maybe if society wasn't set up to be so intense, we wouldn't need to choose between amphetamines and drowning.
i'm so sick of the "glorification of busy". i want to enjoy my life and that doesn't mean working every moment to me. if people thinks that makes me lazy then fuck them.
that's why i'm really trying to just make my life simple and full of life. i just feel like that's pretty hard to do in this country at this time. i've made big changes, but here i am unshowered, feeling anxious, and making this stupid thread. it's hard to feel encouraged when you feel like there's no escape from it.
I think that scheduling is a big issue. There's enough stuff going on that we end up cramming our day with busy work just to do the basics (cook, clean, work, exercise) and then indulge a couple of interests. Real quickly, you get to the point where you have to run just to keep up with your schedule.
But they say that 20 percent of your activities provide 80 percent of the results; the other 80 percent of your day is mostly busywork. So they say it's important to make up a schedule every so often and see where you're investing your available time. Then make up a list of what you really want to prioritize in your life (a mission statement). Then see if the schedule really matches your priorities. If not, you can use that 20 percent/80 percent thing to delete out some stuff in your schedule that's just busywork.
For example, say you like to do a lot of gourmet cooking, or canning your own veggies, or something like that. But it takes up a lot of time, and frankly it doesn't excite you to the point where you look forward to your day when you wake up in the mornings. So chuck all that out, buy some frozen foods or make up big pots of rice and beans and chicken on Sunday to last you through the week, and free up your evenings for salsa dancing lessons or scuba diving lessons or whatever.
IOW, don't be afraid to look at your schedule with a critical eye and turn it upside down. There should be things in your schedule that really energize you and make you look forward to the day. If not, do a mission statement, figure out what you would really like to be doing with your life, and then start discarding some current interests/activities to make room for the new stuff.
(This post is on a FWIW basis. The previous posts were tips and tricks for getting started on difficult tasks; this one is more about how you define yourself and your life.)
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[ETA:] BTW, the above exercise helps me to deal with anxiety issues.
IOW: If I'm floating through life directionless (busy but not really accomplishing anything important), I tend to feel anxiety: "Why am I running just to keep up? Are there other things I should be doing? Am I dropping the ball on something important?" But if I've done this exercise, then I know I've spelled out what's important to me and put it in my schedule. So if anxiety hits, I can tell myself: "Lighten up! I'm doing what's important to me, and I'm making progress on it. There's nothing else to be done; I just have to stick to my schedule and see what comes out of it."
And if things get stale again after a while and I start having doubts again, I just repeat the exercise and maybe head in a new direction with new priorities.
It may sound a bit navel-gazing and arbitrary, but it really does help with the anxiety. I tell myself that I've done "due diligence" and constructed a plan that really does address what's important to me; now I just have to stay the course and see what comes of it.
, fortunately I have my days of being very active and get all the things I pushed away done in almost no time so it really helps me to deal with the pressure. But I know when the feeling like you described comes, there's not much you can do and you just feel totally incapable of doing anything, even though you know you have to and you feel this terrible pressure inside of your body that is telling you "Get up, get up don't sit here like that, that's so wrong!" But you sit there anyway. Ah...I know how unpleasant it is, I just don't know how to handle it myself... so I am just going to say I feel you and pretend it should help you.
