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.

Getting in Tune

  No, I'm not talking about my musical skills, which are pretty limited, though I'm trying to change that. I'm talking about perspective, my continued theme from last week. I have spent several months now working on my goals, while still sticking with the status quo which allows me to earn money while I'm trying to get the rest of this stuff in order. You gotta make some sacrifices (e.g. selling out) to get what you really want (e.g. making a living doing what I enjoy).
    Sidenote/bonus: the inspiration for my post title, and arguably the greatest band in rock and roll history: THE WHO.

    I'll admit, I've become a little despondent about my progress. I'm still enjoying working on my own projects, but I feel like my present track has hit a plateau in terms of progress toward my ultimate goals. It's been very frustrating to have the feeling that I've worked so hard and accomplished so much, while having so little to show for it.
    I feel like I need to revise my strategy, but I feel like everything is running at such a fast pace right now that I don't have quite enough time to reevaluate everything I've been working on to find a way to do it better. It's extremely frustrating to know that you're on a plateau in terms of results and productivity and not having the time to be able to improve it. If I were to stop work on these projects completely to strategize, I'd fall far enough behind that even if I came up with a better strategy, it'd take a lot longer to implement and might even undo some of the progress I've made so far.
    I have scaled back my work on a few things because I was on the verge of burn-out a few weeks ago, and it seems to have helped me get back on track a little bit, but I'm still not where I want to be with these projects. I believe in hard work, and I know nothing comes easy. I just wish I didn't also have to deal with everybody else around me trampling on my goals so that I can become their version of a productive member of society. I'm working on that in my own way with my projects; it's just a process that takes longer, and while more fulfilling, can take a long time to be lucrative, if it ever is.

    The argument against me is: you have to be realistic. You have to have a car. You have to have a place to live. You have to eat. Granted, I do have to eat, but I don't absolutely have to have a car. And if you want to get right down to it, I'd probably survive even if I didn't have a place to live.
    Case in point: I just saw a post about award-winning actors who were once homeless. And then they worked really hard for a few years, caught a break, worked really hard some more, and won an Oscar, a Golden Globe, etc.
    This was inspiring to me. Not that I want to deliberately live out of my car until such a point as I'm successful with my writing, but if these people made it to where they are after living out of their cars or at a bus station or whatever, there's hope for the rest of us with dreams. There are no hand-outs. We all have to put in the work, the perseverance, and the time to get to where we want to be.
    Sometimes that means we have to make sacrifices, and sometimes it means we have to do things that our families and friends disapprove of in order to achieve our dreams. Of course, looking like Halle Berry probably wouldn't hurt.

Success is simply getting up one more time than you fall down. 

(I attribute this to a wall-sign in Jerry Maguire,
but I'm not sure where it came from originally.)

My Belated Holiday

It's been an extremely short December! I feel like it's lasted forever, and at the same time, I can't believe it's two days before Christmas! I JUST got my holiday shopping done yesterday, but I already have to exchange something because I bought the wrong item and I need to get photo paper because photos were a part of my gift. I know I have photo paper here somewhere, but I cannot find it. That's what happens when you move in and out some many times. Stuff gets lost in the shuffle.

I've been working on editing my new book to publish and I've hit a snag--I'm starting to wonder whether I need to cut out a character because I'm not sure how much they actually help the plot. I just skimmed the rest of the story last night, and I think I need to straighten out some of my themes a little better. Right now it looks like a really long run-on sentence/stream of consciousness thing.

The holidays snuck up on me this year. I was so prepared last year--I had everything bought and shipped weeks before Christmas, but this year, I was so busy, I lost track of the time and had to do all my shopping 3 days before Christmas! I don't think that's ever happened to me before. It's also the first year I didn't put the Christmas tree up.

Even when I was living on my own, I came back home and put the tree up at my dad's house, but I lost track of time and my dad ended up putting it up! It actually looks nicer I think--I usually get carried away with the ornaments because we have so many pretty ones.

I am getting started on my New Years Resolutions though, though I'm trying to think of them more as goals rather than set-in-stone resolutions.

So far:

1. Edit/Publish 3 books next calendar year
2. Write a new novel/screenplay (haven't decided which)
3. Write a children's story
4. Lose weight (unoriginal, I know)
5. Find a way to earn money at something I enjoy (earning money from my writing or my books would be nice, but if I found a regular job that I liked and that paid decent enough, that'd be all right too)
6. Win Nano again :)
7. Plus a few other things I've been wanting to do for a few years now, but haven't had the time/motivation to teach myself to do or the money to have someone else teach me...

Well, the world didn't end the other day. I didn't really expect it to. But with all the terrible things that have happened around the world and especially around the country lately, I'm hoping 2013 will usher in a new year filled with more positivity, peace, and compassion. I'm hoping these things go in cycles, and that 2013 is the beginning of a new cycle with more ups than downs.

New Year's state of mind.

