The Writing and Photography Blog of Kevin J Sabo

I’ve been feeling good, albeit tired, lately.

I have truly been blessed and am grateful for the good I have in my life.

My mental-health treatment goes well. I have a fantastic team up between M and H and my family doc. I still don’t have a new psychiatrist yet, but with where I am mentally that is a minor issue. I would like to get one, just for sake of continuity of care for my meds, but at the moment things are working..

Physically, I’ve definitely re-tweaked my shoulder, but some kinesiology tape and backing off on the weights a bit will turn it right around. As I continue to drop weight, my blood pressure continues to come down and my sugars are stabilizing. The awesome thing is, even entering a lower energy mode the way I have, I’ve still been going hard enough that my weight is continuing to drop slowly, just not quite at the rate it was before. That’s not a bad thing.

Professionally, I continue to grow exponentially every day. My writing is improving by the week, and it’s becoming rare when I don’t have at least one article in the paper. The support I have from my editor and his team have been hug, and I wouldn’t be where I am without the support they have given me.

I am two days into my course, and though I still have some review to do, I am nearly done the first of eight units. Another couple days of review and I will be able to begin the time consuming part of the unit, writing my first piece. If I spend a week working on it and polishing it, I should still manage to have it done a week ahead of the curve.

In a word, I’m f’m feeling calmer. Relaxed. I’m feeling a positivity about the future that is definitely out of the normal for me, and I’m not complaining.

The road I’ve been on has been hell. The way I’m feeling now doesn’t wipe-out the past hurt or the past trauma. It just means that I have grown. I’ve grown mentally, I’ve grown physically, I’ve grown as a husband, and as a friend.

Self-confidence is still my biggest challenge. I still question how I am at the point I am in my life. I fear that I will be unmasked as a fraud, and that everything in my life will come crashing down.

On the flip side, I’m scared of growing my self-confidence. I was plenty confident in myself and in my skills when I worked on the ambulance. The problem is, that self-confidence grew into a level of arrogance and cockiness that I believe ultimately contributed to my down-fall.

I know I had other factors contributing to things. The development of my PTSD for starters, but I can not help but make the connection between the self-confidence and the arrogance. I need to feed the one, but not the other. I need to work on becoming self-assured, but not over-bearing.

Like all things in life, it’s a balance, and I’m already making progress. The fact that I am extending myself, pushing myself with my writing by going back to school tells me loads about where my self-confidence is versus where I feel it is. With my confidence I feel like I am in the process of building a house of cards, and that the slightest breeze will knock me down. Where am I actually? I’m confident enough in my abilities to go to school for my writing. At least, I’m faking the confidence well enough to get me through.

I used to hate the phrase “fake it until you make it.” I thought it was trite bullshit, because how can you fake something you cannot do? It wasn’t until I had the phrase reframed that it started striking a cord with me.

A person I know reframed it in such a way as there is no such thing as “fake it until you make it.” How is this possible? If you are faking doing something, such as faking the confidence in your abilities to go back to school, but you are doing it, you’re not faking it. Despite the tricks your brain plays on you, you’re making it. There is no faking involved.

I have grown by leaps and bounds in the last year, and the growing isn’t over. I’m finding the confidence to make it through despite the hurdles I’ve faced.

That you can’t fake either…

K