5/15 - Fear of Success Plays Dress-up

Many times, I’ve tried to get into a nice little morning routine. Typically, this happens after I’ve become overwhelmed by bad habits: skipping meals, pushing my naturally-late bedtime until sunrise, avoiding the task of picking up the various magazines and bowls and pens that my cat, Tula, has shoved to the ground (like why tho??). At a certain point, I just wake up and decide: you know what – enough is enough. With all the drama of a cinematic things-are-getting-better montage, I revamp my day.

But I’ve never really been able to make it stick.

I’ll burn through a couple of days radically self-bettering, only to feel the routine fizzle away by the time the weekend rolls around. It’s frustrating and demoralizing; it leaves me feeling like I’ll always have this low-grade, latent desire to better structure my days, but will never be able to bring that desire to fruition beyond a short, passionate burst. I’m sure my sister would say something about this being linked to my being a Sagittarius. I had a recent epiphany about this tendency, which has less to do with my astrological makeup and and more to do with my psychological makeup (although I suppose debating the lines between these is a whole thing it itself).

I’ve discovered that part of me is convinced a life of routine would make me boring.

Somewhere throughout my adolescence and early adulthood, as I veered in the direction of an artsy, self-employed life-style, I absorbed the idea that chaos and disorganization were both A. part and parcel to the artistic experience, and B. somewhat invigorating, mysterious, and appealing. By contrast, the idea of being completely scheduled, and tidy, and honoring routine, has seemed conducive to a bland, unrelatable version of me. The fear goes: this version of me has no narrative intrigue, no slapdash charm, no sense of playfulness , etc etc etc. The associations I’ve had with such assiduous organization were with the very plain, grown-ups that I know.

Which is all to say: I’ve subconsciously internalized the idea that to fully commit to routine is to accept a life of vanilla plainness. I’ve imagined the people closest to me would start to lose interest in me if really locked into a groove. That they’d pretend they were proud of my tightening up my days, but privately yearn for that more pell-mell Evan. It seems somewhat obvious in writing this that we’re stumbling into both some Peter Pan Complex-y and self-worth-y territory here. I’m new to blogging, so I’m still figuring out the Venn diagram between blog-reader and shrink, but I’ll try to put the emphasis on my conclusions, rather than on psychological unspooling. With that in mind, here’s what I’ve concluded:

My fear of boredom is a myth. In fact, it is just a disguise worn by my fear of success. Waking up at more reasonable hour, writing regularly, stretching regularly, and eating healthily doesn’t make me narratively uninteresting; these habits don’t strip me of my inherent identity, because a messy room and double booked schedule aren’t an identity. By starting my days away from my phone, with a blogpost (heehee hey look you’re part of the process now) and a workout and some moments of meditation, I’m not forsaking any of the qualities that make people want to be around me. All I’m doing is pushing myself towards finishing the projects I want to finish, quieting down my brain, and feeling more present around the people I love. The idea that I could actually have all of that contentment… now that’s fucking scary.

The challenge then becomes: making peace with the scariness of potential happiness, and not concocting new reasons deny myself that happiness.

That’s all for now. I’ll be back soon :)