in US households since the 60s, it seems. Where do people think they went? Is it an excuse to escape to California or Mozambique; to run away from adult responsibilities? Or is it like you’re a computer and you were sitting on idle for too long and now you need to reboot yourself?
Of course one way to “find yourself” could be to remind yourself that “everywhere you go, there you are”. Not only is this an overlycuddly, cloying pseudoanecdote that won’t let go no matter how hard you try and kick it off, you can even buy a book of the same name on Amazon.com. If you still can’t “find yourself”, you can remind yourself that “you’re just doing the best you can”, or “you are exactly where you’re supposed to be right now” … I need to address that first one: I don’t buy it. People are not always doing the best they can. There have been plenty of times I’ve known I could do something better in that very moment or later. One time when I was embarrassingly old for such a stunt, I punched my brother so hard in the jaw that he nearly fainted. I might have done better. I might have left the room, instead of retaliating with violence. I was certainly not doing the best I could (especially for him), and I wasn’t “exactly where I’m supposed to be right now”. I was rolled up on his face when I should have been in transit from the room and probably, the house too. Was Ted Bundy or the Zodiac Killer doing the best he could? They both seemed to really enjoy what they did, but I wonder if they were “just doing the best they could“. Are you doing the best you can at all times? No. The term, while easygoing on the “inner child” can also inspire passivity and let those groping men and women who just happen to be over 35, off the hook for their alleged mid-life crises. It also invites self-pity at times, and helps others avoid the need to look at just how much change needs to be made to make themselves and those around them happy and healthy.I’ve been hearing about the apparently esoteric “nervous breakdown” almost since I was old enough to speak and no one has agreed on what it means. Once a little maturity set in, I asked what it means. Mostly people said it means a person “lost control” or “broke down”. They couldn’t break it down any further than that. Someone said that it had to do with a person becoming a “psychopath”. Later I learned that a “psychopath” is a botched, Hollywood term for the psychiatric label “sociopath”. My understanding is that Dr. Phil uses the word “psychopath”. Ratings are important. Movie psychiatrists still misuse the term. Some people on this site claiming to have therapeutic credentials use it too. … In the end, I learned that sociopathy may have nothing to do with any type of nervous breakdown, because there really is no such thing as a nervous breakdown.
Due to my age, my speech is largely influenced by the 80s and 90s. And it’s interesting to see what the 90s and the new millennium has dragged in with it, in terms of slang: “Sort of” has replaced “umm”. Especially in socially-self-conscious, middle-class White America (I‘ll attack other cultures in Part II).
For example, the old way:
It’s the way we need to umm try and deal with this problem before we lose our planet to pollution.
The new way:
It’s the way we need to sort of try and deal with this problem before we lose our planet to pollution. I still can’t seem to wrap my brain around the appeal of this one.
- R
For reasons I’ve yet to grasp, my brain sometimes leads me to listen to radio programming that competes with my general world views … am especially drawn to cult-like, hair-raisingly twisted religious programs like Open Forum, with octogenarian Harold Camping (born 1922). He is a Christian educator, author, etc. … but mostly, he’s the slowest speaker on radio to date. For me, the most interesting thing about him is his middle name: Eggbert. I’ve only known one other Eggbert and she was my Girl Scout counselor. She taught us how to keep a canoe from capsizing with the aid of great determination and a medley of exotic curse words. She was golden.
Two Sundays ago I tuned in to the Family Radio station to hear Harold drone on about salvation.
This time he reminded us that people misunderstand Hell. Hell, he believes, is not some geographical place where people are cast into a fiery pit of molten lava (OK - I thought). He says the Bible has been misinterpreted as far as what Hell is … that those of us who die without being “saved by Our Lord Jesus Christ“, simply forfeit our “right to life”. Then he used this fairly riveting and illogical example:
Think of a man who is having a party with his friends one night and thinking to himself, ‘Who cares about tomorrow? Let’s eat, drink and be merry!’ Then that man drunkenly throws a stone out the window and accidentally hits something or someone and ends up on death row …
( To his credit, he did admit this analogy wasn’t perfect.)… As you can see, that man gave up his life. He’ll go to the death chamber … needle … injection … and he’ll painlessly [?!?] be put to sleep forever. No pain for eternity, but he will never know the joys of everlasting life.
