Seven Years...
It's absolutely nuts to think it's been seven years...
Nearly 7 years since this idea first came into being.
7 years since Steemit. It changed everything.
7 years since I was "living my best life in Bali."
7 years since I took the first steps away from that life, (perhaps foolishly) moving out of 'my' villa and planning ahead to return to Canada.
7 years since getting married.
7 years since i truly felt alive and in the joy of life.
the reality of this sorta hit like a ton of bricks to the face when thinking about it yesterday.
how fast time flies. how short life is.
part of me wants to freak out. where the fuck am i gonna be 7 years from now? is it gonna disappear just as fast? what am i gonna have to show for it as turning 47? am i gonna 'waste' as much of it as i did the last 7?
i can take inventory of all the music i've made over these 7 years, how much "progress" in skill & quality of the results of these collaborations with my past-self. but "so what?" for the handful of people who might actually listen to some of it (probably on a shitty phone speaker) and think it's cool for all of 30 seconds, what does any of it matter in the end? maybe my artistic fate is doomed to that of the Tibetan monks, spending months focused in on the finest details of sculpting the most exquisite sand mandalas, only to destroy it.
surely, some part of me is "stuck in the past."
i wish it was as easy as "going back" to the love & enthusiasm i had for life seven years ago, that i could return to Bali and just 'pick up where i left off' - happy, radiant, in love, feeling on top of the world and savoring every moment. "but."
i fear becoming too fucking complacent where i'm at. i fear becoming too content with "how things are" and the lack of drive or motivation to change. as much as i can see the merit of patience to wait for the correct timing to make moves i can't see yet, i fear i'll sink into this comfort zone keeping me buffered from truly living.
"blah, blah, blah," goes the mind, never ceasing overanalyzing and reaching for a sense of understanding & control.
maybe it's just a bunch of cognitive biases at work distorting my perception to downplay all the good that's occurred in the last 7 years. (scratch the "maybe," surely.)
and/or maybe it's not entirely "stuck in" the past, so much as keeping rooted in those aspects of it which will always be part of the foundation of who i am, where i came from, and what does breathe life into me - even if not physically present there at this time. maybe the "problem" isn't one to be "solved" by attempting to force myself to "move on," but honoring, embracing, and integrating every step of the journey.
(or maybe my ego is just trying to sound wise, throwing together some philosophical word salad to compensate for some existential unrest there is no "solution" for other than surrender to it.)
well, at the least... there's a bunch of good music that's come out of this last 7 years.
and while the ego might feel it's never "enough" - especially when still pretty much a "nobody" with an audience that could be counted on both hands - perhaps i oughta just embrace some of the wisdom spoken by the legendary Rick Rubin, something along the lines of "you're successful when put art out into the world."
so... as one of the few who get a glimpse of this art before we're all blown back as stardust into nothingness... enjoy 🍻
Congrats on your blockchain birthday even if it is a bit bittersweet. I think you should be proud of all the stuff you have created on here. I can definitely say there are certain things that have had an impact on me, so that's something I guess :)
man, i like literally can't even process that it's been seven years here. lol.
in a way, you're probably right. yet, i still can't quite shake this sense like, 'what does any of it even matter now that it's all behind? like, am i just gonna be some washed-up hack reliving his glory days... or what is actually going down here & now???' (yeah, therapy is probably not a horrible idea. lol.)
i appreciate you, bro. even if you & Josie are the only two ever providing feedback here anymore, it means alot. 🙏🍻
No worries! I sometimes think about Hive folding and the past six years worth of work amounting to nothing. It was a good hobby though. I could have picked dumber things to do I guess. I say if it made your time on the planet even a little more enjoyable then it was worth it.
Well, sand mandalas are a deliberate practice in detachment.. soo.. xD
In my experience trying to force oneself to 'move on' only ever backfires, so no point torturing oneself. The 'moving on' either happens gradually over some arbitrary length of time or it doesn't.
One thing that I find that DOES help whenever I feel I've ended up uncomfortably 'dependent' on someone else's energy is I reflect back on the time before I even knew them, to remember that it was, in fact, possible to live without them. The positive effects of this exercise get multiplied if I manage to dig up some aspect/hobby/trait of mine that I felt like I had to give up for them that I get to fully reclaim.
That is one heck of a nice energetical pattern to focus on. Don't mind if I add that to the peace and clarity mix. ^^
And it's always, always, always important to create, no matter the audience. You can't possibly know who needs to hear you. Your audience maybe hasn't even incarnated into this 3D yet, what do you know. :D
You're not a "nobody", you're Rok-Motherfucking-Sivante and you GET to show the world what means!
