7daycycle

[7daycycle]

Stages of Grief

I start with the title first. I don't know where this is going, but that's my title.

I recently got some terrible bad news. It broke me. It was a month of work and then it was nothing. It might've been the hardest I've worked on something over a period of time. If you've read my previous blog post, you'll know that working on something, with grit it something I have trouble with. So, to have been able to put my foot down and see what I can, do work on something and for it then be taken from me was devasting. The news however, wasn't terrible. It only felt terrible. That's how grief works. I think. I'm pretty privileged because I don't think I've had to deal with a lot. Not a lot of loss, but I have had to deal with failure. This is ultimately a story of failure, not a story of loss. So, let's go through the stages. I'm going to google them now. After that google search, here's what the stages of grief are; Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. I didn't read the actual blogpost(?) but maybe it says something about the order not being in the same for everyone, or even being the same every time. Here's how they went for me.

Depression : Let me tell you, I was broken. I had recontextualized my whole life the hours following the news. I broke my life into five year chapters, each culminating around a failure. I didn't see my adventure as time spent growing, but instead as a stumbling buffoon. I took away any reason I had to be loved, stripped myself of all my success my wins and simply understood myself as an inevitable loser. It was a tough place to be.

Bargaining : I think I've seen this explained as reasoning before, but I tried to reason why I failed. Remember though, I wasn't coming from a good place. I had already decided that I was a loser who can only stumble. If you know anything about bargaining, you don't don't bargain from a position of weakness. You need to negotiate from a winning position, I wasn't. So I as a tried to rationalize and understand what had happened, I did it as an idiot. A broken, sad idiot. I was filled with frustration, doubt and fear mostly. I couldn't see past the cloud of sorrow that I breathed into my vision.

Anger : I'm still angry, but it's given me clarity. Good sleep, a loving support system and time gave me the distance I needed and I was able to get angry. I have a very positive relationship with Anger. I'm not afraid of it, not when I see angry people, or even upset at myself if I'm ever angry. I think it comes from a quote I attribute to Malcolm X, which might not be his, but I've already googled once today and I won't be googling again. In my head canon, Malcolm X said something like the the following -

"I want our people to get Angry, but because when people get Angry, they start to do something" He was talking bout being Angry instead of being Sad when some journo accused him of rousing people up and getting them Angry. So, whenever I see someone Angry, I wonder why, and should they be. For me, I was now Angry. Angry about how things had gone, and ultimately, now factors outside of my control decided that my work wasn't valuable. My grit, my time, my attention, wasn't worthwhile. I can't control that, but the value of my work exists independently of how people define it. So they made a mistake, but I created value. So what happens with that Anger? Denial : I deny the guilt I felt early. it's done. I take that Anger and now it defines how I look back at that chapter of my life. It's not a chapter of my failing, but a chapter of me working. My chapter of grit and grind. A chapter where my people took care of me. I absolve myself of the loss. Acceptance : I can't absolve myself of the failure though. It'd be stupid for me look back at what happened and see that I didn't fail. I did, at the end of the day, the games are over and scoreboard has been recorded. I don't live in a vacuum and there are other forces. This started as a journey of me questioning my work, my value, my self but I should be questioning how did I work, how am I valued and not me. Sure, ultimately my work was a judgement of me, and it's how I was valued but that's how other people judge me. I can't let that me how I judge myself. I had to accept that I wasn't perfect, but I don't need to be, I need to be better. I am. I will be.

[7daycycle]

Broken Promises

I made a promise to myself when I started this blog that I'd commit to and build in public. That sentence, the one you read before you started this one, is a lot about me. Maybe that's why it failed, but it's easy to do things for other people. People reciprocate, good people do it well, bad people do it poorly, but that's social lubricant. A promise to yourself, you need to be your own lubricant. I'm not a good lubricant. I stop myself, I'm afraid I stop other people too. That being said my analogy falls short because it implies that lubricant is universal. The stuff you need to get yourself rolling is the same thing that gets other people going. It's not. There's a sound case to be made these two classes of lubricant are mutually exclusive. Something along the lines of social, generous people provide social lubricant, and selfish, egotistical people are fantastic self lubricants. A pretty shit metaphor, but that being said, there's something about getting other people going but I can't seem get myself going. Maybe it's about slow, small, consistent work. It's a failing I've had my entire life. It's great getting by on fleeting brilliance, and to be honest I think people generally have a high opinion of it. People love stories and stories are a string of moments. You see what I'm getting at? Being able to think of something clever on the spot, remembering something useful, seeing something shrouded is great for a moment. It's helpful for creating tension at the beginning of the story, great for resolving tension at the height of the story, and people love those stories. So they'll love a person who can deliver a moment of genius. So, grappling with this cheap brilliance is a bit of work. You have this about you that'll get you through. You've convinced those around you, friends and family, that you're useful, maybe you are. What you know that others don't, is that you're a shell. You've not done the work, the slow, hard consistent work. All you've got is your flashy brilliance and it's been great but you know that you've been letting yourself down. All the times you've made promises to yourself that you'll get something across the line. The times you've failed at work that needed focus. The times you've quit. You've quit so much. I realize know that I'm talking about you, but you should remember that from the beginning I'm talking about me.

[7daycycle]

Arsenal Lost to Citeh

So Arsenal lost to Man City. To be honest, I didn't realize City would finish above us if we lost the game. They were only three points behind us and now they're ahead on goal difference and it's a bit shit. A lot of Arsenal fans had become bullish on us winning the league and that confidence will be tested now.

From a meta perspective, Arsenal still have a game in hand, are in a relatively poor run and are kind halfway through the season. City have caught up and so now Arsenal's quality and resolve will finally be tested. There's a position that this is the best chance Arsenal will ever have to win the league. I've only heard about this from people who didn't think this team had the minerals to even make top four. Arsenal only have to play City twice and you don't win the league by beating the team who comes second. You win the league by beating everybody. Leicester lost to Arsenal twice, they won the league. Whatever qualities that Arsenal had to win the league 3 games ago, largely still exist. If Arsenal played the game they played yesterday there's a good chance we'd have had better results over the past few games. Not much solace, and the reality is we didn't pick up many points over those games and lost this one. The game itself was very exciting. I hate watching Arsenal lose, but I love seeing them play good teams. We made good opportunities to score, both from transition and against their set defense. An offense which seemed out of ideas for the past game showed some promise. Could be that city would be more front footed than a Sean Dyche Everton and that gave us some more space. Smarter people would know. Individual decisions and lack of quality cost the team goals. Maybe lacking a bit of confidence and fortitude but the ideas were good. Arsenal's defense and build out, however, was tested and definitely lacking. If the defense limited their mistakes, read not commit them, the offense could've played with more confidence. A Tomiyasu back pass, some shit Gabriel passes led straight to goals. Other made mistakes too and we were lucky not to have been punished. It's pretty frustrating to know that we lost the game ourselves. When you play a team that's better than you, you want them to beat you. That's the minimum. At least I can be happy that Guardiola didn't beat us. His players did. When it comes to the final bit, I know the quality of these Arsenal players is something that will increase. Individually, collectively, this team has more levels to get to. It's very exciting and I'm here for it.