> It made me realize (re-realize?) that I’ve been in this ‘neurotic holding pattern’ for years– gripping anxiously and tightly onto my ‘work’ past the point of any meaningful productivity– and whatever branch of this I’ve been on lately, the stem and roots of it go all the way back to the beginning of my childhood.
This is pretty insightful. I think that a lot of internalized subclinical trauma can be conceptualized as learned helplessness from a younger age.
Coincidentally, I'm also thinking about moving and about "in-between homes" so those topics are of burning interest for me, even if I'm at the other side (the beginning, rather than the end) of some of the stages you mention.
I've recently moved to a different country and for the first <1 year I'm in a studio apartment/hotel room that will be my "in-between" home until i look for something else, and it's very much in development, but I guess I am taking a "mixed" approach of online and offline.
My "exile" was under way different conditions, too late instead of too early, and I haven't properly gone back, but i've also gone back to my hometown in vacation so it's interesting to observe those feelings, seeing old comforts and old tensions, and also noticing some of both vanish
I've had a perhaps parallel experience over the last year; returning to the small town where I attended university after 15 years. Now my daughter is studying at the same university. I have a very different life here from when I was a student; as I have changed, and the town has changed too, but there's this odd layering of nostalgic experiences with novel ones.
kids are wild because they are like the perfect mirror. they show you, you. and that's brutal. because then you see that what you critizise in others is on your awareness because you don't accept that happening through yourself. and kids are great for discovering this. imhe
Welcome back!! The only thing I wrote all summer was a short piece gesturing to the mental chaos my own (much smaller) move put me in. May you find the version of sovereignty and rootedness that fits you in this new/old space.
> It made me realize (re-realize?) that I’ve been in this ‘neurotic holding pattern’ for years– gripping anxiously and tightly onto my ‘work’ past the point of any meaningful productivity– and whatever branch of this I’ve been on lately, the stem and roots of it go all the way back to the beginning of my childhood.
This is pretty insightful. I think that a lot of internalized subclinical trauma can be conceptualized as learned helplessness from a younger age.
Love to see that you're back.
Coincidentally, I'm also thinking about moving and about "in-between homes" so those topics are of burning interest for me, even if I'm at the other side (the beginning, rather than the end) of some of the stages you mention.
I've recently moved to a different country and for the first <1 year I'm in a studio apartment/hotel room that will be my "in-between" home until i look for something else, and it's very much in development, but I guess I am taking a "mixed" approach of online and offline.
My "exile" was under way different conditions, too late instead of too early, and I haven't properly gone back, but i've also gone back to my hometown in vacation so it's interesting to observe those feelings, seeing old comforts and old tensions, and also noticing some of both vanish
I've had a perhaps parallel experience over the last year; returning to the small town where I attended university after 15 years. Now my daughter is studying at the same university. I have a very different life here from when I was a student; as I have changed, and the town has changed too, but there's this odd layering of nostalgic experiences with novel ones.
i'm also homeless atm; we just had to move out of our house due to flooding, and now we're in between homes!
hopefully a homecoming for us and our family, soon.
kids are wild because they are like the perfect mirror. they show you, you. and that's brutal. because then you see that what you critizise in others is on your awareness because you don't accept that happening through yourself. and kids are great for discovering this. imhe
We've really missed you, man. Glad to see you back.
Welcome back!! The only thing I wrote all summer was a short piece gesturing to the mental chaos my own (much smaller) move put me in. May you find the version of sovereignty and rootedness that fits you in this new/old space.
Kids are an unrelenting mirror held up to your childhood trauma.
Congratulations on returning home!
really is amazing how every thing you "try" to impose on a child is usually filled with your own shit somehow