Starting over elsewhere may be exactly what you need to get out of the rut you seem to be stuck in lately. Sometimes, just going where someone doesn’t know your past mistakes can help you heal more than therapy. Trying to live with everyone's constant judgement can weigh you down with guilt over your past mistakes. How can you move forward when no one will allow you to escape the guilt and shame?

Stop letting people disappoint you and talk down to you, just because they have not forgiven you. Admitting you made a bad choice and work on changing your life. Start by evaluating your close friends and family, in order to decide who you want to be in your life. If you need to move, then create a plan to begin transitioning to your new place. Decide what you will tolerate and what you won't tolerate, as you begin picking up the pieces of your life.

You have to believe in your own self and stay positive, while trying to rebuild your life. No one has a right to put you down or degrade you. So, with that said, be careful who you allow into your personal space. Don't let anyone who is toxic in your circle of friends and family. This will keep you on the right track as you moved forward in your journey to recovery. Additionally, pick up hobbies that you enjoy and try to stay out of your own head.

Copyrighted 2019

PS; I am not a licensed Therapist. Based on personal experience.

You may believe that success lies in getting results. Believe it or not, success is not always about winning. Success comes from doing your best. But, that doesn’t mean that you have to be the best in your field to succeed. It means you just to be the best at what you are best at doing.

Success is not driving the most expensive car or having millions of dollars in the bank. True success goes far beyond material things and the number of digits your bank balance contains. Here are the four things you need to do to find true success:

- Live your life to the fullest
- Live life on your own terms
- Give everything you do your all
- Live without regret

These four things sound extremely simple. But, while many people understand what they mean, only a small minority ever realize all, if any, of these concepts. Let’s look at what it takes to meet each of these four things in daily life.

Life Your Life to the Fullest

While this phrase has become highly cliched, the core message is still good. Always find a way to make the most of every day. No, you may not be highly productive or even accomplish something significant every day. What you can do is always find a way to improve yourself. That may just be reading something interesting, helping out a friend, or finding a recreational activity that you enjoy that also allows you to recharge.

Basically, don’t just sit around and wait for things to happen. Make things happen. They won’t always work out well. But, as long as you keep moving, you’ll always find ways to make the most of each day and spare moment that you have. That's how you start living life to the fullest!

Life Life on Your Own Terms

Don’t let people tell you how to live your life. Don’t let them EVER tell you that there is one best way to live. You need to discover for yourself what your best life looks like. Many people believe that living life on your own terms means being your own boss and setting off on your own. While this is true to a degree, you can still find yourself subject to the whims of others, even if you run your own successful business.

Living life on your own terms actually means being self-aware and self-confident enough to know when compromise is worth it in order to achieve success and when it will only hold you back. Living life on your own terms means knowing yourself well enough to know when you are no longer moving forward and are willing to take the risks and steps necessary to continue to grow. These steps are rarely easy, but no one ever said success was easy.

Give Everything You Do Your All

This tip sounds obvious, but it’s very common for us to sometimes just do the minimum amount of work required to perform a certain task.  It actually is better to give full effort to each thing that you set yourself to doing, because then you will naturally do the best job that you can.

It becomes a good habit to pour yourself into each task because even the seemingly most mundane tasks have their purpose. In the process, you may find ways to make mundane tasks easier to do or even fun. So, giving your all has its benefits.

Live Without Regret

This may be the hardest of these four things to do well. Regret is powerful, especially when you regret opportunities you could’ve taken better advantage of at the time or missed entirely. This is why it’s important to give your all and take full advantage of each opportunity as it comes.


In applying these concepts to your daily life, you will find your own version of success. Even in failure, by doing these things, you will still find yourself still moving forward. You may well find success in ways you couldn’t have even imagined.

How can you apply these concepts to your  daily life?

People love New Years resolutions.  They are  wonderful things people make to try and steer their lives in new and exciting directions.  But, most of the time, people don't stick with them. Why's that?

The truth is that having goals is great, but achieving them takes time. As the year goes on, people will lose motivation and lose sight of what they set out to achieve. Most people set their goals and resolutions blindly without knowing exactly what they need to do to actually reach them.

Really, though, all you need to succeed is to keep motivating yourself. Unless you hire a coach, though, you have to do it yourself.  What a coach really does is find what works best to motivate you. Then, a coach reminds you to keep doing those things and to try new things when old things aren't working. But, you could learn how to self-motivate and coach yourself.

