the long way

Sometimes I’m tempted to rename this blog to “infinitely indebt” or “Ode to Inadequacies,” which finally is what this self-indulgent space has been – nothing new there. The summer has always been a time of reflection for me, naturally since I have more downtime than in the winter break. I have more time to think about personal projects, books to read, goals—the endless list of summer aspirations. But this time is also a kind of summer in limbo or summer in media res. Certainly, I am always happy to make lists, but there is also the threat of the lackey part of me – the self that likes the idea of lists but somehow falls short of achieving the goals. Of course, sometimes I have work-in-progress goals that get lost in time, lots of muddled thinking, which is to say that it gets harder to see whether I am actually making progress, what, with the baby steps I take!

And it is funny to think that sometimes I really do have moments of lucidity, like when I think I have a clear expectation of things I want to do and hope to do. When I say “think,” as in the previous sentence, sometimes I fear that what I really mean to say is that I want the illusion of certainty. I want to think that I am certain and confident about the choices I am making (and have made in the past), but it’s hard for me to say. I have infinite bouts of doubt and thus the illusion of certainty that mobilizes me to try to move forward, I think. In other words, if I set goal X and think that I’ve managed well enough or have the illusion that I’m close enough to the finish line, then I can actually make myself move in the direction of goal Y and move on instead of fretting about goal X so much. But because I’m conscious of the role of illusions, I keep having recurring crises about certainties, which in turn produce abnormally high levels of anxiety.

I can’t believe I just wrote all this crap about illusion of things. Holy bejezus -- rereading paragraph 2 I realize that this is a post a about perfectionism. But I am not a perfectionist. Okay, I could have saved some bloggy time, but in the spirit of indulgence, it seems I took a detour. The long way to the root of the crisis. I was actually going to start talking about some of my goals (ie. Not just in the vague form of letters!). But I got all sidetracked and lost. Even worse is that I am sober and blogging

Whatever, I’m tired. Tomorrow I need to post about assertiveness -- the lack thereof,