Emotional time travel

I sometimes find myself stealing achievements from later. I celebrate when I'm on the track to win but before I've won. And I get into debt because of it. Its like I borrowed the happiness from the moment I would win and to pay it back I have to win. It puts a lot of unnecessary weight and stress on me. And even though I know how it ends the fact that it has to end that way makes reaching it more critical. It opens way for paranoia and imposter syndrome. When or if, the moment of winning arrives, I feel nothing. I've already spent the happiness on the way there. And I couldn't even feel it fully because it was diluted by the fear that I might not deserve it in the end.

I find myself rehearsing how to tell a story about an event thats happening, while its happening. Its as if I'm hyperaware that the moment will pass and the story will be the only thing left so I have to perfect the story. I polish the story, embelish it, make sure I spin it in a way that I want it to unfold. But since I make the story before the task/event is done, it becomes outdated by the second. And its like I create a blueprint of how I want the event to go and when it doesn't, it ruins my mood, my motivation, my willingness to do it and I become a passive unsatisfied participant in an action I once gladly partook in.

It also applies to fantasizing about plans, ideas, dreams. I create a step by step simple and clear plan for something I want to do and I imagine myself doing it. And it feels good. Dammit does it feel good. And somehow, someway I delude myself into thinking thats how it will be. That the path will be that clear and simple. Just one step after the other. But when I start doing the task and I find out that it, in fact, is not that easy, it completely shatters me. Its like I reached the top in my head before I even went to the foot of the mountain. And its as if I mentally lifted myself to the level of the summit and assumed all it would take was a simple one dimensional walk. So when in reality I'm faced with every added dimention, every ridge and divot, I realized the map I had in my hand was comoletely false and misleading. But who could I blame? I drew it myself.

#thoughtdump

Engineer 🤝 Marketer
Vibe Startup