Sometimes I think I try too hard; the key to not losing ones sanity seems to be try as little as possible-that way if you fail, it won’t hurt as much.
That’s always been my attitude to life-particularly in things which I know I will be no good at: from the inconsequential, like sport, to the absolutely essential-my career. I put in as little effort as I can get away with, because I know, deep inside, that I am no good.
Can I safely say that I’ve put my heart and soul into proving myself at my job? Of course I can’t. Because whilst I could be doing things to better myself career wise, things like reading scientific articles or even preparing to return to uni by getting a start on my subjects, which I hasten to add, will be completely new to me; I am sitting around, twiddling my thumbs, reading fucking worthless shit on buzzfeed and obsessively checking tinder and Grindr every few minutes. As though I would have suddenly become popular in that short span of time.
I could be doing something infinitely more valuable with my free time and instead, I am dragging my feet and wasting that precious time. With the amount of free down time I’ve had at work in the past year, I could have done several online courses, written a book, learnt mandarin, learnt how to cook properly, found a boyfriend (haha, that’s a big joke…); point being I could have achieved something, I could have been a contender, to quote On The Waterfront.. But I didn’t.
Choice is a very loaded term; because yes, some things you can choose, some are already chosen for you. I could have chosen to spend my free time in a more constructive manner. I could have made that commitment towards.. something. Instead I made the choice to focus inward, to try and force love to happen; and love-well that’s one thing you cannot choose.
Sometimes, I read stuff that I’ve written, when I am in a more stable frame of mind and I wonder. I wonder how I could be so together in that moment, how perceptive I am, how rational compared to the shithole irrational person I am at times. I can accept that I have a duality in my nature; I can accept that-I have to accept that. But what I cannot accept is that I should know better and I don’t; that I continually make the same mistakes over and over again. And I continually point out that I make those mistakes, and yet I can’t seem to make the lesson stick (another familiar and overused line in my writing oeuvre). I feel like some, if not most of my readers are so tired, so very sick of the familiar path that I tread. I feel like some of them have given up on me as I have already given up on myself…
I know and don’t learn. That’s who I am, that is the duality in my nature; to be both extremely self aware and yet so absolutely stupidly ignorant.