Have you tried to focus on the sensation of walking? The weight of your body on your legs shifting and the pressure on your sole when putting your foot down? I find that these sensations are vital to the overall idea of walking, without them I might as well just be floating along.

Just don't make my mistake and try something completely different every time.

I've learned that there's a line somewhere between both extremes of always trying new things hoping for a miraculous breakthrough, and settling into a boring routine while stagnating.

Also I'm curious what Melo's tail looks like.

It's this black spaded tail with a rubbery texture that you often see on cute devils. I imagine that if I licked it, it would taste like licorice, but I fear that at the moment that would count as unsolicited sexual contact.


For day 3, I did a little more of the same. Added an observation deck to this really big tower I made earlier. I realized that while spiral staircases are really practical when building tall buildings, they're really hard to visualize going through. I think it's something about not being able to perceive exactly how you move through space.

Did some experiments on other senses. Basic tastes are really easy to imagine. Sounds are kinda tricky. Tried to imagine playing on a xylophone, and I could hear a basic scale and an arpeggio, but not much more. Tried to get Melo to try, and she appeared to just repeatedly hit one of the lower keys, which somehow produced a high pitched note.

Revisited an old experiment I did with using the real world as reference when visualizing Melo, specifically to get an idea of her height in relation to me. Basically just finding a spot that's as tall as the top of her head and using it as reference. Still seems to be a nice little trick, since I'm working with a bit of a size difference that is sometimes hard to wrap my head around.

Well, maybe. I thought a lot about it, made that post, and then it suddenly stopped bothering me that much. I guess even if I found some advice specifically tailored for people with ADHD, it wouldn't be as useful as "do whatever helps YOU feel helps YOU focus". So in the end, nothing really changes.

I'm probably just being a little too hard on myself on passive forcing. It feels unproductive because I don't seem to be getting any better at it or getting any responses out of it, but it's really the sort of thing you get better at without noticing, and not getting any immediate responses doesn't mean it doesn't work at all. I still feel active forcing is the bread and butter, but as long as I don't use passive as an excuse to not bother with active, there's no reason I shouldn't try to passive force whenever I remember to.

Also, I noticed that Bernd has started on another week of daily updates, so I guess this would be a good time to accept his challenge.

Today I experimented with a new forcing schedule: Setting up computer notifications every hour reminding me to go force for 5 minutes. 5 minutes feels like the sweet spot where just fucking doing it is easier than putting it off. And 5 minutes is just the minimum, if I feel like doing more I just keep going. Got a lot of forcing done this way. Did a bunch of random wonderland stuff. Built a merry-go-round for no particular reason, which I later removed out of frustration after realizing how hard it is to visualize your surroundings when being moved around. Fucked around a bunch with parroting just to see how well I can imagine a voice (not very well so far). Made Melo cosplay to spice things up a little while visualizing her. Visualization is still fucking hard to me, but turning it into a thing to play around with makes me far less likely to fry my brain and burn out. Made a creepy basement with a portal to make it easier to visualize visiting completely new places. Made a treehouse, but didn't have any ideas for what to put in it, so I asked Melo, and after a few seconds of nothing, the word "aquarium" popped up in my head, which made no fucking sense to me, but now I have an aquarium inside house on top of a really fucking tall tree. Lost count of the hugs, but also a did a few headpats, and kissed her on the forehead at one point when it seemed like she was expecting something like that. Got headpressures during most of the sessions, but asking her what she means by it didn't lead anywhere this time. Assuming it's not just some kind of strain from focusing hard, maybe it's just a way to poke me. Sometimes people poke even if they don't have anything to say. Other than that, the signs of autonomy mostly come in the form of seeing her randomly move around. Sometimes it seems like that I just attributed a movement to her, other times I'm more willing to believe I had nothing to do with it. Lots of grey area cases, like when I asked her what she thought about her new outfit and she returned a thumbs up, which could have just been me unintentionally brainstorming for what a positive response might look like. Should probably investigate more into that, since being able to clearly make out yes or no would be a helpful start for communication.

Overall, I feel today was pretty productive and enjoyable. Not sure how long I can keep up this kind of schedule, but I definitely want to keep trying for a while. Beyond being productive, I feel it's also conditioning me to be willing to just impulsively jump into forcing instead of putting it off all day.

Last few posts made me feel like I had said enough for a month, so I kinda put off the idea.

