The End of Semester Push

COVID-19, Personal

Well, I’m going to look rather stupid. In my last post I went on about how I had learned to relax, to forgive myself for delays and lack of productivity, and how I didn’t care as much about getting work done since it’s my last semester and I have a good foundation to fall back on. All of that still applies, but as we come into finals week, I find myself grudgingly trying to get back into the grind. I say grudgingly because it really does feel involuntary, like a learned response from all the finals weeks I’ve pushed through. I know I don’t have to push hard. I know that I only need to nominally get things done and I’ll be perfectly fine. But old habits die hard.

Of course, this means that I’m having to up my game in terms of overcoming the obstacles to my productivity. When I could afford not to care, I didn’t have to do much to ensure that I got work done to a certain degree. I basically just had to sit down, put on a podcast for background noise, maybe start a pomodoro timer, and then do the work. It wasn’t a process I could effectively do everyday, which was fine when I didn’t have large scale end-of-semester projects to finish.

The first thing I’ve done to try and increase my productivity is change my environment. Normally, I would work at my desk in my bedroom. It’s good for those intense bursts of work when I need to lock myself away, but when my entire day is effectively being locked away, I go even more stir crazy trying to work in one small corner of my apartment. Instead, I’ve moved a lot of things into my living room. Since my roommate moved out, I don’t have to navigate around someone else needing the space, so I’ve been able to spread out a bit, not only for work but for more fun activities. I’ve hooked my Nintendo up to the bigger living room TV and just today brought my guitar amp and pedalboard out so that they aren’t crammed into the back corner of my bedroom. It’s been nice having more light during the day while working. It’s also had the side effect of making me sleep a little better, since my bedroom has effectively been reduced to that purpose alone and I can’t be overwhelmed by all my distractions being there when I go to bed.

Of course, this change in location has come with downsides. The wider space does offer more passive distractions. I’ll be working and look over into my kitchen, get hungry, and whip up a small meal, and before I know it, I’ve spent half an hour cooking and eating and my work flow has been entirely stopped. The light that comes in from the two bigger windows is nice, but it also means that I’m more inclined to get curious and peek out at what’s going on outside. Solve one problem, introduce another.

The biggest issue I’m facing is related to my lack of desire to get schoolwork done. In past semesters, I’ve at least had the drive to get the work done, if only to make it to the next break. My future and other passions have always been far off entities, things I could imagine but would not be able to reach or realize for a long while. Now, that is not the case. The future is in sight. It’s not only reachable, but increasingly imminent. The things I want to learn and accomplish are so close I can taste them, and I’m obsessing over the idea of finally being able to address them. School has always been in my way, but for the first time I can see a not-too-distant future where it isn’t in the way, and that makes every second I have to stick with schoolwork more unbearable. That in turn makes me fall a bit more behind each day, which makes me feel overwhelmed and want to work even less.

It’s kind of funny to be honest. I feel like I have this kind of issue every time I get to finals week. It rarely matters whether I am behind, but I always feel behind and I never know how I manage to get everything done. It’s like my brain goes into red alert and I descend into a trance of caffeine and anxiety until I find myself finished my work. I really want to avoid that this semester, because it’s honestly hell, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to. The fact of the matter is that whatever I normally do, however it normally works, it does work. Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet. Sometimes you have to hunker down and push through the things you have to do so that you can do the things you want to do. I know I can do it, if I can only sit down long enough.

Self-Forgiveness & A Different Motivation in Quarantine

COVID-19, Personal

It’s been a while since my last post. I could sit here and tell you about how busy I’ve been, how much stress I’ve been under with COVID-19 and the end of semester grind and worrying about moving back home. I wish I could tell you all of that, but the truth is, while all of that stuff has indeed been going on, I haven’t actually been all that busy. I haven’t been all that stressed. I’ve actually been feeling pretty great. Better than I’ve felt in actual years. In truth, the reason I haven’t been posting is because I’ve been putting more effort into self-care, and that I haven’t figured out how to balance it with schoolwork.

In one of my earlier posts, I talked about how I wasn’t great at self-care. I mentioned that I was trying to implement certain things like meditation and regular walks. I mentioned that I had several things that I wanted to do, wanted to implement, but didn’t know how. In the time since, I’ve figured out how. You just do it. The trick is that it might come at the cost of something else, and in my case it has been school and schoolwork.

