Jealousy is a Bitter Snake

Don't waste time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. - Mary Schmich

Edward Hopper - Automat (1927)

Thirteen days into 2025, I realized my biggest failure of 2024 wasn’t me neglecting my novel. It was neglecting the thing that brought me joy.

Once upon a time, in 2023, I was the happiest I had been in years. I recall sitting in my room and having the strange desire to record a video or maybe a voice memo to have some kind of evidence what I was feeling. I ended up doing neither, but I still remember exactly what I was thinking.

“I am so happy. I really don’t want this to end.”

It did end, slowly and quietly. But I remember it well.

2023 Alivia was truly different. Throughout my life, I had been asked a few times if there was an age I enjoyed the most and would like to go back to. The answer was always no. As much as I have loved how my experiences have shaped who I am now, I do not want to redo any of it. Because for all the highs, there were just as many if not more lows in each season.

But twenty-five-year-old me was something special. She finally didn't feel that pressure to please others the way she had for so long. She romanticized every little thing about her life. Driving her own car to work in Downtown Indianapolis while listening to her favorite songs? Immaculate vibes. Sipping a hot chai latte with pumpkin spice in her little cubicle? So cute and cozy. Walking along the canal and visiting food trucks at lunch? A dream.

And when she came home, 2023 Alivia didn't exhale in exhaustion and flop on the couch for the rest of the afternoon. No, she would have to keep herself from running to her laptop and opening her novel. Because through every moment of every day, it was all she thought about. It was the first thing on her mind after waking up in the morning. It was what her mind drifted to when daydreaming at work. It was what filled her dreams when sleeping at night. Her characters and their lives were what she lived for. Her fingers flew across her keyboard for hours every day, not giving a second thought to how she could reword this sentence or that sentence. Writer's block did not exist to her.

Man, she was so cool. And as I stewed in my bitterness of what I didn't accomplish in 2024, I shook that thought away and reminded myself: she wasn't cool; I was. That was me, not someone completely out reach. I was that person enjoying life and writing for the thrill of it.

It would be funny if it wasn't so sad. As 2025 began, my life was still the same in all the important ways. I moved to a new apartment, but that morning commute I used to love was essentially the same. I still drank chai most mornings. I walked outside to lunch. And yet, that level of pure unbothered joy was no longer there. Somewhere in the days of 2024, I let that joy sucker creep back in: people-pleasing.

I've always been a people pleaser in general, but last year saw a specific desire to have people see me accomplish big things. I wanted to experience success the way I saw other experiencing it. But alas, when I realized I was pursuing my goals purely for the recognition, I had to sit with myself and really reflect. Jealousy and envy taste very bitter. I had lived with them for so long, I myself had become bitter and green-eyed. My motivation to keep pursuing my goals was at an all-time low.

An actual page from my journal (the one that says I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING on the cover)

This little picture here is how I have always envisioned my two selves at war with each other. Well maybe not war. Maybe I should say they're at odds. Because all one of them does is lay there. That's who I call Tired. The one pulling at her is Motivation. She wants to do so many things all the time, but she needs Tired to come with her because the two of them make up one whole person.

Many years were spent with these two doing everything this way. Motivation has always had to drag Tired by the foot. That's how I've always gotten by.

2023 me somehow figured out a better solution. I got Motivation and Tired to walk hand in hand, no dragging or tugging necessary. 2024 me let Motivation stop trying. She didn't lay down with Tired, though; she just kind of sat there and tried to do everything herself.

It didn't work. Because sitting down meant she was stagnant. She wasn't progressing.

My novel sat for all of 2024. I opened the file containing my draft maybe once, twice at the most. But I still thought about it daily. I thought of Jeannie, my protagonist, and my desires for her growth and evolution over the course of the story. Those ideas never made it onto a page, though. Not even a scribble in my ideas journal. And somehow the one thing I constantly thought about was how tragic it would be if this story stayed with me and only me. I know stories are meant to be shared, and I desperately wanted to share this one.

But it deserves to be completed first. It deserves the full writing process: planning, drafting, revision, editing, and publishing. It is a story I am immensely proud of - the characters, their lives, their desires, their fears, etc. I want others to know this story the way I know it. I want others to know and love these characters the way I know and love them. I want others to laugh and cry with them, to see pieces of themselves in them, and to shed a bittersweet tear when turning to the last page.

All these things will come in time, and that means putting in the work. I forgot what that meant for a while. I forgot what it was like to sit back and breathe a sigh of pride and contentment after a solid writing session. Even the days when I only wrote a few sentences felt like a job well-done.

My goal for 2025: leave hoping and wishing behind. Get back to doing, to writing for the joy of it and nothing else.

Because that, dear reader, is the secret to motivation. There is no five-step plan or how-to guide for getting your motivation back. But if you would really like one, I think it would look something like this...