Tuesday, September 28, 2010

6th Month Update: Out of Control Still?

It has been 6 months since my 41st birthday so I am halfway through my allotted time for this project.

In that time, I've written frequently about my desired changes and the difficulties in achieving them, but I feel like I've made little progress. Sometimes I feel like I've written more about them than I've done. Other times I remember all of the organizational work I did, the major events we worked on, and the small successes along the way. I'm not sure whether I am proud of myself or ashamed.

It's been a running theme in my blog, I find, to chastise myself for all I haven't been doing. I've spent the past two weeks planning on cleaning up the house, and instead it has gotten messier. I have allowed chores to pile up. I don't even have a good excuse for a lot of it, other than depression and stress (which are exactly the sort of thing I'm supposed to be working against with my projects).

Habits are a hard thing to change and I have a lot of bad habits. I'm addicted to being online, which is why writing in this blog is the one major success I've managed to be fairly consistent through this time. Since most of my other projects involved being offline, they've been spottier in execution. I'll go along fine for awhile but then a project will come up and I'll get busy, and the next thing I know I'm spending way too much time online and not using the time I have wisely.

I've gotten so bad, I've canceled my idea of having a monthly theme because I never seemed to do them. Instead I've been concentrating on one idea: Doing the Work. That's right, I'm not very successful about staying focused and actually finishing my work.

For next month, I will work on this even harder. I'm halfway through the year, and I would like to have more to show for it. Here's hoping that my journey will improve.

How about you? If you are on your own journey of self-improvement, what has been the most difficult and what tips do you have for solving these sorts of problems?

3 comments:

  1. What exactly are you trying to accomplish anyways? Is doing volunteer work really helping towards that goal? Maybe you don't feel like you've got a lot done because you don't have a clear-cut destination. "The answers to life" is a vague thing to aim for.

    ReplyDelete
  2. There is some truth in what you say, Starshard0.

    My goals for this project:

    Find a career where I will be happy in my job (I graduated with my Ph.D. feeling a bit down about my field, only to discover there were no jobs there anyways--and then was hired in a job I hated but needed for a paycheck)

    Get organized (life has been a mess and so is my house)

    Finish projects I start (I have a been habit of starting things but not finishing)

    Write my novel

    Try new things to help me decide who I really want to be "when I grow up" (hence the 41 Things List meant to expand my experiences)

    ReplyDelete
  3. My volunteer work, just to clarify, is supposed to be helping me find a job I like--by letting me build a portfolio and resume and helping me to expand my experiences.

    I like the volunteer work, mostly, although there have been some hassles with some of the people, and I do think it might be taking up too much time.

    ReplyDelete

Please be kind in your comments.