Losing Time Or Making Time

  My dad likes to say that age is nothing but a number. I think that's something older people say because they don't like to feel old. I think age is a lot more than a number. Sometimes it can indicate maturity, legality, and other times, it's just a social identity that shows we relate to our peers.
    I feel distinctly old today, being it's my birthday. While 24 isn't a very big number to some people, it seems pretty big to me. I'm leaving my early twenties for my mid-twenties, and I feel like this is a milestone in my young life. 23 seemed young enough to still play the college-aged young person card, and 24 seems like the real line between youth and adulthood.
    I have been really struggling with the desire to become independent and self-sufficient and the desire to remain somewhat innocent, footloose, and fancy-free. On the one hand, I want to be financially independent, but on the other, I would really enjoy having a little more free time than a full-time job allows. Not so I can go to the brewery every day or watch TV even more than I do already, but because there are things that I want to do that I don't have time for right now. Like this blog.
    I want to have more time to write. I want to have more time to read. And yes, it would be nice to have more time to go to the movies or watch them at home. But it's more than that. I want to have time to cook for myself, shop for groceries more than once or twice a month. I want to take walks and do yoga. I want to spend time with my friends and my family. Plus a million other things on my to-do list. And I feel like right now, I'm budgeting my time as thinly as I'm budgeting my money.
    I feel like I'm missing out on some of the things I should be enjoying, some of the things I think I have a right to enjoy, because I don't have time to enjoy them. Most people would diagnose this as having my priorities mixed up. If you have your priorities straight, you can always make time for everything. I don't think this is always true. There are a finite number of hours in a given week, and there is only enough room for a portion of everything you want to accomplish. We end up sacrificing so much of what we want to do in favor of what we are obligated to do.
    It isn't easy juggling your wants with your obligations, especially when time or money is the constraint. But the only way to achieve your goals and make your wants become a regular part of your schedule is to say yes to yourself and those wants instead of no, procrastinating and making excuses why you can't. You still may not be able to get all of them in every single time, but you can at least make the effort.

Coulda woulda shoulda.

Multi-tasking Overload

When you feel like you don't have time to sit down, it may be time to slow down. However, multi-tasking can be addictive once you've started. It used to be: "how great it is that I have time to read this book or watch this movie, spend time with my family, cook a real meal for dinner". Now it's constantly telling everyone you don't even have time to eat lunch or go to the grocery store; you can't get to class on time; you can't finish your homework on time; one thing after the other. It's not only that you really do have that many things to do, it's also that you want that many things to do.

What????

    That's right. While you may feel that you have this many obligations, you can't get out of this thing for that reason, it's your fault. It's easy to forget that we made the decision to take all this on. Even though, at the time, it probably seemed manageable. For instance: I can do full-time coursework at grad school; I can work twenty hours a week; I can go to the rec center to exercise 3 or 4 nights a week; I can write my blog 3 or 4 times a week; I can do all my homework on time; I can keep my relationship going; and visit my family, and run errands, and maintain a social life, and stay in touch with old friends, and find time to eat, sleep and keep up some level of personal hygiene. It's exhausting, the things we do in our lives. But once you're busy, it's really hard to not be busy. One thing ends, you take on another.
    Being busy isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's productive. It's the American way. Productivity, efficiency, hard work--these lead to the good life.
    But, I don't see that. These lead to stress. Sometimes overwhelming, even crippling, stress. While I'm not quite that far along yet into the realm of the overwhelmed, every time I miss a deadline, cram something in last minute that's totally sub-par work, or cut short a social engagement or visit because I have to go to class or work or whatever, I feel not only overwhelmed with how full and heavy my plate is at the moment, but I also feel guilty. Guilt may be an unfortunate side effect of my upbringing, too much religiosity, but maybe not. I signed up for the class, shouldn't I do my best to submit my best work, show up on time, do the homework, study the notes for quizzes and tests? I made the decision to take the class, so doesn't that obligate me to follow through on those things? I think it does. And while I want to stay and talk to my friend that I haven't seen or talked to face to face in months, I can't because I have to get to class. Fifteen minutes for lunch is insufficient when it's in a cafeteria style dorm with lines and crowds everywhere you look. Wolfing down food because you have so little time to eat is not healthy.
    Minimizing sleep to get more work, errands, or obligations done is not healthy either, but we do it. We sacrifice sleep for many things. Somehow, this task or that piece of homework is more important than sleep.
    I'm not pointing fingers. I do these too. I cut social visits short. I turn in crappy homework done in ten minutes because I didn't have the time to do it properly. While I can do my best to evenly distribute my time, it never seems to work out quite as well as I planned. So, when you have a choice to eliminate one of your obligations or duties from that growing list of things to maintain and do on a regular basis, maybe you should actually consider eliminating it--and not immediately replacing it with another task or obligation right out of the gate. We need time for ourselves. If we can't find time for ourselves the way our lives are arranged now, we have to make time. If that means dropping an obligation or giving up one of our responsibilities so that we can find more balance and peace in our lives, it may be worth it. Exhaustion, overwork, and poor quality of work as a result of too many things on our to-do list are not good for anyone.

Confucius say: Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.