09/16/2026: Imperfect and Non-linear Correlations

The last fun things we had planned have come and gone, and now it’s time to get back to normal. But when I think about things going back to the way they’ve been recently, I’m suddenly not okay with that, not anymore. 

It’s hard to admit that you’ve lost a part of yourself when all you’ve been trying to do is improve. But if I stop to consider how bad things have been before, I can at least say that I haven’t fallen all the way back to where I started. That has to be proof enough that growth comes with pain, and fulfillment comes with setbacks.

The loss of direction I’ve been feeling now doesn’t feel like it did years ago; that’s all I know for certain. I’ve just lost touch with certain things that matter to me, and for some reason I’ve come up with every excuse in the book to not fight for them. 

All this time, I could have been getting up earlier to start my day right. I could have gotten that yoga mat out, or spent ten minutes in meditative mindfulness before I started my morning. I could have written before I went out to work, got tired, and decided not to write at all when I got home. But for some reason, I’ve just let a lot of things go that I wasn’t before. 

Even still, some things are better that weren’t before; I guess I’m in a weird phase of life. I think that’s definitely a testament to how growth isn’t necessarily linear, and it doesn't always have to be positive either. It sucks that it takes so much more work to be better than it does to just accept how things are, but it’s a fact of life that can either make or break us, and unfortunately for me, I’m closer to the breaking end. 

I feel grounded in some ways—the mental and emotional aren’t so bad overall—and untethered in others—the physical is super hard to pin down lately. I guess I thought that once I had a better hold on the non-physical things through diligent physical practices that my physical energy and can-do attitude would rise to meet the non-physical, but I think I’m learning for the first time in my life that these two things don’t always perfectly correlate.

I know it probably seems like I’m being hard on myself, but right now I just feel genuinely perplexed. The body and the mind are beautiful and powerful, but, most of all, they’re unpredictable at any given moment. They constantly lift us up and let us down, and we do our best to carry on anyway. And that’s what I hope to do today and for many days after. 

It’s time for more pain and less mild discomfort; it’s time for more gain and less crippling stagnancy.