I'm on the cusp of completing so many of the big personal and professional projects that I've been working on for so long. Things I have been working on not just for weeks or months, but in some cases for years.
I can feel the momentum.
I'm about to get to the flywheel, the tipping point where momentum begets momentum. Where the 'big rocks' are going to be moved. The mental ones, the physical ones, the business ones, the emotional ones, and even some of the spiritual ones. The gates are close to being blown wide open.
And so now obviously, in a Murphy’s Law-like scenario, I can feel myself trying to self-sabotage.
What is that? Some sort of imposter syndrome?
If I get to completion, am I proving in some way that I could have completed them earlier? Or maybe I am trying to avoid completion to provide myself some sort of solace that these tasks weren’t accomplishable in the first place.
Thinking like that trivializes the enormity of some of these efforts. I have come to appreciate the adages: All things in due course and timing is everything as some of these efforts really needed time to tackle and needed to be on the back burner for a while. Some even required painful inner work on an emotional and mental level with different forms of therapy or life coaching before tackling, while other efforts were just grueling task oriented work like getting health on track or painstakingly reviewing poor bookkeeping from years past. These last few years have been crazy, painful, and tough, involving a lot of anguished and hard inner reflection questioning my own morals and ethics, my life goals, my desires, and my purpose. Admitting to myself the personal characteristics I like, the characteristics that I don't, and choosing which aspects of who I am that I want to retain, and which I don’t.
I have always been in awe of my seventeen year old self. My university self. At that time, for the first time, I was finally 'free' -- making my own way, able to make whatever choices I wanted with accountability and ownership of whatever outcomes resulted. To embark into the world with financial and moral independence. And I was so fortunate in those first ten or so years professionally, financially, and personally.
Then I hit a brick wall: more than a decade of what I now know were faces of depression brought on by unexpected setbacks including broken trust in personal relationships and the trauma brought on after working in Afghanistan. There were so many triggering causes, and it is hard to even acknowledge I went through such levels of depression, but at the core I think I was just unwilling to let go of my seventeen year old self's worldview, naivety, and self-assuredness when faced with those setbacks.
That guy couldn't have been wrong.
That guy is who led me to capture the successes, wealth, and ambitions that I had set out to achieve and now enjoyed. In reality though: wealth didn't help; success didn't help. I found myself wanting and languishing for years, building walls around destroyed connections caused by those professional and personal setbacks which I hadn’t been prepared for and which I didn’t have support structures for. I was preventing myself from questioning or changing in order to protect my ego. And that mentality eventually took over. Rigidity. Cynicism.
Maybe if I don’t finally close out these efforts, while I might rob myself of the feeling of satisfaction, I will protect myself from admitting that the person I became isn’t who I should have been. I can continue to be that person rather than grow.
Maybe it is something related to that version of who I became. In building those walls to protect myself from the pain of those failures, many facets of life took a back seat. Some things suffered. Many personal relationships faded. Without a doubt, I feel more distant to so many who are so important to me and I doubt they know it.
In the last couple years, I have wrested back control. I have been able to make the choice of what I can or cannot focus on. I had the courage to let those that were detrimental go. Friends are the family you choose, and those, even family, that choose to not want to treat you as a meaningful friend, are not really part of that chosen family. I finally had the insight to recognize that letting go doesn’t mean you need animosity and that as long as you have been true to your own moral compass, you don’t need to be the one to get up and prop open the door. Those relationships that are pure have persevered, but it could be that I am looking for other things to fail so that it doesn’t seem like this is the area I ‘choose’ to step away from. It could absolve me of ownership.
The pandemic actually did give me an opportunity to build personal relationships back up, and I did start reconnecting. The space and time afforded from the lack of alternative outlets forced new ways to bond (who doesn’t look back fondly to those first few weeks of global Zoom calls and HouseParty rooms?) which in turn nurtured relationships near and far. I was able to focus time on a personal level with so many and felt that sense of meaning and value in being available to others in their time of need. It was comforting to know that true friendships with loved ones will rekindle if there is shared desire and consideration.
