Tag Archives: Self-Care

Changing, Discovery, Dreaming, Greatness, Growth, Hope, Mental Health, Mindfulness, Peace, Reflections, Self-Care, Self-Love, Wellness

Without Action

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When all is said and done what will my legacy look like? As you probably know by now, this is something that I spend a lot of time thinking about. I know, I know, I’m putting the cart before the horse. Thinking about what the results will look like before I’ve put in the requisite time and effort. I can’t help it, but one can dream right? In a way, this keeps me motivated and pushing forward. It works for me, but it may not necessarily work for you.

It didn’t always work for me either. I’ve always been a dreamer, even if I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, at times. Dreaming was done, but what came of it wasn’t always productive. I spent more time fantasizing about crushes and becoming famous than I spent thinking about career aspirations and what kind of person I could become. I dreamt of nonsense not of impact. I spent more time in my subconscious than I did in the waking world. It was safer that way, easier. Nothing to goad my anxiety into overdrive. No embarrassment that I would have to suffer through. I did plenty of dreaming in my teenage years, but it wasn’t healthy for me. 

I didn’t go out and live my life. I didn’t put enough effort into my schoolwork or in finding connections and developing relationships with other people. All of my interactions were surface level or non-existent. I spent more time talking to people in my dreams than I spent talking to them in real life. I was partially held back by fear, and I was partially held back by having unrealistic expectations of what a friendship was supposed to look like. I’ve always been an introvert, but early on I was also painfully shy—I don’t know if I ever fully grew out of that—that being said, friendships had always been hard to come by. The effort that it took to try to maintain the status quo was already draining enough, I didn’t have the energy to invest in new friendships or to deepen the ones that I had. To say that my shyness stunted my growth would be an understatement. But we all have to work through adverse circumstances. 

We’ve all been raised by nature, nurture, pure dumb luck, and perseverance. Your parents raise you using certain values, but there comes a time when you start thinking for yourself, and you either continue to agree with them or you start diverging from them. Thinking for yourself is the final stage in your transition from childhood to adulthood. At some point we have to grow up, whether we want to or not. With growing up comes the understanding that sometimes shit happens. But sometimes you can do shit about your circumstances. Either way though, you have to make something of your life. You can’t just exist for the sake of existing. Your life should have meaning, purpose, and passion. Without those, you are living without actually living.

I’ve done more than my fair share of that. Of course that’s something that I regret, but the past is not something that can be changed. Oftentimes people say to, “live life without regrets.” That’s a statement that I agree with somewhat, but I don’t adhere to fully. How can you move forward without regret? So, for me it comes with a caveat. I don’t regret the things that I’ve done or the decisions I’ve made because there were lessons to be learned from them. But I do regret some of the things that I’ve said that have hurt people or ruined relationships. I do regret the times when I should’ve spoken up but didn’t. And I do regret the time that I’ve wasted. Our time is precious and we only have so much of it, so it’s best to use it wisely.

You might be able to spend five years at a job that you hate, if you’re still learning or growing or making good money. We all can come up with reasons for staying, but it usually comes at a cost. Every week or month or year is a good time to think deeply about what your job is costing you. Weigh the pros and the cons. Check in on yourself regularly—it’s easy to forget to do so. Sometimes we’re so busy looking out for our family or friends or significant others that we forget to look out for ourselves. That’s something I’ve been getting better at the past few years, but I’m still learning how to do it. Looking out for myself is not something that came natural to me. I attribute that to my Asian-American heritage, the morals I learned from church, and what I learned from school (amongst other things). The way I was raised stressed politeness, humility, helpfulness/generosity. None of which are bad traits to have, in a vacuum. 

But sometimes what’s unsaid or hidden in subtext is equally as important. That’s become clear to me as I become a better writer. Unfortunately, what was unsaid here was vital information that I missed. I was told time and time again to help others, to not be selfish, to focus outwardly rather than inwardly. Which is all well and good, but I was in no position to do so. I couldn’t impact others or contribute meaningfully to society with the war that was going on inside of my mind and my soul. Some people are ready-made from the moment they were born to be a positive influence on the world around them. Many others will need time to develop. Some may not ever develop. 

For a while, I was part of the latter group. On the one hand, I did not develop or learn, grow or improve. I was stubborn and stuck in my ways. Trying to approach things the same way, and expecting different results. But on the other, I didn’t know any better. I didn’t know what doing things in my best interest even looked like. I thought maybe it was making my parents proud, or meeting my friend’s expectations, or pursuing a career path that was prestigious. Later on it was being a company man and a team player. But none of that was fulfilling, none of that satisfied me. Because I wasn’t living for me, I was living for them. It sounds bad when you put it that way, but it wasn’t weird to me at the time. It was all I had known really. It took me years of therapy to break me out of that mentality. 

Doing things for yourself does not make you selfish. Nor does looking out for your future. Nor taking the time to get your shit together. Sometimes we need to take a step back and focus on ourselves before we can help others. And helping others should not come at the detriment to your own health. It’s hard to help others when you haven’t helped yourself. Unfortunately, I learned this the hard way. I neglected my self-interest and ambition for more than two and a half decades. It took me more than a year and a half of therapy for me to even figure out what I wanted. Even though I had grown up, I still didn’t know what I wanted to be, because I hadn’t thought about it in so long. I didn’t think that I was allowed to be what I wanted to be. I had been conditioned to want to be what others wanted me to be.

I know now that it never satisfies. If you’re living for others and not for yourself, you’re essentially telling yourself that you are second place in your own life. Your desires and dreams take a backseat to the desires and dreams of your parents, your peers, your employer, or what have you. Trust me, that’s not very fun. Life is meant to be enjoyed. You’re supposed to work hard, but you’re also supposed to have time to rest and relax. You’re supposed to be kind and helpful to others, but you’re also supposed to be kind and helpful to yourself. Put yourself in position to have a positive impact on those around you by putting yourself in position to succeed. 

