Sometimes I amaze myself with how quickly I get distr
Sorry, I just remembered that I needed to change out my Brita filter. Anyway...
Sometimes I amaze myself with how quickly I get distracted. It seems like every time I settle on some idea as being important and necessary, ten other things I haven't done this week/month/year pop in to my head and demand my immediate time and attention. It's kinda like how I'm bad at grocery shopping: I walk in with this overwhelming sense of determination to get milk and eggs and get the heck out of there as fast as I can, but then half an hour later I'm wandering through the aisles with $90 worth of cinnamon rolls, Pop Tarts, Dr. Pepper and ice cream sandwiches, trying to remember why I came here in the first place and where all this other stuff came from.
I think maybe it's because I'm such a sucker for flashy advertising. I crave to be told what's important. And I love the idea that all I need to do is acquire something to start being happy or quit having a problem, even if it's a problem I only found I had because some commercial told me I did. I think maybe that process has screwed up my ability to prioritize things correctly or hold on to one thought for longer than thirty seconds.
In my last post, I talked about coming up with an instruction manual for how to get out of wherever it is I find myself to be, and I think this is where I'm going to have to start. I think you end up wherever you end up in life because of the desires you choose to follow. And I think there's a super-practical application for that, too.
I was talking to a friend of mine about how Sunday was kind of a rough day for me in terms of feeling anxious and stressed out and wanting to drink, and I told him that there was this point somewhere in the late afternoon where I realized that whatever I spent the next five minutes doing was going to be what I ended up doing for the rest of the night. I ended up leaving for Cliff's house an hour and a half before I needed to, because if I sat around and moped because I was mad and wanted to drink, I wasn't going to do anything else all night long. We talked for a minute about how weird that is, but how true; about all those mornings that we woke up and started drinking or smoking pot before 10 AM, and how the rest of the day was pretty much determined from that point on. We talked about how weird it is to look back on those times and remember how we lied to ourselves, saying we were just relaxing a little bit before the day started, or how we'd get right on that other thing as soon as we were done. And then we'd spend the rest of the day drinking or smoking and be totally wasted by noon. It's stupid, I know... but that's what I used to do.
Change started happening when I ran out of excuses. You go on like that long enough and eventually you realize you've been telling yourself the same things over and over for days and weeks and months on end without anything actually happening. I just kinda came to the place where I couldn't help but admit that smoking weed and drinking were choices that I made, and that every time I made those choices, I was essentially choosing to put my life on pause for one more day. It seems like such a simple thing to talk about now, but I was really messed up back then. My main goal in life was to not have stress or face hardship and the only way you can ever really do that is to just kinda check out on life. But even then it doesn't work, because you get new stresses like "What do I do now that I'm out of weed, but I don't get paid 'til Friday?" and "If I go out drinking tonight, I won't be able to pay rent next week."
And I guess that's where it all comes to a head. Like I said before, you end up wherever you end up in life because of the desires you choose to follow. You basically decide what's the most important thing for you to do or to have and you just set your priorities around that. When it's time to change, though, you have to turn those priorities on their head and develop altogether new ones. And that can be a really difficult thing to do, especially if you've spent the last however long making a mess of everything and killing brain cells. It makes it difficult to know where to start or how to proceed.
But proceed we must. Sometimes I end up caught in a vortex of thoughts and feelings that immobilize me and make me want to stop and sort everything out before I take any action. But I know that doesn't work. You just have to focus on one thing at a time, something immediate and manageable, and just work on that until it's finished. It can feel kind of childish because of how simple it is, but it's really the only thing I know that works. You have to ask yourself "If I could only get one thing done today, what would be the most important thing to do?" and then go do it. If you start to get distracted, put down whatever it is you chased after and go back to what you were doing. Make up your mind early about what "done" looks like so that you know to stop once you get there. Then you can move on to something else and repeat the process.
I think one mistake I've made lately is trying to lean on routine and structure to pull me out of the mess. Don't get me wrong, I think routine and structure are great, but they're great if you've got a good system going. If you're trying to fix or get rid of a bad one, putting new routines in place of the old ones can take away from your ability to clean up the mess. I love riding my bicycle and writing my 'blog and having a smoothie for breakfast, etc. etc. etc. but those things take time and I have other concerns to worry with right now.
I'm going to hold off on riding again until I feel like I can add it back into the mix without taking away from other responsibilities. I know it's good for me and I really want to keep doing it, but I have a hard time limiting myself to a few laps around the block. I want to explore and push myself to go farther than I really have the time for right now.
Don't worry, I'm not giving up the ghost completely... I'm going to continue 'blogging and eating better. But for now, I've got laundry to do and a bathroom to clean. I'll figure out what's next when those are done.
Stay gold, Ponyboy...
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