Today did not start well, and for the first time since going public with my plan to move into an RV, I'm having doubts as to its feasibility. I'm going to let you all in on a little secret, I'm not the most confident of people. That plays, and plays strongly, against what I believe is my very strong and confident nature. A bear, unsure about his claws.
As I've written about before, part of the purpose of this blog is to go public with my plan, and chronicle it's progress, not for PR or press or attention, but because without it, I could back out. I could give up. Well today is the first, of many I'm sure, time that the thought of abandoning this ludicrous idea has crossed my mind. Sad to say, I'm prone to such thoughts of fuck it I give up.
I'm not giving up. I can't. In this blog so far, I don't know that I've impressed yet how important doing this is to me. So to make amends for that oversight, I want to tell you a bit about me that you may not have already known.
I've suffered from depression for the entirety of my adult life. My first real bout with self loathing came when I was 13, and I'm ashamed to admit that I almost lost. The struggle to keep my emotions in check is a daily one, and one I've gotten better at winning over the last few years. So far this sounds pretty positive, self-awareness and survival and progress, but it's not what it seems.
Some of that progress has been concealment. If I'm feeling bad, for years my go to coping method was to not feel at all, to bury everything in me and ignore it. When that no longer worked, I adopted the Fake It Till You Make It attitude. Eventually the bad feelings do go away, but I'm still just ignoring them.
Then I started to make real change. I began allowing myself to feel, to experience these rampant emotions, and in feeling them, I began to properly deal with them, but even that was soured, because I was doing it for someone else. 17 years of self loathing and not caring about myself had left me unable to make any self improvements for me, so I made them for someone else. That person and I aren't together anymore, and that leaves me with just me, and my square one.
So that brings me to now, to this. I am tired of not being okay. I'm tired of sacrificing my time and my energy to simple maintenance of a lifestyle, a lifestyle I'm not sure I ever fit in to anyway. Those of you who know me, know that I'm a pretty odd fellow, and yet I've spent my entire life striving towards other people's goals, even if I have gone about obtaining it in an unconventional way. The nice house, the big back yard, the 2 car garage and 2.3 dogs (I don't want kids).
The decision to transition into something different, like living in an RV, came on the heels of another decision, a revelation. I don't want, I've never really wanted, a normal life. I'm not happy in a normal life, and for once, and maybe for the first time in years, I'm making a decision to be happier, for me. I'm tired of trying to be a weird person in a normal world, so it's time to move into a weirder world, where the rules are mine, and only what matters, and only what makes me better, has any place.
-Z
Don't forget to donate to the crowdfunding campaign, and tell your friends whether you can donate or not.
Then I started to make real change. I began allowing myself to feel, to experience these rampant emotions, and in feeling them, I began to properly deal with them, but even that was soured, because I was doing it for someone else. 17 years of self loathing and not caring about myself had left me unable to make any self improvements for me, so I made them for someone else. That person and I aren't together anymore, and that leaves me with just me, and my square one.
So that brings me to now, to this. I am tired of not being okay. I'm tired of sacrificing my time and my energy to simple maintenance of a lifestyle, a lifestyle I'm not sure I ever fit in to anyway. Those of you who know me, know that I'm a pretty odd fellow, and yet I've spent my entire life striving towards other people's goals, even if I have gone about obtaining it in an unconventional way. The nice house, the big back yard, the 2 car garage and 2.3 dogs (I don't want kids).
The decision to transition into something different, like living in an RV, came on the heels of another decision, a revelation. I don't want, I've never really wanted, a normal life. I'm not happy in a normal life, and for once, and maybe for the first time in years, I'm making a decision to be happier, for me. I'm tired of trying to be a weird person in a normal world, so it's time to move into a weirder world, where the rules are mine, and only what matters, and only what makes me better, has any place.
-Z
Don't forget to donate to the crowdfunding campaign, and tell your friends whether you can donate or not.
There is no shame in admitting to having almost lost to depression. It's a brutal opponent, and that admission is an important part of the process of driving it back. I'm glad you've reached the point where you feel like you can make the life for yourself that you need in order to be happy. Be the person you want to be, and in doing so, be well.
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