Tag: life

Choose Your Pain

November 16th, 2022

“Crossroad” A.I + Human Collab

I’m listening to Elliot Smith’s “Miss Misery”. What a songwriter! Lately, I listen to this guy like every day, not lying to you, and that’s just something I do until I’m through with it and need something new that makes me feel things, then a new music crisis begins and after a finite number of these cycles, I die (of old age I hope).

But that has nothing to do with the title, although I have to say, lying down in my bed, listening to this playlist, and writing in my blog is quite cathartic and probably the beginning of a moment’s rest in an otherwise hectic day.

So yesterday I lost almost a full day’s work because of a major system update applied to my laptop that changed the way I work quite drastically, changes are hard to assimilate especially when you’ve built a lot around the way things were. And today, I had a third and final interview for a job I really, really want, and I felt so nervous! So today I had to work like a motherfucker, focused, fast, and relentlessly in a new, weird environment to make up for the time lost and be able to squeeze 1+ hours in the afternoon for my interview. The interview was a KILLER one, I felt like a mouse trapped by a very playful and evil cat who won’t just let it die; and to my surprise, it seems they will make an offer (I can’t wait for the news!).

After all of this, I’m just beat.

But there are projects I’ve been postponing for years, my art odyssey, sailing the seas of creativity, learning the technique and the craft from scratch while working on bringing to life concepts that have been locked deep inside the wardrobe of my secret wishes. So I face a bit of difficulty here: “Do I go find a way to please myself after a hard day? Or do I invest some time in the disciplines I require to master if I’m ever to make it as an artist?”

It’s not an easy choice, also it is neither completely right nor completely wrong. I could not image nor endure an existence that is made up of 100% discipline, virtue, and rigor. I aim to enjoy my existence and if everything is serious, scripted, and unflexible that will simply not happen. But then again, what’s the right time for each? Me being a 36-year-old, my life doesn’t get any easier, my responsibilities increase as my kid grows up, my career advances, and I introduce personal projects into the huge amount of matters that require attention, time, and money.

So I realize that although it’s perfectly acceptable to take time to rest after a hard day, it is not the best choice when compared to my aspirations and their size. So I chose to stick to my decision of keeping a daily discipline: writing and studying classical guitar. It wasn’t epic folks, it wasn’t full of heroism nor did a muse come to me and showed me how valuable my effort was: it sucked. My musical practice came very slow and didn’t sound so well, my writing wasn’t fluent at all and a truck cut the power cabling in my residential area so when I was finally gaining some writing momentum it all went dark.

So discipline is such, precisely because it happens in spite of feelings and events, but only if you’re willing to make it happen. Hence the title of the blog post.

Owning your suffering

“Choose your pain”

Who wants to hear about suffering, right? I mean, isn’t it the very thing we avoid like the plague, and isn’t this avoidance the reason why we do a lot of what we do consciously or not?

But suffering is a reality, and realities are there to be seen, acknowledged, and dealt with. The opposite is one of many forms of denial, but the denial to see what exists and is evident is probably one of the worst abilities we have as humans; denial has buried entire lives decades before their bodies hit the grave.

So, if we face the reality and the constant possibility of suffering, the question is: how do we manage it? Well, we use it, and we seek to accommodate it so that in the means possible it happens in our terms and within our parameters; and when we accomplish this, that suffering has a much deeper meaning to us and produces less discomfort as well.

Let me give you a very mundane example:

“Rent is due, you’re behind and you know your landlord may want to evict you soon. Now, you know you’re tired, work is not going as good as you wish and you’re a bit down about the whole situation, you choose to ignore the risk and wish for the best; you read in some bullshit book that prosperity is manifested through positive thinking and thus, your efforts to resolve the situation are mental and sadly soon enough they prove to be useless as you actually get kicked out. Now there’s quite some suffering coming your way.

The alternate version of this is, you actually have a bike you use to go to work and run your errands; you realize that things are going south and on top of that, your landlord seems not to be tolerant of your rent payments any longer. You choose to download a delivery app and enroll in the system; Uber or any of those apps, you know you’re going to make some money there and it may take you a couple of months to resolve the whole situation and it’s going to also mean finishing your shift to work even more, taking shit you don’t care about to people you don’t know. You go a speak to the landlord, negotiate some installments for the amount due and commit to full payment of the current month as soon as you’re paid. You’re buying yourself two months of tiredness and suffering.”

So what’s the big difference between these two scenarios?

In the second scenario, you acknowledge the monster below the carpet, look it in the eye and in all its awfulness, and decide to deal with it. If you’re able to control it, you will indeed suffer and probably regret some actions that put you in that position. But you also have a clear timeframe in sight, you won’t be having a great time but you won’t be humiliated and homeless by the end of the month.

