hyperbole riff

Recently, I had an argument with my family wherein I was told I was the first to get mad, the first to yell, and the first to accuse. But I couldn’t remember doing any of those things.

I’d been told I hadn’t wiped up the water on the bathroom floor after my shower. But that would have been impossible. That day, I’d pulled all the hair and soap residue from the drain during my shower, thrown it away with a paper towel, and then wiped the ground where I’d put the towel.

My only response during the argument proper had been “I did!”—but my claims were rejected without question.

While the argument had been in its opening phases, I remembered feeling confused and confounded. I had done exactly what I hadn’t done. I didn’t know why I was being told I hadn’t. All of us are aware that the shower gets the bathroom floor wet, and I make a conscious effort to clean up after myself, but sometimes I forget to do so.

On those occasions where I definitely didn’t wipe the floor—there have been three, four—I listen and apologize. But the day of the argument, I’d made a conscious effort to clean up. If their point had been that I’d missed a spot, I wouldn’t have felt a single negative emotion. But to be told I outright didn’t wipe up the water, as if I didn’t even try?

That was annoying.

To be told I was the one to get angry when I don’t consciously remember feeling angry?

That was perplexing.

My pride must have entered without my knowing. Did my tone shift of its own accord? Had my voice risen without my knowing?

That argument had gone nowhere, so I’d eventually walked away, but two people followed me and stood in my doorway yelling at me.

“You’re always like this, getting mad and yelling and storming away,”

when I felt less riled up than before they started saying those things.

“You called me a liar,”

as if ignoring what I had to say and only repeating “No you didn’t” wasn’t making me out as a liar.

Because of that, I’ve decided to distance myself for a little while. It’s my usual response, but it’s one I feel everyone in the world does too. I think I tend to distance myself for a longer time, usually until someone tries to close the distance, telling me I’ve been upset far too long and it’s making everyone else upset too.

I thought about that this time.

“Am I not allowed to be upset?” In my mind, I asked them.

Are others allowed to be upset? I said yes.

“Am I not allowed to stay upset?” Then I asked myself

Are others allowed to stay upset? I said yes, because I would never dare to tell someone otherwise.

“Am I obliged to forgive when asked to do so?”

Are other people obliged to forgive me when I ask? Not at all.

I concluded that I have the right to my own emotions. If I actually asked my family if I were allowed to be upset and stay upset, they would obviously agree with me. I know their answer would differ when it comes to forgiveness, though.

Yet even though I have the right to my own emotions, it’s not really right to cause negative emotions in others.

I can be loud in my anger. I can scream, slam doors, cry.

I can also be quiet. I can silence myself, distance myself, shut myself away.

Sometimes, I feel I’ll be criticized whichever path I’m on. Because my negative emotions are visible either way, and my negative emotions apparently flood the senses of those around me, like the ALEPHs of Lobotomy Corporation.

I’ve been trying to process my emotions better, which is the reason I started writing this.

And something I’m realizing is this:

Emotions cloud judgement, but for me, they cloud awareness.

In my argument, I’d been perceived as angry, but I don’t remember feeling anger insomuch as confusion. This creates two possibilities:

1. I’d been angry and unaware of my own emotions

2. My confusion and annoyance come off as rage

They also said I’d namecalled someone a liar, but I never said the word liar myself. They claim that I’d been asked “So you’re calling me a liar?” to which I said yes—but I don’t even remember the question. (Still, I’d been called a liar first, so I don’t feel in the wrong for that.) This creates two more possibilities:

1. I made an accusation I don’t remember

2. I unwittingly answered a question I wasn’t aware of

It’s clear that I pay less attention to my own words and emotional state when I’m experiencing negative emotions. Funnily enough, I think I actually pay more attention to other people’s emotional states at times like these.

Clouded judgement implies making conscious decisions in poor conditions. But my situation is more like, I don’t understand the decisions I’m making.

The “decision” to yell at someone,

The “decision” to call them a liar,

Neither can be called a decision if I’m on auto-pilot, not in control of myself.

Today, I’m still upset. I still firmly believe that I did exactly what I was accused of not doing. I don’t believe I owe anyone an apology for getting upset. I know they’ll criticize me for that.

But a precious friend of mine once told me something that will always come to mind at times like this.

“Maybe you don’t need to forgive them, if that’s what it takes for you to get along.”

My family has always asked me to forgive.

They have told me that I’m obliged to forgive.

If I don’t forgive, that simply makes me the shitty older brother. The first child, the first failure.

I don’t want to think about how I truly feel about that. I know I can’t complain, because I’ve been on auto-pilot for all my life.

When I’m angry, I don’t look where I’m going.

I don’t heed the feelings of others.

I don’t even notice my own.

That’s something I need to apologize for. Not the bathroom floor.

But my pride stands in the way of that.

I think later, I'll go out for sushi. I need some time to myself in a warmly lit setting, away from my family, with something comforting. I'll take that time to sit and think by myself for a bit.

Or at least sort of? This is from weekly post 【21】:

I’m a week late again to writing my weekly post, which means I’ve got another one to work on right after this.

