I made a mistake. I was actually feeling really good about getting done with the day around 11:15 pm but then I dawdled. I dawdled and I checked my phone and then I started reading stuff on twitter. And now it’s 11:45. This isn’t a great feeling. I wanted to explore a bit when I’m at peace. I don’t want to fall into the trap of revenge bedtime procrastination. The only way I would be able to sleep on time is when I find enough time in the day to be able to feel “satisfied”. And that’ll come from being able to do a little bit of things that make me happy and give me personal satisfaction.
It’s good that I know this and I see this. It’s good that I recognize this feeling that arises whenever I dawdle and scroll for too long. At least I think it’s good.
I want to get a little better at valuing my time. Earlier I was pushing back against this a bit. Because I thought I don’t want to be overly attached to my goals and desires. But now I feel like there can be a compromise. I’m sure it’s possible to have goals and desires and yet be non-attached to them? I know this is a pretty ideal state to be in, so I’m not taking it lightly.
I was also questioning where the need to value my time was coming from. I know now that it’s coming from a recognition of unfulfilled wants and desires. One of the reasons I was fighting so hard against my day job was that I felt like it was leaving me with no time for all my other pursuits. Of course, the anxiety and stress was real too, but maybe it doesn’t have to be a wild change. I see what’s happening, I’m trying to find a compromise. I’m trying to see if valuing my time (and eventually managing it better) will help me be more satisfied.
Whenever I think about creative pursuits, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs comes to mind. I keep thinking about how I’m often sad and/or dissatisfied because I keep trying to fulfill the (self-actualization, esteem) needs even without fully fulfilling my (physiological, safety and belongingness) needs. Why are the bottom three rungs so boring to look at or think about? Maybe because I haven’t solved them. Maybe because they’re supposedly easy and I keep failing at them. We keep trying to hack at happiness.
But then I also remember seeing a few posts about how Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is flawed. I also dislike research so I don’t think I’m going to look this up, though I do feel like it would be interesting to. (Well, note to self.)
I’m very glad that I’m not consuming mindlessly a lot these days. It’s nice. I think I’m not as addicted to scrolling and content anymore.
How do you set boundaries with your parents? I really love them and I genuinely like spending time with them, but I can’t figure a good way to seek and take their support without also inviting “parenting” in. I don’t want to be parented anymore, I just want some support. It’s a fine line. I’ve already had a couple of really tense arguments with my mother, and she’s barely been here two whole days. I remember it’d been the same way with my sister when she’d come to stay with me for a month around a year ago. But I remember making a shared document of working styles and communicating styles which had actually worked pretty well for us. Maybe I can do something similar this time too.
It’s already 12:30 am and I really wanna be in bed by 12:50 am. Can I try writing 400 more words in 20 minutes? I mean if I really just want to ramble on I probably could. What stops me generally is wanting to write something of relevance, something of value, something that ties in well with whatever I’ve written so far. Even though I’ve (way too) often told myself I don’t need to be worrying about all of that. I suppose there’s a part of me that thinks unabashed writing is lazy writing. And honestly, it probably is. But it’s probably better than no writing. Doing this day in and day out. This is the primary reason I really like my music teacher. She keeps asking me to sing and keeps reminding me how singing wrong notes is better than singing no notes. She gets it, she gets me, and she really “attacks” the biggest and the most primary fear in me. The fear of being bad.
I’m happy to have some of these structures in place. I think I do need to take some time out to set up a few more of these. I probably need monthly check-ins for admin tasks, large cleanup tasks, decluttering tasks. I know that getting these things done feels really good and yet I don’t do them enough. I think there’s something about batch processing not done right that just ends up being worse than the unideal alternative of stream processing.
I think at some point, somehow, I had just accepted batch processing to be the superior option for most tasks. This is especially true for chores. I would often skip daily chores and let them be a “weekend problem”. But when the weekend would come around I would often not feel like getting them done, sometimes just whimsically, and sometimes because it would feel more mammoth. So then I unconsciously shifted to stream processing for “all tasks”. Which then ended up crowding my daily life way too much. So now I gotta do an intentional evaluation of the treatment different kinds of tasks deserve.
Well, I’m kinda done. So it turns out I’ve started valuing my time again. I think it’s a good direction to be headed in. This doesn’t mean I would want to be crazy about saving time all the time and not be okay with wasting it once in a while, but in general, I would probably want to be at least a little aware of it. I still have 4 minutes to 1:00 am so I’d say not too bad. *pats self*
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