Everyone has their own strengths, weaknesses, passions, and interests. Do what you can to make the best use of the skillset you’ve been given. Dream big and never give up. But when you dream, make sure that there is a path to meaningful action that follows. Think of what steps you need to take to get to where you want to go. Without action, your dreams bear no fruit. Without action, your dreams are just hot air. Without action, your dreams are meaningless. 

I know that full well. I have nothing to show for all the dreaming I did in high school. I didn’t get the girl. I didn’t become famous. I didn’t even come any closer to figuring out what I was put on this earth to do. All that dreaming left me with my wheels spinning, wondering what’s next? While I was playing out fantasies in my head, others were out living their lives, pursuing their passions, finding happiness. They were honing their crafts, learning what they needed to learn, mapping out their career paths. I didn’t envy them, I still don’t. But I do wonder what if that had been me? What if I hadn’t wasted all that time?

But as I said earlier, I can’t change the past. I can however, move forward. I can live in the present, and work hard to set up my future. I can think about what kind of legacy I want to leave. I can think about how I want to make an impact. I can think about how I want to be remembered. I can keep on dreaming. I can think about all these things, but I must do everything in my power to make my dreams a reality. If I want to leave a legacy I have to do something worthy of it. That’s what keeps me moving. That’s what I remind myself every time that I’m having a tough day. The process may be hard now, but the end result will be beautiful. It will take time and effort upfront, but it will pay off later. It may seem premature to think about my legacy now, but I have to. I can’t get to where I want to go if I don’t know where I’m going.

Changing, Discovery, Dreaming, Greatness, Growth, Healing, Mental Health, Mindfulness, Reflections, Self-Care, Self-Love, Wellness

Does It Even Matter?

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“Does it even matter?” That’s a question I find myself asking every so often. Is what I’m doing meaningful? Am I even making a difference? As I’ve said before, I was quite naive when I quit my day job last year. I had quit without fully understanding what I was getting myself into. I think it’s safe to say that things have not exactly played out according to my expectations. Over time, my expectations have changed and I’d like to believe that they’ve become more realistic and more attainable. But the shadow of doubt still manages to peek in at times.

I wish someone had told me that this is all a part of the process. Just as there are good times and bad times in life, there are good days and bad days, good weeks and bad weeks in your writing. I learned that maybe half a year ago, but that doesn’t mean that the tough times aren’t still tough. There are days and weeks when I don’t feel productive. When I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing, or that I can’t write. There are weeks when I feel uninspired. Weeks when I feel like my work is useless and pointless. Some days I don’t feel like reining myself back in; I don’t feel like taking the time to recenter and refocus. Eventually though, I find my way back. Usually it takes a day or two away from my work in order to find my motivation again. At the end of the day, I write for me. Does my writing make me feel fulfilled and happy? Is what I’m writing important to me? If yes, then it serves it’s primary purpose.

That doesn’t mean, however, that I don’t still seek affirmation. It’s a part of human nature and not that easy to completely disregard. Everyone wants to know that they’re on the right track. Wants to be recognized and appreciated for the work that they do. Especially so in artistry, when the framework for “success” isn’t as well-defined. You know what you have to do in order to get to where you want to be, but it’s not that easy for others to understand what that entails. We’re not given an expectation for the amount of cold calls we have to make in a day, or the number of sales. We’re not given parameters for the experiment we’re about to conduct. We set our own goals and milestones. Unfortunately, that is a bit of a double-edged sword. We know what we’re looking for, but oftentimes that doesn’t translate externally.

This has become a source of tension for me at times when I’m lacking focus and motivation. In moments when you’re not producing, it becomes easy to buy into the doubt. When the results don’t meet your expectations it’s easy for your belief in yourself to waver. Something that I have to remind myself often is that I’m on my way there. My toil was never going to pay off right away, that was not the plan nor the expectation. It was going to take time, I knew that full well. But I lose sight of that sometimes. Sue me, I’m only human.

When I first started this blog, I was using it as a way of practicing writing. I wasn’t new to blogging—I had been doing it off and on for a while—but this was my first real foray into what I had considered actual writing. To me, everything that I had done beforehand didn’t count. Using Xanga as a kid wasn’t so much blogging as it was maintaining a basic webpage. Blogspot was just something that I checked out because I was curious, but didn’t spend much time on. Tumblr was an online display of the things that I liked. But WordPress? That to me was the only thing that was legit. In reality though, I was selling myself short. Everything that I did led me to this point. That being said, it still took me a long time to gain steam.

For the first two and a half years, I can count on one hand the amount of posts that I wrote—none of which I’m particularly proud of. In truth, I had forgotten that this page even existed… on more than one occasion. The writing only happened when I felt inspired or when an interesting premise came to mind. It came and went in spurts. I wasn’t practicing writing, I was binge writing. Not exactly a helpful method of learning how to write. It’s hard to improve in an area if you’re working on it infrequently. Every time I stopped writing I went back to zero; I had to start over. Each time I did this I missed out on an opportunity to pick up momentum. And really, momentum is one of the most crucial components when you’re trying to pick yourself up off the ground, especially if you’re, “working for yourself.”

It’s no different for a more standard career path. The way you move up the corporate ladder is to learn more, take on more responsibilities, broaden your skill set at every stop. You pick up momentum by gaining more experience. As you gain more experience, you open yourself up to better opportunities, and you work your way up. What that boils down to is building your brand. You might not own a company, or run a website, or sell a product, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have a brand. You might work for “the man” but you also work for yourself. The landscape has changed significantly since our parents were younger. There’s not as much company loyalty as there used to be. So, we have to learn to grow and adapt, and that starts with learning how to market ourselves in meaningful ways.

