This was a challenging week. My mind and soul were at odds with each other constantly, most of which is now documented in my handwritten journal.

I haven’t said much on the topic publicly, and I’m not ready to do so yet: the situation in Israel has affected me greatly. It stands in harsh contrast to my quiet life in the US. I have family in Israel, and I’ve experienced the overall fear during the Gulf War firsthand when I lived there, among other experiences. I’ve come to discover this “soul pressure,” for lack of a better term, has started to shape into something else, something that might be positive in a way I never thought about in a long time.

As I said, I am not ready to talk much more about this further at this point, and being able to say the above words is a lot as is. A step in - I hope - the right direction.

Self-care and reflection took a big part of my personal time this week. I started documenting some of my methods in my wiki last week, and I’m in the process of looking over my old notes, and selecting what to combine with my current notes. There’s a new (but in terms of practice, also very old) Elements section on the wiki.

On the blog, the new search function (built with search space for Micro.blog) indexes conversations and comments; the links at the top changed along with the about section, which in turn led me to look into my Ko-Fi page.

For a long time now, I’ve been thinking about how to be able to get some financial backing from my blog, my pictures, and my wiki. I never liked subscriptions and ads. The idea of charging money for something that should be free, like information and opinions, is even more absurd to me today than it was before. This conflict has kept me in an infinite thinking loop, and I think I’m finally able to put it behind me now. In turn, this will lead to more of “me” on the blog and the wiki and less of my “brand,” which, in a word, is bullshit. I am a human being to talk to, not a brand to rent or purchase.

I feel I should apologize for this vague summary. It doesn’t explain what I did this week as much as it explains what I felt. But I think that’s OK. This is important, and writing it down is progress.