What I Learnt From The First 6 Months of 2022
Quite a lot
A trip, a journey, or an extended experience forge much stronger friendships and bonds than the occasional coffee meetup or once-a-week football. Friendships forged on long treks, at university, or on school trips expose us to the personalities of others in many different lights as we also exhibit and show different parts of ourselves that would otherwise remain hidden in a single meeting.
Family will always be there for me. Friends may come and go. Relationships may thrive and flourish only to be extinguished as fast as they came. Remembering this, spending time with the people who brought me up, and invested so much time in me, is one of the best things I can do.
The overwhelming need to slow down, to stop taking so much in, to process, to get off those damn screens. The need to realise that the chronic lethargic cloudy feeling and headache is NOT normal nor healthy. To realise that one can relax without T.V, phones, listening to music.
Detoxing has fast impacts. Spending 4–5 hours without a phone, lying down on the sofa in the conservatory, talking with my parents outside in the sun or having dinner with my brother and mum as the sun sets. My mind feels so much clearer, so much healthier. And I hardly ever have this feeling — I am always trying to escape; my mind just about settling down before I suddenly start a new project, receive a new notification, start a new video. I think I should spend more time unplugged over the next 6 months.
Looking at what I have done versus what I know in my heart I want to do. I want to travel solo, go on camping trips or treks by myself. I want to read and write and be free from all external expectation. How much time do I set aside to just focus on this? Nil. Zero. Nada. I need to stop focusing so much on external signals of success.
During the past 6 months I have taken a very active role in learning as much as I can about the various injuries I have faced: chronic toe pain and swelling, bursitis, achilles tendinothopy, as well as inflammation and infection after a serious bike slip in wet conditions. Learning from videos, Ross Edgely’s incredible books on sports science and the body, I have learnt that my health is an absolute and utter priority. It is almost one with my mental health.
I have also learnt a lot about myself. Namely, I am definitely not perfect — I have just as many weaknesses as those around me. I can be very stubborn. I tend to project my stress and anger at the people I am around. I can get insecure around confident people who seem to have it all together. I can struggle with standing up for myself, with being open with friends. And whilst I feel I am getting better, I often feel the need to do, do, do, to prove my self-worth. I have learnt to avoid conflict, that I bottle up emotions over small issues that eventually results in outbursts not necessarily at the deserving person. And what is maturity but giving people what they deserve when they deserve it? Rather than shouting when someone leaves a plate in the wrong place on the counter.
Viewing things holistically rather than in isolation has allowed me to recognise when I am at great risk of burning out. Considering the many things I have done in a week, rather than just my feelings on a particular day allows me to better decide when to take a break and to slow things down. Previously, I would simply react to surface-level factors, such as my feelings on a particular day without ever addressing the root cause of the problem. If I even stopped to reflect on the events of that week or the past month, I would have realised that the amount I was doing was totally unsustainable. Thus, looking at the whole can be very useful.
There are many other things I learnt about friendships, relationships, travel, and studies, but that’s all for now.
