My name's Dave. I'm working on it.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Reset.

Mornings are a crucial time for me.
I woke up around 9 o'clock, as I usually do. My first incoherent thought was: Do I have to work today?
My brain began functioning. No. It's Thursday. No work. Joy. So I allowed myself to drift back to sleep, guilt-free, for another hour.
And that's when things began to turn sinister.
The later I slept, the more I was aware that I should be getting up and getting on with my day. The longer I stayed in bed, the harder it was to get out of it. I am already fucked. Lost before I start. Same as it ever was.
So much of it is arbitrary. I feel that my morning productivity speaks for the whole day; there are others who don't get up 'til noon and have their peak productive hours at night. But whatever your settings read, once you make a misstep, there's always something inside you begging you to make another, then another, and then one more after that, ad infinitum.
It makes me wish we humans had a reset button.
A quick push and the useless thoughts would be gone. I could proceed unencumbered. Ah, wouldn't it be nice?
I know, in my higher mind, that it doesn't matter what the day's been like so far. I still have all day to be productive, live well, etc. But I know, too, that depression is a self-perpetuating entity. Maybe it's just me, but feeling like I've wasted my morning increases the likelihood of wasting the rest of the day a thousandfold.
It's quite mad, really. Nothing is wrong, per se; just the knowledge that I've let the hour and a half I've been up slip away without anything to show for it is enough to irrevocably mar the next 11 hours. All the while, I'm aware that you can spend a good amount of time putting off doing something, but when you finally work up the stomach to take care of it, it takes practically no time. Focused effort is a force to be reckoned with. Yet here I sit, prey to my computer. Instead of making breakfast, putting away laundry, and getting on with things, the internet holds me in its clutches.
As I've no doubt touched on before, this is most common on days when I don't work, with the free hours stretching out before me. We all know the theory of the advantage of working within a schedule. But if I'm getting more done on days I work than on my days off, something's very wrong.

I can't give in. I know that button is there, somewhere.


Ah, there it is.

Push.

1 comment:

  1. Oh geez. I have these thoughts, too. We all have the same amount of hours per day and yet some people are so damn productive. Like Steve Jobs. Or Mozart. Or Liv Tyler's character in Empire Records. I wish I were as prolific as Martha Stewart. (Wait...what?)

    Lindsey gave me some good advice about this. I think it was: Give yourself a friggin break and don't beat yourself up if you just need some time to just sit and stare at the walls.

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