Trust

I’m not sure I’ve ever trusted myself. Not as an adult, at least. I’ve accrued mountains of historical evidence that I’m not the kind of person who can reliably follow through on commitments and stay in the game. Eventually, despite the overwhelming force I’ve used against myself to, once and for all, break free of my bullshit, I will slip back into my patterns of self-destruction. But of course, being at war with the bullshit is the problem. A life of war necessitates ever more war, a downward spiral into increasing levels of brutality. Hard to stay committed to anything when the cost of doing so is an ugly conflagration within.

This year I’ve been trying to make friends with my bullshit. Because lord knows the old way wasn’t working. And of course, lurking beneath said bullshit is a scared little boy, terrified of being abandoned, convinced through and through that something is wrong with him, and that no matter how hard he tries, performs, controls, it’ll never be enough to be loved by others, let alone himself. I’m so sorry, little buddy.

My friend Raj once told me that he admires how steadfast I am towards my dreams, and how I stay on the path no matter what. I was taken aback when he said that, because I’ve never perceived myself that way. In my mind, the opposite is true. But when Raj looks at me, he sees someone who’s been independently making their own way through the world for 13 years, who always followed the commands of his heart as best he could, and when life knocked him down, again and again, and when financial insecurity lurked around every corner, he kept coming back, starting fresh, and putting one foot in front of the other. I like the way Raj sees me. It’s not instinctive for me, but when I slow down and breathe, and take honest stock of the past decade, I can see a bit of what Raj sees for myself. The road has been rocky, to say the least. But I’m still on it, more committed than ever to doing my work.

A few weeks before the Writing Challenge started, I built myself a little dashboard in Notion to keep track of my commitments, my visions, and the small steps I take each day to build towards a more beautiful life. My buddy Jared and I refer to this daily grind as stacking bricks, and he’s lovingly started calling me Bobby Bricks from time to time. Over the past few months, this has become a bit of an alter ego for me, this character who shows up humbly and persistently every day to stack a few more bricks, with attention and care, towards something he can’t quite see yet. He’s not working towards some set blueprint of his own design, but is instead trusting that God will continue to guide his hand, and that the resulting cathedral will be more grand and singular than anything his ego could conjure. Day by day, brick by brick, Bobby keeps building.

Anyhow, this Notion dashboard, which is lovingly titled The Ballad of Bobby Bricks, is having a fairly profound effect on my sense of self-trust and self-efficacy. Because now I have evidence accruing before my very eyes that I can, in fact, follow through on what I say matters to me. Some commitments are tiny, like choosing not to eat pizza after my delivery shift for one night, or for a string of weekend shifts. Some are larger, like writing and shipping something every single day, which I’ve done every day since the start of the year. I’ve made commitments to find a cheaper, more humble place to live, and I’m now in the process of moving. I’ve made a commitment to meditate every day, and just before sitting down to write this morning, I sat out on my balcony in the chilly early morning air and attuned to my body and breath for ten minutes. It felt pretty wonderful.

It’s beautiful to see a growing body of evidence, these dense little bricks of commitment, stacking before my very eyes. Given where I was emotionally just a few months ago, in the depths of despair and wishing my life were over, this stack of bricks feels like a miracle. So too do the days where I feel overwhelmed by anxiety and slip back into patterns of recreational numbing, only for the voices in my head to be gentler and kinder. There’s somehow compassion in my system now, instead of reflexive shame. And that’s helped me slow the downward spirals that have long consumed me and choose to step back on the path the next day, or even the next hour. Where once a slip up was a sign of failure, now it’s a sign of being human. A miracle.

There are still many more commitments to come. Scarier ones. It’s been lovely writing every day and keeping it contained first to a private blog no one will ever read, and now to the Writing Challenge community. But wider visibility beckons, and I am genuinely freaking out. Writing for a handful of people feels so different in my body than writing for 5500. But I’m starting to learn to let go of the results of the work through the past two months. What matters is that I show up and do it. That I stack a few bricks each day, however imperfect, and do the same the next day. And the next. And at this point, I feel capable of that. I trust myself. Onwards.