Progress or nah?

My circle is growing and I have been having conversations with new and exciting people which has been productive, interesting, and given me, a lot think about. While I entertain and enjoy them, I have noticed I have over thought most ideas and somehow feelings of inadequacies have crept up on me.

These feelings are not new because they feel familiar to me. I really thought I had found a way to get over them and move on, however, that is not the case. Sometimes I think I have too much spare time as the reason why I strongly hold on to these emotions because what else do I have at that moment?

Today, I started feeling this way again, with a sense of terror sweeping over me. Randomly, I remembered thinking to myself why I have a bunch of old ideas. I decided to do some writing which I have intentionally avoided and realized my vocabulary consisted of simple and overly repetitive words which led to an immediate panic of existential dread within the scale of “how can I learn and incorporate new words” to “you can never write anything meaningful in your life straw brain”.

To think that was not stressful enough, consistently complaining about it to other people without taking their advice on how to deal with it is a testament to how much I have a problem letting go. I mean I do not even take my advice lmao. I can tell you for a fact I know, word for word, the cliché advice I’m going to get which I rarely apply. I try sometimes, clearly not enough.

Sometimes, I feel the desire to have some kind of emotional anchor provides some type of validation from other people which in itself can be narcissistic, or is validation really the sort of support I need at that moment? Either way, I feel the urge to apologize to everyone whose time I have wasted in their attempt to support me. I probably will be back tomorrow for the same thing, so please bear with me and extend grace.

In hindsight, the real issue was my difficulty and overwhelming terror of writing something meaningful and relatable to other people. At the core of me, writing is personal and should be about my own unique experience regardless of how relatable or not they might present. Sometimes I forget that and it sends me down this downward spiral of unhealthy self-deprecation.

I know I have the tools at my disposal to grow from this, I will try to be better, although I’m not making any promises. I’m just glad that reflecting and being self-aware has helped establish a pattern to my behavior which is a positive baby step.