Then he responded to a few caller’s questions about it (paraphrased): But what would the guy be missing if he’s dead? He won’t be aware of it … how do I win my mom over to Christ with this argument? She’s an atheist … The youngish sounding lady’s voice was shaky and she sounded unstable. I think she was just itching to save her mother from Hell and dying to get the Hell off the air before her mother walked into the room and swatted her.
Harold floundered, and I smiled to myself, giving the man credit for trying to wrack his mind for an answer he surely didn’t have. Well (said Harold) the executed man might not know what he’s missing, but he WILL be missing out on it. (Another longish pause …) As for your mother, she’ll have to reach this truth on her own.
He pushed the dump button on her at that point and prepared to take another call.
I thought of how tiring life can be for a lot of people; how nice the idea of unbroken, eternal sleep might sound to some people I know; how awfully supportive this guy’s theory is of those who are life-tired and just want to end the whole affair and get a moment’s rest. Harold promised an eternity filled with rest from problems. Harold calls it Hell. Intriguing.
… While I wait for one of you to hopefully maybe offer your reaction to this, I’ll scare up Part II. The man was just getting warmed up.
The idea of "psychic vampires" came up in the forum. I don't believe in "psychic vampirism" in the mythical sense. There seems to be this need for a few Americans (not implicating anyone in that thread) to make a very common, irritating event, like someone wasting your time with mellodrama, sound romantic and otherworldy by putting it under the heading of "vampirism" LOL. If this pertains to one of you, sorry but onward march ...
Rather, "psychic vampirism" is just a loose way of saying someone happens to be really emotionally needy and annoying and aims those needs in your direction. But you can't be the "victim" of such a "vampire" because you've chosen to be emotionally "sucked dry" by that person ... so the "victim" of "vampirism" isn't really a victim of anything.
Nor does the needy person necessarily feel gleeful or enhanced somehow by "draining" you, as the mythical vamps do. Often they - or maybe I should start saying "we"- feel worse off than before by draining. So the word vampirism doesn't even quite fit as a loose analogy.
We've all wasted someone's time blathering on about some real or imagined woe, knowing damned well we have no intention of looking for an answer from that person at that very moment. We're just unloading as their eyes glaze over. ... OK, well, I can at least speak for myself. So maybe I should have said "I" instead of "we".
If you want to avoid a so-called "psychic vampire" attack, skip the mystical books and "how to" tapes and just use common sense: don't allow yourself to indulge your time or resources in people who are consistently needy and selfish. Both emotional and physical fatigue result ... kind of like that feeling you had in a really tedious, boring highschool lecture. You wanted to fall asleep, crawl under the table or just leave, right? Back then maybe you were a sort of victim because you couldn't. But for most of us, class is now out.
- R
Can only speak for Northern California: for a while now, public bathrooms have been taking on a, well, frugal nature when it comes to toilet paper. Go into just about any public bathroom to relieve yourself and you’ll notice the toilet paper is about three times as thin as it used to be. So if you’re a responsible, sanitary wiper, you’ll end up spinning the spool about two additional rotations to compensate for the loss in thickness. And maybe one more out of paranoia. Which means you’re using at least three times the tissue you normally would. Quite a few of us wipers (I’m hoping) don’t want to risk moist hands just to conserve paper (assuming our business of the moment is liquid instead of solid). If our business is solid, as many as four additional rotations worth of tissue may be needed (at least psychologically anyway).
Why did they start making tissue so thin? When did it all go so horribly wrong? Well, the first answer is that it’s Northern California. Conservation is key here, even if saving part of a tree involves public health risks. Just think: the people flipping your burgers, letting them land on the ground then placing them into your bun, are the same colorful people who take bathroom breaks in which they (still) ignore that frivolous sign about employees needing to wash their hands after using the potty. It’s just that now they’re using toilet paper that’s slightly more porous than a common household spider web. Bon appetite!
I think another reason tissue has thinned is - as always - related to money. Business owners must have had a collective breakdown about their annual deficit of toilet paper a few years back, possibly due to all the stolen rolls of toilet paper they lose each year. I’m quite sure people steal entire rolls of tissue. Some people are homeless … some are poor or desperate or bored enough to do it. I think I might have stolen a roll or two years ago. Back then I might have stolen a lollipop from your crying kid too. But then again I’d have felt guilty enough to return a few minutes later with a small stolen box of raisins (they’re better for her health anyway). We’re out there.
