It’s occurred to me today that I’ve always had this tendency to sort of “fade away” when I am doing anything involving difficulty or effort.
It’s like I can’t even commit to doing things and so before I even actually try to do it, I am halfway out the door already.
This negatively impacts performance.
In other words, it’s why I often do terribly at even the simplest of things. If it’s something even slightly outside my areas of confidence (intellectual, creative, wacky, etc) then when I try to do it, the anxiety immediately kicks in and makes me want to give up and flee and that means I am too scared to really try doing the thing and so I fail.
And when I fail, the sick part of me says, “Phew, thank God that’s over! I feel so much better now! What a relief!”.
So on a primitive level, this goes down in the books not as a failure but as narrowly escaping mortal danger, and I actually feel kind of good about it.
But then reality sets in and I realize that my inability to do even basic things has once more left me embarrassed and humiliated and now I hate myself.
I hate myself SO DAMNED MUCH.
This is why it is far better to stay in the game and get hurt. Life will treat you far more kindly if you are genuinely trying your hardest, even if you fail.
Besides, pain is transitory. It happens then it’s over. It’s not fun but it’s nothing worth fucking up your whole life to avoid.
Adulthood begins when you can choose to do something you know is going to suck because you think the rewards are worth it.
That is more or less how having a job works. Or so I have heard.
So how do I stop this fading away effect? Through getting hurt, I imagine. The more hits you take, the more your deeper mind gets the message that pain is not the worst thing in the world and you will get to know the triumph of knowing what it will cost you and doing the damned thing anyway.
This will be extremely liberating. The tougher and stronger you get, the less scary and dangerous your world becomes. Things that were unthinkable nightmares before will become laughably trivial because you finally have the (real and metaphorical) callouses to endure them with almost no pain at all.
But that means resisting the urge to flee reality when you think something painful is coming. And that is not going to be easy, especially at first.
I know that my instincts are all wrong. Escape is my greatest addiction, the one that underwrites all the others, and fighting that urge is going to be tough.
Kind of makes me want to run and hide, ha ha.
But somewhere in the vast expanse of my wimpiness and cowardice there must be a flaw. A subtle fault in the fabric of it all that I can exploit to create a teeny tiny breach for my latent strength and courage to surge through.
I think the secret is to get mad and stay mad, which is not something I am used to either. But I think that if I can conceive of my struggle for manliness as a way to defy and/or spite something or someone, that would help me stay determined.
I need to tap into all that latent anger more often period. I suppose that means I will have to be willing to become an angrier person, at least for a while, as I do my best ot learn the integrate this new power into my personality.
World domination through bitterness!
More after the break.
Don’t Google Mommy
This is quite witty and fun.
I can relate, although compared to Millennials and beyond, my little trove of perverted things stupidly attached to my real name is quite small.
That’s the benefit of being an Internet pioneer, not a native.
Like, who gives a fuck what anyone posted to UseNet?
A busy day
By my standards, anyhow.
It started at 11 am. That was the time Julian was originally going to drive me to the bank to do my monthly banking.
It still pisses me off that I can’t find a way to spend my money online and have it come directly out of my bank account.
I think in order to get that, I would have to switch banks. VanCity is way behind the times when it comes to this kind of thing.
So, consider my gumption trapped because changing banks is a HUGE hassle.
Anyhow, 11 am comes around, and Julian and I realize that we forgot to wash any clothes for me, so we had to wait on the washing machien et al. and I had therapy between 1 pm and 2 pm, so the trip to the bank had to wait until after that.
Oh well, whatever. I don’t mind change, it’s uncertainty I can’t stand. A switch from 11 am to 2 pm means going from certainty to certainty.
But going from 11 am to “whenever” would be completely unacceptable.
Anyhows, we did the bank run a little after 2. It went quite well. VanCity might he behind the times but I must say they are always super nice and accommodating to me.
People really are extra nice to you if you have a disability. At some point that will stop surprising me, but until then, it’s really quite nice.
I don’t know why I always expect the world to be cruel and callous to me. I guess it’s because that’s what my childhood was like.
Not even my teacher could stand me for very long.
Anyhoo, after the bank we came home and I ordered my groceries. It came to the usual ~$65, and I re-upped on all my little pleasures.
By the time I did that. it was time to eat n’ blog, and after THAT I had to wait for my groceries to arrive between 6 pm and 7 pm, and then it was time to teledine with Joe. Julian, and Felicity at 8 pm, and then it was time to finish blogging.
So really, it’s been a madcap merry-go-round of activity today.
And I feel fine.
I am happiest when I am busy.
So I need to learn to keep myself busy.
And I have a whole lot of anti-action bias to overcome before that.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.