Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back | 5/6/2024

Preface: I guess I'm turning this into something akin to a public journal. My new therapist wanted me to start journaling again and I have trouble keeping up with a physical one, so maybe a blog could suffice? I won't write anything overly personal, just trying to keep some documentation of my life I guess. Anyway though, many things have happened since the last entry. Some good, some bad, some just meh.

My great grandpa passed last month. It's been difficult, but life goes on. We're getting everything ready for the funeral and family/friends coming to visit so it's been a stressful past three or so weeks. Today we went on a quick trip to Kohl's to get me and my grandma new clothes for the funeral. 

My meds seemed to make me very irritable and/or sensitive to sensory input today, so that wasn't fun when we were shopping. My mom is a little sick right now and her coughing fits feel like daggers piercing my through my skull. It's legitimately painful and makes me want to cry, but I hate getting angry because I know she can't help it. I need to find some kind of way to not be a dick when I get sensory overload because I don't like who I become when I'm in that state at all. After we finished shopping she got me Chick-Fil-A (one of my comfort foods if that's what you want to call it) and I had my airpods in with noise cancelling activated so I slowly started to feel better on the way home. I'll talk to my psych about the irritability because I might need a different medication, but it seems like it just exacerbates what's already under the surface so I'm not sure.

On a lighter note, I've been working hard at CVS (my part-time job) and getting more clients for my videography business, so I feel much more financially/emotionally secure. I hope at some point I'll build enough of a solid client base for my videography that I'll be able to drop CVS, but that really just depends on if I can learn the game of "socializing" and "networking" which seem to come fairly natural to most people. At the very least though, I just feel relieved to have a modicum of stability in my life right now. People aren't kidding when they say being in your early 20s is difficult.

Seeing my friends from CNU graduating has been hard too. Most of them I haven't spoken with in a long time, and it made me really reevaluate how close I was to a lot of people. I understand that that's kind of just life in the sense that people come and go, but it doesn't make it any easier. It's also been hard because I wish I could've finished my degree like everyone else. I don't know if I'll ever go back to school. I love to learn and absorb so many different ideas, but I just find the classroom setting so frustrating. 

On top of this, it's kind of scary seeing my youth pass by so fast. Not to say I'm old by any metric, but the fact that I'll never get to be a 19 year old college freshman ever again is just hitting extra hard right now. I've been going through my old hard drive looking at all of these high school/early college videos and it's made me realize just how much I've matured (or in some cases regressed) as a person.

At 23, I know much more about myself and what I need as a person than I ever did at 18/19. Conversely though, I've shrunk myself down more for other people than I did when I was younger (although that could just be attributed to me being less aware of social rules than simply being more confident, because my self esteem was even lower back then), and I hope that's something I can improve upon with therapy and self acceptance.

I still don't entirely know what I want to do with my life, but I know that I don't want a conventional one. I'll probably expand on that more in the next entry with things like living out of a camper, learning how to DJ, expanding my filmmaking, and more. (Hopefully they'll get shorter too hahaha, brevity is not a strength of mine.)

Best,

Rhys