On escaping
I'm not re-reading it, because I wouldn't send it then. Forgive me all the mistakes.
I’m escaping into books a lot lately. From the news, from work frustrations, but also from what I need to do to make myself happier. I thought that after my month long holiday I’d come back to my desk full of energy and motivation to work on everything that can bring me closer to change. But I spend most of my hours in my reading chair, making Alice, the cat, extremely happy. I know that keeping her happy is my job (at least, according to her), but it doesn’t really bring me much closer to my life goal. Although, reading books and being paid for it is still a job I would gladly accept.
Unfortunately, nobody is offering reading jobs and it seems that nobody will save me from my other job either. The hard truth is, I need to do this myself. I need to find a way to work differently, to create the life I don’t want to escape from. It’s not an easy task as I think that there’s no blueprint for this. Actually, I know there isn’t, because I’ve spent the last several years to look for it.
I’ve tried to follow other people’s ways, I’ve tried changing myself into someone else. It only brought depression, even lower self-esteem and lots of other misery. Trying to find a blueprint or to follow someone else’s path can’t help me, but I’m wired to look for it. As a child I was told that being good, that in order to be accepted, I need to like someone else, that being me, doing things my way, simply wasn’t good enough. And it has stuck with me till now.
Lately, I’ve realised that I always looked for examples to follow. That I’ve rarely dared to do things completely my way. Even when choosing secondary school, university, job, I was following someone else’s dream, someone else’s path. Because my own choices couldn’t be good enough.
And now I’m stuck. I’m stuck in indecision. I’m stuck in fear that doing what I want to do and doing it my way, without seeking a map to the destination, will not be accepted, will not be enough. I’m stuck in conviction that I’m not enough as I am. That I need someone to show me that way, because choosing my own would never bring me to where I want to end up.
I’ve been talking about it for years now. About my vision for my life, for our life together, how we can both do what we want to do, how we both can pursue our passions. And I’ve been helping my husband to do just this, but I was sabotaging myself.
I have no idea how I get over it. The only thing I can think of is action, but I seem not to be able to make the first step. So I’m escaping into books, or searching for new hobbies, or trying new sports. Anything that will make feel like I’m doing something, but not doing what actually needs to be done.
Where do I go from here? How do I break this pattern? I have no answers and a lot of fear that it’s too late, that I’ve missed my chance.
It's never too late! Perhaps you need this slow doing nothing time before a new way becomes clear...
At worst you might have missed a chance but not all of them. Self Sabotage is normal, we all do it to a lesser or greater degree (at least I hope so!). I’m a great believer in writing stuff down and working backwards from that. I might never look at it again but it helps me to make the nebulous a little bit more defined in my head. In fairness it’s something I have to redo every once in a while because what I’m looking to do isn’t true to me and I repeatedly fall off the wagon:) Don’t forget that even your endeavours in procrastination produce worthwhile results! Yay for books and new hobbies- wonderful ways to cope with stress!