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I’m working on my goal to type up my journals.
Sometimes this is a very fun project and I look back and
smile at fun memories or silly antics of my former self.
Other times this is a painful process.
I’m reminded of my flaws or see recurring negative behaviors
and patterns in my life.
No one is perfect, I know that. And I’d like to think I
don’t expect myself to be. But I do want to improve and grow.
While typing up some entries from my freshman year of college I was momentarily thrown into a funk – “See, you haven’t learned anything! Here you are two decades later making the same mistakes.”
These lyrics came to mind and calmed my heart:
It might be taking forever, but it's better than never
Here is how the song starts:
You know we're just working on it
No leaderboard keeping score
Long as you woke up this morning
And see you're working on it
It might be taking forever, but it's better than never
I was listening to a podcast that said we should ask ourselves: who created the benchmarks you are measuring yourself against?
If we are holding ourselves to someone else’s standard, we are likely to have a hard time measuring up, and to feel extra frustrated when we don’t meet the mark.
Instead, we can look at where we’ve come compared to where we want to be, or where we came from. And, spoiler alert, that is going to look different for each of us. And that is okay!
It don't sound like much, but for him, that's a revelation
You shoulda seen the pride in his eyes
When he said how far he's come from where he was
One of the things that consistently trips me up (in addition to seeing recurring bad habits/choices/patterns) is seeing how far I still have to go. Seeing all the things I hope no one else notices about me.
There are two phrases in this song that poetically convey that fear of mine:
We all got our monsters that don't see the day light
…
Skeletons you're hiding ain't gon' leave overnight
I wish I was okay with people seeing all of me. But I want to hide those monsters (but sometimes they sneak out anyway). I’m not proud of the skeletons I’m hiding (and I have definitely learned they won’t leave overnight!).
But, if I spend my time thinking about those monsters and skeletons, they have a way of sucking me back in, influencing my life and repeating cycles I thought I was done with.
And now you're back to chasing that watered-down love
You already know that ain't what you want
This stanza gives me great hope and direction I long to follow:
Day by day, we fight the good fight
Maybe once in a while, we find the strength to be okay
And find some patience for ourselves
Don't be so hard upon yourself
Show some love to yourself
So today I’ll celebrate that I took time to finish writing a
post, not worry about how long it took me.
I’ll acknowledge and believe the people who tell me that I
am essentially good.
I’ll choose to take a step forward and not calculate either how far I’ve come or how far I still have to go.
It might be taking forever, but it's better than never
So go easy, easy
Everybody got ugly, ugly
You know we're just working on it
