Reflections on Missing Expectations

Everything on the internet is permanent is a common phrase associated with social media, and this is a good piece of advice (think before you post).  But it's also true that nothing on the internet is permanent.  Websites collapse, accounts are deleted, priorities of even major companies like Google & Apple & Facebook disappear into the ether.  Because I have spent 12 years of my life on this blog, and because I am always a little bit fearful that it will all go away if Blogger ever disappears, I have been working on a project in my personal life to back up all of the articles on this site, at least in terms of the words themselves (the pictures & collages, I'll be honest, will have to be at risk in the ether as I don't have the bandwidth to save all of them, but the words are the important part).  This has meant that I am peeking at thousands of articles through the years on topics ranging from politics to movies to a whole host in between.  I have run across articles not only that I don't remember writing (but I did-with one exception where my brother did a guest spot, I have written every one of the 4000+ articles that have ever been published on this blog), but about subjects that I don't remember at all.  Hot topics fade away, and honestly that makes it more fun to revisit.  It's a good reminder that even in the digital world, yesterday's newspaper is lining a bird cage tomorrow.

One of the things that I was struck by while writing is that I used to be far more diligent about writing about my personal life, or at least thoughts from my personal life, on the blog.  If you've only come to the blog in the past couple of years, you'll probably know I do write about these things (I do a personal life update every few months or so), but I used to write about topics and not just my personal life.  Dating advice, navigating being single, advice for new home-owners...things that reflected what was going on in my life.  I don't know that that will ever be something I really get back into totally.  As you get older, your sense of propriety gets a bit stronger.  You find a few close friends (or a spouse...or a therapist...or a journal) that you can pour your guts out to, and you learn some decorum about what is shared on the internet.

But in the spirit of liking that reflection when I'm saving these articles, we're going to talk a little bit about feeling overwhelmed.  This has been a feeling I've been navigating quite a bit in the past few months, and one that I've been trying to get a handle on, and I suspect is something other people have gone through as well, so I wanted to invite it onto the blog for a GTKY Sunday article.

The last few months I have spent a lot of time doing what I call "working in inches" to not get overwhelmed by the day-to-day aspects of my life after having a tougher 2023 than I expected, certainly at the beginning of that year.  I put an inordinate amount of pressure on myself, and part of that means that there are a lot of things that I do that take a considerable amount of work.  I have been trying really hard at my job for advancement, which takes a significant amount of networking & extra work to prove yourself.  I have also been working harder with my personal finances so that I can afford some changes to my home & to go on a number of trips this year and next that are on my bucket list.  I own a pretty large home, one that for a single person is a lot of work to maintain.  When people talk about home-ownership, I think they think of it as a financial responsibility, but a house is a living, breathing organism, something you're expected to take care of and improve constantly, and all of that costs money, time, & effort.

These are just two aspects of life, ones that everyone has, but let's face it-we have others too.  To be well-rounded, we are expected to keep up on modern music, film, books, & television, having a "what are you reading/watching/listening to" answer whenever anyone asks (and not the same one they asked last month).  I run a blog I write on daily, one that I frequently have more good ideas for than I can execute in the time I allot it.  I feel a pressure to both cook healthy and interesting meals (which for a solo person, you also need to last as leftovers, otherwise your budget gets destroyed), while also eating out and finding a way to be sociable.  The more involved you are with people who share your hobbies (which is a beautiful aspect of being online), the more you get to talk about them, but also the more you get to realize if you're falling behind on that as well compared to other people that are super-fans of, say, Oscar-watching.  And to top it off, you have to be in shape, find time for a romantic life if you're not married, & be well-versed in things like retirement planning & properly saving your money...while also finding some time to volunteer to be a more civically-engaged human being.  I generally approach all of these things through "working in inches"-each month making sure I do at least a little bit to keep that ball rolling, while rarely actually finishing the project, or when I do finish it, it's just a couple of inches from the finish line so it doesn't feel like it's as big of a deal.

The thing about it is that none of these are things you "have" to do (if you want to go into my comments and be mean or condescending, you will get deleted-I'm aware that none of these are life-and-death issues...this is a personal blog, you're here by choice to listen to the topics I wanted to share-I'll be back to politics or movies tomorrow), but they are all things that make you feel whole, and for the past year I've felt that, even as I've moved significantly on some of these metrics as a combined effort, it doesn't feel like it's enough.  I'll spend six hours cleaning my house or write a dozen blog articles or finish buying a decorating project (these are not hypotheticals-they're all things I've done in the last month), but it doesn't feel like I'm having enough break between that and "okay, what's next."  Part of this is due to being single, I'll be honest-I know that in relationships you have someone else who is on the same team as you on a project, so they'll understand that spending $200 on a bunch of picture frames to make your guest bedroom look how you dreamt it would look is a big deal.  But I think this is everyone, going too fast to try to get to a finish line that doesn't really exist, rushing past being proud of the moments where you actually did something you'd worked days, weeks, months, or even years to be able to afford or put in the effort to finish.

In a way, it almost feels like there's a mild connection between these feelings, knowing that I'd stopped marking major achievements in my personal life on this blog with some sort of article cornerstone, and feeling like I am not giving myself enough credit for doing all of the things in my life.  I am working on all of my projects at once, all of these amazing goals for my life at the same time, and there are days when this "working by inches" approach feels so slow as to not feel like I should get credit for where I'm headed.  But I'm getting there, and so are you-celebrate that in yourself, and make sure that any movement forward, even if it's not at the pace of people next to you, is still headed in the right direction.