Let me be clear. It’s not like I’m dropping school entirely. I’m here writing this for school. I still write my papers. But I’ve spent the majority of my life placing school as my top priority. Anything else I had came second, and everything else suffered as a result. I got results from that way of working. I don’t want to brag, but I’ve kept up a 4.0 GPA my entire time at Rowan University. I’ve been seriously dedicated to school, and I by no means want to drop it entirely. But as I said in my Self Care post, there are so many other things I want to do that I haven’t felt capable of doing because I only ever had one priority.

I refuse to sustain that. If I had to pick one thing that isolation has taught me, it is self-forgiveness. It’s an ability that I have almost completely lacked up to this point, despite friends and therapists and professors telling me that I should exercise it, that I deserved it. I never listened until now, until quarantine. Self-forgiveness, in my experience, functions the same way regular forgiveness does. When you mess up, you apologize to yourself, not just by regretting your shortcomings but by providing some way to make up for it. And then, you make it up to yourself and are forgiven.

I’ve had pretty severe issues maintaining motivation for schoolwork since quarantine started. It’s been a perfect storm of being stuck in a relaxed, non-professional environment, being isolated with no one around to truly hold me accountable, run-of-the-mill senioritis, and an overall dissatisfaction with the way I’ve been feeling mentally and where I am with my passions. It’s as though some switch has flipped in me, that I’ve reached some sort of breaking point. The fact of the matter is I’m tired of school. I’m tired of not doing the things that I want to do. And with “graduation” so close, all I can see is my coming freedom. I’m finally going to have time to do all the things I’ve wanted to do, that I’ve been neglecting.

Admittedly, this may not be the greatest tactic for succeeding in school. That’s where the self-forgiveness has come in. I have learned to trust myself. I’ve got a hell of a track record behind me, and even in times where I’m not motivated to get work done, where I procrastinate or struggle, I know that I not only come through it, but excel in doing so. Even with the chaos currently in my life, I have no reason to think that this will change. I trust that I will get done what I need to get done, and that even if I don’t do it to my absurd, perfectionist standards it will be good enough and won’t make too much of a dent in the progress I’ve previously made. I’ve never been a “C’s get degrees” kind of guy, but there comes a time where you have to put your foot down and say “I’m not going to torture myself”. I’m done torturing myself over grades that won’t matter to me ten years from now, especially when I know I can still do well enough to get by, if not better.

So I’ve found a new motivation. I’m forgiving myself, rebuilding my self-esteem, working to pursue my personal interests and hobbies, and looking forward to my future. I’m looking ahead. The future has always scared me, but I’ve been getting excited knowing that I will soon be able to work on my future without restriction. Hell, I’m already starting to. This new motivation might be exacerbating my issues with staying motivated for school, but I’ll be totally honest, I’m not sure how much I care. What’s one more obstacle? I know I can still get things done, and I trust that my work will ultimately be good enough. And if my energy is going to productive activities, to good things that will improve my life and mental health in the long run, then the hit to my school motivation is something I’m absolutely willing to forgive.

Dealing with Solitude: Living Alone During COVID-19

COVID-19, Personal

It’s Tuesday night and I’m Zooming with my friends as I speak. It’s become a staple of our routines. Not daily, but close. It’s pretty quiet at the moment. Everybody’s doing their own thing. We’re just happy to have each other around. When we first started doing this, almost a month ago, it was much different. Back then, the calls were loud and energetic, as we hadn’t been in constant contact since we’re spread out away from home. Some of my friends were in Philly when everything started. One was on Staten Island. Another was and still is living alone in L.A. If I could find one upside to the chaos today, it would be that it has shown us that we can stay connected even while apart, by geography or quarantine. This comes at the cost of some of my friends’ housing, internships, and jobs, so I suppose it’s a pyrrhic upside, but I’ll take what I can get.

The energy of our Zoom calls has dwindled somewhat, but there’s a certain sense of community still, shared suffering, intimacy even. There are some nights where we hardly speak at all. Each of us doing something to ourselves. Those of us still in class might be doing homework (or in my case, attempting then giving up). My Staten Island friend, whose only responsibility was her internship with a live music venue which has cancelled shows through May at the very least, has tried to keep occupied with video games. My L.A. friend, laid off from her job, has done the same, though she has the added advantages of legal weed being able to walk to the beach to pass the time.

Even in those nights where we don’t speak, there’s something comforting about being able to talk to them. There’s something soothing in hearing the sounds of their games and typing, slightly garbled by the internet. It’s something approximating normal, giving something close enough to human contact that we can carry on. We might not be able to huddle up on a couch and play together, but we can make do playing online. It’s almost like we’re making up for lost time, for years of accepting separation while we were all away at our colleges.

