Going to do a deep dive into tricky territory tonight.

For reasons I don’t want to go into, there are currently things I should be doing.

Because I should be doing them, I have been avoiding them. I was “supposed” to do them this afternoon but ended up alternating between sleep and video games just like I normally do instead.

I told myself I was too sleepy and incoherent to do the things, and that’s true up to a point, but past that point it is total bullshit.

I could have gotten up, walked around a bit, got some hydration, and done all kinds of other things to wake myself up.

Or barring that, I could have just thrown myself into my tasks in the hope that doing them would wake me up enough to get them done.

But I didn’t do that. I did what I normally do because that was what was easier : repeating routine like a robot in a rut.

And the day ain’t over. I still can do the things. All I have to do is override that insane voice in me that will insist it is “too late now” (why?) and that I will “totally do it tomorrow afternoon”, even though I know that is bullshit because tomorrow afternoon will be pretty much exactly the same as today.

Later is not actually better. In fact, it is usually worse. Its only virtue is not being now, and unless you are willing to admit to yourself that you are never going to do the thing, you have to agree that doing it now is better because then it will be done and you can stop worrying about it, and won’t that feel good?

It’s not like you will feel any more like doing it later. You will, in fact, feel exactly the same about it because nothing has changed.

The task hasn’t changed. You haven’t changed. So unless you can imagine a scenario in which you totally feel like doing the thing, putting it off until later is just another way of lying your way into being a total loser.

And that’s my worry about myself. I know that to overcome my loser-ness, I need to stop pretending like I can have a happy life without effort, courage, or pain. I need to accept the basic truth that life is suffering and you can’t get anywhere in life without facing the facts and doing something about them.

I have bullshitted myself into my current unhappy life and I am damned sick of it. At some point down the line, I learned to make excuses instead of changes, and doing that is more or less the definition of loserdom.

And I am not a loser. I am a strong, capable, competent man who deserves a lot better out of life than what he has gotten so far, and who is perfectly capable of straightening himself out and going after what he wants.

I’ve just got to rid myself of some bad habits first.

It’s all about your response to challenge. Winners respond to life challenges by increasing their commitment to overcoming them – the challenge stimulates them into overcoming it and they get ahead in life.

Losers respond to challenge by withdrawing their commitment to the situation and attacking the problem with excuses and evasions instead.

If your first response to life challenges is to complain about how unfair it all is, congratulations, you are a loser.

If you can think of a dozen reasons not to do things and no reasons to do them, guess what, you are a loser.

And if your first response to someone trying to help you do the things you keep saying you want to do is to, in a panic, shoot down all their offers of assistance with excuses as to how it would never work or why you can’t do it, A LOSER IS YOU.

Sorry if tht seems harsh to you. But ask yourself this : why do these ideas upset you so much? If you think them wrong, then what’s there to be upset about?

But if you think I might be right – ask yourself how much you are willing to sacrifice in order to crawl back into that hole you’ve been hiding in and go back to pretending it’s the fundamental unfairness of the world to blame.

Then ask how much you have already sacrificed to that goal.

Does it still seem like it’s worth it?

Back to first-person me. All that macho talk does a lot to make me feel better about myself – sometimes the only way to get the stern talking-to you need is to give it to yourself in the second person.

But what am I going to do about it?

The million dollar ticket for me is to separate my motivation from my tendency to put pressure on myself.

Right now, there’s a strong self-destructive pathway that, the moment my back is turned, transforms my excitement about doing something directly into a feeling of scary pressure that makes me highly avoidant of the thing I was just happy to be doing. 

It’s a sickening kind of emotional alchemy and quite frankly, I have had it with it.

The only solution I can think of is to steer directly into the heart of the pressure. That will shatter its hold on me by proving that I don’t have to do what my fears tell me.

They don’t know what the fuck they are talking about anyway.

So here’s the deal : when I am done here, I will lie down like I always do after blogging. It gives my brain a chance to recharge after the discharge that is writing.

And then I am going to get up and do my things. That’s a promise.

And the old me can recoil in horror and try to flee the intensity of the moment and pull all its old tricks, and it won’t make a bit of difference.

Because that’s not the real me. The real me is strong, and capable, and competent, and has everything he needs in order to get what he wants out of the world.

Because not only is he strong, capable, and competent.

He’s also fucking amazing.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow,.