June 25th, 2022: Half Delayed and Half Relayed
Good morning, my dear guests. It's currently 5:31 AM as I start this blog post, and I'm going to make things perfectly clear: I am not a very responsible person.
The brutality of this drawn-out time is that hardly any of it is spent relaxing. I mean, sometimes I truly find myself having fun while procrastinating on my own life, but most of the time it's spent stressing out over the very same things I was trying to avoid and it makes me miserable. It's quite a stupid problem, because the simple answer really is to just handle my life first, and then find my enjoyment later. But the simple answer is hard for me.
The simple answer is representative for me. Handling life first and having fun later screams to me that I'll be spending most of my life delaying my gratification. I fear that I'll be spending thirty years of my life in the dog days to finally get a chance to enjoy myself in a fashion I see fit. If I handled life first all the time, it feels like I'd never get a chance to do anything that I enjoy, and that's terrifying. There's so much of the world that I don't understand yet that I'm hopeful about, and yet the extremely delayed gratification coupled with the fleeting quality of life has torn me in half again and again and again.
Things like that were easy for him to say; he hadn't worked a day in his life.
Your half-robot,
DW
Oh, hey! I didn't think blogs were a thing anymore.
ReplyDelete"Sometimes I truly find myself having fun while procrastinating on my own life, but most of the time it's spent stressing out over the very same things I was trying to avoid and it makes me miserable."
This is a situation I've been fairly familiar with. A lot of the time it feels like my brain would rather spend 20 minutes fabricating the reason why it's unnecessary to do something, rather than simply taking the 5 minutes to just do it. My own discovered solution, and one that I think has helped more than just my procrastination, has been using my brain less; as blunt as that sounds.
For most of my life I've always considered myself a thinking man, getting lost in thought for minutes on end from things as nonsensical as "how to accurately describe the taste of orange juice", as well as being hyper self-aware of everything I do. And while that trait has been beneficial throughout my childhood, as I was more easily able to think things through, empathize and interpret other's perspectives, reflect and improve on myself, among other things you could probably think of... It's been way more of a hinderance for the past couple years. Overthinking easily gives way to anxiety (which I think plays the most into procrastination), and hyper self-awareness makes sure to remind you that you're not the person you want to be (and frustrated that something you did doesn't align with your previous understanding of 'you', but that's a whole other can of worms).
So, I figured, why bother? Why take the time to think things through, when it's potentially detrimental? Up until a certain point, I never had these issues; so I never put thought into the consequences *of* thought. I'm not 16 anymore.
Of course, there's a balance here. I can't just become a creature of instinct, nor is it even possible to suppress my thoughts all that much... but I don't need to. Simply let your thoughts graze your mind's pasture peacefully, and observe them for what they are. Only your actions really matter in the end, and the only truly wrong choice to make, is none.
More importantly: live in the present. Not the past, or even the future. The only thing important right now, is the next thing.
Reeling it back again, this isn't something I've fully figured out myself; it's only something that's been helping me as of late. Getting myself to commit to long-term tasks (learning to draw, write, etc.), has still been a very big mystery. You have to be in just the right mind-space when going into those things, making it no longer as simple as 'not hesitating', unfortunately.
Anyways, you've been wrapped up in VR while I'm typing this, so I'm gonna wish you a good night or morning, whenever you see this!