Comparisons

I used to think comparison was something you could just decide to stop doing. Make a choice, shift your focus, move on. Well, it is easier said than done.

Comparison sneaks in wearing different clothes. It's not always envy. Sometimes it's disguised as inspiration. Sometimes it's disguised as research. You're not jealous, you're just looking. You're not measuring yourself, you're just curious.

But somewhere between the looking and the curiosity, you've quietly started to feel like you're behind. Behind on a race nobody officially entered you in, with a finish line nobody can actually see.

The dangerous part is how reasonable it all feels in the moment. You see someone your age who has built something impressive and you think - good for them, and also, why not me? You see someone doing the exact thing you want to do and instead of feeling motivated, you feel a strange heaviness you can't quite name.

That's comparison. Dressed up as self-awareness.

The only way I've found out of it is to get so absorbed in your own thing that you genuinely forget to look. Not willpower. Not discipline. Just absorption. When you're deep enough in your own work, your own life, your own becoming - other people's timelines stop feeling like a measure of yours.

It takes time to get there. But that's the only direction worth moving in.