If you, the reader, are anything like me, you’re insecure. You’ve got a lot of problems. You don’t know to act in social situations. You’re awkward. Life sucks more than it probably should. It may seem like I’m listing off all of my perceived flaws, and that’s because I totally am. Because this is a short little piece about self esteem.

Admittedly, the first words that pop into my head when I think of myself are awfully negative. There was this exercise in my first day of Creating Across Genres where we had to introduce ourselves by giving out a one word description. All that went through my head was some questionable stuff that everybody would assume was grounds for psychoanalysis. Which, to be perfectly honest, probably is.

The first article I wrote for the Odyssey was more or less about this. But I’m in a much different place than I was back then, so I think it deserves some retreading. I don’t really think of myself as much of a loser as I once did. I mean, it’s still there, somewhere. But the effect it has on me isn’t as large.

This is partially due to me managing expectations and not thinking I’m responsible for every little thing in everybody’s lives. Which, in hindsight, sounds really weird. But it’s how I felt for a majority of last year. And it’s exhausting, to put so much pressure on yourself to be 100% perfect 100% of the time. There’s no pride in it, nothing to be gained. It’s just a black hole of emotionless depth I put on myself.

Because I couldn’t fit my idea of perfect all of the time, I thought of myself as lesser. Inferior to some lofty standard that is humanly impossible to reach. I have no idea, really, why things changed. But here I am in any case. So self improvement can happen, I suppose, I just have no idea why.