I will not be derailed

[wayfaringwordhack]

 After doing a great job meeting all my art goals, I had a rough beginning to this week, starting with a stomach bug and um, all that ensues.  This is exactly the sort of thing that comes along and totally knocks me off track when I set myself a certain goal.*  When one has work or school, say--some outside entity holding one responsible for work accomplished--it is easy (easier) to look at what needs to be done and get back to doing it.  I always lack that with my personal goals. 

Now that I am better, I am going to dust myself off and get back at it.  I think that "Ok, what did I miss and what do I need to make up?" has been missing from these derailing incidents in the past.  Not the looking at it and seeing what needs to be done,** but the attitude of "outside entity" and treating my projects with the same respect I would treat a friend's or employer's projects.


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* I have been doing stuff but not the stuff I said I would do, thereby assuaging any feelings of failure.  This might read like I am coming down hard on myself, but that is not what I am getting at.  I am trying to understand the psychology of how I drift away from doing the thing I said I would do; how it is that one day I look up and say, "Hey, wasn't I supposed to be doing X?  Whatever happened to Y intention?"

** I almost always look and often feel overwhelmed by a sense of "being too far behind," whereas what I want to cultivate is the idea that accountability to and respect for myself is valid and deserves my follow-through.

Comments

[asakiyume]

I feel like it's also worth considering the purpose of self-discipline and whether the discipline you're trying to enforce is doing the thing you want it to do. With outside obligations, there are plenty of ways people have of putting pressure on you (plus you putting pressure on yourself)--which makes for pressure in your life, you know? So when it comes to your own goals, I feel like adding pressure is only worth it if the pressure is going to help you accomplish a thing and *not* having the pressure means you risk failing to accomplish it.

I also feel like *failure* is a pretty heavy word to use when--as I understand it--what you're working at is building skills. If you miss a day or two because you are sick, does that mean failure? That seems super harsh. ... And in life, if you have 7 obligations and only 6 units of energy instead of your usual 7, because you are sick, then something does have to give, you know?

I feel like I have already banged my head against this same wall countless times :P

[wayfaringwordhack]

Yes, I get where you are coming from. Ever since moving to Mayotte and having J's happy blessing to write full-time, I have noticed that my squirrel brain* gets easily sidetracked into pursuing knowledge rather than creative output. When I am not accountable to someone, I lack the discipline to see something through, and that irritates me. Supremely. But obviously not enough to Consistently Do Something About It.

What, then, is the problem if I have the time and desire to do something but don't do it?** I like creating--I want to create--so this isn't a question of outside expectation. [Frex, J never, ever puts any pressure on me to show something for all the time I spend "creating."] It may not be fair, but I think the variables of kids, health, and time (and international moves?) should be set aside in the examination of this question because I did not always have all those things/issues demanding my attention; and they don't always come into play at the same time even now. Therefore, I think it DOES come down to needing the pressure on some level to buckle down and DO in view of turning out *specific things,* specific things being physical manifestations of the things I build in my mind (stories, paintings...).

My time is precious but I treat it like it's not. If I was putting money into a class, for example, I know I would treat that investment as something to value and, therefore, respect. If time is money, I should also be valuing my minutes and hours, right? The other block is probably my critical view to my own output. Please reference the email we shared about my photo of Sprout. Oh, those expectations are high. Anyhow, all this shows me I continue to live in my headspace about the issues; and what I seek to do, which you pointed out in your comment, is to continue to approach it as skills acquisition.

Which leads me to the "failure" bit. :P In a nutshell, I could have worded that better. I don't feel like a failure. :) Instead, I mean to say "failure to follow through," not "I am a failure for not following through."

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*Or to a more positive spin on Squirrel Brain: my insatiable desire to know All the Things about All the Things and be able to talk intelligently about things that matter to me

** This applies to anything, like exercise, language study,...

Re: I feel like I have already banged my head against this same wall countless times :P

[asakiyume]

I'm nodding hard, because this makes total sense and is recognizable--especially the part you say about "If I were putting money into a class..."

I sometimes feel that permission to write without constraints is almost a curse! At least, I know a friend whose parents told her that she could live rent free with them and just write... and it gave her a huge case of writer's block and a sense of guilt. And I know I write more consistently and dedicatedly when I'm fitting it in around other necessary tasks--and when I have time wide open, yeah: it tends to slip through my fingers. So I do hear you on that, and I think it's a hard one to solve. "My time is precious but I treat it like it's not." How to solve that? I mean it's almost the sort of thing where if you could put money aside--as if for a lesson--and then not put it back into the family budget until you'd done the things you wanted to do... but if you're like me, that wouldn't work because you couldn't be fooled by that: setting aside money that really you can just grab again is NOT the same as paying money to someone else. So I don't know :(

And I'm glad it was just a matter of phrasing about failure <3

Oh, drat you, not trickable Brain!

[wayfaringwordhack]

... but if you're like me, that wouldn't work because you couldn't be fooled by that: setting aside money that really you can just grab again is NOT the same as paying money to someone else.

Exactly! No form of "tricking" myself has ever worked. :P