One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

It's really frustrating always playing catch-up. Always running out of time. Yeah, I like to talk about time management and scheduling things so everything gets done, but sometimes, it's not about the time. The time is always there, it's the energy, the motivation, and the creativity that don't always show up.

Photo by: Melanie Davies, Flickr

I'm one of those people who gets really excited about something, and gives up on it or forgets about it really quickly. It happens with my writing, it's happened with this blog, and a million other things. It's mostly a lack of discipline, something I've been hard at work to change over the past year or so, but there's a point at which discipline can't overcome the block. Discipline can push through low energy or fatigue, discipline can even push through a lack of creativity, but if it's motivation that's the issue, discipline can often get beat down.

Motivation is the driving force. If you don't have it, you're SOL. You gotta want it. Anything you don't want gets put on the back burner. Right now, I want to work on my new writing project for Camp Nano. I don't really want to write up my review for Pacific Rim for my other blog. I don't really want to write blog posts for my wellness blog (even though I already took two weeks off), and I don't really want to sit down and apply for jobs.

While I technically have the time, energy, and ability to do all those things, the motivation isn't there. Or, perhaps more accurately, the motivation isn't strong enough to beat out the reasons why I don't want to do those things. I don't want to write a review on a movie that I didn't really want to see in the first place, even though it was quite good. I don't want to keep putting time and energy and thought into blog posts that nobody reads. I don't want to sit there and customize applications and responses to job postings when I know I won't get a call-back or even the courtesy of a canned email response to let me know I didn't get it on 99% of them.

I don't want to project the idea that I've lost hope. I haven't. It's just really frustrating to keep putting myself out there, with my writing, my blogs, my resume, and otherwise, and getting no response. Hardly even a negative response to any of it. Just apathy. Ignorance. Indirect dismissal. And silence. Even with this blog, I know not very many people actually sit down and read it, let alone care about what I have to say, but the writing is cathartic. The honesty of how stuff affects me perhaps more so.

What's most frustrating is that feeling of being stuck. Stuck in yet another job I don't love, stuck writing stuff nobody reads, stuck trying new things and ideas that don't pan out, stuck financially. I always think of that saying "If you don't like your (job/life/body/etc.), change it." It's supposed to be inspiring, but mostly it feels like an accusation. Like I'm not trying to change it. Or worse, that I did try and failed to make a difference.

It's not easy initiating and following through on big life changes. It takes time. And maybe I'm just impatient. I have made progress on some changes, but it's really difficult to apply that level of discipline and focus to all the changes I want to make, and all the goals I want to achieve. Too often, I feel like I have too many goals, too many things I want, too many balls in the air. I need to lighten the load and make my to-do list more manageable. The only problem is I don't know what to cross off the list.

When life gives you lemons, egg life's house.

Because payback's a bitch.

Say What You Mean, Mean What You Say

  Hypocrisy runs deep, partly because so many people don't realize they're doing it. We say so many things throughout the day, the week, the years, and it's difficult to keep track of everything we say. In the heat of the moment, especially if we're having an argument or debate with someone, we can say things that we don't mean, that we wouldn't say under normal circumstances. It isn't until later that we realize what we said was contradictory to a belief we held prior.
    Unfortunately, not everybody has this realization. Some people go on contradicting themselves, not realizing they're losing people's confidence in them. These are the true hypocrites--the ones who pay so little attention to what they say or how their words and actions may appear to others that they never realize that they are defeating the very image of themselves they are trying to project.
    In spite of myself, I catch my own hypocrisy from time to time. In trying to win an argument, I sometimes end up changing my mind from the beginning to the end. It's not a conscious choice, or manipulation, but rather ignorance. Ignorance about the issues to the point that I am not allied to one side of things more than the other and I trip over my words.
    Hypocrisy stems from ignorance. We say we agree with one thing, but it's more for the principle of the issue than because we have examined it and honestly hold it to be true. In cases like this, ambivalence, or agnosticism (I mean this in a broad sense), is a better option than risking hypocrisy by allying oneself to side of an issue and then going back on your half-hearted belief.
    The best option is always to examine things. Discuss them, learn about them, get a good grasp on the issue before you automatically say I agree or I disagree. Then, when confronted with it, in an argument or just in your daily life, you can see more clearly the choices you make, the words you choose. You won't have to try so hard to argue your point, because you will know the facts and details of your beliefs so well that you can explain them to anyone.
    I've said it before, I'll say it again: An unexamined life is not worth living. Don't let yourself wander into hypocrisy merely because you have not taken the time to consider the matter thoroughly enough.

Reserve the right to change your mind--just not too often.