My first book being published is right around the corner. My. First. Book. Published. Something that I created with my own two hands is going to be officially bound together and put out there for the world to see. Never in my life did I ever imagine publishing anything this way, let alone my poetry writing.
But you wanna know what’s sad?
As I held the first proof copy of my book, the first thought was, “Wow! I’m actually holding this in my hand right now!” And the instant next thought was,
“Man. This isn’t enough.”
Why that second thought popped into my head is beyond me. I know, I want, I need to feel happy, excited, jovial, to the moon, about this, but an itty bitty voice in my head pokes me and says,
“You’re still not good enough, Siri.”
Last week I was cleaning out my laptop when I came across a file named “ALL RESUME EXPERIENCE.” To my surprise, it hasn’t been updated since 2013 (yikes, that’s FIVE years ago). So, today, after working on transcription projects, I had a bit of free time for myself, so I decided to update it. It took a few hours, but I’m happy that it’s organized and reformatted nicely. As I was working and filling in gaps, I read some of my past experiences on there—past jobs, volunteer work, extra curricular activities, etc.—and had actually forgotten some of them. I even thought, “Wow! I forgot I did that. That’s pretty cool.”
But can you guess what the next thought was?
“Man, I wish I did more. This doesn’t feel like I’ve done enough.”
This has been an inner battle for a majority of my life. I can see that I have accomplished some great things in my life, but for some reason, they don’t resonate as true accomplishments to me. Something in my mind is not registering that I should be proud of myself, that I have done something worthwhile. I honestly thought this published book would help me love myself, but it’s become another ordinary thing to me, which is awful because I’ve put my blood, sweat and tears into it.
I took the night off from my Twitch streaming to take it easy and relax, but I ended up deep in my feels. After dinner I came up to my room, turned on the Final Fantasy VII soundtrack and started writing poetry. I’ll share a snippet that’s relevant to this post, aptly titled “I’m Not Doing Enough.”
Getting over this mind game with myself is a hella work in progress. Every day I try to pat myself on the back for all the little wins and fortunate things that happen. No matter how small, it’s good to recognize and acknowledge those wins.
By the way, for anyone who reads this, that’s a sprouting idea for a future book I have in mind. OOH, EXCLUSIVE!!!!!
xoxo,
Siri
SIRI 