Stop Beating Yourself Up

And surrender.

I had five days off. Five. An entire work week! Free! No obligations! Oh how I relished in all that I would accomplish. After all, if God could conjure up most of the universe in five days, then surely, I—the creature supposedly made in his image—could conquer most of said universe in the same time frame.

The tentative plan was to, upon waking up on the first day off, instantly flip a switch and become the hyper-productive, free of doubt, enlightened renaissance man I had always dreamed of being. At which point, I’d make massive headway on the second draft of my novel. Then, of course, I’d do about an hour of French and Japanese on Duolingo, go for a 15 mile bike ride, hit a quick 50 minute vin/yin yoga sesh, and read three different books for 30 minutes each. Afterwards I’d call each and every one of my family and friends, while I walk my roommate’s dog. Finally once all those pesky, yet simple tasks were completed, I’d pop on a tuxedo and take my girlfriend on a picturesque date. I’d get a full nights rest, and then do it all again the next day.

I figured if I could stick to this reasonable and approachable plan, then when I returned to work, I’d be happy as a clam, knowing well that the sacrifices I make to my personal life by having a full time job are not sacrifices at all—and that it’s quite possible to have your cake and eat it too.

And that’s how it all worked out! Haha thanks for reading :)

SIKE! I didn’t do shit! I languished. I woke up an hour after my alarm on my first day off and what shred of confidence I had in my abilities evaporated faster than a shallow puddle in the hot desert sun. I did nothing of consequence! I played video games! Napped! Drank wine! I am the embodiment of gluttony and sloth. Who was I fucking kidding? Me!? Be great? Achieve? Accomplish? That’s Laughable! Ludicrous! Looney!

Wait.

I have been here before.

I have done this over and over again. In fact, the example from above happened months ago, and since then it’s happened at least twice. It’ll probably happen again. It’s a vicious cycle I can’t seem to break. It goes like this:

1. Work hard to earn free time

2. Be so worried about wasting free time that I make some impossible plan to adhere to.

3. I inevitably fall short.

4. I spend my free time beating myself up for failing to adhere to a ridiculous plan, and in the end I do nothing I wanted to do.

5. Repeat.

So, why am I so hard on myself?

Frankly, I don’t know. And perhaps that answer alone is enough to expose my lofty expectations and frantic self-depreciations as silly and unmerited. For if we realize we don’t know why we do something, then it becomes rather difficult to take it so gravely seriously.

And I imagine a lot of you suffer through your own version of this neurosis—in fact, it might be the defining mental parasite of our time—the endless and thankless quest for something to be, that is not—the inability to enjoy, relax, let go, breathe.

And I’ve fucking had it! I can’t live like this any longer. I am planting a flag. I am dying on this hill. I am winning this fight. And paradoxically, all I have to do, is surrender.

Waving the White Flag

I hiked with a friend and mentor, who is also an excellent Substack writer, and I told him, “Every day when I wake up, I feel like I’ve already lost, like I’m already behind.”

I told him that routines aren’t working for me. He told me he doesn’t do routines. I told him I need to write. He saids he does too, it’s the only thing that keeps him sane.

“So what do I do?” I asked.

“Just surrender to it. Write what’s close to you. Fight your distractions. I don’t know, it’s almost not worth talking about. You just have to do it.”

For the next week, when anxiety started pouring into my consciousness, asking me if I was doing the right thing, in the right place, with the right people, I would turn to the word.

Surrender. Like putting a blanket over all those nagging squawking thoughts. It provided me some momentary relief, but I hadn’t excavated the source of the problem. So I call my therapist.

I tell her, “Every day when I wake up, I feel like I’ve already lost, like I’m already behind.”

I tell her I’m trying so hard to create my life at a macro scale, like I am the master puppeteer or clockmaker. I express that somewhere along the line I convinced myself that if I set up bumper rails the right way, I (the bowling ball), would eventually hit only strikes. I tell her that I spend all this time devising the perfect self, who writes his book X amount of hours a week, and goes to X amount of improv and acting classes, and does X amount of networking, and X amount of reading and exercising and whatever the fuck!

Only when I stop yammering does she hit me with it like a ton of bricks.

“Are you exhausted?”

“What? Um? I mean. I guess.”

I didn’t even want to admit that I was exhausted because that would be an excuse! I didn’t believe I had any reason or right to be exhausted, considering I hadn’t even achieved everything I ever wanted. That’s how deeply entrenched this is in me.

But you know what! I am exhausted! I'm making myself exhausted. And I am not going to do that anymore.

Surrender

I wrote the word on my arm with a sharpie. And every time I start worrying about something I look at it, and I am brought back to the moment. I even thought about getting a tattoo of it—because that’s something the worry-wart version of myself would never do.

But for now it’s just sharpie. And the more I adhere to the mantra, the more I come to understand what it really means.

It means to be on the ground. It means writing a chapter or sentence or word or letter, instead of obsessing over when the book is finished. It means one day at a time. It means the obstacle is the way. It means the only way out is through.

When I first drafted a version of this article months ago, I wanted to touch on where these impossible standards we put on ourselves originate. I was looking for something beyond our own personal stories. Not expectations programmed into us from early ages; nor chips on our shoulders from the have nots we believe we should have had; nor vendettas against those who thought we couldn’t. Rather, I was looking for the influences from society.

I wanted to dissect, as the publication has and will continue to do, external forces causing internal angst. I was going to talk about how we reinforce the idea that to be alive is to be paid attention to. I was going to talk about blind ambition. I was going to talk about Lebron James, how we are always trying to compare ourselves to others, about how we are desperately trying to be “better” all the time. And maybe some day I will talk about all of those ideas.

But today, I only offer you my surrender.

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