If it isn’t clear enough yet, the reason I created this blog was to see if I can be proud of keeping up with a project by the time I’m 30 years old, and such event will happen in three years. Three to thirty. You got it, Right? I am probably repeating myself unnecessarily – internet cool kids call it “branding” -, but I figured it is my blog after all so I might as well do as it pleases me. Just kidding. Or am I?
There’s a regular phenomenon that happens to me every time I find myself having a good productive week: it just doesn’t last long enough. Ever. Because I keep betting against myself. Now, I am aware of the many life coaches all around the internet listing the 10 reasons why you keep procrastinating or 32 things productive people do and you don’t because you’re such a depressed looser and I promise you if you are giving me your precious time right now I won’t waste it by making you go through this sort of BS.
Instead, I will just share with you the processes I usually go through before giving up on a project.
- I find myself not doing enough, so I rush to do everything at once. As if I could go from not ever exercising to doing it every day, along with reading 3 different books, learning a new language, and cooking vegan meals from scratch. What is the problem here? I soon find myself feeling like a loser for not being able to perform all these activities as gracefully every single day, and then instead of managing my priorities I just go ahead and quit everything.
- As a consequence of the listed above, even if I don’t quit right away, I quickly start to no longer enjoy doing things that are actually good to me. Whenever I start on a productive week marathon, the results of that first day being active are quite the kick! I get high on the excitement! Mondays should be listed as heavy drugs if you ask me. But nothing like a hangover on overdoing it by Tuesday morning to kill all of your hopes and dreams of being the next Brazilian professional alpinist superstar (or whatever other stupid dreams you may have).
- Before I realize what’s going on, I am already not finding a good reason to do anything at all. Such as existing, believing we can build a better society or, you know, taking a shower. There’s a name for that, I know, its depression. And I sincerely believe it should be treated as the serious illness it is. I’ve done therapy and I am aware that I am in need of more. But I also think simply avoiding some usual triggers for that as we try to be better grown-ups could help us manage our time and priorities in a healthier way, and therefore, avoid depressive behaviors. For that to happen, we need to learn to identify those triggers, and I recently learned something about me: When I try to go from zero to the productive Guru, I tend to see the big picture as some sort of competition. And that holds me from taking the time to enjoy each part of the things I am doing because I am constantly thinking about what I am not doing yet. Then if what I am doing isn’t enough right away, what’s the use of keep going with it?
- Finally, having a distorted collective sense is probably affecting you as much as it affects me; well, unless you are just a selfish dumb*ss that will do things like not respect social distancing in order to go shopping for new clothes in the middle of a world pandemic.
What I mean by it, is that I can’t seem to find the balance between taking care of myself and having a good sense of community/taking good care of my relationships. And that can go two different ways: I either find myself guilty for spending time doing things that seem to bring benefits for me alone (not realizing I will much better love and take care of everybody else if I feel good about myself) or, I will neglect my self-care in order to work on “saving the world” until I get too disappointed at how hard it is to do community-related things and blame how f*cked up society is (not realizing I am a very f*cked up part of it myself).
The big plot twist here is that I am writing this more like a wake up letter to myself than anything else because I am currently on the 4th day of a productive marathon, and I can tell there’s a lack of harmony going on as even when I am finishing every day satisfied with my results and as tired as one can be, I am still not being able to sleep at night. Instead of relaxing and enjoying the mission accomplished feeling that you’re supposed to get after getting things done, every night I roll in bed already thinking of the things I’m to do the next day. And I am unemployed right now, it’s not as if I had a boss or a deadline or anyone putting that pressure on my shoulders. It’s all me like I mentioned at the beginning, betting against myself. Ignoring all my self-knowledge and betting on “this time it will be different” again.
Well, the existence of this blog depends on it being different this time, so I guess this is goodbye, uh? Once again, just kidding. I really hope I can identify which one of the four listed patterns is going on right now before I blow everything. Or learn about a new one, because apparently there’s no end to finding out more of how little I know about my own messed up brain! I love this little game, and so does my therapist. Stay tuned for more! And if you have any considerations about this matter and feel comfortable sharing it, I look forward to hearing about it.
Three to Thirty 