10:58 PM. Just woke up. Sleep schedule is becoming rather humorous! Whatevs, it’s a crazy time right now and I really only have two scheduled events per week that I want to be on time for. That’s my call with my therapist and my video game session on tuesday or wednesday.

This week I showed up for video games on tuesday, but I was feeling ashamed and sad and tired and I bailed early.

Wednesday I had a wonderful game session in which I was Squad leader. I did very well. I communicated often, I assigned missions to my subordinates, I handled criticism gracefully, I took the initiative, and I practice shame resilience techniques.

I was feeling very sad and ashamed on Monday and Tuesday. I lost sleep over the issue with my dad’s request that I denied. I found that reading from I thought It Was Just Me helped me quite a bit. It gave me confidence in myself, knowing that it is my authentic self which wanted to say no to my father. It was my authentic self that feels shame around the idea of sharing a respirator mask, and it’s okay to have those feelings and it’s great to be my authentic self at all times.

I did a lot of meditation this week as well. Buddhist chanting especially has been a great resource for me.

Today’s challenge is to finish this blog post before midnight, because at midnight, the title of this blog post would no longer apply! I have to start a new blog post when it becomes the 17th!

This morning I shipped out 3 eBay orders. I have several more orders awaiting payment that will likely go out tomorrow. They might have been paid for already. I haven’t checked my e-mail this evening so I’m not sure.

3 card sales in a single order! I was surprised to receive so many orders in one day. I sold a bunch of jewelry that I had received from my mom. She was going to donate them to a thrift store but she thought of me and my eBay store. I didn’t think the jewelry would sell, but there’s an unprecedented occurence that happened this week. The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic economic stimulus checks have started to distribute to the population. I think suddenly a lot of people have a disposable income. Lots of people who were preciously hunkered down and broke.

I’m not complaining. I made a bunch of purchases on buyee for my shop’s inventory. I’m moving up into sealed product! I bought a bunch of reasonably priced P-Memories booster packs, and I placed a bid on a large lot consisting of booster boxes and trial decks. I’d be surprised if I got that one, considering that the auction starts at ~$350 and the buyout price is ~$550. I placed a sniper bid for about ~$5 over the starting auction price. I bet i’ll get outbid before the auction ends in a few days, but I’ll just have to wait and see!

I bet I have more orders to ship out tomorrow morning. I bet I have even more orders than the ones that I received earlier today and I’m just awaiting payment for.

I gotta say, I’m really enjoying the Pomodoro Technique. It really breaks up my day into chunks that become more memorable, more enjoyable, and more planned.

For example, I’m working right now. 10 minutes left on the timer. (It started at 25 minutes.) After this work phase is done, I’m going to get up and stretch. I’m so stiff. I had a hard time falling asleep, and a hard time staying asleep. I haven’t been having dreams lately. I think it’s because of my inconsistent my sleep schedule. About a month ago I was having lots of dreams and I was sleeping pretty well. I think my exercise routine is reduced because my ability to get food is reduced. And my sleep schedule is all over the place because I’ve been playing video games and I’m getting on the same wavelength as my friend Matt, who works nights.

Basically I don’t have a solid idea of what I want my sleep schedule should be, because I don’t have a solid idea of what I can do with my life to be happy and support myself financially. In time, I think I can figure something out which satisfied both needs. I basically have to figure it out, or I have to change what I’m doing. I pay rent now. I have no room for a lifestyle that doesn’t produce a profit.

I have a feeling that the eBay store isn’t going to work out. I think if it does work out, it’ll do so in several years. First of all, we have an economic recession right now. And on top of that, most small businesses take 3 years before they become profitable. Basically I don’t have a large enough inventory to where the returns will support me. It’s just not feasible right now.

That doesn’t mean I need to stop. That means I have to supplement my income, until I can dump enough money and energy into the store to where it becomes an efficient money making machine. The whole business itself is one big investment. It’s like a hedge fund where the money has to sit there and grow for several years before it pays out.

The products I buy might not be worth that much right now, but in the future, when they go out of print and more people open the same products, the scarcity of what’s left will drive the cost upwards. It’s at that point when I can reap the rewards of hoarding them for so long. How long I have to wait depends on a whole slew of things. The economy, the popularity of the card sets, the initial print run amounts, the length of time in which the set has been out of print, whether or not this print contains errors that were corrected in later print runs… So many variables!

