Tag: distractions

098b – denial, dreams, distractions

Some days are better than others. Today for example I made a commitment to face an unhealthy habit I’ve been running away from for too long. I crossed off more tasks than I added to my very long backlog of tasks, I did vocals practice and funnily enough, also got sufficient sleep (something I hadn’t really been able to over the past week). 

I imagine these word-vomits aren’t of much use to anyone else, and I know I’ve mentioned this probably a hundred times here now. However, very recently I got something nice from a word-vomit, ie writing that I actually liked and found more satisfactory in terms of content and quality, and that I was also able to flesh out into a longer post of sorts. Something I’d happily want to share with a broader public too. 

Trying to be better at combating denial. Denial keeps me so stuck sometimes, I lose out on days and weeks. Also trying to get more in touch with whether my goals and dreams are important, and if so, how much. I feel like the last month or so has been a bit of “ah, we’ll see, we’ll figure it out” and that’s a fine response to the anxiety of it all but I don’t want it to become an excuse to not do the things that I care about. 

I think, if I decide that my goals and dreams ARE important, I will definitely have to narrow focus a bit. Even though last week I did acknowledge that narrowing focus makes me a bit anxious, I do think it might be important. And of course, narrowing focus doesn’t mean I would need to cut down on the other things completely! I can just know what takes higher priority. So, yeah, maybe I do a prioritisation exercise again. 

Man, absolutely detest it when I get distracted from a post and pick up my phone in the middle of distraction. I really want these takes to be as one-take as possible because otherwise I feel like I don’t really uncover anything. I feel like scrolling and social media and my smartphone is definitely a very harmful distractor. It really just hits a reset button on the journey that is inner exploration. It’s like you have to start again, start from the top, swim all the way back into the ocean again. You’re just left making small talk and repetitive analogies for a whole paragraph.

Struggling a bit with the whole situation of being interrupted in conversation. I’m finding that I do get affected quite a bit when I’m interrupted, but I’m also finding that I haven’t fully owned how much I don’t like it. Would like to explore this in therapy for sure. There are a couple more things I’m struggling with. Again, not something I can explore by myself but writing it here allows me to remember it. 

Apologies, dear readers, hopefully the vagueness can be excused. 

Alright, that’s the most focus I can muster up today, I think. Happy last week of April! xx v

023b – frustration over the lack of time is generally about something else

Turns out there are limits to introspection. They’re not as straightforward as “I’m done now, I have nothing more to think about”, but more of a gradual decrease in the number of times you get triggered into introspective loops, daily, weekly, and so on.

Since I was mostly doing personal writing so far, my posting frequency has drastically decreased. I feel emptier now, in good ways though. It’s good for me generally, but not great for this “numbers goal” I had. I might have to consider sitting down to write even when thoughts aren’t coming up naturally. This means there’s going to be deliberate effort needed now. And we all know how bad most of us are at keeping things up when they get even a little tough.  

I’ve been watching a lot of Netflix for the last couple weeks. I don’t think I watched a super unhealthy amount, but I do feel some sort of negative feelings around it, which could be worth paying attention to. The good thing is, the show I was watching is over, so I don’t have anything great (or bingeworthy) queued up for the next few weeks. 

I think every time I feel frustrated about not being able to meet my writing goals, I think about time-management and end up on the “how do I make time for everything that I want to do?” question. But I think the truth is I’m not frustrated with the apparent lack of time, the frustration is simply about not having anything to write when I do actually sit down to do it. It’s a frustration about being distracted, about thinking of Y and Z while doing X. 

I think the frustration is also about not getting enough engagement on the things I’m posting lately. Be it blog posts or song covers. Although I’m aware that I’ve been putting in less effort in “sharing stuff” and engagement is only in limited ways a reflection of the quality of my work, it’s still generally nice to keep getting engagement on it. Even though it might not be enough to create motivation when it doesn’t exist, I think it can keep the flame burning, so to speak.

I’ve been thinking about whether I feel ready for “society” in the post-pandemic world. There’s still a decent amount of time to go before I absolutely have to start working from office, but even then, it’s something that’s on my mind. I’d be excited to see some people, some old hands, some new ones, but I’m also anxious about some of my old worries that used to come up when I was going in to work everyday.

Lastly, feeling grateful. Grateful that I get to do this. A weird random thought about how I probably wouldn’t be able to carry on a lot of the things if I had kids and/or dependents? Not sure whether it’s true but feels like it.

Sometimes I feel like reducing my minimum required words to 500 from 1000 is a little hacky. Since some of the interesting stuff is only uncovered much later into a 1000-word post. I feel like 500 words come around even with some of the surface-level stuff, and it allows me to exit before I can get to the juicy stuff. But I’ll think more about this later. Adios!