Revelation

Sometimes your life takes a certain turn, or encounters a challenge or situation that makes you sit up in bed and exclaim "eureka!" in horror as you realize something about yourself that was always there but that you never faced before. A couple of weeks ago I realized that I have been sabotaging myself for years now. It is the kind of thing that people tell you but that you never fully assimilate, or that you do but with a touch of dramatic despair, "woe is me, my greatest enemy awaits inside me."
But suddenly I realized it. It happened after a long discussion with someone about the way I was handling a situation and I realized that my attitude towards life, my fear of failure, and my preemptive strikes of pessimism were really keeping me from enjoying life and perhaps even succeeding in the areas that I was really passionate about.
I automatically assume failure and therefore don't try to accomplish anything. I am terrified about finding out that I am actually as bad at the things I like as I think I am, despite other people telling me the opposite. Deep inside I feel that I have tricked them somehow, that they have an erroneous perspective of me and I am reticent to do anything that may burst that bubble.
But that was before, and I am aware of it now. Instead of viewing myself and life from such a dismal point of view I am trying to make the best of what is actually there rather than what I have pictured in my brain as the extreme ideal which everything is measured up against. I wont be the easiest thing in the world, but somehow I feel like I can see the problem clearly and am sick of wallowing in it.

Comments

Anonymous said…
good on you then, ryan...
maybe it's like your belated new years resolution:-)
sometimes i have the same thing... but i think i deal with it ok just through the fact that i AM so passionate about certain things that even if i feel at times not good enough, even that isn't enough to keep me from it... make sense? anyway, i look forward to seeing what the enlightened ryan is now capable of:-)
2/2/07 04:56
Anonymous said…
What a painful but liberating thing to realize. I think most people have some measure of self-sabotage in them, it just depends on what area of life they do it in. Good for you for facing the truth.
2/2/07 10:12
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Things I think in the city on the verge of winter

Winter is almost here. You can never tell for sure at this time of the year. One day it is warm, the next it is cold. But for the past couple of weeks, the Fall has been wrestling, and losing, to Winter. The mornings start out very cold, and slowly the day starts to warm a bit as the sun comes out. But the Cold stands patiently in the shadows, hidden from the sun's warmth, waiting for you to walk into the shade of a building or tree to show you how cold the air really is and remind you to bring a scarf. Today was especially chilly. Even our apartment made me wrap up a little tighter. It also made me close some of the windows that we had wide open. Our whole building is heated with a giant coal furnace in the basement that tends to turn our humble abode into a living inferno. We balance this out by opening windows. It is a terrible waste of energy, but we have no control over the heating. I read that madrid still has over 2000 buildings running their heating off coal. It is terribly...
Read more

Snowmelt demands movement

The sun is out again today. The snow has all but melted except for in the abandoned lots where they piled it up several stories high; but even those piles are melting, leaving behind all of the grime that was plowed up with the snow and rivulets of water running towards the nearest gutter. The fact that the water reaches the drain is quite a feat. Just weeks ago it would have frozen halfway across the sidewalk... and lain in waiting for an unsuspecting jogger. But, as I said before, the sun is out now, the temperatures are up, and the ice is nowhere to be seen. I am running out of excuses to avoid jogging, if you will permit the pun. I am in some of the worse shape of my life and I don't particularly feel good about it. Those of you who have known me for most of my life know that being "in shape" was never really been a priority of mine until recently. In high school I looked for ways to do the least amount of work possible in P.E class. When we played sports, I chose t...
Read more

Blogs

I remember when I started blogging. I think I was one of the first people I know to start blogging. Dont get me wrong, it was a cultural phenomenon back 4 years ago when I began, but none of my friends really did it. And then all of a sudden a bunch of us did. We all kept it up for a while, some came and went, but I had a pretty vibrant blogging community. Tonight I found myself checking my friends blogs and finding only abandoned websites for the most part. It kind of kills a lot of the fun of blogging for me. So I guess this post is a bit of a salute to all the blogs around me during this time: So I started thinking of all the people that had blogs I liked that stopped: -Jen -Erin Kidd (though she kept it up for a very short time) -Rebecca Wood (though it seems like she may start up again) -Kenny -Evangeline -Chris Cherene Or the ones that never really started up in the first place: -Charles And then there are the ones that I wish would write more often: -Ed Rand -Aitor -Erin Davidso...
Read more