This post is a rerun. I post occasional reruns as a kindness to myself and to unearth old posts for new readers. You can read about reruns, too.
Today’s rerun is Work in Progress, and it’s a pretty painful one to revisit if I’m honest. The post was about a compulsive behavior that I’m plagued with to create paragraphs of equal length in a piece of writing.
If you read my last few posts, it will be very obvious. Obvious to the extent that someone recently commented on it. Despite the fact I knew it was obvious, I still felt a knot deep in my stomach at the knowledge that it had been noticed. A sort of embarrassment or shame.
It’s not so much that I care what others think, more-so that I care about what I think, and actively want to work on it. It’s not an overnight thing, of course, which is why the original post is titled “work in progress”. It will take time, discomfort, and a little patience.
My motivation to write the post was to state publicly that it’s a thing I’d like to work on, in the hope that the commitment would help me to do so. My motivation for this rerun is to share that of course it doesn’t work like that, and it’s totally fine that it doesn’t. Nobody’s perfect.
The reason I know it’s difficult? I really planned to make all of the paragraphs a different length in this post, but my brain steered the last three toward the compulsion. I almost went back to fix them, but resisted.
Posting this rerun, I think, is mostly a reminder to be kind to myself. To give myself the same grace I’d give to anyone else, because we’re often so unlikely to do so. We expect perfection that we wouldn’t from others.
A few weeks after writing the original post, I wrote something very short recalling how Elizabeth Gilbert had encouraged people to consider how they feel about themselves vs. toward themselves. I didn’t feel great about myself when I first thought about posting this rerun, but I’m trying to feel better toward myself. To give myself a little more patience.
You probably won’t notice this change about my writing very quickly, but you might notice it change. You’ll notice it a little in this post, and in a couple of others maybe. In a few months you might notice it in a few more. In a few years… well…who knows—work in progress.
If there’s something that you’re trying to work on in yourself and it’s taking longer than you’d hoped, give yourself a little grace. Consider how you’d feel towards others struggling with the same thing. You deserve the same kindness that they do, not least from yourself.