I have the luck/unluck to be able to see what I am at the very bottom of everything (since the masks have a bad habit of crashing), but at the same time... is that person really me? To be sure, she is me, but I also think that my layers make me more than her. So if I'm not the collective of layers, and I'm not the "baseline Vector," then who can I say I really am?
I think I ultimately ended up defining myself in terms of goals. Thinking of myself as a collection of goal-oriented behaviors makes everything easier, though I wouldn't recommend it. It's pretty dumb, ultimately, but it helps a little if you're feeling really frazzled.
You are you, and more importantly, you are your own worst critic. You can't see yourself as a collection of parts and motivations. You spend all your time trying to mentally define yourself, when really all you're doing is constructing little phrases and itineraries that amount to nothing. They all fly away as soon as you starting talking to someone, and they're only around to grade your performance when you're not actually doing anything. You are everything in you at once, regardless of what anybody else sees or what you tell yourself. The only person who knows who you are is yourself, and you can never get out of your own head, no matter how hard you try.
I know the feeling all too well. I spent years wrapping myself in an ever tighter web of philosophies and rubrics, before I finally realized I was setting myself up for constant disappointment. Chief among them was always belittling myself and my accomplishments, whatever they were, under the notion that the constant self-criticism would inspire me to try harder at what I wanted to do, and make me appealing to people for my humility. Combined with a long string of academic and social lull periods, all it really did was convince me to stop trying at anything because I refused to believe I was capable of accomplishing anything, and making me look like a whinging, melancholy loafer to everyone else. At some point, you just have to stop caring about what you
are, and just
be, and over-analyzing how you go about that is a quick path to nervous fits and panic when you never seem to measure up.
Settling into a tepid pool of depression. Nice... well, at least being stable and miserable is better than zinging up and down all over the place. Maybe if I spend enough time here, thinking things over, I'll be able to leave once and for all.
It'd just be nice to have some serious motivation and an attention span longer than 15 minutes >_<
I've already used your problems as a springboard to talk about mine enough, so I'll just say,
tell me about it. If I can pull any more advice out of my unprofessional hole, find things to be happy about. Little things, big things. Or find things to be angry about, or sad about, or astonished about, or any emotion besides "meh". There's no motivation in "meh"; motivation comes from moods, it doesn't arise on its own.
Author
Topic: Things that made you sad today thread. (Read 9797955 times)