Shedding Skin

“A man with no purpose distracts himself with pleasure.”

The quote above summarizes the current chapter of my life.

It’s been a cycle of pleasure, stuck in pursuits to numb anxiety and drown the feelings of being stuck. Of going nowhere despite thoughts and attempts to move.

I’ve noticed a shift in my psychology. A trend towards comfort; not the good kind.

Good comfort is pushing yourself in the gym and enjoying the couch afterwards. Good comfort is focusing hard to learn difficult concepts, following the bout with a long walk to decompress.

Good comfort is earned through the active delay of pleasure.

Bad comfort is the opposite. The comfort I’ve been seeking is not earned. It’s cheap. It’s playing games after doing nothing all day. It’s craving escape after going another day unemployed. It’s stressing about family and futures that don’t yet exist, quelling this anxiety with online content and friends.

The paradox of this comfort is banking on tomorrow to finally fix these habits. The more we crave comfort, the more reliably we push the responsibility of change to tomorrow.

Which brings me to the this: Life punishes inaction.

I need to return to a more focused self. A sunrise-watching, gym-going, book-worming, blog-writing, doodle-drawing, poetry-writing introvert who continues to push himself every day for the fulfillment he receives from the process. I was here 4 months ago. I am no longer here.

Though, that person I crave is one day of behavior change away. Simple, yet difficult.

This quest is often individual. It requires a confidence in the process outside of external understanding. Social contracts may be broken, but that’s ok! Reveal to the world what it is that makes you happiest, using the positivity gleamed to attract those who reciprocate. I’m lucky to have friends who support this malleability.

Behaving different from your ideal is NOT wasted effort. Life is a constant effort to decipher who you are. A failure to perform properly is a lesson learned—and as such, life will nudge you in the right direction by signaling dissatisfaction.

And that’s life right now: Noticing the many signals of discomfort amongst the comfort.

A failure to recognize that it get’s better if I make it better—it’s my skin to shed.

And yet, I write this at night as a means to convince myself of change.

Knowing I sit upon a growing hope that tomorrow is a better day.

A day of change. The day of leveraging Now.

For it is only there, friend, that you will discover the ammunition for change.

But be gentle, it’s ok to grow slow.

It's ok to stray away so long as you return home.

Til next time,

sapoots

_(┐「ε:)_🤍🌱

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