Workloads

"The ego could be defined simply in this way: a dysfunctional relationship with the present moment. It is at this moment that you can decide what kind of relationship you want to have with the present moment."

"The present moment is inseparable from life, so you are really deciding what kind of a relationship you want to have with life. Once you have decided you want the present moment to be your friend, it is up to you to make the first move....But that one decision you have to make again and again--until it becomes natural to live in such a way."

"The stronger the ego, the more time takes over your life. Almost every thought you think is then concerned with past or future, and your sense of self depends on the past for your identity and on the future for its fulfillment. Fear, anxiety, guilt, anger are the dysfunctions of the time-bound state of consciousness."

It would do me good to just keep typing those things until they really sink in, but no one wants to read them twenty times. I find myself fighting again and again with the present moment. I'm always scared it's not going to fulfill me--that it's not going to be good enough, productive enough, fun enough, stimulating enough, as if Life itself exists just to please me and validate me. I have always imagined myself to be a happy person, but the more I become aware of myself, the more I see this part of me that constantly looks to be anxious and fearful--like I'm scared I won't handle my life unless I'm in a state of fear that I use to motivate all of my actions.

While I was getting myself ready to take a walk with Leif the other day, I was thinking about my workload and what I needed to do to be ready for the next day, week, couple of weeks. It struck me that I was waiting (procrastinating) until I was mad at myself to buckle down and attack my work.

This is kind of difficult to explain: I told Leif this when we were almost finished with the walk, and it took a few tries, and then he said it sounded like a pretty big realization, and why hadn't I told him earlier? I realized that anytime I have a big load of work to do over a long period of time that I never choose to break it up and do it in small portions, which would be the least stressful, healthiest way to approach it. And I've never been able to figure out exactly why I do this. I've been trying this method on these research papers (final drafts), and I've had some success, but what was supposed to be ten per day turned into ten per week.

So what I'm really doing (unbeknownst to myself) is waiting until the last minute so that I become mad at myself and "punish" myself with the workload. It felt really sick to admit this, but there it is! I view my work as punishment, apparently, so I wait until I feel I deserve it. So right now I'm in the stage of "it's not time to be punished yet."

Therefore: if I view all tedious work as punishment, then this means I'm walking around with a sense of entitlement, thinking I'm not really supposed to be doing tedious work in my life--like I deserve better than that in my life because what...I'm smart? Less smart people deserve this kind of work?

Now, it looks like I'm being really hard on myself, but ironically, this has been a very freeing thing for me to realize. It means that it's okay that I have a lot of work to do and it doesn't mean I have a crappy life--everyone has a lot of work to do, and doing it is part of personal growth and really just part of being useful to the people around you and doing some good. And thinking that I deserve to not be doing it is just...inaccurate. And mopey.

Even after writing all of this, I really don't want to do the thing I'm about to do: ride my bike to Perks and grade papers and finish planning my unit for as long as it takes. I really really don't want to do it, but I'm going to do it anyway.

Ulgh, but I really don't want to.