Suddenly, a taste of freedom

So a few days back, I mentioned that after getting rid of my subconscious idealized assumptions of what a relationship “should” be like, I stopped being so desperate to be in a relationship.

And some time before that, I mentioned that I’d decided to put the whole “saving the world” thing on hold for a few years and focus on taking care of myself first.

As a result, I’ve suddenly found myself having *no* pressing goals that would direct my life. No stress about needing to do something big-impact. No constant loneliness and thinking about how to best impress people.

Just a sudden freedom to do basically anything.

I’m still in the process of disassembling various mental habits that were focused on making me more single-mindedly focused on the twin goals of saving the world and getting into a relationship. But starting to suspect that even more things were defined by those goals than I suspected.

For instance, my self-esteem has usually been pretty bad, probably because I was judging myself and my worth pretty much entirely by how well I did at those two goals. And I didn’t feel like I was doing particularly well at either.

Now I can just… Live a day at a time and not sweat it.

It’s going to take a while to get used to this.

Originally published at Kaj Sotala. You can comment here or there.