December 2024 — A New Place To Call Home

End of the year, start of a new beginning: an update post.

Hey all,

Here’s an update on what’s happening in life and creativity, plus what’s been capturing my interests in philosophy and body-centred depth psychology that I am excited to write about here soon.

Life

I've landed in my new home!

This month was quite busy—I didn't realise how emotionally and physically taxing moving interstate is (first time I've moved out of my hometown).

There's a fair bit to adjust to since I used to live only a few minutes out of a CBD in a very low-maintenance property that was in a mostly cool and dry climate. Whereas now I live the countryside approximately 30 minutes from anything that resembles a city (and an hour and a half to a real city), the climate is sub-tropical, so it's humid, and I've now got gardens to look after and lawns to mow... apparently every week too since everything grows so fast here in wet season 😬.

One of the things I knew I'd regret in life was if I had just stayed in my hometown and never experienced living elsewhere, so I'm glad I made the move, despite the exhaustion and struggle to make it here.

On the plus side, I'm basically in nature when I head out to my backyard. When I'm around nature, I find that my capacity for ideas and creativity increases—I'm excited to see more of this.

Anywho, here's a few pics of the view:

Guidebook

In The Book of Being, I managed to write and publish 8 seed notes this month amongst the moving chaos—I'm happy with that outcome:

1. Folgezettel is a way to store notes and map your train of thought

2. Your train of thought is where new ideas are born

3. Trauma is a catalyst for awakening

4. The Felt Sense is about naming what’s true

5. Language can never capture the richness that takes place in our interiority

6. Little T Trauma isn't about bad things happening, it's about good things not happening

7. Freud segmented the Psyche into three distinct elements

8. Repression is the act of blocking feelings and emotions out of awareness

A topic I'm currently reading up on and becoming very interested in is Character Structures and Bioenergetics based on the work of Wilhelm Reich and Alexander Lowen, which is about how the denial or Repression of our primal/human emotions leads to stasis and blocks in the energy systems of the body that then show up in our character armour (personality styles and defences), body posture and muscular armour (areas of muscular tightness in the body).

This work is particularly fascinating to me not only because I have areas in the body which are chronically tight and armoured, but more-so because working directly on the body to release this muscular tension and therefore unblock the flow of life force energy (what Reich called "orgone energy") can increase our capacity for self-expression, creativity, love and joy.

With the Guidebook, I need some focus, otherwise I'm just writing and publishing notes with a spray and pray approach (not always a bad thing—spontaneity is good sometimes).

This month my focus will be on unpacking and understanding Reichian Characterology and Bioenergetics.

Letter

Besides a couple of sporadic update posts, I haven't properly published to The Gift of Being You in many months.

What's weird is that people have still been organically subscribing despite any lack of activity (thank you, kind people!), so I'm just gonna take that as a sign that I should probably go ahead and publish some newsletters.

I have a couple of topics in mind I'm super fascinated and curious about that have been just simmering in my subconscious for far too long.

The first is inspired by Byung-Chul Han's work in his book The Burnout Society which is essentially about how ridiculous our incessant thirst for productivity and achievement in modern society truly is. I wrote a Substack note about this:

The second is inspired by my own personal healing journey where I've recognised connections between autoimmune disease, psychological separation, the inner critic and the importance of determining and meeting your own needs. I wrote a Substack note on this, too:

I'll expand and write about one or the other (or both—see how we go) on the newsletter this month.

👋

That's all for this time!

Seeing as I'm writing this on the 1st of January 2025 though—Happy New Year to you all. I hope you had a great entry into 2025 and I wish you all the best for the year to come.

Keep well—speak soon,

Roc.

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⬅️ Last Update: November 2024 — Feeling Fresh

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