Cliches, vapid platitudes… call ’em what you will, but the title of the post being what it is doesn’t invalidate the veritable truth behind it.
Today is Memorial Day in the United States, where I reside. The most productive thing I did today was clean up the kitchen a little bit and do some laundry. Ah, and I cooked up some cheesesteaks on my 17″ tabletop Blackstone griddle. However, prior to logging in to type out a few words, I spent the last three hours lying down on my bed, browsing through Facebook and Reddit. Oof.
Time is money, right? Opportunity costs are to be accounted for, eh? I could have spent the last few hours working on my desired business venture, much like I could be doing now, but I spent it indulging in mindless social media consumerism. I’m not one of those people who believes that social media is just a time thief (although it can be), and I accept that it is important to take time to relax every once in a while, but I remember a time when I spent years of my life wasting away in my own head.
2010-2013, especially 2011 onwards in that timespan, I wasted my life. That isn’t to say that I did not have productive days, but from the ages of 19 until I was almost 23 in 2014, I screwed around. I was in a manic depressive state for much of that time. Here’s the short version of it all, which I may touch on in a future post: in 2008 I began a relationship with a woman who I thought I would marry (I was young and full of optimism); things were awesome in 2008 and 2009, but things broke down in 2010. After two years and three months, she inexplicably ghosted me and I lost my mind. I didn’t talk to anyone about it asides from what I posted on relationships-based forums on the internet. I spent the following few years feeling extremely bitter and depressed due to the lack of closure, before I finally turned my life around in 2014 by accepting that not everything in life will feature the opportunity for closure and that you simply have to look through the windshield and not the rearview mirror, so to speak, to be able to move on for yourself.
Anyhow, I used to dwell on the fact that I wasted those years of my life. It affected me greatly, because as a high school graduate in 2009, seeing former classmates on social media celebrate their college graduations in 2013 made me feel envious and terrible about myself due to my own personal shortcomings. However, I learned a lot about myself from the time I spent ‘wasting’ my life. I grew as a person; I realized what I wanted in another human being as a partner; I also learned what I would and would not accept from those I choose to have in my life.
I digress, however.
I developed bad habits during those years. Namely procrastination. That can stick with you for a long time if you don’t shed it. Perhaps we all procrastinate from time to time, from sleep to washing the dishes to writing a paper to exercising to whatever, but it is a habit that must be broken in order to feel personal success.
That is such a bland, meaningless term, though, right? ‘Personal success’? What the hell is success, anyway? The definition varies from person to person on a subjective level, because my idea of success differs from yours and others.
I used to compare myself to my dad a lot, and it made me miserable. I was named after him, so I feel like I’ve pressured myself into living up to that title. He was only 49-years-old when he died from cirrhosis of the liver and renal failure a week before Christmas in 2003, when I was 12-years-old. While only 49, I feel like he lived a successful life. He married my mother when he was just 22-years-old in 1976. By the age of 25, he started his own business selling coal mining parts (I’m from southwest Virginia where coal, a dying industry or not, is king). In the ’80s, he bought the home I grew up in, and it was built from the ground up, and he had it paid for by the time I was born in 1991. He grew up in poverty, clawed his way out and made his own living on his own terms. I love my dad and I’ll always miss him. I stopped comparing myself to him when I hammered the idea of generational changes into my head, about how the world is way different today than it was in the 1970s, and how I’m a different person although we do share plenty of the same personality characteristics. I will always want to make my dad proud, but I am my own person and have to live life for myself at the end of the day.
I apologize for this post being all over the place, but this is my word vomit coming straight from my mind.
I often think about the times I’ve been the most productive in my life.
I started college at a local community college in the fall of 2009 when I was 18-years-old, but by the end of the semester I was only taking one class (my 8 a.m. English class) after blatantly discontinuing appearing in my other classes (no, I didn’t drop them; I had no idea about the consequences of not properly dropping those classes). I finished up that semester but didn’t return. So those aforementioned years happened. In June 2013, I made a pact with myself that I would return to school in the fall of 2014 and have my shit together. Well, by the time August 2014 arrived as I waited for the very last possible minute to begin taking classes, I did not have my shit together, but I somehow willed myself to go over to the same community college that I previously mentioned and signed up for classes. The rest is history: I finished up at the community college in May 2017, started taking classes for the university I had transferred to on Monday evenings at the community college location and earned my bachelor’s degree in December 2018. It was a long journey full of frustration and stress, but I managed to get it done. Along the way my cousin Justin died in December 2015 from accidental carbon monoxide poisoning when he was only 21-years-old and then my uncle Steve died in January 2017 at only 61-years-old from an unknown cause that we might never truly find out (his death certificate cites a blood clot, but I’m not sure I believe it).
Ah, hell, I totally blew my chance to mention the times I feel I’ve been the most productive… regardless, it is irrelevant to the matter of this all-over-the-place, rambling-laden post.
I’m trying to get my shit together, even to this day. The last six months of my life has been some of the most stressful times ever. My mother had a stroke in November, my aunt who is like a second mother to me suffered a heart attack in March (big time smoker and someone who is stressed out easily) and my cousin who is like a sister to me? Well, in April, her husband of eleven years was arrested for a despicable crime that sent shockwaves through the whole family because we are still floored almost two months later!
I feel like that phrase, ‘trying to get my shit together’ applies to more people than we’ll ever know.
I have been trying to include healthy habits in my life, but today I slipped up. We all do. My most recent ex-girlfriend told me that I needed to give myself some credit, to cut myself some slack and enjoy lazy days from time to time, but I have a crippling case of being a perfectionist and I’m often hard on myself when I feel like I’m not being productive.
You certainly are not defined by your past, but who you are comprised of as an individual today has been brought on by a collection of moments from the past. Maybe not even moments, but your daily actions have led you to this point, from the status of your health (not counting health issues or limiting disabilities that you have no control over) given your dietary and lifestyle — workout related — habits to your hygiene to your choice in hobbies to what you choose to do for employment, school, etc.
I want to be the best version of myself, just like you, the reader, probably want the same for yourself. This includes active engagement in working every day to improve just a little bit, from attempting to be a better person to learning just a little bit more about the world around us, even though it is healthy to accept and be aware that we will never understand as much as we truly would like to about this thing we call life.
Whoever that is reading this, I wish you nothing but good things in your life. You deserve it, whether you think you do or not. But you will never get to anywhere you remotely want to be if you don’t take the uncomfortable step out of your comfort zone to chase goals that are conducive to such things.
V-Neck Gangster 