Throughout the entirety of my personal journey – betting on myself and moving ahead with projects I had postponed – I hadn’t been gripped with a shadow of “positive emotion” in a long time.
I sat with the emotions I usually feel: anger, resentment, bitterness, and regret. But beneath them was something else, something subtle, and fleeting, yet it made itself known.
Pride.
Resilient.
Persistent.
In the moments where my demons surface, beneath their screams and shouts is something quieter; when it seems all of the work I’ve been putting in to build something I can call my own, to live my life on my own terms, is for naught, it whispers, “keep going.”
These emotions: my pride, my resilience, and my persistencewill channel my anger and regret into something better, beautiful, and enduring for my life to matter.
A sketch of my job’s mascot representing a person’s (mental and emotional) prison FINALLY getting a chance to be let out in a rage room.
I Would Like To Rage!!! In A Rage Room!
“Ever felt that bubbling rage boiling up from within the pit of your soul? You know the feeling: Your body begins shaking, you feel your hands curling and clenching, your breathing becomes shallower and fast, your vision begins to narrow and sound becomes less noticeable, and you feel the need to exert energy and force.
Many of us keep our emotions bottled up, afraid of judgement and the consequences that will follow if we act on our anger indiscriminately and lash out.
That’s where a Rage Room comes in!
A Smash room, a break room, a destruction room, whatever you want to call them, these rooms will allow you to safely explore these feelings that are commonly frowned upon in civilized society in a safe, controlled, and sanctioned environment.
Observations From A Rage Room Attendant
As a rage rooms attendant, I’ve seen a lot of different people enter the rage room for their own reasons. Many people, after getting everyone comfortable with the idea with breaking and destroying things, are initially visiting for a few reasons:
It’s a company team building experience.
A family or friend outing.
Are looking for novelty.
Celebrating something significant.
Going through a lot of stress and emotions.
Had been hurt, betrayed, or been through a break up.
After they pick their items, are suited up, given the safety rules, and put into the rooms, depending on the size of their party, it’s usually free game within their 30-45 minute time slot.
Some people are awkward and don’t put too much force behind their swings or throws that I tend to find a lot of things left unbroken that I can give to the next group to break.
Although, most visitors are military, so they fall into one of two categories:
They are either so efficient that they are in and out of the room in under 5 minutes, likely due to their efficiency and training, while others take their time and enjoy themselves after being on tour.
Then there’s those who are doing this for fun with friends and family, or people who are celebrating a huge win for their company and they actually like and enjoy their coworkers enough to do an outing, and or someone is leaving their company and this is a farewell gift(a pretty cool and memorable one in my opinion).
I’ve seen the people who have had their hearts broken. There is nothing more painful and rage inducing than hurt, pain, and loss. When they enter, some are willing to share that they’ve gone through a break up, they still have a smile or neutral expression on their face, but others you can tell only by the type of music they play when the room door closes. It’s pretty obvious and we can see their behavior on the cameras to make sure they’re doing okay.
Real World Examples In Action
I remember a group of women, three friends, came in because one friend was going through heartbreak. All three were extremely enthusiastic when in the room that I saw they were stomping on a CPU unit after being told not to in the safety briefing.
Fun can make people myopic, but they knew what they were getting themselves into and we made sure they didn’t do anything to really hurt themselves or each other.
Another visitor was a high school boy and his good friend. He was visiting because he was going through a break up, and from what the dad, and the boy’s choice in music, told me.
The second I heard, “Photograph, Thinking Out Loud, and Perfect” by Ed Sheeran, ‘I’m Not The Only One” by Sam Smith, “It Will Rain” by Bruno Mars, and other sad sounding love songs, I knew what was happening.
The Pro’s of A Rage Room
I may be a rage room attendant trying to endorse people to try something I work at, but I’ve seen the benefits of people taking their frustrations out with us than outside in the world. Besides novelty, a Rage Room:
Allows for safe and immediate release of anger and excess emotions: Why destroy things outside and get arrested, when you can do so someplace designed for this kind of release?