In some ways, it’s even better than hanging out in person. It’s certainly logistically easier. We don’t have to drive to someone’s house and calculate how long we can stay before we’re too tired to get home and get ready for bed. Since I don’t have a car and have to depend on my parents and friends for rides (which I will never stop feeling bad about), we don’t have to figure getting me home into the mix. We’re all already home. When we finally tire out, we leave the call, turn around, and we’re already in bed.

To get to the point of this post, these Zoom calls, despite the fact that we don’t always do much and sometimes go far later than I should, are one of the only things keeping me sane while living alone. I used to dream of living alone. Of having my own place, of not having to dance around roommates, of only needing to deal with my own schedule, of not needing to deal with my parents. Of course, those dreams usually included opportunities to get out, be it for a job, a girlfriend, or hanging out in person with friends. They certainly didn’t include social distancing, at least not to this degree. And while I am very introverted and certainly appreciate the solitude, it doesn’t feel as freeing right now as I’d like. It’s not the escape I wanted, and it’s somewhat discouraging considering the image I built up in my head.

There’s a silence in my world right now. It’s a lurking thing. It slithers behind me while I try to drown it out with YouTube and loud music. It creeps around between the chirps of birds outside and the footsteps of people living on the floor above me. It whispers just beneath the hum of the the stove fan, oozes out of the vents of my air conditioner, steams out of my kettle as I make tea for one. It’s silence as white noise, constant and just loud enough to be noticed, just present enough to make you aware of it, paranoid and holding your breath while you wait to hear something, anything. A creaking chair, a muffled voice, a throat-clearing cough. I’m okay with it most of the time. You can’t expect the world to speak constantly, especially when it’s holding its breath. But I’ve never had to deal with it for such a sustained period.

I don’t know where I’m going with this. Rambling as usual. Trying to fill the silence. It’s not a perfect solution, and probably not terribly entertaining. But hey, I might as well speak where I can, right? I’m sure I’m not alone in this situation. All things considered, I’m probably doing better than most. I know my L.A. friend in particular is very extroverted and has been going very stir crazy being stuck alone, to the point that she’s been seriously considering breaking social distancing somewhat to get together with the one or two friends who haven’t gone home. I haven’t really felt this need yet. The Zoom calls are sustaining me, at least for now. It could be worse, after all. I could be old, lonely, technology deprived or technologically illiterate, with no friends whatsoever. I have to try and look on the bright side. I can’t say I’m truly happy with this version of living alone, but I can say I’m thankful it’s not as bad as it could be.

Learning Bass While Procrastinating

COVID-19, Personal

In my last post, I talked about the fact that I needed to work on time management. I have been thoroughly failing at this. I’ve been having pretty big issues with motivation and the longer I go without getting enough work done, the more stressed I get about that work and the less I ultimately get done. I’m the type of person who avoids stress with distraction and procrastination, so as I’ve become more overwhelmed by the work I’m not getting done, I’ve had to find new things to do to keep myself from liquefying into a puddle of panic and guilt.

Excuses, excuses, I know, but cut me some slack, it’s a rough time we’re in. Of course, I can admit that the distractions I commonly turn to might not be the best. My most common distraction is YouTube, and I normally have a solid backlog of videos in my Watch Later, and though I’ve found a lot of great new content to watch, I’ve been whittling it down enough that I’m rapidly losing it as a distraction. Thus, I’ve had to find a new distraction and have taken the opportunity to do something that I’ve wanted to do for several years: learning bass.

Two years ago, a friend of mine had a cheap starter bass that he didn’t need. Looking to make a quick buck, he sold it to me for $20. It clearly wasn’t anything special, but it was a solid starter. I attempted to play with it for a little after I got it, but the songs I wanted to play were far outside my beginner’s ability. You can’t exactly go straight to Les Claypool’s crazy slap bass on your first day. I’m sure I could’ve found easier songs to play, but at the time it wasn’t really a priority, so I ended up focusing more on guitar instead, where I had a few years of experience.

Since then, my bass sat in my closet, accumulating dust. When I found out I would be stuck here at Rowan in quarantine, I pulled the bass out of storage while I was visiting home and brought it back here. A few days ago I finally tried to play it, and the effects of long term storage were obvious. The strings buzzed like hornets in a tin can and the first three frets on every string were dead notes. After some research, I found out this could be fixed by adjusting the truss rod in the neck to give the neck a bit more of a bow. This scared the shit out of me. I had deliberately avoided doing maintenance like this on my guitars, instead paying to have them professionally set up and being careful with them to avoid needing it done again. I couldn’t do this for my bass, as COVID-19 will have closed down Guitar Centers (and I’m cheap and don’t want to spend the money), so I did it myself. It was nerve-wracking doing it on my own for the first time, but at least I know how to do it now.