Sure, you could go to some seminar or retreat held by some big-shot motivational guru to jump-start your self-motivation. But, that gives you a temporary high, which after a week or two being back in “regular” life will disappear. That is, unless, you learn how to motivate yourself from it.

At the end of the day, you are the only one who can motivate you. Only you can know your true intentions and how your own emotions impact your actions. If you’re feeling overwhelmed with what you’re trying to do, remind yourself what got you started in the first place. Visualize the reasons that you set out to do it. That should get you going again.

If that’s not enough, write down your reasons for following your dream. Remind yourself that you should be following your passion. Keep writing it down if you have to, and keep it somewhere you can see it.

There’s a reason that motivational posters do so well. Motivate yourself with your own words and your own reasons. There’s no better motivation than that!

You may have heard the saying ‘resting on your laurels’. It means settling for what you've already achieved. In other words, it means becoming complacent. Well, complacency is one of the worst mistakes that people make. But, how can complacency turn success into failure?

Let's say you've just climbed and scaled a large mountain. Now, you've reached the top. It feels pretty good, doesn't it? But, climbing the mountain is only half the battle. Unless you're wanting to stay up there, you are going to have to go back down at some point.

Despite gravity being in your favor at this point, you can't necessarily just slide down the other side of the mountain. There's work involved, and sometimes, it's even worse than you think. In some cases, the way back down can be more treacherous than the way up. Then, the momentum that gravity gives you may not be as much of a positive as you first thought.

Maybe you never make it back down. If you're not careful coming back down, a successful climb can then into a tragedy. At the very least, an overall failure is always a possibility.

Once you've enjoyed a major success, it’s very enticing to rest and reap the rewards of your achievement. Being content is OK for a moment and taking a vacation is fine. But, you have to get back to work at some point.

Sure, you might build a big garden on the mountaintop. You can sit back and enjoy it for a little bit. Then, you can even hire somebody to care for it for awhile. But, if you're not careful, the weeds can take over and the beautiful flowers can wilt.

Sure, you may get to the top of a great mountain. You may build something beautiful and want to just sit back and admire your handiwork. But, what if you do decide to go back down the mountain? You never know what awaits you on the other side. If you keep moving, you may find even greener pastures. Possibly, there could be greater mountains to climb. There usually are.

If you keep moving and stay alert, the reaches of your success can be unlimited. Let your success be not an end, but the beginning of something even greater. Always let your momentum carry you forward.

"It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness." - Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Aren't we all born for greatness?

For many of us, it takes all of our lives to know what we were born to do. Some of us are born to simply be in the right place at the right time. Some of us are born so that someone else may be born from us, who in turn will give birth to an exceptional individual. It may be a Hercules or an Aphrodite - at least you hope. God forbid a Hitler or a Cruella De Ville… one day there may be those who will equate the evil nature of those names.

Others of us feel like we serve no real purpose at all. How can we live in a universe where a soul can come forth into being who can serve no valuable purpose? Yet, it seems we live in a world where so many souls become expendable. Why exactly has this happened? Well, it's nothing new.

It's important to me to remind people that each and every one of us had a reason to be born. For some of us, that simply means we have to make our own reason for being. While our purpose is not always  obvious, it is absolutely necessary that we are each born for greatness in our own ways.

Each of us are born for greatness - in some way, possibly not always recognized, but great nonetheless. It is our duty as human beings to find that one thing that truly allows us to be great.

Let’s help one another learn to be great in our own unique ways!

You may have read a lot about how we need to build up momentum in our lives in order find success. What does it mean to gain momentum? What benefits does having momentum give us in life?

Why We Need Momentum in Life

Think of momentum this way. Say you're riding a bike. If you pick up lots of speed early on by pedaling harder, you build up energy. This energy, known as momentum, allows you to maintain a certain speed while having to actually pedal less later on.

Momentum is particularly important when you're biking uphill. It's also the key to long distance bike riding. You can do something similar with driving a car, speeding up fairly quickly then sort of coasting. This saves on fuel, too.

The beauty of concepts in physics is that the ideas can be applied in other forms. You can actually build momentum mentally and emotionally, as well. Say you have a big project coming up. It doesn't matter what it's for. If you get started on it right away, you have a much higher chance of seeing it through to completion.

Momentum Can Get You Ahead in Life and Keep You Ahead

One of the beautiful things about momentum is you can actually conserve energy if you build it up correctly. The longer that you put off a task, the more energy you'll have to burn later to get it done. It's like you're pedaling casually, even knowing that a steep hill is coming up along your way. Once you get there, without the proper momentum, it's going to feel like you're going uphill both ways.

