Daily blog: 10/19/11

Not much has happened so far today which is noteworthy. Have french class in about 15 minutes. I'll update as the day goes on :)

Updated - 10:03 AM 
Just got back from french class, she started us on doing some new thing with Etre (how to speak of something in the past). And we have a test on that and avoir, but I think I'll do alright on it. I got a 91 on our first test. It's weird that the teacher seems to always assume I know what I'm doing in class. When we broke up into groups, she went around checking everyone and told me "you understand this, right?"..I replied "yes"...and she didn't even check my paper (we were suppose to be writing sentences, which I was ..more-or-less). While leaving class and heading back to my dorm there was this bus with a bunch of children (probably about the age of 5 or so) getting off. I wonder why they would be taking them on a field trip to the University campus....unless they are just super advanced and/or have pituitary problems. Anyways, back to studying! (going to be reading this book about how this scholarly woman did this experiment where she attempted to make a living off a low wage to see how difficult it was).

Updated - 3:10 PM
Busy studying, highlighting parts in the book for a paper I need to write, etc. What was annoying is that the  person in the dorm near mine was playing drums; I put on my Remington noise-canceling ear muffs, but the noise still got through (was a little bit quieter however). Then later someone knocked on my door (I don't really know anyone that well on my floor due to being super busy and an introvert to boot), I just ignored it because I didn't feel like/have time for getting into a conversation, and I hate being asked to do things when I'm busy--which is typically always (people tire me out, so I need to spend time just being away from people to unwind/recharge between classes, etc).

The one thing I like about being busy is that it gives me less time to worry, and thus my anxiety is not as bad. Which is a good tip for anyone with anxiety problems--keep your mind busy on other things! 


Anyways, back to work :)

Updated - 4:20 PM
After studying for awhile, I got some food. One thing I thought to pick up was some Greek Yogurt (I like the taste/texture much more than normal yogurt, and it is supposedly healthier). I have class at 6:30, so I should now take a nap. As I'm writing this now, that annoying kid from across the hall is playing his music (he blasts music and leaves his door open so everyone can hear it). Aren't some people precious. By the way, I suggest to anyone that has to do a lot of mental work (such as studying), take a lot of little catnaps (like 20-30 minutes long) throughout the day, it's very refreshing (clears up the brain-fog and fatigue like a charm) :)

Updated - 9:05 PM
Just got back from a class that goes from 6:30-8:45. Before heading back to my dorm I picked up a wrap from the dining hall. The class went well, I feel like I absorbed the information well and took good notes (the class is Sociology of Social Services). This teacher gives tough tests, and if you don't take notes very well and have a good memory, you get your ass kicked hard by them (plus they are about 30% of the final grade). This teacher is also my adviser, I signed up to be advised for class registration for next week at 6:00 PM, but I later changed it. What happened was that he mentioned that class would get moved back to 7:00 PM, so I thought that perhaps he wouldn't be able to make the appointment. I went up to him, and he automatically knew why and told me to change my time to 5:40 PM. I filled in the wrong date, and had to go back right after to fix it (woops, lol). All this information is probably only interesting to me :P

That's about it for now, just blogging (obviously) and eating my wrap. 

Is everyone crazy? (mental illness and lack of mindfulness)

I've been doing some studying on mental illness (have taken classes on it and am taking one now, plus I have looked up a lot of stuff using Google :P ). And it seems to me that a lot of mental illness is caused by thoughts. It appears that stress-inducing thoughts are bar far the biggest cause of mental illness (aside from being human). And what is the cause of stressful thinking? Lack of awareness (at least in my opinion). When I am aware of my thoughts, and more importantly, aware of the fact that my thoughts are thoughts, they don't cause me stress (like realizing a nightmare was just a dream).

I believe that being in a state of awareness of the present moment (of our senses more specifically) is the intended default mode; but we have been bombarded with nonsense from TV and the internet, plus have been taught to see the world through the imagination in school (they teach you to see history through such a lens, for example). Most people today see the world through their imagination, they are constantly thinking about things that have happened or "will happen" (most people can't predict the future that accurately). I'm not much better (it's hard to stay in a state of mindfulness for an entire day), but I realize that mindfulness causes a shift away from being consumed with the imagination to a more accurate one (the imagination can distort our perception of reality).

