I used to think when I got to this point the thing that was missing was worship.
Although it surely is, I’ve been to this point and worse when worship habits were firmly entrenched.
So that alone cannot be the sole solution.
Of the many things I know about myself, I know I must have purpose. And if I don’t have purpose, I find distractions. Or I find excuses. And when I search for those, very little useful things happen.
I need time alone. Time to think and time to write.
But I also need time around people. I need this less, and I grow from the interactions, even if they are completely exhausting.
Discipline is lacking, but that’s because I am not wholly dedicated to anything and the alternatives are much easier and/or more fun.
My intent with my current set of plans was to learn to balance. To have some things that had to be done and add things little by little to develop discipline and make progress.
I don’t really think this has happened.
Have I lost focus? Yes. Have I thought I could solve some problems with money rather than effort? Yes.
Have I completely failed at adding structure to my life and exercises the discipline to keep it in place? Yes.
- I know I’m most effective when I wake up early.
- I know I’m really bad at going to bed early if I play computer games after dinner.
- But I feel like I haven’t “relaxed” if I don’t. I assume that is because it’s addiction and habit, not because it’s actually true.
- I know I’m less likely to bear down and work if I watch stuff while eating breakfast. This is a gateway to playing games.
- But I’ve always done relatively mindless stuff during breakfast, and that doesn’t seem like a bad thing. As a child, it was reading the paper. Now it’s YouTube.
- Potentially reading is the way to go, but reading what makes sense here? What has an endless (or essentially endless) amount of reading that can be done during this time?
- Scriptures and gospel library make some amount of sense, but I always want to give them full focus, which sometimes ends up giving them no focus
- I had things pretty under control when my days were regimented and I moved from one thing to another about every hour. This scheduling of my life was forced on me, and working within its constraints was useful. I suppose that’s another way to say the schedule was extrinsic and now the discipline to follow schedule is an intrinsic requirement.
I don’t think I answered the prompt.
I wish I could systematically engage in and discover what was wrong and put it to rest permanently.
At some level, I think that is discipline: do things because they’re scheduled if even if they don’t seem useful in the moment.