Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Repetitiveness and Redundancy



More and more, I'm starting to get the sense that this is the thing that needs to be chopped out of my routine, with regards to my latest set of goals. I'm supposed to be exercising, mediating, and writing every day. Mediating is arguably the most important, since it's probably the most transformative of the three, and certainly the most helpful at helping me solve what's become the central problem of my life: stress. Exercising is important because I've let my weight get to a point where I'm unhealthy, and that is wreaking havoc on both my self-esteem and my joints.

And, let me get be straight about this, writing is important, too. It's all about starting to deal with a lot of things that have been festering for me for a long time, as well as focusing my goals and priorities, and helping to straighten out my head space. Plus, as I think I've mentioned in previous posts, it comes naturally to me, and puts me, at least occasional into a state of flow- a state of activity which is a perfect balance between challenge and ease-- which is probably as beneficial as mediation, in a lot of ways.

The thing of it is, this doing it once a day for thirty days thing? Fairly arbitrary. I do need to get back into the habit of using writing to work out my thoughts, concerns, and emotions. It's a very important part of the way I learned to cope, in the hardest parts of my life, and I feel like things have gotten so dark for me in the past few years because I abandoned it.

But, on a night like tonight, where I just want to go to sleep, and I end up staying up later than I mean to, either to write, or because I'm stressed about having to write and avoiding it? I just spent 30 minutes I could have been sleeping discussing with Dan how having to do these three things every day is overwhelming me. The reason I spent that time? Essentially because I'm an adult version of my teenage self, and I was avoiding my homework. Being this. This right here.

But I'm not quitting yet. Of the three goals, this is the only one that has an expiration date. 21 more daily posts after this one and I'm off the hook. I can take newly limbered-up linguistic skills out of boot camp mode and use them to write when I happen upon something worth writing about. I hope it's still, at least, two or three times a week. But it should be happening when I feel like it.

I'm proud of myself for the overall quality of these posts, despite being out of practice, but given how few people will read them, they're probably not as important, write now, as the quality of my sleep. When they help me to stumble upon some realization, well, so much the better, that's a big part of what I'm doing this for. But I need to stop writing long posts like this just to "do my homework" when I could be using that time better to get ready for the next day.

And so, with that, I'm off. This whole thing feels repetitive, anyway. I bet I was complaining about it yesterday, too.

Yep. Look at that. Not a carbon copy, exactly. But certainly not worth anyone else's time to read both of them. Since it wasn't worth my time to write both of them.

Sorry for cheating you out of the last several minutes.

Day 9. On with it.