Wake up and do something!

I don't know about you guys but waking up in the morning and making one or two poor decisions can cripple my entire day. Getting out of the wrong side of bed is quite the proper idiom for me personally. Honestly I hate to admit it but at least I understand the truth; because not understanding or being willfully ignorant is so much worse than just accepting the reality of the situation.

When you are willing to analyze toxic patterns in your own behavior that create negative feedback loops there's an opportunity there to create coping mechanisms or otherwise avoid that type of behavior so it does not spiral out of control. This is especially relevant for addictive personalities... which are not so much personality traits but coping mechanisms themselves.

No one just wakes up one day and decides to be an alcoholic. It's a quite slow process. There first has to be some kind of insurmountable problem that never gets fixed in that person's life that requires a coping mechanism of dulled senses. That coping mechanism never goes away because the problem never goes away... until one day the coping mechanism becomes an even bigger problem than the original issue. Addiction is inherently ironic like that.

Structure can break bad habits.

Being required to do something that you might not want to do can increase discipline and often avoid falling back into bad habits that can spiral downward. Personally I hate lists and I despise making plans. Like, I don't need a plan to do laundry or visit a new city; I'll figure it out it's not hard. In fact now that I mention it, traveling to a new place is so low on my list of priorities the only reason why I do it is because someone else wants to, so I'm just tagging along. Maybe I'm telling on myself a bit here. Who knows. It is what it is.

That being said there are plenty of other forms of structure that can bring a certain amount of stability into one's life. When I was working in that Amazon warehouse part-time from 2017 to 2021 it wasn't glamorous in any way but it did have a way of "keeping me honest" and on track. It's hard to fully explain exactly how this was accomplished but it happened regardless of my ability to express it.

Of course a job itself can be the source of an immense amount of stress and seemingly insurmountable problems so that can backfire real quick, especially for those who are working 60+ hours a week with a never-ending overtime workload. Finding a balance can be tricky for some but I'm on the other side of that spectrum so I can hardly relate on a personal level.

Another example... Sportsball

Going way back to year 2000, many are shocked that I was on the high school football team at one point. I mean I wasn't good at it (novice first year) and I didn't take it super seriously and I was basically just there because my friends where doing it, but it is another example of structure making things easier even if the thing is slicing out of huge chunk of time from the day.

I vividly remember that when I was engaged in some kind of activity like a sport it was a lot easier to perform other basic tasks like doing my homework early because there was simply less time in the day to say things like, "Oh well I have enough time I'll just do that later". Procrastination can be a real killer. Just do the thing now if you have the energy to do it. That's what I've learned anyway. Assuming I'll feel up to doing work five hours from now tends to not work out so well for me.

Ironically one of my least favorite subjects in school was writing. Ah English class, the bane of my existence. That and history class... and most of all public speaking. Turns out indoctrination camp has diminishing returns when it comes to taking learning seriously while actually wanting to participate. Math an science where much easier because they were far less subjective. Maybe this is no longer the case considering 2+2 seems to equal 5 nowadays. Gotta add +1 for the vibes.

So what about now?

Well I woke up this morning and realized hell I need to crank out a post immediately before I procrastinate the activity away for another week straight. Looks like I'll finish this one before I usually even start thinking about it. Normally I like to doomscroll social media for a while for inspiration, but that can be a real timesuck. It's all doom and gloom anyway.

Just took another quick peak just now and it's still just littered with "tariffs are dumb and nuking my bags" posts. I guess nobody is bored with that narrative yet except me. The rules for this are pretty clear: wait for some "too big to fail" industry to fail and then turn the money printer on... same story I've been parroting for months now but seems to fall on deaf ears. Nothing has changed... except the price and the sentiment of course.

No more TA for this post!

Gotta stay on topic as it were. Although maybe number go down is the reason why I've been out of sorts lately. Possible I suppose. Worth mentioning briefly I guess. It is obviously stressful to be so heavily involved in an industry that can nuke 90% for like no reason. And the price is one of those things that's beyond anyone's control so we just have to deal with it in our own way... just try to make sure that way isn't toxic sludge I guess. As long as we're not degen gambling on leverage we'll be fine methinks.

In fact I seem to have inadvertently provided an example of exactly what not to do! Now that I've opened up the financial can of worms I have a tendency to keep expanding on that and going way off topic. Interesting how that works out, but this post is coming to a close regardless so I guess I've been saved by the bell as it were.

Conclusion

There was a time in my life where I wouldn't even be awake right now. Luckily the days of going to bed at 4 AM and waking up at noon are behind me. I think the bottom-line lesson to be learned here is being honest with yourself and setting up the dominoes correctly rather than hoping they sort themselves.

For me it's understanding that once my hyperfocus takes over on a certain thing I usually just keep at it for the entire day. And then there was yesterday's post that I wrote after everyone was home from work and my environment became an endless distraction. Personally I require a distraction-free work environment. Knowing yourself is a key feature in maintaining efficiency.

At the risk of saying the most cliché thing ever: stop procrastinating. If you can do something now do it now; don't decide you can do it later... because how often does that actually work out in terms of the reality vs theory game? If a task is too large: divide and conquer it rather than biting off the entire thing at once.

A little trick I've learned is that every time I claim, "I'll do that later," I now also automatically also say to myself, "Either that's getting done now or never." Surprisingly that works for me quite often when I actually remember to do it. The only reason to actually put things off is if the circumstances of that later time are truly more ideal than they are now now. Most of the time this is just a lie we tell ourselves. Avoid at all costs. The world is deceptive enough even without being your own worst enemy.