When you put off a project, something similar happens. You have to use a lot more energy to make up for lost time, even if there isn't a specific deadline. Sometimes that thing doesn't even get done.

So, how do we find the momentum to get something done and done well? There are a few ways to gain momentum without going overboard. If you get just the right amount of momentum in whatever you're doing, you'll find yourself not only seeing things to completion more quickly and effectively, but that momentum can carry into other things you have to do, too.

Ask Someone to Help You Get Started

It sounds like common sense to ask someone to help you with a task. But, this isn't always the case. People might not think of asking for help to start on some things. Having another person or persons help you get started is the best way to pick up momentum. For some tasks, the more people involved the better the momentum becomes.

Start Work at a High Energy Time

Know yourself and when you have the most energy. Trying to start something when you're feeling sluggish or not at your best often keeps you from gaining the proper momentum. If you have some choice when to get started, if you do, start when you have your best energy. Then, picking up later will be a lot easier, as you already have momentum going with the task. You may not always have this choice, but when possible, keep this in mind.

Avoid Distractions Whenever Possible

One of the biggest threats to productivity is distraction. Email and phone are two of the major ones. You also want to keep your working area as clean as possible. Then again, you may be one who loves to work in chaos. Still, in general, get started when you can have the least amount of distraction. Distractions kill your momentum by dispersing your energy in multiple directions.

Put a Time Limit on Your Task

Even if you only have twenty or thirty minutes to dive into something, that's enough to get something at least underway. Actually, it's better to spend even just twenty minutes completely focused on a task than three or four hours of constantly being interrupted and having to keep refocusing. By setting a short time limit, you can allow yourself to take short breaks without losing your momentum.

Visualize the End Result

One major hurdle to clear in making progress with a task is not keeping the end goal in mind. “When is this ever going to get done?” you may ask yourself. Even with something as mundane as sweeping the floor, visualizing the end result helps you stay focused on the task. You'll feel a lot happier when you realize the end result if you were keeping it in your mind all along.

For bigger projects, visualizing the realization of your goals is especially important. One of the keys to building momentum is focusing your energy. Visualization is one of the best ways of doing just that.

Being Prepared Keeps You Focused

There's nothing more frustrating than not being prepared when you're setting out to work on something. If you go to get started and you're missing just one tool or don't have all the info you need to get started. These moments drain momentum. Even if you have to take some extra time to get what you need set up, it's worth it to set yourself up for building the right momentum.

Whatever You Do, Just Make Sure You Get Started

It's common sense that the only way to get something done is to get started. But sometimes, you can't choose when to do something. Many times you have a certain deadline. Even when there isn't a set time, you can't get any momentum if you don't just get started. While high energy times are best for doing anything, you can only put off doing something for so long. Even if you're not at your best energy level, if it's on your mind, and you have the desire to do something, just set yourself to get started. Whatever momentum you can build is worth it.

The key to building momentum is to make progress every time you put yourself to a task. If you don't have to, don't try to finish a task all at once. There's great benefit in having the end in mind but also knowing that you don't have to finish all at once. It's very possible to spend too much energy at once and actually lose momentum.

The key to momentum is not only gaining it, but maintaining it. The trick is actually stopping when you're ahead. The gaining and maintaining of momentum is different for everyone. Your set limits and tolerance for distractions will be different than another's. But once you find a balance between energy level, desire, motivation, and momentum, you'll find yourself getting things done a lot faster and better.

On the journey to and through adulthood, many individuals wonder what it would take to become the best versions of themselves. Following some advice can help you to tackle these existential questions and to bring that person into fruition.

Know What Your Goals Are

Sometimes, it is easy to get caught up in what other people think about what you should do. For example, maybe you showed artistic skills at a young age and your parents have encouraged you to pursue a career in the arts. However, perhaps you’re more interested in finance but have pursued art to please your parents. On the other hand, you may have friends who dissuade you from living in a certain neighborhood or going on a particular trip because they had a negative experience. Get these other people’s voice out of your mind. Determine what it is that you want.

Sleep Enough

When you’re exhausted, it’s difficult to know what you want, and even if you can figure out your goals for the day or week, you may feel too drained to pursue them in any fashion. Aiming for around seven or eight hours of sleep per night is a smart move. Still though, different people have varying needs. An example is if you have a certain medical condition; you might need more sleep. Speak to your doctor to determine what the best amount is for you. You should also articulate any troubles you have with sleeping to your health care professional.