I’m just jumping into this trading card world because 1) I love anime and the characters and the beautiful girls and the stories. 2) I love trading cards and how they are so small and compact and they stack well and are fun to sort and organize and display in binders or toploaders. 3) I LOVE the idea from working form home. 4) I LOVE the idea of working for myself. 5) I LOVE the excitement of building an enterprise and scaling up and getting an office and experiencing growth.

Break time!

I didn’t do stretches. Instead, I followed along with Sanbutsuge. I wondered why it the audio was so quiet, then I realized that my system audio was still piped through my headphones! Whoops! I hope I didn’t damage them by really cranking that audio!

11:44 PM. I have 15 minutes until Apr 17th! I think I have a good workflow going, so I think I’ll make it in time.

I went overtime on my break. I read a pages 150-154 in the Shin Buddhist Service book on the subject of etiquette. I learned some things that I can put into practice the next time I go to the Spokane Buddhist Temple. For example, it is good etiquette to bow in gasshou when entering and leaving the hondo. I saw a father and son bow in gasshou when entering but I hadn’t really thought of doing the same when leaving.

I think there’s a wonderful amount of respect and reverence for the building by doing so.

Oh hey, I just realized that I can’t drive to the SBT anymore. Not legally anyway. LOL, I don’t have auto insurance! This is by my own choosing, of course. I chose to go all-in on my online money making opportunities. I’m planning on selling my Suburban in the near future so I can get a bicycle instead. But a bicycle ride to the SBT would take a long time and a lot of energy! It must be at least an hour to ride there. I can’t even imagine what the route would be like, either. It would definitely have a certain amount of danger.

Speaking of danger and helmets and fast moving vehicles… Earlier today I heard on Joe Rogan about deer who jump off bridges. Apparently it’s common enough to where there are several videos on youtube of that exact thing. In one video, a herd of deer make their way onto a bridge and get spooked by the cars that make their way onto the bridge from either end. Feeling trapped, the deer panic and jump over the guardrail and down onto the ground below. Down to their deaths!

Deer are so stupid! I see it up close in my parent’s back yard. They’ll often just stare at me like they don’t know what to do. I make it a habit to be respectful to them. Sometimes I’ll just sit down and meditate and wait for them to move on. Sometimes I bow to them, and on some occasions they bow back. So they aren’t that dumb, but they do get spooked really easily. I imagine they have an internal scale which goes from 0 to 10. Zero is when they are at peace, chomping on grass with their mates. 10 is when they’re being chased by a predator. Any sensory input they get which is odd or new raises that scale. At about 6, they will hastily walk away from the source of the sensory input. At 8, they’re making a mad dash.

When I see a deer, and they see me, their scale immediately goes up to 3. That’s when they raise their head and stare. Their big ears are propped up and their whole focus shifts to me.

Sometimes I can sit there and express gratitude for the forest and their presence, and their scared scale goes back down to 2 and they’ll begin to eat grass again. They haven’t forgot about me, but their scale is low enough to where I’m not their sole focus.

Yesterday when I walked, I heard a loud exhale kind of a sound. I looked over to where it came from and there was a deer running away. The deer was in the neighbor’s yard and looked like it had just emerged from a grove of small trees to the sight of me. I must have startled it. I wonder if that sound was just it being afraid and dumping all the air in it’s lungs, or if it was a sound it makes to warn other deer that there are predators nearby. It was a loud sound. It wasn’t a casual exhale, but something with a guttural force behind it. I don’t think I’ve heard that sound before.

I think deer are stupid, but that doesn’t make them worthy of being hunted by me. Humans are just animals. We share a lot of DNA with deer. Studies have shown that most animals experience the same emotions that we humans have.

Joy, Fear, Sadness, Anger, Envy, Jealousy, Shame, Guilt. I think there are more emotions but those are just the ones I have memorized.

I always used to get Jealousy mixed up with Envy. I got that sorted out by taking DBT classes. Envy is when I want something that someone else has. Jealousy is when I’m afraid of losing something I have.

I used to think that jealousy and envy were synonyms, but they’re really not.

I could use some more study in the area of emotions. Knowing the different emotions and being able to recognize my own emotions and give them a name has been a real help for me.

12:06 AM on Fri Apr 17. I failed! That’s okay though. I’ll just finish this post when I get to 2000 words and I’ll have more to write about in the next post!

Today/tonight I plan on doing some work on my codependency. I have a couple homework items that I was assigned by my therapist. CoDA 30 questions question #6, and researching other CoDA groups in the area and finding the motivation to attend CoDA meetings.

I didn’t go to CoDA on Tuesday. I just didn’t plan for it. The time came and went.

