Serguey Asael Shinder – IT Professional

I didn’t lose the afternoons all at once.

I lost them a scroll at a time,
measuring myself
against everyone else’s highlight reel.

Their shipped feature.
Their confident announcement.
Their career, apparently effortless,
moving faster than mine.

And every time I looked,
I came away a little smaller,
a little more behind,
a little less able to enjoy
the quiet progress
I’d actually been making that day.

It took me too long to see the trick.

I was comparing my inside
to their outside.
My whole messy, unfinished self
against their best five seconds,
edited and posted.

Of course I lost that comparison.
It was rigged.

So I mostly stopped.

And I kept exactly one comparison,
the only fair one:
me today
against me a year ago.

That one is mine.
That one is honest.
And that one almost always shows
I’ve come further than I feel,
on the days I bother to look.

The feed felt like motivation.

It was just theft,
dressed up as inspiration.

– Serguey Asael Shinder