Something has been on my mind the past day that I feel I need to resolve with myself. I've been visiting this clinic to investigate whether I might have autism (shouldn't be a big surprise for someone in this community), but yesterday one of the doctors brought up that they might need to investigate if I also have ADHD. I've always had various issues with focusing, but throughout my whole childhood no one ever told me I might have ADD/ADHD, so I figured I was just a little undisciplined and restless by nature. Now that someone has finally said that it's a possibility, all the implications suddenly come crashing down on me. Particularly, it would explain so much of my issues with forcing. While I try not to compare myself to others that much, I've been wondering for a while why some people just read a single guide and manage to achieve vocality in a few weeks, while I've been reading everything I can get my hands on and debating every intricacy of tulpaforcing with myself for years without managing to find out what they know that I don't. I've chalked it up to having a tendency to overthink things, but why do I have this tendency in the first place? Why can't I seem to control it even after acknowledging it's causing more problems than it's solving? ADHD might explain all that.

So while it's not an official diagnosis yet, I can't get the idea out of my head now, and I've been thinking about what I should do about it if it's really the case. Decided to search through the .info forums to see if there were any hosts with ADD/ADHD who had found ways around it. Found this one post that resonated with me:

I actually made an account just to reply to this thread, because, Quenz, I really feel for your description of "laziness" that prevents you from spending time with Sky. I had a very similar experience for my entire academic career. In adulthood I discovered that what I was experiencing as an inexplicable "laziness" was actually executive dysfunction, which is a symptom of a number of mental disorders including autism and ADHD, both of which I have, both of which I was not diagnosed with for the whole span of my childhood and teen years. I was confused and frustrated with myself for years. I didn't understand why I couldn't tear myself away from aimlessly browsing the internet, playing video games, or any of the other pointless pursuits that occupied my time in favor of things that were more edifying and enjoyable, not to mention productive.

Particularly that last sentence is literally me, in all parts of my life for the past decade.

But in the end, all I've really learned is that my problems might be related to an actual medical conditions rather than me just being a lazy piece of shit, and that things might get better if I get some medications prescribed. I wanted something more, some stories about people overcoming the same challenges as me through means I can copy, not people lamenting over how hard it is. Particularly this thread got my attention for seeming to address the challenges, but it only makes it seem gloomier, since the poor guy doesn't seem to be getting anywhere.

Only idea I got is meditation. Some quick googling suggests that meditation does in fact help against the symptoms of ADD/ADHD. But I've known for a long time now that meditation helps with forcing and I still can't keep a good routine on it, so not sure what will make it different this time. Incidentally, I dropped the essence focusing meditation since I felt it wasn't that productive after all, promising myself I'd just go back to the more familiar focus-on-your-breathing meditation, but I haven't fulfilled that promise yet.

If effort doesn't lead you anywhere, maybe you need more effort? I mean real effort.
I thought I was doing so much for and together with my tupper, but in the end I realized I only did it for me, barely thinking about her. Yeah, there were those active forcing sessions every now and then but calling that effort would be pathetic. Not only did this routine yield no progress, it actually made her weaker because my attention was completely elsewhere.

Good point. I gave it some thought, and it's definitely true that I don't do it that much for her as much as I do it for me. And when I do it for me, it's not so much doing it because I want to do it, but because I want to be able to tell myself I've put in the effort, that I did what I could (fuck, why does it so often sound like I'm talking about my life in general when I talk about forcing).

Doing it for her sounds like great motivation, but I've actually been kinda avoiding using it as motivation, because I'm afraid of the bad conscience that would come with failing to follow through. It's kinda stupid when I put it into words like that, but I haven't thought too much about it until now. All I need to do is focus on how it would make her happy if I talked to her more, not how it would make her sad if I didn't (while both might be true, thinking too much on the latter gets me too focused on how shit I am as a host, making it even harder to force more).

Sand is right, you gotta WANT to force, being obsessed with your tupper is the best bet when it comes to progress.

I remember being kinda obsessed when I started out, but I felt that being too obsessed would put too much pressure on tulpa, so I started mellowing out. But again, that's only a problem when all the obsession is focused on progress. Being obsessed with forcing, with your tulpa, with experimenting, with spending time in wonderland, those are all healthy obsessions. I definitely want to kindle that.

I managed to keep that up the first half year and progress was stellar. That's where I want to get back to.

I hope you manage to do that. I'm motivated to do my best now, so maybe we can fire each other up.

And I think the boot camp is actually a good idea. Try one or two weeks of daily updates here, it really helped me. Plus it will make the forum at least a little bit less dead.