If I wanted to actually be on time with these, I would have to hold myself to completing them on weekend mornings. That way, they’re done quick and easy, and I can forget about them for the rest of the day.

Letting this task endure into the week means that I may forget to do it on Monday and Tuesday, by which point I won’t even think of it on Wednesday and Thursday.

To make up for it, I’m going to try including a few more images than usual today!

Cuts are not working well again, so this post is going to be posted in full. I'll see if I can do a chimera cut later, though.

With this being almost the 20^th weekly log, I wanted to examine the structure of these posts and try to take them apart a bit.

In keeping them, I’ve started figuring out what kind of things are useful to track and what kind of things aren’t.

Not everything that happens in life is worth expounding on or revisiting, right?

These journals naturally picked up some bloat.

It’s important to look inwards, review, and shed any unnecessary parts of a process.

I took this photo while hanging out with a good friend. Afternoon sunlight, falling on a wooden post covered in moss.
You can't get much of the forest in the city, but it's there nonetheless.


For a few reasons, I’ve let my weekly logs compound on themselves once more.

I wouldn’t like to stop doing them yet, though. I’m going to keep them up for at least some more time now.

Writing up an opening and these notes on my activities feels almost like diving into the past.

Even though it’s just procrastination, by the end of the day, I wonder if there’s some value in forcing myself to reflect one or several weeks after the fact?

We’ve already passed into the new year by the time I’m writing this. These posts are dated back to when I created the drafts but neglected to finish them.

Let’s take care of them quickly, then!

Originally, I had planned to post this at the usual time I do all these posts.

Then, I forgot to do it.

The plan, then, became to save writing it for Thursday, so that I could write about my 3^rd call with my mental health coach.

But I forgot that after my call, I wouldn’t have that much time before I had to head to work.

So I forgot twice, and now it’s Friday.

While last week was hardly eventful and actually quite tiring, I am pleased to report that I am in quite good spirits right now!

This might be a long one, because I have a fair bit I want to talk about.

While I could have brought it along,

I decided to shed the responsibility for those four days instead.

And in accordance with that decision, I also decided not to log Sunday and instead enjoy one last day off the record.

And even though I logged Monday and Tuesday, creating the usual tables for only two days is a lot of work for a few lines and some brief comments.

Instead, I’d like to share a few pictures from my vacation!

I didn’t take all too many photos during my trip. But I did take three shots from a trail which I believe to be called Lakeshore Path, on the east side of Lake Tahoe in Nevada.

To our Bay Area sensitivities, Tahoe’s cold was enough to send us back to the car after about 10–15 minutes of walking. But the scenery was nice up to that point.

According to some Tahoe-produced travel brochures, Lake Tahoe holds as the largest alpine lake in the United States as well as the second deepest at about 1,600 feet at one point. This depth prevents the lake from freezing over, since the water itself stores enough heat to make it through winter.

Lake Tahoe is exceptionally blue and clear, and you can see evidence of that in the photos. Even on my phone’s camera, the lakewater shows up beautifully vivid.

It’s that way because of plankton, apparently. Zooplankton (microscopic animals), particularly two genuses called Daphnia and Bosmina, eat the phytoplankton (microscopic non-animals) in the lake that would normally cloud up the waters.

This population of zooplankton was threatened at one point by an invasive species of shrimp called Mysis diluviana. These Mysis shrimp apparently died out at the machinations of a fungal infection, saving the clear waters of the lake from slow devastation.

In lighter news, we spent the day after Thanksgiving in Heavenly Mountain Resort, by the gondolas and the outdoor fountains. There’s plenty to walk around and explore there, but our activities mostly included shopping and looking for warm food.

We ended up going to Azul-Latin Kitchen, where we sat beneath a funny, not quite elegantly constructed “coat hanger.”

And while I didn’t take any photos of the Airbnb we stayed in, we did find a block toy set on the shelves among the photography collections and Tahoe travel magazines.

I couldn’t resist.

She and I talked for a bit about my view on success, vision, and achievement.

Our conversation ended up moving toward meditation, to which I mentioned that I did want to start doing it, and I told her that I would do my best to build a habit of it in the next 4 weeks before we spoke again. She picked up on the way I worded it—

“Do you see that? There’s the achievement. You don’t have to do it. We’re just trying it out, remember that!”

Being achievement-focused is a thinking pattern of mine that I’ve never noticed up until now.

But I really do tend to think of everything as a task.

Any activity that goes toward my self-growth or my goals counts as a task. Goals themselves are tasks.

Even in recreation, I accumulate tasks. Read all the stories, earn all the achievements, finish the game.

A completed task is worth something. All the reward lies in completion.

An incomplete task is worth nothing. Because the absence of success is failure, right?

And working on tasks, then, is punishment. Trade in the necessary time and effort for a reward.

If I stop seeing the things I want to do and the things I want to achieve as tasks, then I’ve suddenly reframed the entire situation.

Doing things can be fun in and of itself, even before it can be considered complete.

Things don’t have to be completed to hold value to me.

Things don’t have to be tasks.

I don’t have to reach 100% in everything I do.

I’ve still got a lot of reflection to do.

But this is a nice start.

Already, I’m doing things that I’ve been putting off for years.