Highly recommend subscribing to The Atlantic. It’s about $50 for a year but has some of the best journalism across a variety of perspectives that will challenge you. Sometimes emotionally, like with this article, other times politically, but I always come away feeling more informed.

Gotta be “wokin the wok”

Anything you can do to remind yourself of the journey and progress along the way helps. Thinking about someone’s weight loss journey the end goal is to hit an ideal weight, but the regular weigh ins, tracking progress at the gym, and reduced calorie counts help give perspective to the bigger picture.

I’m very much a data/visualization so your mileage may vary. Hope that helps spark some ideas!

It might be helpful to reframe what made you proud. Like you said, putting in the effort up front means you expect to do well. But you should be proud of your preparation which enabled you to be successful.

It’s easy to fixate on the end goal (eg doing well on a test) and ignore all the little steps that got you there (going to class, doing your homework, studying).

This is just a visual representation of how big each category is in the US, not where it’s located geographically. Cow pastures are spread across the entire country but if we combined them into one big square this is how it would look.