I started writing this on my birthday. I've found myself really, really bored of introspection lately, and I finished this only through brute force. This is an account of my
26th year, an assessment of personal progress, and a blueprint of new goals.
Last year I focused on developing a plan for action and constructing a solid foundation of habits for the next year. Leaving
room for unanticipated happenings, I tried to refine the questions I was
interested in answering and the values and objectives that guided them, and
then searched for researchers who could help me to approach those questions. It
didn’t take much introspection to realize that going through with this plan
would be trying, and if I wanted to maintain my health during this turbulence,
I needed to be able to better take care of myself even when I was on autopilot.
Accordingly, I spent some time paying close attention to myself and my everyday
behavior and deliberately started to develop healthier habits.
This year, I started to execute the plan. I
applied to schools that seemed to be enriching places to learn and to approach
my questions of interest. A few months later, I received notifications of
acceptance and began making plans to move.
There were, as I anticipated, some unanticipated happenings. This past year, I had to say farewell forever to some of my closest
relatives, two who had lived long lives and one who departed from this world too early. I also got to celebrate their terrific adventures and their beautiful beings in the company of my relatives. I made a quick note to myself that I would like for there to be plenty of food and alcohol at my funeral.
Before I felt ready, I drank my last coffee at my favorite back-alley coffee shop. I watched the sunset one last time at Greenlake. I submitted my letter of resignation to my workplace of almost three and a half years. I waved some teary goodbyes to the people and places that nurtured me from when I was a fearful, hunched-over adolescent of almost 18 until I was a thoroughly bruised (thank you, children I worked with) but hopeful girl of almost 26.
And then, it was time. I uprooted my life and repotted it in Minneapolis. I think a lot of the roots survived and are just now starting to acclimate to the new soil.
Considering the amount of changes, things have gone well so far. This is large part thanks to the kind people around me.Many people have been so generous with their ears and wisdom and so patient with my silliness and clumsiness. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Here, I’ll review some of the progress I have made on some of the goals I set for myself last year. Then, I will unroll some of the objectives for my 27th year.
Physical Maintenance
My schedule was fairly routine for a majority of the past year, and I enjoyed a mostly consistent sleeping schedule. However,
when school started in September, my schedule changed completely, and I have
been finding it difficult to adjust. In fact, there were weeks this autumn in
which I slept for two three-hour periods throughout the day for several days at
a time. During this time, I couldn’t think of interesting things to say, I
couldn’t focus on readings, and I couldn’t seem to think about anything without
fixating on its uglier facets. My sleep routine goal has unfortunately not been
met, and it is negatively affecting my life.
This collapse of my routine also affected my
exercising. Until I moved in autumn, I was happily doing rigorous exercise for
30 minutes or more about five days a week. In autumn, this routine completely
imploded because navigating a novel environment and sleeping poorly depleted me
of my energy. For the last two months of this past year, I rode my bicycle or
walked to and from school but did hardly any other form of rigorous exercise.
On a more positive note, I have managed to
maintain a nutritious, fun diet. Food appreciation has been central to my
everyday life ever since I was a child, and I am proud to say that I maintain
this even today—I had a flaky, fluffy croissant for breakfast by the way, thank
you for asking. I regularly get to munch happily on a well-balanced, exciting
array of foods. This has not changed much since last year, but more recently it
seems that by the time I know what my body needs, I am already reaching for it,
almost instinctively. This habit, which previously required a nontrivial amount
of cognitive effort, has become mostly intuitive. I am humbled by my body’s
ability to internalize this habit and allow this shift from deliberation to
automation.
Psychological Maintenance
Next, I have a slightly more nuanced
understanding of my feelings and moods. I have found it less difficult to shift
my attention to my feelings and then to sit quietly and observe the tension in
my jaw, the tightness of my guts, and the bounciness of my thoughts. The
categorization of my feelings based on those observations has been more
precise; I have a larger selection of categories than I did last year, and I
categorize more accurately. With a more fine-grained set of categories sprouted
new combinations of coping skills and expectations.
