01/05/2025: Getting the Ball Rolling

Tomorrow life gets back to normal. I’ve been hard at work making plans and setting goals, and I’m just ready to dive in. 

With all our holiday travels over for the time being and with a sense of urgency to get the ball rolling, I look to tomorrow with excitement. But I’m trying to keep my expectations from getting ahead of where I am currently, so I don’t rush in too quickly and disappoint myself before I really begin. 

I know a common problem I have is setting the bar high with infinite tasks and setting an unrealistic time frame to the point where I don’t come close to that bar at all. And as a result, I find myself feeling like I’m spinning my wheels or that I’m moving way too slow to feel accomplished about anything. I know I have to take the necessary time to take a step back and realize that the plans I’ve made and the goals I hope to achieve are really tailored for multiple months, and maybe even years of hard work and dedication. Some things just aren’t meant to be tackled in days or weeks, and that’s perfectly okay. 

I just don’t know when I decided to feel as if I’m on some invisible yet impossibly high pedestal. I think that a lifetime of pleasing others and putting my dreams to the side turned me into a well-oiled machine, a machine molded by the world and people around me. I didn’t question my motivations and my actions until now, either, and it’s hard not to feel like I wasted so much time before I started to learn these things about myself I never dared to question until now.

Now I know the beauty of being my truest self, and things that I thought were selfish before are actually quite necessary for a well balanced life in this crazy world, and necessary for our mental health and wellbeing. I’m trying not to think too hard about the fact that my new year starts tomorrow, on a day that I believe is the start to a very uncertain and unfair four years ahead. All I know is that I deserve better, and the world deserves better.

The sooner we buckle down on our respective sides, keep the hurtful words to ourselves, and just focus on our own things, the better. It’s really the only way to ensure we make it through this uncertain time unscathed - mentally, physically and emotionally. And so I think it’s best to accept the things that are in our control and the things that aren’t, and to just keep moving right along.