Soo.. Rock on, you're doing great! ^^
~Josie~
there was some subtle ping when read that, like you may be onto something there.
though feels like that's something that's gonna take alot of time, focus, and energy and may conflict with my ADHD-like & procrastinative (if that's not a word, i'm making it one now) tendencies. lol.
this is where i sorta question whether it'd be worthwhile just to go back to Phuket and surrender to the hedonistic side of my Pluto-Zenith there to get back in touch with my actual core masculine drive properly. lol. but also, not really keen on taking risks with STDs (and the inevitable energetic equivalent) and sliding so far back into that scene which is no longer a vibrational match. sigh. lol. it's seriously tempting though, considering i can't think of anything that would probably make me feel as alive as the feeling of being treated like a rock star by the women there the way they did/do. (my oh my, sometimes i question if i'm being way too honest with stuff like this for a public forum. 😹)
another sorta subtle ping.
and something sorta comforting like gentle, warm hug from a higher force as reading those words.
i can't remember what it was in my natal chart that some interpretation of was something along the lines that i'm ahead of my time and might even be the type whose work isn't truly appreciated until after i'm gone... as much as that approach might be used as a way of trying to self-manipulate into feeling better that it eventually will be recognized, it still kinda sucks. lol.
but i dunno... it's weird, like i used to be SO fucking ambitious in my twenties and want all this adoration for shit i hadn't even done yet, then swung to this other odd space of acceptance that i may never really get or accomplish any(thing) - and from here, in whatever low-wave of "self-esteem" this is, there's some wisdom/acknowledgement that even IF one of my tracks got accepted as a collab and went to #1 on Billboard, i probably wouldn't even fully appreciate it... with some tiny vague sense of trust/faith or some shit that maybe there will come a day where whether there's some "big" thing that all this was leading up to or not, there probably will be some sense of deep satisfaction in "touching someone" (metaphorically, not literally, lol) and making an impact that is really clear in its significance to an extent that silences all the doubt, "not enough" not-self shit, etc.
i do get glimpses/moments of it sometimes... lately, when sharing some astrocartography stuff that really helps someone shift from confusion & fear into clarity & confusion. maybe part of me is still just too stubborn in wanting musical fruits rather than fully embracing and maximizing those 'small' moments connecting with people on a resonant frequency via astrology.
sometimes i question if too much "ego death" is a bad thing and i overdosed. lol. like again, i swung to this opposite extreme of "meh," where i sorta don't even care about "showing the world" anymore, aware of / feeling like that's just an ego game i already exhausted myself out at.
though it also sorta ties back to the Phuket thing... and whether it's my Venus in 12th house or Sun + Mars in 12 in whole sign, there IS something to the "foreign lands" thing; and that Pluto-Zenith... (like peak examples: i had a couple incidences there where women literally just stopped me on the street cuz they wanted to fvck/bl0w me (no $ involved)). here, i feel like a ghost. like no one sees me, no one cares. just like i'm an NPC in everyone else's matrix. it was like there, rock star energy - no need to "show" or try; here, doesn't fucking matter how hard i'd show/try... invisible. or even in Bali with Neptune-MC, still this public allure and rock-star-ish energy (of a different sort).
goddamnit. as writing this, it almost feels like i'm trying to talk myself into going back. but this fucking conflict of "correct response" and acknowledging timing. fucking impatience!!! 😹🤬
well that was semi-therapeutic. (although similar to dropping $200/h for nothing but a space to vent and some bullshit generic feedback from someone that's only there for the money, i dunno if anything's really fundamentally changed. lol. but at least it was more fun sharing with you, as a friend and somehow who gets & appreciates a bit of my complexity. 🙂)
There, das more like it! ^^
I'm grinning like a Cheshire cat reading this. xD
I don't know, but I get the feeling that it is somehow EXTREMELY important to be exactly THIS honest.
Yup, this.. this sounds correct.
Can't help you with timing, but as far as "correct response" is concerned - Rok Sivante, would you kindly go back to Phuket to reclaim your core masculine drive at your earliest convenience? Thank you in advance! ;) xD
~Josie~
this is the kind of encouragement i need more of in my life. 😹😎
(though shall see where the energy leads later in the fall/winter... might go back for another snowboard season in Revy IF universe lines it up effortlessly, or Cabo also on the map. and really need a clear "yes" if do Phuket again, as feeling energetic hygiene more important than ever - especially considering no one yet fully knows the fallout of the mass medical experiments in progress. Celibacy might suck, but far less than the Plutonic consequences of playing in the devil's playground against my higher calling! 😬🦂)
Seven years and still counting, grace.