What I’m guessing the missing link is: small projects. A sense of completeness. That’s what worked so well for music. Leaning into “unpolished”. Posting it. Letting it live, moving on. Not expecting anything from it. Small projects. Step by step. After each step, feeling relief, satisfaction, completeness, not needing to take another step. Not feeling incomplete.

I’m back making the same mistakes now, and I’m back feeling the same way. Let me at least learn faster this time.

The problem arises when I try to lift too much. I get hurt. I get tired. I can’t recover. I injure myself.

My dreams are too big. My goals are too grand. I’m trying to lift a mountain. I can’t. Maybe some people are built that way. They can be wildly ambitious and it won’t consume them. Good for them. Not me. The only way I can be happy in life is to pursue small things. Simple pleasures. Bite sized portions. Small. Small is better. Small is good. Small I can handle.

Big will eat me alive.

I resign. I resign from all that. It’s too much.

Here’s my guess as to why: I’ve been addicted. ***No amount of cutting out porn, internet, anything else, will cut out the dopamine highs of dreaming of success***. I’ve been addicted, and I’ve been dreaming of success. It feels good. Working on my side project feels extra good when I make progress, because I think, “wow, this might be it, I might finally have my big break with this”. This is what I did in my year off. This attitude is what I sense from my dad, what [ex gf] sensed in me. Too dopaminergic. Too dream-y. Too ambitious. The things I do serve the part of me that feeds off success and achievement and goals and feeling like I am a certain way. I used to daydream about being interviewed by 60 minutes or something, getting the attention for being so successful and being seen as smart etc.

***The only way to heal is to resign from all of that***. Unless I truly let go of it, I will always be attached to those dreams, I will always get the highs of dreaming/wanting/making progress towards it, it will always push me out of balance, and I will find a way to get addicted one way or another. I resign, and I don’t need anything to be happy. Peace of mind is the highest luxury, and it is so rarely found in the throes of achievement and success.

That’s also why I wasn’t able to work on my side project for a while. I avoided it because I had so much pressure on it.

Fuck it. Let me publish. Let the thing I make live out there, let me feel a sense of accomplishment. Let it not consume me. Let me put a bow on it. Let me let go of it.

All that I said above applies to [ex gf]. I get high on the idea of her. That’s why it’s so hard to move on. I’m addicted to the thought of her, what we had, etc. Let a relationship, with whomever it’s with, be a small project. Let it be real. Let me not get attached, let me not get high.

I think there’s this notion that discipline and good healthy choices is this big thing, requires all this effort, etc. I don’t think so. It requires letting go. At which point the good choices are easy.

There’s a real possibility that things with [ex gf] are over for good. That I ruined our relationship beyond repair. I need to come to terms with that. I don’t know what the future might hold, but whatever it holds, it will come through small projects.