sometimes, missing out on your goals is what you need.

No one wants to hear this. I certainly don't - I have high expectations for myself, and in the moments when I fall short? It's like I'm proving right some sort of inner failing I always secretly thought I might have had. It's probably one of my bigger insecurities, the whole 'what if I'm not good enough' classic that most people have at some point in their lives.

But, sometimes there's a reason you fall short. For me, it was just a reminder that healing and self-improvement can't just happen overnight. I've been really good over the last couple of months. Like - deliriously good. Self-motivated, disciplined, the girlboss I had always wanted to be. You know the one that has her life and career on track and has a clear goal at the end of the line? But being her is difficult. Being the best version of myself, for myself, is really difficult. It's not as easy as waking up and deciding to be her, as much as the influencers tell you.

I think the one thing they say that rings true that really set me on my path was the constant procrastination. In the future, I'll be her. In the future. Tomorrow, next year. Five years. It was always some form of the future. But the thing is, the future doesn't actually exist. The future is some figment of time that we've socially constructed to keep track of our progress. The future only becomes a reality once it becomes the present. And if my present self was always promising ambition to some future version of me? It's wishes in the air. My present will one day take over the future they thought would be perfect, and then it's the same. Because it's still the present. There was a constant procrastination, and it was only when I realised that any future I had was only ever going to be lived by me, as my present self, that I couldn't promise anything to the future anymore. It was a bit of an epiphany that I'd never understood before.

But, at the same time, becoming someone better takes time. You can't just become someone new. You can only take the steps that who you are now will allow. Your habits aren't just going to change, just like that. Who you want to be takes time, and active steps to become. I thought my epiphany could change everything. It doesn't. It allows you to actually work towards yourself, but it's not some kind of life-changing sequence that changes you to a huge degree. Humans aren't built like that.

So, when I fell back into a depressive spell, I was shocked. This new version of me - she didn't get halted by the whims of her own brain. Her brain is something she has control over. But alas, not only does that not really exist for anyone, it most certainly wasn't who I was at that point. I'm not totally healed, and I'm not sure that's even possible. I think I'll always be impacted by the occasional spell. And this one was caricatured by a bloody soup, of all things.

I desperately wanted to make this soup. And every single day, every single meal, I would mentally prepare myself to make it. And fail. After five days of this cycle, the chicken was thrown in the freezer. It felt like I'd disappointed myself. I'd taken steps back. I could make a soup last week - why couldn't I just do it. I was so entranced in this cycle that I missed a competition deadline that I was really looking forward to entering. Yeah, there's next year. But it could've been done this year.

I was pretty disappointed. But, a friend of mine always reframes their failures to become successes, to switch it up so that the outcome that disappoints them ends up leading to something even better than they'd originally wanted. And I think it's good advice, to make sure we never really regret things. I'm buying additional ingredients for the soup, now. When I make it, it'll taste better. And I'll be able to eat it while watching a new show I've juts picked up. And the competition? I'm going to save the money and enter a bigger one. And aim higher. Maybe this was just a sign to wait for the next opportunity. Even if it doesn't work, there's the next one, and I'll be ready for that, too.

Sometimes, we need to feel failure to remind ourselves to set goals, and do even better. It's to remind us of our shortcomings so that we can work on them, it's to remind us that even as the most perfect versions of ourselves, we'll still have shortcomings. And that's okay. We can just continue to try and get better. My theory is that the only reason we cannot achieve perfection is because humans don't have the lifespans for it. But that just makes the beauty of self-improvement even lovelier. All we can do is continuously aim for better for ourselves, and that's it. For me, the low moments remind me of this. Plus, how are we supposed to realise how good the good is without the bad? Success doesn't feel so brilliant without the understanding of what it was like to fail. All of this is just essential to being human.

< 78% baked >