Y'know, plateaus are boring, but they're awfully nice. Easy. Relaxing. Comforting. I'm used to being able to make decisions without thinking about them, either because I'm being thoughtless without knowing it, or because the things I am deciding are not hard.
If people rise to the level of their incompetence (a better way of phrasing it: people rise until they're somewhere they can learn something, I try to be incompetence-intolerant enough to drag the wall of what I can do a few centimeters behind the reality of what I'm trying to do. Do things before you realize they can't be done. That kind of thing.
During those moments, I have to think a lot. Decisions take a long time, even simple ones, because you're breaking down assumptions and habits in your world so you can build them up again. (It took me 45 minutes to decide which sandwich I wanted for dinner, and 15 minutes to eat it.) Writing feels muddled because I can't think straight. My brain is swarming. I can't sit still, clutter accumulates everywhere, and I hyperfocus too long on the wrong things because I'm trying to avoid the clutter that I'm spuriously generating.
And weirdly enough, this is how I learn and how I make my biggest mental shifts. When I can catch myself and step into control long enough to step back from the hurricane, and then step back into it in a way that lets me function because of it rather than despite it, the storm transforms from something that pummels me into a force I can control to do things... and make the same decisions easily, without thinking, and without being thoughtless.
It's tough, and a non-perfect process, and I backslide sometimes. And right now i'm being tossed around by one of those hurricanes. I keep dragging myself out, closing my eyes, and trying to think. I can't always. Think, I mean. Not properly. (Don't worry; this is normal. I have to relearn how to think. Happens every so often.)
The past 6 days or so especially, I've felt the weight of a million little things each day, a lot of tiny unimportant things that add up to ask: "Do you want to be the person that you are, or do you want to be a better person than you can be?" I look and curse the fact I have that choice, because if I take the easy out I've no excuse and it's my fault for choosing not to be the bigger person. It would be easier not to know; it always is.
I drop things and I make mistakes and mess things up, let people down, and Fail A Lot. And then the failing sloughs away the parts of me that shouldn't be there, and I build the parts that should be there up from the fragments of what I can learn from my mistakes, and so I Learn Things, and it's good, and I am happy doing this - and I'm becoming the human being I should be (who I should be is always a step ahead of who I am; sometimes the steps are larger and more numerous than other times).
It's just that... why is this so hard? GAH. The struggle is what makes it wonderful, though. There is something worth learning towards and fighting for. I don't know what it is or what to call it ("masochism?") but it's - I mean, the... gah, I can't speak English tonight. I get the notion that I am exactly where I need to be.
One thing I can't forget during the times of non-plateau: I am alive. And this alone is plenty to be thankful for.
I don't know what I'm trying to say here, or where I'm headed with this - ah, I know. It's bedtime. I'm headed to sleep. Yes. That. I'm going to go to bed.
Ahhhhhhhh. May you live in interesting times, indeed.