Last month, this blog reached its ninth year of existence (shocker I know!), but only the last three and a half years have borne any fruit. I know there are several things I could’ve done with this, but I let opportunities go to waste. The unfortunate truth is that I neither felt confident in my writing nor my ability to market myself. So I didn’t really do either. My writing was done in silence and my blog existed in its own obscure part of the internet, neither living nor dying, just being. And that was fine for what it was for a time. But the time for that has run out. I can no longer hang back and let life play out around me. I can’t linger in the background hoping that I don’t get noticed. A change in life circumstances has dictated that. After all, this is what I had hoped for. This was what I had been aiming towards. If I don’t reach out for it now, when will I? I’m not one for making excuses—not anymore.

As I started to really grow as a writer after the new year, it became evident to me that I can’t just rely on one thing to get me to where I want to go. If I want to earn a living as a writer I need to have multiple outlets. I need to build a following. This much isn’t new to me—I’ve known this for a long time. But what was I doing about it? Not much for a while. The work I did in obscurity, however, was great for me. Like everyone always says, “I’m my own biggest critic,” and I stand by that statement. No one judges my writing harder than I do, and I’m never satisfied with where I’m at as a writer. There are always areas that could use improvement, and my strengths can always be made even stronger. Like I’ve said, I’m constantly tinkering and tweaking.

Progress and improvement never stop. Once you lose sight of that you open up the opportunity for stagnation. I know how slippery that slope is. So, I keep working, I keep trying to improve. And the best way to do that at first was to do everything quietly. Learning how to write without the fear of judgment. Without the added pressure of trying to appeal to others or garner traffic. As I mentioned in a previous post, I had confidence in my ability but it was a bit misplaced. My confidence level far outweighed my skill level. In truth, I was still learning how to be confident in everything I do—I had only developed real self-confidence a few years earlier. And that only came after therapy healed me of my brokenness. 

I was exploring how to write without knowing how. The God-given seed of talent had always been there but had never been given room to grow. I was too worried about how other people would perceive me (and my work) to spend any time actually writing. But once I did, I started learning and growing and improving. Practicing on my own, however, had its limits. I was only able to self-critique and self-edit myself so much. I needed input from others, whether that came directly or indirectly. There was only so much I could learn on my own. My naivety blinded me to that fact. So, by the time summer 2022 came and went I had passed through both a peak and a valley. I had reached the end of the line. I had gotten all that there was to take from it. I needed a good support system to take me higher.

That’s really what I’m all about. Reaching higher. Doing better. Working on my craft. Those are the things that matter the most. Those are the things that I can do something about. And thus, those are the things I should focus on. I need to get better, it doesn’t matter how I do it, doesn’t matter who or what I learn from. It needs to happen somehow, some way. I’m not too proud to ask for help or to try something new. The resources available to me are innumerable. I owe it to myself to explore my options. What can I do differently? What can I do better? As an adult, those are the questions I spend time worrying about. Not worrying about things that I can’t change. Or other people’s opinions of me. Or their perceptions. This was not something that I understood well when I was younger. Wondering about these things only led to inaction. Inaction, to me is worse than failure. It’s better to try and fail than to not try at all. It’s better to know for certain whether or not something is going to happen for you, than it is to sit and wonder. 

Sitting and wondering, however, is always easier to do. You can backtrack from the decisions you make in your daydreams. You can break promises. You can start over, and try again. You can make mistakes without facing any repercussions. You let your imagination run wild and let the story take you, but none of this is rooted in reality. Your fantasy is a place where you can run free and forget about life. There are no troubles, no worries, no stress. No consequences. Seems harmless right? But there is still an opportunity cost. The time you spent dreaming about your future could’ve been better spent working towards it.

The best things in life take time and effort. Which, like all things, are finite resources. But if you’re passionate about something, you will find the time for it. Sacrifices will need to be made—that’s just the way that life goes. If you work hard, and constantly improve, success will come to you. Your hard work will pay off in the end, but you need to stay focused on the task at hand. Your primary focus should be inward: what can I do to perfect my craft; what can I do to be a better person; what can I do to make a difference? You control what you can control, which is to say: what you do, what you say, how you act. You can’t force someone to be grateful. You can’t force someone to like you or to support your work. You can’t force a response from someone. Trying to do so is controlling and manipulative. 

Why worry about outside opinion? Do something that makes you happy. Pursue something that fulfills you. Make something that you’re proud of. Turn your attention to being the best you can be and the accolades will come. If you are great at what you do, sooner rather than later people will recognize your talent. This is as much a reminder for me as it is for you. It’s easy to lose focus when gratification doesn’t come quick—we’ve been conditioned to think that way. It’s easy to wonder if what you’re doing is meaningful, especially when traffic is slow or new followers are infrequent. But none of that matters if you aren’t working diligently at becoming the best that you can be. None of that matters if you’re not striving for greatness. None of that matters if you’re no longer passionate about what you do.

The goalposts will shift if your focus isn’t right. If your focus isn’t on continual growth you’re in for a lifetime of disappointment. If you’re not getting better every day the industry will pass you by, the competition will catch up with you. But that isn’t to say compare yourself to others. Don’t compare yourself to anyone. Compare who you are today with who you were yesterday. If you see growth, if you see improvement that’s all that matters. The recognition will come in time, you just have to do your part. Focus not on fame, fortune, or popularity. Focus not on gaining traffic or glowing reviews. Focus not on going viral or becoming internet famous. Focus instead of honing your craft. Put your head down and keep grinding. Believe in yourself first, and others will soon see. What you do is important if it matters to you. Others might not see it now, but they will see it in time.

Changing, Discovery, Dreaming, Greatness, Growth, Healing, Mental Health, Mindfulness, Self-Care, Self-Love, Wellness

No Minutes Left to Spare

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“Time flies when you’re having fun,” so the saying goes. But I’m not so sure that this doesn’t just describe life in general. As children, each year felt like an eternity to us. That was to be expected. We hadn’t lived that long so we didn’t have a good gauge for the passage of time. Each day felt long because in comparison to what we had experienced it actually was a long time. But alas, those days are long gone. So as we get older the years start feeling shorter. Now that the years feel shorter, it seems that time moves too fast. Is there any way to slow it down?

