Podcasts Make My Life Seem Worthless
Positive energy is in no short supply on your favorite podcast. Rags-to-riches stories of wild abundance, Phoenix-rising stories about transformations that don't seem humanly possible. All these things, and I listen to these things and get extremely excited about the potential of change, but then the daily goings on of life pull me back into my shitty version of reality. "Life is what you make it", and "in order to get to the other side and achieve greatness you must endure lots of suffering", discipline equals freedom, all of these things just sound like yadda-yadda-yadda over a long enough timeline. Like David Goggin's says: "They're all just fucking words."
So what is it then when you know what steps you have to take, and you know what direction you need to start navigating and you still don’t have it in you to get after it? Sometimes I wonder if it’s the accumulated fatigue of my bad leg that keeps me from being able to get into things the same way I used to, but I know that’s just a cop-out excuse we all say to ourselves in order to walk back into the comfort zone.
There’s just sometimes, like today, where I just don’t feel like I have what it takes to improve myself. I have improved myself a million-and-a-half miles from where I was even ten years ago, but I think it is literally possible that I have plateaued. Some of these guys who talk about rising from the ashes, they do have stories about the darkside of life, but none of them really speak of genuine darkness. The kind you can’t paint and make look pretty. The kind that makes an entire room uncomfortable. But, like my bad leg, I tell myself that this is bullshit too and it’s just another cop-out excuse for I am such a pathetic human being.
Sleep routine is fucking shattered. I don’t know what it is. As strange as it seems to type these characters, the fact that I started eating proper food at least once a day seems to be the primary culprit for my shattered sleep. The problem with eating properly, even if it’s once a day, is your body all the sudden wants more food more frequently. I’ve primarily survived for forty plus years by just simply drinking coffee and taking in massive amounts of nicotine. Working in kitchens for almost twenty years helped because you didn’t really ever have to eat properly. You could do things like eat a single piece of cheese every forty minutes or something like that. You’re in the back making large ass batches of soup for the week, so maybe you have a bowl to see if it tastes right. I say bowl, when in reality, it’s typically just a spoon or two. Perhaps this is just the accumulation of years of ignoring my nutritional needs. But I’m literally physically hovering around 20-30% capacity when I get out of work. Literally nothing left to give, but my mind is racing like a fucking madman because my job requires little to no brain power. In fact, I think the less brain power you put into it, the easier and more enjoyable the shitshow is.
I might have just had an epiphany. The sudden realization of wasted effort and underachieving in my life is a powerful one. Something has to give eventually. Chances are I'll have no problem finding excuses to keep my version of misery going. It's what is expected of people like me, and let me tell you, I fucking deliver.
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