End-of-year reflection 1, or what I needed to hear ten years ago

I'm shifting without the clutch from my Left/Right series to looking back on this year because I'm tired of being angry, screaming into a void, and taking responsibility for trying to help people out of the trap I was in for so long. One of the Woke ideology's motto is stay angry, which is antithetical to how I want to live my life, but I hadn't realized how deeply the rehearsal of rage as per the Radical Left's modus operandi had molded my physical and emotional being. So, take this paragraph as your transition to a new focus:

The list I made of all the new things I did this year surprised me with its length. Weird, since it would probably be this long every year. Because I've been on turbo since I arrived on this planet, and that's supposed to be a good thing. Getting out of your comfort zone, putting yourself out there, refusing to stay stagnant and stuck in routine--all of these are touted as self-evidently good things. They're ways to get to the top one percent of the one percent of whatever it is you do. And, of course, that's where you NEED to be in order to label yourself successful in life.

These behaviors are also evidence of trauma.

Also, being perpetually out of your comfort zone is the fast lane to burn out. "Fast" for me apparently is almost forty years. This is why being strong is also not an unqualified positive (nor is it a pure compliment). My whole life, I've barreled through red flag after red flag, soldiered on through deepening fatigue and lack of clarity believing that if I just try more things, if I just stay busy, if I just do all the things and take care of all the things and behave exactly how I'm guessing people want me to behave, then I'll be loved and accepted and have a meaningful life and earn my existence on the planet assured that I won't die alone under a bridge.

Yeah, so that was all wrong. Here are things I'm still working to believe and maybe would have by now if someone (including myself) had been paying enough real attention to how I was trying to live my life in my 20s to tell me these things: It's actually okay to rest. It's okay to spend some time in your comfort zone. It's okay to say no. And it's okay to stop contorting yourself to accommodate because you think the only thing you have to offer in relationships is sacrificed boundaries. Maybe you'll have to get all new friends. And that will probably be hard. But you're not making real friends not being yourself anyway.