While I've been functioning above this level for almost a year now, I've had a couple times recently where the idea of wanting to watch porn or masturbate did occur to me. It's easy to see now, it's a combination of being at a low point emotionally and indulging in too much pleasure in other areas (sleeping later, eating sugar). Not an emergency or cause for concern, but a reminder that I can never return to the same level of pleasure and "freedom" as before. In the past month I've been able to successfully enjoy moderate amounts of pleasure in areas like sleep, time off, and food. But as alluded to above, it's easy to cross the line and slip into overindulgence, it's enjoying in the moment vs seeking indefinitely. I tend very strongly towards repetitive habits, so doing anything and not making it a habit just needs to be conscious.
When I talk about crossing the line into over indulgence, I don't mean anything dramatic, I just mean I went past what I could enjoy and made myself feel not the best later, mostly because I wasn't able to accomplish as much as usual. I don't even mean anything regretful, I just know I gave myself enough of a break for now, and it's time to tighten up the routine again. I know I need to tighten things up because I can see myself letting the wakeup time slip later, because I'm not attacking my routine with as much vigor and not because I'm more fatigued (I am better now at telling the difference between fatigued and lazy), I know because I'm not getting as much work done as before, I'm not getting as much done as I know I could and that doesn't feel good.
Good news is, I've spent the majority of the last few months in a tight routine, which means returning to that routine is not that hard, it's a piece of cake compared to trying to establish that routine off the back end of years of late wakeups and sluggish days. It's not just the experience, I have too much shit to do, I'm working 28 hours a week, finals are looming, and I'm not about to let up on my fitness or my close relationships, in fact I intend to improve them this month. These goals are just as important as my practiced discipline, continuing to have more than I can handle is I believe, vital for maintaining my sense of priority. An aspect of slipping on my discipline that I didn't mention is an increase in time spent working on projects that aren't vital. It's good that I have time for those projects, but I easily monopolize my time for them, and that's an indicator that I have the energy and headspace to do work, but not enough discipline to moderate spending time on fun things.
This is a long journal but I guess I'm basically throwing a lot of journaling that I might have otherwise done somewhere else and putting it all here. I find that when I share snippets of these thoughts with other people they caution me that i'm too hard on myself. I take consensus from other people seriously, but I also recognize that my standards are simply higher than average, I appreciate this space of self improvement because this culture actively supports raising standards for self, because you know not only how meaningful but also vital it is to take on the habits of improvement that we know we need to.
October 17 to October 24
Successful
Success
Success
ollyreagan
- Referee approval report
zjmc
- Committed user success report
October 10 to October 17
Successful
Success
Success
ollyreagan
- Referee approval report
I'm sorry that I've been inconsistent on supporting you with this. I will do my best to be on time!