2. GET YOURSELF A RIVAL TODAY! CALL NOW!!

 GET YOURSELF A RIVAL TODAY!

I think more people should have rivals, and I’m not kidding! Friends and family—now that’s all well and good, but if you only have friends, family, and potential romance, I hate to say it, but you’re missing out. A little friendly competition between two rivals can lead to them improving at whatever they’re competing in. Rivalry is a great way to motivate yourself to accomplish more than you set out to. Don’t twist my words though, not everything should be a competition but we all need a little competition and even if you aren’t convinced of rivalry by the end of this, I hope I can still urge you to explore different kinds of relationships.

I’m not sure how apparent it is to the people I know but I do have a slight tendency to be competitive. It’s just how I was brought up and it used to be much worse. Every single aspect of my life was a competition and every new peer was an adversary. That is a VIP ticket to misery and poor self-esteem. Obviously. Who would’ve thought that constantly comparing yourself to others is bad for your mental health? I was told not to do that all the time. We’ve all had those social media talks in school about how it creates an unhealthy standard for yourself because you want to be like the little people in your phone. Even so, I didn’t take any note of those lectures because I didn’t even know I was making these comparisons.

Now, imagine how annoying I must’ve been to hang out with. Imagine spending prolonged periods with someone constantly looking to outdo you. It must be exhausting. The good news is that my mental health was severely affected and I decided to stop being so competitive. I decided to stop being competitive as a whole. That was just as bad. If you’re an underscores fan, you probably know about horseshoe theory (two extreme ends of a spectrum are just as bad which isn’t something I fully subscribe to however for the sake of this part of the text, I’m referring to it). I just became a massive pushover because I never wanted conflict ever. I was still unhappy and still had self-esteem issues. Obviously. Who would’ve thought becoming completely passive and not recognizing your own needs and self-worth would lead to discontent?

I already said this in the first paragraph and was meant to refer back to it but in this final version it’s sort of buried beneath other sentences so I’ll just say it again: we all need a little competition sometimes. I even used redundancy to emphasize my point. Just a little competition and only sometimes. It can be fun when it doesn’t completely consume you.

I’ve even got a rival. It started in class. There was a class discussion about movies and this guy raised his hand and made a bold yet false claim. He said he’d seen every movie ever made. Everyone knew he was being hyperbolic but they still assumed that he had seen more movies than anyone else in the room. Let me put this nicely, I am an attention lady of the night and I’m not sure if that’s obvious or not. Anyway, me being an attention strumpet, seeing everyone ask him about movies and not me. I slammed my fist to the table (in a discreet manner) and silently vowed to watch more movies than him. I ended up discovering a love for film because of that. I remember I watched 200 movies in that year and then became severely burned out and I was doing poorly in school on top of that. Who would’ve thought that someone who watches movies instead of doing school work would do poorly in their academics?

The year after that, my rival changed his subjects and we shared a lot of classes. When I found out, I did the healthy thing: I slammed my fist on the table (in a discreet way) and silently vowed to outdo him in every subject and I came out on top! Though, I should mention that he’s not my rival anymore. It has recently come to my attention that he is very racist. He is so racist that other racists call him racist. Talk about a NARC! Ruining all my fun.

Don’t let my racist ex-rival dissuade you from getting yourself a rival. It’s something you need to experience for yourself. Now go out there and rival!

EPILOGUE!

This is not my best work but I need to get something out and it’s all to help me become a better writer. The only way you can be a better writer is by writing. I usually thank people here but I won’t be thanking my rival, he’s racist but I will give some credit to Greg Guevara. His video on different kinds of relationships is pretty good and inspired this writing piece heavily. 

I rushed this piece out but I had the idea for it ever since I started. I was holding out on using this one for a while but I didn’t have anything else to use. I will be more prepared next week. I’m going to get started as soon as I post this actually. I have recovered my passion for writing and now it’s just a matter of honing that.

Small update: It has been a very busy week but I have a clear schedule except for studying but I should be able to make more time for writing. I need to focus on trying to monetize my writing as well, so I have something to fall back on for the future in case things don’t work out. Anyway, until next time!