About Me — Austin C. Harvey

A human trying his best.

When I was fourteen, I watched Scott Pilgrim vs. The World for the first time. It had everything I wanted: action, romance, comedy, a main character that was a dorky, awkward guy just like me. It’s my favorite movie, and it took me almost a decade to realize that Scott was an asshole.

I’m bringing this up because it was during a rewatch of Scott Pilgrim that I had a realization: I was an asshole.

I don’t mean that I was a bad person, or a mean person, or a malicious person, but simply that I was an asshole. I was a miserable, sad person obsessed with his own self-pity, refusing ever to make meaningful changes in his life because it was a lot easier to work a job he hated and get drunk after.

It was easier to tell myself every day that I was a failure, a loser, a person who would never amount to anything — because believing this means you don’t have to try at anything.

But living that way sucks. Feeling miserable all the time sucks. Hating yourself sucks. It’s a feeling that roots itself in your stomach like a tapeworm, slowly devouring you from the inside out until you wither into nothing.

I was withering when a friend made me go to a bouldering gym with him: