for the life of me I cant figure why cant pull my shit together. All i have to do is get off my ass and do the work, then I get everything I ever wanted. or at least things will be set in motion. Yes its a shitload of work but Im no stranger to shitloads of work. Ive accomplished almost every goal I ever set but this last one is
too much?
no actually its the easiest. I’m just wiped out. years of being beat down, by others, by myself, by the gods by the demons whatever, years of being beat down have taught me to stay down
but its all mental. physically ive never been in better shape. but mentally i dont have the strength to pick up a cup of coffee. fucksakes. i guess it doesnt matter how finely tuned the engine is, or how short a distance it is to the finish line, if your tank is empty you lose
4 comments
perhaps it isn’t so simple, success is less certain than you make it out to be?
The hardest sell is always the self, if you can sell yourself on something you can sell anyone else. So, as with any sale; find objections, remove objections. If you can’t trust yourself, who can you trust?
I think it is the framing you need to get in place, figure out a sturdy why before the how, as you observed the how is relatively simple. Start working out that mind I suppose, same as one would for a weak body (which is my current predicament.) You’ve got to unlearn bad habits, replace them with better ones.
Most of the struggle of anything is mental, because mental are the puppet strings that move the hands and body.
“The hardest sell is always the self, if you can sell yourself on something you can sell anyone else.”
very insightful… yes I think that’s the root of all my problems. My plan looks great on paper but deep in my mind I know it will eventually fail because it all rests on my ability to keep it up. And my current situation is proof positive that I can’t rely on myself.
But then how can any depressed/suicidal person sell themselves on any plan? We’ve learned how easy (if not inevitable) it is to fall into a depressed paralysis. Dealbreaker every time.
ig that’s why my plan banks on reaching a point of sustainability. For example, if you calculate the amount of money you need to live comfortable off the interest, that would be a sustainable plan that doesn’t require any more effort from you. (btw that’s not my plan, as great as it would be. I have to be realistic)
i dunno. every plan requires some sort of consistent effort or maintenance on my part. And that’s the part I can’t sell myself on. Thus why bother?
well, I sell myself on any plan by assuring that with a bare minimum effort (aka while still depressed and somewhat suicidal) I can achieve the goals. It’s that way with grad school in three months. I’m not invested, the only loss that would come from it not happening is that I would have to invent some new project to justify myself, but I would.
It is my plan to limp along, until either success or failure prove or sink the venture, and then I will manage the aftermath. Two classes are all they’re asking, both remote. You know what’s great about remote classes? Incredibly clear and understandable course plans and syllabi.
So I can sit down at the beginning of the semester and in a few hours calculate what it takes to succeed in these classes. I set it in motion, poof, I’ve done most of the work for the thing. Then, god college is amazing for depressed people, I get to passively enact the plan I worked out early in the semester, tweaking it as needed, but usually coasting to the end of a semester.
I do that five times and I have my master’s degree.
I don’t know what your plan takes to reach that minimum effort threshold, but if you can push through to it, you’ll be set up good.
I have the comfort that my backup plan is the most solid it has ever been. If I fail, or if the school fails me, or the job market, or any other force I’m not yet aware of, I plan to take disability. I’m only fit for such a narrow field of work, and if I can’t do it, I’m done with this silly market.
Then I fix up my house and sell it, move to land I own outright and build a little cabin, some gardens and a workshop, and garden and tinker the rest of my days away. How’s that for sustainable?
But I stay at it, because if I can manage to con a company into paying me huge gobs of money to understand their security system, I can get a bigger plot of land, bigger cabin, and maybe a few vacations. Incentives, they’re what motivation is all about.
It’s a narrow hope, and one that relies on the outside world to behave uncharacteristically rewarding and useful , but this is my minimum effort life. Apart from figuring out the next semester, the next three months are going to be me going to the dog park, swimming, and finding projects for my 3d printer. That, in my life, is as good as it gets.
Find what makes you happy, then find a way to get it without having to depend too much on others, that’s my recipe for a rewarding life. I really like swimming. As in, if I retire I’m going to have to find some way to swim at least three months a year or I’ll go mad. But that’s doable, I know how to build and maintain pools, it’s just a matter of money….. and money is the sticky wicket of the whole thing, because you can’t count on it.
but I think about my own heated pool…. swimming twelve months of the year 4-6 times a week…. I’d do a lot for that. Also a sauna, you go sit in the sauna until you can’t stand it anymore then jump in the cold water…. if there is a better feeling out there I haven’t found it.
That’s the ideal sustainable plan, a plot of land, modest dwelling, gardens to grow your own food. But I suspect that pesky ‘ambition’ thing will come back. I don’t necessarily mean desires for more stuff but more like a fundamental ‘what am I contributing to the universe’ sort of thing. Because ultimately a pointless existence (even a happy one) isn’t going to cut it.
Or will it? That’s the million dollar question. Maybe satiety is enough. A safe place and plenty of yummy food in your gut, is that the antidote for ambition? For some reason that makes me think of Napoleon, arguably the most foolishly ambitious person in history… In the end you know how they got him to shut up and stop causing trouble? They ‘exiled’ him to his own private island, with all the lavish trimmings of the royal court. After that we never heard a peep of dissent out of him.
idk why I suddenly turned cynical there. The truth is I think a quiet self sustaining existence in nature is itself a great ambition, leading to opportunities of intellectual & spiritual development we cant even fathom. But that’s so far from me I can only see it with sour grape colored glasses.
Maybe even the idea of contributing to the universe in a meaningful way is a copout, an impossible goal to set myself up for failure. But some bizarre self-destructive code in my brain chooses that over happiness.
Have you ever seen the old movie Papillon from the 70s? Two guys are imprisoned. One is obsessed with escape and keeps attempting in various painful ways, meanwhile the other tries to make the best of prison life, arguing that that’s the only way to beat ‘the system’. Between this thread and your other one about ambition Im thinking we both could stand to watch that flick and see which character we identify with.