Retraining Myself to be Myself

The Content Monkey Owns Up.
Image from Tim Davis, AllPosters.com

So let's see... I wrote "Refocusing" almost 5 months ago now, and only in the last few weeks have I had some of the mental, emotional breakthroughs/realizations I've been so desperately seeking.  February was definitely a month of hell in various ways, but from the ashes, goals and aspirations have only become clearer and I'm hoping that coming into March, I'm truly starting my new year and a new era in my life.  Maybe I can finally let go of all this self-loathing born from a variety of sources.  With that said, let me list some things I've realized:

1) I truly have people who love me and want me to breakthrough to success.
Fortunately, the majority of people I know want me to be successful, but everyone expresses it differently and I've had to learn what that means in terms of feeling support.  With the last breakdown in work ethic due to sickness, causing severe emotional distress, my family has truly come together to prop me back up and away from the brink of a complete breakdown.  Not that I want to actively continue to test this well of support, but it finally resolved issues in regards to feeling support.  It reminded me that I've taken for granted the support I do have available to me, and that I've been blinded by trying to get that support pleasing people who I can't please, and in the end, felt my energies and self-confidence massively drained.  That said...

2) I'm completely free to decide what path I want to take.  I'm single and independent, and there is vast strength in that.
In trying to please people for their support/friendship, I've held my own wants/needs ransom.  The amount of "me" time I need, what I like to do or not do in my free time.  As a result, the whole thing compromised me as a person, instead of looking disciplined and focused, I've been scattered like dust in the wind.  I hated myself for liking things that other people did, even then I voiced that and then proceeded to deny myself from doing those things to make time to do what they wanted to do.  And after what felt like work, what happened?  I still felt alone and left out even though I was surrounded by people.  Besides, for better or worse, no one, short of the law, seems to be able to give me the clear guidance I need to decide who I should be.

Due to these two central realizations,  I finally have some goals to set in front of me that I've settled on myself.  The right questions were asked that got me here, and I can accept the reality of my situation a little bit better.  With this acceptance, I'm hoping that I can start (slowly) to become more functional.  So here are my goals...


A) Finding a sustainable work schedule.
I'm very excited and motivated to continue my research in grad school, as I think technically I'm finally over the wall that I've been trying to scale for the last 5 years, and I'm getting less timid and scared of the amount of work that lies ahead of me, but I don't want to get shallowed up in the mania that I feel like I'm surrounded by, it is part of why I've self-destructed in the past and burned myself out.  So I need to find my center and focus, finding a schedule that I can stick to without killing myself.  That brings me to the next goal.

B) Finding my discipline so I can turn off my empathy accordingly.
I've always been sensitive to others and their needs/moods and unfortunately, most times it causes me distress.  I need a thicker skin, so I can shut off the majority of this input.  Hopefully, then I can leave myself open to understanding my own needs, and use my empathy as more of a strength, better working to understand the motivations/wants of those who I'm working with to graduate.

C) Expressing myself better.
This one is simple; I need to take out the time to fully release all the emotions and thoughts I build up from day to day.  Since I spend so much time in my head, I tend to have a lot build up that can cause distress when not released.  I use to think the best release was being social, but that's been vastly underwhelming.  Most times, I've just told anyone who would listen without a filter so the whole thing just comes off as venting instead of have an actual discussion with someone, which was what I was looking for.  So I need to write it out, either on here or in my personal journal.  Part of this goal is expressing what I like without feeling scared because someone will judge me accordingly.  I'm utterly done with trying to please anyone outside of those who try to please me in some portion of my life.

D) Getting in better shape.

Now this goal is a little vague, as it is dependent on goal A.  So for now, I'm focusing on trying to make it to gymnastics practice twice a week so I have some physical activity.  As time goes on, I'm hope this with evolve accordingly.

E) Becoming more fiscally responsible.

While I need to come up with a more detailed personal plan of how I will do this, the simple answer is that I need to consolidate and eliminate my credit card debt, build up an emergency fund, and start putting aside money that I can play with so that it can grow faster than just sitting in a savings account.  These three things are the main subgoals of this overall goal, and with my car almost paid off, I think this can be actualized.

These are the five main lines of work I want to embark on, and I'm hoping in further posts to expand on my progress with these ideal goals via cutting them up into smaller short term goals.

Whew, that was a lot and there are no pictures...  need to change that, but I feel a new day on the horizon, and hope has surged back like never before.  Until next time...