Balance Your Life

Having too much of anything in your life can lead you to get lost in that one area. For example, if you spend virtually all of your time working and miss out on many social opportunities, you essentially become the job. On the other hand, you may surrender valuable possibilities at work if you are more concerned with going out most nights of the week. You also need to find time to prepare healthy meals, get in exercise and pursue hobbies. Planning out a schedule can help you to fit in these assorted tasks.

Set Actual Goals

Saying that you want to become the best version of yourself is a goal, but you need to make your plans more tangible. Once you have decided what the best version of yourself looks and feels like, write down those goals. For example, you may want to return to school to obtain a graduate degree, or you may want to purchase a new home. Once you have your goals written out, you can start to make a list of steps to take to achieve your goals. While harsh deadlines can impede your progress, setting reasonable ones encouraging you to move forward.

Seek Guidance

When you’re working on yourself, you may feel as though you have to pursue this path without assistance. However, plenty of professionals are available to guide you through the process. If you are trying to lose weight, you can work with a nutritionist and a personal trainer; if you are trying to save more money, you can speak with a financial adviser or an accountant.

On the other hand, when you want to get back to going to school, you could speak with an admissions representative. Talking to other people gives you a sense of what you need to do. You also have support when questions come up. Instead of just imagining what the answers are in your mind, you can get real answers.

Dallin Larsen said “A life of significance is a byproduct of making the ‘best’ choices”. Becoming the best version of yourself is a task that you can achieve by striving to make those same choices. When you want to improve who you are as a person, you can implement these steps and work toward a more fulfilling existence.

Sometimes, you just need to take a step back and breathe. As you're doing this, you want to recharge yourself by putting your mind in a positive frame. One of the best ways to do this is to try to appreciate the beauty of every little thing. I mean EVERY little thing.

Appreciating the little things in life is how you get through some days. When everything seems to be falling apart, be grateful for what you do have. Even something that you take for granted, like your internet connection, is a beautiful thing to be grateful for. Even your water bottle is something to be grateful for, because it helps remind you to stay hydrated.

Being grateful for the things we take for granted is good for a couple of reasons. First, it helps remind us that we have plenty of things already. These are things that we must treasure because any one of them could be gone at any time. Secondly, you learn to appreciate each individual thing more closely. You have to take in the beauty of everything, no matter how simple or utilitarian or seemingly unimportant it seems to be.

There's beauty in everything, no matter what it is. Even when you are going through a tough time, there are ways to reframe your circumstances. Don't think “it could be worse,” though. Think “I'm here right now, so what's the next step to get into a better place?” Don't try to improve things all at once. Identify just one thing you could do to better yourself and your situation. Preferably, find something that allows you to do both.

I'm not selling magical cures here, just some simple advice. Just step back and appreciate the beauty of everything. Take a walk in nature. Really look around and keep an eye on things that stand out to you.

Maybe you're not in a bad situation at all, yet you feel like something's missing in your life. The same advice applies. Even if you're in a situation that seems hopeless right now, you can find something that's beautiful to appreciate.

Try it. You'll be in a better mood for it. Things will look up if you do.

~ Phoenix <3

by R.A. Rowell; Co-Owner ofIntent-sive Nature & theBrand Shamans network

Individuality is the most important thing in leading the good life. The greatest step is finding people who accept you for what you are and can live with both the good and the bad things about you. The opinion of others should not matter all that much.

While it's wonderful for many people to have a good opinion of you, it's important that others not be the most important factor in living your life. Who should be most important are your friends and family. It is imperative to have good friends, true friends. It is in choosing your friends carefully where you will find the most happiness.

Marcus Aurelius in his Meditations wrote, “I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.”

Aurelius made an excellent observation. American society, in particular, is quite concerned with how you look to others, and very little emphasis is put on understanding your individuality. When someone breaks the norms, many people seem to think that person is being anti-social and rebellious.

However, society should not be what tells you who you are. It is with friends that you really learn who you are. They are who you have the best memories with, but also the worst, as well. True friendships are those that can survive the worst times and flourish in spite of them.

The world is full of adversity and it is impossible to live an absolutely “good” life. The closest you can ever get is living it with a few best friends who understand you and appreciate you who for you are and are not worried about what you’re not. The opinions of your friends, as well as your own of yourself, are the only ones you should really heed.

Above all, the only way to live your life is to be as positive as possible about everything you encounter. Life is not long enough to remain negative for too long. Living the good life is in finding what you like to do most and trying to make a living out of it.

