Thursday, October 10, 2013

Procrastination and Self Destruction

I struggle with two things as of late. Really. Only two things. (I'm being sarcastic), the two things I notice lately are procrastination and self destruction.

I procrastinate like it's my job. And it's probably what I've been used to doing for the past, oh, I dunno, 10 years. While I smoked weed, my daily motivation was to get high. Work until after lunch, and you can smoke a joint. Do all the work you need to get done and you can get drunk as shit tonight as a reward. Even then, probably due to the distraction that marijauna came with, I didn't do everything in a timely fashion. Hell, I procrastinated writing this little "blog" post, if I even make it public.

But I knew that I should write about it - because if I did, I could get a better grasp on what is making me procrastinate in the first place. But it's taken me until 11:11 pm tonight to get around to it. And there are a lot of really good reasons for it - the kids distract, I had real paid work to get done, I went out for a friends birthday party. And what's funny, that I jsut realized from writing, is that procrastination leads to more self destruction. But more on self destruction later.

I will wait days, weeks, MONTHS even to complete a job that takes an hour, or even half a hour. Take burning these DVDs and putting them in the mail. I promised I would do it 2 weeks ago - but didn't do it until today. And it took an hour tops. I didn't even have to go to the post office, which was my main deterrent in motivation. Another client wanted a collage, something I promised almost a month ago, and it took me a whole 20 minutes to make, upload, and e-mail to her. WTF?

Here I am, running my own business, wanting to be successful, wanting to make clients happy, but there's some deficiency in me that makes me procrastinate which I know, is hurting me slowly but surely. I don't get it. Other people do ANYTHING and EVERYTHING in their power, in a timely and orderly fashion, and they are more successful. I know what it takes - I just don't do it.

Which leads me to being self destructive. For the longest time I smoked and drank like a chimney fish. After I quit smoking weed and drinking I still decided to smoke cigarettes. It's only now, tonight, that I feel I am not as self destructive as I once was. I haven't had a cigarette in ... well, long enough that I can't recall off the top of my head when I had one, but no more than a week. I still have destructive tendencies abundant. I will play video games until 2 in the morning when I know my children are going to wake me up at 6:45. I will eat shitty, greasy food and drink dark soda when I know that shit isn't going to make me feel good or help me live a long and healthy life. I procrastinate, which is a form of self destructiveness when you get down to it. It hurts my business, which hurts my career, which hurts my attitude, which affects my children and my wife. WHY? Why do I continue to self destruct?

Since the absence of weed and alcohol, I do feel less self destructive. And after running 11 days in a row, starting push ups and crunches tonight, I'm feeling better about the path I'm taking.

I want to live a long and prosperous life. I want to be around for my grandkids, and not attached to a breathing machine for a decade. I don't want to get cancer, I don't want to be out of shape or unhealthy. I want to have money for retirement and save money for my kid's education. I know these things. So why is it so hard to do the things that help me achieve my goals? When did the switch get switched to "Self Destruct"? It's time to turn it back to "Create" and "Prosper".

Part of me used to think it was the 'artist'. For whatever reason I thought artists needed to have self inflicted pain in order for their art to be "good". I dunno where that came from...

That's all I got.