I believe people that have thoughts constantly streaming through their heads, not being focused on the present moment, have a form of mental illness that is more common than not in today's world (given how hectic it is, people have adopted this sort of thinking, I believe, as a coping strategy). I'm obviously included in this bunch, but I'm also trying to shift myself out of it. I'm hoping that in time I can make mindfulness the default mode, instead of worrying (I notice that when I'm doing nothing my mind automatically starts worrying).

On a heavy end of the spectrum of this are anxiety disorders and depression (caused by a high volume of stress-inducing thoughts). I hope in time, people wake up from the daymares (like daydreaming) caused our imagination by realizing that it's not real (our brains are not really time machines going into the past or crystal balls looking into the future).

I still struggle with the process of trying to wake up, but I'm getting better in time.

Daily blog: 10/18/11 - awkward porn in class and fire alarms.

Today was an interesting day at the University. I had a class at 9:30 (Sociology of Mental Illness), it was fairly uneventful. But I did notice that my anxiety (or stress) levels were abnormally high this day. I think it might have to do with the drinking I did over the weekend and/or with a few of my other habits (like listening to intense music that gets my adrenaline pumping).

Random thinking: Part of me thinks that I'm addicted to stress hormones, and this underlying addiction causes me to think in a way that causes a stress response. Because when I'm bored, feeling restless, I just want to listen to some intense music or watch an intense, adrenaline pumping movie. But maybe this is just my unconscious attempt to maintain the state I am most used to, being stressed.


After class I always (almost) head back to my dorm to unwind. I'm an introvert, and I need my alone time to unwind. Sadly, the fire alarm was going off, and I couldn't enter the building. The people that I talked with outside seemed to think that it was a drill. Being that I more or less have social anxiety (I don't like to think of it as a disorder, it's fairly orderly), but I've gotten into the habit of focusing on my breathing when I feel anxiety coming on—it seems to be fairly effective at calming my symptoms once I start doing it for a few moments. Anyways, after a few minutes, it stopped and I went to my dorm.

My girlfriend messaged me on Facebook.

Background into my relationship: My relationship is extremely long-distant (in that she lives on the other side of the world). She is from the Philippines, and while this arrangement isn't ideal (her being so far away) it has been working well for the past year (aside from a few little hiccups). But I'll get more into the relationship later down the road in future posts. 


After eating lunch (I had a wrap from the campus dining hall in my dorm), I soon had my next class: Gender Inequality in the Workplace. It's only me and this other guy in this class, which is awkward on normal days, but today was especially awkward. This girl did a presentation about sexual harassment in the workplace, and brought in porn magazines as a prop. Later, while the teacher was doing her lecture on the topic of sexual harassment, she pulled out one of the magazines, and it had a woman with her breasts exposed on the front cover.  It seemed that it was me and the other guy that felt the most awkward here (I tried to look as if I didn't enjoy seeing it by not looking and putting on just the right face, and the other guy just looked down at the table), the girls just laughed.

I found this to be ironic because feminists always talk about equality, but if this were a class with a male teacher, and he pulled out a porn magazine (male or female on the cover), this would have been considered highly inappropriate (and charges of sexual harassment may have been filed). 


Oh, and apparently (finding out with late notice), we have a paper/class presentation on a book I've barely started reading due in 1 week, yikes. Anyways...

I had another class after this one, but nothing interesting happened. During this class, because it is so easy and boring, I practiced mindfulness of breathing.

When I got back to my dorm I was exhausted, so I took a nap. I brought a few beers to college with me to see if that drinking a couple a day would help me relax, doesn't appear to be helping (I drank those beers before the nap).

We later had another fire drill. After it, I was becoming painfully aware that my levels of stress were not very good. So I started reflecting and came to the conclusion that I need to both be more optimistic with my thinking and be more aware in general of my thoughts. When I don't pay much attention to my thoughts it seems that negativity runs rampant. That is why I started this blog, I'm hoping that it keeps my mind more focused on mindfulness and pushing optimism.

my nature...

By nature I am an unconscious pessimist, and I believe both feed into each other (that being unconscious creates pessimism [looking for problems/threats in everything] and vice versa). And when I use the word 'unconscious', this means living life with a lack of awareness (autopilot). After taking a class on self-help, I learned about mindfulness. I started utilizing the technique more and more. I loved the way mindfulness gave me new insights about myself, and it was also a much more relaxed way of being (I was, for as long as I can remember, an anxious person).