If only… But life is finite. With a beginning and an end. No one lives forever, and no one can defeat death. The time will come for us some day. Will we make the most of it before it comes? That’s a question I ask myself all the time. Will I make an impact before I go? Will I leave a legacy behind? My body will rot and decay, but my legacy should live on for years or decades or centuries (hopefully). As the years go by, I find that my priorities have shifted. What used to be my focus, I find nowadays is something that I don’t care all that much about. I used to worry so much about the opinions of others, but as I’ve matured I find that the best way to change someone’s opinion of you is to give them reasons to think of you differently. 

However, despite whatever positive changes you are able to enact in your life, some people will still dislike you, some people will still be jealous of you. It’s inevitable. No one in the world will ever be universally loved—it’s a hopeless endeavor. That’s why it’s no longer my focus. I’m not trying to become more loved. I’m trying to become a better person. I want those around me to thrive because success breeds success. Seeing others being great motivates and inspires. Encouraging your loved ones to be the best that they can be keeps you locked in, helps you maintain your drive. There will be some in your life that will put their best efforts into tearing you down. Those aren’t people that you need, they’re destined to be miserable so long as they’re splitting their focus between watching/judging others and bettering themselves. 

Unfortunately, those haters aren’t always the easiest to ignore. But know that their barbs will help you develop thicker skin. Criticism hurts at first, but gets easier to bear as long as you keep honing your craft. The better you get at what you do, the less hate a shit talker is able to spew. Their arguments will soon lose weight, and you’ll be able to prove them wrong. Of course, proving someone wrong isn’t the goal, continuous growth and improvement is. In order to continue on, you need to stay focused. Easier said than done. But if you’re passionate about something you won’t have much trouble doing what it takes to pursue your dreams and aspirations doggedly. You will eventually find yourself reaching greater heights.

Success more often than not will not reveal itself immediately, but that doesn’t mean that your toil is pointless and isn’t going to pay off. You need to be patient. It takes concentrated time and effort to pick something up off the ground. It takes time for fruit to grow. You need to water and nurture the seed. You need to work for the best things in life. You look for blessings not miracles. The way I see it, blessings won’t be plentiful if you don’t do your part. In order to live an abundant life you have to work hard. It sounds simple but I wish it’s something I would’ve known earlier on in life. 

Unfortunately, it took a long time for me to grow up. I don’t think I was challenged enough as a kid, at least not in the right ways. School came easy to me, and that was the only thing that my parents really cared about. I was able to half-ass things and still get good results. I wasn’t forced to do extracurricular activities or find a job—my parents weren’t particularly hard on me. So I didn’t really need to face my adversity head-on. Running and hiding like I’d always done had always been an option for me. And that’s the path that I chose to take time after time. It was the easy way out. Which, as I’ve said before, provides short-term relief, but doesn’t resolve any issues. Everything was going to eventually catch up to me—lo and behold, that’s what happened once I reached high school. Half assing things no longer netted me A’s and B’s, instead I was getting B’s, C’s and the occasional D. I suspect that this sudden change in results played a role in how depression and anxiety were able to needle their way into my life. 

My sudden inability to achieve good results without hard work had sapped my confidence. But really, what had I been expecting to happen here? That I could coast for the rest of my life? I had been blessed with good luck up til then, I just didn’t realize it. I didn’t realize that luck and innate talent wasn’t always going to outweigh effort—in fact, more likely than not it’s the opposite. Arriving at this crossroads could’ve been the catalyst for significant change, but regrettably it wasn’t. I didn’t have the ability to motivate myself to put my all into everything I did. Instead of putting in my best effort to try to get the best results, I instead resolved myself to put in a little more effort in order to get passable results. Again, a short-term fix for a long-term issue. It’s no wonder that I had been trapped in a cycle of mediocrity for so many years after college. I had unknowingly set myself up for that, conditioning myself to accept average as a reasonable thing to strive for. That’s a pretty low bar to clear. Who aspires to be the world’s most average doctor, or athlete, or what have you? Like c’mon…

But what did I know? I was just a kid trying to find his way in the world, without the proper amount of guidance in certain areas. I had good parents, but like any other human, they had their weaknesses, made their mistakes, and were misguided in some ways. Well, we live and we learn. As I’ve said before, we’re all just figuring things out as we go along. And I can’t be upset about it, because no one’s really at fault. Oftentimes we fall into the trap of feeling the need to assign blame for everything that happens in our lives. But sometimes there’s no one to blame, and that’s perfectly okay. Life is random, and at times it unfolds in unexpected ways. That being said, I’m grateful for everything I’ve gone through—my triumphs and my failures, times that were easy and times that were tough, the right decisions and the wrong decisions. My life is a culmination of everything that has happened beforehand. I don’t regret anything that’s happened or the mistakes that I’ve made, because everything came with a lesson.

I do however, regret my inaction during moments that could’ve been monumental. I regret the passivity I displayed in letting life play out around me. I regret the period of time when I had stopped dreaming and aspiring. Occasionally, I find myself hoping that time would slow to make up for the years that I had lost. But you can’t change the past and you can’t slow time, so I’m left wondering, “what if?” What if I had not stopped dreaming? What if I had found my calling earlier? What if I had been happy as a teenager? What could I have done with my life instead of wasting a decade moping around and feeling sorry for myself?

It doesn’t hurt to wonder about these things, but it’s best not to dwell on them. You are who you are as a result of past experiences, good and bad. Your adversity and how you deal with it show the world your character. Without my struggles with depression and anxiety I wouldn’t be the same man. My circumstances are not unique to me, but the sequencing of my journey is. I might not’ve found my healing if I hadn’t gone through my hardships. I might not’ve realized that I needed to make an impact on those around me if I hadn’t spent so much time wasting my time and my talent. I might not’ve found what confidence looks like if I hadn’t struggled with self-image. Everything that happened in my life needed to happen in order for me to find my way.

