Author: somevariables

When everything feels contrived and depthless, I believe it’s a call to focus on the sheer unremarkability of life and yourself as an individual.

***

My life looks very different today in comparison with last year. Those words could have come from your mouth. You’ve experienced a lot of change in the last year too.

Sometimes I look out of the window during a lecture, or spend more time than I’d like to admit scrolling through memories and (insert year ago) todays. I watch videos I filmed at uni and I laugh at how young I looked in sixth form. I look back at myself now knowing that I knew so little. Of course, that’s the way life goes.

Time poverty

Every once in a while we become obsessed with time. We come to realisations about it that open our eyes and we want to share it with people. That’s a phase I’m in right now.

I have been thinking about the past, especially now that life is requiring more of me every single day.

Despite them having the same quantitative value, some seconds mean more than others.

I recently saw a TikTok where a woman explained time poverty, which in a nutshell, is having too many things to do and not enough time to do them – or at least what feels like not enough time. I’ll leave it at that.

Pressure

I’m finding it hard to keep up – every week I think things will be less pressurised and easier to deal with. But they all end up as tasking and demanding as each other.

I’m being tugged in different directions by education, relationships, ambitions, my faith, my self-perception, how I feel about my body and the way I look…

Many are threatening my peace of mind and I have already lost the battle a few times.

Writing

I haven’t written a post in a month or so but it feels longer than that, because so much has been crammed into that short horizon of time.

Really, I only write blog posts when I’ve realised something and can articulate it in a way that I’m proud of, and that people can relate to.

But I’ve recently been thrown into the deep end. And the absence of time has means I’ve been less capable of processing and forming my thoughts. I have been waiting for something to come to life but my realisations have been stunted.

This is the most I’ve written in a while.

To be real

A year ago I was finishing 3rd year.

And looking back I still had no solid idea of what I wanted to do with my life. Ironically, if you asked me I would have given an answer that sounded like I knew what I was planning (pandemic considered).

I’m good at bullshitting my way through life. I‘ve been an advocate for faking it till I make it for many years, and I still am. Yet I grow in awe of how this can coexist with striving to remain who you truly are in any and every moment.

I saw a tweet some months ago saying that you know you’re real when you’re not trying to show that you are. You just ‘be’. That’s all.

That’s what I’m trying to do now. When everything feels contrived and depthless, I believe it’s a call to focus on oneself and the sheer unremarkability of life and yourself as an individual.

I have enjoyed that so much. I used to care a lot about upholding perceptions of myself. If someone thought I was interesting I wanted to remain interesting to them.

But now I am happy to become bland in their eyes. If that’s the ebb and flow of my existence then that’s what I should put across to the world, while paying little to no attention to it at all.

To conclude

Is there value in putting effort into things, and creating art with your living? Yes. But it should be authentic. And if you don’t feel like portraying a certain image of yourself, be okay with not doing so and portraying who you are right now with no care for it.

I say that for myself.

These are some half-developed realisations I’ve come to recently. I will have more over time so perhaps I should be okay with not having every thought turn into a perfectly articulated realisation in my eyes.

Psalms 73:25-26

*this reads like a diary entry

My twenties look to me, like they will be full of opportunities and a call to live my life as if it has just begun, because it has.

***

When I reflect on what I was like as a teenager, I see everything I wish I did differently. I see the times where I should have tried harder and when I should have cared less. I see the things that I allowed to affect my confidence and the things I wish I were brave enough to do.

Funnily enough, I also hear a lot from people in their 30s and upwards, reminiscing on their twenties in the same way that I reminisce on my teens. They say things from ‘I was a mess, I had no clue what I was doing.’ to ‘I wish I realised that my decisions weren’t doomed to be set in stone. I wish I worried less, I wish I realised just how young I was.’

I’ve recently put two and two together and I feel like I’ve cracked some sort of code. What is stopping me from treating my twenties like my teens with experience? Here, I have the benefit of vicarious reinforcement mixed with my personal experiences. This realisation feels like a second chance to live as young as I still am, with the freedom I wish I had when I was a teenager. It’s time to turn my ‘I wish I…’ to ‘I will now, because I still have a chance.’

My twenties look to me, like they will be full of opportunities and a call to live my life as if it has just begun, because it has.

I will be 30 years old in nine years’ time. And I will use those nine years to live more fearlessly than I ever did when I was a teenager. And when I turn 30, there will remain so much more life for me to live.

I will not let the fear of how others will perceive or interact with me and anything I produce, to stop me from following my heart with whatever it is that I create. I will not hold myself back in fear and I will not allow hesitation at the sight of the unknown to transform into stagnancy and never giving anything a try.

I will start things and lay them to rest whenever I feel the need to do so, because doing so is not the end of the world. That’s something I learnt in my teens. I will try my hardest to disallow anxiety from ruling my life. That’s something I’ve learnt from those who are older than me. I won’t have a fear of the future because every moment I live is the future and I have always been fine, despite not knowing what any day holds for me.

How blessed are we to have the gift of retrospect mixed with that of vicarious reinforcement! Those who are older are advising me and I am advising myself. In doing so, I am paving a life that is full of endless possibilities, one where I will no longer hold myself back, and where I can continue living a time in my life that I thought was long gone. It’s here right now, it never went anywhere.

I must continue telling myself that my decisions are the beginning rather than the end. I’m not scared of making mistakes. Despite how regret makes me feel when I feel it, I would prefer that feeling to the numbing question of what if.

I have allowed myself to see too many things as final and it’s put obstacles in my path. So, if I am the only person that has ever held me back, I am going to get out of the way!

Are you in your own way?