If you haven’t read my previous post, go ahead and do that, because it’ll hopefully give you a good insight into the state of my brain at any given moment, firsthand. It may explain why I write the way I do (or, if you know me, act the way I do). You might be surprised. You might not be. You might have already diagnosed me. It’s 2025 and everyone’s autistic!
Back when I was a teenager spending as many free hours after school as possible carefully curating my Tumblr, I had this stupid Confucius quote seared into my brain a little more each time I created a new post (and, for an angsty teenaged youth, this was often).
“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop”
It read like wishy-washy, live-laugh-love pseudo-philosophy (although, to be honest, doesn’t a lot of philosophy sound like that? What do you mean you are famous and revered for thinking of something ten-year-old-me thought was just a standard idea not even worth mentioning out loud?); it is a painfully obvious fact of life in most cases – why are you even telling me this? What do you mean? Who even says it does not matter?
It brings me back to a post I once read (that has been washed and recycled a thousand times on Twitter and Threads by various people hankering for engagement – very ironic given the very essence of the post), and I agree. I, too, would have figured that stuff out.
But now, the Confucius quote feels more relevant to me than ever. I still find it cringey and stupid and it makes me laugh because I associate it with Tumblr (I often quote it, but sadly nobody knows what I’m referring to. I like your shoelaces), but I get it. And maybe I’m wrong about thinking I’d figured that stuff out.. Because sure, i’d thought it – but had I really figured it out?
I notice the futility of forcing myself to spend precious minutes of my waning life trying to do things I want to be doing so, instead of slowing right down and reducing the intensity so that I’ll enjoy it more rather than it feeling like a chore, I just stop altogether. Which makes it much harder to start again. My brain is always trying to squeeze a million minutes out of an hour and I find it hard to maintain momentum; so, as soon as it arrives, I try to hold on for as long as possible but I’m always distracted by the next thing that needs doing and before I know it, I’ve gone on seventeen side quests and only finished two of them.
I recognise now, more than ever, the importance of building healthy and good habits, and I realise that taking a ‘break’ from doing those things means it may then be forever until you start up again. Everything now, for the rest of my life, seems to be about gaining and keeping momentum – because if I don’t, I’ll just fall off. Since reaching adulthood, I feel like a giant wheel of Double Gloucester rolling down the hill, and the big bad, dishevelled and red-face of ageing is stumbling down quickly after me, threatening to squash me (or so it feels). But really, we’re working hand in hand to win this thing that I call my own life. In the same vein, once you get into the groove of something, it’s easy to keep going until some spanner throws itself in the works and chucks you out of whack again.
When you stop writing every day, picking up a pen again is exhausting, your fingers cramp up after two paragraphs, and your handwriting gives the GP a run for her money. When you stop plucking the strings every day, the next time you play you’re so rusty, your fingertips are sore for the following week, and you wonder if it’s worth investing hours again in a hobby that is just a hobby. When you stop practising an art that you are good at every day, the next time you attempt it you’re so shite that you’re embarrassed to try again, even behind closed doors. Maybe you’ve outgrown it and you were simply a gifted and talented child, teenager, young adult. When you let weeks, months, years go by without speaking to your friends, you allow yourself to become more acutely aware of your differences and suddenly it makes sense that you’re strangers again, but one day you’ll be walking down the road five years later, thinking about how different things are.
Maybe there isn’t enough time in the world to build habits for everything we want to be doing, but it gets much easier when you remember that this life is the longest thing we’ll ever do. If there is a good thing happening, keep allowing it to happen for as long as you can. If you stop, pick it up immediately if you don’t want to lose it, because one gust of laziness will blow it out of your grasp forever. Read for ten minutes before bed, write a paragraph before work, check in on your friends every week, practice a Van Halen solo every day until you can impress the people in the guitar shop (don’t do that part), even if it takes years, don’t ever stop saying I love you when you hang up the phone. What else are you going to do? Scroll through instagram for three hours a day? Watch Game of Thrones for the seventh time? Read more opinions of more people you don’t care about? Do me a favour.