Unfortunately, that also came to a screeching halt after the reality sank in that the pandemic would be around for much longer than just a couple months, and with an uncompromising work environment I had to retrench to cope with the many different pressures. I didn’t expect the loneliness and isolation to hit so hard, nor did I expect family difficulties to get as bad as they did.
At the same time, the pandemic did reignite many things that were stalling, in particular in regards to health and fitness, my art and creative outlets, and especially with my daughter. Without any exaggeration, despite that retrenchment in regard to personal relationships, the pandemic was a blessing for me as I realized that not all facets needed to take the deferred life plan. While I became pretty insular in 2021, friends and community right here in our backyard became immense sources of happiness and joy. I am truly grateful for them and for such an unexpected source to tap into as I continued my years-long journey in self reflection and growth.
When I pause and really reflect, I can’t argue that without a doubt I am winning overall. The pandemic was very good in terms of the things I can control as well as testing my resilience, and testing my ability to react to it. In many ways I love the world in the pandemic scenario - I remember when people thought it would only last a couple weeks, there were volumes of write ups advising to not wish for what life was like previously too hastily because it wasn’t like it was the greatest life for most either. Recognition of that is what has led to the great resignation and I personally still feel the same way. There is so much about that old lifestyle that I think really sucked and wouldn’t want to go back to.
I was able to accelerate most of my multi-year-long efforts during the pandemic. The extra time and space even gave me the avenue to start praying and meditating again - a practice I don’t think I had been able to sustain since university days and now is two years in. I’m smiling more and am more myself - no longer self-questioning due to countering external pressures. My confidence and arrogance have morphed into self-assuredness and self-understanding.
I am laughing more, I have fewer depressing days, fewer days of feeling sad. While I enjoy hanging with Tito, I no longer default to him or Jack. Those liquid friends are no longer there in my lows and instead visit me to celebrate achievements and successes. I have no idea whether that is because things have changed, or if I really have succeeded in redefining my reality. A bit of both I am sure.
Importantly though, I can palpably feel myself breaking through, reaffirming my 'truths,' 'my purpose' which I’ll talk more about in the future. I have finally got myself back to some of my proven actions from my youth - consistently having 1 year, 3 year, and 5 year plans for successive years now (my 10, 20, and 50 year plans are still wanting). Maybe I’m preventing myself from crossing that cusp because many things, while not quite complete, are still good and the comfort of that is preferred over the unknown afterwards.
Or maybe I am not letting myself cross that cusp and break those gates open simply because of some sort of understanding of mortality. Mundane things like estate planning are finally nearly done for example - maybe a part of me knows that if I have my ‘affairs in order’, that I won’t feel like I left that incomplete. I’ve come to accept that I likely will not have more kids and that the picture of a family is not what I had envisioned, and that reality has forced a realization of what my end of life journey might look like. It could be that I am trying to delay a feeling of accepting that story. Pretty asinine if that is what is preventing me from keeping the momentum going. I wonder if it is the worry that the pressure of having ‘things left undone’ is dissipating.
Perhaps the pressure is gone, and the transition to having little pressure is so jarring that I'm self-sabotaging just to get that pressure back. Pareto’s rule: The last 20% usually takes 80% of effort, but maybe there is an extension that the last 5% takes 95% of focus? There is so little to do on some of these efforts, and yet finding the control to finish feels more elusive than ever.
Whatever it is, here I am now. The procrastination beast is kicking in like crazy right now. This year is going out with momentum and if I can get myself to stop 'organizing my photographs' yet again, I might even get over the cusp, get the flywheel going even faster, and find myself up against the cusp of even greater things, much sooner than expected.
So why am I writing this?
It is simply something I have become a lot more comfortable with again in this evolution. To trust my instincts of how to address something blocking me. In this case I am sure it is the journey of thinking through this and writing it down that will help me to propel over that cusp.
Let’s see if I’m right.
That was awesome Rahim!
Donuts help with everything, always!