I Have No Fucking Idea What I'm Doing

Honestly, I'm sort of uncertain about what to do with this space. This was supposed to be my place to process things in a more long-form way than social media allows for - sort of in the way I used to do in my livejournal.

But (despite the fact that literally no one knows this page exists) I feel sort of constrained - like I have to hit a certain level of profundity, and thematic harmony, and wry humor, and also come up with a great short poignant title to use.

And those two things feel really in conflict for me - I want to be able to be vulnerable and honest and open, but also make it really entertaining and relatable and well-written. And that's ... not possible. It's just not.

I'm sort of trying to get over that thing where I try to always put on my best face, though. I'm trying to be more okay with that crawling discomfort I feel when I put myself out there and don't put in the previously-requisite effort to shine myself up or to add that self-deprecating overlay so that people know I know I'm not *that great*.

Which is pretty counter-intuitive to the part of my life where I'm trying to teach myself that I am actually pretty great, and I deserve great things.

I think Past Me would be bummed that it's this hard. I think Sixteen-Year-Old Sarah would be pretty damn disappointed that, even with almost two more decades' worth of life experience and almost one decade's worth of therapy under my belt, there are no easy answers. There's no process, no equation, no checklist. God, I hate that. I love checklists and I hate that life only fits into them in the most shallow, narrow ways.

I hope that means it's worthwhile, to work this hard and push against this and struggle. I try really hard to divorce myself from the idea that something doesn't count unless it's hard, because that steals a lot of joy from me, but in this case, maybe that will make me feel a little bit better.