As you age and try to put together your next steps, it becomes easy to feel disappointed, less than and begin comparing yourself to others.
In my personal life, I am now seeing friends, colleagues and ex-classmates surpass me in their career and social visibility.
While the adult, grown-up mind in me says, of course, this makes sense, they continued and you bought a house and got roped into a 9-5 gig.
The immature, bratty part says loud and clear- Fuck that!
It’s too late and OMG did I just waste half of my life chasing something that could have been?
With all of the self-doubt in my head, I did have a major epiphany last week.
I didn’t get roped into doing any of this.
Why did I choose door number two instead of door number three?
Basically, my miscalculations were based on emotions as opposed to experience.
Whenever I have made a decision based on wanting to have a certain experience, it has worked out wonderfully.
When I’ve made a decision solely based on emotion, things have gone South rather quickly.
For instance, my decision to move to both California and NYC were both experiences that I wanted to have.
But if we look a bit closer, the NYC move had just enough emotion behind it so that not one but all of my decisions were emotionally based.
Many of the ways I created art and developed my artistry while in NYC was based on pure emotions.
During my time on the East Coast, there was a great deal of time spent repeatedly proving that it was ok for me to claim artistry and have a place at the table(emotional).
There was also way too much time spent proving to my family (and my parents in particular) that I’d made the right choice (emotional).
I spent 13 years chasing something that may have started out like mine but gradually and undeniable became someone else’s version of what I should be doing.
It’s difficult to admit it now and yet it seems quite obvious.
Apparently, the 27-year-old version of me failed to develop the insight and character that would have saved me a shitload of money and allowed me to do some different kind of thinking.
When all of your action/planning and reasoning is based on I’ll show ’em, you will never have enough or be enough.
Sadly, that was a hole that I didn’t know I had much less was fighting to fill.
When you are unaware of deep-seated emotional needs and feelings of personal inadequacies you end up mistreating yourself and using others.
What if I had been wise enough to say : Ok, I’m here now let’s plot a course that involves supporting myself and not doing all kinds of degrading shit to be accepted and in the room?