Full disclosure: I’ve hardly made time to sit still this week, so if my stream of consciousness is all over place, feel free to appreciate this as a surrealist portrait of my mind-state.

Some pretty big news, I was recently admitted to my first graduate school programs! WHOOP WHOOP! I feign excitement because I know that’s what I should feel, but I have to admit that my excitement has been shrouded by a number of other conflicting feelings. I know this isn’t a novel sensation, particularly amongst my peers, but I would like to acknowledge this internal contradiction, so, I’ll set a boundary here. I’m going to make a concerted to celebrate this accomplishment and celebrate the fruit of all the work I’ve put in over the past 4 years.

I got into graduate school! HOORAY!

I don’t want to care as much as I do that I don’t feel all that excited. That I may very well live in a state of perpetual pause, inspecting every significant event that takes place in my life until it loses all value. But I do. I do care. It’s like that feeling where you repeat a word so many times to the point where it loses its meaning. In science, we call that semantic satiation. It’s as though my mind is the goofball who keeps on repeating the word because he likes the way it sounds and my emotions are words, being ever-so-quickly being sapped of their innate power.

As I was saying, I find that I often do this with events in my life, as though it’s the path to some greater self-knowledge or that it will make me emotionally impenetrable. This has not, in fact, proved to be the case. I pride myself on comprehensive self-awareness, I protect it as though it’s some conduit to higher intellect and exaltation. And in some ways, it has been! I say humbly. However, it never feels this way. Does that make any sense? It’s come to exist as a form of self-imposed anxiety, a completely superfluous hyperfixation. One that has, like many of my other startlingly maladaptive practices, numbed sensations that should not be unfamiliar to me.

So, how do we (I) fix this? I uh… I don’t really know. Perhaps it’s just another important component of our humanity? Like I said, surrealist mind-state here!

You would think I would understand my inner workings well enough to think myself out of this hole I’ve done splendidly in thinking myself into. But I don’t. Perhaps therein lies the problem, at least for me. Perhaps the solution to the absence of sensation isn’t more pragmatism. I think I’m going to be sick.

This is my encouragement to you: Make sure to intentionally celebrate your wins. When you set goals, and stick to them, appreciate that for the accomplishment that it is! I know for a fact that the dopamine provided within success isn’t satisfaction enough to vindicate all the effort it takes to meet the standards we set for ourselves. So, vindicate yourself! I apologize for the abundance of exclamation, apparently, I’m very passionate about this.

As I pen this, I’m brainstorming ways to celebrate myself that feel appropriate. I realize this is an exercise that is new to me. Maybe I’ll take myself to the movies. Yeah, that’s it. I’ll take myself to the movies. Long live da movies!

Happy celebrating y’all!