everything happens to me

Life lesson: you don't have to do it all alone. Trust people. They are a resource. You do not know best. Collaboration yields so much more. Don't try to carry it all alone. Your noble sacrifice is really just kind of selfish and weird. Don't martyr yourself on too much responsibility. Seek input from others!

It's not complicated, it's just hard to do sometimes. It's not that you're not capable of making decisions on your own, you are, but just remember that other people bring different perspectives and different points of view. What's leadership? It's not telling other people what to do, as much as I want it to be.

I wish I was better at handling criticism. I try to be ok at it, but I still get that squirrelly feeling. It's not personal (except when it is, though it usually isn't), don't take it personally.

happiness, the pursuit of

Hey! I'm happy right now. Like literally smiling as I type this. I thought it would useful just to mention this for posterity, to have it recorded somewhere that, yes, this an emotion I am capable of. It might not last, I might become overwhelmed (well, I will become overwhelmed, but let's pretend for now that it might not), things may become darker down the road, but for today, and tomorrow and a maybe a few days more, things are really good. I'll hold on to that for as long as I can, or at least the memory of it to remind myself why I'm doing what I'm doing. And what's helping fuel this beyond my own small successes (and the fact that I picked up a fucking stylish pair of new glasses yesterday (material possessions make man happy, news at 11)), in a funny self-perpetuating sort of way, is the successes of my class mates as well. The thought of all of us reaping the work we put in (with some grumbling along the way) and triumphing and accomplishing new things and basically being out there conquering the world every Tuesday and Wednesday is kind of special. These people are starting to mean something to me. Their successes are my successes, mine are theirs, we are in this together (almost ended that with a cynical little 'etc' but today is not about cynicism). ENJOY THIS FEELING WHILE IT LASTS.

here i am, once again (i'm torn into pieces)

Periodic update time: big things coming this week. School resumes tomorrow. Internship starts on Tuesday. So! I don't feel prepared. I doubt any one in my class feels particularly ready, so I'm not special in that regard. But still, I've never worked a job that I truly wanted to make a career out of. It just means added pressure. Not caring about your job is a useful fiction. If you screw up it's because you weren't really trying, not deep down at least. I can't fall into that trap, that trap of looking busy without accomplishing anything. I want to accomplish things. I feel like a part of me hasn't gotten that message, that there is a part of me that is ready to shrink away from the challenge, to duck out of sight whenever possible. It's the fraud complex inside of me. For how long can I trick them into believing I am a competent human being? Worse though is this idea that I'm just trying to trick myself. The ruse isn't for their benefit, it's for mine. These are unhelpful thoughts so it's good to shine light on them, spray a little disinfectant in the darker corners of my mind. (I have this idea in my head that just by writing down my problems I can make them go away. Which I think is why I so rarely do write down my problems: if I write a problem down and it fails to go away, my ruse is revealed and I am exposed as a charlatan. Better to hold on to the idea of writing as a cure-all without putting it to the test).

But ok, I am not so dumb or useless as I fear and I am not so smart and resourceful as I would like. Somewhere in the middle. My marks were good last semester, in fact they were superfluous to the point where I have trouble taking them seriously.

I'm re-reading Mental Trap. I feel like it helped in the past, and it's interesting to see that I have actually internalized some of the lessons. Some of it I'm having trouble with. Sometimes it seems like the author is advocating for a very passive existence: e.g if you avoid making plans, you can't be upset when they don't materialize. That is, if you have no expectations of the universe, you will never be disappointed in how things turn out. He argues that it is the difference between what we plan and reality that causes discord and unhappiness with-in us. I.E if you have no plans to watch Community when it returns, you can't get upset when it is yanked from the schedule. I think I might be misreading this part.

Maybe I'll write more (he wrote, and then died, suddenly). I'm reading more at least, so that's a start.