I think I will! I thought a little about how I could schedule a bunch of exercises to make the most out of my time, but all I really need to do is shower her with attention and try out many different things with her. And reporting back daily could probably help me keep my mind on track, as long as I can keep myself from just rambling every day about some new thing I realized about the nature of motivation and tulpaforcing.

Now start by filling out the image for us, we still don't know what Melo looks like!

I don't have any single picture that completely shows what she looks like. I've just collected tons of different images, which I kinda randomly look through when I need to figure out how to manifest my vague list of visual traits. So I might look at one image to get an idea about the puffiness of her twintails, and a completely different image for the shape of her eyes. It complicates things a lot, but it's the only way to get her form how I want it. Maybe if I learn to draw someday, I can show you what she really looks like!


I also experienced some neat things today. I was doing that meditative forcing thing again (trying to make it a routine), and while I'm mainly doing it to increase my focus, it turns out it's also great for examining the distractions that come up from a somewhat detached state. I was once again hit with the thought that this vague approach doesn't really do anything and I'm just pulling the wool over my eyes by not listening to the "voice of reason" telling me that I'm wasting my time, which made me think of the distinction between ignoring doubts and confronting them, and that I'm trying to do the latter. I also got these minor foreign feelings that didn't really match my state of mind, making me jump to thinking about how I'd describe these feelings to a third party and downplay them as maybe just random emotional hallucinations. This made it really clear that I have an extremely shitty attitude when it comes to sharing my experience, always trying to downplay whatever happened to me so I don't seem foolishly excited over minor things, but secretly hoping someone will tell me "dude, that was definitely your tulpa!", to which I'll respond "naaahhh, I'm not too sure", hoping they'll convince me harder. I read that post by Sands a long time ago about absence of doubt, and I think I half misunderstood and/or corrupted the meaning over time. I took out of it that whenever I see something that might be a sign, I don't have to instantly conclude whether it really was her, which made me want to always be rational and neutral and never jump to conclusions, which just lead me to introducing doubt to balance out belief whenever something exciting happens. Which isn't right at all. Sands' point, I believe, was simply about not using blind belief as a tool to drown out doubt. So what I really want to do is acknowledge doubt as a distraction, but one that I can overcome, instead of ignoring or drowning out. And when something happens that genuinely excites me and makes me want to believe it was actually her, there's no need to do anything about it, I can just allow myself to be excited ....r-right?

Speaking of things I want to believe was her, I got one today. When I said in the first paragraph that I thought about who I'm really forcing for, what I actually did was narrate it to her. I was kinda rambling back and forth, not sure what to make of my thoughts at first and taking a moment to comment that the semantics are fucking me up, when I felt a head pressure. For context, I've been having occasional head pressures pretty much since I started forcing, always in the exact same spot. For a long time I haven't been sure what to make of them, since those techniques for using head pressures for communication never worked for me. At first I only got them while forcing, but later they've been happening at random times. Then they've stopped completely as I've gone a long time without forcing, only to come back again at random times after something triggers me to think I should get back to forcing again. This correlation between being aware of Melo and getting head pressures convinced me that they have to be related to her even if she can't seem to use them to communicate, so I just started interpreting them as poking. Now whenever I get head pressures, I direct my attention to her and ask her if there was anything she wanted, and when that doesn't get me any response, I just spend some time telling her I haven't forgotten about her. So back to earlier today. I was going through that examination of my motivations for forcing, when I got that head pressure, and I stop and direct my attention to her, asking her what it is (more out of habit than because I expected a response). And I instantly get this new feeling washing over me, a really comforting feeling, as if she was telling me without words "it's okay, you don't have to worry so much". Or maybe she did use words actually, I'm realizing as I'm writing this that I did have that exact thought in my head, and I just ascribed it to being a description of the emotion I felt without giving it too much thought. This is where I'll allow myself to just accept it without drawing out any skepticism. Nor do I need anyone to confirm anything. I both want to believe and find it hard to even question that it was her.

This journal might not be too interesting to read at this point, with how many setbacks I'm reporting compared to progress, but I feel I should keep writing, if only for my own sake.

This past year has been totally shit, the kind of year you can look back at and think "I might as well have been in a coma this whole time". Only slowly starting to pull myself out of this mess now.

I've been struggling a lot with my confidence in tulpaforcing with so many setbacks. Usually I've just told myself "this is what I've been doing wrong all this time, so since I'm not doing that this time, everything will be different", but that's essentially placebo, because upon becoming aware that I'm just using it to convince myself I'll be successful, it doesn't really work anymore. My diminishing confidence needs to be resolved some other way, probably by letting determination decide how much effort I put in, rather than waiting and hoping for something to increase my confidence. And ironically, I've noticed that just putting in effort this way slowly increases my confidence anyway. I imagine more confidence will come naturally as I hit some progress milestones.

