Just so anybody reading this mix of thoughts and life story doesn't think everything is always rosy, I should mention that I did suddenly hit a rough patch this weekend.
As is often the case, it's difficult to know exactly what the immediate reasons were. I had packed a lot into the week, and was probably shorter of sleep than I knew, and was also frustrated at a lack of progress on a project I had hoped to swiftly sign off before the weekend began. Because I'd been occupied with that, more important activities didn't get as much of my attention as they should have done.
Maybe it's also because I've been feeling more distant from my family, something which was noticeable from seeing one of them without being able to speak, and sending a package to another for a birthday, without knowing what (if any) the response might be. I have also begun to question my goals, and wonder just what I should be aiming at. With that uncertainty, I have a lurking suspicion that I may have made some bad choices in some things recently.
Whatever the cause, I had a sudden wave of sadness that took me by surprise, and a general sense of failure. A kind of feeling that I can't be the person I need to be.
Fortunately I had help and support at hand.
A quick glance over my life says that I should cut back on the things I'm doing and give myself more time and relaxation. Not to mention scaling back my aims so that more is actually achievable. However, it's not quite as simple as that. I fill my time with projects, and they're all things I know I can do, although they may be challenging in different ways. Where I feel I fall short is in life itself, in things to do with people, in big scary things like career, security for the future, and in being the person that I want to be for others. The projects, in some ways, are a kind of distraction that keeps me going. That distraction system may keep my sanity from day to day, but I am suddenly wondering if I'm storing up problems because these larger things are lurking in my head, still without solutions or plans of action.
Life is not simple or easy, and abandoning one set of weights and drags doesn't suddenly remove every problem.
2 comments:
Some people make decisions and choices in life quickly. It seems as if they have had clear goals for a chosen career from the day they started school. But others aren't sure even as they approach their last day at school!
We often see people change direction in their mature years, when life's experiences enables them to make a more informed choice.
Maybe the key is to allow yourself time to to choose what you WANT to be, and not so much of what you NEED to be.
Treading water helps keep us afloat until we find the energy to swim again.
Sheesh, pebbles, where were you twenty years ago when I needed to hear this?!
(pebbles wrote: Maybe the key is to allow yourself time to to choose what you WANT to be, and not so much of what you NEED to be.)
Remembering back though, I found it terribly difficult to even ascertain WHAT I wanted, after I left the EB. (I still struggle with this... but maybe I'm just a retard!)
When you've grown up with very little real freedom of choice, I think your 'want' muscle kind of atrophies. That's my theory, anyway!
Perhaps some of us need to work at rebuilding that 'want muscle' a bit. Many exEB I've met DO seem to find it hard to lose the peeby mantra: "O wretched man that I am; I must constantly subsume myself to the needs and desires of others who are supposedly much less wretched than I!" ..or however that stuff went, that we were encouraged to say each morning during one point of the EB 'leadership of the recovery'.
Oh for a nice neat little instruction booklet for exEB: "How to Grow A Healthy Sense of Self"!!
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