Accessible and low-commitment: Unlike therapy or martial arts gyms, you don’t have to commit to scheduled sessions. You can walk in, smash and scream, drink water, and leave and return whenever you want.
Provides cathartic support: You don’t have to talk, no one has to listen, it’s just you in a room with things to break, a few lead pipes and sledgehammers, and the world doesn’t have to bat an eye to you in that room. Except us employees. Whatever happens in the rage room, stays in the rage room(unless you’re recording on your phone).
What Are the Downsides?
The cons are just as important to know as the pros. They do make a difference if you want to give it a try or not, but it’s not always a make or break deal. Visiting a rage room isn’t always the best solution. A rage room:
Can be expensive: It’s a better investment than bail, but the money could be better used towards therapy or a martial arts classes.
It doesn’t address the root cause or emotion for the visit: rage rooms are meant to be fun, novel, and an outlet for sublimation, but it’s not a solution. Rage rooms can’t provide skills or strategies to deal with anger or excess emotions that professional help is better equipped to do.
It could reinforce destructive behavior: Ironically, though we do have repeat customers, a rage room might reinforce someone’s inclination to deal with their emotions through destructive means. I’m not suggesting that these repeat customers fall into this assumption, but people are interesting and might cling to this outlet as the only solution they can get.
Not readily available in your area: Rage rooms are a growing trend, but aren’t everywhere. My workplace is the only one in my state, so some people have to take a drive down or need a plane ticket over. It’s another reason to consider long-term and local alternatives instead.
Do Rage Rooms Have Anything Else?
Yes, as far as my job goes, Rage rooms do have other means of letting excess energy out. People don’t have to come in angry to enjoy the services my job can offer, though some people are usually in need of a different kind of release. One not catering towards destruction, rather one that’s more creative.
We have a Zen Lounge where people can relax, talk stories, and chill after a rage room session or before entering the Splatter Room.
A Splatter Room is an open paint room where you can shoot paint at the walls, the provided canvases, or each other with paint guns or the paint kits.
It’s a different and creative release some people appreciate instead of wanting to break things when they don’t feel compelled to.
We do provide safety gear: ponchos, eye wear, and boots to protect people’s clothes and eyes as best as possible, but friends and family make that difficult when fun’s involved.
Being creative can be just as cathartic as the rage room as it lets you be physical and you don’t have to care what you create, compared to painting a masterpiece or someone’s house.
What About The Overly Enthusiastic Individuals?
Some people have asked, other than what items they are allowed to bring to smash from the outside, if they could bring the person who hurt them in to smash. Other than an obvious, “no”, I’m able to suggest another alternative.
An Alternative To Rage: Martial Arts
I’ve done wrestling and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu prior to working at the rage room, so I suggest that people can visit a sparring gym.
Any gym that offers sparring:
Boxing.
Kickboxing.
Judo.
Muay-Thai.
Wrestling.
BJJ.
ANY MARTIAL ARTS GYM.
Any good gym will teach you new physical skills and how to ensure you keep a level head. Anger doesn’t make a person stronger, no matter how much of a fan of Dragon Ball Z or Naruto: Shippuden you are.
Those are animes; we don’t live in an anime where we’re the main characters with plot armor. I know this intimately and from experience that anger makes you sloppy, predictable, and a sore loser who refuses to learn or adjust their approach to the sport and to life.
True Strength Lies Within
I had spent more than 10 years wrestling with my anger. During BJJ training, I didn’t care what happened to me, I wanted to see what I could do. Even if that meant enduring some locks or chokes because I didn’t want to tap out and I wanted to see if I could get out. My personal motto was, “If I can talk, I’m still breathing.”
However, I’ve been dealing with emotional numbness for years that a professor at my gym told me some people, and himself, thought something was wrong with me.
