Yow...

[liralen]

.. it always amazes me when people just DECIDE stuff and get going on doing things. I don't know why. I guess I have spent most of my life procrastinating so much that it seems weird to have personalities that don't even have that kind of indecisive inaction on their radar.

I mean, it makes *sense* to just go ahead and try stuff. Really. If it fails, then you know that, and can make decisions based on that. If it succeeds, then you're a step closer to where you dreamed you'd be. I hate having the kind of personality that wallows in the 'What if it fails?!?!'

It was really funny having someone tell me, in an email, that I wasn't perfect. I mean, "DUH!" I've spent my whole life knowing just how fucked up, flawed, and failed I am, and it's not like it's news or something constructive to say or something that would actually help me do any better or feel good about trying. It just slapped me in the face for trying and failing. That's what I SO do not want for Jet.

I think that's why I love John so much. He never does that. He also just goes out and tries things, and doesn't give a shit if he looks stupid, fails, or whatever. Kind of like Jet falling into the pool, it was just something that happened and things go on, no yelling at him for fucking up, no trying to put fear into him, no making him ashamed of not knowing the consequences, no making him feel bad for having an accident, just deal with it and believe that Jet'll make the decisions that make sense to him in the future. It seems so simple. I don't understand why so many, many, many people, including me, make everything so hard, ugly, painful, and fraught with fear.

So it is. I keep trying to get better at that, and I'll never be perfect, but that's part of the game.

I guess it really plays into my understanding of gung-fu. Where the action, the practice itself is the thing. There is no perfection that one can just hit and be done, though there is an ideal to aim for, it's the motion, the action, the doing itself that's the important thing, not the comparison. A Way, a journey, not just an end-place. Maybe it's just the means being the end, rather than the end justifying all means.

Comments

[agrimony.livejournal.com]

I would say something supportive and clever that wrapped it all up in a neat bundle and explained everything and made it instantly overcome-able...

... but I'll put it off until later.

*hughugs* I'm right there with you on the procrastination front. I hate that I will sit here and know that I should do something and berate myself for not doing and yet continue to put it off.

[liralen.livejournal.com]

*hughugs*!

Yeah, you got it, exactly.

So I wrote to the boss of the possibility, and he came back with a list of what the next steps likely are, including him talking to his uberboss to talk to my uberboss (three levels above me) about resource management stuff. So he's doing that. I'm all scared and weirded out by it just happening the minute I decided to say that I was interested. It's a good weirded out, but it's still weirded out. *grin*

*hugs* So the hugs helped more than you thought they would. *grin*

thanks!!

[flit.livejournal.com]

*hug*

I'd say something pithy about procrastination but I think I'm going to have to put it off.

*grin*

It occurred to me, though, that John is the human closest to Moose I've ever met. He's cheerful, unafraid, and very natural. He's a big happy dog! Okay, he doesn't steal food, but the similarities are still striking.

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Yeah! Just like Fezzik, too.

It's not worrying. Dogs can worry, if there's something that's proven, in the past, to be a bad thing. On the most part, though, they don't make up things to be worried about. They don't imagine 'worst case scenerios' or stuff like that. It's just not in their nature.

Or John's for that matter, though he is good about taking into account past experiences when planning for stuff.

[kjc007.livejournal.com]

Hiya,

One thing that I've learned recently is how to handle things when I feel overwhelmed and want to put things off. It's all about how to break down the problem into what's wrong and why (instead of letting things go to crisis and then shift into CRISIS-MODE! where I can handle ANYTHING).

An example - last week I was feeling overwhelmed and didn't want to do ANYTHING. I found myself indulging that feeling and just generally feeling ooky, so I stopped letting myself feel helpless and looked at what was on my MUST DO list that might be causing the trouble. I found 3 things - updating my insurance with the pharmacy, renewing prescriptions with my doctor's office, and doing laundry. They were effectively blocking the rest of the TO DO list and exacerbating my normal procrastination habits.

Then I looked at each thing, trying to figure out whether there were dependencies (one thing must occur before another), particular fears or phobias that were being triggered, problems that I had no easy solutions for - so my brain was shying away from them, or just straight up laziness.

