At the ripe old age of 24 (;-)), things have started to turn around.

I am now beginning to have the hindsight to appreciate and be able to look back in time and think about how I was affected by the people around me growing up.  In the spirit of mother’s day, how my mother has influenced me as I grew up.  And despite disagreements and arguments through the years, the most valuable lesson I learned from my mother, was…

Always support and be there for those whom you love.

As a kid, just knowing, that even though my mother didn’t like music and would rather listen to talk radio or read a book, she would be there in the crowd for every band and choir and musical performance I’ve ever done.  No complaints.  No words necessary.

Birthdays?  Never forgotten.  Appointments, always on time for.  In every way possible, being present for support, to celebrate successes, and offer help in times of need.

Knowing that there is someone there always and seeing the benefit of having that in my own life is a gift I think no one should go without.  I happen to be fortunate enough to have more than one person in my life providing that support at the moment.  Growing up, I realize now that my mother was always there in some way to support me and be there for me.

For that, I am eternally grateful.

Thank you.

What is a lesson you have learned from your mother?

1. I’ll do it tomorrow.
2. I’ll do it later.
3. Every variation of the previous 2.

Tomorrow never comes.

Putting things off and procrastinating is a HUGE problem of mine.  I don’t feel good when I procrastinate.  Like a smoker trying to give up smoking.  I know it’s a problem and that I need to make better choices.  I constantly beat myself up about it.  A lot of it is just habit.

When I procrastinate, which is most of the time, there comes the cycle.  Putting things off to do ‘later’, doing alternate tasks to avoid, beating up self, feeling low energy, leading to more putting things off… etc.

One things I’ve noticed is that in the act of procrastinating, the tasks I find to do instead are often things I end up not feeling good about later.  Like eating junk food, and staying up too late on facebook and browsing the internet and depriving myself of sleep so that I feel even worse the next day.

I think that the alternate choices made when procrastinating are a big influencer in mood and continuing the negative cycle.

Solution:  Replace bad choices with better ones.

Hence why I am writing this post.  I do have things I am procrastinating on now, but instead of being on facebook or mindlessly browsing the internet I am writing, which is something I regularly procrastinate on as well.

Hey, it’s an improvement, and an important change overall.

Replacing bad habits with better ones over time will help turn this procrastination thing around.

I feel good about writing and publishing on this site, which definitely helps with the beating myself up afterwards bit.  So my 1st goal is to replace facebook/twitter/mindless internet browsing with writing when I feel the need to procrastinate.

Starting…now!

Any other anti-procrastination tips that have really worked for you that you’d like to share?

My immediate thought when I read this quote was, “So, deciding to spend a month in India this summer confirms that travel is indeed a priority in my life?  Well duh.  I already knew that.”

But there are plenty of other things in our lives that we give priority to that we don’t always realize; Twitter, Facebook, mindlessly browsing the internet.  You know that I’m talking about.

Just sitting here writing this post, I spent probably a good hour and a half browsing the web and doing nothing before I finally got to it.  I may tell myself that Facebook and Twitter are not a priority.  But looking at the sheer amount of time I spend on these sites?  Embarrassing.

It reminded me of this post form Expert Enough on wasting time .

It’s time to face the math on how you’re spending your time not becoming an expert.

In other words, it’s time to face the facts on the things you give priority to in your life.

So, when you talk about how you don’t have time for an important project you want to work on, think if you’ve actually given it the time it’s priority level deserves.

Have you?  And if not, what can you do to change it?

Know where your time goes.

Being aware of how you spend your time is an important first step to getting back on track and making the right things priorities in your life.

Take a week and log what you are doing every hour, or every time you switch tasks.  Then review and see just where your time is actually going.  You may find that in the 3 hours you put aside to work on a project, you also spent 30 minutes on Facebook, checked your email 5 times, and spent 15 minutes on twitter.

Tracking time will help get things into perspective so you can make those important changes and get more done.

I’d also recommend reading 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think, by Laura Vanderkam.  She also suggests tracking time and has a number of examples and suggestions on making the best use of your time.

One thing I have learned as I read the book, is that people largely don’t know where most of their time goes and make wrong assumptions about how it is actually spent, leading to the “I don’t have time” script so many people (including myself) use  (Which, when looking at the numbers, usually isn’t true).

Start today.

Start taking control of your time and spending it on the things that are truly your priority.  Even if that means only checking your email 10 times a day instead of 30 at first.  Great progress is achieved with small steps.

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Daydreams, flashes, wandering thoughts.  My big juicy vision is constantly in the back of my mind.  But, more often than not, as a dream of “if only…”  rather than someday.

I catch glimpses of it while I doing things I enjoy.  Like waking up early on a Saturday morning to sit at a coffee shop, writing, drinking coffee, and watching the world wake up around me.  Or exploring a new section of the city and taking photographs.

It occurs to me in those brief moments that I am doing exactly what I should be doing, and what I would want to do in my big juicy vision.

The trick is to continue to explore and pursue those flashes that come into my mind to bring that vision to life.  With that, my vision grows and I step into a fuller life.

