May 25, 2021

Checking in and feeling sluggish

I feel sluggish lately. I am overwhelmed by the number of things I want to get done and as a result, I procrastinate, which only makes matters worse.

I don’t have a great tip or hack for dealing with this; this is just a status check of how I’m doing at the moment. In the past, forcing myself to sit down and spend at least a few minutes on something would help but it’s not really helping for the kind of anxiety I’ve been feeling lately. 

On a macro level, I want to do so many things each day. I want to read, write, and exercise everyday. Then, there’s String Theory and my day job. I have resistance against doing each of these things and within String Theory, there is so much work to do and a lot of it is not the kind of work I typically like doing.

So, I’ve been retreating into Twitter and YouTube. Twitter, in particular, is a terrible place to hangout. Everyone is “building in public” and talks about the importance of having a “personal brand” to promote your work. I suspect a lot of it is bull shit but it’s seductive and leads me into the truly toxic habit of comparing myself to others.

If I find an effective way of managing the anxiety and getting shit done, I will write an update about it but for now, I’m just leaving you with an outline of my predicament. I hope this makes someone feel better if they feel this way too, knowing that they’re not alone.