(2014-dec-14)<\/p>\n
I spent a long time today lying on my sofa, looking out at the sky outside my window. I found it to be very calming. Lately I\u2019ve been feeling like everything is too chaotic, too noisy. I was starting to get really anxious and stressed, and I was feeling like I was constantly falling behind everything, constantly lagging, constantly playing catch-up, never quite able to keep all of my balloons and plates in the air.<\/p>\n
I revisited Guruka Singh, whose happy, jolly face is still pleasant to encounter- but I don\u2019t know, it wasn\u2019t entirely what I needed. I revisited Jon Kabat-Zinn, watched a couple of his videos and I found myself thinking yes, I need to revisit this. I need to meditate. I need to calm down. All this anxiety and flitting around wasn\u2019t helping me to get anything done. I was just kicking up a dust cloud, running from point A to point B, panicking\u2026 like a person freaking out because they\u2019re late (I do that a lot).<\/p>\n
I\u2019m really fucking tired of freaking out all the fucking time. I cannot sustain this, and so I need a pretty significant lifestyle change. It can\u2019t be a one-off thing. I managed to quit smoking, cool. I\u2019ve reached 200 word vomits, cool. But I\u2019ve done all of this- and everything I\u2019ve done- has been in this state of constant fear, constant panic, and as I get more responsibilities, as I become more accountable for things, random improvisation doesn\u2019t help anymore. I can\u2019t just coast along anymore. I\u2019ve always known this to be true, just as I\u2019ve always known that smoking was bad for me. I\u2019ve been writing about how maybe-i-oughts meditate for a long time. I\u2019ve been writing about how I ought to drink more water, how I ought to exercise. I keep reminding myself of these things. I keep forgetting. A part of it might be ADHD or whatever, sure, and as long as I persist I do trust that I\u2019ll eventually figure stuff out.<\/p>\n
So I\u2019m here again, at this funny observer\/participant crossroads where- yeah I know that I\u2019ll make it as long as I don\u2019t quit, but that part of not-quitting means fixing things along the way so that you don\u2019t fail, so that you don\u2019t die. (I mean \u2018die\u2019 in a video game sense, I\u2019m not suicidal or anything. I recognise that life can and will get better if you let it, and that in some sense I\u2019m really just beating myself up over a whole lot of nothing.)<\/p>\n
I KNOW that I will find peace. I KNOW that it is entirely up to me, and that it\u2019s inside me. I have made the decision. I made it weakly a while ago, and now I\u2019m making the affirmation. I\u2019m revisiting it. I\u2019m becoming the kind of person who insists that shit gets done. The saboteur will die a slow, painful death just as the smoker did.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m reminded of how I used to play Simcity (I\u2019ve written about this before) and how I used to play Grand Theft Auto (I haven\u2019t written about this, I think.) Let\u2019s talk about the GTA example. When you first start a game of GTA2- (GTA3 and Vice City and the rest have better onboarding, I believe), you just start out with this guy in the middle of a city- in front of a city block- and you\u2019re free to wander off punching people, stealing cars, driving around, getting in trouble. There are actually quests that you can do, but it didn\u2019t occur to my young child-self then that that was an option. I didn\u2019t pay attention to the instructions, I didn\u2019t know what the arrows were. I thought GTA was just about stealing cars and running over people, which seemed fun. For a while. Eventually you get the police chasing you, and you have this fun little chase sequence for a while, but then they overwhelm you and you die. And then you start the whole thing all over again. That cycle gets boring (just as Simcity gets boring when you build too many roads without doing any zoning and then you have too many maintenance fees that you can\u2019t pay, and so your budget goes into deficit and then they fire you for being a shitty mayor.)<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been living my life kind of like that, I think. Running around randomly in GTA, or building too many roads in SimCity without doing any zoning. In both cases, running around IS fun, and building roads IS fun- but that\u2019s not all there is. You need to do the quests. You need to build the actual city. Those are the bits where the real challenge is. Those are the actual main quests that challenge you to grow and develop your skills, and they rewards you disproportionately for it, too. What I\u2019ve been doing is sort of running around in free roam forever and then wonder why I don\u2019t have any money, or why I don\u2019t seem to be getting any stronger, and why my in-game experience starts getting so shitty.<\/p>\n
I need to focus. I need to prioritise. I have limited time and limited energy, so I can\u2019t afford to dawdle around on free-roam and hope that everything just works out. Because I know that doesn\u2019t work. I\u2019ve done it long enough to know that it doesn\u2019t work. I\u2019ve faced the undesirable outcomes in many different forms, enough to know that it doesn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n
If I want to learn and grow and challenge myself, focus is the only way. The free-roaming bit and the random road building stuff is only afforded when I get the cool stuff done. And the huge side-benefit is that free-roaming becomes a lot more fun when you do the fucking quests. (The quests give you respect from the gangs, legitimacy, currency, and they walk you through the things you need to do to evade the cops, etc\u2026 all in all making the experience a whole lot more sustainable.)<\/p>\n
Ok bye. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(2014-dec-14) I spent a long time today lying on my sofa, looking out at the sky outside my window. I found it to be very calming. Lately I\u2019ve been feeling like everything is too chaotic, too noisy. I was starting to get really anxious and stressed, and I was feeling… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[65,32,62,303],"class_list":["post-8934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-word-vomit","tag-focus","tag-games","tag-mindfulness","tag-next-steps"],"yoast_head":"\n