Every day I try my best to dream tomorrow makes it better. // Then I wake up to the cold reality that not a thing has changed. // But it will happen. // Gonna let it happen.
Paramore, Last Hope
A bit of an extension from last week, keyed off as I end a weekend with not one but two Christmas celebrations. The perpetual treadmill has been turned up of late, it seems, and I’m finding that I’ve been loathe to keep up the pace. It’s a frustrating feeling, but that frustration isn’t borne from the failures themselves. No, it comes from the fact that I know I could succeed if I had better discipline, and the fact that I’ve complained about this exact fact more than a handful of times here alone.
I woke up this morning with an idea worming its way into the back of my mind. December’s a shitshow, it said. Look at all these parties we have, all the travel, the extra meals, the desserts, the time spent doing anything and everything but writing – wouldn’t it be easier to just toss out those goals we set at the start of the month? Take a month off, let what happens happen, and pick back up January 1st with a fresh view?
It’s a persuasive little worm, I must say. And, like all truly persuasive things, it has its hooks in the truth. December is, to put it lightly, a struggle. For all the reasons in the paragraph above and then some. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted to give into that. Forget the writing. Forget the food tracking, the intermittent fasting, the new workout plan. Get up a little later, go to work, get home and veg out with the family. Be comfortable. Complacent. What’s the worst that could happen?
Inertia, for starters. Inertia would ground me. I’m already feeling its sedentary nature in my evenings, and while some people might be fine with that as part of their daily routine, it’s steadily driving me crazy. I look over my days and find barely any progress on any of the things I’ve wanted done. Instead, there’s waste. Watching mindless YouTube content, repeating the same mundane chores day in and day out instead of making the household work together to get things done quicker. Easy things that I can pretend are advancing goals instead of putting in the hard work to truly push them forward. The longer these things go on, the harder it is to break from them and get to what I want to be. What I need to be.
Too much talk, not enough action.
And so, naturally, I had to say no to that little worm. Not that it sent it away, not fully, but that no was enough. Enough to get my head on straight and to realize that I am, in fact, in this doldrum. Enough to realize that worm wasn’t something that came out of the blue. It was the natural result of this slowly building inertia that I’ve managed to cultivate without realizing. Now that I see it – now that I understand – I can begin to fight it again. To work on myself and my environment. To build what will make me better, both for my own goals and for my family.
Once I publish this personal attack on myself, I’m going to take a bit to build a list of what my primary struggles are, how they show themselves, and what I’ll need to do to deal with them. I’m the type that breaks before bending, in that I can put up a good fight against something for a long time, but the moment I let myself fall off the wagon a little bit I go all the way. That’s why I’ll skip donut day at work for a couple of months and then have five on the same day. Knowing that about myself is a step in the right direction, but despite what the Joes say, knowing is much less than half the battle. Knowing is easy. Doing something about it is what counts. And not just doing something once – setting up a lifestyle that does something forever.
So begins the never ending journey of discipline and asceticism.
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