Hey guys, I just thought I could update you a little bit on my journey. A lot of stuff happened in my life that I´d like to share.
PARAGLIDING
Yes, I went paragliding with a good friend of mine primarily for the reason of why not?
The day before it happened my mind had all these delusions of how mind-blowing it would be to jump out of an airplane, not knowing if I am going to survive or not. Well, in the end it turned out to be a pretty ordinary experience. But I can see it being an addicitve activity since it´s pretty hard to be occupied with thinking when you are free falling and tumbling through the air.
Now after three weeks time I have almost no recollection of the actual event but I have it on video for people to enjoy and laugh at.
I don´t know if this acivity changed anything in me, maybe I got more courageous and bold in my daily-life? I´m not sure. I would recommend doing it even though I didn´t get a huge adrenaline-rush out of it but that´s completely subjective I guess. It always takes me a while to integrate such "extraordinary" events in my life, so maybe one day I´ll wake up being totally shocked that I actually did that. But who knows.
WOMEN & RELATING TO PEOPLE
Well, obviously this girl that I fell in love with can still teach me a lesson or two since we ended up sitting beside each other again this new semester. As fate wanted it, there were no other seats left. A month ago - when my training started again - I was actually frightened that the whole year would be the same as the last one with me not getting over her, pointlessly lusting after her and daydreaming about a relationship with her. It all came back on a day when I showed extremely needy and submissive behaviour towards her which resulted in me being just so bored and annoyed with myself for doing that again that I thought to myself "If tommorow will be the same as today, I´m just going to kill myself". Looking back on it now it seems like a very extreme reaction but I just had no capacity for suffering anymore and I just wanted to finally have some peace. On that day I came home and I felt like all those thoughts and emotions that I ever had about her were coming back to torture me and rip me apart but I just let them all play out and afterwards I fell asleep from exhaustion. When I woke up again I felt like a storm had passed and I said to myself: "Never again." And that was the end of that.
It also became clear to me that my desperate wish to have a girlfriend was not motivated by joy and sharing love with another human being but to prove something. Yes, I wanted to prove to this girl that although she rejected me I was still able to get a girlfriend which would be superior to her (whatever that means). It was a purely egoic motivation and it´s no wonder that the universe didn´t align with me to help me fulfill that pathetic desire. It took me a lot of honesty to really figure that one out. It eventually came to me when I pictured myself with my new girlfriend and all I could see was me showing her off to other people so that I get their approval and recognition. It´s a good thing that I wasn´t able to get a new girlfriend as I would´ve started a relationship for all the wrong reasons.
I also brought a lot of clarity to my approval-seeking tendencies and I don´t know why or how but these patterns now simply resolved over time. It´s only now that I realize that how exhausting and pointless it is to hope for other people´s approval constantly, modelling yourself after the wishes of other instead of just being yourself. Being yourself actually seems like the hardest thing to do but what´s great about it is that the people that will be left on your side will be the ones that appreciate your authentic self instead of your submissive, approval-seeking self.
I actually have to laugh now when I think about all those times when I did things only so that people would like me more. I mean it´s sooo exhausting and - in the end - counterproductive that it just baffles me how I could ever be so confused to think that this is the right way to live.
I feel very at easy when I talk to women now primarily because I know that they can´t fulfill me. Enjoying life together is fun, for sure, but if I´m dependent on another person to act a certain way for me to feel good I´m once again participating in the insanity-dance of the ego. Right now I´m still single but I feel like I´m getting there. It´s like each week I learn something new about how my ego operates and I think to myself: "Wow, good thing I learned to let go of this pattern before entering a relationship." I guess eventually this learning-process will end and I will be able to have a relationship that´s free of all my past-baggage and ego-expectations. I´m not to hard on myself since a year I was a social recluse and "successfully" interacting with people in general was not even an option. I learned a lot in the last year.
NO MASTURBATION
I think I already wrote about this but I really urge everyone to check these websites out: yourbrainonporn.com and nofap.org.
I once tried to stop masturbating during the sommer months but I eventually relapsed. But now I´m willing to go all the way up to 90 days. I`m on day 14 now and I feel really good. If you believe in this method or not my subjective experience of it is that it really brings a lot of those benefits that these websites describe.
I think porn-addiciton and unhealthy masturbation-habits are generally dangerous because these are subjects that no one talks about. And I have to be honest, when I first started masturbating to porn when I was 12 years old (now 23) I though nothing of it but as the years went by I felt more and more depressed and distant from myself after masturbating to porn. I thought the sadness afterwards simply occured because I was on such a high from masturbating that when I came back to my "natural"-state I was only experiencing the emotional jetlag. But now I see how porn really kills every motivation to go out and meet women because if can watch the most crazy sexual escapades, not get rejected by a real woman and finish off anyway, why bother taking the initiative to meet real girls? I could go into more detail but I think it´s clear what the problem here is.
JOB DISSATISFACTION
I´m no longer convinced that the training that I´m doing right now is the right thing for me. Last year I studied my ass off to get the best grades in class but was it actually fulfilling? No. I think of all these stressful hours that I put into learning things that are of no interest to me just to feel five seconds of relief and happiness for getting a good grade. Is this really how I want to live my life? There must be a job out there that is more aligned with myself. Maybe it´s also time to leave my small town, there´s nothing here for me and I feel like I can sense this inner pull to go someplace else.
"Happiness / Something in my own place / I'm standing naked / Smiling, I feel no disgrace / With who I am/ I´m a lucky man...with fire in my hands"
(The Verve - Lucky Man)
That boy was fearless, he tried out a lot of different things and if they didn´t work out he would try again or he would simply leave them, turning his attention to something else with unbridled enthusiasm and excitment for what he might discover or find out. 
