There's a pretty long list of things I have trouble motivating myself to do, ranging from big things like "quit smoking" to more rudimentary, incredibly simple tasks like "throw out used cotton balls instead of leaving them on the counter". I'm an expert at the "I could [x]... but then again, I'm already not [x] or haven't [x] in a long time so why bother" line of thinking, which is probably one of the most sinister and quietly destructive ways of living if you intend to grow as a person and lead the life you actually want.
Like I said, the list of possible values for [x] is lengthy and varied, but there's a few that stand out. One of them, until recently, was "look for an agent" which I'll address in a later post - suffice it to say, for now, that it was worth getting off my ass and sending my portfolio out.
Two of the things that I'm really bad at both starting to do and following through with are blogging (ref. the fact that this is my first post in, what, three months?) and working out (ref. my entire life, my body, my self-image). And yesterday, I decided to combine them in an experiment I'm calling:
Thirty Days of Take That Fat!
I will be doing Joey Bothwell's Take That Fat! workout and stretch video every day for a whole month. I will be blogging, vlogging, and slogging through it, regardless of muscle pain, hangovers, early work days, burnout, apathy and self-consciousness. I don't own a scale but I'll be recording my progress in terms of three measurements (stomach, upper arm, thigh) and general reflections on how difficult the video is and how I feel afterwards.
For more information on Joey Bothwell and her workout video (I'll write about how I came to know her, and it, later on as well), visit her website.
And now, to shower! For I am sweaty and sore.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Resolution: Update Ever
We'll see how that goes.
The thing I hate most about moving is the lifting things. The thing I hate second most is the packing things. But the thing I hate THIRD most is the settling-in period. Not unpacking or setting up, no, I actually kind of love those, where you get to reinvent your relationship to the space you live in, maybe this time I'll make my bedroom more of a boudoir, what if I am in fact the person who has a beanbag chair and a shelf dedicated entirely to incense, etc. I like that, and I like that when I'm finished my apartment is literally the cleanest and most organized it will ever be again.
What I don't like is the recovery period from the trauma of moving. There's a part of me that so remembers how much it sucked to get my last place from "I live here" to "I don't live here anymore" that it almost doesn't seem worth it to live anywhere else again. The more I settle in, the harder it will be to clear out, and I'm not quite adjusted to the idea that I might live in a place indefinitely. Moving into a place reminds me that eventually I will move out of said place, and there's always a scabbing-over period where I need to do something extra to really convince myself that really settling in, letting the wound of moving heal properly, makes more sense than remaining in a state of mid-unpackedness for the rest of my life.
Usually I cope with this by buying furniture. Man, I love old cheap furniture. And I love that I'm still of the mindset where, if a piece of furniture does a thing successfully (holds books/tchotchkes/my ass comfortably and without collapsing), I could give exactly 10% of a shit how it looks or how it coordinates with the other things I own. Ratty black vanity that has teeny drawers and "needs a good sanding"? Gimme. Steamer trunk with the latch broken? WANT.
Only! I don't have a job yet! Which is the other worst kind of limbo, because I have money right now, but I can't predict when I will next have money coming in (aside from my security deposit from my last place, which I'm getting back entirely and will more than cover what I shelled out in the move/cleaning process, boo yaaaaah) so every single purchase has to be assessed not only in terms of "Do I need" and "Can I afford" but "Can I do without until". And that's not even counting the rather... comprehensive amount of debt I'm currently in ($15k to the government, $25k to a bank, $10k to my parents, fuck me). Not to mention the expenses and emotional expenditures associated with getting acting work - my headshots will cost some money (the shots themselves are paid for but there's a bunch of satellite expenses like make-up artist, a proper haircut, hidden costs for prints, etc), I've got to start choosing which agencies to contact and how, etc. And I keep thinking I should be using this pre-job time to write, to do something productive, so that even if I'm not getting paid I still feel like I'm working.
Basically it is now a race between "getting a job so I can start making my life what I want it to be" and "getting comfortable in my life so I can start getting or making the jobs I want". And for a race, I'm spending an awful lot of it sitting on my couch.
We'll see.
The thing I hate most about moving is the lifting things. The thing I hate second most is the packing things. But the thing I hate THIRD most is the settling-in period. Not unpacking or setting up, no, I actually kind of love those, where you get to reinvent your relationship to the space you live in, maybe this time I'll make my bedroom more of a boudoir, what if I am in fact the person who has a beanbag chair and a shelf dedicated entirely to incense, etc. I like that, and I like that when I'm finished my apartment is literally the cleanest and most organized it will ever be again.
What I don't like is the recovery period from the trauma of moving. There's a part of me that so remembers how much it sucked to get my last place from "I live here" to "I don't live here anymore" that it almost doesn't seem worth it to live anywhere else again. The more I settle in, the harder it will be to clear out, and I'm not quite adjusted to the idea that I might live in a place indefinitely. Moving into a place reminds me that eventually I will move out of said place, and there's always a scabbing-over period where I need to do something extra to really convince myself that really settling in, letting the wound of moving heal properly, makes more sense than remaining in a state of mid-unpackedness for the rest of my life.
Usually I cope with this by buying furniture. Man, I love old cheap furniture. And I love that I'm still of the mindset where, if a piece of furniture does a thing successfully (holds books/tchotchkes/my ass comfortably and without collapsing), I could give exactly 10% of a shit how it looks or how it coordinates with the other things I own. Ratty black vanity that has teeny drawers and "needs a good sanding"? Gimme. Steamer trunk with the latch broken? WANT.
Only! I don't have a job yet! Which is the other worst kind of limbo, because I have money right now, but I can't predict when I will next have money coming in (aside from my security deposit from my last place, which I'm getting back entirely and will more than cover what I shelled out in the move/cleaning process, boo yaaaaah) so every single purchase has to be assessed not only in terms of "Do I need" and "Can I afford" but "Can I do without until". And that's not even counting the rather... comprehensive amount of debt I'm currently in ($15k to the government, $25k to a bank, $10k to my parents, fuck me). Not to mention the expenses and emotional expenditures associated with getting acting work - my headshots will cost some money (the shots themselves are paid for but there's a bunch of satellite expenses like make-up artist, a proper haircut, hidden costs for prints, etc), I've got to start choosing which agencies to contact and how, etc. And I keep thinking I should be using this pre-job time to write, to do something productive, so that even if I'm not getting paid I still feel like I'm working.
Basically it is now a race between "getting a job so I can start making my life what I want it to be" and "getting comfortable in my life so I can start getting or making the jobs I want". And for a race, I'm spending an awful lot of it sitting on my couch.
We'll see.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)