This project is about reclaiming my time in dreadful moments. The time I lost because I couldn’t focus. I am reclaiming my time that I couldn’t focus because of my fear hearing people go to the toilet. When I hear people pee or poop I freeze, and try everything to stop the sounds reaching my ears. I close doors, I put on headphones or start singing or zooming.

The project started to find the focus to not take in sounds around me by reading or breathing techniques. By becoming more aware of myself and what I am doing I make the exterior less impactful.

I get that people will think that with only changing these specific moments a day, I doesn't have a big impact. Well on me it has. My roommate, when she has to poop, she stays at least thirty minutes on the toilet, which is so distracting. Questions I don't want to ask fly through my mind, I don't know what to do with myself except listening to random music and trying to zone out as much as possible.
But that is a waste. I can use my time better then that, so that is why this project what so necessary for me.

In the past two weeks I am reading to books and tried a few ways of meditating, the one I like the most (not successful yet) is the transcendental meditation of David Lynch.
I already started Crime and punishment, but now I am reading Schopenhauer as well because he is such pessimist and someone in my life could also be perceived as one from time to time, so I am trying to understand him.

The video is inferior to the real work I made which is the mending & learning of the time I reclaimed. With this "collage" I wanted to show what I have been focusing on and with the video I wanted to show in a very banal way how the "DREADFUL MOMENTS" affected me.

Selection of the videos:

The mending classes meant for me awareness of the concept and how I could use it in research and my perspective. I didn't intend with this project to make a work, but it is intended to facilitate a new method of research, to re gain my focus.
The "DREADFUL MOMENTS" are a metaphor for my constant struggle of a lack of concentration and rhythm, so much broader then only the toilet fear.

THEORY:
Beste Gedachten/Brein,

Volgens mij zijn je denkwijzen rigider dan dat je zelf toegeeft. Veranderen is ook lastig, niet alleen voor jezelf maar ook voor anderen. Het belang dat je “jezelf” blijft drukt, omdat er anders aan je integriteit wordt getwijfeld. Maar alles verandert zo snel, als ik mijzelf zou moeten blijven zou ik het allemaal niet aan kunnen. Het is juist de fluïditeit die mist in mijn denken, in ons denken, wat Rizvi aan de kaart stelt. “In setting up objectivity as criteria to uphold, western academia has distanced us from ourselves. For example, to provide an air of neutrality, we are taught not to write with ‘I’ in science, when in fact one of the ways in which we first understand the world is through the ‘I,’ and one of the ways in which we continue to understand the world and encounter nature, feel the breeze, look at green leaves, look at the sky, is through that ‘I.’” (p. 91)

Zelf zag ik je wel als open minded, Gedachten, maar er is een verschil tussen open staan richting ideeën en intrinsieke open gedachten hebben. Je hoeft niet de oude regels los te laten, maar je moet er geen waarde meer aan hechten. Op deze manier laat je niet jezelf gaan, je verandert niet zoals de stigma’s je er van behoeden, maar je komt dichterbij jezelf, je wórdt jezelf. Gedachten, leer schijt te hebben aan de regels die je worden opgelegd, luister naar anderen die deze regels niet kunnen of willen volgen, zij zijn juist degene naar wie we op kijken, waar we van leren. Hoezo blijven wij dan zo graag het gelopen pad bewandelen terwijl we net zo goed door het bos kunnen rennen?

Ach, Gedachten, de eeuwige tegenspraak die in ieder inzicht van ons schuilt, die door vloeit in wij als persoon, onze interesses, onze handelingen, je maakt het er ons niet makkelijker op. Maar als je stilstaat bij onze dualiteit, en naar ons beste kunnen accepteren, kan dit uitstralen naar anderen.
“And so through alliances and creating kin with others (human/non-human), we maintain and protect ourselves. And ultimately, that care for and with others is also self-care. Once we recognize ourselves, we begin to recognize our positions, and how our positions may be at the expense of others, be those others human or non-human. Once we recognize that we are placed in various systems in ways to keep us moving in place, we stop and then slowly realign our ways of experience, our praxis experiences radical change, one in which we might recognize decolonization as care.”
Juist door dit langzame proces, van ontdekken wie we zijn/onze plek in het grote, kunnen wij er daadwerkelijk van leren en een eigen pad bewandelen.

Je bent niet jezelf, maar je wordt jezelf.


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