That kind of hurt because that told me people thought I was damaged in some way and it showed in my training. I was eager to learn and use my wrestling experience to help me learn a new sport, but I needed to FEEL something, anything, because I struggled to that wasn’t anger. So, once being told this, I tried to tap more, but my habits always kicked in, unless something really did hurt.
My training would suffer when I got mad; I would be blind to the countermoves, to the opportunities to attack and defend. I needed more energy, and my trade off was horrible in the end.
I hated training, I hated myself, and that hate made it difficult to learn or pay attention to the lessons being taught, in BJJ and in life.
I would rather train and spar than deal with the real reasons for my anger, but I did it anyways. I needed to because doing nothing would have gotten me into real trouble. Then what? I’d be in jail and have that on my record for life, making a lot of opportunities impossible and out of reach than it already is for me.
Therapy wasn’t the best fit for me when I tried it, but I’m not averse to trying again. Money is kinda tight right now, so I’ve started taking notes, noticing any changes in myself and what could have caused it, setting boundaries, having standards for myself, while pursing new outlets at home and on a budget.
Seeking professional help, even learning new skills, to redirect anger through a sport or art is more powerful than anger ever could be. It takes more strength and courage to do the things that scare us and I know well that facing my own demons are terrifying.
I’ve been noticing that some places in my life ignite the rage I’ve been keeping under wraps. It emerges when I feel disrespected, looked down upon, or made a fool of because I’m not conventionally successful or in a position of authority. I’m just a grunt at my full time job and it drives me up the wall.
Anger and sublimation are signals, not long term solutions, and are trying to tell you that something is wrong. Don’t let it consume you because you might do something you could regret.
Reflection
Have you ever gone to a rage room for its novelty, creative outlet, or needed to break something that wasn’t going to hit you back? If you did, share your experience with 1 word that described what it was like or how you felt when you visited.
I’d love to know what your opinions on them are in the comments below. No pressure. No clickbait. Just curious. Thank you, Fellow Archivists, I’ll see you all in another post.
Call to Action
If any part of this resonated with you — the release, the rage, the quiet that follows after — consider sharing this piece with someone who might need a reminder that it’s okay to break before you rebuild.
Every read, like, subscribe, and share helps this small corner of the internet grow a little louder in a world that keeps trying to quiet us down.
Below are other reflections I had on feeling anger, redirecting it, not feeling enough, and doing something different.
My goals undergo a process; it often comes from a place of spontaneity: listing every curiosity and skill down on paper, researching the amount of time and resources I’m able to free up without forfeiting my current lifestyle or neglecting my current obligations, and doing a process of elimination.
More often than not, my plans are born from a place of mild obsession. I hate feeling small, weak, worthless, useless, and always at the mercy of someone else because of their “position/place of authority.”
To put it simply, I carry a few questions with me everyday. It scratches the surface of my awareness to the point I’m physically on auto-pilot, but mentally overstimulated and calculating:
How Much Time Do I Have Left?
How Many More Opportunities Do I Have Left To Explore?
How Many of My Curiosities Will I Be Able To Satisfy?
Will I Be Proud of My Life If I Stay Where I Currently Am?
These aren’t the complete list of questions, but they are the most important. I had spent the first 2 decades of my life hiding, playing video games to numb the pain, to hide the fact that I was not gifted with much skill, brains, or strength. I could easily acquire skills and experience quick in video games, unless you’re playing any FromSoft game, but I refused to do the same in real life.
I decided very recently to change my narrative, and it’s a hit or miss some days. Starting a blog was born from a long wish to write and share when I have no one who would sit and listen in person; I’m learning to code, despite having had an awful experience in university with zero exposure or knowledge prior, to be an opportunity to overcome self-imposed limitations; Allowing my mind to wander and become distracted often leads to adding fuel to my personal fire.
What Are My Reasons For Planning Things This Way?
