I’m tired of making excuses, but I don’t know how to stop.
Okay, so this is the metaphor: the slats are all excuses and the water below is my psyche. As soon as I even begin to consider doing something remotely creative, the slats just slap the water one right after the other just slap slap slap. Poor water.
I have a lot of ideas. I don’t act on pretty much any of them these days. Once upon a time, I’d bang out a first draft or at the very least do some sort of sketching it out in my journal, but now…
Now, I think up a project and then… I groan. Because I don’t feel as though I have the time or energy required.
You see, I’ve learned that any idea I have is going to be a much bigger time and energy investment than I initially think, and because I’m now aware of that, I don’t even start. Because is this idea really good enough to be worth that investment? Probably not. This, understandably, has had a freezing effect: I start hardly any projects, but I hardly continue ongoing ones either because this thinking has poisoned my brain so much that before I sit down for Writing Time, all I can think of is all the time and energy I have left to put in until it’s done and… I impede myself.
I’m tired of this cycle, but I don’t know how to get out. I want to both be able to make stuff with a quick turnaround, but I also want to put out high quality or lengthier works and those two things seem incompatible. So I freeze, do next to nothing, and am fully aware of the irony that I’m not using what little “time and energy” I say I have well at all.
This all boils down to one thing: I’m just coming up with reasons not to do stuff. Not to do creative stuff, nor to do healthy stuff, nor to do improvement stuff, nor to do career stuff, nor to do life stuff, nor to do helpful stuff. I’ve been getting by doing what I “need to” and no more.
I have so many excuses that all wind up with me staying at a consistent level of mediocrity. I could start listing them all, but I’m sick to death of them. Be content with knowing my excuse list is as verdant, lush, and robust as a rainforest.
Full of life my excuses may be, but they make me feel like this.
Wait, you mean I need to change myself? But change is so haaarrrrd
Moreover, I keep finding excuses not to change the behaviors that aren’t serving me. Part of it is because I’ve convinced myself I’m “just being realistic,” but a more fundamental dilemma is that I seem to have internalized that I will never be able to make myself change.
I feel like I’m stuck like this. That I’ll be this way forever.
Which is a problem, to say the least.
Perhaps I finally need to see about getting a proper diagnosis for something mental-related, giving me at least a clearer way of navigating through whatever this malaise is. Maybe not though. I need to adopt a new mindset very badly. Perhaps the way to do that is through medication. Perhaps I don’t need it.
The mindset I need to adopt, first and foremost, is that change in myself is possible.
And already here come the excuses: Adopting such a mindset makes me feel like I’m bullshitting myself and when I feel like I’m bullshitting myself I immediately give up.
So what if I’m bullshitting myself? If it works, who cares? So what if “fake it ‘til you make it” has never seemed to work for you — is there a better way of framing it so it does?
I want to be better. I don’t know how to be better. But I keep using that “I don’t know” as an excuse not to investigate the matter further. “I don’t know how, so I can’t do it.” I’m a huge proponent of saying “I don’t know” instead of claiming to know things, but in this case, the “I don’t know” is proving detrimental. It’s a wall I use.
I want to change. I’m not sure how. But I need to very badly if I’m to make progress in my life.