Never been one to let the carrier drop

A confusing problem I’ve run across several times. I wanted to share it with you, because it has me occasionally in mental agony and every once in a while you send me responess that are pure gold in clearing my confusion or building me up.

Let’s say you have person A and person B. Person A is a friend. Person B might be their parents, their spouse, another friend, or any number of possibilities.

Person B tells you not to talk to person A. They might tell you to delete their phone number from your phone, or to never email them again.

In the past, I have always complied with these requests from Person B. Today, I decided to respond to a email from a Person A who has been friends with me for years, despite the Person B request six months ago that I not talk to Person A because Person A was having delusions about who I was and what I represented.

Now, I have a specific case in mind here – although I’ve seen this pattern many, many times in my life – and I want to talk more about this case. I don’t agree with person B. If Person A was confused and thinking I was going to marry them and solve all their problems, I think I *should* talk to them.. to kindly and gently explain that that’s not my path right now.. I love them, I hope they get what they need, but I can’t be that person for them. I wouldn’t want that person to just cut me off with no explanation. But, I complied with Person B’s request because I was afraid of what person B might do.

Now I agree if Person A says please don’t contact me, I shouldn’t contact them. I have a hard time with these some times for a long list of reasons that I’d love to go into with you at a later date, but, I at least agree that I shouldn’t be contacting them.

My struggle is this: The aforementioned incident left a Person-A shaped hole in my life. Person A is my friend, and we share many common interests and I didn’t want them gone.

The angry part of me is saying, What business is it of Person B (their parents, in this case, but Person A is of age) whether me and Person A are friends. They may feel that my friendship is hurting person A, but if so they should explain that in enough detail for me to understand how, not just say “Don’t talk to person A”

I think I hear a threat where there isn’t any. My irrational fear side sees.. weell, are they going to take out a restraining order against me, have me arrested, come gun me down.. all sorts of things that in the real world do not seem to happen to me.

It’s just upsetting. I don’t know the “right” thing to do, and I am conflicted between that part of me that says complience with any request is the “right” thing to do and the part of me that says treating Person A in the way I would choose to be treated is the “right” thing to do.

We’re all just kids from
Around town and so we know
That outside in the real world
It doesn’t matter what we do
We know for us there’s nothing new

So drop your hesitation and come with me
Nothing that we say can hurt us now
Take this night and make it remember us
There’s nothing stopping us now, so come with me

Singing, singing
[Incomprehensible]
Singing, singing
What is the meaning?

Singing, singing
[Incomprehensible]
Singing, singing
I might be singing

I know you’re only here to kill a few more hours
I could be somewhere else but
Now I’ve got my reasons not to go home
I don’t want to be there alone

You know you’ve got to stop
Thinking about right and wrong
Tonight it’s you and me, it’s now or never
We’ve got nothing to lose
We can do whatever we choose

So drop your hesitation and come with me
Nothing that we say can hurt us now
Take this night and make it remember us
There’s nothing stopping us now, so come with

Reach out with music
(Music)
Reach out with music
(Music)

Reach out – music
(Music)
Reach out – music
(Music)

So drop your hesitation and come with me
Nothing that we say can hurt us now
Take this night and make it remember us
There’s nothing stopping us now, so come with

So drop your hesitation and come with me
Nothing that we say can hurt us now
Take this night and make it remember us
There’s nothing stopping us now, so come with me

So, today I’m doing sound for a small venue and a blues band. I’d forgotten how much fun it is (although a fair amount of heavy lifting is also involved). I need to make friends with some bands.. I remember looking at the sound for the Comet Club and being amused that I have a better system sitting in storage.

I didn’t bring the whole system – that would be way overkill for this venue.. I’ve just got one 1801 and 4 450s, two of which I’m planning on using as stage monitors.

After the event:

Well, it could have gone better. 😉 It also could have gone worse. I screwed up and paused the recording, and then when I unpaused it didn’t rearm the record tracks even though the record light was still on on the UI. Grr, digital performer, annoying bug, grr.

But, we got about ten minutes. Available at http://www.sheer.us/stuff/030712-jam.mp3

I had a couple of feedback problems.. I want to get another driverack PA to run the floor monitors through.

Still, I had a really good time and am hoping that more chances to do live sound will be coming my way.

So, I have a really interesting problem.

