The Long-Term 'Mmmmh'

My problem is that I keep waiting for a payoff.

A big paradigm shift, where my entire life seems to come together seamlessly, like in a dream where you end up in a completely different place with no clue as to why. I keep longing for this massive boost, but it slows me down. Why would my dreams come true now? It's obviously too early. It's like I picked a perfect spot to see the sunrise, set up my lawn chair, then found out it's only 1am. What am I doing here with so much desire? Don't I know that it's going to bring me down?

This is the part where I feel inclined to start telling myself that it's okay. That it's natural to want your career to improve and even more natural to be impatient about it. It might be good to swing back to my mantra for a second, to stay patient, to wrap my wounds in creative gauze and start getting back into my rhythm for as long as possible. That's what my intuition says to do. That would be nice if I didn't just call it out, effectively hamstringing myself into finding another way.

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I've realized lately that I'm much less emotionally stable than I thought I was. Not that I'm going crazy over here, I'm still okay, I just didn't really know how easily certain things would calm me down. Namely, food. I could take my entire morning commute inside of an existential-doubt-spiral, a patented 16 year old ultimate move, and by lunch I'm completely over it. Same thing on the way home, I could be stressed out the wazoo but feel zen after making a pot of mashed potatoes. This is something I didn't quite know about myself. Food can help cure emotions. Let's check in with my gut in 5 years, shall we?

It's not just food, it's all sorts of 'sugar'. Not just pop tarts, but mobile gaming and extra cups of coffee. It's the short term 'mmmh' feeling that kicks me back into it, but that needs to not be the case ASAP. I need the long term 'mmmh'. I want to be able to know that whenever I sit down to make something, to be creative, to put myself out there, that it's not just practice for when it really matters. I want it to mean something now.

There's a wash of shame that came over me, really quick, as if to remind me that this is the hole that I didn't want to find myself in. It's like my brain telling me "No shit, everyone wants their stuff read, everyone wants to be noticed, every writer wants people reading. No shit. No shit."

The cold truth is that I need to work harder if any of this is going to work. I don't need to forgive myself, I don't need self-care, I don't need an internet detox or a diet change or an exercise regime or a youtube-creators-course or a personal coach or anything that's outside of my own mind. I just need to do my shit daily and step it up. For real. For real, for real. Just step it up.

So that anxiety I feel on the way to work? Listen to it. Don't push it away, don't excuse it on to something or somebody else, listen to it hard. Sit in it, turn your music off if you need to. Why am I feeling the way that I feel, and what can I do about it? How can I make sure this happens less? What am I missing?