Updating my insurance with the pharmacy meant dealing with strangers, which always frightens me. And it had to happen before I could renew my prescriptions. Renewing my prescriptions meant dealing with my doctor's passive-aggressive nurse and then going BACK to the pharmacy, and dealing with strangers. Plus there was how I might have to handle the possibility that my new insurance was going to deny me my pills for whatever reason (they're a very cheap outfit, while some of my pills could be considered optional - and the pills are expensive) which would mean conflict (another fear) and more strangers. Doing laundry meant dealing with our dressing room, which is an unredeemable pigsty, largely due to my many unpacked boxes and badly organized/over-full clothing storage... and I don't know how to fix it.

Breaking down the problems and identifying the things that were specifically frightening me meant I could prepare myself for each issue, deal with it, then move on. I didn't do it all on my own. I IM'd Regis with "I'm feeling really unmotivated to do anything" and bounced thoughts off of her, which had the added bonus of her providing suggestions for our dressing room that allowed me to break through a barrier of "I don't know what to do, I can't figure it out."

But I was able to recognize the feeling and move toward figuring it out and dealing with it.

And as for you being "fucked up, flawed, and failed" well, I'd have to gently disagree. How much of those judgements are things you've internalized because they were pressed upon you by others holding you to their own standards? Standards that are not valid for measuring you? How many of the standards by which you measure yourself are adopted and adapted from baggage that was handed to you?

I could tell you again how beautiful and smart and gifted and kind you are, and it might help for a little while (at least I hope it would, because I truly believe those things about you) but the only thing that will really help is to ease up on yourself. Pull out the scales by which you are measuring your progress and your value and figure this out - where did they come from? Do they really reflect your beliefs?

And finally, anybody who is callow enough to remind you (in a cowardly email no less) that you aren't perfect needs a swift kick in the arse.

*hug*
Kelly J

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Mmmm... great example and questions.

Having wonderful things said by people that I trust always helps. Thank you! But, yes, many of those judgements are baggage that's been heaped upon me by other people.

The whole email thing was very... weird in that it was actually in response to *my* response to being asked why I hate being judged so very much. It just kind of boggled me that after asking that question, he came back with such a complete, meat cleaver-like judgement that just made me want to throttle him. So, yes, the kick in the arse would be deserved for him.

The words are just words taken from other mouths. I still have some part of me that accepts anything that's said about me, first, especially if it's negative, and only, well afterwards, can I work through it and figure out what it is that I actually should accept. That's still hard for me, but I work on it, some of it is by saying it and taking the truth of it but also trying to figure out what my realities are about it.

I have failed in the past. I'm not a *failure* per se. I'm just gradually sliding over to the viewpoint of failures as being a success of trying, at least, in the last decade or so.

I love your examples.

I'm gradually working through my work situation that way. Figuring out what it is that's making me mad about work and what I'm scared of and trying to see what it is that I'm tackling before I try and step into it. It really has helped me to talk over things with John, to figure out what the next steps are or even what makes sense when I've gotten overwhelmed to the point of apathy with a thousand tiny confusions.

When big problems hit, I just deal. It's true. It's the Death of a Thousand Papercuts that I dread. *grin*

The trigger for the entry was getting an almost immediate answer to my email saying that it took me a while, but I'd really be interested in this new, nasty, lovely, complex, user-contact problem. The immediate answer was from an uberboss, and his immediate actions were to be talking to his superiors at the VP level, to get the resource allocations worked out, first, and then for me to talk to his crew to see if I could work with them, and then working things out with my present boss as to how to do a transition plan. All that quick.

I'd been kind of discouraged by my present boss saying that she really thought she could find a job for me that would work for me in my present environment, even after I'd voice my concerns and she hadn't addressed them at all, especially with her new proposals. I want to solve problems, not design features. It's just a very interesting difference for me. AND she'd said that she really didn't want me to go away, either, to this other group in the company. So I felt like I was just stuck. But I did tell her that I was looking at this, so it shouldn't be a surprise to her. But I'd been feeling very much stuck and then got hit with this In Action email that just seemed so different.

It's kind of cool.

Thank you, though, for the thoughtful response. It does help and it's good for me to not be bitter about old baggage that I really don't act on but DO dwell on.