Kind Of Impressive

Over the years I've learnt to be wary of those times when I feel pleased with myself over something. It's so easy to fall into the trap of complacency and misread the world, and I'm very prone to that. I loved being praised as a child and recognise ways in which that wasn't at all healthy, and ways in which aspects of that child persist in me.

I try now to reserve any sense of self-regard for those occasions when I've managed to keep going on something at a time when I was thoroughly miserable and somehow got through in the end. My first year of teaching is the best example. I sucked big-time at the job but survived through sheer bloody-mindedness, and I'm sort of impressed with that younger version of myself despite all his many flaws.

And this weekend, I felt incredibly lethargic and out of it, yet managed to get two cleaning jobs done that I really, really, really didn't want to bother with at all. Not in the slightest. It's a bit sad, I suppose, that it takes something so utterly mundane to impress me about myself, but that's the way of it.