I’m looking at a journal entry, found on some random paper, tucked up and away in my closet, which was written on October 3, 2023—almost exactly three years before this morning.

Somehow, it is a day very much like today, and I am reading words which are so near the thoughts in my head mere moments ago.

“I woke up at 5:30 after going to bed around 1. The funny thing is that I wasn’t tired. I was actually awake, motivated. But I kept thinking about how I would be tired today if I didn’t go back to sleep.[…]

“I often become preoccupied with fatigue, so that I struggle to function despite it.

“I think I am afraid of failing without anticipating it. [But] I think it’s a better use of time to strengthen myself in anticipation of random failure.”

And I agree completely, from an even more sleep-addled mind, that I am better off anticipating random failure than trying to avoid it.

Last night I procrastinated, then worked late, then remembered an early morning meeting. Then I ate food, and my heart rate was high from smoking some weed and being awake far too late, and I had trouble falling asleep.

And yet, growth: I did not panic this time. And when I made some mistake in my (thankfully virtual) meeting, I did not fall to the ground as I would have before. In fact, I arrived at a near-same conclusion as I did three autumns ago: it is better to expect random failure than to labor over avoiding it.

And then, in some perfect twist of time, before finding this journal page, I demonstrated this morning the very growth I had hoped for myself back then.

I told myself that it’s okay to make mistakes. That I am proud of the work I’ve done in becoming a person who can stand afterward, face the result, and move forward. I will not lose more sleep over the mistake, and for that I feel joy.

In fact, I am very, very sleepy now: it’s only natural I would make a mistake. For a moment, I wondered how I could prevent this from ever happening, and then realized that I am ever at the mercy of human folly, of random chance, of circumstance.

I have found many parallel lines in the journal I pulled from my closet today. It seems that in three years, I have realized near every hope I wrote from that sleepy, sad, downtrodden but hopeful state. The child in those pages took baby steps, unsure where they would lead, not moving quickly enough, still confused from the dream before.

Yet, every path she paved continued on to this place.

Recently I was asked which paths I’m walking now, and whether my course has changed. Yes, my course has been altered near-daily—micro-adjustments against the moving wind and my changing spirit—and yet the same destinations have somehow lured me steadily for years.

I am surprised, and quite intrigued, and a fair bit proud, to find that I am, somehow, usually the same person, wanting the same things.

It turns out that I know more of myself than I gave myself credit for.