Forgive Yourself Sooner

I am eager to improve. There are targets that I want to hit. Goals and images of success in my head.

I don’t plan to stop once I achieve them. After all I enjoy learning. I’ve always been curious. And I hope I’ll always be willing to change and improve myself.

However, I am eager to improve. I’d like to get to the point that I reach my idea of success sooner rather than later. This applies to my writing but other aspects of my life as well.

This eagerness to improve pushes me to come up with regiments that will push me to improve. Ideas like writing 25 minutes every day, reading a certain amount of pages in non-fiction books, finishing projects within certain time frames.

Often these goals are unrealistic to get done in the amount of time I give myself. There’s nothing unique to me about that, managers have been setting unrealistic deadlines for their employees for ages. I don’t expect to overcome this, as much as I’d like to.

One of these regiments is keeping a daily journal. I write about 3 pages every day for 30 minutes. I also read these pages regularly usually after about a year has passed.

Occasionally I come across a journal entry that is upset that I’m not getting any work done lately. Not that I’m not doing enough but that I’m not doing anything at all.

For some reason, I have streaks of bad days about once a month (although they’re getting less frequent). These “bad days” look like me doing virtually nothing.

I spend too long in bed. I don’t do chores that I should do to keep my house in order. I don’t do much writing usually just the bare minimum of a word or two. Sometimes I don’t even leave the house for days on end.

On these bad days I am in an inconsolable lousy mood. There’s not a good way to describe it without seeing it. And I don’t really want anyone to see it.

I still journal on these days and I’m often digging into why I don’t feel like doing anything. That rarely goes anywhere. Usually I’m recovering from some exhaustion or a recent emotional blow that can only be resolved with time.

On those days I can’t stand that I’m not doing anything productive (especially because I know that doing something productive is the key to getting out of the slump).

I’m unwilling to forgive myself for my laziness—shockingly that does not encourage me to get to work. It’s a great opportunity to treat myself like a horse not a car but in the past I’ve failed to do that.

However, in hindsight, on good days like today where I’ve got a good writing streak of a few hundred words a day for the past few weeks I don’t begrudge myself those bad days.

I am more than willing to forgive myself for taking those days off. I don’t feel the inconsolable lousy mood but I know it was, for some reason, insurmountable.

It’s in the past, there’s nothing I can do about it. So I forgive myself.

It takes me a week or two maybe longer to get to the point of forgiving myself for this laziness. But I always do.

So why can’t I forgive myself sooner?

I know there is some future version of myself that will get over my inability/unwillingness to do work. This hate and frustration I feel for myself will pass.

Lately I’ve been reminding myself when I am in a slump of bad days. It’s helped a little, it will take time to change my perspective but slow progress is progress.

But lately I’ve been feeling something beyond forgiveness. I’ve felt gratitude that I took those days off.

I’m grateful for these days because often I spent them in bed or on the couch with my dog Wayne.

And since I lost him a few weeks ago I know I’ll never get to share a calm slow morning with him again.

And I’m unimaginably grateful that I had the luxury to spend those slow mornings with him.

That gratitude makes it really hard to be angry at the “poor” choice I made not to get any work done on those days.

If anything I wish I’d let myself have more and enjoy them more.

Find Peace in Progress,
Nicholas Licalsi

Photo Credit: Image by Alexa from Pixabay