The other day I was hanging out with my friends for dinner. “How’s your project going?” they asked, I suddenly felt a squeeze around my lungs and my face was starting to get warm, I couldn’t breathe. “It’s going well” I coughed up. I blabbered on about the microservices I have built so far, timelines, and little details. I pulled through but I still felt insecure, I didn’t completely understand why. I love what I’m working on, it’s my best project work. So, why am I feeling so insecure?

I’ve noticed this feeling come up every so often, especially when people want to talk about my chungus life. “What school did you go to? How was your last internship? What do you do for work?” The school wasn’t the best, the internship didn’t go that well, my current job is whatever. Everything about my past hasn’t been up to my current expectations, and I’ve been very critical of it for a long time.

Funnily enough, I wrote about security the day before, what it felt like and how to achieve it, but I still was insecure despite it. In traffic, I started to dissect my own writing and apply it to my current insecurities. “Do I really understand myself? Do I really understand the world I live in? Where is that feeling of ease? How can I grasp it and deploy it?”

Thinking…

Chain of Thought #

Who really am I? Well, I’m a chungus, a chungus human. Why are other humans so proud of themselves when I can’t? What makes them so different from me that allows them to be proud? Nothing really. Well I really like my work, but at the same time I don’t? Why? My work is good, I try. I wouldn’t say it’s bad because it works, but it’s not perfect because I don’t fully understand what the fuck I’m doing. Am I not proud because I’m critical of myself? Probably, but other’s are critical of themselves too and they’re still proud. Do other people genuinely feel like this too? Well, probably. Then what is the secret sauce that I’m missing?

Okay, to recap, I’m human, I’m not perfect, but I did something that I like, and it itself isn’t perfect, but it’s still good. Woah. Maybe I wasn’t missing something, but rather I had something that gave me a passive debuff. Yes!

It’s the idea of perfection.

Do I live in a perfect world? If I lived in a perfect world, how would that feel like, what would it look like? Well my current ideation of perfection implies that I live in a perfect world right now, so how and what is it like? Looking around, everything about society kinda sucks, everyone is trying their best to live, but the world is still functioning and there are some neat things that exist.

My favorite musicians have a couple songs that I don’t like and that’s okay, because damn I love the rest of their discography. I find some artist’s work to be beautiful, but they themselves still see mistakes and regrets in their work. This person is really neat too! Sometimes. At least they like listening to me talk, enjoy my company, and they’re also really pretty.

Why do I live in a world of perfection when I clearly don’t? Perhaps years of thinking this way entrapped me. Sigh.

How do I get out? Surely I have the key somewhere, maybe I just forgot where I put it? What feeling do I have to chase and grasp once I’m out?

Imperfection.

It’s the art you lose and find yourself in, the penis music you jam to, and the person you deeply love and care about. If imperfection makes me feel goosebumps, makes my heart flutter, and generally makes me feel, what’s so bad about it? Nothing really, it’s actually epic.

That’s a lot of feelings to chase. Yeah, that’s kinda the whole point, everything that’s neat is inherently imperfect.

Damn, imperfection is kinda cool. I wanna be imperfect too. Oh wait, I already am.