Another uneventful month, to finish up an uneventful year. Yeah, 4 days ago it was a year since I started. Instead of being celebratory, like a birthday (no, I didn't make cake, sorry), I've actually been dreading that date for a while, since it's hard to look at a whole year without vocality without kinda feeling like a failure. But life goes on, and I'll keep on doing this even though my expectations are honestly rock-bottom at this point.

I still wanna be a little hopeful that this year will be more successful, and I'm putting some more hope on meditation this time. I realized that when I fall off from daily forcing, it's not so much that I lose motivation, it's that I feel completely incapable of forcing. I seem to lose my ability to focus on things when I'm stressed out about things in my life, which it turns out I'm extremely prone to. In the hopes that it will be the miracle cure for my troubled mind, meditation is now my top priority in life. I even prioritize it over forcing itself, hoping that forcing less with a more focused mind will be more effective than forcing more with an unfocused mind. Let's just hope I don't achieve enlightenment first.

You expect whatever she'd say outside your "control" to be much better than what you could consciously devise for her character? Your expectations are too big, and you aim too high.

That's actually a really good point. My perfectiautism seems to have set a standard that I can't even properly define before I see it fulfilled. That doesn't sound good even from a narration perspective. I'm gonna have to rethink a few things.

It's a long story and my hand hurts. I don't really interact with my imagination anymore.

Fede had a tough imaginary life.

It's not a problem for me now, though. It just means I have to give her plenty of attention to keep her satisfied, which I intend to do anyway.

Unless you mean to say that she'll start to hate me for not giving her anything to do when I'm just too busy to pay attention to her.

I decided on a personality when I started out, and though I can't really confirm at this point that all of those traits are currently manifested in her, I don't see what else I can do except assume so as long as I don't notice any deviation.

There's one source of doubt that I find hard to get rid of: The feeling of doing it wrong. Lack of results can usually be explained by either not working hard enough, or using the wrong method. If you know it's the former, that's simple to amend, there's only one thing to do: Force more. But if you even suspect that it's the latter, that's a total motivation destroyer. Throw forcing more out the window, because even forcing at all is hard enough if you have the feeling that you might never get any results because you're doing everything wrong. This shit is why you should never put a pathological overthinker on a path that has a lot of time of overthinking things in between milestones.

I have removed one source of this doubt by upgrading my bullshit filter a little. There's this idea that goes around a lot, "if your tulpa isn't saying anything, it's just because you don't know how to listen to her". The part the implies you need practice to communicate with your tulpa seems perfectly reasonable. But it also implies that the only reason you can't hear your tulpa is because you're doing something wrong, not because you simply need to work more and give her more time to develop sentience. This kind of thinking has turned too many forcing sessions into "fuck, I didn't pull it off this time either", and it's about time I got rid of it.

Any advice for overcoming the rest of this doubt? And if one of you cheeky cunts say "force more" I'll smack you on the gabber i swear on me mum

Despite my need to air some of my doubts, things aren't going too shabby. I'm just balancing on the border between eagerness and impatience right now. In a couple of months, I'll be traveling abroad for a while, and I don't get to bring friends. The flight plan I'm filing only lists one of me, but I don't plan to be the only one who gets to stay on the aircraft. All those difficulties of going to a new scary place where you don't know anyone will become a lot less painful if you have someone who's always there for you. So the next step in my "masterplan" is to do everything I can to have a healthy and talkative tulpa before then. Conveniently, I don't have a lot of obligations in the meantime, so it's a perfect opportunity to step my game up. I just hope I can do it.

Oh yeah, back to actual progress report things. I've resumed meditation. I'm slowly getting into wonderland based forcing again, it seems I stopped doing this at some point because it required too much concentration, but I realized that's exactly why I should be doing it, things that require a lot of concentration are usually effective. I've made a subtle change to how I approach concentration challenges: If I can't focus entirely, I keep moving forward. Like, sometimes my visualizations don't feel as vivid as the previous day, because the mind is a moody bitch, and I'd get demotivated and stop after not getting to the same level, telling myself my concentration isn't good enough right now. That's stupid, so now I just go with what I have. Sometimes the concentration comes to me later, and even if it doesn't it's a hell of a lot better than waiting for perfect conditions to force.

I have some more faith in my ability to visualize using all senses after a particular experience where exploring an unexpected part of her body lead to an unexpected physical reaction from me. Wait, that sounds way worse than if I just put it straight. I fingered her bellybutton and got a boner, that's all.

Like I occasionally do, I've been going around rereading various guides in case there's still things I've missed previously. This time I found something interesting in Fede's guide, namely what he says about how a realistic personality needs some context outside of its interaction with you. At first this didn't quite click with me, because I never conceived of Melo as someone who would feel the need to withdraw from me, that would be downright contrary to her personality. But the part about treating your tulpa as a doll that you occasionally bring out to play with kinda struck me, because it really does feel like that sometimes. I thought about it for quite a while, whether I should give her some new hobbies or something that I can imagine her engaging in when I'm not there, but I couldn't find anything that fit. I'd have to completely rethink her personality if I wanted to imagine her willingly going off to do something alone. So what can I imagine her doing when I'm not paying attention to her? Hanging around me, hoping I'll pay attention to her. I'm completely satisfied with this conclusion, it gives her personality context and alleviates the feeling that I'm just bringing her out like a doll. It comes with the consequence of feeling bad about not paying enough attention to her, but that's my burden and I will carry it.

jesus christ how did this post get so long
there's probably even more but let's just stop

I'm not Fede (as far as you know) and I can't speak for belief implanting, but that calls to mind something else, which is habit/reward stuff. I only have this article to hand to show you what I mean - it kind of meanders between data collection and habit formation. But yeah, I dunno if you'll have seen some stuff like that before. But worth considering I guess.

I've actually read a whole book about that, called The Power of Habit. That article is like a condensed version of that book.
>By CHARLES DUHIGG
Oh right, that's the author of the book.

Conscious habit forming could be really useful, but I've found it hard to actually implement that habit cycle in anything. It says you need a cue and reward, but coming up with those are hard. I can't exactly give myself a cookie every time I successfully complete a task.

Id? Do we Freud now?

Freud literally predicted Fede. He must have been on to something.

I have a feeling that it's better to not assume that a part of yourself is not under your own control. You make those choices, not something else, as even your unconscious thoughts are a part of yourself. Just remember to stop and think rationally before continuing so you're not purely following whatever emotional conclusion you have come to.

It's more of a metaphor, I don't mean to imply that these things are out of my control and responsibility. I'm just arguing that sometimes we fuck up, and it's not necessarily because we didn't desire to not fuck up. You should all trust me on this, I'm an authority on fucking up.

Woah, Fede bringing on the heat.

I'm not apathetic, I'm just worthless at anything that requires consistent effort.

Oh, that makes sense. I might have been approaching this with a too future-oriented mindset.

Generally I enjoy stuff like anime, video games, eroge, and music. Things that I've found it hard to incorporate into tulpaforcing without taking away too much focus from it.