In the first scenario, however, you’re thrown by someone else into uncertainty, things are already out of your hands and there’s potentially no end in sight for the storm that’s upon you.

That’s what I mean when I say “own your suffering”. And it’s a bit of a drastic scenario, but it illustrates the point.

For many years, I suffered the fact that my artistic light was shut down, denied by mundane life and obligations. No time to create, no freedom either, no funds to get an education, enslaved to my technical career because it’s what gets me money, growing older and older and I can go on with the list…

You know, I was so wrong in the way I viewed things, but it took me a long time to realize. I mean, there were some awful realities to face: yes, I didn’t have the support I needed to start early in the arts, I missed some opportunities as a young adult and I took responsibilities out of my own choice that ended up limiting my freedom to move. So yeah, I fucked it up, but in no way did it have to stay that way.

As it turns out, the technical career I dedicated so much time and effort to, so that it would get me some money… guess what? It got me money! Not only that, but seniority gave me more flexible schedules and hence a way to organize my time more freely, and what about all the years lost? Not lost at all, it’s no secret that artists benefit much from suffering if they’re able to translate that into an art form worth appreciating, my life experience in other realms is a great source of knowledge for my books and songwriting and even the long wait, pushes me to be more decisive in my current efforts.

What will it all turn into in the end? Will I be a success? Will I go unnoticed?

Yeah, those thoughts are part of my daily anxiety, but I’ll tell you something after years of frustration and getting depressed because of this topic: I’d rather choose that risk of putting heart and soul into something that’s not as well received as I expect, than lowering my arms and adopting conformity with my current situation, and slowly grow bitter and bitter, feeling dreams are never meant to be fulfilled, that life is unfair, that other people had the opportunities I didn’t and so on… Become resentful, bitter…

No, I’ve known enough people like that, their lives are my definition of doom, imprisonment, and despair and it hurts me that so many folks with a huge potential just chose to give up way too early in life. But you know what? It’s their choice, they just allowed the default direction of the system to pull them and define them, they chose not to suffer the embarrassment of learning something as older students, the uncertainty of risking their grown-up stability for a dream, they chose to watch T.V, cook barbeques or party instead of building the vehicle that would take them out of the “unfair” existence they bitch so much about.

I’d rather fail with the full knowledge that I’ve chosen that pain, instead of waiting to see what my denial is bringing upon me, a pain I can’t control nor possibly revert.

Final thoughts

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not extrapolating a principle of general applicability out of my very specific life history. I’m applying ancient principles to my efforts in attaining very difficult goals, and this is what I want to communicate, for it may be just what you need to read today.

It may be that for many of you, this is a time to enjoy your family, your friends, your lover, a T.V series, travel, and entertainment. I don’t antagonize any of these in principle, it would make me a hypocrite as I’ve traveled many places, watched Breakin Bad about 4 times now, Death Note about 3 times, sung karaoke and danced with my wife and kid for hours, and have streamed the whole Death Stranding videogame via Twitch.

But I’m now facing a new stage, one that I could have had much earlier in my life and I would possibly be under less pressure now, but it is what it is. This is my time for discipline, effort, and suffering my belated dreams. And you know what? I’ve waited for this for many years and I intend to live it fully.

I do hope some of my struggles make nutritious food for thought, and if it seems to shed some light on a situation you’re going through, don’t ignore it, take that light and seek the monster’s lair for yourself; you may find out you’re more capable of dealing with it than you thought and just as I believe will happen in my case, it will not go unrewarded.

Remember: “Fortune favors the bold”.

“Fortune favors the bold” Anime A.I render
Late Night Journal – 08/24/2022

August 24th, 2022

Headaches, dreams about to come true, and the value of discipline.

Fuck man, I have to say, my life won’t be normal but sure as fuck is entertaining and full of things xD

See, I’ve been working hard, for many, many years in finding myself (I know this is vague and cliche) but yeah, too many years. You may feel this is a stage of life but it’s not, let me explain: you easily get to spend all of your hours on Earth and never come to understand what you are, how you are, what you want and what you’re willing to do for what you want. It would sound like it should be a basic premise of any given person but we’re presented with a lot of surrogate sources of distraction, entertainment, conflicts, stress, etc, that for too many, that moment of self-reflection never actually comes.

This is one of the things that I hate the most about modern life, and part of my personal quest is to find a way to show people how important their life is, how full of potential, and how they’re able to break the cycle of a cookie-cutter, pathetic existence.

