Excerpts from a Past Self

I want to keep myself accountable to posting twice a week. But I also don’t want to phone it in and post something that was quickly written and not fully thought through. So, I thought today would be a good day to start a series of sharing excerpts from a journal that I’ve been keeping for the past four years now.

I think it’s important to look back on how far I’ve come and how much farther I have to go. There have been a lot of ups and downs and I want to consciously share some of the lows along with the highs.

15 September 2016

I just feel a lack of energy. I feel like I will never reach any type of goal in my life. I’m 19 years old. And what have I done? No-thing. And what am I going to do in the future? I don’t know but I know I’m not the type of person to work really hard and actually accomplish their dreams. I’m the kind of person who won’t try as hard as they could have and therefore will always be disappointed with themselves.

I’ve already lived a third of my life and I haven’t done anything worthwhile. And I don’t want to live more just to make sure of the fact that I will disappoint myself.

3 November 2016

When I think about it, I just have this sinking feeling about the rest of my life. That I will just end up working really hard or kind of hard doing something I kind of like. Be kind of happy/kind of depressed forever and never really accomplish anything, never really have any friends. On the one hand I’m very afraid of this, but on the other, I’m not doing anything to counteract this eventual and seemingly inevitable fate.

12 December 2018

Sometimes I feel like I just woke up to life last year and realized I was living and could live and could do things I wanted and could accomplish my goals and could set goals and before that I was just living in this tunnel of darkness or more like grayness that I couldn’t seem to get out of or add any light to. And I’m happy to have woken up to the world and life and stuff but now it’s like I’m so overwhelmed and I don’t even know where to begin and I feel so far behind all of these people who were living and doing and experiencing and creating thigs in high school and it’s like I just don’t know where I was all that time, just trapped in that gray alternate universe or something. Like what did I do in hs? I just like watched TV or something and chatted with friends on messenger I guess? Did I even watch anything that impacted or influenced me or made me think differently? I don’t think so… And that is just so sad. 2019 is going to be better. I can feel it. I think we’re gonna listen to and watch and make some truly interesting and inspiring stuff I hope. I believe. I trust.

24 March 2019

Everything is so stupid and pointless. I feel like nothing I do and nothing anyone else does means anything. It’s all just useless. People just sitting around and reading and talking about nothing. Working on dumb little projects that impact nothing, coming up with cool new terminology and talking themselves in circles, patting each other on the back and validating each other.

I don’t believe I will ever be happy. I don’t believe I am capable of happiness or productivity.

18 September 2019

I realize many of the thoughts shared in these journal entries are somewhat disturbing. I would like to address that more later this week. But for now I’ll just say that I am not the same person who wrote these entries and this is no cause for concern.