When I started this blog in 2020, I thought I’d never need a lesson in procrastination since I was heavily enamored by the meritocratic promise that with the sheer combination of effort, brown-switched keycaps, and overpriced coffee, I can be the next Maria Popova.
And now, three years later, I’ve only written my first blog post.
You must think that within those years, I’d had undergone some Bruce Wayne typa training to prepare myself for the war against hostile blinking text cursors and the condescending scowl of a blank page.
But I have not.
Although I could make up stories about that one time my speaker acted up and couldn’t produce the motivational background noise I want to set the mood when I write or that one summer afternoon that was too hot of a day to focus on picking the right synonym for fart, these stories are mere scapegoats of the slacker mind to avoid the roundhouse kicking and Krav Maga-practicing truth.
I was procrastinating.
Not to mention I fell headfirst into the rabbit hole of internalized fear of rejection and self-doubt, a little miserable Alice stranded in Woe-derland with no “eat me” edibles in sight.
Believe it or not, it took me three years to actually suck it up and type a single word.
A Lesson in Procrastination
I am still struggling with those rascals in my head, although I made one very important discovery: I am an Aquarius. Hence, I am not to be blamed for anything that happens to me. I blame everything on my star sign. My personality is because of the alignment of the stars when I was born.
Yeah, yeah the science doesn’t hold up, but you can’t hold it against me, I was born without my consent, so I justify my entire self based on what the stars were doing at the time of my vaginal eviction. (No, I’m kidding.)
The Actual Lesson in Procrastination
What I’m actually trying to say is, I learned something about myself that I wouldn’t have learned otherwise I hadn’t pursued my writing delusions.
I learned to work on my own terms, slowly, irregularly, most of the time deceiving myself into taking “well-deserved breaks” which I don’t deserve for I did nothing but be fake productive: always planning, always scheduling, never doing. And these breaks range from a day to over a year which are very counterproductive because they didn’t provide me with the relaxation I thought I’d get, instead, what I got was frustration from the ghost of not having written anything loom over my head.
I tried countless tricks to get me to write anything; I researched, tried tweaking my schedule by waking up earlier to write as have many great writers before me had done, which as it turns out the early bird snoozes its alarm and sleeps back in.
So, yes, I have seen the err of my ways by seeking other people’s routines, instead of experimenting with what works for me.
Now, I am celebrating the fact that I don’t have to force-wake myself at 4 in the morning to write, I have in fact learned that I work best at night, being able to write and finish a thousand words post, even if quality-wise, it is only disastrous.
On Future Blog Posts
Amidst this development, I am still the same adult who sends an e-mail without the attachment so this is a notice to anyone reading: I still have a lot to improve.
I still live with my parents despite the ripe age of 26 (not in their basement, but on a floor above them so that should tell you I’m not into video games because of my slow, nerd-like reflexes). My finances also can’t support travelling to a new country on the weekend so I can’t be a travel blog, instead, I stay cooped up in bed on Friday nights re-watching Downton Abbey with a bowl of instant pancit canton topped with poached eggs and a cup of green tea to balance the junk to the healthy.
I also read a lot of pretentious crap like the Myth of Sisyphus (A/N: To Mr. Camus, please don’t roll in your grave just yet, I call it as pretentious crap because my fanfiction-laden brain is unqualified to read such substantive material. It’s a whole degenerate episode of the classic “It’s not you, it’s me”).
I also write a lot of bullshit, some tacky, some pop culture brainrot, but mostly just ramblings that should have just stayed in the drafts. so I guess
welcome (but also fuck off)
