The Calm

Alright, so I decided to stop updating every day. It was honestly kind of a spur of the moment decision and although I still harbor doubts and feel a little bad about it, I think I mostly feel like it's the right thing to do. Forcing myself to write every single day is not actually all that healthy for keeping my creative juices flowing. It puts me in these situations far too often where I'm phoning it and slavishly adhering to some bogus self-imposed obligation. A lot of my entries comes across as pretty stilted and awkward for this reason. I can't think of exactly what to say so I ramble on endlessly and go on a lot of different tangents simply to fill up space. I'd like to not have to do this anymore. I'm not going to say it'll never happen again because I think it's safe to say that it will. Beyond everything else, this blog is a repository of my thoughts. Sometimes those thoughts go spinning wildly in different directions and there's not much I can do to contain them. This is exactly the time I should be writing entries in this blog.

A part of me is sad that I broke my streak--but if I'm being honest with myself there were several times that happened anyway and I double updated or otherwise fudged the rules to make up for it. I can't count the number of times I updated after midnight, for instance--and a number of times early on I completely forgot to update until the next morning. This kind of thing gradually petered off over time, but recently I've been feeling awfully clueless on what to actually say. It didn't feel as important or as necessary to keep these entries coming every single day. I was doing it because I'd gotten into the habit of it but it wasn't something that felt at fulfilling anymore. Not every day, at least. I shouldn't be writing these entries when I legitimately don't have anything to say.

I have been grappling with depression recently for a number of painfully trivial reasons. Most of the things that make me sad aren't actually all that significant when taken at face value or when taken separately. Lots of little things tend to snowball into making me miserable. It's part of the reason I've been trying to focus on sorting out all these little things to gradually increase my happiness level. It's why I've focused more on how I dress and I how I look--because although I don't feel one's appearance should dictate one's station or sense of self-worth, I would be lying if I said my self-esteem doesn't get boosted when I feel I look more attractive. I got a haircut--and then another haircut to repair that haircut because I felt it had been done poorly. I was losing my mind looking in mirrors every few minutes, trying to come to terms with what my hair looked like. It's such a silly thing to even worry about, but it was stressing me out like you wouldn't believe. I'm an extraordinarily self-conscious person. I imagine if I felt I was attractive I would also be extremely vain.

Of course, I also have to deal every day with the reality of my job. I am a salesman and am tasked every day with dealing with the public and being courteous and personable with complete strangers. There are some days where this seems like such a monumental task that I don't know how I even stand it. I don't know how I even get out of bed in the morning sometimes. It's so hard and so painful--so often. I hope every day that I can work towards feeling better about this kind of thing because I know the person that can deal with this is inside me. Unfortunately, I have thus far not been able to coax him out. He is asleep at the wheel and all is left is this terrified little kid who fidgets nervously and sweats profusely. My job is so frequently just this mountain of stress crashing into me violently. Am I getting better? I don't know. I sell a lot of phones but I still feel pretty terrible!

I'm glad I haven't completely abandoned this blog. It has been a very important thing in my life for over a year now. I believe that turning this blog into something that isn't perfunctory for me will greatly improve the quality of my writing. It's very likely I'll write about the same things as always--less frequently, but at greater length. I will no longer burn myself out on certain topics by writing about them on a daily basis. I'm not sure what else is to come. This blog may never be some professional writing project like I'd imagined it could be, but it will definitely be something helpful to me, both as an outlet and a catalog of my life and interests.