Finally I’d like to look at all the likely affects of this whole toilet paper debacle:
Not only do a lot of people likely use more ass tissue than they did before, to ensure adequate coverage, some of the tissue roll crooks probably steal two rolls now instead of one - thank goodness God designed coats with two pockets.
Mr. Raphael thinks the public paper strike has more to do with deterring customers from using the bathrooms, in order to avoid heavy duty maintenance of them. ?
After blogging about my recent Sleep Paralysis episode, I called my brother to talk about it. Found out that he has paralysis almost every night (!) Lately his “theme” is that he sees dark shadows around the room. So his aren’t as intense as mine, regarding the hallucinations. Some of the time he gets strange electric-like sensations and hears/feels buzzing in his body (I get that too). He also has night terrors, which means he awakens every so often, screaming (like our father did).
He seems half-way convinced his episodes are paranormal in nature (the paralysis, not the night terrors). I think tonight and tomorrow I will ask other family members if they have sleep issues … it’s starting to sound like our problems might be hereditary.
More people have these things then I even realized. Mr. Raphael says he gets them too, but very infrequently. His are quite tame. The worst he reports is: seeing an old lady with a warty face leaning over him, hands around his neck. He said it was more like he “saw“ her in his mind‘s eye … like it was more like the idea of her leaning over him (whatever that means). I then told him about the “Old Hag” that many people in the US have reported seeing during sleep paralysis. He said that usually he only feels paralyzed, with someone watching him. That’s as far as it goes. He tells himself to relax and it goes away. I’m envious LOL. No tactic consistently works for me.
Have you had these? What do you think? What helps you “break the spell“? … If you’re not sure what I‘m talking about, or want more info on it, you can do an online search using the words “Sleep Paralysis”.
I’m not always feeling haunted, so this blog is not about psi. If you give up here, I get it.
Friends and relatives alike are lamenting being single during the holidays. I don’t remember what it feels like to be single, but being part of a duo has its challenges too. Anyway, just read an online article called 7 Signs He’s Trying to Buy Your Love (Men’s Health). It seems like another attempt for one person to speak on behalf of all men; a supposed decipherer of males and their dating gestures. And by gosh some of those generalities seem sort of accurate a lot of the time. ... Of course there are plenty of exceptions. I do agree when the author notes that someone placing a busload of flowers in your arms on the first date might represent a yellow or red flag type dating situation. It would make you wonder what stinky agenda or secrets might be hiding behind that dramatically distracting arrangement of fragrant floral petals. Is he extremely insecure (not healthy)? Is he buying sex (a “guilt bouquet“)? Is he an extreme “I love you/I hate you” personality (Mr. Fatal Attraction)? It could be he really isn’t hiding any poop and just is EXTREMELY inexperienced at dating. But if dude is over twenty and doing this, I’d be inclined to keep him at bay. The author also makes a point when he offers that a woman getting a business card instead of a handwritten note with flowers, could mean he‘s trying to “buy her off“. But then again, I think some men and women just might not be used to popular rules of dating and don’t wish to come on too strong. I wouldn’t have necessarily written off a guy who sent a business card with flowers though, because …
Years ago I got into a row with a man I was dating and he typed out an apology letter. Can’t quite recall if he signed it by hand at the end or not LOL … but I quickly found out he’s a practical man and didn’t want to frustrate me further with what he considers his “awful” handwriting (it‘s not that bad). I’m still with him and he’s the most loving, warm, well-adjusted man I’ve known. His typing gesture wasn’t exactly traditionally romantic, but it was considerate and practical. The real gift is who he is.
Going off-topic a little: I’m not a girl who’s into flowers anyway (and in general I‘m not materialistic). I’ve been gracious when my guy, or any guy, gave me flowers. But let’s face it: flowers aren’t particularly original or durable. If I'd received a super-cheap, used racetrack set with a couple matchbox cars I’d be REALLY impressed. Now that kind of originality might have bought my love on our very first date!
I wonder if Men's Health would allow me to write a complimentary article called 7 Signs She’s in Love With Your Wallet.
Some argue Sleep Paralysis with Hallucinations has nothing to do with hallucinating - that very real entities are responsible for what people call hallucinations, in this situation. I say maybe, maybe not.
