A speck of sand on a smallish shoreline,

of one windbaggy waterdrop left behind from the human ocean.

This said sand dash stashes into this slit inna screen—

heartsrelease.neocities.org is for tracking and documenting my mostly Buddhist pursuits of mental health and physical well-being. These are my shared stories for anyone to find, anytime. We all need a gimmick, so I psychopompously showcase these means, ends, and related pre-blogging (even by a shoestring) to seeking brighter results: melancholia refutation, moral refinement, and more ridiculous meretricious redundance. I was way ahead of the loneliness epidemic curve, plenty of time for my high school creative writing class to applaud my alliteration addiction, thesaurus thirst threnody, and posh punctuation promulgation — they can have my precious ellipsis, em dash, and semicolon when they're scooped outta my cold monkey skull.

Delicious segue into over-explaining that I maintain a strong and healthy body is great grounds for a strong and healthy mind, a firm foundation for a well-grounded spirit. If you think health (especially mental) is costly in discomfort and inconvenience, wait 'til your karmic creditors hand you the compound interest for neglecting it. Only a Buddha can show us the fine print, but even he can't go back 5, 25, 75 years to tell anyone: "don't do this, stop doing that, start doing the other". Sakyamuni Buddha's sāsana is here and now, though, and you might not get another precious human birth within any future Buddha's sāsana anytime soon.

Though tempting, I don't want to make this not-Angelfire yet another "who are you and why should I care what you like?" MySpace/LiveJournal analogue horror. This is in spite of this place's retraux sovl dumpster fire look, because my web design skills are nearly 20 years out of date. (I still don't get why I need to do <div> and <span> all of a sudden, what was wrong with <p>? and what's with <br> becoming <br />!?) For just music alone, I'd be here all next fortnight (no no, not the game) recollecting and sorting hundreds of my favorite bands across my life.

If I indulge that egotistical attention-begz0ring, I'll quarantine my special interests to a lone page linked only from here. But even then, for the most part I'll try to avoid listing my beliefs and so on unrelated to Buddhism, fitness, and mental health outside the context of documenting this personal pursuit of making peace with myself in what has rarely not felt like a burning world crowded with hostile natives.

I'm not always edgy!^[1] Surely it's not long before all notice I drop grosses of cheeky references for the giggles like some lonely old loser. Not denying I am, but I'd like to make it less obvious up front. But other than that, like my favorite uncle I don't want to define myself by traits and preferences I honestly don't think should matter except as entertainment and social connection. I in fact would rather minimize self-identity as much as I can, within reason. You might have noticed I carefully avoid using personal pronouns so you're left guessing the shape of my plumbing! Mmm, self-insert bait.

1.

There will be no disclaimer except here. But I know I have to say it: I try to minimize "therapy-speak", as such terms have been overrused and abused^[1a]. But like with my precious semicolon, I won't give in so easily and throw out the baby with the bathwater because so many are so easily triggered [wink]. I'm enough of a fool, I don't need to go looking for negativity when the world is nasty enough. And so to try and reduce how much I fall for the wrong speech of gossip and slander and so on, I'm learning the difference between convenient descriptors and misusing words as a shield against criticism. It's very helpful against the wrong action of cancel culture dogpiling. No trust, no functional society; nothing new under the sun. The world is a mirror: I can only change myself if I don't like what I see, and I'm used to being an army of one anyway.

1a.

Here's a thought-terminating cliché I carry: to learn from others' regrets, as none of us live long enough to make every mistake ourselves. Sentiment from others who want to be kind in their own ways seem worth paying forward. According to whom? According to me the blameless and observant; I am neither. And those even more neurotic than I, however, have observed that conventional wisdom is largely irrelevant recommendation; mmh, n'yes, I concur. My novelty-craving character has never been a fan of average advice (especially unsolicited; unsolicited advice is criticism always) which usually yields average results anyway. Especially since plenty of such are unfeasible for my complicated set of circumstances, nor really my shaker cup o' milk-tea & protein powder. (Grass-fed only, please!) Not to mention the personality and proclivities I just so happen to have (whatever fashionable, us-vs-them, self-divide-and-surrender-for-free short-hand summary you wanna label them) are not some sort of disease. Reality loves to slap me with proof after proof that the grapes I try not to chase anymore were sour all along.

That sacred cow cooked and ate, here's another shrimp on the barbie: "You can't love another if you don't first love yourself." In my experience, this is backwards. Another smarty for the party touched on a most personally resonant concept: the "wounded healer". I can only dream of being a tiny candle of joy in a world of suffering, like this site being yet another attempt at active-listening-by-proxy. Sorry for the hypen storm. (Doo-dah, doo-dah.) I've often struggled wrapping words around what perfect sense to me, though at the risk of tooting my own horn I believe I've come far and in many ways left my old tormentors in the dust.

I've much to learn as a wannabe compassionate, wannanotbe fool who doesn't know how to moderate hyperlinks. In the meanwhile: may this sand among the sands of ten-thousand digital display cases of this one's fruits but more importantly fumbles and foibles, help even one other in their own vehicle and road to their heart's release.