Build a Bridge. . .
There is nothing worse than having the best of intentions and not getting anywhere. Old habits haunt. They stick around like horrible temptations, telling me that “It’s been over a week since you have done something, just give up already.”
The procrastination bug is real. It’s insidious and seeps in when you don’t expect it. For me, it takes a few days of inactivity to kick in but once its there it becomes a mammoth task to start again. I was just today likening it to physiotherapy after an injury. If you keep up your prescribed exercises you get into the rhythm, they become easier and easier to do even through the original pain. If you slack off and miss a few days (or weeks) it becomes so much harder as you need to build up that strength again. I have loved what I have done this month, the trip to Melbourne, the trip to Adelaide, but both have taken me out of my habit. I would not trade the adventures; I just would love to have figured out how to be active with my goals while on adventures, so I don’t lose momentum. There is another whole week one coming up in March.
But that’s the thing about habits – you must keep at them. Thankfully, it isn’t like how I used to think – work on your daily habit streak, and if you break it then you have wasted all that effort. No, it’s more like you are building a bridge, and even time you do (or don’t do) a task/habit, you are placing a plank on the bridge. Some days you are adding planks to the bridge marked “new habit”, some days you might place a plank on the old bridge marked “habit you are trying to break”. The good thing about this is that just because you may have placed a plank on the old bridge does not take planks away from the new. The more you manage to lay on the new bridge, the stronger it becomes and the easier it becomes to walk across that and get to where you want to go.
I know I am in a bit of a slump lately. My mood hasn’t been great, been struggling a bit with my black dogs barking in the distance. I have been really struggling with inspiration for even simple tasks I enjoy. Just this past week, we were tasked with an assignment to replicate photojournalism, the area of photography I keep claiming to be aiming towards. The photos I took were stock, and basic and I knew they were simple box tickers. And I know that it’s OK to be like that occasionally, it’s just not feeling very occasional lately.
I have questioned why I am doing this. If it is to inspire others, then I really should work for ‘others’ to read this. If it is for me, then the low-grade stress it’s causing of constant deadlines and tasks isn’t the most helpful. I realised it’s for my future self. It’s for the me I am when I am not in this mood. It’s for the me that chose this in the beginning and told myself its for my own good. That me, the one who knew, could see that I would feel like this and made allowances for it. But that me also knows when I can get off my bum and get some planks laid on this bridge, I will enjoy it again.
It is too easy to give up when one no longer feels like doing a task (and I set myself six!). I am pretty good at doing that. Giving up is a bridge I am familiar with, and I don’t enjoy what’s on the other side. Too many broken dreams that won’t ever be rebuilt. So I need to continue to build this new bridge, the one where I don’t give up. I haven’t made it across yet to the other side but it looks like a place I want to be.
As the saying goes, I need to “build a bridge and get over it”.
THE RUNDOWN
Art – Tried two pictures today, both were horrible, and the colour bled everywhere, just a mess. (11/100)
Writing – Novel: 1139 Blog: 14,814
Cooking – Has anyone out there struggled as much as I to make chocolate chip cookies? Been meaning to for a week! It feels like it’d be the easiest thing to be motivated by (19/285)
Music – Yay! At least something I can say I did! May have ended with me crashing out of every piece I tried as I was not making it into the zone where everything sounds nice but at least I did it! (8/100)
Photography – This is an area that has been suffering too. Has been about 3 weeks of challenges that I have missed.
Craft – (12/100)