The “value of discipline” mentioned above is closely related to this previous reflection; ever since I was fired from my second job, I took it upon myself not to get another job, even if I feel like I really really need or want that extra money I was used to earning. Instead, I would take a set of activities that I have identified as leading me to build my personal life strategy (yes this is something and it’s been written in a notebook for two years), and take them with the seriousness of that second job, or even more because one is about money but the second is about meaning. And it’s hard man, it’s fucking hard, I’m dying every day in a good sense and being reborn; studying the disciplines that my plan requires, and experimenting with uncharted intellectual and artistic territories every single day after work and after exercising (which is part of the change) is taking a bit toll on me. I’m tired, and I’m in a lot of internal conflict and uncertainty, I’ve left the shore and set out to discover the unknown.

Probably that’s where the headache is coming from; no, most certainly that’s the reason why (note to self: buy some fucking aspirin).

I haven’t mentioned the “dreams about to come true” part, I know, I know. But as rational as I try to be, there’s still a more primitive man inside of me who’s superstitious and I’m afraid if I say it, I’ll jinx it.

But I promise I’ll tell you when it happens, and I will link it to this entry 🙂

Hugs.

J.V
Attitude #1

August 18th, 2022

Attitude #1
Thoughts 2022 – Defy #1

August 16th, 2022

Thoughts 2022 – Defy #1
Patterns

August 16th, 2022
By Josué Vargas

Audio and Video Version of the Poem

Patterns

Alone at the sea,
the air is salty and clean
evil muttering has ceased
and silent angels guard the scene

It makes me think, and recall old dreams
of childhood and sorrow,
not that they’re a different thing.
But that wound is also relieved

By the playful battle of the rocks
against the waves.
Old friends,
children of the centuries
who never cease to pretend being unseen

Oh if I would become a rock,
become the ocean’s own
that I won’t see love turned bitter
and men become what they abhor

For it is all laid down in patterns,
seems to me, a cosmic joke.
Not that it’s all gloom and wrong,
but it’s all doomed to end, and everyone is doomed to mourn.

But not the waves, they won’t,
nor will the rocks notice
when all you care about , is gone.

Their game goes on, and on, and on,
a mighty battle, just for fun.
Pretending being unseen by
the yearning eyes of those

who would be waves and rocks but instead,
are a wonderful dream
between dawn and dusk

Patterns

Alone at the sea,
the air is salty and clean
evil muttering has ceased
and silent angels guard the scene

It makes me think, and recall old dreams
of childhood and sorrow,
not that they’re a different thing.
But that wound is also relieved

By the playful battle of the rocks
against the waves.
Old friends,
children of the centuries
who never cease to pretend being unseen

Oh if I would become a rock,
become the ocean’s own
that I won’t see love turned bitter
and men become what they abhor

For it is all laid down in patterns,
seems to me, a cosmic joke.
Not that it’s all gloom and wrong,
but it’s all doomed to end, and everyone is doomed to mourn.

But not the waves, they won’t,
nor will the rocks notice
when all you care about , is gone.

Their game goes on, and on, and on,
a mighty battle, just for fun.
Pretending being unseen by
the yearning eyes of those

who would be waves and rocks but instead,
are a wonderful dream
between dawn and dusk
```
                           Josué Vargas - 2022 Ⓒ
```
Let Go

July 1st, 2022

“It’s better to burn out than to fade away” – Neil Young

This is personal

This is a post about me, this is a public declaration of a decision that will change my life forever, I know it because I’ve taken a similar one in the past, and it did.

Let me tell you a story.

I got married young, very young. I didn’t know what the fuck to do with adult life suddenly falling upon me like a fucking iron dome, no way out. It wasn’t marriage that was the issue, as a matter of fact, this was no issue at all, my life was already a lot better than it was years before. The issue was, that I had to become a full adult as an “emergency procedure”, there was a sequence of decisions that were all about breaking free and having a very slight chance to actually build a life of my own, and the promise of these decisions came with a high cost.

It was tough. I was broken, really broken not like nowadays that everyone with a hint of anxiety says “we’re all broken” to get sympathy, fuck it. Seriously.

Do you know what it is to be tied to a hospital bed and left screaming until you simply can’t fight anymore?

Do you know what it is to see everything you prepared and worked for years be destroyed in a matter of days?

Have you had an experience where something out of your control rips your life apart and effectively takes away every dream and hope you had sinking you into chaos?

Have you felt a hospital is more of a home to you than your actual home?

Have you been institutionally abused, harmed, tied to a bed, or threatened with getting electroshocks to your brain?

