Before you begin reading this, I need you to understand that this blog might not make a whole lot of sense as you read it, but I’m going to be walking you through my day today and 3 separate events that have led me to writing this.
— — —
This morning, I was aimlessly scrolling through Instagram and came upon a series of stories posted by a friend. He was sharing about the text messages he has saved from people since moving to a new city and the lessons he’s learned about himself over the past few years. I fired off a quick response to one of his stories and we followed that up with a few messages back and forth ourselves.
Him: thanks dude, in my feels for sure lol
Me: Need to be though- our feels are our truest
selves. Good to be connected with who you are
Him: absolutely. totally agree with that, just
takes time and patience sometimes to sort
through it and build up that relationship with
yourself
Me: Agree too- can’t say I’m necessarily good at
it myself. I’m good at recognizing paths forward
but executing them for myself is where I can
come up short
I fired off that last message and moved forward with my day. Between 11 am and 3 pm, here's roughly what I did.
Played a golf game on my phone
Made mac n’ cheese for lunch
Cleaned out my inbox and unsubscribed from marketing e-mails I’ve started receiving since holiday shopping
Scrolled through Instagram
Set my Fantasy Football line up for the day
Showered
Played more golf on my phone
Played with Riley
Watched a little bit of football
Scrolled through Instagram and Facebook again
What I had hoped to accomplish looked vastly different today, though. I had considered going grocery shopping and knew I needed to do some laundry, empty the dishwasher, and vacuum the house, but my day consisted mostly of lounging around the house and passively avoiding things on my to do list.
— — —
Around 3 pm, I got a boost of energy from who knows where, and decided to make myself another coffee and read a book. I picked up one I’ve been reading off and on for a few months now, 25 Lies Twenty Somethings Need to Stop Believing, by Paul Angone, flipped it to where I last left off, and started reading Lie #11 - I need to stay constantly connected.
For several pages, the author came at my life, consistently calling me and my habits out as it outlined why we should stop trying to be constantly connected with our phones and live more of our life offline and in the present with the people around us. One part in particular hit me, “Yet here’s the problem: our escape into our phone does not decrease our loneliness - it heightens it. We are all escaping into a disconnecting connection.” Dang.
I started my day off talking to a friend about connections and how an understanding of who you are matters more than anything else - we must be committed to a healthy relationship with ourself if we hope to be able to connect well with others too.
The problem with our ever connected world is that loneliness runs rampant. 6 of the 10 things I did in the early afternoon were on my phone or computer, an escape from the responsibilities I set for myself today and a desire to feel connected to others while sitting alone in my apartment.
— — —
After reading, I fed Riley and got to work on some chores for the day. I did the dishes, cleaned and vacuumed my apartment, and started a load of laundry.
I then took some of what I read and put it into practice, deleting the 2 golf game apps I’ve been playing for the past couple of weeks and purging through my phone, deleting apps I didn’t need anymore and cleaning up photos and notes I have saved. That led me to discovering a note I wrote back on September 5, 2021.
That day, I must have been feeling pretty productive and made a to do list 22 items long. Of those 22 items, 5 I accomplished that day and had marked off as complete, including deciding on a week to go on vacation and go hunting as well as adding photos from my phone and computer to Facebook. That left 17 things I didn’t get to that day. From planning out my meals for the next week to changing the names of friends in my phone who had recently gotten married, there just wasn’t enough time in my day to accomplish everything I set out to the morning I made that note.
Or was there?
Being that it’s 3 months since that day, I can only assume what happened that led me to not accomplish my list. I probably chose to be on my phone more than I should have and flipped between time spent on Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat instead of using my time more wisely and crossing off more from my to do list. At the top of my list that day was to start writing a new blog to post and I wanted to write something about lethargy and motivation. It wasn’t one of the items I tackled that day, go figure given that topic.
— — —
Reading through that list from a few months ago and realizing that I had only even accomplished a handful more of the tasks since that day, didn’t feel great. Then I remembered the last thing I sent to my friend earlier this morning, “I’m good at recognizing paths forward but executing them for myself is where I can come up short.”
I don’t know if it’s lethargy, my personality, my desire for perfection that sometimes hinders my ability to start given I might fail, or a combination of these and a whole lot of other things in my life, but it was so simple to write that line to my friend this morning yet has been hard to own in my “real life” offline.
That’s changing.
In 2019, I created my 19 for 19, a year long set of 19 goals I wanted to accomplish. In 2022, I’m going to revisit this concept and work toward 22 changes I want to see in my life this coming year. In the next month, I’ll be putting together a list and I’ll be sure to share it here too. I found years ago that my best bet in working toward my goals was sharing them with you, friends, family, and random followers online, so that you can help hold me accountable to them and check in to see how I’m doing.
I can’t promise success, but I’ll promise to bring authentic honesty as I work to better myself and live a life day by day that I’m proud of. I promise to work toward choosing the paths forward working toward the things I want in life instead of failing to even start because that seems easier and safer than failing once I begin.
Stay tuned, more to come.
- DV