No More Hiding
I feel like every time you wind up somewhere unexpected, it just turns the past into a blur, and you find yourself better off, as hard as it may be to accept. If I know anything about myself, it’s that when I get comfortable, I coast. I kind of put my life on autopilot and expect things to just keep going on their own. Clearly, that’s not a good thing to do, for myself or anyone else in my life. It makes it easy to avoid problems and brush them off like they’re nothing. It makes it easy to overlook people and expect them to just be there the whole time.
The last year, as I’ve navigated this self-employed life for the first time ever, I’ve faced a lot of decisions and trains of thoughts. Things are scary, volatile, and sometimes very unpredictable. Those things can bring out the absolute worst in a person. When I look back at the last year, I’m proud of where I’ve gotten professionally, but I also am very not proud of some of the things I’ve done and said. My life became AJ’s world, only about me. Yes, my field and my ambitions require me to be self-centered in a way to where I really have to have my best interest in mind, because I have bills to pay and goals to meet, and if I stop or slow down, that’s risking my progress. I want very big things in life. Things that are very difficult and time consuming to achieve. The process of getting there is long, complex, and is filled with decisions. Some decisions are easy, some are not. Some decisions require help from others, and some are decisions only I can make.
In that process of making decisions and drawing my road map, I was faced with issues at home that I wanted to ignore. There were things I didn’t like that I didn’t express or speak up about, purely because I was afraid to. I was afraid of the outcome, afraid of the consequences, afraid of it in general. I became someone simply chasing an image, or a life with all the “correct” pieces, like a nice home, a relationship, good income, etc. All those things started to slowly just mesh together into one thing I was clinging onto for the sake of having them, making my attention and devotion to them basically nonexistent. It changed me, and not in all good ways. I did and said things that were out of character. I became a version of myself I do not like. Unfortunately, that being combined with bottled up thoughts and feelings that I wasn’t expressing led to poor decisions. Those decisions affected my personal life very heavily and have resulted in where I am today. Professionally and financially, I’m better off than I’ve ever been, but the emotional and personal cost is huge. I will never blame my problems on work. My problems are my problems and it’s up to me to figure out how to be a better person going forward.
Regardless of being in the wrong, I will say that punishing myself and harping on things repeatedly for an extended amount of time is unhealthy, and that goes for anyone. That’s not how problems are solved. That’s how they become even worse. I understand that I may appear fine, but inside, I am thinking about things. I feel guilt, regret, sadness, all of it. I’m putting on a happy face for the sake of trying to carry on with my life. I am taking proper time to address things to myself, but that doesn’t mean I just want to talk about it, and that doesn’t mean I can simply flip a switch and solve all my problems. It just isn’t that simple.
The truth is that what I want in life is going to occupy all of my time and emotions. It doesn’t create a situation to where I have any capacity to support someone more than just myself. That goes emotionally and financially. I do have to be able to talk about my thoughts and feelings, because no issue will ever be solved if I don’t. I can’t ever expect to be able to fix everything for myself without anyone else’s input. Clearly, when you’re given opportunities to speak your mind and you don’t, you get nowhere. I’ve learned that the hard way. What did that do? It led me to make things even worse as a result of resentment, resentment caused by bottled up thoughts and feelings that were never expressed, because I was scared to express them out of fear of the consequences of them. While the specific circumstances are complex, the process is simple.
Things really only have to be difficult if you make them difficult. So, don’t.
