I'm 29 now!

And... I think I've leveled up.

Because I just came through a gigantic crisis.... and it's made me realize some things.

For one, I've been operating under a bias. You see, I live with a few psychological troubles. I manage my symptoms through meta-cognition; I haven't been supplementing that with anything for a few months now. And I realized something.

Once I was no longer distracted by money vanishing practically by the minute, broken appliances, and a dozen other headaches, all of which have been resolved fairly handily in the last few days, I noticed: "You know, I don't think I've been freaking out about this any more than most people would. This whole time, I've been thinking that having any strong feelings about this situation were coming from my "nuts", but really, I think just about anyone who suddenly lost their primary income with no savings as a safety net, the whole house being an episode of hoarders, the oven, washing machine, and only working toilet breaking in the space of a couple weeks, and having accidentally broken in the front door, would probably freak out at LEAST as much as I did." So I've suddenly been faced with the fact that I'm a whole lot more stable than I thought.

And another couple things came up too.

I've been having some trouble with a friend, and I realized that demanding him to be different from how he is is going about it all wrong. If I behave differently, opting to treat him as better than he behaves, choosing not to be so easily upset, and by refusing to involve myself in his drama.... that might actually improve things with this friend. Not only with him, but with people in general.

Third, I came to a stunning realization. In hindsight, it seems so obvious. This is deep, old wounds. I'm very risk averse, very loss averse, and this is unsurprising because I realized my life experiences have taught me to think of myself as a colossal screw-up. I'm used to believing on a deeply influential level that everything I touch, I break.

But that's a lie.

Because being a little more clever than most, it's true that my failures are somewhat more spectacular. But for every failing, all I lose is time I would have spent anyway; and I gain tremendous amounts of knowledge. I LEARN, and I learn very, very quickly, and very completely. Because I dissect those failures with surgical precision and absolute ruthlessness. When I try again, I almost invariably succeed; in fact I often know within minutes why something didn't work on at least a surface level. There are some things that take me longer to solve; meta-awareness of mental disorder, self therapy, weight loss. But for the most part, when thrown in the water, it only takes struggling to the shore one time before I know how to swim.

I've been much too hard on myself. Now, if I were not, I would not have come to these recognitions. However I believe that there must be a way to retain this level of critical self-examination in a way that is self-compassionate. I feel empowered. I know what to do, really know it. I feel very confident about my situation, and my first intuition is to ruthlessly clutter-bust the common rooms of this house so I have room to tackle the others. I have been beating myself up for not doing anything creatively worthwhile; but surrounded by this kind of chaos, anyone would have trouble doing so.

So, I shall set my house in order. But for now....

*puts on a cone-shaped hat, blows a noisemaker and throws a handful of confetti*

Happy Birthday to Me!