Have you watched every person you know move on with their life and plans, while your youth is draining like the blood of a dying man in an alley, with no hope to be helped, no one who can stop the hemorrhage?

Have you ever felt death was a gentler fate than dealing with who you are or have become?

If you have, because I’m sure I’m not alone in tragedy, then I send you a sincere hug and I tell you: this will pass, but you need to hold on to hope, focus on that and find a way out, things will get in place eventually.

If you haven’t, then I hope you never have to walk those paths, I don’t envy or resent people who’ve had a better or easier life, I believe this world needs all the happiness it can get, and I sincerely hope you’re making the best out of it.

I lost the five most important years of my young adult life, my college years, not in college as I have prepared for, getting the best grades, getting admitted to the college, and the program I dreamt of and planning everything carefully. I spent those years in between hospitals, doctors, depression and despair. It didn’t come to me because of a bad decision, it simply happened and it couldn’t be helped.

Back to where I began: adult life. At 23 I was just recovering from the darkest period of my life when I decided to make it on my own and marry. Not only was I broken mentally, emotionally, physically, and with no structure whatsoever in life but also, I was financially broke and absolutely ignorant of how things work. So I came out of a personal tragedy five years long, to an absolutely brutal struggle with my own decision of becoming independent and the poverty that came with it; when I say poverty I mean it.

Then, a life-changing decision

While I took a crappy call center job, I came across network technologies; I heard it from lots of people this was a hot trend to get into and people were being paid lots of money. I needed no more explanation.

You see, I was a failed law student because of tragedy, but that was in the past now. At this point, I was able to have a job (that was a huge achievement believe it or not given my circumstances at the time), I was just married to the best girl I’ve ever met and we were both enduring great pain. It didn’t matter that “it wasn’t my passion”, it didn’t matter that “I felt life was unfair to me”, nothing of that mattered. What mattered was that there was a very slight chance of turning the tide for us, and I took it.

There was only one shot at turning the tide, and I took it

It wasn’t easy, I was never a systems person, I have always been a culture and humanities person. But I’m thankful to God I had the opportunity, and the vision to believe I could thrive in this; I couldn’t afford lessons so I had to learn this by myself.

I had no computer, I stayed late at my job to use their computer and then took the bus home; my health was still in terrible shape, and doing my job plus studying was simply taking me to the limit. When I finally was able to buy a cheap Toshiba Satellite laptop, I was living in a tiny, cheap apartment full of noise and shady people, one of whom actually came to threaten me with a gun if I kept asking them to lower the music a notch. These are the conditions in which I completed my first I.T certification, after paying it with a credit card because it was impossible for me to afford the exam, and then failing my first attempt.

It didn’t matter, now I was in a different community, a different market with unbelievable opportunities and I laid my life on the line to be part of it. Many more years of study, a lot of tough on-the-job learning, and countless hours of side freelance gigs to increase my learning and development, finally took me to a proven position of seniority and the ability to pretty much choose my jobs, after a decade.

I let myself go and also my previous aspirations in order to be able to attain opportunities for me and my family. It’s taken me a lot of time to understand that there are years of my life I simply lost and they’re not coming back, nor the experiences I was eager to live during those years. But I got something different and amazing, certainly far better than what my original career was going to give me as far as life quality and opportunity.

I was blessed, and I consider myself blessed. The decision to jump into the void finally proved to be the right one.

But…

But this is not what I want in life, it’s certainly a beautiful stop on my path to it, but it’s not it.

I told you before, I’m a man of culture and humanities, not a man of technology. I’m a thinker and a writer, and it’s amazing that I got to build a strong career as an engineer given the fact that I’ve never had fulfillment doing this.

Man, you build a life for more than one decade of continuous, hardcore sacrifice, sleepless nights, all sorts of jobs, you earn certifications, study the coolest and craziest cutting-edge stuff, build a business and succeed, then fail, rise again, build connections, travel the world with your shiny career… all of this after being poor and having nothing at all! And then come to realize this will always get you a good income, but will never fulfill you, will never replace what you know you want, what you know you are. It’s hard to know what to do.

I’ll tell you what I did: I wrote.

I wrote, all my fears, pains, dreams, hopes, feelings, light, and darkness. I wrote it all, and I keep writing…

A New Beginning

This takes me to 07-01-2022 at 1:52 AM, the time of writing this post.

When I was a child, I used to create monsters, stories, and worlds of my own; my first short stories, I wrote just because I felt like at 6 or 7 years old. My first poems at around 9 years old, and as a teenager, I always carried a notebook for thoughts, songs, and poems, and I ended up destroying it always because I felt it wasn’t enough and because the contents hurt me more than they would help me.