My reasons for planning my goals this way is simple. I’m not striving towards pure freedom, some rules need to remain in place. I’m striving to reduce fear’s hold on me and to expand my options. To use my anger against myself, circumstances, other people that irritates me for something constructive.
How many of us are living life where our options are limited?
That is what I want, to expand my options, to release as much anger and rage as I can, one centimeter at a time. The goals I’m striving are for me, for where I want to go, who I want to grow into, and to experience things that I had denied myself and witness and be a part of as many things as I can. True freedom is to have options, instead of having no options and feeling powerless, small, useless,worthless, and a failure.
These are my goals, my struggles, my process, and my drive. Time is against me, it’s against all of us, and my self imposed deadline is fast approaching. 3 more years, I wonder what I’ll have accomplished by then. Only time will tell, and me!
For more of my writing and things I’ve been planning, you can check out my other articles below. Thanks!
Many words have been used to the point that hearing it provokes a visceral reaction. I know that I tend to feel myself: tense up, I feel a noticeable thumping hitting the front of my skull, I’m mentally rolling my eyes, and letting out a heavy huff. It’s the only way that I’m able to release the bubbling irritation boiling within me, before returning to emotional numbness, especially when I’m at work.
The few words or phrases that tends to get a rise from me, in the sense that I want to drop kick whoever is talking, are:
Can you go do X? (Either I’m already or about to do it, or the person asking bypasses more than half a dozen people standing around just to ask me? That’s infuriating.)
Have you seen so-so? (I’m not getting paid to babysit young adults, no. Go bother the people who’s supposed to be training the new hires.)
[S/he’s] not doing anything! (Have you EVER noticed you’re doing the same thing? It’s irritating, nothings going to change, just do your job and leave. Still working on taking my own advice too.)
I want to go home already. (Me too, but we have to finish sorting the freight, then we can leave. But that’s wishful thinking on good days.)
These are other words and phrases I can’t think of at the top of my head, though it does make me want to drop kick people, but it also depends on how it’s being said.
Think of it like this; we all have our preferences and it will differ from the people we know and don’t know, right? However, have you ever heard one person speaking and their voice is pleasant, soothing, and makes you want to listen more intently? Okay, keep that in mind.
Now, imagine the most irritating, nail scratching, metal grinding metal, and obnoxious sounding person you can muster and saying the words you absolutely despise and are repeating it over and over again until you start to think your ears are bleeding. That makes those overly used words even more difficult to tolerate.
There’s nothing that can be done about it, sadly, it’s another lingo, and the best I can do for myself is to tune everything out and do what I have to do. No matter how angry, bitter, and resentful I feel, no matter how much I want to drop kick people, I just have to exist and let go.
For more posts like this, I have a few recommendation below, and I’ll see you over in the next ones!
The majority of the prompts I’ve answered since starting my blog had asked similarly, but worded differently, questions, and I had mentioned doing some physical activity. Walking had been my most prominent answer, although it’s true, this brings me contentment.
Peace on the other hand is different; I’ve lived near the ocean my whole life and, as a kid, I’d used to have to be dragged out of the water to leave. Some people have a strong connection to the ocean: they care for it and in return the ocean would care for us. Not in the same sense as we would care for our family and friends.
One of my grandma’s younger brother had take shrapnel from a grenade blast when he served in the Vietnam war as a young man. He was on and off medication because the doctors couldn’t remove all of the metal in his body because it would have led to him bleeding to death, so they left the metal in his body. It was until their dad took him fishing one day that, when he was out on the water casting a line, his pain felt far away.
Whenever I used to go swimming, I would never stray too far from the shore, I would feel at peace in the water. The saltiness of the water would let me float on my back, fill my ears and everything would feel and sound muffled, sand would end of getting into places you’d never want them to be, and I would stare at the sky and let the current take me adrift.
Being in the ocean, among the sandy shores, that hasn’t been fully contaminated by myriad of sun screen or boat waste, has been healing for both body and spirit.
