Get your drinks from the lobby and strap in to your cushy velvet seats because this is a two act post!
Act I: Pity Party for How Hard it is to Self-Motivate!
I hope you enjoyed the theatre metaphor. It's what happens when you're a theatre grad, I guess. Also, another thing that might happen to a theatre grad at least before they find some sort of job is #funemployment! As fun as it sounds, it's actually a lot of fun. Sure, there are daiquiri days and internet days when I just stay online and look at tattoos. But there are also times when you have to get it together and work. And that shit is hard.
In my little over a month of funemployment, I've discovered that it's extremely easy to fall back and just say, I'll do it tomorrow. It's easy to just spend 3 or 4 hours on the internet giving yourself excuses. "Oh, I'm eating food, I can't write anyways." "Oh there's this great YouTube video that I've watched 50 times, but YouTube is recommending me to watch it again." Then before you know it, the sun's gone down and I can count on one hand the number of things I've accomplished today.
And to be quite frank. I'm embarrassed with myself. I told myself that by the end of May I would have a working first draft of my short written and so far I've gotten barely over half way... (Granted it's turned into, what looks to be, a 30 page short, which I'm going to have to seriously edit down, but hey it'll a first draft.) I've also started another sketch that I told myself I'd bang out in 48 hours. Here it is, over a week, and I still haven't finished it.
Though people warned me that I was going to have a hard road ahead of me, I never expected it to be quite this hard...
Go ahead. Get some more drinks. Use the bathroom. Do what you gotta do. I'm not here to judge.
Act II: A Lesson in Motivation & Discipline
Today, with a little help from a couple friends. I found my key to motivation. Now, my problem is that I find it easy to just fall into doing nothing if I'm left to myself. However, what I realized today was that I just need people around to force me to do things.
How did I realize this? Well, I recently reconnected with a friend who has now become a fitness trainer at an alternative fitness lab. He invited me out tonight and I thought why not? (To not feel awkward I also brought a friend) Also to preface this, I'm not a big fan of going to the gym. I don't motivate myself enough to go on my own and plus I hate the gym anyways so that's another excuse. I do workout on my own occasionally, but that's always the first thing out of my schedule if I feel as though I have to make time for other commitments.
Well today, even though I had considered canceling earlier, I went (in part due to the fact that I had already roped a friend into going with me and she wouldn't've known anyone there without me. So long story short, despite reservations, I went.
When I got there, it was crazy. There was a huge group of people and we all warmed up together and then split of into groups to do various types of workouts. My friend and I elected to do the more challenging circuit workout. Great choice, but now that I'm sitting I highly doubt I'll be able to summon the strength to get back up again. Anyways, the environment there was really encouraging. There were tons of people going through the same workout as me, as well as trainers who were running around correcting form and encouraging us to push ourselves. Not only that, but they encouraged us to learn each others names to encourage each other.
That was what really got me. Getting use to encourage each other. It's really like you have a whole team rooting for you to push yourself just that little bit. Of course, I struggled through really finishing each of the exercises, but that's what happens when you run around on set and call that exercise. I need something with more structure and, more importantly, people.
This will definitely influence how I try to get work done in the future. Perhaps the notion of co-working in the sense that I find people to work with and we just work. The danger in that is finding people with whom you just hang out. But! Maybe laying down the notion of co-working is enough to get me and whoever it is I'll be co-working with to work together and not just chat and be silly.
So that's my lesson of the day. Self-motivation. Find what you need to motivate, and that may be something other than the self. Be it schedules or calendars or people or rewards. Figure out what gets you to hunker down and work and do it!