comparison is the thief of joy
i get nervous about sharing my thoughts publicly.
i assume everyone reading this (and especially those who aren’t) are smarter than me and has already come to the conclusions that i just sorted out today, a long long time ago. i convince myself that people will read this and say… “uh… yeah duh nina, that’s obvious” and then they’ll realize i’m an imposter who’s been pretending to know things all along.
i still feel that way right now. i’m guess i’m just choosing not to care for long enough to write this, re-read it really quickly to check spelling, grammar, and congruency, while also trying not to read into what I said too too much and then quickly hitting “publish” before i let my mind overthink it enough to delete the whole thing because i’ve committed to this 100 days thing which means i’ll have to write something anyway so i might as well commit to this and then i contemplate how much garbage there is on the internet because of challenges like this and on and on and on it goes, all the while, the loading screen is committing my writing to digital ink, while i wonder why there’s no undo send button.
deep breath, that was a long sentence.
all that and then i begrudgingly think about doing this all again tomorrow…
anyway!
day 2, jun 18
comparison is the thief of joy
today is my last day in la before driving back to boulder. i wouldn’t refer to la as a city of excess but nonetheless, i’ve been feeling a little poor here (in santa monica to be specific). i feel like i’m lacking something when i’ve gone for bike rides up into the hills and pass by mcmansions with perfectly manicured lawns and large pearly gates and while passing a mclaren or an aston martin or someone referring to their fixed up, old school shelby cobra as their “sunday driver” on my way to get coffee. all of a sudden, my boulder day dreams of living in a van while driving through the national parks turns into day dreams of cool cars and fancy clothes and gorgeous houses and hard-to-get michelin star reservations and i’m left wondering, will i always want whatever everyone else around me has or will i commit to wanting what i want regardless of what’s around me?
there’s a lot to unpack here and i’ll do that on my own time probably, hopefully.. but i reflected on what it might take to stop this endless comparison and wanting and my gut said 3 things:
gratitude for what you have already
acknowledgement of what you’re capable of accomplishing
acceptance of what you’re willing to do to achieve those ends
ps - one of my favorite artists is doing her first archive sale on june 25. i love her work and i appreciate her personality (as far as i can tell from instagram).