Finding motivation by creating it.
A large collection of books on writing sits on a sagging bookshelf in my disjointed home office. Most of them came from used book fairs. The one I decided to start today was copyrighted the same year I was born. The author discusses tools in the first chapter with a focus on pens and notebooks. When computers are briefly mentioned (following typewriters), the author discusses the novelty of “wrap-around” text. (To be fair, this was a pretty cool advancement in 1986. That first aliens story I started in 1995 was not written in a proper word processing program, and I clearly remember having to hit “return” to move to the next line as though I were using a typewriter.) I hope the remaining sections will be a bit more timeless.
Currently, I’m reading three books. A novel, a book about the French revolution, and a book about writing. This makes me sound like an avid reader, which I like to pretend to be. In truth, I’ve become an avid book collector and television watcher in recent years. I’m surrounded by stacks of unread books, but my laziness is telling me, “Turn on the TV. You can read another night. A couple episodes of Deep Space Nine will help you relax tonight.”
I work, I come home, I watch television, and nothing in my life changes for better or worse. I’m afraid that makes me sound like a depressed loner. I have a pleasant social life, but I am quite introverted. This means, I often “reward” myself for socializing one night by becoming a zombie in front of the television the next night. This leaves little time for things like studying for the CPA exam, exercising, or writing.
I’m overly ambitious when I try to make time for new things. I’ll make a schedule that eliminates all television watching and Facebook scrolling. The schedule presumes I will suddenly be the person who does not snooze the alarm several times each morning. Then I rebel. I begin to snooze the alarm six times each morning instead of three times. I sit and scroll through Facebook and Twitter for hours after work. I spend all morning in bed on the weekends. To remedy this, I designed a new weekly schedule based on the shortcomings of the last one. I’m operating under the assumption that these schedules will work if I can only make the “right” one.
It’s more likely that simply STARTING the things I wish to start will create momentum and get me moving. Tonight, I started studying for the next CPA exam section by watching the introduction video. I wrote this post and read a couple sections of a book on writing. I will go to bed early so I can keep my Sunday morning run momentum alive. It feels like I’m pulling myself out of a rut, but the catalyst certainly wasn’t the colorful schedule taped to my kitchen cabinet.
All I had to do to start was start.