Hey Crickets. Welcome to day number forty-six of Operation Achieve Anything. Today’s going to be a bit of a rough one but not because I take issue with either of the assignments that I’m here to share. No, today’s going to be rough because the Achieve Anything… book has me tapping into more depressing areas of my life that may have been lighter back in my glory days.

Yesterday’s assignment was to observe how I treat other people in my life, highlighting how you get out of relationships the same energy that you put into them. Where I used to be a barrel of fun, always putting in an effort to make others laugh, I’ve since lost my desire to be funny after years of feeling that my efforts had gone unappreciated.

Granted, a lot more went into my loss of humor than simply feeling people didn’t appreciate my jokes but ever since my priorities have changed, I lost a major piece of my identity and I often find that I no longer know how to act when interacting with others. Where I used to give into nervous energy by easing my nerves with a joke, I now opt for silence which I feel gets people who are used to my old ways to feel like I’m being a jerk.

This is part of the reason that I opt instead for isolation because I’ve never known how to relate to others unless I felt like I was being entertaining. It was this pressure to always be on around others only to never feel any real deep connections that left me questioning my approach to interacting with others. It always felt that people loved to observe me but the moment they grew bored with my antics they were instantly out the door.

This really sucked because I really liked these people that I tried so hard to make laugh to the point where they were part of my identity and why I felt more and more empty the older I got and the more people I lost to maturity. So it’s hard for me to gauge how I treat others right now because I don’t talk to anyone but my family who I feel liked me better when I was funny as well, leaving me confused as to who I am and even worse, who I want to be.

If this wasn’t depressing enough, today’s assignment is to make a list of my flaws in an effort to find areas of my life to work on. Though the assignment suggests that I go light and try to find flaws that I can laugh about, if you can’t tell from the assignment above, part of the reason I feel stuck is that I’ve been laughing at myself for far too long to the point where I feel like the guy who started the joke that got the whole world crying, only to find that the joke was on him, from that song by the Bee Gees.

I delve more into this when I check in with tomorrow’s update where I actually dig into the assignment. Until then, it’s now that time for my usual closing where I say, good day and good luck to you and all of your projects.

Talk to you soon.

Sincerely,

The Wicker Breaker

P.S. Below are links to my novel, which I plan to promote as part of Operation Achieve Anything, as well as a link to where you can buy the book that is providing the structure to this project in case you would like to purchase it in order to play along.