Everyone in the external world.. Oops, not everyone, but a majority of people.. caution me repeatedly about sleep deprivation and how much damage it will do to me / my life / etc. About half the times that I have experimented with sleep deprivation – either because of the effects of drugs I was using, or because of a concious choice to go down that road.. I have ended up in a psych hospital.

Now that I have heard the conditions for why one would end up in a psych hospital, I know that in fact for most of my life I have qualified for one of the conditions. “A danger to myself”. I had a really bad habit. I participated actively in my own ego-destruction because I didn’t want my ego to get too large, because I found people with excessive egos to be annoying.

At this point, I’m no longer participating that way. I believe that I’m sane enough and a good enough judge of myself that I do not need to insult myself / tell myself that various friends don’t want to spend time with me / tell myself that people who have never given any evidence of hating me hate me / doubt people who have shown over time to be trustworthy. My mind is a much quieter place since I made the irrevocable decision not to hurt myself in this way any more.

It astonishes me how easy this change was. Several of the previous changes that I have made in myself have been very difficult – ceasing using drugs, making the irrevocable decision to not think about or talk about suicide any more. (I did so recently despite my best inclinations on the matter, and I ended up regretting it)

But sleep deprivation is complicated. I’ve seen amazing things, heard amazing things, and seen measurable growth in my dream life and my inner life every time I engaged in it. On the other hand, there’s no doubt that there is some period after 72-ish hours where my decision-making skills become poor, my ability to navigate is seriously diminished, and in general I’m not tracking as well as I normally do. However, I can’t shake the feeling – even though no one I’ve talked to has agreed with this – that there is some plateau hanging out after 100-ish hours at which I will return to my usual level of competency and just, well, no longer need sleep.

One of the possible ramifications of being lost in plato’s cave – which I will readily admit that I am – I have no idea how much of the reality I experience is internally generated (“the map”) vs how much is externally generated (“the territory”). To put it another way, I’m pretty sure that a fair amount of what I experience is at least somewhat under my control, but it’s not under my *conscious* control.

To add to the fun, I am not at all whether my subconscious mind is pro me getting the experiences I want, or against. It seems pretty clear that whatever part of my mind that is responsible for creating my dreams has a history of not liking the part of my mind that is experiencing those dreams as subjective reality, since the dreams that I have are often nightmares. I’m not sure what to take from the fact that most of these nightmares are about unsolvable problems.. I recently had a dream in which people were slamming cinderblocks against my head. One advantage of not sleeping is not having to deal with the dreams I have when I sleep. I have a few good dreams.. and a much higher percentage than I did a year ago, so I see improvement, and improvement is a good thing..

Anyway, back to the debate.

Here are some of the pros and cons:

Pro: Intense and very good visual experiences (including starbursts, pretty lights, hallucinating the muppets)
Permanent improvement in my ability to visualize
Temporary improvement in kinesthetic abilities i.e. skating, dancing, playing the keys
Temporary periods of fearlessness which enable me to investigate the folly of most fear
Permanent improvement in number of nightmares I experience
Permanent improvement in my ability to think outside the box

Con: Risk of harm? I haven’t yet been harmed by any of my adventures in sleep-dep land but large numbers of people keep telling me this is luck and could change at any time
Risk of incarceration (Mental hospital or jail, it’s basically the same animal)
Lowered considerably by my learning that mental hospitals do not in fact help me get better (although they can be fun) and understanding my legal rights in WA regarding
being placed in such places for more than 72 hours
Poor decision-making skills
Risk of losing friends (?)
Frightens my friends (:()
Do not always correctly respect other people’s bounderies. <--- BUG, must fix Basically, when I look at the cons, what I'm saying is that it's high risk behavior. Apparently considerably higher risk than, for example, taking a hit of acid. On the other hand, I've never found drugs to be anywhere near as mind-expanding as not sleeping. If this does turn out to be a addictive behavior with only bad effects, or with more bad effects than good ones, I expect I can get free of it using the same process that got me free of my other addictions. There is also the question of what would happen if I didn't sleep but also used a antipsychotic or other psych med to help compensate for whatever issues I have. There are people who claim that sleep deprivation will cause death, but then, you can find people who claim that just about anything will cause death, and thus far I haven't died, not even once. 😉 [In point of fact, if quantum immortality is true, I've died many, many times and just not experienced that death because as the subjective observer, I can never die]