Can't hurt Me: Challenge #2 & 3

Accountability Mirror

I did the accountability mirror, even though I thought it was cringey and dumb while reading it. I thought that this was not how it worked. I'd written down my goals before, although that was far more lax. You rile yourself up, push yourself with great effort, and make a little progress, and then you crash, burn, and fall back two steps after taking only one. That's what I did. Still, I had heard David speak, I'd looked him in his eyes as he did, and I deeply respected the man. I was determined to give this a real shot. I read the challenge at night, woke up in the morning, and when I wrote down my goals on the sticky notes, I was sincere.

I wrote down all the big ones, and while speaking to myself, I gave myself tasks for the day to make progress on each one. After many years, I felt like I was making some real progress yesterday. I didn't get much sleep, and I didn't complete them all. Today, I woke up feeling disheartened, and didn't have the same emotion when I talked myself down in the mirror. I'm not accustomed to talking harshly to myself, being a fragile little shit. I went through it anyway and sat down at my desk to work, waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

Sure enough, something or the other "triggered" me, and I had a little mini-breakdown about my life circumstances. I found myself unable to go on and craved my creature comforts, but reaching for them felt even more unbearable. Stuck in limbo, I walked around the house and continued reading chapter 3 in the evening, instead of how I'd been reading at night so far. Then I read something which felt like it triggered a slow transformation within me. David wrote, "That's when I first realised that not all mental and physical limitations are real, and that I had a habit of giving up way too soon." 

That was less than 30 minutes ago. Suddenly, I find myself feeling a strange, new sense of inner peace, as if I've just internalized the fact that talk is cheap. So, here I am. Sitting in front of the computer again, writing a list of things I hate, with the exclusive aim of torturing myself, and it's one of the most positive experiences I've had in my life. To be fair, writing here comes easily to me at this point. There's no judgment, pressure, or fear of failure. I realised yesterday that I was just wasting my time here, indulging myself, moving around to seem busy, and creating an illusion of progress.

I knew that this was useless before as well. Yet, at least it was better than doing something unproductive. Maybe I wasn't doing what I needed to do, but it was close enough to be in the fold. Well, it's not good enough. It's really not, and that's exactly why I'm so fucking miserable. Just because I laugh, sing, and make merry, doesn't mean I'm some happy-go-lucky blessed soul with a halo of rainbows and puppies around him. I'm fucking miserable because the things I truly want to do, I avoid like the plague, because I've already decided I can't really do them. 

"It's pretty much fucking impossible to animate a whole-ass story yourself. Why don't you pick something manageable and save yourself some humiliation?" So I play it small and stuff it down. Well, no more. I knew in my head what Goggins was all about. Last year, I heard all his fucking podcasts from when he was promoting his book. In fact, he did one with Huberman, and they literally broke down how and why mental limitations are not always real. I knew the idea intellectually. I knew it would be hellish to internalize, implement, and execute. 

Most importantly, I didn't think I had it in me, because I tried and failed ALL those fucking times. I'd have to be a clinically diagnosed idiot to keep doing the same damn things with no results. Oh yes, because that's who I saw myself as. "The Smart One," what a fucking joke. Anyway, I won't waste much more time here indulging myself, at least I don't want to. It's just that I'm starting to see all these parts of me I didn't know existed. All these ways I was holding myself back. I would heave, push, and try to make progress, but it felt like running or punching in a dream, all effort and zero progress.

Callous Your Mind

Fuck it. Let's give this a real shot. I truly despise the following:

- Wasting time with chores like cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry. 

- Sitting on this fucking uncomfortable-ass desk, with all these aches all over my body, and trying to do work.

- I say trying to do work, because I absolutely fucking despise senseless, meaningless, tedious, formulaic, and repetitive work that I was not interested in. You know, like literally any kind of work that pays you money? Hell, I'd say hating ALL the work I have to do for my current freelance client should be on the top of the list, merely by virtue of the fact that it's pretty much the only thing I HAVE to do professionally, like my sole obligation at the moment. 

- Counting calories, watching grams, and stressing fitness. I hate pushing myself physically, and I am very much afraid of injury. I've been easing into it, though. I've been taking it REAL slow, and honestly, it hasn't been working that well. Perhaps now, I can push myself just a little bit more. It just has to be uncomfortable; the more painful, the better. I mean, to be fair, it is already quite fucking painful, so let's see what to do.

- Studying. I actually fucking hate studying a lot for someone who wants to do SO much of it. I want to learn graphics, maths (just brushing up the basics from school), coding, running ads, web dev, vocab, science, art, and so much more. But I fucking hate how I pick something up, do it with the utmost sincerity for like 20 minutes, and then literally forget it existed for 3 years. Hmph, in fact, a book about the Indian stock market is staring me in the face as I type this as proof. 

- Drawing. For someone who daydreams all the fucking time of bringing ideas to life through character designs and comic books, I sure hate drawing and practicing art. I mean, what the fuck, man? I'm way beyond anger at this point; this is literally me being a ridiculous clown. I know for a fact I avoid any and all forms of accountability. I purposefully keep people in the dark because I don't want them meddling in, and then I fucking pull this shit??? I mean, seriously, it just seems hilarious and delusional. I guess I knew that, which is why I have a freelance client in the first place. It's why I'm still playing it safe in the marketing world instead of actually going for the kill directly.

- Writing. Not the half-assed, improvised, bullshit that I do here, smothered in makeup and bullshit excuses. Real fucking writing. Actually working on singular ideas with the aim of publishing them for real people. Deep, excruciating, hard fucking work where you're stumbling in the dark, rambling, and feeling like an idiot before painstakingly going over the whole thing under a microscope, with a ruthless fucking scalpel. How the hell do I hate something I've been doing every single day for more than 2 years? Even when I didn't write something real, I felt this compulsive need to express myself, as if I would literally die without it, like breathing. I'd note down ideas here or there, chat with other people on WhatsApp, or have hour-long conversations with some AI. 

- I think, at this point in my life, I hate feeling like I can't do all the things I truly want to achieve. This bothers me the most out of all the other individual things. It's like this invisible rock tied to my ankles, stretching out my bones, and tearing my muscles. It hurts so much I can't even muster the strength to cry. The more I try to do everything, everywhere, all at once, the more I fucking feel my own fucking weak-ass, pathetic, needy little limitations. 

I need to get fucking serious about what I'm doing, or things will go from bad to worse really fucking fast. More importantly, I need to be, do, and move instead of planning, pretending, and passing the fucking time. I've had this cancer of purpose eating away at me all these years, and I hated it. It fed off my life force and got me all worked up about things. I'd ride the fucking wave like a piece of wood and end right where I was before. Now I know why I'm failing. It seems so obvious that I was supposed to keep going where I was getting pulled.