This is pretty much what my weekend looked like.  I had good intentions. I thought about all the amazing stuff I was going to accomplish over the weekend.  Finally I was going to make progress on my goals.

But, things didn’t exactly go as planned.

I found myself wasting time, getting stuck in that cycle.  Stalling, avoiding, even having tabs and programs open so it appeared I was working.  But I was doing everything but that.

Why does this cycle keep repeating itself?

I took some time to really think about it, and came to some conclusions.

The goals and projects I think about are on my mind constantly.  I daydream about a job and a life I love and how I can make that happen.  I really and truly want to make these things happen.  Then it occurred to me.

If I wanted so badly to make changes in my life and looked forward to having time to devote to making those changes, why do I always end up wasting that time and stalling on them?

Fear.

I realized that when I think about my goals I am actually afraid that it will work.  I’m nearly certain, that if I put in the time and dedication and hustle required to accomplish what I wanted, it would definitely happen. BUT…

I’m afraid of being judged if I fail.  Even more so, I’m afraid of success.  Because I’m sure I could make it happen. 

All those hours wasted.  All those worrying thoughts of ‘what if I fail?’, and ‘is this really the best way to do this?’, fogging my brain and paralyzing me from taking action.

It ends today.

Starting with this post.  The time is now to finally fucking DO something about it.

Just start.  Move.  Take action.  Do SOMETHING, anything other than nothing.

Thinking about things doesn’t make them happen.  Actually doing them does.

So add this to the pile of ‘JUST GET UP OFF YOUR ASS AND TAKE ACTION’ posts that are out there.  Log off facebook, and take one step towards a goal you have.

I’m just disappointed it too me so long to actually figure it out.

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Like the last prompt on ‘discovering my thing‘ I am coming up blank.  My immediate response when I think aobout this question is that I am not unique, because a part of my brain is telling me that I haven’t done anything worthwhile and there are no different or unique qualities about me.

Thinking about this now, I realize this says a lot about my self esteem (and how low it can be).  It is something that I hadn’t observed very much before writing about it now.  In any case, in terms of uniqueness, the only thing that really comes to mind is a Dr Seuss quote thatI particularly like.

“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”

Because I am me, that is what makes me unique.  There is no one alive that is more me than, well, me.

The areas of me, or my uniqueness that are emabarassing or uncomforable for me are my fears, and that I am too afraid to be mself, whoever that may be.  I am proud of my continual progress toward discovering who I am and what I’m about and my quest to constantly stretch and grow and improve myself.

I nurture my uniqueness by giving time to myself to explore my interests and think about who I am and my life and what I want to do in it as well as by creating space for the things that are important to me.

I share my uniqueness with the world by simply being a part of it and interacting with and through many things.

Thoughts of fears and what I should or should not do with my life get in the way of my uniqueness.  I’m on a path to change that.

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How do I feel about finding my thing?  I’m not sure.

I feel excited and tired at the same time.  Tired because I want to figure out exactly what it is right now and excited because I know it will be amazing when I do.  I also feel worried because I am not sure how I am suppposed to tell when I do finally find my thing.  Will it be sudden, or gradual, a refined precess or will it suddenly slap me in the face one day?  I am feel discouraged because I feel like I haven’t found my thing and that I am wasting time getting to it.  I feel like a late bloomer, so to speak.  In my online world and the places I hang out, I see so many other people around me who have found their thing and are shining brightly with it and changing the world and here I am wandering and lost, inconsistently spitting out self pitying dribble about how I’m ‘not good enough.’  It annoys me.  I’m 24, and I feel I’ve got a late start.  Not only that, but I feel so bogged down and numb by notions of what I should and should not be doing that I feel completely frozen to the spot.  Where do I even begin to chip away the ice and clear my view to even begin to start looking for my thing?  I find it is difficult to sort out what my feelings are from the shoulds I keep hearing everywhere.  How will I distinguish and know I am pursuing that right thing or not, and how can I rpevent the shoulds from clouding my vision again?  I fear I may never know.

When I look back on my life and think about hobbies, jobs, etc that energized me, I draw a blank, worried I’m confusing feelings with the ‘shoulds’ and wondering that had I not been afflicted by the ideas of what I should an should not do, I would have expressed myself more fearlessly and I’d be more clear on what direction to take today.

Thinking back, when I was very young, I drew a lot and I would tell people that I would be an artist when I grew up.  I’ve drifted away from drawing and now I don’t care to do it much anymore.  Music caught my interests by high school and I told people I would be a musician. I even went to college for music.  But, by the end of my undergrad years, I didn’t feel as passionate about music as a career as and it began shifting into a hobby in my mind.  On the day of my graduation from college, my stepfather asked me what I wanted to do.  I told him I just wanted to travel and explore.

When I think about it, exploring and experiencing the world is one of the few things that has stuck with me since childhood.

Admittedly, I daydream about having a career as a freelance writer and photographer traveling the world.  But when I do I feel selfish.

