cycles

I think I kinda go through cycles with this inertia/anxiety stuff. I work hard on overcoming my old habits, and it's hard work, and they are just habits, nothing more, and hard work is the only way to get past them. I make some progress, I get some work done... and then for whatever reason (I get overloaded, I get tired) I find myself back in the middle of the old habits, which generally involves giving myself a lot of stern little speeches about how I am just being lazy and ridiculous.

I hope sooner or later I'll really start to get it that these speeches don't help, that I just get stuck in a circle of self-flagellation which makes me rebel against working which makes me self-flagellate some more--getting nowhere.

All the things I'm using to try to change my habits--my anxiety book, therapy, Buddhism, etc.--tell me that it takes practice, that you just keep at it, that "we just go inch by inch," and sometimes you feel that things are changing and sometimes you feel so stuck.

What struck me yesterday is that I need a new model of what it means to "work." My old model involves high anxiety, high speed, last-minute panic, self-flagellation, and sloppy results. As I lower my anxiety level, and learn to be nicer to myself, I just don't have the motivation to work this way anymore--nothing external that I once used to whip myself into a frenzy, seems that important anymore. I need to learn to connect my work with my goals, learn to work steadily, persistently, need to learn a whole different way of doing things. Basically I have always done work due to external motivations (get an A, impress the teacher, etc.) which is what our school system teaches us to do. I have lots of internal motivation, I just haven't been able to figure out how to connect it to work. It's like that connection has been completely severed and I need to figure out how it works, which is so unnatural, and another example of what's wrong with #$*@(#$ schooling.

OK, Gracie has been barking this weird little bark, about every six seconds, just "yip.........yip...........yip............" then silence then "yip yip woof woof..." then back to the intermittant barking... after barking all over the yard and the house for a solid hour and a half. I'm going to go stark staring mad. I have to go shoot her with a tranquilizer dart; I'll be right back.