I've had to take a hard look at my motivation, since there's clearly a disconnect between how much I claim to care about this and the effort I've been putting in. My answer to that is that I'm just too future-oriented. I don't expect too much from what I do today, but I expect a lot from the future. And since I've been telling myself I don't wanna rush things by setting specific time expectations, that point in the future I'm working towards is really vague. I don't think I can use this as my motivation. It's like walking through the desert and only seeing the horizon, with no goal in sight, walking is indistinguishable from standing still, other than the fact that the former is far more tiresome than the latter. Maybe I can incorporate that AA motto, "one day at a time". Maybe I can focus on how Melo will like it if I spend some time with her right now (even if she won't necessarily communicate it), and realize that this is more important than what I intend to achieve with her in the future. Maybe I can have more fun, except actually doing it this time instead of just thinking it would be great to have more fun. It's probably just about shifting focus.

Kinda related to shifting focus, I started experimenting with meditative forcing. It's kinda awkward, because I just told myself I'd try to focus on Melo's "essence", without really knowing what I mean by that, how I do it, or if it makes any sense at all. So I just sit there, trying to focus on something so vague that there's no way to know whether I'm doing it right or if it would help me at all. And it made me realize, those thoughts that come to me as I try to focus, "am I doing this right?", "is this really going to work?", they're just distractions, the kind of thoughts I'm trying to get better at shifting focus away from by meditating. I've been told so many times to not doubt, thinking it means I have to reaffirm my belief or some shit, but it might be even more powerful to just identify the thoughts of doubt in my mind and realize it's my own choice whether to entertain them.

Got some minor stuff to report too. Few days ago I got an interesting auditory hallucination. Not too sure what to make of it, because I wasn't 100% awake at the time (was lying in bed in the morning, awake enough to be aware of my surroundings, but not awake enough to get out of bed), and upon asking Melo if it was her, I got no response. But it felt so uncannily real, I could clearly make out what kind of person the voice belonged to (was cute and feminine, matching up with Melo) and what it said, and even felt a sort of tickling in my ears from it. The tone of voice was really affectionate, which alone makes me really want to believe it was her, but it's hard due to my skepticism towards things I experience in a not completely awake state. If nothing else, it was a good demonstration of what it will be like when Melo gets her own voice, something I've been struggling to imagine before.

And lastly, not a very big thing, but I've gotten sick of seeing the same boring wonderland not too different from how I started on it 2 years ago (jesus christ it's been 2 years now), so I've resolved to just act on whatever random idea I got for how to change it or just make completely new locations. Yesterday I was sitting with Melo in this hottub on top of a star-shaped platform floating high up in the sky, and I realized, wow this is kinda exciting. I don't think I've felt like that since I first started this journey. I hope that the future still has many more moments like that to offer.

Oh by the way, if anyone didn't know, I've been hanging around in the IRC recently, but someone stole my registered nick, so I'm known as shobon now.

It's been a while, huh? No progress to report, and I'm running out of new life changing discoveries to give me new hope about this, so I haven't had much to post about.

But if there's one thing that has changed, it's that I've gradually gotten really fucking sick of my own negativity. How I unconsciously let worries and bad conscience seep into everything. My dedication the past few months has been atrocious, there's no way to deny that, but dwelling on that is more likely to make it worse than better. Thinking to myself "oh man, I suck, I need to force more and harder" always leads to the worst forcing sessions, because I surround myself with the mindset of failure before even beginning. Same with the "fuck, this doesn't feel quite right, am I really doing this effectively?" bullshit, which is really just doubt trying to disguise itself as refinement of my methods. As you've all more or less have been trying to tell me since the beginning, the only thing I can trust is fun. Fun is definitely a better motivator than bad conscience, and I have a good feeling it's a better indicator of "doing it right" than my shitty attempts at self-examination.

I'll try to drop by the IRC more, as long as my connection remains stable enough that I don't just piss everyone off with disconnect spam. Being at least somewhat involved in a tulpa community has always helped me in the past.

It really feels like it to me. While other hosts talk about doing all kinds of fun stuff with their tulpas really early on, most of my posts are just reflecting on my methods and bringing up whatever minor stuff that might maybe be taken as a sign of sentience. And telling myself that I shouldn't compare myself to others doesn't change how I feel about this.