It's 3:51 AM. I woke up at 6 PM yesterday, which means I've been awake for the part of the day where nothing counts and nothing is open and no one is watching. Nine hours of telling myself I'd practice later. I'll practice later. I'll practice later. I said it so many times it stopped being a plan and turned into a sound I make.
Nothing was due. That's the part that gets me. This wasn't a test. There was no deadline breathing on my neck, no one grading me. I just wanted to slide through at a mediocre level, the way I slide through everything, and the strange thing about mediocrity is that it doesn't even require effort to maintain. It maintains itself. You just don't show up and it happens to you.
I keep thinking about the game. Which sounds stupid. It's Fortnite, it's a game. But it's the clearest mirror I have, so I'm going to use it.
When I load in, I'm sharp. Genuinely sharp, knife-sharp, reading everything. And then it drains. One hour, maybe two, and I can feel the edge going dull in real time. I start losing. Not to anything complicated. I lose to simple mistakes, the same patterns I've lost to a hundred times, the ones I could name out loud if you asked me. And I know, while it's happening, that I'm not actually trying. That's what makes me want to put my fist through something. Not the losing. The knowing I'm not trying and doing it anyway.
So I lose a few, and I quit.
And then I look at the people who are actually good, and I don't understand them. Not their aim. Their attention. How does a person hold focus on one thing for that long? How is that a thing a human being can do? I hit a ceiling years ago and I've just been standing under it since, telling myself it's the ceiling's fault.
It's not really about the game. I know that. It's about the job I'm already falling behind in. The other job, the one with the money, that I've decided I'm not going to get before I've even reached for it. The life where I'm the underdog forever, which is a flattering word for someone who never entered.
Here's the thing I finally figured out tonight, and I don't like it:
I don't avoid trying because I'm lazy. I avoid trying because if I try, I find out.
If I never push, I never learn the ceiling is mine. I get to keep the maybe. Maybe if I'd focused, I would've won that game. Maybe if I applied myself, I'd have the job. Maybe I'm capable and just haven't turned it on yet. As long as I don't test it, the maybe stays intact, and I can't be disappointed by a version of myself I never met.
That's not laziness. That's insurance.
And it works, which is the worst part. It genuinely protects me. I've built a whole life out of not finding out, and it's comfortable in the way that a room with no windows is comfortable. Nothing gets in. Nothing gets out either.
I don't have the ending to this. I'm not going to pretend I woke up at 3:51 AM and solved myself. I know what the right thing is. I've always known what the right thing is, that was never the problem. Knowing was never the problem.
I just don't want to find out I need to be better.
Because that would mean starting.
Fuck.