Why I obsess over know[ing] thyself

For the past 30 years, I was putting enormous amounts of effort to become someone else. I was too this. Too that. Too impatient. Too tolerant. Too emotional. ​Too serious. Too much initiative. Too little initiative.

I don't think anyone really wanted me to be literally someone else instead, but if you ask the 6-year old me being told that I was too short-tempered, the 9-year old me being told that I had to say something funny for appeasement purposes, the 13-year old me being told that I wasn't attractive because I didn't look happy enough, the 18-year old me being told that I shouldn't pursue a career in fine arts because I won't make money, the 26-year old me being told that "I had too much initiative" in my first full-time job, and the 30-year old me being told that "I just had to toughen up" in my second job (where it got psychologically unsafe to me to the point where I wished I never woke up in the morning when I went to bed, every night), over time we all heard the message loud and clear: they didn't want me there - they wanted someone who had characteristics that were simply not mine.

The aspirations I wrote back in 2018 felt true to me at the time, but looking back, I was trying to become my mentor (who actually built and fixed organizations, and I still think it is a great thing to do - just, not actually my cup of tea). The following statement is much more aligned with myself: I live to make the world a better place by giving the gift of self-reliance and well-being to others, by transferring functional knowledge through various media: developing instruction manuals, making improvements in graphic/web/UI design, and creating illustrations/diagrams/storyboards.

It took me 30 years to finally accept myself for who I am, and to decide to become a better version of myself instead of becoming someone else. So if this rings a bell for you ("I've been bending myself into a pretzel for far too long") or if you feel like you're in the dark trying to figure out who you are and what you want to do, it is worth spending the time now to get to know yourself better - your interests, preferences, passions, values, what you are willing to spend your life on.