Once you’ve found your footing, the next step is to move forward. To do better. To seek greatness. To be a blessing rather than a burden. What exactly that entails is up to individual interpretation. For me that means maximizing my potential, sharing what I’ve learned with others, giving back to the world, contributing knowledge or meaningful conversation. As I approach my 32nd birthday, I am no longer able to use my youth or my naivety as an excuse. I can’t just sit by in the background and let the world move around me. I need to add meaning and substance to it. I need to do my part, play my role in society. I feel that I have a duty to myself and to others to be a better person now than I was before. 

If onwards & upwards isn’t the goal, I don’t really know what to tell you. If you’re not growing, you’re either stagnating or you’re deteriorating. Neither of them are desirable to me. Stagnation feels comfortable for a time, but will eventually hinder your growth. Comfort is good but is a slippery slope that leads to apathy and inaction. That’s not a place I want to be ever again. I’ve already spent too much time there; I don’t have any minutes left to spare. I can’t make up for the time that I wasted, but I can make sure that I don’t waste anymore of it. I can’t change the past, but I can change the future. I can’t undo mistakes, but I can make sure I don’t repeat them. I’m not old, but I’m not getting any younger. I need to make the most of my opportunities, there’s no guarantee of more in the future. We might know what we want, but we don’t know what life has in store for us. Work hard and dream big. Never stop learning, never stop improving. A better life starts with a better you. There’s no time like the present to try to find what you’re looking for. There’s no onwards & upwards without moving forward.

Art, Changing, Discovery, Dreaming, Growth, Healing, Mental Health, Mindfulness, Self-Care, Self-Love, Wellness, Writing

When the Day Comes

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“Amazing things are going to happen for you this year, 2023 is your year,” my therapist declared a few months ago. It didn’t really take much convincing on her part—I had already told myself that several times. But it was good to hear it from someone else. Everyone needs a little bit of affirmation. Even the most confident individual has moments of doubt.

As I start to wind down again with my therapy sessions it’s good to take a moment to reflect. This is my second real stint with therapy (there was also a stretch in college that I don’t count), and it was just as helpful and informative as the previous one. I was willing to go back because I know that it works, I’ve seen it in action. I’ve made meaningful changes to my thought process and life style. And I came out of it a changed man. 

However, my reasons for going were different this time. When I first went between 2018 and 2020 I was depressed, anxiety-ridden, and lacking confidence. I was melancholy and pessimistic. Putzing through life with no direction. Looking for meaning but lacking purpose. Not coping with stress and adversity in a healthy way. This time around, I wasn’t in a state of emotional distress. My mental illnesses hadn’t come back to haunt. But I was looking for answers, and it’s safe to say I found some. 

Many of you know by now that I’ve gone off the beaten path, but this might be new to some. In February of last year I stopped doing the 9-5 thing. I’ve come to realize that it’s not what God intended for me. There are much bigger things in store, and a standard workplace limits me from reaching my full potential. My time and focus were being spent on something that I wasn’t interested in and didn’t feel fulfilling. I wasn’t making the best use of my talents and abilities. My greatest strength—my command of the English language in written form—was something I wasn’t able to display properly. The seed of talent had always been there, but because I wasn’t watering it, it had no room to grow. In order to facilitate that, I needed to step out of my comfort zone (yet again) and try something different. Leaving the work force entirely wasn’t the first step, but it was the most meaningful one. But just because I’m not “working a real job” doesn’t mean that I’m not hard at work. You could even argue that I’m working harder than ever. 

Unfortunately, in my line of work, progress and improvement aren’t always the most tangible. Comes with the territory. In more obscure or subjective fields it’s easy to overlook the amount of talent and the effort it takes to excel. For some who are more academically inclined it’s hard to see the merit in artistry, but everyone listens to music right? Everyone appreciates visual art. Everyone loves a good story. It just may not necessarily be in written form. At the end of the day though, everything comes down to storytelling. A song tells a story. A movie tells a story. A painting tells a story. And with each written story (so to speak) comes an untold backstory. 

We don’t see the effort that’s put into perfecting one’s craft. We don’t see the fuckups and the failures. We don’t see the process and the progress, only the finished product. We’re more than capable of judging the finished product (everyone is entitled to their own opinions), but unless we’ve been in someone else’s shoes it’s hard for us to understand the process, let alone judge it. In creative fields such as these it’s hard to say what the process should even look like. It’s different for each individual. There’s no standard operating procedure, there’s not really a rulebook. Steps may overlap but they may also differ. That becomes more clear to me the farther along I get in my journey. 

And boy has it been a journey with several twists and turns. I wouldn’t want it any other way, however. If everything always turns out as expected then it gets easy to get complacent, and to stop challenging yourself to reach greater heights. I’ve said before that complacency is the enemy of growth. You seek comfort in life, but you don’t want to get too comfortable—you need to find a balance. You want to constantly be bettering yourself, to be learning more. After all, the latest version should always be the best version. That’s why the process is so important. I wouldn’t have found out certain things about my craft if I hadn’t tried them. When it comes down to it, life is just an unending series of trial & error. 

That’s just how it goes right? We’re just trying things out to see if they stick. Career-wise, parenting-wise, life style-wise. It’s not unique to writing specifically, or artistry in general. We’re all figuring things out as we go along. We spend hours practicing and tinkering. Nothing I write is perfect on the first try—not my blog posts, not my poems, not the chapters for the novel/series I’m working on. I’m always switching words around, deleting sentences, and changing scenes. I’m trying things until I find something that works. This is the same for painters, musicians, and sculptors. For researchers, businessmen, and athletes. We’re all trying to hone our technique, and perfect our craft. Trying to make the best product possible. 

That’s what brought me back to therapy. Some of the things I had tried were no longer working as effectively. Like I said, I was looking for answers. Not the answers to life’s questions, but I needed to know what was next. As you know, 2020 was the year that I started writing in earnest. I had just quit a job that had become far too taxing on my mental health. The plan was to take a few weeks off to detox and debrief. But I am not the type that is willing to sit still for extended periods of time. After one or two weeks of vacation I start to get antsy, feeling like I need to do something productive. For years, I had been making up excuses and reasons not to write. I no longer had that luxury—I had run out of reasons. The time had come for me to embark on my journey. And I’ve learned so much in the last three and a half years since.

