It's Only Been 3 Days...

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When I started this 30-Day Challenge - she says as if it hasn't been all of 3 days - I had hoped it would be... to be honest, I want to say "easy," but that's not the right word here. Neither is compelling. Or reflexive. 

I think, or rather I hoped that, the challenge would allow me to be. It was supposed to be an opportunity for me to immortalise the many, random and often contradictory thoughts that keep me company. I just didn't realise how vulnerable this process would leave me feeling. I didn't anticipate how exposed and raw I currently feel. Nor could I have foreseen how this challenge would animate my feelings of inadequacy. 

Rather than exploring what I could do, this challenge has reminded me of all the things I can't do. And how I've allowed my fears to stop me from exploring other types of writing. Specifically, my fear of failure. I don't mean this in the sense of not getting 'enough' clicks or views. At least, not entirely. When I consider what failure means as a writer, it is the inability to communicate a feeling. Even in my academic writing, I try to make you feel something. Indignant. Curious. Challenged. And when I can't do this, I know I have failed. 

Yet this type of writing is exhausting. It demands a significant amount of emotional and intellectual labour that, often, leaves me feeling hollow when I'm done. In this way, it is not sustainable. 

And now, I have to do it for another 27 days; hollowing myself out daily to create somethings I'm not entirely sure of. Scattering pieces of myself across the internet, in the hopes that I can see the whole and be proud of it; to be proud of me. 

And to be honest with you, I have no idea how to be proud of myself. I've hardly done anything worth celebrating or revering. I don't believe I should get a merit badge for simply existing or for benefiting from my parents' hard work. Everything I've done always feels temporary. Like it's not enough. Like it will never be enough. And I don't know whether to sit with these emotions, work through them, or work to ignore them. 

Maybe, with this challenge, it will be all three. Again, hopefully, this challenge will allow me to simply be. To embrace this state of being, without judgement and see where it takes me. 

Here's to day 3! And God help me tomorrow.

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