I started writing a blog post the other day but it sounded like every other post I’d written over the past six months or so. It was again about recovering from burn-out and trying to figure out my work-life balance.

My first reaction was a mix of embarrassment and disappointment. Is my life really so boring? Am I so lacking in creativity that I can’t think of anything else? Am I now wandering aimlessly in the barren desert of my writing life, circling around one swiftly drying oasis of inspiration? Frustrated by the repetition, I deleted the whole thing.

But once I got over my habit of self-shaming, I asked myself if it was really so bad. If my thoughts keep coming back to these themes, it means that these are important to my life right now. What’s there to be upset or disappointed about?

It makes sense that I’m going in these circles: I’m in a period of learning and discovering who I am. I won’t say “rediscovering” because I’m not convinced I knew who I was before. I often talk publicly about how I stumbled into activism, civil society work and political writing, and how lucky I was that the stars aligned for me. A harsher way of putting this is that I wasn’t just adaptable but also malleable; I stumbled into things and went with the flow because I didn’t have a firm enough grasp of who I was, or what I stood for, to have any other ideas. If just one thing had gone differently—if I’d remained in New Zealand after my undergraduate degree, or if my first job had been with a different, more commercial company—I could have turned into a completely different person, with different politics and values, leading a completely different life. I didn’t actively choose the path I ended up taking; instead, it was a series of (mostly) fortunate events that, like waves, miraculously washed me on to shores of plenty.

I’ve observed people—friends, acquaintances, public figures, even fictional characters in novels or dramas—who’ve made difficult decisions about their lives and marvelled at their ability to say no to things or let go of relationships that weren’t progressing in accordance with their own standards or needs. I’ve been a people-pleaser for as long as I can remember. I’ve been so worried about rejection and so self-critical (while over-compensating for internal shame with outward bravado or defensiveness) that I’ve, on many occasions, resigned myself to conditions I should never have accepted, stuck around when I should have walked away, or tried to pander or appease or avoid conflict when I should have been more honest. I get FOMO all the time because I always want to be part of the in-group. When I see anyone draw firm boundaries for themselves, I’m awed by their strength while deeply ashamed or regretful of my own spinelessness.

When I was a teenager, I made a wish: I want to be comfortable and confident in my own skin. I’m tired of feeling sorry or guilty all the time. I’ve spent a lot of time haunted by thoughts of ‘should’. (I mean, look at what I wrote in the previous paragraph.) I should work harder. I should be more thoughtful. I should be better than this. I should be studying right now. I should be working. I should be stronger and smarter. I should be more caring. I should know what to say, what to do. I should I should I should. Every ‘should’ pressed down on me until it felt like there were lots of little ball bearings weighing on my heart, rolling around in my chest and leaving me destabilised. It made me feel bad, like I was perennially letting someone down, even though I often couldn’t articulate who, exactly, I had failed, or how I’d done it.

I’ve tried to work towards my teenage wish over the years. There have been multiple occasions, when I was feeling good or proud of some achievement, when I thought I’d achieved it. But I’ve also come to realise that being happy with where I am in life is not the same as being happy with who I am. A temporary meeting of expectations set by the ‘should’ in my head does not equate to making peace with myself; pleasing my jailer does not make me free.

Maybe it’s because our tenth wedding anniversary is coming up this year, but I’ve been thinking about the early days of my marriage recently. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I see so much absurdity and foolishness. As a young wife at 26 years of age, I was fixated on—and therefore stressed out by—so many things that I’d been convinced were crucial for a successful marriage, but really weren’t important at all. I look back and wonder, Why the fuck was I so obsessed with doing laundry together and getting the ironing done every weekend? Why did I keep tabs on so many trivial things? I’d picked up the idea from somewhere that these were things married couples should do, or things that a wife should be on top of. I’d get so worked up and feel resentful that Calum didn’t seem to take these things as seriously as I did. This sometimes caused strife when there was no need for any, but what was worse was that this obsession with how I thought things ‘should be’ distracted me from paying attention to and being present for the things that were and actually did matter.

