We seem to become tired of writing every day from the singular, first person perspective. We will switch to the plural instead. For a time, in our handwritten journals, we switched to the second person perspective, we referred to the writer of these thoughts as you, but the disassociation became so great that our mental health suffered greatly. If the experience multiplies by the ordinal value, we might go insane writing in the third person. But we want to try it, let us write a couple of paragraphs in each perspective.
We've been feeling strange pains which hadn't been felt in a long time. We suspect the cause is alcohol. This weekend we drank more than usual, and it seems that if we indulge in it, we pay with inflammation and lethargy. We indulge in beer, wine and spirits when we mostly cut off weed from our life.
Sometimes we get glimpses of possible healthier alternatives to exogenous relaxants. In yoga, at a particularly intense pranayama breathing exercises, we might get both the consciousness warp and the relaxation we seek in weed and alcohol. We set intentions to do this instead of that, but to tell the truth we almost never breathe intentionally out of class.
Something we truly do is notice our breath, perhaps a couple of times per day, particularly if the mind is dispersed and we need some kind of grounding. This morning we went to the cafeteria for lunch, and as we were walking among the crowds of people we noticed our breath, and with this we noticed a certain confidence and presence. We looked at people in the eye and held their gaze, whereas we would have been lost in thought should we had not our attention in the inhalation and exhalation. It's strange how placing our attention in our breath can bring such a change in subjective experience. We suppose that—after noticing our breaths—the next logical step would be to breathe deliberately. We will put this into practice and report back to the reader.
Your back feels weird, it's a sciatica-like sensation you haven't felt in years. You will switch your seating, from an office chair to a puff, to see if sitting as if you were riding a horse helps with these sensations. You are mounted on the puff now. You think it feels better, it helps you tighten your core which always helps with back pains.
Your dancing school has closed for vacations. During work you searched for alternative places where to take Twerk lessons, but the other two places you found were also closed. The teacher at your school takes a video of you and your classmates, and you've been wondering if you should share your progress at this venue. You've been very close to doing it, but you wonder if it's violating the privacy of your classmates.
"Proof of work", you call it. You are held under the illusion that you are making progress by writing every day, but everything else remains the same. The result of your mental processes should manifest in the material world, otherwise it's mental wanking. You still don't understand why you do this, but it feels right. There's nothing special about how you move—well, certainly you move much better than the average 45 year old male, but there's a long way to go before you can impress anybody.
Today at lunchtime your 30 year old boss was talking about his girlfriend's boss. He said he was an asshole, and sometimes he would play along the lines of inappropriateness, but never enough as to call him out on his behavior. One of the younger guys said "well, he's forty something, perhaps he's having a mid-life crisis". The CEO confirmed by saying he had recently divorced. Then the younger guy turned to you and said "well, not all forty somethings are having a mid-life crisis" and you laughed, you said "of course we are, me especially", you said with a grin. You relish being discrete about it.
He feels relief when he contracts his abs, but he can't keep them contracted until inflammation subsides. As he reads his writing, he cannot help but notice how much his consciousness changes by changing his perspective.
One of his co-workers stood up and banged his metal water bottle. They usually do this when they make a sale, in lieu of a sales gong. He said "What? Did you make a sale?" and his co-worker said "No [the 30 year old CEO] made it and asked us to ring the gong" (since he's not at the office atm).
He feels that indeed, the degree of disassociation increases as he changes from the first to the second and third perspective, but contrary to his experience writing like this years ago, he's not suffering from disassociation in his daily life, quite the contrary, he feels his first-person perspective has perhaps taken too much ahold of his personality. He believes he is the voice that is inside of his head, and he is wondering if perhaps changing perspectives will loosen the grip of the ego on his soul.
He wishes to identify with the spirit of the world. He has experienced his egoism and narcissism in full. He feels he must transcend this stage, but he doesn't know how, so he sits on a puff contracting his abs, writing in the third person, hoping this will somehow lead to identification with the spirit of the world. "How ridiculous I have become" he thinks. A discrete mid-life crisis, indeed.