Day 176: My difficult flatmate finally moved out

For 2 years I have been living with a female flatmate in a 50 square meters large apartment. We shared the dining room with a kitchen and a bathroom and each of us had our own living room with a bed. She initially moved in with her ex-boyfriends and before that, they both lived in a very small room within the apartment next to mine. Before they moved into our apartment building with a shared backyard and a garden I have met her a couple of times personally. It was she who initially contacted me via Facebook after finding my self-support vlogs on my YouTube channel. She was seeking support due to her emotional and mental state. So when she and her boyfriend moved into our building, I had an expectation that she will be open to my support and will begin the intensive process of self-transformation. However, she had big resistance, had intensive emotional episodes and almost never came out out of her room.

Initially, that girl had a very strong attachment to physical intimacy and was not able to fall asleep if at least one person did not sleep near her bed. In times when her boyfriend was away for a couple of days, she asked a friend or a neighbor to come sleeping in her room or she asked them if she can sleep on a floor in near their bed. I found out that that was because she was used to living with her parents in a very small apartment where she did not have her own room so she basically slept with her parents to her quite high age. Her parents were very possessive, they did not want her to ever leave them and wanted her to remain their child forever. Consequently, she did not develop proper social skills and to be able to function in this society independently. Eventually, she resisted their parents, left home and was so far in a couple of unsatisfying relationships with boys. She also told me how her parents fought a lot and were in conflict with basically all of the neighbors in the village. 

When she initially contacted me I found her very cute and did not know if she was in a relationship or not. Then when I met her in person at an event I asked her about that and she told me that she is with a boy however I should ask him about the nature of their relationship. So I did speak to that boy and he explained that they are in some sort of uncommitted relationship. Despite that, I decided not to interfere in their relationship since did not want to be responsible for a breakup. Also when they moved into our building, I respected that and supported her only with friendly conversations. However, after her boyfriend broke up with her, she asked me if I would be fine with her sleeping in my bedroom and I gave her permission. Overtime her desire for physical closeness increased and that was the stage where we had to look at the point of sexuality.

Regardless of how much she craved for the physical intimacy, she did not want to treat it as anything sexual. The reason for that was that she was terrified of getting pregnant and having a child because she considered herself as being only a child. Her level of emotional and psychological development was so low that she never had a job and lived only form social support money. She had very low self-esteem, also due to her problems with digestion and some other health problems. In the past 3 years, she made some steps forward since I supported her in getting used to sleeping alone in her bedroom and she started to go out more. A couple of months back she found herself a new boyfriend and he started to visit her in her room. When she moved out he also assisted her to pack her belongings and to move the furniture out so that the room could be repainted.

The reason for her moving out was because her basic communication pattern was only to complain about the problems in her life and this world. She also has been accusing me and all the neighbors for how she felt about herself and also committed some minor physical attacks. Usually the day after her outburst she apologized to those that she hurt, however, after some time the pattern repeated. Due to complaints, the landlord gave her a deadline for moving out. It is now a week since she moved out from the time I am writing this post and I feel massive relief since I no longer have to worry about someone attacking me on a daily basis. However, I have not been taking everything that I experienced with my ex-flatmate as one of her own faults. Sure she had her part of the responsibility and she did change quite a bit however I do understand that it takes time to change own behavior patterns.

I can say that we both learned a lot from our relationship. She learned from my own example of how to maintain a clear and orderly style of living and how to support self with writing. And I learned how deeply the traumatic experiences from childhood can be rooted and how the change in behavior takes a lot of time despite a very supportive environment. Thus despite some girl looking attractive to me visually, she can be holding past experiences that create conflicts in a life partnership. In the past, I have been attracted to girls that displayed problematic behavior and I desired to be in a relationship with them in order to fix and save them. But I have learned that such relationships are very compromising in terms of my mental state, health, and business success. So now I would rather live alone and enjoy the peace that suffering conflicts just to be in a relationship with someone.

