"Don't turn yourself into a pretzel," said the pretzel

In numerous occasions, when I have conversations with people about figuring out careers ("what do I want to do?") and life in general, ​I encourage them to find environments that fit their working and lifestyle if they can afford to.

Recently, it dawned on me that I wasn't following my own advice.

I don't like seeing things that are imperfect. I hate leaving things unfinished. So I have a tendency to take more unto myself to fix those things. That quickly becomes the expectation and the norm. I was doing mental contortions of all sorts to fit into the mold of the perfect knowledge worker: someone who knows where everything is and how to fix anything; someone who can reliably get shit done.　But at what cost? I was not really myself anymore at that point. Instead, I was a pretzel. A burnt one.

In the next year my goal is to "un-pretzelify" myself and practice self care which I am well-known (by those who know me well) to be horribly neglectful at. So I'm hoping that some of my posts in 2019 will reflect that :)