I can’t be someone I’m not

The older I get, the more I find myself observing the weather.

March has flown by. The birds chirp outside my window in the morning. The ants have made an appearance again. It snowed in March, then melted in the rain. The resorts are already closing. It’s light when I bike to work and light again when I bike home. There’s more time to do things. I feel energy bubbling. I pull out my phone to film. My plants seem happy. Tourist released a new album and it makes me want to dance!

One day you look outside and see tulips. Suddenly, a page turns. 

I noticed a year or two ago that I was in a new chapter. It felt gradual, then all at once. Dreams I’d had for so long no longer felt like mine. What had once felt exciting, felt heavy. If my 20s were focused on hyperindependence, travel, and unraveling my anxiety, my 30s have been focused on stability, interconnectedness, and new dreams. It was time to shelve some things and try on some other things. A more long term approach.

The other day I found myself brushing off my C1 Grammatik book, curious. For all of my 20s I dreamed of passing German C1. It hovered over me like a rain cloud–maybe this year, maybe this year–until one year I left it off my annual goals and decided it didn’t have a place in my life anymore. I didn’t touch it for four years.  

But sometimes, a German phrase pops into my mind before the English one, and I feel a hunger to speak. So I dabble and dip my toe in ab und zu. I try to speak German and describe what I’m doing, but the words form slowly, frustration bubbling: “I know I used to know this word.” 

Dict.cc ekes out Strava as the most used app on my phone. It feels fun to use my brain again in this way, thirsty for a challenge when it feels like everyone is running full steam to offload mental tasks into AI. My brain has always been quick to memorize things. I love to make up stories with random words. I listen to podcasts and read the news and am surprised by how much I understand. The news depresses me. Things I was always confused by in class suddenly make sense? Perhaps I just needed a few years away for the language to seep in and gel in the background. 

My voice feels different in German. Is it really me? I was always so afraid to speak when I lived there, hesitant, worried about making mistakes. It takes a lot of courage to continue speaking German when the other person tries to switch to (flawless) English. 

Trying to write blogs again feels similar, like trying to recover my voice after being sick. Rambly, raspy, disjointed. Unsure how to do this, unsure if I have anything pointed to say. I attempt to film some videos and put them on YouTube, and I struggle with the same thing. It is difficult to make a point. I question why I try at all. 

And yet. Here I am! 

Here is my belief: Little bits add up. I plod on. 

Things fell off in February. Food poisoning, then a cold. I lost my routine, I skipped things. I stopped doing my skincare routine for like a month. I avoided going to the grocery store. I rested instead of biking. I didn’t cook. I felt sad about my hair.

But now I’ve done my skincare routine three nights in a row. I went back to the gym. And I made chili last night. If I’ve practiced anything over the last ten years, it’s the ability to come back to something, again and again, without feeling like I’m starting over. 

Creating routines, drinking water, and sticking with something will always be great achievements I’m proud of, but to someone else, that might just be Tuesday.

The truth is, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to understand that some things are really difficult for me, and I’ve come to accept that this is not a moral failing or a “problem” to solve. People used to tell me I should speak louder, and now sometimes I wonder: Why don’t you just listen better?

I’m not the person with the loudest voice in the room, and I never will be. I’m not a high-energy person and never will be. Perhaps I will never speak German perfectly or pass C1. Perhaps I’ll never really understand why I wanted to learn a foreign language, or write such personal things on a blog, or make videos. I just am who I am.

My conversation with myself in my 30s has become: How can I work with my energy and not against it? How can I work with my voice and not against it? Doing it at the “wrong” time or the “wrong” way is better than not at all. Little bits add up.

I started writing a song about this a few years back, although I never really finished it, I still hear the words in my head. 

You can put me in a blue suit, 

put me in a board room, 

I’ll play it cool, it’s chill, I act so nonchalant, 

but the truth is I can’t be someone I’m not, 

no I can’t be someone I’m not

I started reading the book Laziness Does Not Exist last year (and did not finish it – the irony lol), but the parts I did read helped me have more compassion for myself. The premise is that much of what our society deems as “being lazy,” is actually not laziness but a sign that you’ve overextended yourself, you need extra support in some areas, you don’t have the resources you need, you’re being asked to do too much, or simply the stress and squeeze of capitalism’s demand for productivity means that rest, slowness, or non-monetary activities are seen as laziness, personal failure, or not valuable uses of our time. Life is hard and maybe it’s not a personal, moral failure if you struggle to keep up. This has helped me reframe expectations for myself. I don’t have to do life the way other people do. 

I’ve made huge strides in my consistency when I took away the expectation to do everything all at once. By that I mean, doing laundry, grocery shopping, and cleaning all on the same day is really too much for me. I’d like to be someone who can do that, but I’m simply not. I try not to stack my days like that anymore. I can do it, but it wipes me out. Then I don’t clean or do anything for a week. Then things pile up and I get overwhelmed. So I’ve learned it’s better for me to just do little bits at a time. Little bits add up. 

The other important thing I’ve discovered is letting myself stop before things are done–critical for energy management and preventing burnout. Chores and life admin were constantly hanging over me. You know, it’s never done. You make food, but then you have to eat the next meal. You do your laundry but then there are dirty clothes again. You wash the dishes and there are dishes again. I realized if I didn’t create energetic boundaries with these things, they were going to dominate my life (and mental energy). It’s important to let yourself shut off from them, to tell yourself, “I have done enough for the day.” 

“That’s it!” Like a timer ringing in my head. The rest waits for tomorrow. Yes, sometimes that means stopping even though there’s still some dishes left in the sink, or the trash sits for an extra day, but it means I don’t burn out. I come back the next day. Things actually pile up less for me. I feel less overwhelmed and more consistent day by day. I let myself be done before things are “done.” Because the truth is, chores are never done! Part of this inspiration came from Cal Newport–creating an end of day ritual. I believe he’ll literally say outloud to himself at the end of his workday “Powering down,” or something like that, before he leaves his desk. It helps him signal to himself that work is done. And so I signal to myself that it is okay to rest, to not always be feeling guilty about not doing the next “correct” thing.

I think about Alysa Liu and how young girls must feel seeing someone radiating such joy saying, “I wanted to do this on my terms.” She quit and came back. A lesson I wish I had learned earlier–one of the most powerful things you can do! Every time I have broken off and changed my approach to do things on my terms, with my intuition, things have worked out for the better.

Sometimes you need a break in order to understand where your terms start and others end, what brings you joy and what does not.

And one day you wake up, and the tulips are staring you in the face and you tell them, I am who I am!