nnxcx.xyz

You can understand something completely and yet not use it when the moment comes. You can know exactly what you should do and then do the opposite. And sometimes you make your best move while you are in your worst shape. I have stopped trying to make that make sense. That is just how it goes.

I learned it the hard way. I was a perfectionist about everything. Every thought had to be right, every action had to make sense, every decision had to be the best one. I would think, rethink, question, correct myself, then question the correction.

It cost me. I pushed people away. Stress that never switched off. A low hum of worry that never went quiet. And no satisfaction in anything I did well.

There is no finish line, only the running.

The problem with a perfectionist mind is that there is no finish line. Every action could have been better. Every decision could have gone another way. Every mistake could have been avoided. The mind always has one more reason why what you did was not enough, and it never reaches a moment where it says: alright, this is it, we are done. So you chase something that does not exist, and every normal moment becomes proof that you have not found it.

That instinct is at work. I keep trying to do things well, keep going back over things more than I should, keep failing and taking it apart afterwards. But I let the rest of life be.

Sometimes I do things well. Sometimes badly. Sometimes not at all. Sometimes full on. That is not a flaw in the process. That is the only process there is.

What I find strange now is what happens after something happens.

Nothing happened to me. It all happened in me.

Something happens in the real world for a few minutes. A bad conversation, a mistake, an embarrassing moment, a wrong decision. It is over in the world and not in my head. Whatever comes to life in my head also dies in my head, and it never leaves, because it only ever existed there. It lives for hours. It keeps me a prisoner for days. It tortures me for weeks. I replay it. I rewrite what I should have said. I imagine what the other person is thinking. I build other versions of what could have happened, and then I react to those as if none of it had ended.

So what am I actually fixing? The thing that happened, or the machine that keeps making thoughts about it?

A thought shows up and I believe it. A feeling shows up and I treat it as proof. An idea about what someone meant shows up and I assume it is true. Something gets made in there and I get to work on the thing that was made.

Meanwhile, how much do I actually know about the machine itself? I barely know what it is, how it works, what moves it, what helps it and what hurts it, what I keep feeding it. How much sleep has it had, what has it been eating, what has it been reading, what happened to it ten years ago, what happened to it ten minutes ago? I have never once worked on its health.

The output is not the problem.

And yet I trust almost everything it produces, as if it knows something I do not. If it says I failed, I believe I failed. If it says nobody understands me, I believe that too. If it says something is wrong, I go looking for what is wrong. If it says I should have done it differently, I go back into the past and punish myself for not knowing something I only learned later. I believe it because it came from me, and it came from me, so it must be true. That is a circle, and I have lived in it for years.

I say it to myself more often than not: this is just something my machine made. Sometimes I say it while the feeling is going, and the feeling runs on anyway. It might be useful, or wrong, or me being tired. It might be fear. It might be something from years ago, or something I saw this morning. I do not know which. But not knowing is the point. The moment I stop treating every output as the truth, there is a little space between me and it. That space is the only place I have ever found any freedom.

For years I tried to force the machine to produce the outputs I wanted. Do not think this. Do not feel that. Do not react like that. Be calm. Be rational. Say the right thing. Make the right call. Do not make mistakes. None of it ever worked, and the trying was just another job I gave myself.

Nobody looks after the machine.

Maybe it was never built to work that way. Thoughts will sometimes make no sense. Feelings will sometimes be bigger than the thing that caused them. Fear will show up for no reason. I will react badly, and make decisions I regret, and be at my worst. None of that means the machine is broken. It means it is a human machine.

So the goal is not perfect output. The goal is looking after the machine. Let it rest. Feed it better things. Give it space. Learn what moves it. Let it make mistakes and get better.

Everyone outside the loop looks like an enemy.

Otherwise a loop starts. The machine makes something bad, I believe it, the belief creates a feeling, the feeling changes the machine, the machine makes something worse, and I believe that one too. The loop feeds itself, and it ruins everything around me, including me. And then somebody comes close and tries to stop it, and they get hurt for trying. From inside the loop, they are the problem. They are not listening. They do not get it. They do not see what I see. Most of the time they are not fighting me. They are fighting the loop. They are looking at the machine while I am staring at the output.

What are we even fixing?

None of this means I should stop thinking, or stop caring, or turn into someone who feels nothing. I do not want that. I want to feel things and not be run by them.

The point is smaller than it sounds. A thought is a thought. A feeling is a feeling. Something comes out of the machine, and it is information. It is one thing it made on one day, out of whatever it had that day. It is not the truth, and it was never trying to be.

Life will keep happening. I will keep making mistakes, keep having bad days, keep being my worst self sometimes. And sometimes, on my worst day, I make my best move. I have stopped needing that to make sense.

So when the output comes, and it will, the question is not what it says about me. The question is what the machine needs right now. Sleep. Food. Some quiet. Someone to talk to. An hour alone. To be told it is not in trouble.

That is all it ever needed. Not another plan, not another fix. Someone to look after it instead of someone arguing with it.

So maybe instead of controlling every output, I maintain the machine. It needed maintaining all along. That is the closest thing to peace I have found.