I found myself today at 9 pm, the very end of a day that was meant to be productive. I last remember waking up 20 minutes before I had to leave for an appointment but then decided to sleep longer so I cancelled it. When I got up around 15 minutes after I was meant to leave, it turns out the next appointment was not for another month and a half from now minimum.
That guilt should have sealed the deal to make me want to be productive. And that's how my morning started off. I studied and took notes for a class and then spent a whole 2 album cycles listening to grouper's Ruins album while I cleaned my studio. I then had a bass lesson for an hour, cooked lunch then quickly went to grab a milkshake, thinking that since my parents are visiting tomorrow that I wouldn't have a chance for a cheat day any longer.
When I got back, I felt the food coma and decided to watch a little Netflix. I found a show I realized I had only watched the first season but since the second season had yet to come out, I forgot about it.
It was here that I binged 10 episodes straight and found myself today at 9 pm. I realized that this was a form of an immersive escapism masquerading as a kind of productivity. This was a backdoor to a previous mental state back in my senior year of high school. And now that I look back, it did feel like it.
I have this bad habit of procrastinating through binging whenever I'm faced with work I don't want to do. I am very willing to throw myself into the subjects I love (philosophy for one). But perhaps that goes without saying. Albeit a truism, I think there's insight into this.
I think the kind of person I am tends to binge when faced with uninteresting work because binging provides that same mental state of productivity without the lackluster unappealingness. While binging, I was actively observing plot and different details, throwing myself into this other reality. And at the end of it I felt drained. If the eye strain is put aside, I still felt mental fatigue– perhaps an indicator of keeping my brain active and working.
Reflecting on the content I've watched, I realize I also tend to feel good and motivated from it and I found that when switching shows, I tend to go for the ones with lots of hardworking experts in their field. I realize I was riding their momentum as a kind of vicarious wish fulfillment.
So I decided to start this blog for myself and perhaps anyone who happens to stumble on this to write about motivations and not momentums. To reflect on what motivates me to be the kinds of role models I identify with.
So without further ado:
I believe I'm motivated by the desire to learn things that don't appear to be outright useful for conversations but indirectly teaching a lot of skills that I find valuable. I want to one day be like those experts I see on shows, despite the debatable other reality or perhaps fictitious fantasy presented for me to believe. But these myths are my culture. I model myself on the kinds of behaviors that provide the best hit of dopamine when I reach those goals. These binging behaviors are only symptomatic misunderstanding of wanting to achieve short term goals and be productive without so much effort jumping over hurdles I dislike.
I need to get into the habit of reflecting on what motivates me and how the things I'm doing help me achieve the goals no matter what kind of momentum I'm on. I can't stay on the aesthetics train for too long and neither can I go for the academic. The proper balance lies in these projects and I think the first project I need to set myself isn't to find productivity but rather to get myself back on track towards a healthy mental state and attitude towards the goals I've set myself up to achieve.
That or I'm just saying this to make myself feel better after a binge. Either way, this is a good step forward because I'm doing something to change this behavior that might have become a bad habit at this point.