Sadly, my family life became very tumultuous soon after (it always was, but became much much worse), and my spirit withdrew back into its shell. I may talk about this period of my life sometime in future blog posts, but I prefer to not dwell on those negative experiences. Now when a thought of the past comes about (primarily when it evokes negative emotions), I tell myself that it's "just a thought, it's nothing more or less". And this sort of thinking is a product of my mindfulness, which I have brought back over the last few years, and it has given me some useful insights.

Tip: Recognize a thought when it comes about as it is—a thought. If you correctly label a thought, like correctly labeling a nightmare as a dream, it loses its emotional punch. 


My life has been filled with many problems both external and internal—ranging from bullies to domestic abuse and from alcohol abuse to anxiety disorders. And while these problems have occurred, and some of which still haunt me in some form to this day, I see through them with a mindful optimism. I believe that positive thinking and awareness are the keys to overcoming personal demons, and I want this blog to be both a combination of my journey and the insight I have gained throughout.

If God was real, life would somehow have meaning?

Christians (or other similar believers) believe that without God, life is meaningless. In other words, atheists have a shitty existence that is devoid of meaning because we don't believe we are created in the image of a sociopathic attention-whore (I'm not sure if they would word it exactly like that). But what kind of meaning is that? To believe that the only meaning is found in 1). believing in an invisible being that can't be proven to exist 2). worship it and 3). obey its laws (i.e. obey whatever you believe it wants you to do). And of course the cherry on the sundae is that God has an infinite love for everyone, even those He casts into hell and/or punishes with AIDs *rolls eyes*

...and with all this meaningful existing that Christians believe they are involved in, it is the atheists that are left out!

[What's funny are those goofy atheists that wishes God was real, but are just slightly too logical to believe but not logical enough to realize that such a thing would make existence much worse (for obvious reasons like hell and having to worship an invisible attention whore for all of eternity). I guess these atheists are between a rock and a hard place.]

The point here is that I fail to understand how God somehow makes life meaningful. Being an objectified pawn is not very meaningful in my book. No, atheism doesn't hand people false-hope for a crappy afterlife (as already mentioned) or some "divine purpose" (to feed God's ego), but isn't it important for people to come to conclusions about purpose/meaning on their own? I suppose a Christian would see meaning in such a worldview (as an atheist I obviously don't). But I believe that to leave questions of meaning untouched detracts from a meaningful existence more than anything. An atheist can find meaning in life merely by being open to think about meaning.  If your brain automatically concludes "God", then it shuts itself off to thinking about the meaning of life.

So if you're a Christian, and feel as if life is meaningless, try seeing the world as if the atheist's view is correct. The conclusions you will come to will be very different (and probably much more thought-out). 

Are any Christians completely void of skepticism?

I remember having skepticism as soon as I started being indoctrinated, and that was when I was in grade school (before I knew anything about evolution, or any other alternative views). One of my earliest memories of skepticism was when we were told to draw a picture of God in Sunday School. I drew an old looking man with a grey beard, and thought "this looks a lot like Santa Claus" and then I thought "how can I know this is what God looks like, I've never seen him". Then I asked the teacher "what does God look like", and she said "no body knows". I then remember just being overwhelmed with skepticism/doubt (for the obvious, logical reasons).

I wonder if any Christians go through life have no skepticism of their religion. Obviously Christianity frowns upon skepticism (a protective mechanism of the belief system), but it seems hard to believe that all true-Christians don't seriously doubt their faith from time-to-time.

I believe most Christians are closeted atheists that hope they are wrong. 

Argument about atheism on a bathroom stall

So I went to the bathroom (I live in a dorm), and I noticed this conversation on the bathroom stall. Someone wrote some quote about how life without God is pointless...then the atheist wrote something like "the only thing God gives is false hope"....then the Christian tried to cross it out....etc. etc.

The point here is, aren't some people precious? Arguing about religion on a bathroom stall like it's an online chat room....

It was funny because the atheist had some witty comments, and the Christian didn't exceed expectations (to put it nicely). 

Anyways, I've been neglecting this atheist-centered blog because I've been sort of uninspired/unmotivated. What I might do is make this blog more centered on me giving my opinions on news related to religion and/or atheism, but I'm not really sure.