I’m on the subject so I might as well do the CoDA work right here and now. But first, a 5 minute break!

I did some Yoga. It’s amazing how good I feel after doing Yoga. I think a large part of why I had such a good video game session on Wednesday was because I did yoga beforehand. I let out a lot of muscle tension that I had built up in my back and shoulders, so I felt calm and collected. After video games were over and everyone disconnected for the night, I started to become rather anxious and I started to feel shame about one of the verbal conflicts I had in the game earlier.

I had spawned at the main base and grabbed a Logi that looked abandoned. As soon as I started driving it, two players came up to me and were saying, “what the fuck are you doing?” and “that’s our logi.” So apparently it wasn’t abandoned. I said I was getting out and I hit the breaks and got out. I had hit the brakes a little late and I slid into a ditch. The player got angry that I left it in the ditch. “what the fuck is wrong with you?”

I became rather angry as I had just yielded the vehicle to this player and they had the gall to belittle me. “I could have just driven off.” I replied. He kept up his verbal attacks and made no sign of backing down. He had backup as well, his teammate. I had the urge to shoot him for his rudeness. I just walked away to look for another logi.

I walked around and checked the map for nearby vehicles. It was then that I realized I hadn’t spawned at the main base after all. I had spawned at a mortar FOB which was so well stocked with emplacements that I had mistakenly thought that the mortar FOB was the main base.

It was then that I realized why these two players had become so aggravated by me taking what I thought was an abandoned logi at main. It was not abandoned, it was standing by to do a supply run once the mortars had fired enough rounds! From their perspective, I was stealing their means to resupply that very important mortar base.

I realized I was in the wrong and I felt guilty. I knew that I needed to apologize. I didn’t hesitate, I didn’t delay, I simply ran back to the player who was repositioning the logi that I had just got stuck in the ditch.

“I’m sorry. I’m an idiot. I though this was main. I’m an idiot.”

“No worries.”

And that was that. Their anger was instantly diffused by an apology. I didn’t feel ashamed, and I didn’t feel guilt anymore. I felt humiliated at first when the guys were berating me for taking the logi that I thought was abandoned, but I dealt with those feelings by acknowledging them and talking about them, and I forgave myself for the mistake.

I re-spawned at main and grabbed the next best thing, a Bulldog. That round was not so good because I wasn’t with my squad for so long, but we did end up winning.

I felt good about that conflict until later when I was spending long hours at my computer and not using Pomodoro technique. I became rather scared and felt vulnerable for the Logi mistake I had made. I think I could have used some yoga right then, because I think what I was feeling was simply a physical vulnerability– tight back and shoulder muscles from maintaining a poor posture at my desk for so long.

I would like to get a really nice chair at some point. I thought about using my stimulus check to buy one, but I figure that I can’t monetize a chair. Instead I’m buying things which I can flip on my eBay store.

Anyway, I took a break from the computer when I started to get scared and anxious about the past event. I reminded myself that I handled the logistics truck conflict to the best of my abilities. I didn’t harbor shame immediately following the event, so there was no reason to back to the feelings of shame and guilt. I took a moment to remember what it was like to immediately own up to my mistake and diffuse the feeling of guilt I had. It felt good at the time. It was a major success! So then the feelings of guilt and shame I had later on were completely out of line, and I think they only started to settle in because of the physical vulnerability I was experiencing with my stiff back muscles.

2800 words, wow! I’m going to end this one and start a new post where I can get into the Codependency topic.

60. I will stay calm, it will get better.
61. I will allow myself to forgive; it will allow me to move beyond the pain, to a place of peace.
62. I choose to make today amazing.

I’m grateful for my list of one hundred and one affirmations! The list makes it so easy for me to find something wonderful to say to myself, and enforce that I treat myself as well as I treat others!

I’m grateful for reflection. I am happy to know that I took the time to reflect on the logi truck issue, because doing so helped me to check the facts. The facts are that I was pleased with how I handled the situation. In the future, I hope to repeat these good actions and do even better! For example, I would like to not say things like, “I’m an idiot,” and be more constructive in that aspect. I might not have thought about such self-deprecating thought had I not took the time to reflect!

I’m grateful for flat bread. I think I might have already said this in a recent post! Basically I have been making this flat bread that i got from a CM Coleman Home video. I think I actually talked about this just yesterday! Anyway, I made the flat bread for a second time today, and I appreciate the flavor and the nutrition! It’s amazing that such a good meal can come from a few bags of powder!

Excelsior!