Observations On Motivation, and a Milestone or Two. · 8:44pm Jun 15th, 2019
So, I don’t usually do this sort of blog anymore, for a variety of reasons, but recent events have been somewhat… exceptional, let’s say, and what follows may be helpful to people other than myself, so here goes.
As you may have gleaned from some of my previous blogs, I’ve had issues with motivation. Specifically, I could not picture myself as happy anymore: I could form the picture in my mind of having accomplished my goals, and it did nothing. It still felt empty, it still felt hollow. You may have noticed these themes sneaking into stories, too, but it’s only the past two or three weeks that I’ve really managed to explore it and put names to faces. I decided to go on and off of some of my ‘junk food’ habits: going into chatrooms, constantly refreshing this site to check responses to my posts, spending ages on YouTube videos I’m not even that interested in… I cut off social contact where I could, left groups, started treating YouTube like the pointless timesink it was. I got stuff done, to an extent, but it felt draining and meaningless.
I did work through it, though. I started watching some gameplay videos of WoW Classic, more MtG videos, and my mind filled in the blanks. Wouldn’t it be awesome to play this or craft that, or make this deck with those cards? That leads to other problems, though: it’s hollow things that are catching my interest.
To put it in nutritional terms: I lost my appetite, started actively looking at things to get my appetite going again, but I could only seem to bring myself to eat less than healthy food.
So right now I’m kind of neutral towards things. I spent the week ‘fasting’, going into a light monk mode (the internet term for these sorts of activities) and I managed to make progress. Thing is, it’s not progress where I really want it. I still have lots of things to do, I’m still procrastinating watching shows I actually want to watch… it’s not a fun feeling when your entertainment feels like a chore. Gaming is kind of a middle ground there. Thea: the Awakening has been my most recent killgrief, highly recommend it for a dose of strategy and lore. Binged on YouTube today, going to try and get some serious work done tomorrow, shutting off from the negatives again to roll on for another week.
Anyway, here’s my findings so far: scrapping negative behaviours can be as powerful, if not more so, than actively pursuing positive behaviours, but they don’t always mesh together, and they aren’t appropriate in the same situations. If you feel like you’re not getting the things done you need to do, focus on eliminating the negative first. Even if you end up replacing one negative behaviour for another (in my case: browsing Imgur instead of YouTube), you still free up a lot of time and your mind starts associating those timeslots with productivity. If you can be faced with an empty timesink behaviour and tell yourself “I don’t feel like doing this,” you’ll find something else to do, usually something better by default. But that may deaden you inside a little, at least temporarily.
If you’re not getting the motivation to do what you want to do, your entertainment seems… well, unentertaining, then actively pursue the positive, in the sense that you should try and consume media that fires you up. Find music you enjoy, watch tutorials and/gameplay videos of stuff that looks interesting. You want something that gets you hungry for the real thing, basically. I’ve only found this to work for activities that involve me doing things, though, mainly writing. If anyone has advice on how to fix a lack of hunger for passive entertainment, feel free to comment below. I imagine it’d be a mix of the two, or to simply keep working until you’re so tired you need to watch your show to relax. Thing is, I’ve done the latter, and it still didn’t work. Who knows, maybe I’m just approaching spiritual Enlightenment, and all these bad vibes are just little changes in my chakras or whatnot. Avatar Cracker’s got a nice ring to it, no?
Short ramble done. I have two milestones coming up, incidentally. Three, actually, but the third one’s of no concern to pony fiction. I’ll be turning 32 in July, that’s one. I didn’t put up much of an announcement for that last year because, as it turns out, a fairly famous person I admire shares the same birthday with me. Or shared, I should say. TotalBiscuit was three years older than me, and he was, well, Total freaking Biscuit. I’ll be two years younger than he was when he died. As egocentric as it is, it’s hard to shake the sense of inadequacy there. Second milestone is in my word count: I’m fast approaching 1 million words of ‘serious’ fanfic. I’m told once you’re past the first million words of junk, you’re ready to write for realsies. Here’s hoping. I don’t intend to make the last 20k words of my million be pony-related, though, I’ll be trying to hit that off the Niko fanfic I mentioned earlier.
Beyond that, who knows. I’ve made a lot of plans I’ve had to cancel in the past, no sense in getting anyone’s hopes up prematurely. Refer to recent posts for the planning, there’s not been any change there yet.
Cracker out.
I’m in a same boat as you are because I’m also experiencing lack of motivation for myself and other stuff. To be honest, your words about how you feeling is almost the exact thing I’m also feeling.
I know that it may look like my comment looks like one of those sob story but no, it’s actually what I am currently.
For you though, I’m trying to work on a business idea but like you I can’t have enough motivation for it. Fun fact:it has lasted months and still currently still affects me today.
All I could say to you know is
“Good luck”
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I think I know the vibe you're describing. You don't so much have an emotional negative response, but a lack of any emotional response at all. I have the motivation issue for a long-term novel project, too, it's exactly the same, from the sounds of it.
On the upside, that makes it feel like a practical problem that just needs to be thought out and rationalised to solve. Best of luck to you, as well. If I find a nice and functional way to get around the problem or solve it, I'll be sure to post an update.