Plateau

Try to find my way in the increased world of higher expectations.

There comes a point in every activity, every job, every relationship where one realizes two things:

1) This is a good as it it going to get. The limit has been reached.
2) The resources you have are the resources you are going to get. Further aid or support is a pipe dream.

What I would like to hear from myself is that this has given me greater clarity in my life. Instead, it seems only to have given me greater stress.

Stress? Yes, stress originating from the fact that the expectations and resources behind the situation generally have not changed. The goals are still the same and the resources are still what they have been. You are expected to perform at the same level as previously or even better - and Heaven forfend you should mention the lack of either. The expectation - always the expectation - is that you are an adult, and whatever sacrifices are necessary for the accomplishment of the task are presumed.

Adapt or die. The New Normal.

The stress results in a high level of frustration as well. I tack back and forth in my emotional state between a bland sense of acceptance of the situation as it is and a high level of anger about lashing out and making others deal with the same situation. Neither, of course, is correct.

But what then is correct? Work harder at the job or project or relationship? There are only a certain amount of hours in a day to accomplish things. Work smarter? I'm never really sure what that means - that becomes a never ending target that is judged by others about how "smart" you are working.

It's as if there was some revolution on the tip of my mind, something floating just beyond the reach of consciousness that has some kind of solution. I can feel hovering there, seemingly waiting to be discovered.

But is it there? Or is another attempt by mind simply to veer aside from the realities that exist and cannot change?