Has this ever happened to you?
You want to do something, and you’re excited for it, and then you don’t do anything about it, and then you feel bad about not doing it.
I’m a bad people watcher, and I think that extends to myself. I’ll navel-gaze with the best of them, but actually looking into my habits, how I act, how I react, what trends I follow, where my time goes and where I wish it went – these are things I don’t look into so much.
I keep saying, “I should do this. I should do that.”
But then I don’t. Follow-through is a huge issue.
Why?
One thing is self-doubt. The “who wants to hear this?” The “this is self-indulgent trash.” The “you should your spend time on things that will make you money, or are more popular, or you’ve been thinking about for longer, or are better for society.”
Another is energy. Art is work, and I work outside of art, as well. Doing more work after you’ve worked a full day is exhausting. It also cuts out time I could be spending on other things I love, like my wonderful partner, and my cat, or my friends, my family, other hobbies, a million different projects.
I waste so much time on unnecessary things – mainly, lately, social media. I spend so much time scrolling on Facebook and Twitter. It’s good to be in the loop, and it’s a nice way to share things about my life, but it all slides so easily into doomscrolling, time wasting, flicking through the same two apps for hours. And the garbage arguments online. It’s not healthy. But I also use social media for work and connection. It’s a hard balance, and so far, I have not found a way to balance it well.
There’s anxiety – both the personal anxiety of “Will people like this? Is it worthwhile? Will it somehow come back on me in a way that hurts other and makes me feel terrible?” And also the general social anxiety of, “Welp, guess the world is ending this century.” What do some funny scrawls or a quick one-liner or a few lines of insight mean in a world where whales are dying because their stomachs are too full of plastic to eat? Making someone laugh seems like a distraction when people are shot by government agents while sleeping in their own homes. There are famines and wars and refugees and there’s so much injustice.
Laughter makes people feel good, but that can be used for bad. Am I raising spirits? Or am I a way for people to neglect real issues, a distraction from important work? We all need a break, but at what point does that devolve into bread and circuses?
And then there’s the hundred other projects I have. Gardening. Comics. Reading. Writing. Stand up. Film. TV. Juggling. I used to juggle all the time, but I haven’t lately. I was going to try to do staff spinning at some point, that would be good exercise. Swimming? I need to get to the gym. Bills. Food. I should cook more. I should clean more. I should vacuum more. I should take a walk. I should put those clothes in the laundry. In the dryer. Put them away in their actual drawers and not just leave them in the basket for weeks. I need to clean my office. I wanted to try sculpting. I want to learn to animate. I want to make animated cut outs. I enrolled in a music making challenge. In a short animation challenge. In a short doc challenge. I want to write one song. I should record this. I should make a music video for it. I should write an album. I need to start setting dates. I want to make a short film. My friends and I should make some shorts. We need to buy some gear. Wait for it to come in. I need to write a script. Edit a script. Book a time to meet up. Edit it. I should learn After Effects. I should do a podcast. I need to research something to do a podcast on. I should watch a show. I should liveblog watching the show. I need to take a hearing test. Maybe I have ADHD? I should take a test. Book an appointment with my doctor. I need to get a pap. I need to get bloodwork done. Do I actually need bloodwork or do I just think I do? I feel productive right now. I should write down what I’m doing that makes me feel productive. I should hang out with that friend I have been meaning to contact for months now. We should Skype or Zoom or Teams or Hangouts or Marco Polo or Messenger or something. God, remember when we were all on video chats dying for a chance at human connection? I didn’t write anything about that time of my life down. I should have written it down. I should have made one of those posts to remember what a weird time we’re living through right now. I need to write more. I should write more. The deadline for that doc challenge is coming up and I haven’t done anything for it. I should do a short in my kitchen. I’ve been neglecting my compost. Do I love the cat enough? Have I seen my family enough? I should write a book. I have so many ideas for books. I should write that book about witches. No, edit the one about superheroes. But that sucked and I didn’t like it. I should do NanNoWriMo again. But I didn’t find it helpful. But I did write, and that’s more than I do now. I should carve out a dedicated time of the day to write. Or do art. Or make a script. Or write a song. Practice with my ukulele. I should learn guitar. I should clean just enough space in my office to make it seem clean and record myself singing a song. I need to eat better. I need to sleep more. I need to wake up earlier. I need to drink less. I need to go shopping, but not on an empty stomach. I need to wash my hands. I need to wash my mask. I need to wash my workplace. I need to eat, it’s 1:35 and I haven’t taken lunch yet. I need to stand up. I should take regular stretch breaks at work.
I wrote this post July 20, 2020 and never published it.
Veronica Dymond 