It’s not the colleagues you fear disappointing, or their hitched disappointments that would cut at you like a thousand paper cuts — each with a bit of citrus diplomatically applied.
It’s not the haters — your mortal enemies, nemeses since high school, sworn with the charge to undermine, obstruct, and interfere with your intent.
The haters all suck, there’s no doubt, with every cursed breath they draw in. And the disappointed all blow, it is certain, with every putrid breath they spit out.
I’m not here today to apologize for them.
Worse than worst
Because you — dear reader, you are much, much worse. And so am I. Like, ugh.
Why?
Unlike all of them, you exist.
We shall forgive our imaginary enemies and the illusory disappointed for their chimerical grievances. Because, you know, they’re not fucking real!
We are real. Actually, we exist in the real world, which provides us with things like proof, evidence, corroboration, facts, friends, mentors, coaches, and therapists. I
And yet, we fill our own filthy, fetid minds with toxic ideas about ourselves— our limitations, our failings, deficiencies, and shortcomings.
We invent narratives to support this nonsense. For example: about past events which we endlessly replaying to concoct fouls, slights, and transgressions despite no detectable evidence of harm.
And then what do we do? We build our self-image mostly from this instead of what we learn from looking in the mirror, from the results we’ve gotten from our hard work, or from what we hear from the people who love us.
Jerks!
We have been worried since last Tuesday that the thing we said while trying to be nice to someone was taken the wrong way. There’s no evidence that it was, it’s just a thing to worry about it.
Meanwhile, it’s Summer! And probably one of our last, because the fucking planet is burning!
We are obsessed with these invented beliefs about how we are falling short or disappointing people. I call these anti-fantasies.
Welcome to my community of people who are obsessed with invented limiting beliefs about themselves. We’ll call it the Anti-fantifa!
Before we get started, any feedback on the name?