Becoming a better writer and Homo sapien.
I need to remember that time spent questioning if something is possible to do is often better spent trying to actually do it.
It’s like being a pundit, looking at your life from the outside.
It’s better to trust my ability to work than my abilities at precognition.
I’m having trouble with anxious thoughts when trying to get to sleep.
It took a few nights of this before I came up with a phrase I repeat to myself to try and shut things down:
Don’t try to play the game when the other team is on the bus.
If the anxiety comes from something that already happened, or something that might happen another day, there’s nothing I can do about it while lying in bed in that moment.
It’s like a team playing in an empty stadium, convinced the points they rack up matter in a real game.
It’s helping, so I thought I’d share.
I returned a library book early.
Two chapters in, I kept seeing references to the last several books I checked out. The book wasn’t making new connections for me, so I stopped reading.
Some nights in college my friends and I would play a game.
We’d split into two teams at the video store. Each team picked a potentially terrible horror movie none of us had heard of. We’d rent them both, and watch a double feature.
Whichever team found the better movie got paid back for the rental by the other team.
I don’t remember many of those movies, but no matter how bad they were, we watched them from start to finish.
I remember in middle school and high school a common complaint that I’d hear (and sometimes say myself): “When am I ever going to need this?”
We’d wonder why we would need the quadratic equation, or how to properly do a flexed-arm hang, or remember some seemingly obscure Supreme Court case.
The answer we usually got was a combination of “It might be on the test,” and “You don’t know what’s going to be useful to you when you grow up.”
I don’t remember the movies, but I remember having fun with my friends.
I don’t remember everything I learned in high school, but more of it turned out to be useful than I anticipated.
That hindsight makes it hard to put something down or walk away. What if I’m wrong about this? What if it turns out to be useful later?
It’s not necessarily that I’ve honed my decision-making skills. There’s less later than there used to be.
I got older, made choices, and there are fewer possible futures I need to prepare for.
Maybe there’s some alternate world where I remember all my math because I work for NASA or Toyota. Maybe there’s another me that kept playing music regularly and retained more music theory and finger callouses.
I can still change and grow. I’m not on a single, set path. But the choices I make are the product of choices I made.
That makes it easier to see the difference between a book that I’m enjoying and a book I can put down.
I don’t know everything that’s going to be on the test, but I have a better idea of what kind of tests I’m taking now.
It’s easy to think of identity as a fixed point. Defining yourself like you’re a basket of tangible things.
I am these desires. These things I like. My perspective. How I understand others perceive me.
A narrow definition can cut a person off from other possibilities: I am not this. That’s not something I do. It can negate the value of the present moment.
If I see myself as a noun, everything I do either fits with that definition or doesn’t. Every action, every moment, gets judged in relationship to those set terms. X isn’t something I should be doing because I am Y.
Which is why thinking that I’m a verb feels healthier.
“In the beginning, we believe that there must be someone in order for the breathing to be possible. There must be someone in order for the walking to be possible. But in fact the walking, the breathing is enough. We don’t need a walker; we don’t need a breather. Think of the rain. We’re used to saying, “the rain is falling,” or “the wind is blowing.” But if it’s not falling, it’s not the rain. And if it’s not blowing, it’s not the wind. It is the same with breathing and walking with the Buddha. We begin to touch the reality of no-self. There is only the breathing going on; there’s only the walking going on.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Breathe, You Are Alive!
Or, put another way:
“It’s not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.”
– David S. Goyer’s dialogue for Batman in Batman Begins
Some pressure I feel to define myself comes from outside. To swiftly package what they want to know. Meeting new people. Applying to jobs. Being a person on the internet.
There’s self-imposed pressure to maintain ideas of my attributes. Like a hidden character sheet that shows what I’m skilled at, and where I’m lacking. As if I should refer back to this rubric to remind myself how to be myself.
I want to work at seeing myself as a verb.
To stop trying to make myself make sense but end up feeling broken, or lesser; stop justifying the present moment with a forced connection to some fossilized identity.
I hope to see meaning in the things I choose to do because I give them my full attention and effort.
The funk creeps in disguised as a search for something better.
Procrastinating by reading up on a better way to organize and prioritize, or scrolling for one more interesting bite of content — Flipping back the pages on an overstuffed menu, thinking you missed what you actually want to order.
The funk waves a pennant in the stands, pretending to be a supporter shouting “You can do better!” It wears your team colors, but placed bets against your victory.
The funk wins not by convincing you to stop doing anything, but by making you believe there is a right thing to do. It gets you asking the wrong questions.
I find the way to get the upper hand is when I can ask “What can I do?” instead of “What should I do?”
Momentum is the funk’s natural enemy, not perfection or strategy.
The order of my to-do list doesn’t matter if I’m not checking anything off.
I need to remind myself: Prioritize when there’s energy and clarity. Otherwise, don’t be ashamed of reaching for low-hanging fruit.
My future self will appreciate not having to pick up the slack.
This Builds Character 