One such expectation is the understanding that
sometimes, feelings cannot be dealt with and squared away completely.
Sometimes, I need to expect that all I can do is mitigate the feeling enough,
just enough that I can treat others respectfully and perform my duties
sufficiently well. This means that when I cannot alleviate emotional pain
entirely, I must not put further burden upon myself by being alarmed, and I
must not be angry with myself for being unable to accomplish an impossible task.
Rather, the most appropriate course of action is
to soberly acknowledge my limitations. Since this acknowledgement simply
constitutes learning new facts about myself, I would ideally feel neutral about
it, the way I might feel learning a fact about the Andromeda Galaxy or tree
frogs or something; however, I think it is also not unreasonable to feel
frustrated or even stunned at being hit in the face with my
limitations. I should just be careful that I don’t weaponize these negative
feelings about my incompetence to bully myself.
My next goal was to probe more into my long-term
anxieties and insecurities. I have been doing this by asking myself probing questions and
carefully angled follow up questions until the insecurity feels precise, and
then trying to untangle memories to pry out the critical ones that formed
the insecurity. The hardest part of this procedure is trying to quiet the
panicked warnings from my viscera to stop, but this has gotten slightly easier
with practice. Performing what felt like surgery on my own emotions has
honestly been agonizing, but it helped me to synthesize my thoughts, emotions,
and forgotten memories.
Here are three insights that came from this
synthesis:
1) Many insecurities start from little moments, but ruminating on
them turns them into monstrosities. If I think hard, I can point to certain memories in which someone, whose judgement I trusted or whose approval I
wanted, told me something that caused me to fixate on some strange detail, to
make bizarre assumptions, or to be unduly self-conscious. I started to obsess
over the notion that my values were incorrectly calibrated and that I must be
dumb or depraved. Quite a few of these ideas were hurtful and absurd, and
adopting them has contorted parts of my worldview.
2) I can counter the effects of rumination by
questioning the insecurity and the authority of the person who brought it to my
attention. In addition to questioning the veracity of the insecurity, I
explored the reasons and contexts that led some people to say things that were
so inappropriate. Maybe they needed to vent some unrelated frustration or were
trying to impress someone nearby by seeming witty and edgy. This obviously does
not absolve them of their rude behavior or justify what they said. It only
contextualizes and delegitimizes their comments, which dislodges the
insecurities from their nests and allows me to slowly remedy the infected parts
of my worldview.
3) A surprising ratio of my thoughts about
myself are not actually mine, and taking ownership and maintenance
responsibilities of my identity will require hard work. This examination of my
insecurities made me realize how much I identify even with off-hand comments
and snide remarks by other people. I become careless and indiscriminately
accept outside judgement, I am kind of embarrassed to say, with hardly any
hesitation. This goal of developing a more accurate self-concept thus proved to
be a more sizable undertaking than I anticipated. Still, this year, I made some
headway by reevaluating a few of my self-beliefs and starting to write them
down: where I came from, what I believe, what I value, and what I want. Most of
these things are still vague, but I can fidget with them until things seem
right.
Social Skills
I’ve started delving into some heavy territory,
so here is an intermission peanut.
This year, one goal was to get used to casual
group social situations. This year, I pushed myself into situations where I was
one of group. I feel more a tiny bit more comfortable with having fun in
public. Through exposure, I am slowly getting used to it. Thank you to the
people who are so pleasant and hold my hand in these situations even though I
am a silly, nervous girl and have sweaty palms.
Relationships
This year, I acknowledged just how hard it is
for me to let people come close to me. I also acknowledged that this is
something that I deeply, deeply desire.
I found freedom and empowerment in
being a kind of elusive character. Not talking about my inner life to people
meant that no one would know what I am doing or even what I am trying to do,
and therefore that no one could judge me, and no one could try to get in my
way. However, over the past few years and this year especially, I realized that
this also meant that I could never truly collaborate with anyone and I could
never share the joy of success with anyone. I further realized that I wanted to
play with people, grow with people, and adventure the world with people. This
means that I need to let people get close enough to see me.
