Well, today was a step back. Scratch that, it was a step forward, but downhill.

As I’ve said before, this stuff isn’t monotonic non-decreasing, and today was definitely a decreasing day. Oh well. It’s like that MLK quote that Obama always used for explaining why the Democrats are unstrategic and would inevitably beat Trump despite their perpetual mis-steps (they lost), about how “the arc of history bends toward justice”, except it’s actually true. Something like, “the arc of time bends toward feeling better”, idk.

I’m not really sure what went wrong today, or even if something went wrong. I can’t think of anything in particular. I was maybe a bit frustrated by my lack of output-based progress this week. As mentioned before, I wanted to do things this week (whereas last week I didn’t want to do anything). But I actually didn’t get much done at all in spite of physically showing up every day and trying to get stuff done. I got more done toward the end, so that’s progress for me, but my actual output didn’t make much progress on the broader projects.

For that matter, I’m not even sure whether thinking about whether something went right or wrong is right or wrong. It’s more like time goes, and with it so does the arc toward feeling better.

I should be less hard on myself. To be honest, I’ve been consciously not hard on myself, which is definitely the right approach here. I like to output output output, though, so even though I know that I need to be patient with myself right now, it’s hard! I also was being a little over-emotional about things that simply don’t matter. Maybe, because putting pressure on myself to work productively was banned and clearly not worthwhile, I tried to offload that pressure in a non-sensical way onto other things. Or maybe I was just being silly, and this could’ve happened in any week.

Anyway, I was walking back from working today, and I was just feeling not happy. I’m fully entitled to feel unhappy right now, and I do give myself room to feel unhappy, but that doesn’t make it any more fun.

Another trouble that I run into is figuring out when I’m making excuses and when I’m being legitimate. For example, Fall 2020 was an academically successful semester for me, and – based on events at the time – it should’ve been tough. Now, it was tough: I was keeping stupid hours, and I was doing work last minute, and I was just wracked with something, but numerically I was good. Spring 2021, on the other hand, also felt like a struggle and looked much more like a struggle (to be clear, it wasn’t catastrophic or anything, but it wasn’t great). In retrospect, I excused it away by remembering the 2020 troubles I went through, but I still haven’t been able to tease out what, exactly, prompted the challenges of Spring 2021. I wasn’t myself, but was I not myself because I took on too much in terms of classes or because I wasn’t being organized or motivated, or because there were some other things going on and left over? It’s unclear.

Right now, I think it’s a combination. I think I’m not feeling focused, but I also know that when things are clicking and things are good, I’m so committed and so focused, because I genuinely love the stuff I work on, I think the fact that I’m not working on it as much now must be due to some external factors, and not just silliness.

OK, recent events have convinced me that my happiness had become way too reliant on external factors. That’s unusual for me. My happiness is often based on (1) the health of people I know and (2) whether I feel like I’m working hard. OK, I guess I had to totally abandon (2) this week, because I was putting in all that I could, but I was not working hard as compared to how hard I usually work. And I also had to totally abandon (1) because, well, my grandma died last week. So I’m starting to understand why I’ve been grasping for happiness sources. I happened to land on one that relied on external things, but what the heck were my options? I’m pretty sure I legitimately had none. I’m understanding now why I was not feeling hot. Of course, I know it’s largely because of the funeral etc, but to feel funky for this amount of time gets a little rough and starts to feel inexplicable even though there’s an explanation.

See, this blog helps! I sometimes wonder whether it drags me into thoughts that I’d rather not keep reliving. Actually, just a few weeks ago I was reading some of my “oof” posts, and I was thinking about how happy I’d become and how good things were and how much I’d grown as a person. Then, when my dad called with the news, I drew on the lessons of those posts to remember how to handle things and how not to handle things, and also that I’ve made it through and I’ll make it through and it just takes time.