There are so many ways to be successful. You just have to be creative, and work really hard at it. A good life is worth the hard work. As long as you have true friends, you will always pull through.

by Sharon Sherbina, NYR Organic

It’s a dark and stormy night on the island of Oahu.  The surf breaks harshly on the plank of a pier jutting out determinedly into Maunalua Bay.  The dark clouds overhead eerily reflect the light pollution of the nearby shopping districts of Honolulu and Waikiki, where the conversion of paper dollars into stuffed, plastic logo bags is in full swing.  In the distance you can hear a gorgeously wrought cover of Israel Kamakawiwo’Ole’s, “Maui Hawaiian Sup’pa Man”.

When you get to the end of the wicked finger-like pier, it feels as if you’re at the end of the universe, looking out into the dark expanse of the unknown, the peaked and turgid waters all around you.  And, if in that moment, your spirit happens to be troubled, look no further than the ‘alamihi crab skittering purposefully out of your way.

The ‘alamihi crab (metopograpsus thukuhar) is worthy of watching and reflecting upon, although maybe under safer circumstances.  The ‘alamihi keep to the low-tide shallows, much like humanity, and clambers about on the exposed rocks, stones and piers.  They are quintessential self-preservationists.

Is your self-care actually self-preservation, instinctive and reactive?  Or, do you practice it with intention and reflection?  Are you actively planning on how to weather the next storm?  Are you in the middle of a storm now?

It’s anecdotally shared, that when faced with the imminent threat of a collision in a moving vehicle, you clench every muscle you have including the tongue.  This leads to more sustained injuries, and a lengthier recovery time, if your situation is recoverable.  Life is filled with collisions.  There are minor ones like disagreements at work over processes or miscommunications on the homefront with partners and children.  Or there are major ones like the sudden loss of child, getting an unexpected diagnosis for a serious health issue, and losing your job.  What if you could live life unclenched?  Would it matter?

It’s important to be of a positive mindset, but it’s of even greater importance to be of a realistic mindset with a positive response.  The shock is greater to your being, when your first response is, “I never thought something like this could happen to me!”  Why not?  Why, based on all the evidence around you, the rise and fall of civilizations, the ebb and flow of humanity, would you sail through this existence unscathed?

We have a cognitive capacity that way exceeds the ‘alamihi crab.  We can do more than furtively scramble out of the way in the darkness.  We can plan, conditionally, lest Robert Burns’ words come back to pinch us.  We can form intention now.  We can unclench.  We can know for certain that the storms are coming, but that they can be faced.  And some storms may even be dissipated with the right actions.


*This piece was written in the aftermath of the “false alert” January 13, 2018, where thousands of people on the island of Oahu received notification that there was an incoming ICBM missile, and to take shelter.  The beach where the ‘alamihi crabs were observed was the same beach that had hundreds of screaming people running anywhere they could to find shelter, under lifeguard stands, in bathrooms.  In many cases mothers and fathers had their children lie on the ground and they covered their children with their own bodies.

Author Bio:

I’m opposed to author bios, for much the same reason that I’m opposed to framing artwork. Intellectually we know that art goes beyond the frame, and that the frame is an artificial construct.  My husband says that I “sure am a piece of work”, but he has never, (nor has anyone else) ever referred to me as a piece of art… 

So, right now I am bouncing back and forth between the beautiful and troubled island paradise of Oahu, and our home base in deep rural Missouri.  Subjects of interest for contemplation and writing include nature, sustainability, primitive skills and traditions, kindness, unconditional positive regard, all the big whys and hows, movement disorders, the juxtaposition of science and religion, education, second language acquisition, holistic skin care, and cats.  I fail to practice much of what I preach, and greet each day as a challenge, and consider each night before I go to bed an exercise in self-grace.

 
Oahu is beautiful.  There are sunsets that will suck the breath right out of your chest.  The massive banyan trees look like they could pick up root and lumber down the way if you took your eyes off of them.  Sometimes you startle a flock of yellow-fronted canaries, and then they startle you with their breathtaking upflight into the sunlight.

While walking one afternoon, I stopped and looked closely at the trunk of this papaya tree.  All around the trunk, every foot and a half, are a half dozen heart-shaped scars.  I looked fifteen feet above me to see what might be making these beautiful scars on the tree.  At first observation, it appears that when each generation of fruit comes to bear, the large leaves that nestled that fruit begin to wither and die.  Eventually the heavy, dead leaves drop off to the fertile ground below.  They decompose into the soil and cyclically nourish the tree in their demise.  When the leaves drop off, they leave behind the mark of a heart on the trunk. Every.  Single. Time.