I’m by no means good at it yet. I’ve looked up some easier songs to learn and am trying to pick up more simple, fundamental techniques before I really get into slap. I’ve got some blisters forming on my right hand, which is a real pain in the ass to type with. That’s what I get for not using a pick, but I’ve been told using a pick on bass is something of a sin, and besides, it’s more fun without one. In any case, I’m going to try and get at least a little practice daily, and maybe with this addition I can get back into the groove of getting things done. Lord knows I need the motivation. Besides, I’ve been told that time management is easier when you have less time, so maybe keeping myself more actively busy instead of passively distracted will help in the long run.

Self Care (And Lack Thereof) under COVID Isolation

COVID-19, Personal

Hello, all. I’m still not used to the idea of blogging, so I’m going to write off the cuff and see where it goes. Maybe it’ll be good. Something personal, maybe even juicy and entertaining. Maybe it’ll just be disorganized ramblings. Who knows? In any case, we all know why we’re here and what’s going on. There happens to be a microscopic elephant in the room. In which room, I’m not sure. Maybe mine. Maybe yours. Maybe every room, hallway, elevator, and entrance. There’s an elephant somewhere, and everybody’s stuck hiding from it.

COVID-19 hasn’t been an easy thing to deal with. As of today (4/7), it’s sounding like the pandemic will hit its peak here in Jersey in a week or two. I’m currently on week three of social distancing and it’s been a real mixed bag. I was lucky enough to secure emergency housing on campus, as my situation at home is currently in flux, and that’s been a mixed bag too, since my roommate has moved out and for the first time in my life, I’m living entirely alone on a ghost campus. In this time, it’s been more important than ever to have something in place for self care.

Admittedly, self care isn’t something I’m great at. I’ve always prided myself on the ability to push myself to (and sometimes past) my breaking point and still come out okay. Definitely not a healthy way to live, especially when you’re like me and deal with mental health issues to begin with. I’ve always been meaning to improve my self care, and yet it gets pushed into the background most of the time. I suppose in some respects I can thank this pandemic for giving me an opportunity to put some much needed energy into this.

Of course, that’s implying that I have put energy into self care. I suppose I have, but certainly not the amount I need and probably not always in healthy ways. It’s difficult to add something entirely new to your routine when you’re struggling to preserve what was already there. There were some things that I was already doing that I’ve struggled to maintain. Most notably, I began meditating daily back in January. I was on a solid streak for a while, but during the past few weeks, I’ve had some difficulty maintaining that streak.

Part of that is because my normal nighttime routine has been almost entirely demolished, though not without purpose. Since I’m isolated here, I’ve been having almost nightly Zoom calls with my friends from home to preserve some sense of social contact. I suppose that’s a form of self care in and of itself. Still, as much as I love them, I probably need to get more comfortable regulating how much time I spend on the call, maybe leaving a bit earlier so I can pick up my standard routine after a delay.

In addition to meditation and Zoom calls, the only self care I’m succeeding in implementing is taking walks once or twice a day to get some sun, leave the apartment. Even then, I’m not terribly consistent with it, but I try as hard as I can. It definitely helps, even if only a little. Beyond that, my self care is, in my opinion, lacking. I’ve got plenty of ideas, but irritatingly few of them make it from theory to practice. I had been reading nightly before the world stopped, and I haven’t been able to get back to that. I wanted to improve my guitar skills. I want to learn bass, since I’ve had a cheap bass lying around that never gets used. I had a plan for a novel that I wanted to start researching and writing. I have no shortage of video games I want to finally get around to playing.

I’ve got plenty of things I want to do, and I’m not sure exactly how to improve any of them. I suppose it starts with time management. Never one of my strong suits, so I suppose that’s where I need to improve most. Any recommendations on that front are more than welcome. I’ve tried everything from the Pomodoro technique to binaural beats for focus to putting on a podcast, and nothing seems to stick. If I can learn to manage my time effectively, to maintain productivity at such a level that I don’t feel bad indulging in any of the self care ideas I have, then I think I will not only deal with this damned pandemic better, but be happier in general. That would be a very welcome change.