Through that time, my confidence has not wavered that much. But for a while, that confidence was unwarranted. I wasn’t where I needed to be as a writer, and I didn’t even know it. Part of it was ignorance, and part of it was naivety, but an even greater part of it was the fact that the start of my journey coincided with the start of COVID. Unbeknownst to me I was writing in isolation. I didn’t have any outside input or feedback of any kind, and that held me back as a writer. I didn’t have an accurate gauge for my ability. And I didn’t have a realistic outlook for where I stood. I didn’t even talk about things in the right way. The way I was approaching my journey was all wrong, but you live and you learn. I think about things differently now and that’s what matters.

I know what steps I need to take to get to where I want to go. I know what aspects of my writing are my strengths, and where I need improvement. I didn’t necessarily need to see a therapist in order to find this out, but it certainly helped. What I needed was someone to bounce ideas off of. What I needed was a greater goal in mind that would keep me motivated. What I needed was to be willing to try new things. I needed to approach this with an open mind. I can say with confidence that doing that has allowed me to get the most out of therapy. Like many things in life, you get out of it what you put into it. Therapy works, but only if you do your part. You have to be open and honest with yourself and with your therapist. You have to be willing to uncover your past trauma in order to move on. You have to be able to embrace the pain in order to bring about healing. 

All this was stuff I had already worked on the first time around. My mental health didn’t need fixing, but that doesn’t mean that none of this was relevant. Going into this second stint with this new perspective was interesting to say the least. You don’t often see a healed individual back in therapy again, unless they’ve suffered a setback. That was the position I was at. I was able to sit across from my therapist, look her in the eye and tell her, in person, that therapy works and that it healed me. That was as much a blessing for me as it was for her. But there were reasons why I found myself back in that office. 

Similar to the circumstances surrounding my first stint, I had found myself in a bit of a rut, feeling stuck. For two years I had been writing in my free time while working a 9-5. My intention had been to finish my manuscript, get it sent out, then quit my job. I thought I had arrived, but turns out that I still had a long ways to go, and had a lot more that I needed to learn. I had spent the time thinking I knew how to write, when in fact I was only just learning how to. I had allowed hubris to get the better of me. For the past few years, I’ve tried to approach life acting like I know nothing and that there’s everything left to learn. Unfortunately, I had lost sight of that—thinking that I was better than I was. I naively thought that once I finished writing my manuscript that it would be ready for publication. I’ve since disavowed myself of that notion and I’m much better for it. 

As it happened, I ended up quitting my job before I finished my manuscript, although I had set an arbitrary deadline for when I expected it to be completed. I quit with the expectation that spending more time on my writing would help me to improve as a writer, and it did for a time. But the gains were limited and that took me by surprise. By the time the summer rolled around, I was feeling tired and burnt out. I had cranked out around thirty chapters (out of a planned forty-five), and there seemed to be no end in sight. There were serious issues with my story and I didn’t know how to fix them. I started regretting the decision I had made to quit my job, wondering if I was, in fact, built for this. It took some time for me to come to the conclusion, but eventually, I realized that I needed therapy once again.

Fast forward about a year, and my manuscript is still unfinished and therefore not yet available for public consumption. I have too much pride to show a work in progress to people I care about. But that doesn’t mean that no one has seen it. That’s the main difference between this year and last—I’m no longer writing alone on my creativity island. I have since found an online community of like-minded individuals who are looking to accomplish the same dream as me. Last year I was spending way too much energy worrying about “what comes after.” I didn’t have writer friends in real life, but I was wondering if I could use what friends I did have to help me with editing and revisions when the time came. I was putting the cart before the horse—this energy would’ve been better used focusing on becoming a better writer and on finding a writing group. That being said, I’m in a much better spot than I was a year ago. I stopped stagnating and I started improving again. I talk differently, and I think differently. Nine months of therapy will do that to you. I came out changed before, and I’ve come out changed again. I used to be just a man trying his hand at writing. Now I’m a writer trying to become an author. 

Pursuing my dream wouldn’t have been possible without a reality check. It was inevitable, either I was going to be treated to one early, or I would be treated to one late. Luckily for me, it happened early, and I’m grateful for that. It happened to me before I really had a chance to get rolling, and that’s the best thing that could’ve happened to me. It is going to take hard work either way to get to where I want to go, but I needed to be put in my place. My excessive, unwarranted pride was going to be my undoing if I had allowed it to continue on unchecked. And it was certainly looking that way. The isolation in my personal life and in my writing was a bubble that was getting ready to pop. 

It shouldn’t really have come as a surprise to me even though it did. There is always a limit to how much you can improve on your own. It’s naive to believe otherwise. Oftentimes the best way to learn is through teamwork and collaboration. Why else do they force us into group projects in school? To teach us how to work with others, to show us how to delegate responsibilities, to highlight our strengths and weaknesses. This is a lesson that I needed to be reminded of. I can’t do this on my own—I know that now. My writing style isn’t just my own. It’s a culmination of my stylistic choices, what I’m good at, what/who inspires me, what I learn from people that have gone before me, but most importantly what I learn from my peers. I need to see other people’s writing and to critique it in order to see how I measure up. I need feedback and suggestions, positive and negative criticism. Just because I think that I’m a good writer doesn’t mean that I am one. 

For a while, my confidence outweighed my talent. The potential was there, but my technique needed to be honed and refined. Beneath the crap there was gold, but I needed to uncover it and chip away at the shell. My mistake was not realizing that there was a shell to begin with. For those two and a half years before I went back to therapy, I thought I was closer to the end than I was to the beginning. I had grown a lot as a writer in that time, but little did I know that the growth that came after would be much more meaningful. In the last nine months I’ve been steadily improving the quality of my writing. “New” chapters have been slow, but the rewrites of old ones have been fruitful. The old and new versions are night and day. I’ve started using a new five-color coding system that gives me an idea of what shape each chapter is in—spoiler alert: most of what I wrote wasn’t good enough. I have also developed a more objective sense for what “good writing” entails. I didn’t have that before. 