Even though I haven’t visited a beach in years, being in a hot bath provides a similar feeling the ocean used to bring to me. That feeling, though fleeting and stretched into infinity, was being able to let go and drift.
No need to go anywhere, no obligations to fulfill, no noise about being a failure or a success or a nobody or a somebody, just being. Just breathing. Just existing.
The sea has its rules and ignoring it would lead to disaster:
Never face your back to the water, else a rogue wave comes and drags you in.
Never fight against the current, go with it until the current calms and you can swim.
Take care of the sea, make it better than you found it, and it will care for you.
Letting go and drifting in the water had brought me peace. It made me wonder if this is what moving on would feel like when my time comes, but I won’t know until I get there. The next time you’re in a large body of water, or even a simple bathtub, drift on your back, close your eyes and let the water envelope you.
Welcome, Co-conspirators, the Stratagem’s Archives are now open for perusing. Today I will be starting a series called, “Starting Over.” To put it simply, let me ask a single question.
“What skills or hobbies did you want to learn, but stopped MOSTLY because of an awful experience?”
That is essentially what “Starting Over” is going to be about; returning to pick up the skills and hobbies I gave up on and didn’t pursue for years. All thanks to the experiences I had that convinced me I wasn’t smart enough to learn, or that, because I had no prior knowledge or experience or skill, I shouldn’t have pursued those skills or hobbies in the first place.
As you already know, “The Stratagem’s Archive,” is a place where I document my interests, thought experiments, what I’m learning, what I’ve learned, and what I’ve tried so far. Despite not having credentials, formal education or a mentor, or prior skill and knowledge, I didn’t want the obvious to prevent me from trying again.
Fear, criticism, boredom, lack of money and time and energy, and every other obstacle under the sun already dictates majority of our lives.
As a lifelong learner, a person, and an Autodidact, I am choosing to say, “No More”, and start my journey with picking up the things I gave up on because I “failed to learn it the first time.” (HEAVY AIR QUOTES).
Anyways, each “Starting Over” installment will be different and broken up into parts:
My previous experiences and what made me stop.
The resources I’ve chosen to get back into learning.
And what I’ve learned and made so far to showcase here on the blog.
I am extremely excited to begin this project; I had stood in my own way for a long time, believed people who knew better tell me to give up, but I only have this one life.
When will I ever get the chance to do anything ever again if I keep letting myself waste time with sulking and wishing?
When will any of us finally decide that NOW, choosing to try again, to start again, will be the only time we have now?
Whether we are “Starting Over” or trying something new for the first time, we get to decide to:
shift our perspectives and psychology.
adjust our relationships with success and failure with learning and ourselves.
be proactive with our learning anyways.
That is the beauty, and challenge, of being a lifelong learner and a fellow autodidact, polymath, renaissance person, and everything in-between. I have a similar post down below that you could check out, and I’ll see you in the first installment. Thank you.
Enjoyed this post?
I write about creativity, coding, art, and personal growth.
Subscribe to follow my journey and get new posts when they drop!
This is a tough question because it seems to me that we can only pick 1 profession to admire and explain our reasoning below. I’m going to be bending the prompt to suit my needs and share what I think instead.
The professions that I admire are almost all of them, except for the illegal types like: trafficking, prostitution, drug dealing, forcefully indentured and many more that I don’t want to immerse myself in.
I’ve worked entry level jobs my entire working life. I had worked at 2 separate grocery store chains, I’ve worked at a fresh food restaurant called, “Teddy’s Bigger Burgers”, I’ve been unemployed for 7 months from leaving my first job that I had since high school, and I’m currently working at a warehouse full time and at a rage roompart time.
My reasoning behind admiring every legal profession is that every job does keep society and the economy thriving.
Yes, though many jobs are essential and necessary, I’m aware that the countless ways we are able to earn an income are less than ideal and to our preference. Myriad forms of employment are also:
Dangerous
Unsafe
Unsanitary
Grisly
Life threatening
Etc.
