Cerulean Mornings

Yeah, so I did pretty well yesterday. Kept up all my goals. And then I woke up this morning with a colossal stomach ache. I think I had a massive hemorrhoid or something, but it felt like constant cramping every time I move. No good! Funnily I'm passing poop fine. I think I must have strained something in my sleep and, yeah, am in pain and just want to stay in bed and not do anything all day.

Also the reason why I kind of went on reddit against my better judgment and now it's super late in the day, but you know what, I'm going to keep on working. It's not like I have anywhere else to be, right? So might as well just put in the hours. Pretend it's like hours getting billed. I clock in, I get 'paid.' Lots of people would love to be able to sit down when they're feeling bad and on the clock right? So I'm not even feeling that bad, just very crampy. I have no excuse.

Anyway, maybe I'll actually make this into a thing on here, checking in every day for work? Just for Camp NaNo month, though. Keeps me motivated. (And of course now I've kind of set this into a goal I'm immediately not motivated and don't want to do this anymore lol). Perhaps in May I'll actually schedule a normal day off or something. Anyway, this is more or less a pep talk for myself as I don't feel well and I still have to make myself work. I will NOT be exercising today, though, thank you very much. Ain't gonna push myself physically too. 

My therapist told me that I need to stick to a schedule. Right, that has never quite worked out for me. So I've decided that I'll make some adjustments. Instead of blocking out certain time of day - start working at 1 pm, stop working at 5 pm etc. - I'm going to be flexible with time but not time duration. So start half an hour after eating lunch, whenever that is, and then set timers for an hour, or half an hour, and dedicate whatever I need to do to that block. If I feel like this would take two hours, I'll block out two hours. If it takes 15 min I'll block out 20, etc. Cumulatively I'm aiming for 4 or more hours for work-related things every day. (Workday, I'm still having trouble taking full day breaks, but my s.o. is trying to get me to adopt that attitude. Try being the word here.) I seem to top out around 3 and a half, though, so I'm not quite happy there, yet. A work in progress.

I think I'm going to start the day with an hour blocked out for whatever I need to do BEFORE I write. I find myself usually unable to concentrate when I first sit down, at least not enough to write on the novel or whatever else. So I do my bullet journal, write blogs, check tumblr, plan things, all that. The point is that I'm in front of the computer and NOT browsing social media or playing video games, and that's enough for me to get my mind set for the next hour. And then I'm going to do 30 min intervals with short 5 min breaks in between to get the actual writing going. I think the major thing is that once that first hour timer passes I stop. No matter what I was doing, I stop and then go on to actual work. Otherwise I'd just mess around and then of course, nothing will ever get done and the day's wasted. 

And really, seriously, I need to stay off all social media. Especially reddit. Every day that I didn't I do less work. It's so bad and predictable. But I fall for it anyway. I really, really, really need to stop doing it.

I'm trying something new today. Possibly extending this to the rest of the week, but we'll see after my psychologist session on Wednesday. Anyway, what I'm trying now is to simply cut back on distractions so I can work. Yes, that's all  I want to accomplish, isn't it? Just to do work. I've been trying meditation and it's working okay, I guess? I've also been not going on social media before 5 pm, and that has been working, I think. I didn't really adhere to that rule yesterday and was super stressed by the end of the day. Still got work done, but not optimal. I need to persevere.

So I've decided that yes, I will continue to cut out social media, possibly for good. (Social media only, not news articles. I still need factual things to keep up with the severity of the pandemic, but I don't need people's doomsday or ignorant opinions on the facts, thank you very much.) I will still read the few happy blogs I follow, will still do fun fandom things, and all that. Just, basically no reddit, not too much Kotaku, things like that. I don't think they bring joy to my life. Along with that I will also cut down on the amount of mobile games I play. I basically play them because 1, I'm a gamer, and 2, it's a nice distraction and makes me feel like I'm progressing in something in life. I mean why are there homeless and jobless WoW players who have like all the best gear? It's the only thing they have in their life and it fills in a hole. I don't think my slew of mobile games fill a hole, per se, but it does keep me entertained so I don't have to think about the difficult things in life, like my novel and how much stress it brings. But I've noticed that the gaming is taking up a lot of my time, and also if I'm going to spend time playing games I should be playing some good, narrative-focused games I have on my computer (yeah...my Steam collection is insane....). I should be reading books (argh!) instead of consuming literal Skinner boxes. (Thank goodness I don't have a gambling personality, so I don't spend hundreds of dollars a month on gachapons at least.) So I'm cutting down my mobile gaming to a couple of essential gamified health trackers and two leisure ones. One is a cat cafe - too cute, and another is a game I've been playing since October of last year, so, kind of a sunk cost kind of thing, but I like it, so that one also stays.

The point is, my social media habits combined with my gaming habits are giving me way too many opportunities to ignore my work. My fearful mind is constantly going 'no no, you don't want to open you word document, you want to browse r/redditlaqueristas' or 'just two more rounds and then you'll work' and then like two hours pass. So, yeah, no, we're not going to be distracted any longer. I've got a lot of work to do, and I need to do them. Now.