A few months ago, everyone was into this whole decade challenge thing. As far as I could understand it, it would be as simple as posting a picture of yourself 10 years apart. It was supposed to be a silly/interesting look at how you’ve changed over the past 10 years and maybe give yourself (or others who might still think you’re just as cool as you were back then) some hope for the next 10 years. CAN WE SAY GLOW UP?! Yeah, that’s a thing and I know about it! (WHO’S TOO OLD TO BE COOL NOW?! HMM?!).
This being said. I had great joy yesterday, when I was able to have the same movers that I’d just seen 2 weeks before, to bring me my stuff from my soon-to-be-abandoned storage unit. They felt like familiar figures, passing me onto the next stage of my life journey, with dollies and a huge truck. I’d spent those previous two weeks with the bare minimum of things (seeing as I was supposed to have a totally empty apartment and be strolling along some random canal in Amsterdam by this point). Once all the boxes were moved, it was almost like Christmas morning, picking a box at a time and being surprised by what had been packed away instead of given away (you might find this strange, but c’mon! I’d been living for weeks without this stuff! I put it away literally and mentally).
The big thinking came when it was finally time to unpack and replace things where they were supposed to go. I realized that I was unpacking much of the same stuff that I had unpacked in the same apartment that I had been unpacking things into for the first time, a little over a year and a half ago. DOUBLE MOVE-IN DAY! Usually, people don’t pack up just to come back to the same place that they’d left. I had a similar feeling of things when it came time to change my mailing/residential address. For some reason, this was embarrassing to me. I found myself feeling like kind of a failure, because I had set myself to be a phantom roommate of my friend Laura and here, two weeks later, I was moving back into my previous physical address. Normal folk would understand the situation and tell me that it wasn’t really a big deal, but for some reason it stuck with me.
It wasn’t until I was explaining to friends how excited I was to be getting my things back (champagne always tastes better out of a proper flute, I know it sounds crazy, but I’m not here for your judgement guys), that I realized that my current situation was very reminiscent of my situation 4 years ago. Almost exactly this time of year back in 2016 I was dealing with a recently failed trip to Costa Rica, I was unemployed, and I was thinking about doing some classwork to up my technical skills. I’d previously stated that my initial 2 weeks of lockdown had thrown me back into the type of bachelorhood that I though I had left behind in college. Back to the days of minimal furniture, eating out of disposable (at least now compostable) cutlery and dishes. There were a few initial moments of fear and shame around this. I’d worked for 4 years just to come back to where I’d already been. How in the hell was I supposed to be finding myself, when I was just in a cycle of perceived failure?
The truth came really quickly. It was less than about 10 minutes for me. Thankfully, 4 years ago, I tried out going to therapy. That was significant in being able to jump into what I was thinking and explore why I felt the ways that I was feeling. I also gained the ability to appreciate what was happening, instead of just feeling like things were happening around me without my consent. There were certain things that I could control and then there were all the other things. So, my response was to think of the ways that I am different than I was those 4 years ago.
| 4 years ago | Present year Justin |
| – Felt alone and misunderstood. – Had very little faith about what I could accomplish. – Had no motivation or vision. | – I recognize that I have family and friends who are invested in me, whether things are good or bad looking. – I have seen myself jump through many hoops and I believe in my ability to come out of the other side of problems victoriously. – I have a goal in mind, that I will fight to make happen. |
Instead of being led to some magical life-altering solution that will fix things for me, I recognize that I have the ability to shape my present, despite anything in my past, by how I react to things. Instead of being afraid for life and feeling overwhelmed by the idea of being laid off (like I was prone to 4 years ago), I knew before anything happened, that this was a possibility and I got a clear idea (with some courage, finally), a plan of attack, and peace from the thought that nothing is permanent. No thing that you go through is for nothing and opportunities are only wasted if you allow yourself to get stuck.
So. Four years later. The situation looks similar, the variables are all familiar (Look at me already talking like a developer!), but this time I walk into things a little wiser and a lot less stressed than I previously thought was possible. Apparently, I needed the last run at this, to show me some things and I’m ready to apply the lessons learned and make something great happen. Nothing will be easy about it, but it’ll be something that I’ll be proud of, because I did it and it didn’t just happen to me.
Vernacular Dysfunction 