this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2024
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Self Improvement
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At the end of May, I decided I wanted to start going for daily walks. It's something I've tried to do many times before, but I would always give up after about a week.
I have not missed a single day since then. Rain or shine, depressed as hell, or 2AM...there's not been a day that I went to bed without going on a ~30 minute walk. I don't think it's made some incredible improvement in my life or anything--fitness-wise, I really ought to be doing some high-intensity exercise as well because my cardio is still terrible--but it means I can always point to at least one good thing that I've done to take care of myself every single day. It's also evidence I can use to challenge the negative self-perception that I never stick to my goals. Small, but something I can build off of! And finally, as someone who has a tendency to be a shut-in, it's a way of reminding myself that, hey, I may feel like a worthless piece of shit a lot of the time, but I am part of this world and I deserve to live alongside everyone else.
As for new goals: I've finally started to make my first foray into contributing actual code to an open source project. I've been making pretty good progress, and I need to make one final push before I submit my pull request for review. I think these are my main stumbling blocks, in order of seriousness:
I actually already dealt with #1 recently...partially because the desire to avoid #3 was a sufficient motivator to figure a difficult part out myself, although to give myself credit I made progress after setting myself a deadline after having not worked on it for weeks.
I also don't think #2 is too bad. Realistically, as someone making their first contribution no one is going to expect me to get everything right, and as long as I put in an honest effort to follow the contribution guidelines I feel like I can convince myself of that fact rather than listen to cognitive distortions.
#3, though...that's a doozy. I've saved the most difficult part of my code for last, and there's a good chance I simply won't be able to figure it out without asking for help. I hate asking for help more than almost anything in life. Pretty funny considering I strongly believe that everyone deserves to be able to live a life of basic dignity and get whatever help they need to do well, but I always make an exception for myself so that I can engage in some self-flagellation. But the reality of working on any large project, especially as a greenhorn, is that you will have to ask for help at some point and it's completely expected as part of the onboarding process. But...but...but I should be able to figure it out myself!
In the end, I guess it's purely about ego. If I ask for help, that means I couldn't do it myself, and that means I'm weak. But we've only made it this far as a species (for better or for worse) because we were able to work together, so that's a pretty stupid way to think about things. Hopefully as I make my first contribution and continue to work on this project I'll begin accumulating evidence that asking for help is okay and even good, actually, because by asking for help those with experience can share their knowledge with me and make me able to contribute even better in the future. And finally, to remember that there's little I enjoy more than helping other people, so it stands to reason that many others would be thrilled to help someone discover more about their passion project.
Good post
I struggle with the same stumbling blocks in a slightly different order but it sounds like you're making good progress. Going for walks is a really helpful habit too imo, even if it's not the most intense exercise, setting the time aside and sticking to it as a habit really helps me center myself mentally and unwind a bit.