Meditation, Coffee and Robert Rodriguez – 10-11th August 2021

Today was an incredible morning. I woke up dead on 5AM. I heard the Coffee Machine making noise. I took my Coffee and went for a walk. I was listening to the Interstellar Soundtrack, I fit the mood. I felt like listening to calm music. After I got back from my walk in the wet misty rural lands, I returned and prepared myself food and while it was cooking took the time to meditate.

Today I really hit the spot with Meditation and I went into that phase of higher focus and calmness, feeling tranquil across my entire body. I said to myself constantly “Be the sky, the Clouds are my thoughts. (Let the clouds pass by, let them drift by without my mind being caught up in thought stories). Become the observer, become the watcher. (of my conscious mind, become meta aware of my thoughts).”. This seemed like a good mantra for me to remain focused, I’ve been struggling with Meditation a bit for a while now but that plateau has given me this moment and it was worth it. I may not experience this again for a while but I’ll do my best. Not listening to high energy music first thing in the morning is good.

After 20 minutes of Meditation I maintained a relaxed meditative focused state for a while. Feels good man, this practise that I’ve been failing at for years is finally coming back around. I think I must’ve lost a lot of motivation to even try after the end of 2017. I also listened to too many techniques and got a bit confused. Meditation needs to be kept simple and clear. Stepping back and becoming meta aware of your thinking rather than merely being inside your thoughts, I’m not sure what the best way to put it into words is but basically you want your thoughts to be like watching a presentation on a TV and you’re consciously aware you’re not the TV and that you’re merely observing and watching it. Once you realise that you’re not your thoughts, your thoughts will gently quiet, do not try to stop thinking per say, just don’t get carried away on thought stories and lose awareness that you’re supposed to merely be the watcher who is meditating. Gently close your thoughts when it feels right to do so rather than repeating or extending it unecessarily out of anxiety or the feeling that you NEED to think more, really it’s not necessary. Don’t suffer twice, I dunno if the Buddha said that or who said it but it applies here. After meditation which is your practise, try to do this just in your day to day life. Become the watcher of your mind, realise you’re not your thoughts and that you’re the observer. Meditation I think is very effective in addressing anxiety and depression. I felt great in 2017 before some irl problems happened, I was new to adult life then so it was hard to take. I hope I am a bit wiser now.

Coffee was great. I’ve figured out the solution to my dull Coffee, a bit more coffee in the filter using the larger spoon and microwave the milk. This seems to bring the Coffee to a satisfying flavour. Not too much milk either, just a bit. My energy is focus feels great right now.

Great morning, kind of feel like making a Meditation tutorial or a guided meditation or something. Last night was a bit rough though, I went to bed a bit late and meditation was HARD. I do 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes before bed. It’s really easy with my phone and listening to gentle binaural beats. I get 40 minutes of practise per day without it feeling like a huge chunk of time. Anyways, last night on the 10th Meditation was HARD. I was dying to go to bed and sleep but I disciplined myself and saw the last 5 minutes through to the end. Boy does it feel great to actually go through on discipline for once. Perhaps that gave me the strength to meditate so well this morning on the 11th.

The 10th. Tuesday was a bit of a rough day to be honest. I was pretty hopeful at first but as the day went on I found myself doing things out of order and being distracted. I did some work on Mr Rex, fixed a bug with the moving platforms and started tiling episode 3. A bit out of order but whatever I felt like it. I got a bit frustrated though and ended up procrastinating a bit. Plum also wanted a lot of attention today, I need to set boundaries sometimes so I can get work done. I decided at least to use some of my spare time to read. I’m so close to finished Robert Rodrigeuz’ autobiography on his production and release of El Mariachi. (I finished it that evening, I wonder what I’ll read next).

I can’t remember whether it was the 10th or the 9th but I read Jason’s book “It’s a Comedy Dammit”. It was pretty funny, I tend not to laugh like other people do but I found it worth my time. It’s a pretty short book, if It were a film it would perhaps be 10-15 minutes if done right. I’m wondering if me and a few others at some point could adapt it.

Apparently Game Maker Studio 2 is changing how their licenses work so I REALLY need to get GMLive and Game Maker working. I am sick of upgrading my software and things breaking. I want to stick with one version of game maker so I don’t have to do labour on fixing things. The updates aren’t worth it anyways. Once I get GMLive working again, I’ll be in a great position to no-bs get the game done. I need everything I can get. I don’t want to wait for compile times to fix basic things that would benefit from realtime code updates.

I made a gif of plum that morning too. It was a fun one.

Yesterday I got a bit anxious about some concerning behaviour I’ve seen in some of the communities I overlap with. This behaviour really annoys me, I need to make some kind of stand and soon. I’ll spare the details but it’s got me thinking that I need to be a community leader in some capacity in order to raise standards. I need to step into that leader role every once in a while and lead by example. I guess I have self doubts about this, whereever I go I see communities being unaware of their problems. Echo chamber mentality, I resist Echo chambers as much as I can and conform to ideas only knowing intellectually and with my gut that it is good. I will not adopt ideas or tolerate behaviour, simply because other people are doing it. Most people don’t think this way, I have realised that people are conformists. There are positives and negatives to this systematically but I can’t enter a system that is designed only to work if I am too stupid to question it. It’s a serious problem that I would like to parody in my short film “2+2=4”. It’s yet to be made but I would like to soon. It’s the light hearted comedy to Mr Rex’s epic darkness.

Anyways, I hope I can do a bit better today than yesterday. I think I might skip animation today. I did some animation yesterday actually in the morning, I animated Melisa and Garry skydiving away from Bruce and getting into Terror Eggy. I hope to use these in a Mr Rex Opening or something like that soon. Even just as practise these rough animations are good. We’ll see what I do.

I’m glad I finally finished “Rebel without a Crew”. I’ve got a long reading list. I find reading to be similar to meditation as it requires focus unlike passive media that requires no action on the part of the viewer. I think reading IS indirectly helping me gain more will power and in turn improving my ability to focus and meditate. I definitely recommend reading, even fictional books are good. Autobiographies are great, It’s like being reincarnated. I was Robert Rodrigeuz for a while and then I was DynoStorm. I remember all those experiences and it gives me perspective. I think that’s very powerful, autobiographies I think can be long but way more effective than merely “advice books” that describe abstractions by analogy and example. It lacks that experiential aspect to it.

Alright I’m done Journaling now. Take care.

Peace.