I’m sitting here in Rome. I’ve been fortunate enough to be in Rome for a few weeks now, and I’ll likely stay for a few weeks longer. I have the career I want, the lifestyle I want, I’m quite content with my fitness, but I’m still feeling sad.
I feign for a way out of the sadness. For a longtime now I’ve found scapegoats for my sadness. Either I wasn’t getting the attention I wanted from a specific woman, or I was being held back by a woman, or I was going to a soul sucking job, I wasn’t making enough money, I wasn’t in good enough shape, I was in the wrong city, etc. I always had some half-baked scapegoat I could blame my sadness on and fight against. Figuring out an affliction and launching a plan to fight against it was a huge part of my life, and that helped me overcome some of my darkest times.
Now I am starting to run out of reasons. I work for myself, I make the kind of money I’ve wanted to make for a long time, my work schedule is reasonable, I’m not in a bad relationship, I can literally go wherever I want…. I look around and I realize that I’m still feeling sad, and I’m running out of things to blame it on.
So maybe it’s just me. Maybe it’s time that I just sit and deal with it. Learn from it, and see if I can mitigate my sadness in the future. For a long time I’ve been finding things to blame my sadness on. While those actions have brought me to where I am today, I can no longer say my sadness is due to anything other than my own internal bullshit.
I’ll always have times where I’m sad. I’ve had an amazing few months in South Africa and now my happiness is ebbing a bit. So maybe this is just a natural balancing of my emotions. I’m not sure why I’m feeling bad, but I know changing cities, finding a new love interest, or building a new career is not going to fix it.