Although not in any nar­ra­tive Herbert Morrison sense.

I had a dif­fer­ent entry half-writ­ten, but the dark­ness was debil­i­tat­ing. All I want­ed was a sec­ond sun; it felt like a case of SAD because the night was mak­ing me both anx­ious and uneasy. It’s noth­ing close to a pan­ic attack, but it was bad enough that I felt com­pelled to called Pat to help talk me out of it. He’s one of the only peo­ple I can count on 24/7, and just talk­ing to him for an hour helps me fig­ure out more about the world than three months of writ­ing here. I know my eye­s’ll feel like lead weights tomor­row for stay­ing up this late, but I need to get this entry down before I lose it. Hopefully, know­ing that it’s Friday will be enough to keep me alive through the day.

Self-improve­ment has dri­ven me for most of my life, a nev­er-end­ing goal that’s guid­ed me through my actions and beliefs. This is usu­al­ly based on com­par­i­son, since improve­ment is always rel­a­tive. Those who can accom­plish what I have dif­fi­cul­ty doing always have my respect, and give me some­thing to work towards.

Before I com­plain about get­ting six hours of sleep the pre­vi­ous night, I think of Navy SEALs who get four hours total dur­ing Hell Week, a five day under­wa­ter train­ing exer­cise dur­ing the first phase of the BUD/S. That’s when I real­ize that I should be able to sur­vive an extra hour of work with­out much dif­fi­cul­ty. When I feel like throw­ing my hands in the air after work­ing on an ad for four hours, blind­ed by the depth with which I’ve star­ing at the mate­r­i­al, I think of my boss who can work through count­less inter­rup­tions and dis­trac­tions. That’s when I real­ize that I should keep at my work, because per­se­ver­ance will almost always yield results.

If I can sur­vive it, any­thing can make me stronger.

But as I dis­cov­ered tonight, every­one has their weak­ness­es. Even Pat. He’s always seemed as sol­id as a rock, com­plete­ly unfal­ter­ing, but he admit­ted that there are also moments of weak­ness, how­ev­er brief. Times when he can’t get any work done because some­thing is both­er­ing him that he can’t let go. Times when he just does­n’t feel like going out or social­iz­ing. To find this out about Pat, was to dis­cov­er that the most cheer­ful, friend­ly, con­fi­dent, and men­tal­ly strong per­son I know has his off days. Even the hard­est work­ing, most pro­duc­tive per­son I know occa­sion­al­ly falls vic­tim to a case of the Mondays or the 9–5 grind. There must be some sem­blance of bal­ance, in how much to push one­self, and how much to accept.

To strive for per­fec­tion is fine, but to lose sleep over imper­fec­tion is fool­ish.

Being a dom­i­nant, respon­si­ble for anoth­er per­son, means that one should be sol­id as often as pos­si­ble, but even this extreme case should allow for some lee­way. This does­n’t mean that I won’t try as hard in my attempt at dom­i­nance, but know­ing this cer­tain­ly makes the approach, and even self-improve­ment in gen­er­al, much eas­i­er.

Some may say that it’s a fal­la­cy to com­pare one­self to oth­er peo­ple. After all, every­one has dif­fer­ent abil­i­ties and tol­er­ance lev­els, and it’s no fault to born bet­ter at some things than oth­ers.

But even then, every­body’s human.