Reflections 2024

With the new year approaching, I decided to read through my journal entries from the past year. After some self-reflection I’ve collected my thoughts here.

This year has been a rollercoaster of the highest highs and lowest lows. It has simultaneously felt like the longest year ever and also the shortest one yet. I think compared to 2023, simply more stuff happened, both good and bad.

What follows are… observations? Guidelines? Goals? It’s a mix of all three. I want to keep them in mind for the new year. What to focus on and what to vanquish.

Why put this online? Because fuck you. I don’t know. Just so you can see I’m trying, I guess.

Actions have consequences

I don’t care about consequences anymore. Actions have long-term consequences that I don’t think about. I screw future me over.

Small things add up. They cause chain reactions, butterfly effect. Getting up late causes you to miss class causes you to mess up your appetite causes you to sleep late causes you to skip exercising etc. etc. etc.

I don’t think I particularly care for grades. But when I got a C in CIS 3200, I just remember thinking, this was entirely preventable. You could have tried just a little more. You gave up so quickly. This is the first C on my transcript. I’m scared it won’t be the last.

Sometimes I don’t realize that I’m suffering. Whether that’s losing sleep, or harming relationships, or never achieving my full potential, somewhere I’m paying for the shortcuts I’ve taken, for my ability to fill a whole day doing absolutely nothing.

Because I’m not aware of the consequences anymore, it makes me think that I got away with it. But remember this: I’m always paying for it somewhere else.

No more ketchup days

I had a high school teacher that would designate certain classes as catch up days. Catch up, ketchup (he was big on puns). On these days, no new content was taught. Instead, we could make up missing assignments, ask for help, and generally take a step back. I was grateful for them because it meant that I could catch up on sleep.

I still think of ketchup days everytime I stay up late to finish (or really, begin) work. Now in college, this has meant popping a Celsius (or two, or three) and working until I crash at 7 AM the next day.

I thought, an extreme situation requires an extreme act to counteract. I destroyed my sleep schedule and mental health, but in return I could hit a big reset button on everything. But what happens when everyday becomes a ketchup day? What happens when I abuse it, resign myself to it every night? I was like, you deserve this self-destruction.

October and November were hell for me. I didn’t know what day of the week it was, nor did I care. I became nocturnal. I submitted mediocre work and missed many, many opportunities. I began to think there was no other way of life possible. I was suffering consequence after consequence after consequence and didn’t even realize it.

Dilution

I dilute myself purposefully.

Cramming my brain so full of random social media content that no original thought or personality exists. Nothing material or concrete to draw from when it comes time to talk. I’ll half remember things and the most riveting insight I can provide is that I once saw it somewhere on Instagram or Twitter or Reddit or whatever the hell.

I recently learned about the idea of being hungry for stories and I think it describes me to a T. Always trying to find something to call my own. To have something and be something. But how can I find the stories when everything I do is surface level shallow? When I’m so scared of defining myself?

Dilution leads to inaction. It seems I would rather do nothing than possibly be wrong and fail. But being nothing is worse. It’s like you don’t even exist. I thought it was safer to dip my toes in many different places, to guarantee many future paths. To cut off none in case I need to return. But in doing so I’ve become weak at everything.

And then you’re not useful to anyone, really. Appealing to everyone and everything never works.

Self love, self care

Warhol always suspected that he was “more half-there than all-there.” I suspect I’m the same: most days I feel like I’m watching television, never really in control of my body. That my self-destructive actions aren’t really affecting me. There is a serious disconnect.

For the past three years I’ve been waiting for something to happen but I already know the answer, and it’s devastating: it begins with me. It always does.

I have a bad mindset. I always think, how do I keep getting away with these things? But I’m starting to think my standards are just impossibly high, always just out of reach. To the point where anything I do is not enough.

The current me is the real me. Not future me or perfect fantasy world me. Perfect doesn’t exist in the real world because everything is always changing.

I have to stop living in the future. Won’t you believe that I am doing the best that I possibly can?

I don’t know when I stopped believing in myself. But when that sense of trust disappeared, so did the self respect. You wouldn’t ever break a promise with a friend, but you don’t love yourself enough to keep your own.

I’m not sure how, but I wish to regain some of this trust next year.

Write more

The more depressed I am, the more I write in my journal. I’m very aware of this, I retract inwards. But it’s even sadder that I go weeks without writing an entry! I’ve realized that it’s so, so important to celebrate the good times too. I seem to forget those the quickest.

And, journaling is simply different from taking photos. Both of them complement each other, but cannot replace each other for me.

Write for the you 1, 5, 10, 15 years from now. They will be glad you wrote down the details.