It’s been extremely hard to find myself, but this is me, a writer.

I believe even if tragedy hadn’t struck me and I had carried on with my plans, sooner or later I would have realized law was not going to fulfill me the way writing and creating does.

This is me, I’m an artist.

It’s hard to find it out at 35, but it would be a lot harder to never find out and live with a deep pain I can’t understand.

My English sucks, I really need to work on it, I’m totally rusted, I have never studied creative writing seriously and I know no one else close to me who is a writer, who could give me a hint.

But I found out I have a slight chance to be fulfilled at what I do, even more, to leave a mark on other people. And I will take it.

I will keep working in technology because my career is a miracle and a blessing and because I have to fund my dreams and provide a platform for my family. But once again, I will study at night, and spend late nights writing, reading, and editing, not because I need the money like the first time, but because I need to be me.

The first serious poem I wrote as an adult, “Binary“, is my story and my promise to that broken teenager who died in darkness, that he will live again and become what he should have been, and do what he’s meant to do.

J.V
Composition 1

June 24th, 2022

Tonight I chose to publish a poem, with no words on it.

Enjoy it and let me know your thoughts.

J.V
Late Night Journal – 06/14/2022

June 14th, 2022
Hi! I hope you had a great day, I’m afraid this will be a rather short entry as I’m super tired, and it’s been one of those days that aren’t nice or pleasant in any form, and still, you feel there’s been a lot of growth and important things, so allow me to mention them:
- I started writing a novel: Yes, yes I know, I know I should be super thrilled and ecstatic (and deep inside I am!). This is a project I’ve attempted once or twice before and never managed to finish but this is a different time in my life and I will finish it.
- But… my novel is quite scary: He, he that’s the heavy part and part of why I’m so tired. I won’t provide a lot of spoilers because I’d love it if you read it once it’s published, but it’s a very dark thriller about a rather disturbed individual who has an “animal” alter ego and beings hunting people and doing very nasty things to them. Of course, the bottom of the matter is a lot deeper than that, but I’m describing why I got so tired; it’s tough to imagine these violent things and it’s even tougher to understand you’re able to create such pictures out of your own will and even through the manipulation and amplification of some of your own emotions. If I’m to be super honest, it all started with writing a poem, but it came out so vicious and dark that I felt it needed to be inserted into a larger, violent plot.
- So is this about being a new writer?: Well, yes in part. Everything is new to me as a writer (and I mean writer after my office job ends, of course), so feeling drawn into the actions of your character, giving them macabre dialogues and deranged scenarios starts affecting you after a while (is this only me? I’m interested in hearing from other authors who’ve written about killers, horror, etc). And I guess the other part is, that I’ve always been dark in my artistic taste (exceptions certainly exist, I enjoy a Vivaldi concert and a beautiful Japanese print or an impressionist painting of a sunny garden); and as I’m getting older, I’m getting bolder. I feel there’s no time to lose, no holding back on energy, and no insecurity; so if I’m to write something gruesome I won’t soften it to be “reasonable” or “tolerable”: it’s going to be raw and hard to endure.
- Life after COVID and traveling to work: It’s not as bad as it sounds, the only reason I’ve been traveling to the office is that we had two directors visiting my country, but neither I nor my colleagues have the intention to start commuting to the office frequently, and thankfully it’s largely up to us. That said, every trip to the office is long, tiring and I’m just not used to it any longer. Also, soccer is big here, and people today were all over the streets celebrating classification to the World Cup, which I couldn’t give more fucks about, and it annoys me how it changes the whole pattern of traffic and forced me to make long detours. Fuck soccer!
- The effort of socializing: You probably have an idea about my personality by now, but yeah, social skills are not my most developed skills, just to use a euphemism. But it’s weird, it’s not like I’m completely shut down, as a matter of fact, people often find me charismatic; the thing is, I use this only when I have no option; typically, if I have an option will be by myself. But I’m a big guy now, I understand how important people are in my life and how important it is for me to build relationships; it’s easy to be resentful and blame others when later I dislike their attitude towards me, but then again I never really made an effort to show interest. I don’t want to act like this any longer, it’s a struggle. So I decided to go out for a couple beers after work with some of my colleagues, and every time I started feeling weird and paralyzed, I just came up with a conversation topic, just small talk. The result was impressive, people really seem to appreciate these little things, that seem silly but actually show you have an interest in sharing with them; I really liked it. But, it was also very demanding because it’s not natural for me.
OK, that’s why I’m tired but had a day full of growth and good things that felt like shit most of the time, but that the future Josué will appreciate.

Big hug fellows, need to sleep like a log.

J.V