However, without the people who have the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual fortitude to handle those kinds of work, someone was given the strength to do those jobs, things might have been different, wouldn’t you agree?
Teachers
Military
Customer service
Drivers
Nurses
Paramedics
Doctors
Veterinarians
Business owners
Custodians
Morticians
Programmers
Farmers
Ranchers
Personal Trainers
Accountants
Information Technicians
Hospice care
Police officers
Private investigators
Detectives
Security guards
Fire fighters
Rangers
Volunteers
Freelancers
Chefs
Bakers
Animators
Actors
Drivers
Bartenders
Comedians
Therapists
Authors
Publishers
Game developers
Architects
Spelunkers
Historians
EVERY JOB THAT LEGALLY EXISTS THAT CAN’T FIT IN THIS ALREADY LONG LIST, BUT ARE ACKNOWLEDGED ALL THE SAME!!!
Every job is necessary, many are needed, stressful, monotonous, spontaneous, and sometimes thankless. Even though each job might not get the recognition, status, or pay that we believe we deserve, we are able to provide for ourselves, our families, our presents, and our futures.
That is something we can admire – each job is a stepping stone and learning experience if we ever want to move up laterally in a company or vertically into a different field – we have the capacity to make our own path the best to our ability. We earn our keep however we currently can and strive for whatever we want to achieve in each chapter of our lives.
If you agree or disagree with my list, share your thoughts in the comments below. I would love to know what you all think about this prompt. Otherwise, I have a few other prompts you could check out below. The archives will be closing now. See you again when we open. Thank you!
What is the most important thing to carry with you all the time?
I’m a hypocrite because I don’t make enough memories in my life with my family or those I care about. I’ve always hated cameras and flashes – it mostly stemmed from a childhood fear of one of R.L. Stein’s Goosebumps book about the haunted camera – and I never liked seeing my own face.
Although, I guess I’d rather live through the memories than be included in the memories. I’ve always believed that my presence, even among family, tends to spoil the fun and experience. I’ve gotten good at being an observer because I know what it’s like to have someone very close to me lose their memories, themselves, in real time.
Despite my personal feelings, the reason I chose memories is because I grew up with my paternal grandpa who had Alzheimer’s. As a kid, I didn’t understand why my Papa couldn’t remember much and my family told me to be patient because he couldn’t remember. You can’t tell a kid to do something when, at such young ages, it’s instinct to be impulsive and impatient.
On the days he forgot, it hurt because it was as though, as a kid, my Papa could remember to do his chores, walk to McDonald’s to get his coffee, and get home safely, but not remember us.
Sadly, I wasn’t the most behaved kid and I would do really stupid things like, locking the house door from the inside and watching him try to force the door open until my grandma would tell me to open the door. After I did, my grandpa would walk in, see me, and nothing else.
I even remember when I would sleep in my grandma’s living room and I was woken up because my head was hurting, like someone was taking a hammer to my skull, and it had been my Papa hitting my head like I was a pillow because: 1)it was dark; 2)he couldn’t recognize or remember me.
Even though it’s been years since I thought about him, he passed away in 2009 and I was just entering intermediate school, I think I’m thinking of him because my maternal grandpa passed away last month.
He was still young – in his mid-sixties – he loved to cook, sing, play cards and make up his own rules to play, he told me stories of his time in the Army, his regrets, and how he would have done things differently if he had the chance.
Now, I have both of my grandma’s still alive, but because I’ve been working so hard I haven’t made time to hang out with them or my family.
My paternal grandma is in her early 80’s, still sound of mind and body, and maternal grandma is in her late 60’s, still sound of mind and body too.
I fear that something will happen to my paternal grandma because I moved out, even though I tend to call her, I haven’t called her in a while. Even to my other grandma, hell, even to my parents.
