Getting out of a Rut

Yanking the Wheel

My life has been out of sorts as of late. I have been gaining weight. I have been slacking in school. I have been slacking at with this blog/social media and even been slacking at my daily job. I have three vacations in a row, taking up three weekends in a row. I don’t have much of a desire to put in the work after my workday, so I just relax and try to avoid everything. My screentime is also extremely high as of right now, as I have been very tired so scrolling is the only “progress” I can make. I have picked up my phone countless times per day. Through work, after work, and even before work while I brush my teeth. My sleep schedule has also suffered which typically starts a total full on collapse with a relapse into crippling anxiety.

I am in a rut. I love the metaphor of the rut because the only way to get out of the rut where I am stuck, just spinning my wheels is yanking the wheel. Making drastic efforts to get me out of my own head.

What am I going to do to yank the wheel?

Go to a new location and really dive deep into the areas I want to improve. This weekend I have two flights and am staying the weekend in the Bahamas. This will be a nice break and a little bit of a reset to shock the system. I can’t start a strong habit as of yet due to another cruise happening next week. Three vacations three weeks in a row is a true blessing but way too much coming and going. I hope this trip to the Bahamas, alone, can be a strong start to developing more content again. And diversifying into using the microphone I bought a couple of months ago.

I need to put my phone in a place extremely hard to reach. I might even leave it in my car during work and only use it during specified times. 7 HOURS of screen time per day. That is just on my phone. Some of this is from a YouTube video playing in the background but my scrolling apps have been poor. This has made me develop the phone pickup habit. Putting my phone in the car during work will help my production after a few hard days. My phone is practically glued to me at work and I know my pickups must be absurd. 200 times a day. Most of it is messages but I tried to just turn on Focus setting but the no notifications made me check my phone for notifications even more. The best course of action to reset the wheel is putting it in a different room.

Exercise I have fallen off hard. I was playing golf, playing pickleball, and doing some form of extra exercise daily. Now, I have just been getting my steps in and calling it a day. What I really want to do is start another marathon program. These days felt amazing, it is a good goal to chase and the cherry on top is that it is starting to cool down in Florida. I can complete the six-month training program, take a few months off, and do it again to prepare for my 2027 marathon.

School has fallen off hard. I do my homework but don’t put any extra time in. Homework, class, and that’s it. One class I should be able to get an A or a strong B with that effort. The other class on my schedule is much harder. It looks like a whole different language from chapter 3 to chapter 4. A huge jump happened and left me in the dust. I haven’t fought very hard to stay on track of it either. I will try to binge as much as possible but there are so many different things left to hit. After my cruise, I have to drive back up to my hometown to go to a wedding, so I am being pulled from all directions. I am a bit tired, and I just can’t keep up with everything.

Lack of motivation has also been an issue in my life. I don’t really have a goal I am working towards; college seems like no end in sight. My job has been extra boring, and I have just had no motivation to keep up with the travel agency.

I went from having weeks of content scheduled and ready to post. That is when life just runs so smoothly. I can take off days, if necessary, I don’t feel like I’m under the thumb of a deadline and that is where I make my best content. When I create out of want rather than needing to get content out.

My travel agency business has slowed. I haven’t been working hard to generate leads, and most trips have been booked and paid for right now. I hit my sales goals for this fiscal year but the new year started two days ago, and I only have a few booked so far for this year. I just haven’t had the desire to really put myself out there and market in different ways. I NEED to make a month’s worth of tiktoks, it could be ugly, but I just need to do it. I also need to recreate my website, make it pretty and make it OBVIOUS that I do sell travel. An intake form on my Facebook and TikTok could go a long way too. Just some suggestions. The month of tiktoks could be done in a single day. I have so much raw footage of many different experiences from my trips, and this isn’t even counting the trip I am about to take. I am bringing my microphone on the cruise with me to do some content with so I hope I can yank the wheel and really put content together. While I am laying in the sun, enjoying my five days of sun, I could get several blogs together. I was doing extremely well with four blogs a week, but I guess since summertime, I really haven’t stayed on top of it. Blogs written in a notebook on my cruise will help me out tremendously. A huge blast of motivation has finally hit me, and I am going to get as far as possible in the TikTok drafts.  

MY FINANCES. I never thought this would be a category where I could lose myself so much. I have been running in a deficit for some months in 2025. I have had to purchase tuition, pay taxes, and I have paid for FOUR cruises, one skiing trip, and an all-inclusive resort. Not to mention an increase in my typical bills of home ownership, there is always something to buy. I haven’t even given much thought in my swipes either. The credit card has been swiped too many times to count this year. My credit card bill for this month was one of the largest I have ever seen. I was close to paying interest on a credit card for the first time in my life. I started to budget last year, and I was able to enjoy the largest surplus of my adult life. I was able to fully fund my Roth IRA accounts and enjoy vacations as well. I was lucky enough to make a few thousand in reselling items which helped. Unfortunately, the tax on that income wasn’t very fun. I put a bunch of money in a short-term brokerage account and IMMEDIATELY as I did the stock, I was highly leveraged with dropped like a rock. I was having the same experience that I had a few years earlier when my greed made me pour thousands and thousands into single stocks that plummeted into a few months of bills I needed to catch up on. I nearly panic sold again this time. That brokerage account was money for a wedding, a car, a honeymoon and a diamond ring. