Justified

5:46am A lot of energy goes into lamenting who I am not. I mourn the person I failed to become. I wonder about the paths I did not travel. I feel I have to prove I made right choices. That arriving here and now was the best outcome. I spend a lot of time in these posts trying to improve. Change my attitude, my approach. I believe if I achieve quantifiable results in tenure, money, census I will justified

The objective

Very few of us live in a black and white structured league with records and playoff systems and a shiny trophy at the end. We have only one quantifiable metric we can measure, money. The outcome most of seek for personal growth is to increase the amount of money we earn in a given time frame. You are trying to get you more income. Your goal is to make more than you made the year before. To keep moving up the scale and see how high you can get.
Making more money than the year before is the objective. You can measure it. One number is greater than the other.
From here forward that is the objective you are trying to reach. If you accept that, keep reading. If that does not sound like you there is no point to continue.
I am not saying growth and making more money are the only things in life that matter. But in the narrow confines of this work that is what we are talking about. I am not going to talk about much other stuff here.

Re Firing Energy

Giving up, giving in, accepting an outcome other than my objective is infuriatingly seductive.

The slightest tinge of resistance sends me into deep stagnation.

I fritter the day away with pity filled vignettes where I cast myself a wronged but valiant warrior.

Logically I can see the futility of this behavior but the emotions are unbelievably powerful.

The only way to save myself in that instance is to forcibly will myself to do at least one tiny minuscule simple task toward my objective in hopes of re firing my energy in the proper direction.

The battle to do even that is monumental and exhausting. I am ashamed to admit oftentimes I fail.