Because when I travel, experience the world I feel excited.  Like that tingle you got when you were a kid moments before you opened a present on Christmas day, or getting off a plane knowing that someone you love and haven’t seen in a long time will be there to greet you at the exit.  It is a personal pleasure to be able to travel and experience the beauty in the world.  But then I think to myself, ‘I don’t deserve to get paid to do that.  Traveling is just fun and it’s selfish to think that people would pay you to do that.’

I am seeing now I need to work on shifting my perspective on what I believe is possible and not feeling selfish about pursuing things I want.

(Note: I started writing this post with no preconceived idea about where it would end up.  Just stream of consciousness stuff as I responded to the prompt.  The last few paragraphs have been eye opening for me and just came about as I wrote, in case you were wondering why the post shifted as it did.)

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Strengths.  Thinking about it I am realizing I have tucked these away into some deep and dusty corner of my closet, like they aren’t even there.  I’m not used to thinking about MY power.  Instead, I’m used to focusing on what I think I can improve, my weaknesses.  But, here goes.

I am good at organizing.  Strange thing it seems I’m sure, but since I’m very distracted by visual clutter and can’t function as well because of it, I’ve developed this ability to clean and organize everything in a very neat way.  The process is usually quite cathartic and puts my mind at ease.

I am curious, an explorer.  This helps me see and appreciate so many of the wonderful things in this world.

I am musically and artistically inclined, expressing emotions in ways words cannot define.

I am calm and even tempered.  Since my job is very stressful and I deal with a lot of negativity and bad situations, this strength has helped me get through each day without getting pulled too much into or swayed by that negative energy.  It also helps me neutralize energies of people around me.

I am patient.  Also related to my job, working with children requires patience, and having that strength helps me weather all kinds of days.

I am good at taking care of and supporting others and making sure their needs are met.  In both work and at home.

I am independent.  Thinking about this I realize I have often considered it a weakness, in the sense that I often don’t ask for help because I’m determined to figure out something on my own.  On the other hand, I am realizing it is a strength, to be confident in my ability to do things on my own and taking the time to at least try.

Thinking about which ones need to be pulled to the front, I would say most or all of them.  They’ve been in hidden for too long and I don’t pull many of them out as often as I should.  In fact, I’m sure that if I pulled these strengths out more, I’d find even more strengths hidden I didn’t know about.

It’s hard to think of a time when I was happy and aligned and in my creative zone.  I’m not sure I’ve found my creative zone, and I’m not sure how I would define it.  It’s something I’m struggling with right now.  But, on another, somewhat related note, I can think of times when I felt happy, blissfully happy and overwhelmed.  And they were because the beauty of the world the the connected-ness I felt with it.  Two poignant experiences come to mind…

1. Being the only person on a particular stretch of the great wall of China and watching the sun rise.  I wasn’t sure whether to shout or jump up and down or cry I was so overwhelmed with the feeling of freedom, beauty, and the sense that everything at that moment was absolutely perfect.

2. The humbling experience of attempting to climb Mt. Fuji and failing due to altitude sickness but still being overwhelmed with the beauty and closeness I felt with the world.  Even when getting volcanic ash and rocks stuck in my shoes and nearly being pulled off the mountain by wind during the climb.

Recently, I’ve found myself making excuses to get outside, walking to the store to get a bottle of water just to return again later for some other thing I probably didn’t need.  Thinking while walking how it would be nice to just walk and be outside or hours at a time.  It’s welcome relief from staring at screens and sitting idly on my apartment and avoiding my work, which seem to numb me and suck out my energy.

I like to move and be out in the world.  To travel and be free to see and experience the beauty of this Earth.

It is becoming clear that my values are aligned with freedom and experiencing the world.  I try to recreate those feelings through travel and being outside.  The dilemma I still face is how to expand on that feeling and find other areas that will help me experience it.  I struggle daily with where to start.  It feels like I waste so much time being lost.

Understanding and Acceptance.

Growing up, had I had an advocate who was my Identivert, they would understand why I would rather stay at home and draw or practice the piano than go out to the mall and socialize with friends on weekends.  My Identivert would understand that I needed to be alone sometimes to recharge my batteries, not that I didn’t like people.  My Identivert would understand and accept this because I am an introvert.  It would be different because I wouldn’t need to feel the pressures to conform with extroverted activities that didn’t interest me.

But that was the past.  And although my introverted tendencies did prevail while growing up, I liked having an extroverted person to be there to pull and stretch and help me grow and expand my boundaries.  Because I would like to be more extroverted.  My high school best friend was an extrovert or an Oppvert.  Drove me nuts sometimes with her needing to constantly be around people or talking with people, but she got me to enjoy and participate in more social and extroverted activities.  Even if it was uncomfortable or if it didn’t feel true to my nature at first.

Though my Oppverts in my life say and do things that feel contrary to my nature, I welcome it, so long as I can go back and recharge alone now and again.  I would rather be pulled and stretched past my comfort zones with an Oppvert than stay comfortable and introverted, even with the best and most understanding of Identiverts.

Growth is much more important to me.