Know Thyself - Me Being Me

Looking back over past posts that I have written for this blog - as I often do when I need to focus my mind on one new thing to write about - I found a post from way back with this title,  "Know Thyself".  

I wrote that I had found the ultimate "get yourself moving and write" site or at least thought I had. The idea was to take part in that year's NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) the idea of which was to begin writing on November 1st with a goal to write a 175- page, 50,000 word novel by midnight on November 30th.  NanoWriMo

I declared that this seemed "simple", and then immediately decided that it was not so. Having started with good intentions that morning and being sure that at least a few hundred words would be written that day, despite having "other" things to do, my plan went awry and I castigated myself that I ought to have "known myself better". I then described my scenario that day - the site itself was running very slow and I couldn't upload even the title  of my 'novel', I needed to write a blog for that day first and check on how others were progressing with the task, offering supportive comments and the like. Clearly these supposed tasks of mine were procrastination techniques (which I have written about a number of times over the years since this blog's inception) and I had little intention of making any headway with my novel. I had omitted to note that I could write perfectly well without having any connection with the NaNoWriMo site itself. I excused myself, in 2010, by saying that I would begin the next day. But it was the title I'd given the post which caught my eye while browsing today. My memory doesn't usually allow me to remember something from this morning, let alone thirteen years ago, so I was curious as to whether I thought I knew myself, and if I really did, back then. 

There are thousands or perhaps millions of quotations about 'self' from over the ages, by famous and not so famous people. Here are just a few :

"Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves."  Henry David Thoreau

"Know thyself was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, 'Be thyself' shall be written." Oscar Wilde

"Be clear about exactly what it is that you need to learn and exactly what you need to do to learn it. Being clear kills fear. Make it thy business to know thyself, which is the most difficult lesson in the world". Miguel de Cervantes

"There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain if improving, and that's your own self". Aldous Huxley

"Just when I think I have learned the easy to live, life changes". Hugh Prather

And perhaps even more appropriate, also from Prather - "If the desire to write is not accompanied by actual writing, then the desire must be not to write".

By not writing what I had hoped or intended to that day, or any other day before and since, did I not 'know' myself at that particular time ? Or, did I know myself enough to believe that even though I hadn't achieved that day's  supposed 'goal', I could do it (or not) another day and nothing and no one would be any the worse ? 

Right now, I think it's the second suggestion. Today, and probably that earlier day, I know myself. The anxieties I have in my life are from the inner disputes between what I should be and what I am; what I should  feel and what I do feel and, as Prather succinctly puts it ...                                          

 "... it seems to begin whenever I smuggle into my mind an expectation about how I or others should be and the conflict between my desire to control the world and the understanding that I can't. It is the recognition that I may not reach the rung on the opinion ladder I have just set for myself ".

 So today, and for at least the rest of this week, no 'procrastination'. No 'I should ...' this, that or the other. No expectations of myself or anyone else, no goals, nothing 'unachieved'. Just me being me without any repercussions. I hope it lasts.