Oftentimes these days I find myself talking to other people about my writing. (I think) it comes about organically. “What do you do for work/fun,” feels like the right time to talk about it. Sometimes the conversation progresses as expected, but other times it doesn’t. Reactions tend to range from, “oh sweet. When’s it coming out?” to blank stares and apathy. The latter reaction used to really bother me, but it doesn’t so much anymore. I realize now that some people aren’t going to take me seriously until I have published works to show for my hours of toil. It’s hard for some people to see the hard work that goes into an endeavor until it pays off. It is what it is. I used to think I had a good sense for when it would pay off. 

But I’m willing to admit now that I don’t. The truth is, this isn’t entirely in my hands. The writing part is, but what comes after is not. A lot is put into publishing a novel. And a good portion of it is not writing. However, that’s something to worry about down the line. I’ve put the cart before the horse before, and I’m not going back down that road. I know better now. Good things have come in 2023, and they will continue to come if I stay focused. I’ve bettered my craft. I’ve discovered my voice. I’ve gotten into a groove where my level of talent nearly matches my confidence level. I’ve finally come to a place where my writing is good enough. I’ve discarded the shell, and I’m left with ore that needs to be refined. I’ve learned how to write, but it doesn’t mean that I’ve arrived. I still need to chip away and make it shine. Eventually a grand story will emerge, but I can’t rush the process. One day soon the time will come when I can reveal my baby to the world. I don’t know when that day will be, but I assure you it’ll be well worth the wait.

Brokenness, Changing, Discovery, Growth, Healing, Hope, Mental Health, Mindfulness, Self-Care, Self-Love, Wellness

Mind-Numbing Complexity

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English is a funny language. Not all synonyms are entirely interchangeable—they’re not all created equal. Some similar words have different connotations. The meaning of a word might change depending on context. Other words create implications via subtext. There is quite a lot of nuance involved when it comes to wordplay. That’s why I love it so much. A complex language for a complex person. 

Being complex, isn’t always a bad thing, however. Oftentimes, complexity is conflated with high maintenance. Not the same thing, although they might overlap. You can be complex in your personality, but simplistic in your goal setting. You might be easy to please but have varied interests that don’t seem to fit together. But that’s just it. Each person is a unique puzzle with differing pieces. There may be some similarities, but no two people are identical. Most people are complex in some areas, but simplistic in others. Not often will you find someone who is completely one or the other. As with most things, making it black and white oversimplifies things. Personally, I don’t like being told things in absolutes. Doing so makes it easy to think in terms of us vs them. I’ve taken enough sociology classes to know that that’s a dangerous place to be in.

When you think in terms of us vs them you have a tendency to make “them” the Other. There’s an in-group and an out-group. Good vs evil. Heroes vs villains. Again, that’s not how life works. Almost everyone thinks that what they’re doing is right. Everyone will find a way to justify their behavior, even if they know what they’re doing is “wrong.” What really defines right or wrong anyway? Everyone’s moral compass is different. So, what purpose does this really serve? You’ve created a sense of belonging at the expense of alienating others. In this system of constant in and out, there are outcasts everywhere we look. Are we not all humans? Should we not all strive for the same goal—making the world a better place?

Being an outcast is nothing new to me. I never really seemed to fit in anywhere. I’ve felt that way my whole life. Some things were within my control, some things were not. For a while it pained me, I was in a constant struggle between trying to find acceptance and trying to maintain my individuality. At times, I tried so hard to conform, not realizing that conformity isn’t in my DNA. It’s something I can keep trying to do, but now I know that it will never make me happy. Unfortunately, it took me quite a while to finally understand that. I maintained the war inside my mind, not knowing that I didn’t have to. I was free to be me in all my glory, if only I would let myself. But as I’ve said before, fear held me back. It prevented me from embracing every aspect. It forced me to suppress certain interests and qualities just so I would have a cleaner image. This cleaner image wasn’t real though, it was just a facade—not a very good one. It only served as a hindrance on my road to self-discovery.

Worse than lying to others, I was lying to myself. I was trying to convince myself that I was something that I was not. Trying to mold myself into a shape that fit neatly inside a cookie cutter, paring off parts of me that made me who I was. However, clean-cut was never meant for me. Conformity wasn’t the solution. Fitting inside a cookie cutter was not what I was called to do. I have varied interests and hobbies, it’s always been that way. I’m passionate about fantasy and sci-fi, but I’m also passionate about watching football. I appreciate literary art, but I also appreciate seeing people beat the shit out of each other in MMA. I love building Lego sets, but I also love killing things in RPGs. I like what I like, and that makes me who I am. I have gentler interests and I have more violent ones—they can co-exist. Without that duality, I am not the same person. If only I had been more accepting of that as a teenager. 

In High School, I hovered between the nerd crowd, the potheads, and the loners, not connecting entirely with any of them. It turns out I am in fact all three, but I never would’ve known it. I focused way too much of my energy on trying to suppress certain parts of myself that I didn’t want others to see, instead of loving me for me. I tried to hide who I was instead of trying to understand who I was. In trying to remove the parts of me that I didn’t like, I unintentionally actuated a cycle of self-loathing. Attempting to sheer off slivers of the cornerstone of my personality only led to inevitable disappointment, which caused me to spiral deeper into self-contempt. In all honesty, that’s probably why I suffered for so long. If you don’t love yourself, it shows through in the way you talk and the way you act. It’s not as well-concealed as you think it is.

