Turning Szns

Do things get worse before they get better?

I recently went through a huge slump at work. I was recently trained to handle more complexity in my job function and found myself struggling at a job I had done with some ease for a long time. But then, this past week, it was as if all of the pieces came together and something just clicked. It truly seemed like things had to get worse and I had to fuck up at least three times before I could get the hang of things. 

I learned how to snowboard this past year. The last time I went on a three day stint, I remember the first day going okay, the second day going to dogshit, with me falling on my ass and developing a large bruise (what I think to this day was a hip contusion) before things finally clicked on the last day and I was able to ride smoother. 

Lately, I feel that my writing has been through it. This past fall, I wrote medical school applications and, to be quite frank, used AI for a good portion. I feel terrible about it now—not because of ethics. I used these stupid robots to assist/write my statements for me because I didn’t believe in myself or my words. I felt lost and unconfident, which showed in my writing (or lack thereof). 

But here I am, putting my words out on the internet for anyone – well, anyone with the address to my humble blog – to see. Words that used to feel stuck in my head, and feelings that I wasn’t able to parse through, can suddenly be rendered into text. The idea of writing has been overcomplicated in my mind for so long, but clarity has begun to dawn. Communicating in this way requires ideas, form, and logical statements on a page leading to reasonable conclusions. 

So, the lesson of this post is, if you’re going through a dark time, as cheesy as it is, just know that you will come out of it on the other side better than how you came in. The only important thing is to keep persisting. Because we live in a world where people give up on their relationships, careers, and themselves all too easily. Be the one who stuck it out.