On Appreciating Small Wins

I felt I deserved a crown the first time I cooked beans and it wasn’t salty.

Hey!

I actually mean ‘hey’.

Can you tell the difference?

I remember when I would turn to the last pages of newspapers to spot differences between two similar images, do crossword puzzles or find the values of a variable in the math quiz section. For someone like me, I would say those were fun times(I’m not suggesting I’m smart by the way 😭). Whenever one of my sisters discovered that I beat her to it, she was always furious😂 but I was the newspaper collector, and most times I would wait until our father was done reading so I’d snatch them up and settle into my leisure hour properly.

…I’m not telling stories about newspapers today.

Let me not confuse you. I’m not exactly excited. I’m not exactly sad either.

January is only up to a hundred days for people earning income. After spending your salary plus savings to do Detty December, January will definitely feel slow to you. For people that are jobless (who is calling my name?), January is just like every other month. It doesn’t fly, it doesn’t crawl. It’s just...there. January of 2023 is coming to an end and I can’t help but ask myself what I have achieved this year. Is it too early? Maybe. But the presshur is getting wesser and wesser! Thinking about how old I’ll be this year is giving me pre-traumatic stress disorder even though I know that as a baby girl, my age is timeless.

Someone—possibly a motivational speaker, once said that the reason why we always beat ourselves up so much for not accomplishing certain tasks or reaching a set goal might be because we don’t appreciate small wins. We don’t really pay attention to the little steps, the little efforts. That our eyes are only fixed on the bigger picture. I am appreciating my small wins oh and I don’t really blame myself a lot these days. I mean, I felt I deserved a crown when I cooked beans that were not salty for the first time.

You know that feeling you get after washing clothes you’ve piled up for a month? When you misplace something in your room and you end up cleaning the whole place just to find it? Let’s not forget this crucial one: When you make pap or custard successfully. You feel like there’s nothing you can’t do on God’s green earth.

 But do you think rich people have this mentality? Will they bother with washing clothes or making pap themselves? Is it only people like us that feel this way? 🤧

Watching movies feels like a sin because why would I sit through a two-hour film when I can use that time to do nothing? Nothing, because if I don’t watch the movie, I probably won’t do anything at the time anyway so who am I deceiving? 😂 I watched six episodes of Alchemy of Souls this week—the first season because I’m always late to the party. As someone who is a lover of k-drama, I’m disappointed in myself. I watched it without feeling like I was wasting my time. Hopefully, I finish the season over the weekend. There’s only so much one can do and the fact that I wake up every day is already a huge feat. I cannot kill myself.

The pressure that is building up is not from a place of toxic societal influence or self-negation. It’s from a good place—from a place of self-improvement because I count my achievements that might seem little or insignificant to others. It doesn’t mean I do not aim high. To overthink the future is to disregard the present because why are you running? Where are you running to? You should learn to enjoy the journey even when you are not sure of the destination sometimes. It is actually what you do today that matters—even if you end up only watching movies 😏

I don’t mean to come off all philosophical but I can’t help it today. I’m going to make custard, let’s hope I do it right so I can count it among my wins this week.

P.S: I should take time management courses.