Sometimes I stare at my reflection in the mirror sometimes and I ask myself what I think I’m doing. Or who the hell it is that I think I am. I am not a great thinker, or a great writer. I am not influential to a great number of people, or even necessarily to myself, as I fight with myself in my own mind often, dragging my immature inner child kicking and screaming, forcing myself through some of my daily rituals that I’d rather skip some days. That inner voice is very persuasive.
“One missed workout is not that big of a deal.”
“You don’t have to write in your journal every day.”
“No one actual reads this blog anyway, so why even bother?”
I often lose scope of why this started. It was mostly driven as introspective self help. I turned inwards a lot, reading more books, and writing in a physical journal in order to keep my own thoughts in order, or at least, on a schedule that keeps my existential crises to a minimum, and I guess, keeps me from writing in this blog, mostly because I worry that I don’t have anything interesting to say.
The things I say here are meant for me, mostly, so what could I possibly put here that I don’t write in a physical journal? I think it’s that my journal is written somewhat condescendingly to myself, and is much harsher than the average person would want to really read or hear from someone who wants what is best for them. So maybe what I always wanted this blog to be was something more compassionate, something that someone would read and think, “maybe I’m not so bad.”
I worry about that a lot. That I’m not good. I have vivid memories of very specific moments in my life where I was just…not as good as I should have been. I was selfish, or ignorant, or indignant. I berated, screamed at, or gaslit people. At times, I would just say I was piece of shit. These memories of mine, like to creep up on me when I’m feeling nostalgic, to remind me that everything else was good back then, but I was not. Perhaps it’s better to just remember that I was just a kid, and even now, I’m trying my best, but I can still come up short in my behaviour. Sometimes I just worry that improvement is truly impossible, and that I’m just pretending to be good because that’s what I want, and at the drop of a hat, all of my so-called personal development will disintegrate, replaced with old habits. Excellence is a habit, built deliberately, with an end goal in mind, but oriented in process. This is why it needs patience. My bad habits took years to form, and impulses are momentary. All the terrible things I say about me need to be put in their proper place, as bad habits that need to be replaced with something better. It is replaced with good intention, and deliberate action. With self-compassion, and patience.