I’ve been free from these episodes for months now, until this morning. The worst I’ve had are the occasional fleeting physical sensations of being aware that I can’t move as I wake up. For months I didn‘t even have the sense of a negative presence in the room (or in the bed with me).
The most popular themes for me have been the sensation of someone stretched across the length of my body, or sitting/ moving around next to me on the bed. I’ve rarely had harrowing visuals, but I have had them: once saw and felt a naked man laying across my torso (I was on my back). He was face-down and had long, wet hair. Another time it was someone hunched in a corner of the room, wearing a black cape LOL, while at the same time I felt someone with very very hairy legs on top of me, his arms extended toward my head, trying to hold my hands. Ick. My mind told me it was the same individual in two places. That’s probably the worst of the visuals. But usually there’s very little nastiness that I actually see. And I’ve never seen/felt anything that's given me a particularly positive feeling.Have had sounds: growling being the most irritating of them. And one of the worst happened maybe a year ago when I heard footsteps coming up the long staircase leading up to the front door. Then I heard the door open and footsteps approach the bedroom door. It was the only episode I recall having at night,(they happen upon waking), so I actually thought I was awake and hearing a robber and/or killer approaching my partner and I. I screamed at him to wake up and (thought) I was pushing on him. While failing to get a response, I sensed whomever it was approaching the bed, then actually felt s/he or it lift me out of bed and start to carry me out of the room. I felt abject terror and woke up.
This morning I felt myself starting to feel paralyzed while coming out of a dream. Felt movement on the bed - sort of like a cat or small animal crawling around next to me. In my head I kept screaming “Wake up wake up wake up!” LOL ... those of you who have these episodes may know this reaction. Next I told myself to calm down to help it end. Then I felt someone/something moving the bed - pulling it around in a circle. Eventually I woke up. I'd forgotten how creepy these episodes can get.
So … are these hallucinations or not?
… Well I’m not quite sure. They can be explained clinically, to a certain degree. For ex., they are linked to certain physical and psychological disorders (sleep apnea, depression, Bipolar ... ). At the same time, I leave room for the idea that it’s possible that certain imbalances in the body/brain can perhaps lower a person’s threshold for experiencing certain paranormal events. What do you think?
One thing I’d avoided after our loud haunting, is closing the doors to any rooms.
Whomever/whatever it was enjoyed knocking and banging loudly on closed doors (wears down the nerves), so I started keeping them open. But lately it’s been pretty cold in our home so my man and I have been doing the space heater thing. So now we close doors to trap the heat in the most used room of the day.
This morning, after having a relatively infrequent and annoying Sleep Paralysis episode w/hallucinations (it would take another blog to go into this), I awakened to find the door to my room closed, with Mr. Raphael not still in the bedroom.
After doing some reading and writing for a few minutes I got dressed and stood up. That’s when I heard knocking on the bedroom door. It was soft and tame. I said Hello? (a knee jerk reaction). Went and opened the door, thinking maybe Mr. R was playing with me (translation: had a death wish). But I found he was in the room across the hall with the door closed. I opened that door and asked if he’d heard knocking and he said no. … Didn’t surprise me. He had the space heater on plus his door closed; both were sound barriers. Plus the knocking sound was so light.
Was curious/stupid(?) enough to go back into the bedroom, shut the door, and ask Is anyone here with me? If there was a response I didn’t catch on: no knocking or banging or anything else unusual.
One window in our bedroom is open, and there are sounds in the vicinity. So while I can say with confidence that I heard the sound of knocking, and that it seemed to emanate from that door, I can’t promise my ears weren’t fooled somehow by some other noise. Plus, I’d recently awakened., and force of suggestion from bad Sleep Paralysis might have made me more susceptible to misinterpreting some sound as the mystical knocking I’d heard for so many months in the past.
If the knocking sound had been louder, more definitive, I’d have take myself more seriously … and especially if Mr.R had heard it too.
Anyway, hard to say if any anomalous activity is about to start up again for us. But if it is one or more entities, It probably wouldn’t be a problem as long as it was quiet in it’s communication and did so only during waking hours, I think (gulp). Just thought I'd share 
And if you were able to cope with the last video, here's an even stranger one from them:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l48HTZUHfeQ&feature=related
Anyone else familiar with Aphex Twin? More importantly, does anyone have concerns about Rob Lowe damaging what could be an otherwise decent sequel to 'Stir of Echoes' ?
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