On being realistic

I often describe myself as being an ideas person rather than a practicality person. And I'm not very grood at always following through on my ideas.  I am trying to become better at the follow through because I get very annoyed with myself at times for how often I don't do that. I tend to view it as a failure and beat myself up about it.

The trouble with that is that I then get very stressed about how much I have to do, everything I need to fit in and the fact that I'm on the verge of another failure.  I think part of it comes from my having had bouts of depression and anxiety for so long.  And another part probably comes from being disabled.  Many people who don't know me see my chair and have low expectations of what I'll be able to do and who I am.  Hell, even some people who know me but not well have those.  It makes me uncomfortable and like I need to prove them wrong.  I'm more than my disability and I remember as a teenager telling someone that the best way to get me to do something was to tell me I wouldn't be able to.  I'm not quite like that now but I do still hate when people make assumptions.

Lately I've been trying to do something different.  Trying to be realistic about what I'm doing and how I'm doing it and everything else that's going on around it.  Having an idea and planning to do something is great.  But is it realistic?  If it's not realistic and/or life intervenes and something doesn't happen that doesn't mean I've failed.  And more importantly is it important?  What's the worse that's going to happen if I don't manage to follow through on those big ideas?

If I don't manage something important then that's a problem and I need to look at how to prevent that happening again. If I don't manage something I'd like to do but isn't necessary it's not a problem and I need to chill out about it.

If I don't read as many books this year as I planned then who cares. It's much better to really enjoy fewer books this year then push myself to read a large number for the sake of it (I've actually recently drastically reduced my Goodreads challenge for that reason and should probably delete it).

If I decide to update my blog everyday for a while but only get it done a couple of times because life got busy that's fine. It's my blog. I don't get paid for it. I get a lot out of it and I enjoy it and that's what's important. I'm writing and really nothing else matters.

Except it's not really fine because as much as I'm working on being realistic and not beating myself up it's not an easy thing to do.  More often than I'd like I'm beating myself up still.  And I find myself frustrated at yet another thing to add to my failure list.  Even when it's not, actually, a failure.

I wish I could end this entry with some form of magical tip on how to cope with this and what to do to stop it. Life doesn't work like that and I can't. But I know from talking to other people that so many of them feel like this too and so I wanted to share this to at least we know we aren't alone.