Suggested related supportive educational audios:

Family and Friends
A Mother's Love of Guilt
The Crazy Mother
Who's Responsible for the Enslavement of Mankind
Life Review of a Dependent Personality
Releasing Trauma

Day 175: Taking the first steps in a restarted photography business

Recently I decided to restart my own professional services. After contemplation of what I am able to offer to others, I narrowed down the options to photography services. I purchased basic photo equipment and started to experiment with creating animal and human portraits. For that, I used cats of my neighbors and the neighbors and their friends themselves as the models. The location was the back yard of our apartment building where I hoped that would be also able to shoot other commercial sessions since there is enough space there. Yesterday I asked the landlord if he will allow me to do photoshoots there and he granted me permission. But then one of the neighbors complained that such activity would be too much of disturbance for her. I hoped that this place will enable me to at least make some business before an additional room will become available in the building that I could equip for a photo studio. Now I will due to additional constriction have to change my plans.

I feel disappointed because I hoped that by being allowed to shoot in the backyard I will be able to start offering professional photo services knowing that I have a proper location at a hand. Especially because I planned to start earning money with portraits for which I need a more intimate location. I also planned to offer wedding photography but usually, this kind of jobs are being negotiated at least one year in advance. If I am to rent an additional room for my photo studio I need to somehow get an additional several hundred euros by the end of this month or maybe even sooner since the payments are being collected by our landlord around 22nd day of each month for one month in advance. And what also prevents me from fully engaging in the photography business is a delay at a district court due to holidays where I filed the papers to change the name and services of my private institute as the legal entity that I plan to use to charge my clients. Usually, the applications are being resolved within one week however now I have been waiting for their response for over one month and they say that only in 4 days they will restart with sending the written responses to all applicants.

Despite all these downsides, I am at this time able to sell my services and issue invoices however I would need to do jobs at different locations and to use my current educational institute to be the legal entity which is not ideal. The question here is only how to get first jobs as soon as possible in order to generate income so that I could invest it in renting the studio and then to also purchase additional photo equipment. My plan was to visit other local businesses where a lot of people mingle and to place stands with my business cards so that people would be informed about my wedding and portrait photography. And to also visit other companies in surrounding to potentially get product and business portraiture jobs. I could also shoot events and stock photos however I am not sure how fast I could generate income from these services. There is also potential to get hired from online searches however I would need to invest a lot more time in the redesign of my website and search engine optimization. The other thing that prevented me from visiting local businesses already is the current high summer temperature that reached up to 40ºC in past weeks. However, since it is expected to drop to around 25ºC in a couple of days, that will enable me to distribute the stands with my business cards a lot easier very soon.

Then I need need to decide how to price my services. Years ago when I first started with photography I have been charging quite a lot however I lived in a different area, before the period of the financial crisis and I had much better equipment. I have been for the past 6 years living in the second largest city in our country that is considered to be much poorer than our capital city where I also lived before for some time. So I will have to research what the local prices are in order to be competitive and to also see how photography business has changed in the last decade of me not doing any professional photoshoots. What I am also not sure is if it would be best for me to stay in the current city or to move somewhere else. The reason why I moved here was due to predictions that I would be much more successful with the selling of educational software that I have been a national distributor of for several years. Since I then quit the software business there is nothing much that is holding me in my current city. Also, two of my best friends have moved out of the city to a farm and I have also been thinking of joining them there soon. On the other hand, a large city could offer more photo business opportunities and I have also quite settled down here and established a lot of new friendship connections.

There are many options to earn a lot of money by doing professional photography and many are not connected to my current location at all. For example, I could do much more profitable photoshoots for the nearby Austria residents where the economic situation is much better than in our country and I live very close to the border. However, I would need to become more skilled in speaking and writing in the German language. Then there are other international jobs available like becoming a destination wedding photographer but I do not see me just ready for such kind of demanding jobs yet. And of course, as I mentioned I could do many kinds of stock photography in order to generate a residual income. So what I find the most challenging at this moment is in which direction to turn, what kind of services, to whom and in what way to offer in order to start earning money. And even if I should besides photography also be offering graphic design services as I already did before when first established my own business and to even possibly add video services for which I also have sufficient technical equipment to produce some commercial videos.

