Posts tagged under Expectations.
Well-meaning friends say I’ll “find the right woman.” But the pressure to pursue romance has lifted, and I don’t miss it. I feel relieved for no longer being in a game I never particularly enjoyed playing.
How about you? Are you a player?
I can teach a class with confidence but put me at a drinking party and I’m internally counting the minutes until I can leave. The split between professional ease and social awkwardness that might not make sense to others.
Is your comfort actually avoidance? I thought I was serving well in Japan, but a growing spiritual tension is forcing me to ask: When does easy service become a selfish way to dodge a harder, truer calling?
Yesterday, cycling to work in the pouring rain at 56, I wondered: am I being authentically myself, or just making the best of circumstances I’m secretly embarrassed about? When you say ‘it’s all relative,’ are you genuinely content or just making excuses?
We all break sometimes. Relationships end, dreams dissolve, and futures change in ways we never planned. If you’re feeling shattered by someone’s leaving, by someone’s choice to build their life elsewhere, you’re not alone. Sometimes being broken is proof that what you had was real.
After twenty years teaching English in Japan, I’ve watched brilliant women—nurses, office workers, mothers—lose focus during lessons, checking reflections in phone screens, fidgeting with clothing. When did the pressure to be constantly ‘desirable’ become so overwhelming?
Do you feel that knot in your stomach when you need to say no to your boss? Even after putting in a full day’s work? At 4:30 PM yesterday, covered in mosquito bites from farming, I faced that familiar guilt again. You’re not alone in this struggle…
Have you ever caught yourself aiming for something that doesn’t truly resonate? I once watched myself pass interviews for a job I didn’t really want, to get a more prestigious position I really didn’t need. Why do we trap ourselves in these patterns?