I am currently 27 years old, not the same old me who wrote this blog more than 10 years ago. I learned a lot. A lot of it was not fun.
Where should I start?
I have found what I'm passionate about. Now I'm finishing my master's degree in psychology. I love this profession so much. I help people, and I felt fulfilled. But in my opinion, that reason is not strong enough. Every psychologist has to have a selfish reason to make them always fight for others' well being, otherwise they can easily crumble or burn out. For me, the reason is quite simple. It's like solving puzzles. Every piece has to fit perfectly so that you can see the bigger picture. But every human is different, and they're dynamic. They have their own defence mechanism, and that's what made it challenging and exciting.
At the same time, sometimes I hate it. Well, not really, hate is a strong word. I mean it can be tiring emotionally. Sometimes you felt drained and don't have any energy left for social interaction, you just want to be left alone in your own world. You can say that it depends on someone's personality, because some don't get tired as much as me, and some get more tired than me. Some days are hard, especially when you're confronted with cases that hits home or when you're dealing with your own problems. The stress snowballed, until I couldn't handle it anymore. Remembering the reasons why I love this couldn't do anything anymore. I can't be positive just because I write positive stuff. That stuff doesn't work for me, because I'm too cynical. In short terms, when I'm down, it took a long time for me to pull myself out of the gutter. The problem is, I don't have a long time to be nonchalantly escaping my responsibilities. I realised that I have stopped drawing or painting. Turns out, I need that outlet because I was miserable without any form of catharsis. Now I realised that it had to be done regularly.
To my past self,
I found friends who accepts and supports me. I kept my circle small, I don't have as much energy to socialize as I had in the past. I also found someone who can appreciate who I am and what I'm passionate about, but I broke up with him after 2,5 years. I'm happy though, I felt like it was the right thing to do. While many people my age is pursuing marriage, I can say that relationship is too much for me right now. I felt like it's too many work, too many extra things you have to think about.When I started studying to become a psychologist, I was told that I had to think and be a psychologist all the time. It's because this is a profession that needs sincerity. Being a psychologist doesn't mean that you pretend to be someone you're not when you meet a client. But I felt like we can't be a psychologist all the time, because it's tiring. Not the sincere part, I just don't want to analyse everything all the time. It's a nightmare. Not only that it can put the strain on relationships -- because no one likes to be overanalysed -- but it's also a burden on your emotional state as well. Sometimes you still unconsciously notice or analyse something though, and I had to remind myself not to do that.
The danger of analysing something only goes as far as your next actions. Well, I did something with it, and that was out of line. In Layman's Terms, I told him the truth. I wouldn't consider it the truth, because it's more like a rational argument. It's fine if you spin it a certain way so that it doesn't become offensive and make the other person want to cry. Apparently when I don't have any brakes, I don't care anymore and I told the cold, hard, truth. I felt like it goes against what I've been trained. Me, of all people, should know the power of words and how they can impact somebody.
See, this is what I mean by too much work. How do you separate your profession from your personal life? Too many things to figure out. I just don't want to spend time to figure it out.
To my past self,
I'm still working on improving myself and currently on a journey towards self-actualization. I tell myself that it's okay to go slow, one step at a time, as long as you're going forward. That's because in the past I made a mistake and I gave myself too much pressure and felt like I had to grow fast in a short period of time. You know what that gave me? Stress and insomnia.I do set a high standard for myself. I felt like I had to accomplish something big. Am I an idealist? Maybe? I don't know. I just felt like things had to be done the right way. It got bad to the point where I'm so anxious and I couldn't sleep. Either that or I lay in bed and as I'm about to pass out, irrelevant little noises outside woke me up. I couldn't close my windows, because when the room gets silent, I hear my inner ear spasm. It's annoying. Well now I'm rambling.
It interferes with my work and my studies. Often times, I went on my daily life with no sleep. It's exhausting, because I can't think clearly. It's so tiring, and it's dangerous because I still drive despite the lack of sleep. It went away for a period of time, but it came back. At that point, I had already fulfilled my training and don't have too much to do in the morning, so my sleep schedule got even more messed up. Sometimes I go to sleep at 10AM, 2PM, or even 5PM. I got fed up and I worked so hard to fix my sleeping patterns. When I finally managed to to sleep normally at 10PM, I would woke up every 3 hours and I had nightmares. Now I don't wake up every 3 hours anymore but I still have nightmares. Fun times. Ok this is the second time I'm rambling.
In my opinion, the journey towards self-actualization will never stop. I don't even know what the end goal is, I just know that I had to get better.
To my past self,
When I look back, I've made so many mistakes. I had a hard time accepting - not really the mistakes, but - myself as a whole. I had to accept the fact that my immaturity and stupidity made me lost so many things that I couldn't get back. I struggled a lot, but I have already made so much progress on accepting and loving myself. When I look back, I appreciate the journey. I try not to regret anything, because I needed those experiences to learn. I hope that I have matured enough to be called an adult. I'm sorry there are still things that I couldn't figure out. Taxes, for example. Adulthood is tiring by the way. I can't remember anything else at the top of my head, but I know I haven't figure out everything yet. We'll figure it out.I have found out so many different things but still curious about a lot of things. I fell down many rabbit holes, and sometimes it became unproductive because I didn't finish what I was supposed to do. Whoops.
To my past self,
At the time I wrote 'A letter to my future self', I know what you're going through.I'm sorry it took me 4 years to realize that I need to love myself. Thank you for enduring and fighting, because I could get to where I am today because of you.
Sincerely,
Yourself
March 24th 2020
2:41 AM
