Hello there! It’s been six days since the year has started, and I think my entry for the Year-End Social Media Reflection Essay contest is a little too late for posting. But then again, it takes me a while to fully flesh out my thoughts and feelings about everything (especially 2019), so please go easy on me.
When 2019 started, I asked my friend Roxy to do a tarot reading for me, particularly about the overall mood and theme of my life for the year ahead. The message that I got from the reading was to “KonMari my life,” which meant that I needed to find the things that smother me and hold me back. As soon as I find them, I have to let them go.
All throughout 2019, I held on to those beliefs like a life vest. One of those beliefs was attaching my self-worth to my work and my achievements. My ego is pretty huge, and I’ve always seen my job performance and achievements as gateways to raise my own self-worth. To overcome the feelings of being underestimated and being seen as incompetent and incapable, I felt like I needed to achieve more and prove people wrong. I know deep in my heart that I have strengths and I’m capable, smart, and talented, but years of being scolded, shut down, and bullied have made me believe otherwise.
Anyway, when I left my job at the latter part of 2019, I started to work on letting go of this belief. As I reflected on my approach to work, I realized that I don’t have to conflate my self-worth with my job performance. Work does not have to define how good or bad I am as a person. Work is just work, and it’s perfectly okay to admit that it’s just a means to an end. The puritanical work ethic is shitty, and internalizing capitalism sucks. I think I’m doing a decent job of not letting my job rejections get to me and finding peace in the truth that work is just…work. More often than not, work for me is just doing my best to get my bread, and that’s more than enough sometimes. I have said way too much about this, but I’m ready to let go of things that no longer serve me. I’m ready to make use of my full potential in this new decade. I’m capable, smart, and talented, and I can grow even more.
Despite 2019 being a shitty year, there were still some good moments and experiences. My friendships grew deeper, I tried things that were outside of my comfort zone, I saw my favorite bias groups, and my relationship with my dad got better. 2019 was also the year where I started learning how to fall in love with myself again, little by little. In the process, I’m taking care of myself more actively. I’m also learning basic life skills, which are skills that I denied myself of learning, since I thought that my nerdy-ass ways would compensate for them. I was wrong. Before, I used to take pride in the fact that I was such a cultured person, reading magazines and books in highfalutin language. Now, I’m proud of myself for learning how to do household chores, and appreciating the lessons that come with them, such as developing patience, discipline, and potentially an improved sense of focus. I thought stepping back and going back to basics meant something bad to me, but growth is NOT linear! You regress and you need to relearn things 87.5% of the time. Perhaps the most tangible form of not growing is not trying, after all.
In the grand scheme of things, I feel relieved to discover that my life in 2019 wasn’t really as bad as I make it out to be. Sure, some things feel catastrophic at times, but I’m proud of myself for powering through. Here’s to the new year.
hello, yeorobuns 