This is just one area of my life that I’m reflecting on these days; there are many more. I’m trying not to repeat the mistakes of previous episodes of introspection (or attempted introspection)—this is not meant to be an exercise of quickly ‘fixing’ myself and moving on. That’s never worked. Instead, I want to take the time to explore and consider and understand. Or, if I can’t understand it, to at least practice approaching things with curiosity and grace rather than judgement and shame.

About a month ago, I was diagnosed with the misleadingly named attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). When I told someone about it recently, his response was, “Shouldn’t you have been told this about 20 years ago?” Ideally, yes. Even so, it’d taken me a long time—and help from a friend—to actually book an appointment to see a psychiatrist. I’d wondered about ADHD for years, and a number of people I knew had brought it up with me, but I still hesitated and second-guessed. I kept worrying that I’d glommed on to the idea of having ADHD so I could have an excuse for laziness and a lack of self-discipline, and put off getting assessed because I was afraid this would actually turn out to be the case, and that I’d once again end up guilty and ashamed.

I don’t think diagnosis is for everyone—you have to figure out what’s good for you. For me, diagnosis mattered. The shift has been subtle yet impactful. It’s not about the meds—I’m still trying to figure out how that works for me—and to be honest I wasn’t told anything that I didn’t already suspect or know, but there was something about getting diagnosed that was like turning a dimmer switch up in my head. It’s allowed me to think about myself (and others!) differently, and therefore see differently too.

I’m not so quick to jump to blame now. When I’m having trouble focusing, when I jump from task to task and my brain is firing in all directions at once, I no longer default to the assumption that I am undisciplined or incompetent. I now know there’s a reason for this that’s not about personal failure. I know I have options: Do I want to try taking meds, or is it okay that I’m like this today? If there isn’t that much work that urgently needs to get done, maybe it’s okay to just go with the flow and do what I can instead of trying to fight my own brain. This hasn’t cured me of my enslavement to the productivity gods, and I do still spend a lot of my day thinking I should be working more/harder, but it’s noticeably lightened the load.

Another thing I’ve realised: the feeling I’d previously identified as guilt and taken as proof that I’d been, if not bad, at the very least not good, is actually anxiety. This is a helpful epiphany to have because guilt implies cause and effect, while anxiety can just be irrational. Recognising that I have unhelpful intrusive thoughts, then learning how to deal with my inner troll, is much better than assuming that I’ve failed at something all the damn time.

Thinking about all this makes me sad. It makes me feel like I’ve wasted so much time—and that I still keep wasting so much time—on things that aren’t important, or that have actually hurt me and people around me. I should have figured this out earlier. I shouldn’t have spent so long fixated on the wrong things while neglecting what was really going on around me. I should have been more present for who and what truly matters. I should… wow, look at me fucking go again. 🫠🫠🫠

But I feel hope, too—I’m capable of clarity and therefore capable of change.

I’ve been reading Gabor Maté’s book on drug addiction (the plan is to review it for Altering States at some point), and while I’m not a drug user myself, there’s a lot in it that has resonance and relevance to my own life too. Towards the end of the book he writes about compassionate curiosity: how to explore our own behaviours and habits and feelings with genuine curiosity rather than frustrated judgement. He quotes Pema Chödrön, a Buddhist nun:

“In cultivating loving-kindness, we learn first to be honest, loving and compassionate towards ourselves… Rather than nurturing self-denigration, we begin to cultivate a clear-seeing kindness.”

I’ve never really been one to get really into the loving-kindness stuff, because, if I’m being really honest, “loving-kindness” as a term just sounds very woo-woo to me. But the idea of a “clear-seeing kindness” appeals. It’s what I want for myself and for the people I love.

I don’t when I will achieve Teenage Kirsten’s dream. I know it’s not just going to happen by itself—if that was the case, it should have sorted itself out already. I might end up spending the rest of my life seeking that comfort in my own skin. But somehow that doesn’t scare me now; I’m actually looking forward to what I’ll find on this inner expedition of self-discovery.