This year, I admitted that I am intensely afraid
of being seen.
This year, I also squeezed my eyes shut and dove.
I got water in my eyes, and sometimes it burns.
And to be honest, I still feel kind of afraid some of the time. But I got to
splash around in the water and explore its depths with some of my favorite
people in the world.
Thank you again to the wonderful people around
me for your feedback and encouragement.
Objectives for the New Year
Civic Participation
Last year, I identified a problem: I stopped
paying attention to the news because I was tired of getting into fruitless, time-consuming arguments. This year, I managed to get back into
reading the news, but I’m still not as well informed as I want to be. In
particular, I noticed that my main difficulties are: 1) not knowing the names of
noteworthy politicians, 2) not paying attention to state-level issues, and 3)
reading opinion pieces with a less critical eye when the headline sounds
agreeable to me.
Next year, I would like to read the news in a
way that addresses those problems:
1) making note of the names, positions, and
parties of noteworthy politicians, in addition to their positions
2) learning more about the key issues in
Minnesota state
3) being devil’s advocate while I read opinion
pieces that sound agreeable to me and reading more opinion pieces with titles
that are not as agreeable
Physical Maintenance
1) This year, I would like to figure out how I
can go to bed at a reasonable hour. I’m at a complete loss as to how to train
myself to do this. My inkling is that one way to start is to set an alarm to go
to bed at a certain hour. It’s so easy to get sucked into things or just waste
time until the wee hours if I’m uninterrupted by some voice of reason (and
sometimes I ignore her—just ask my mom).
2) I would also like to add more rigorous
exercise and more stretching to my routines. Even doing five minutes of
exercise or stretching at random points throughout the day seems to make me
feel better instantaneously and also make my life significantly better overall.
Psychological Maintenance
1) I would like to continue to get a more accurate
understanding of who I am, what I want, and what my capabilities are.
2) I would like to bully myself less. This year,
I will continue to make the voice of reason in my head louder and more
assertive. I am not optimistic that I will ever entirely eliminate the bullying
voices, but I know I have the capacity to argue with them. This year, I tried (with some success) to notice the moments when reasonable self-criticism devolved
into unreasonable self-torment. There are some notable differences in the tone
and language used in each of these categories of thought. I identified some of
the functions that the bullying voice may have, and then started developing arguments
for why the voice doesn’t perform its function or has a misguided purpose
entirely. I made an effort to start engaging in conversation with the bullying
voice using these arguments when I could muster the energy. This year, I would
like to continue this arguing practice to increase my emotional endurance.
3) Lastly, this year I would like to start
asking people for help. As I acknowledged above, there is a limit to the amount
of emotional burden I can shoulder at any point in time. I mentioned above that
I should not be alarmed if I cannot square away all of my feelings as long as I
am able to be respectful to others and function. The truth is that sometimes,
there is enough emotional burden that the amount is beyond my threshold, and as
a result I am not able to function. In these times, I tend to thrash around,
trying to wrestle with a situation that is clearly beyond my limits, until I
crumple on to the floor in an exhausted, crying heap. In these times, I should
instead ask someone for help. I'm not exactly sure why, but asking for help in emotionally trying circumstances feels really counterintuitive to me. However, I know that thrashing is taking a toll on my
everyday life, so I have to grit my teeth and do the counterintuitive thing.
I’m glad I have maintained good relationships with kind and generous people who
would probably help me if they knew I wanted it.
Fun Things To Do This Year (YAAAAY)
I want to make more music.
I want to have more fun in public with reckless
abandon.
I want to point my eyes and ears at more art.
I want to develop more yummy recipes.
I want to laugh loudly and be mischievous with
people.
I want to explore on my bicycle.
I want to look for some cool ass bugs.
I want to read everything I can about cool ideas.
I want to talk to people about them.
I am exhilarated to be alive for my 27th year.
Fuck this shit. I’m so, so, so bored of
introspection. I’m going outside.
Love and peace,
Rina