And within all this, I also wonder if I should specialize in a specific field of photography and to develop my own style and genre of photos. One reason for this is for me to be able to stand out from the crowd of other photographers and the other reason is to have a mission that would be adding more value to my work. Because for the past 15 years I have strived to make an impact in this world by participating at many different international NGO projects. So I am thinking about how to use the photography to in a way also contribute to making this world the best place for all. Many photographers are focused on beauty and artistic aspects of the photos which definitely have their own market however I am not very excited about only creating something that is attractive to the human eye just from the perspective of esthetics. What I am not also very fun of is the discomfort of my physical body that I am feeling during the process of photography especially when using the computer. Doing photoshoots is much more dynamic however sitting long hours to process and manipulate the photos can be much more painful. Thus ideally I am looking at how to earn enough money by expressing myself creatively, to have as much positive impact on this world as possible and also to feel physically enough comfortable while doing it. Now I will be correcting my subconscious believes in order to become more stable and grounded:

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel resentment towards my neighbor due to believing that she made the execution of my photography services and earning money harder than necessary by not allowing me to shoot at the back yard of our apartment building. I realize that due to her past traumatic experiences she has become very sensitive to disturbances in her surrounding and that she needs to have a quiet end stress-free home environment. Thus I commit myself to understand the current state of her mind and to execute my business projects so that I will not create too big disturbances for her. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to treat our communal back yard as a place that is mostly unused and that each of us who share it can do anything that we desire there at any time. I realize that doing photoshoots with my clients there is an activity that would intrude into the lives of my neighbors too much and would disturb their inner peace. So I commit myself to when and as I plan any activity that is out of the ordinary in the space that also effects my neighbors to not only ask the landlord for permission but to also ask my neighbors if that would be something they are able and willing to tolerate.  

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel pressure in regards to my restarted photography business by believing that I need to rent an additional room in order to be able to execute specific studio photo jobs as the quickest and most reliable source of income. I realize that in any situation that I find myself in there are always many different solutions available to deal with any challenge and that I never need to feel any internal unrest about anything. Thus I commit myself to when and as I see that situation has become different than how I imagined initially, to breathe, slow myself down and see what other solutions are available as the best alternatives for me to be able to move forward.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to compare myself with the younger generation of photographers and to be threatened by them. I realize that I have been defining myself as a youthful person that looks in the eyes of others at least 10 years younger. That shows that I have not fully embraced the fact that I am getting older and will be very old and also look different someday. Thus I commit myself to when and as someone asks me about my age to not reply with me asking them to guess my age based on my outer appearance and then to be proud about them giving me about 10 years less than how I actually look. And also to treat other people, especially young ones as equal with the understanding that we all transition through different age periods however we can at any time find a place for anyone in this existence for all of us to collaborate and express ourselves equally.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel left out due to a past decade not working as a professional photographer. I realize that I have changed my business path many times in the past and that also in the future I might decide to do something very different if I find enough motivation for that. Thus I commit myself not to treat starting something new at any age as a defeat and having the same business for a long time s a victory but to rather treat all situations equally. What matters the most is how each of us within what we do is expanding our awareness and improving relationship towards self and others in order to practically live the principle of oneness and equality.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to see myself as an outcast due to living for the past 6 years in an area of our country with a different dialect and economic situation. I realize that nationalism and local patriotism are tendencies throughout every country on this planet besides many other acts of separation like race, gender, and religious conflicts. So I commit myself to treat everyone equally regardless of their original place of birth and differences of their looks or mental states. And to also treat any attempt of others to create separation between them and me individually within understanding how any expression of hate is actually a projection of bad self-image and traumatic experiences in the past.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel depressed due to discovering how easy is now to acquire the professional knowledge for any profession and how many people are sharing behind the scenes videos that display their excellency in what they do. I realize that me feeling low is the polarity state of my behavior pattern of wanting to feel elevated due to the perception that I am someone special because I possess special knowledge and skills that almost no other has. Thus I commit myself to stop being motivated by trying to impress others for the sake of receiving positive feedbacks but to decide for a profession when I will motivate myself to express my creativity and for my inner guidance to be the main measure of how I am letting the best of me to manifest in this reality.

Here are additional related links to a free online course where also you can learn how to become aware of and change your mind patterns and to some of the other supportive audios from the website that provide answers to any existential question imaginable:

DIP Lite course
The Outsider
Why Do I Feel Left Out?
What Does it Mean to Support Yourself
Isolation