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Dear Dia- er, Confessions Thread: I need to self-evaluate so I'm not sure where this rant is going. I don't even mind if you don't read it, I just need to write this stuff down somewhere so I can understand it better. Anyway, I'm not sure if I've hit a high or low point when it comes to my motivation and self-esteem.
I've realized that a lot of my problems with getting stuff done has to do with fear of failure. I'll get apprehensive about really easy stuff just because I haven't done it before or there's one weird catch to it, and then I never get around to doing it and it all piles up and causes even more problems.
Something that's getting me through this block is just telling myself that it's okay to fail. It's the kind of advice I give out all the time, after all. And a quick look back at the past couple of years shows that I've failed quite a bit, academically at least. My grades aren't nice and shiny like they used to be and I'm having trouble getting into a groove where I can get everything done semi-easily. Now I'm realizing that a huge amount of the stress might've been avoided had I just said "Fuck it, let's get this over with". Even though I put things off to the last second (or later) I still try to make sure they're done right, but I think that it's turned into a fear of not doing it right, which is different. Say I get a project assigned. I might form a couple ideas in my head but I wouldn't know where to start, so I just don't start it, because I am worried that I won't start it correctly, or something. But say I started writing some total crap that I knew I wasn't gonna use, well, at least it counts as starting it and I could go back and fix it later.
This happens all the way down to the smallest level. If I get distracted while working on something, its usually because I've hit a block where I don't know what word to use, or if a sentence will sound right, small stuff like that. Since it's too hard to get the "perfect" solution my brain wanders somewhere else. If I just filled in the blanks with ???? or something I would probably focus better.
Then there's the self-esteem thing. I often think about how much of a loser I am and how often I've screwed up or am terrible at this or that. But, I'm kind of just accepting it now. "Yeah, I suck at school stuff now. Yeah I know I never get out of bed on time, I know I always get to class late or skip or whatever, what of it?" It sounds bad, but thinking like this makes me realize that I am in fact on the bottom, which means every little improvement matters. Before, I was in a state of denial, trying to hold myself up to the standard of "normal people" who always get to class on time and have enough time and energy to study as much as i wanted to. Now, if I see myself on the bottom, I can look around and try to find ways to move up, and even if it doesn't work or if I do a crappy job, it's not like I have anything to lose. I can say "Well lets see...maybe I can get this random thing done" and it feels a little bit better than saying "Oh, I got this random thing done and I have a million more things I have to do". I mean, that's still true and I'll still think about that, but I am trying to push through every one of those apprehensive moments I have when I get stressed and it makes more sense to start from the bottom up than to pretend I'm normally in a good spot that I need to get back to.
TLDR I suck, but I don't even care anymore, it just makes every good thing I do manage to do mean a lot more. Life isn't gonna bog me down much further anyway, might as well take care of whatever I can and take some pride in it.
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