Let Us Eat Delicious Muffins as We Make an Account of Unaccomplished Tasks and Clever Excuses

Once upon a time, I knew everything and Got Things Done.  I was idealistic and extreme and young and optimistic.  Plans were made.  Goals were set.  I knew my future was bright, and that there were Magic Milestones that would flip the secret switches and turn on the lights of happiness.

Even with all my confidence and optimism, I found that I often felt tense and stressed and unhappy.  I confidently proceeded anyway, feeling secure in my knowledge that Magic Milestones would arrive and Make Everything Awesome from then on.  Plus there would be delicious muffins.

But the Magic Milestones came and went; things were smooth for awhile in their wake, but the tension and stress and unhappiness would return.  And where were the muffins?

Clearly, the only thing to do after so long a period of such repeated disappointment was to briefly go insane -- at least for me it was.  It was ugly, but it was over surprisingly quickly.

From then on, I was determined to follow previously ignored advice to relax a little bit, maybe. I found this very agreeable.  I more or less renounced the Magic Milestone fallacy and all its spiritual forces of wickedness.  Things were simpler, clearer and less stressful.

And I learned to bake my own muffins:  lemon poppyseed; blueberry; raspberry lime.  Also cookies.  Maybe sometime soon I'll figure out cakes.

Somehow, though, I managed to discard a big chunk of my productive self.  I was less obsessed with getting things done, and I learned that sometimes I just had to miss deadlines, or had to let things slide.  But I somehow took this too far, and laid the foundation for ten years or so of growing sloth and lame-ass excuses for my ineffectuality.

There are a lot of things I haven't been getting done.  Not everything, but lots.

I have two dear friends who continually struggle with chronic health problems, and their energy level and ability to simply Get Things Done makes me feel useless and lame because I don't have any of those challenges.  All I've got is own inertia and so many excuses it's beginning to make me sick of myself.

I know I have an intrinsic drive to accomplish things, stay on top of my responsibilities.  All I need is to stop making excuses, do some things now.  This should be a reasonable goal for an adult.

This is my attempt to catalog some simple things that I supposedly have been going to do, figure out why I haven't done them, and shame myself into doing them.  In so doing, I hope to restore the parts of myself which were jettisoned because I accidentally conflated Getting Things Done with Being Too Uptight.

With this blog post, I've knocked off one thing that wasn't getting done:  re-initiating my online presence, attempting to engage with some other people out there who might be able to relate to me or provide a few useful insights or information.  That wasn't so hard.