Staying Sane and Maintaining Motivation
I've drafted up a handful of different intros for this post and, in the end, I hated every single attempt. One was a series of questions like some kind of corny boner pill ad, another started with a story that I forgot the point of halfway through. Fuck me, the first one even started with the phrase, "Not to put bush on your pussy," an inside joke that probably only four or five people in the whole world understand (and none of whom are likely to read this). I give up on being clever.
So instead, I'll just say hello. I'm M. H. Miller, and this is me doing my best.
There have been multiple times in my life now where I've felt... off. Like something was missing or out of place, or like I was running on a hamster wheel instead of towards a destination. While the last couple days have felt more productive and purposeful, it was this feeling of treading water that made me make a change. I would argue for the better. At least, that's my take for right now while it seems to be helping.
Two or three years ago, I was found I was smoking too much weed due to an incredibly exhausting job I had at the time. All I wanted to do when I clocked out was relax to the max, which usually meant getting absolutely blitzed out of my gourd and playing a video game I'd beaten 80 times already or mindlessly watching some trash TV I didn't really care about. I just wanted to turn off my brain so I could mentally prepare to take on the next day. It was an endless cycle that seemed to have no end in sight.
Was part of the problem a developing health problem that I didn't know about at the time? Yes, but we're ignoring that for now.
One day, I just snapped. I realized that none of my projects, my ambitions, my dreams, nothing of any substance was ever going to be achieved at the pace I was keeping. I was miserable, and the weed was just a bandaid on a wound that needed surgery and sutures. I wasn't wanting to give up my favorite pastime altogether, but there had to be a way to keep some semblance of balance.
So I made a list.
It started with two simple questions.
- What are things I need to or should do for my health or the house?
- What are things I want to do or work on that will help me further my goals?
After many iterations, this eventually turned into various tasks broken into two sections and assigned points per item.
For some reason, it was much easier to rationalize moderation when I had to work for my relaxation. Sure, it may not be the healthiest way to deal with life stress, but to be honest I really, really worked well for me. I could choose how much energy I had each day to decide how intensive of tasks I could work on. I forced myself to do a minimum of 1/3 of the points from things that were for long-term projects so I couldn't just coast by like I had been. I gave myself some lobs for hard days like "take a shower" and "empty the incensed holders" so if I had a particularly bad day, I could still relatively easily earn a means to unwind.
I wish I could tell you why I stopped using this, but one day I just erased the board and went about my business. Years passed. I got a new job doing something less draining. I had my big health scare well behind me. I started working on games, not just playing them. I changed to writing a different book that wasn't limited by someone else's world building. I tried to consistently move my personal projects forward, and it felt great.
Then, again, I fell dormant. I found every excuse I could to stop myself from making progress on the things I enjoyed. Observation collected dust in my Scrivener files. Nightcap started feeling like an idea that would never be developed. I sank in a sea of shitty true crime documentaries until I couldn't see the light from the surface.
But I didn't have the same excuses this time. My job wasn't hell, just kind of boring. My health wasn't plummeting, it was relatively stable. I even got a diagnosis and medication since the last stagnation, a huge change that really did take away a lot of the barriers keeping me from working on these things that I wanted to.
So, again, I made a list.
This time, I came at it from a different perspective: all new goals, no point tallies, and the only goal being making art. I choose every day to fight the imposter syndrome that tells me I don't count as a creative until I have something to show. I am an author because I write books, even if they're so far incomplete. I am a narrative designer because I write stories for video games, even if they're not released yet.
So this new board, my current iteration, looks like this now:
Relaxation for me with this is in tiers. If I want to fuck around and watch TV or play a game, I need to complete 1 item in 2 of the 3 sections. Nice and easy, I can pick and choose what sounds good that day. If I want to smoke and zonk, I have to complete something from all 3 sections. I want to make consistent progress without dreading it, and giving myself a reward for doing those things pavlovs my brain into getting excited for the tasks.
When it comes to visual art, that will be have to be its whole own post about that journey. It's been a struggle for me, going on longer than any other in my life, but this has even started to help me with that.
Take this blog post, for instance. This one would count as practice on my groupings. It's writing something that isn't correlated to one of the games or books that I'm working on, and I didn't have to learn anything to get this down on the page. Some days, it'll work into another category when the content or purpose of the post is different. The list isn't fully comprehensive by any means, but it gives me frame of reference for what bundle my actions fall into so I can keep making progress.
You may find yourself thinking that this is too harsh, taking away simple pleasures without having to do at least something. What about the days that are so hard that I can't bring myself to do any of these things? Well, luckily for me, my medication means I can read again. So if I can't bring myself to earn more modern pleasures, I can still enjoy a nice book to unwind and let myself bounce back from a bad time.
I'm sure this will get tweaked more the longer I use it, but for the last few days this has worked amazingly at getting me excited to make progress. I've started drawing again, got back into a udemy course that I'd left abandoned years ago, edited more of the book, and developed more of the lore for the game that I'll be working on after Nightcap. And you know what? I feel better spending my time doing the things I want to, even when they're tiring.
I guess work hard, play hard really is going to be the motto of 2025 for me.