So I was watching one of those Reddit videos I love so much and one of the Redditors said something about working on improving themselves when it hit me like a splash of cold water to the face :
I’ve never even considered improving myself. Ever. Even when I went to a year of Kwantlen and then did the VFS thing, I never thought of it as self-improvement.
To me, they were just things I was doing in order to get what I want.
Hell, I don’t even consciously think of therapy as self-improvement, and it most definitely is. Otherwise what’s the point?
So what’s the deal with that? Why have I never thought of anything I do as self-improvement, even education and therapy?
Well right off the bat, just to get this out of the way : around 20 percent of it was arrogance. I don’t need self-improvement because I am so sparkly shiny awesome it’s almost nauseating. The world just needs to connect to my ineffable amazingness.
But the other 80 percent is depression telling me that self-improvement is impossible and that I am too broken to ever get better and that I don’t deserve it anyways.
Funny how those two feelings can exist at the same time.
The issue of my poor sense of self is in there somewhere as well. It’s hard to think about self-improvement when your self is so weak and fragile and disconnected.
I mean, how can you improve yourself when you don’t know who (or what) you are?
Who is even being improved?
And what would self-improvement look like? It’s not like I can’t think of a ton of things I would change about myself if I could.
The first thing I would change would be my lack of drive and will. I would love to be a more focused, driven, and inspired person who sets a goal and doesn’t stop going for said goal until it is achieved, even if that takes a long time.
So I guess I would want to be more persistent and not nearly so easily discouraged as well. And of course, I could use a massive boost in confidence as well.
Although that’s a slippery one. I have a lot of confidence in my abilities. I mean, why wouldn’t I? I am super smart and hyper talented and very capable.
There are a lot of jobs out there that I could do amazingly well.
What I don’t have confidence in is all the little steps it takes to get the job in the first place. Starting with qualifying for the damned thing. I’m a 46 year old man who has never had a full time job and that’s a hell of a big problem to overcome.
If only there were some way to prove you can do a job before you even apply. Like some kind of vocational SAT test.
What else. I would like to have the wherewithal to act as smart as I am. They say stupid is as stupid does, and I does a lot of stupid things that are not in my best interests.
But when you are coping with depression, all you can do is make it through the day.
I’d like to be a healthier weight too. Or just healthy in general. It doesn’t bother me to be fat because I have been fat for my entire life.
I mean, I was a fat infant.
But I want to lose a lot of weight because it will make me feel better.
Yet another reason to get my blood sugar under control.
More after the break.
On Showing Off
I’ve always been a showoff. It’s a fundamental part of my nature.
I have always wanted to dazzle and amaze people with what I do. In my head, there is always an audience watching anything I do in an overt, seen by others mode. To me, the ultimate thing in life is to get way up high and shine, shine, shine.
That would strike some as selfish, and they are not wrong, because it is an expression of self. It’s saying to the world, “Look at me! Aren’t I amazing? Aren’t I so awesomely amazing that it makes you happy just to look at me?”.
And for me that has always been an active thing. So not “I am amazing” so much as “look at this amazing thing I am doing!”.
Again, this is a pure expression of self. And as such, there is a certain innocence to it.
But the problem is that at some point, that part of me got suppressed. Hard. So hard, in fact, that I remained unaware of it for a very long time and tried to operate in a word entirely of intellect and showing off how smart I am.
This, to put it mildly, didn’t get me anywhere. Without a strong sense of self and a healthy and robust amount of self-worth to back it up, that kind of thing is doomed to failure because it’s all light and no heat.
So it seems to me that when I suppressed this side of me that wants to show off all the time, I really threw out the baby with the bath water.
In fact, it was mostly baby. Very little bath water.
So now, when I am working so hard to connect with my primal self and the id that it can only spring from, it seems to me that the little showoff that was before I got raped needs to be up front and center and given his time to shine.
Standard disclaimer : When I declare my own awesomeness, it is not about you. I am not saying you are not just as awesome or even more awesome than I am.
Frankly, you don’t enter into the equation at all. Even in theory, or as placeholder.
Because it is not about you. It’s all me. Me being me as hard as I can.
And if that makes you feel bad because it makes you feel smaller by comparison, I’m sorry, but that’s your problem, not mine.
I’m tired of stopping low to make the pygmies feel taller.
Time for me to reach for the sky.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.