Blog post number 2 of this journey. Like I said last time, I’m going to discuss each of the 6 items on the 31 week journey, why they’re on the list, and why that amount of time. Even if my readers don’t care, it clears the cobwebs out of my own head.
Clean up of my previous motivational attempt: I could just drop it. Erase it all from the roleplaying battlemap I had been using as a lined whiteboard and move on. Two reasons I don’t. The goals on this map are important to me, even though most of them aren’t making it into the first 31 week journey. Also, I am working on building my follow through. I have just dropped things in the past, and I’d like to make conscious and considered decisions about dropping things rather than just failing to follow through.
There are 22 squares in a row on the map, so I was using that as a goal. 22 of X, and I would get the prize. I have 168 left to complete by the end of June. Some of which I know I’m not going to do. I followed a tendency I have to add things to my goals that I’m really not interested in doing but feel that I “ought to”, or making it tougher on myself that I need to. Also, looking through the prizes, I see a glaring problem there. Very few of the prizes are actually incentives. Some are luxury items I don’t actually want but seemed like a good idea at the time. Some are practical items that I hadn’t bought because I have a tendency to be stingy with myself. For example, there is no reason not to buy myself new underwear. Well, no, there is a reason, but it’s an incredibly lousy reason. I “should” be doing laundry more often. If I did laundry “often enough”, then I wouldn’t need to own so many pairs of underwear. Right? Wrong. But knowing something’s wrong and shrugging off the ingrained “we’re too poor”/”you’re not good enough” sentiments are two different things. They’re on the same climb to self-worth and emotional and fiscal freedom, but they’re on different rungs on the ladder.
This is very tough to get rid of. Part of me berates me for no follow through on this. Part of me knows that this was mostly cruel to begin with. Part of me believes that if I just find the right routine – right set of steps – right magical macguffin, I would be able to get my life / house / job / finances in order. It’s ingrained in our society. How many different advertisements have the promise of “if you follow my program, I guarantee you will get X”, whatever magical X they are promising this time around? Or what students are told – sit still, pay attention, get good grades, and you’ll do well, and that’s the only program you can use. The medical profession does it. Follow this diet, get an exercise regimen, take these pills at a prescribed time for a prescribed number of days, and you’ll get your health back. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t. It’s very tempting to believe that if you do things “right”, then you’ll be protected from the black dragon of Failure. But it doesn’t quite work out that way. Not for me.
I could cobble together a routine. I have a routine now – get up at this time, go to work at that time, meet with these friends on these days, and so on and so forth. I could work out something that includes more of what I want done (clean home, healthier me, room to create, and more), but I can’t do it right now. Or rather, I could, but it’d probably fail within the year. And then I could do it again. And that would be fine. I’ll be a different person in a year. I shouldn’t hold to old routines when new ones make more sense. And I’ve done that in the past. But I can’t do it right now. There are things in my way right now, and that’s part of what this 31 weeks is about.
3 weeks is through the end of June, and that seemed like a nice round amount of time. In this case, 3 is not a magic number (Schoolhouse Rock reference).
I’m going to take this month to clear out some of the past both physically and in my head, leaving me free to focus on the rest of my journey.
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