My mom likes taking pictures, I found them a waste of time, but as I’m getting older I’m starting to see their significance. As I get older, so does everyone else, and the amount of time I’ll get to listen to my family’s stories grow smaller and smaller, but even memories will slowly fade with time.
I can’t remember much of my time with my Papa anymore and my Grandpa’s stories are slowly fading because I didn’t hang out with him as much as he wanted. I’d try, but I also didn’t make much effort either.
I don’t know what anyone is going through, but if you have people in your life you still care about: call them, tell them you love them, something. Anything, especially if they do matter to you. My family doesn’t say a lot of things enough, we’re not ones for words of affirmation but through actions, but I can share that, from my experience, it does make a difference.
I’m still working on this myself as I’m learning to navigate my own life as I’m approaching my new life stage of 30. Not there yet, but making memories is all we’ll have, even if we forget them, it’ll come back to us when we need them.
What change, big or small, would you like your blog to make in the world?
The kind of changes that I would like my blog to achieve would be what I had originally planned it to be – a place where I could share my thoughts and ideas, archive the things that I’ve been trying my hand at and what I’ve learned so far, and possibly connect with people who might have similar interests as well.
I had let fear stop me from trying new things and from pursuing things I wanted to because I believed it was difficult and I was intellectually challenged to learn. It wasn’t because I was dumb, rather I had been in a state of “learned helplessness”, I was inadvertently taught to give up and do something I could comprehend instead of pushing through.
After years of allowing this trend to stop me, I finally started my own blog and I’ve been using it to share my progress, interests, and lessons learned from the day to day of my life or from lessons learned from somewhere else. I got fed up with living in faer, with stopping myself from trying new things, and from not exploring sooner because I am feeling behind in life.
Despite feeling this way, I have a literal written record of what I’ve been doing, trying, and applying in my life through WordPress, through The Stratagem’s Archives, originally known as Plans2Action, to keep me accountable on my plans and executing on them while I’m still alive. I won’t have a lot of stories to take with me into my next life if I didn’t do anything new or had finished something to completion.
Even if my blog doesn’t change the world or impact the lives of others in some large or small way. The only life that it should change is ultimately mine and this venture had been no small feat since starting. But it had led to some pretty grand ideas to formulate and execute on, right? I’ll see how this will go for me; I’m simply “Just an average dilettante who likes learning new things, see what outcomes I get, and share what I’ve learned here.”
I could imagine that an Alternative version of Me would have pushed through a lot of things. Alternative Me would have:
Stood her ground or walked away from friendships that weren’t supportive of her.
Avoided being a victim of stalking from discerning people sooner.
Stopped being a people pleaser ASAP.
Pushed through 1 more year of wrestling.
Started many projects early on: YouTube, blogging, coding, game design, locking picking, investing, etc.
Pursued scholarships to afford a full 4 years of university.
Pursued a mentorship or went abroad for school.
Avoided (personal loan) debts and paid with cash (for most things).
Found an apartment sooner to learn independent living, rely on family less sooner too.
Took my nutrition, sleep, and health more seriously.
Spent more time hanging out with family than shutting herself in her room over the years.
Everything I currently am, the lessons I’ve learned up until now, this alternate me would have learned sooner and done things sooner with a broader and larger portfolio than what I currently have built up so far.
Very likely I would have explored and been exposed to different fields, different people, experiences, and lessons sooner because I stood up for myself and didn’t let fear control me as my current self had done for years.
So afraid of being alone, I clung to horrible friendships; So afraid of failure, I struggle to accept compliments and need constant reassurance that I’m doing alright; So terrified of being criticized that I never improving my skills or further my learning: writing, sketching, health, investing, anything until 2023 to 2025.
But I can’t dwell on the past or on what I should have done, I’ll become depressed, and I’ll need to keep working on myself and pursue the things I want to while I still have the time. I had wasted years on hypotheticals that my reality had declined until this year alone, that it’s time to put in the work now more than ever. Time to improve, learn from the past, and build my present and future regardless of where I am today!
