Daily Post: Day 3

Hey readers,

1. I’m cheating and writing this one before the 3rd day, I may post it at 12 to feel like I’m not. BUT SCREW IT MY HOT BLOG I DO WHAT I WANT.

2. After two days of being more productive than I’d been the two weeks prior, the days feels a lot longer. Mostly because when I talk about what I’ve done, I feel compelled to say more than, “um… stuff.”

At the same time, the days now feel much shorter. After a morning workout, organizing a reading of a script, going on a search for more actors, a power nap, some foreign language study, and a little more music making today, I realized two things:

1. That I’m doing so much my body feels the need to power nap.

2. It will take more than just the willingness to do things that will get them done.

As much as I hate to admit it, I may have to plan things.

Planning things for someone like me is a problem. I hate routines. I hate predictability, I abhor time constraints, and my scumbag circadian rhythm likes to wake me up at 3am if I go to bed before midnight. I don’t like to admit it, but the amount of things that I would like to do in a given day are so numerous that they leave me actually feeling overwhelmed if I try to list them. This often leaves me feeling like I just don’t want to do anything because I can’t figure out what to do first. My solution in the past was to just not do anything.

This was not a solution, it was a cop-out. It was fear. And it was goal related fear.

I’m not the type to fear failing. It’s something I do regularly. It’s actually something I embrace because I think it teaches me things eventually, even when I’m not ready to accept that I was wrong right off the bat and try something else. It’s ok to fail and so long as you don’t quit you’re not really a failure. So what am I afraid of?

My own success.

I’m afraid of my own success. I sabotage myself by starting projects and not finishing them. I have a tendency to sink into sadness and retreat from everything I’m working on. My fear is that once I’m successful I won’t be able to ever stop. I’m afraid that if I do, I’ll never be able to start again because I’ll have dropped the ball. My co-workers, friends, family, fans(if I have them) will all be disappointed and I’ll be a bad investment. But that’s not true.

There’s nothing wrong with taking a break and relaxing when things get a little too hard, but you have to do it responsibly.

It’s like when you pick up running. You want to be able to run 10k. You’re doing alright the first week, but you screw up one day and bite off more than you can chew. You realize you can’t meet your distance goal for that day at your current pace. You can slow down to a jog or even a saunter if you still want to make it the whole way. You can turn around and try again the next day. You can even stop where you are for a while until you find the strength to continue. Hell, you can call a buddy to pick you up, sometimes we need help. But you don’t just quit running because you screwed up. You set yourself a goal for a reason. You know you want to achieve this because you cared enough to work towards it in the first place.
I think deep down we all know the difference between when we quit because something isn’t right for us and when we quit because we don’t want to deal with the responsibility of our successes.

Daily Post – The second post is half the battle

The other half the battle was staying awake long enough to post a second time. But actually the second post is technically half the battle until post three… in which it becomes a third-.. Oh God, what have I gotten myself into?

All silliness aside(…but really some silliness) after posting about being a couch potato who accomplished nothing regularly, I bet repeat readers are wondering what I’ve accomplished. I didn’t go running, ate take out, and took a nap in the middle of the day.

BUT!

I am proud of myself because I went out and bought some supplies for language learning and spent the last hour and a half using them. Before that I worked on a small business venture for a friend helping her sort out ideas. I didn’t go for a run, but shortly after this post I think I’ll cram in a few push ups before bed. I touched my guitar and uke, teaching one friend a song and writing a little music for another.

In short, I got off my ass.

In realizing that I’ve been a slave to my own lethargy, I took a few conscious steps towards accomplishing the things I’ve been telling myself I would do by getting up to do a few of them when they struck me.

Guys, I vaccuumed. You don’t know how happy that made my mother. If you’re not sure, the answer is extremely happy. At some point I may take a reference picture for you. It’ll be glorious. She’s a lovely lady.

Anyway, I’m proud of myself because I changed something yesterday. One simple change in the way I decided to think about the value of doing things has laid the groundwork for something even better. And to all of you who subscribed, I want to say, “thanks.” The likes and follows inspired me to write this even more, and I feel like it’s a step in the right direction. Anyone who made it this far, thanks for reading.

Ps. I did the push ups and some abs too.