Welcome to the conversation!

Ah, so there's more people on my lonely planet than I thought...

Yes, surprisingly and fortunately, despite all of us being unique, that does not mean we are alone in our thoughts or emotions. It just means you can never find another person who is going to think and feel all the thoughts and emotions exactly like you. But, there are plenty of people with whom we can share some parts of ourselves. I have people in my life with whom I absolutely agree on certain literary questions, but we completely disagree on certain social questions. I also have people in my life who share my passion for human rights. Then, I have people in my life who share my passion for art, and so on. If I had spent my time looking to find all of these in one or two people, I think that would have been such a waste, because perhaps I would have missed out on meeting other like-minded individuals, with whom I maybe don't have much else in common except for that one thing that we share.

Still, it does sometimes catch me by surprise when I hear or read my own thoughts echoed by somebody else. It makes me feel understood, even if the other person does not and cannot know me at all: it is an understanding of minds that really does not require physical presence. This is why, perhaps, we can still feel connected to writers who have been dead for a long time, like Shakespeare or Confucius, or whoever we appreciate. We understand them, yes, but there is also a feeling like they understand us, because they had thought what we are thinking or they had felt what we feel...

Here's an interesting article about creative people and the people who have to deal with them

iheartintelligence.com/2015/07/08/loving-a-highly-creative-person/


This part especially struck me as being true

Their Minds Don’t Slow Down

The highly creative mind is one that is running at full speed all the time. ... Highly creative people rarely keep normal sleep cycles, 

because I've been really struggling with insomnia in the past few months. Actually, I've had problems with sleep on and off for years, but it really reached a critical point in March this year, when a combination of lack of sleep, bad diet and a lot of stress sent me to the emergency centre and was really a wake up call to start changing my habits.

I changed my diet first: started eating healthy, 5 times a day (whereas in the past I would simply forget to eat, or I'd eat just whatever). I also started doing yoga. I can't tell you how much just those two things have affected my entire well-being. But it would be wrong to think that I had to change myself. I just changed my attitude towards certain aspects of my life. Whereas before I didn't care about what I ate, because I perceived food as something of secondary importance to my life, I now care about what I put in my organism, because I perceive food as nourishment for my brain and all the other organs, every piece of tissue and every cell in my body. Before, I didn't do regular physical exercises, didn't have a routine or a class, because I put my mental work before everything else and therefore physical exercise was not as important. Now, I do yoga at home every morning and go to a class twice a week, because I perceive that physical work relieves stress, and it also builds up my strength, stamina and patience, which are as important for my mind to function properly as they are for my body. 

Back in March when I ended up in the hospital*, I remember not quite understanding why this was happening to me: why did I collapse? The doctors made me do all these different tests, which all came back negative. My iron was fine, my EEG was normal, my blood pressure was great, my sugar wasn't low, I wasn't depressed. Everything seemed to point to perfect health. Yet, I couldn't sleep and I had pain and my heart was pounding, I was anxious and stressed out. There was no disease, no illness that was causing my problems. It was simply my body telling me: "slow down, I can't run on nothing, you need to nourish me if you expect me to function normally". Once I realised that, it was simply a matter of listening to what my body needed. Diet, and yoga. Just those two, and in 2-3 months things are much, much better (actually, I changed my diet first, in March, and started yoga in May). No more strange aches and pains which aren't coming from any real source, no more fainting spells and collapsing on the floor, no more high levels of stress that lead to tension and inability to relax. My sleep isn't yet great, true, but I've gotten to a 5- or 6-hour night, which is acceptable, at least. Better than no sleep, certainly, which is something I wouldn't wish on anybody**. But now, I would never allow myself to forget to sleep, or to forget to eat, or to forget to exercise. I think it's about being aware of how the physical and mental are connected. I used to be super focused on my mind, taking care of my body only as an afterthought, only sometimes or when I could spare a moment from "the more important stuff". Now, my focus has slightly shifted, to include the connection between the physical organism and the mind which inhabits it - one affects the other, we all know that, but, I would venture to say, no one has yet fully understood the full extent of how exactly those connections function....

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*Actually, I just went to the ER because I collapsed. By the time they sent me home from the ER, I was fine and there was no diagnosis or anything.

**After 3-4 days without sleep, the brain starts behaving really oddly, let me tell you :D. Maybe the experience is different for different people, but for me it was so weird - I felt no pain, yet I was so aware that I was unwell that it's impossible to describe that feeling. It's not like an out-of-body experience (at least, I don't think it is - never had one of those), but it's close to feeling like two people in one: a part of you understands everything and a part of you is just totally confused. I was shivering, unable to control my body temperature, but I wasn't sick. I could talk to people rationally and understand them, but I had trouble remembering what they told me and they had to repeat simple instructions two or three times.... It took effort to concentrate on certain things, almost as if the brain just goes into a different mode; it's like the brain was telling me: "I'm focused on keeping you alive right now, I don't have time to waste on remembering what you ate yesterday or when you last went to the doctor" (which were the questions they asked me)... How weird to feel like the brain can just switch into that mode when in crisis and it's almost like you have no control. Not quite, of course, perhaps I'm exaggerating a bit. After all, I was able to talk and understand, and I didn't lose my mind or anything like that, but it was a weird experience, nonetheless, one that I wouldn't want to repeat....

An interesting article about gender intelligence from the male perspective www.filmsforaction.org/articles/three-things-gender-intelligent-men-do-differently/

(and there is a bit about the documentary The Mask You Live In about how the hyper-masculine gender stereotype affects men www.youtube.com/watch?v=hc45-ptHMxo )