Professional Procrastinator
Huh, seems like I forgot my blog exists again. I wish I could say I'm surprised, or even that that was the full story.
The reality is my life has been a vicious cycle of rotating between forgetting the blog exists, realizing I haven't written anything, feeling bad about not posting anything, then forcing myself to think about something else to feel less bad about myself. Reduce, reuse, recyβ oops, sorry; rinse and repeat.
I wish I could even say I've been doing other productive things in place of updates on here, but the truth of the matter is that I've only worked on the video game or book maybe once or twice a piece in the last few months. I can't say I follow the same pattern with those, but I suppose it is somewhat similar. It's more like this:
β> write any amount on the project β> rejoice! β> coast on that happiness for a little while β> slowly start to feel a sense of dread that I will, in fact, have to write on these projects again for them to make progress β> have that sense of dread grow bigger and bigger with each day that I choose to not just jump in and do something with the project β> decide now isn't the time I need to put pressure on myself for whatever reason I can think of (a friend in town, a busy week of social events or other responsibilities, a tough week at work, etc.) β> stop beating myself up about not continuing the project because it's easier than dwelling on it any longer since I expect myself to fail β> arbitrarily decide to write one day in a spurt of random, bubbling over creative energy β> repeat
A wonderfully healthy creative process, don't you think? You'd think with it having done such a bad job helping me complete any projects so far, I'd try something else. Right? Right?? But no, I can't bring myself to just, like... make a schedule or find some other way to stay motivated with any degree of consistency.
Take this blog post for instance! I've been putting off writing something about procrastinating for WEEKS. Honestly, probably more like months.
Don't worry, the irony is not lost on me.
This one was easy to have reasons to put it off. "I have a friend in town..." "My friend just left, let me get some time to recover a sense of normalcy..." "I'm waiting for doctor's results that may shed some light on these habits, I'll write it after that..." The list is as never-ending as my desire to eat dairy without ruining my next day or two.
And you might think, "Hey, be kind to yourself! Those sound like actual, real reasons to give yourself a break," and to that I say... I mean, yeah, sure you're probably right, but they're not always that legit. Sometimes they're I want to watch the next episode of my show, I want to smoke weed and fuck off for a while, the cat is on me so I can't move.
To be fair, how could I possibly move this little MAN?!
Even if I had waited to get my results, then the excuse would become, "Well, let me have some time to let this change sink in..." No diagnosis or information is going to change who I am inherently, it's just going to give me insight into why I do or think things. I don't need excuses, I need accountability. I crave deadlines, the knowledge that if I don't do a thing there's a consequence that's tangible, immediate; something I want to avoid. It'll disappoint a friend if I don't show up for an event? I'll be there! I'll lose my job if I don't turn in work on time? You best believe I'll meet the deadline.
Some days I can get ahead, I can wrap up my tasks without it being a photo finish. Some days I can even be extra productive and feel really good about it! Like today! I got all my work done on time, even with a change last minute to my workload, then I fixed a thing on the balcony, handled dishes, cooked myself lunch (what?!), went for a walk, and cooked dinner! That's not even including small things like lighting incense or making the bed. It's not even including this blog post!
I suppose it isn't all bad; sometimes I can use the procrastination of necessary tasks to do things I've been putting off that my brain deems as less bad. I don't want to put away the dishes? That's the perfect reason to finally fold the towels that have been sitting clean in the basket for the past few days on the kitchen table. Other times it leads to me rearranging my room at 12 AM when I have to get up at 6 AM because I didn't want to put away laundry. But either way, little tricks like this can sometimes help me from feeling like a total waste of space when I can't convince myself to eat more than a scoop of peanut butter from the jar for lunch.
There isn't really a super neat way to wrap this up now that I'm here, but I guess acknowledging this cycle in a quantifiable way kind of helps me keep my spiral in context. Maybe it'll help me pull some self-imposed pressure off myself going forward, who knows. Either way, this is me saying hello again, thanks for checking in, I'm still a piece of * g a r b a g e *, and I hope to have some other creative updates for you again in the near future.