Day 365: Yearly review - year 1

08122013

Today is day 365 in this blog of mine: the documentation of my journey to life that I am committed to continue for at least seven years. I started this blog on the 21^st of September 2012, and because I have skipped some days along the way, I am a couple months behind the planned schedule. It's ok, though, it won't kill me (probably) – it just means that my process will take a longer time. The more I skip days, the slower I make progress.

To commemorate a full year I decided to take a look at the first couple of posts I made into this blog. In the very first entry I talk about my tendency to go to extremes to be accepted: I was referring to a phase in my life where I adopted a “depression personality” to fit into a group of people I found cool and interesting. It is interesting to see myself having mentioned this point, because I am currently in the process of disassembling the personalities I “wear” like masks to survive social situations, survival here meaning that I would be liked/accepted and not disliked/rejected. This particular phase with the “depression persona” is one of the many in my past that I haven't properly opened up yet, and I think it might be of use to me now in my current challenges to map out how I have created and repeated these same patterns in the past.

Some other points that stand out to me from the first 7 posts:

• belief that being busy is a sign of a higher status
• “shame was the only thing I knew for a long time”
• social insecurity being a mother point
• adapting to another's mood -> losing stability

Busyness as a status marker is a belief I see in my life currently as I am NOT that busy and feel guilty about it. The shame point exists in relations to other people. Social insecurity as something inherited from my mother is a point I've been working on for a while now, and I will expand on that later. The “if you're sad, I become sad” -adaptation/assimilation point is becoming more apparent to me now that I am processing the layers of my social behavior, and I find it easier to keep myself stable regardless of others' moods and emotions.

I am now thinking of returning to older posts regularly, to see what I have missed, what is reoccurring, what I have left half-way and where I have made progress. I could do 7 days, a week at a time, pick up all the prominent points and bring them into my writing.

So, next I'm going to continue with the social points, and I am also going to share about a femininity/mother point I am currently walking through. It is fascinating, huge, difficult and has already taken me years, but I am getting somewhere and I am quite excited about it – really nervous and scared but excited, lol. Stay tuned!

I commit myself to review my old posts one week (7 days) at a time approximately once a month, write a list of the points that I find relevant or interesting and then explore those points in writing and living application.

I commit myself to write this journal for as long as it takes to reach 2555 days (7 x 365).