I feel like I need some new in my life right now, so maybe I don't have to be too sad about OD closing down. Maybe I can take this new place to write as a new space for me to attempt being more goal oriented. More driven. More achieving, and do less procrastinating. I might be kidding myself, but maybe it will help. I can try to make the effort.
I need to do more personal reflection. I don't like how much time I waste, and I think a big part of why it happens so easily is that I don't spend nearly enough time kicking my own ass. Instead, I push the "things I should be doing" list to the back of my mind with the simple phrase "I have time, I can do it later." This, I realize, does not make me special. Plenty of people have issues with motivation. I certainly have known this about myself for a long time.
I do better with groups to motivate me. Partners in crime, or outsiders holding me accountable. This is also not news. I know this, have known this, and will continue knowing this for eternity. But has it become an excuse for how little I accomplish on my own? Have I defaulted to "I can't do anything without someone else pushing me!"?
I have so loved my time here in Japan. There are so many wonderful people here, and good things happening for me. But I have also become so wildly unproductive in my at home time, that it's a little sickening. There is so much I could potentially do with these oodles of time I have been gifted with by the 30 hour work week that I have stumbled upon. But the reality is that I do the bare minimum needed for basic survival. Laundry only happens after it's gotten to the point where I really do have nothing left to wear. My recycling is an absurd mountain in the corner of my kitchen, due to never making a point of tracking the two times a month that it can be taken to the curb. My dishes often sit for a few days until I must wash them or be forced to eat from dirty bowls. These small household things are deeper metaphors for the countless other aspects of my life that really deserve more attention, but are left, piling up, until I am forced into confronting them, at which point they are much more difficult to tackle than they would have been if I had just kept up a steady flow of day to day vigilance.
What the hell, man!? I know that every time I do something so simple as washing a sink full of dishes, or clearing out my piles of laundry, folding and putting them away, I feel so relieved! I know if I were to apply just a little effort to the other things in my backlog, I would also feel some of that heavenly release, and in a bigger way!
WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME? WHY IS IT SO HARD?
It seems like my constant question.
So actually, writing this post right now may look like another form of procrastination, but it's an attempt at the opposite. My creative life (outside of performing a lot of songs I'm already comfortable with and therefore don't have to generate any new creative mojo for) is gasping for breath. I need to make the zines Katie paid good money to send me, and mail them/hand them out to my people! I need to write that effing grant application! I need to play my guitar and learn/write some new songs! I need to paint something! Draw something! Contribute something to the world! And then, of course, there's all the stuff I MUST do in order to make good on this dream in the making of going to Bolivia. Study Spanish. Fudraise the hell out of everything. Troll the internet for more places to apply for grants and sponsorships. WRITE MORE LETTERS.
This entry is the first step. I hope I am able to take another and another from here, and not months from now. More like more steps today, more steps tomorrow, more steps every day.
I kept the name of my old OD because it comes from a quote that is completely fitting here, and it helps me feel like change is possible, even when I feel like a total failure.
"By degrees, little by little, from moment to moment a wise man removes his own impurities, as a smith removes the dross of silver or gold."
--Verse 239, The Dhammapada
Here's hoping.
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