The papaya (botanical name, Carica papaya) is a powerhouse of nutrition and medicine.

See here  for the full break down (PDF).

And like most plants and trees, every single part of it is useful.  It’s a perfect tree to use to illustrate a life of intention and purpose, a life with ruts and hardship, a life with joys and mountain-top experiences.  It’s also an ideal cosmic model for resiliency and adaptation at the personal level.

Where is your life at this moment?  Where is it in the life cycle of the papaya?  Is it fruitful and protected by stalwart leaves, and safe from the buffeting of strong tropical winds?  Have you just made it through the most difficult ordeal of your life, and are shedding the dead leaves of your experiences to the ground below you?  Will your hardship nourish and benefit the next generation?  Or are you still somewhere in the middle of the storm, with your desiccated leaves hanging all about you, a semblance of protection until the storm passes.  What shape are your scars?

Author Bio:

I’m opposed to author bios, for much the same reason that I’m opposed to framing artwork. Intellectually we know that art goes beyond the frame, and that the frame is an artificial construct.  My husband says that I “sure am a piece of work”, but he has never, (nor has anyone else) ever referred to me as a piece of art… 

So, right now I am bouncing back and forth between the beautiful and troubled island paradise of Oahu, and our home base in deep rural Missouri.  Subjects of interest for contemplation and writing include nature, sustainability, primitive skills and traditions, kindness, unconditional positive regard, all the big whys and hows, movement disorders, the juxtaposition of science and religion, education, second language acquisition, holistic skin care, and cats.  I fail to practice much of what I preach, and greet each day as a challenge, and consider each night before I go to bed an exercise in self-grace.

Author Bio

Kara Masterson is a freelance writer from West Jordan, Utah. She graduated from the University of Utah and enjoys writing and spending time with her dog, Max.

by R.A. Rowell; Co-Owner ofIntent-sive Nature & theBrand Shamans network

Constantly, I wonder about my motivations for writing. It's when I reach these crossroads about my intentions that I find myself dealing with difficult thoughts to express or articulate. There are questions that I find myself asking that I don't feel qualified to try and answer in any sort of meaningful way.

In recent times, I've been retreating to safe topics writing about various amusements. It's as if I'm unwilling to truly unearth anything that could be particularly dangerous to my sanity. But now, I find myself particularly fascinated by one of the difficult thoughts that have crossed my mind.

The thought in question deals with a particularly interesting topic: mapping the unconscious mind. Sometimes, I find that my mind gives something a name before I truly understand what it is that I am naming. I don't think this is an uncommon practice when it comes to creativity. Although there is often at least a bit of forethought involved in assigning names, sometimes there isn't.

My poetry often  involves taking some difficult thought, giving it a name, and describing it in some way. It's often inspired by the echoes of my unconscious mind upon waking. People seem to enjoy the fruits of these exercises. Honestly, though, most of my poems were simply my way of dealing with thoughts I couldn't otherwise express. I never really considered myself a poet.

So, my poetry has been a way to sort of "map" the workings of my unconscious mind. It's one way that I try to hit on characters, concepts, and settings that my brain conjures up while I'm sleeping.

There are many interpretations of dreams and studies on the workings of the unconscious mind. But I believe it can be extremely dangerous to read too much into dreams. What we actually remember from dreams upon waking is often greatly distorted or is so strange and paradoxical. Because of this, it's difficult to frame it in any meaningful way to explain it to others.

The difficult thoughts that I often find myself harboring upon waking each morning I do not believe are fully formed. We all awake with difficult thoughts at one time or another, I'm sure, some more than others. Some are more troubling than others,. With the many stresses I've weathered at times, they can become far more troubling and much more difficult to express.

Rather than focusing on writing about amusements just for the sake of being able to write something easily, I should instead be focusing on "mapping" my thought process. It's even more important when it comes to dealing with difficult thoughts. I don't really want to do it so much for myself or even my own edification. It's more to find some sort of way to release the frustrations I've had about not writing anything much inspiring in such a long while. I feel at times that my work gets awfully dull and I need new sources of inspiration.

Perhaps by mapping the journey that my mind takes in dealing with difficult thoughts, I can finally feel a bit more settled. So many of these thoughts  often spring from my unconscious to my conscious without warning. Indeed, trying to reason through the workings of the unconscious while conscious can be dangerous. But, it's as they say: if it's dangerous, but it has a potentially huge reward, then it's probably worth doing.