Of course, it’s hard to see that when you lack self-awareness. It’s hard to do anything really if you have an unrealistic outlook on life. Unfortunately, that was me for a long time. My constant wallowing and self-pity blinded me to what was going on around me. I was incredibly self-absorbed but also incapable of improving my situation because I was stubborn and didn’t have a coping mechanism in place for dealing with adversity. If your primary instinct is to run or to hide from hardship, you’re in for a lifetime of pain. Emotional trauma that isn’t dealt with head-on isn’t going to heal on its own. Each new bit of pain that you repress is only going to make things worse. It’s easy to ignore your trauma or to suppress it, but it’s only a temporary fix, no better than a band-aid.

I learned that the hard way. For twenty-seven years I pushed the pain and adversity deep into the recesses of my mind. Each negative experience was tucked away, never to be thought about or dealt with, it hurt too much, but I was only delaying the inevitable—a nervous breakdown was imminent. Aside from failure, emotional pain was what scared me the most. This fear proved to be crippling, preventing me from moving forward with my life. I didn’t know it, but I was stuck dwelling on the past. Until I drilled down to the root, until I dealt with the things I was ignoring, I would not find healing and circumstances would not improve. I was stuck in a holding pattern, wanting better but seeking to achieve it in all the wrong ways. I naively thought I could set myself up for a bright future without addressing the past. Life doesn’t work that way. That will become clear to you in short order.

After a tough breakup my junior year of college, things began to spiral. All the issues that I had tried to ignore the previous seven years had stacked and were coming to a head. But instead of addressing them directly, I returned to the well-oiled machine of running, hiding, and ignoring. This time, however, I added a fourth item to the mix: numbness. I tried to numb my emotions with anything I could find: cigarettes, weed, alcohol. This was the physical anesthesia, but it was accompanied by psychological anesthesia as well. I dampened my expectations—bad times were bound to happen to me, and the good times wouldn’t last. The walls that were starting to come down during college, I built back up, higher than ever. I had a few friends that I leaned on for my support system, but I’d be damned if I let anyone new through—not before I’d had a chance to vet them first. I was living a hedonistic lifestyle without the hedonism, because pleasure no longer existed to me. Thus began my cycle of despair. Thus began my descent into nihilism.

Surprisingly, my attempt at numbness worked, and it was more effective than I had anticipated. So much so that for five and a half years I forgot what it felt like to be human. Each day was the same as the last. Stuck at a dead end job. Living a dead end life. I wasn’t happy, but I also wasn’t angry. I was in a perpetual state of melancholy. Low energy and unfeeling. A robot going through the motions, running through a preset program. Go to work, come home, get heavily medicated, go to sleep, eat only if I feel like it. The one thing I found solace in was that despite my aversion to emotional pain, I was still capable of feeling physical pain. I didn’t self-harm, but that was only because I’d found someone else to do it for me.

I’d known since Junior High that I was going to get tattoos later in life. It just took me a while before I finally got my first one. But once I did, it was an addiction that I had no intention of controlling. And it was probably better that way. Without this outlet, I probably would’ve been even worse off. For that half decade, tattoos were the only thing that kept me sane. The only thing that made my life feel real. The only thing that I could actually feel. Sure I got high every day, and sure socializing gave me a bit of a rush, but nothing beat the burst of adrenaline I got from a tattoo session. The physical pain of a needle reminded me that I was still capable of feeling. It reminded me that I was still human despite the nothingness that my life had become.

Numbing myself had seemed harmless at the time, but so too did running and hiding and ignoring. That’s how it all starts though isn’t it? The path to self-destruction doesn’t start out at that magnitude. You let the little things slide and they start to add up. Before you know it, several minor issues have become a monstrous one. That’s when life becomes overwhelming. That’s when you feel like you’ve lost control. That’s when the gears start spinning, but the wheels stop turning. Unfortunately, my story is not unique. Many young adults have been through the same shit. Ideally, you want to tackle your issues one by one, nip them in the bud before they have a chance to snowball. But oftentimes we don’t have all the tools we need to fix our problems and we don’t have the awareness to know when things need changing. Even if we do, we might not know what to pivot to or how to pivot when we find that things aren’t working.

But not all hope is lost. You’ve reached a dark day, but there is always a way out. It might appear to you in the form of a permanent, long-term catchall solution that brings about an end to your suffering. More likely, however, you will come across a temporary fix or several. There’s nothing wrong with that. Broken people need to find healing some way, some how. What matters is not how quickly you are able to heal, but rather how thoroughly. It might take you several tries to find the path of healing, but that’s okay. Once you acknowledge that things could be better, you’ve taken the first step.

Still, words mean little if there is no action to follow. It didn’t take me long to realize that living wasn’t fun for me anymore. I knew that as early as 2006, but I chalked it up to teenage angst. I believed that in time, my depression would go away on its own. How innocent. How naive. How misguided. It wasn’t until 2015 that I decided that I wanted more from life. I wanted to find meaning, to do something fulfilling, to be happy for the first time in a long time. Once again, there wasn’t any meaningful action to follow. I was too afraid, too nervous, gave up too easily. 

And yet, unbeknownst to me I had stumbled onto the right path. Everything happens for a reason. My adversity made me stronger. Everything I went through made me into the man I am today. The devil tried to bring me down, but he only made me better. The numbness hindered me more than it helped me, but it was necessary. Without it, I wouldn’t have gained a deeper appreciation for the little things in life. I wouldn’t have learned to cherish my emotions. I wouldn’t have learned how to feel again if I hadn’t forgotten how to in the first place.

The tattoos weren’t a landmark on my path to healing, but they led me to it. The physical pain couldn’t replicate my psychological pain, but it helped me to feel something. There aren’t many stories or meanings behind my ink, but they mean something to me. The physical scars masked my psychological ones. They didn’t bring meaning to my life, they didn’t make me feel better about myself, they didn’t buy me happiness. But what they did do was remind me of my humanity. Remind me that I’m not a program. Remind me that I am in control. My tattoos tell the story of a broken kid. Someone who had lost his way. Someone who had lost all hope. My tattoos didn’t change who I was, but they helped me to find what I was looking for. The numbness slowed the damage, but it wasn’t able to heal. The pain showed me that, at the very least I was real. And in that moment it was enough.