There is an expression: “Don’t beat yourself up about it.” I remembered it just now. At the exact moment when I was remembering it, I had the sudden realization that I have spent a great deal of time beating myself up about one thing or another. Like, it’s something that I’ve really invested a lot of time in.
I’ve heard it said that in order to be an expert at something, you need to invest about ten thousand hours in practicing it. I am going to go ahead and go out on a limb here and speculate that, judging by that criteria, I am a fully fledged, world class expert at self deprecation. I feel like it would almost be okay if it were exclusively (or even mostly) the humorous, tongue-in-cheek variety, but it’s totally not. It’s the real thing.
The unfortunate truth is that I am really, really good at judging, criticizing, browbeating, and running myself into the ground in general.
The good news is that I am pretty sure that I can reverse that whole thing and become an expert in being the other way around. The key is simply to deliberately choose to exert myself in the opposite direction. I must choose to be kind to myself. I must give myself a break. I must allow myself the care and understanding that I need to have in order to grow into a healthy, awesome me.
This blog is basically a publicly recorded effort toward realizing this goal. So! That is what it is.
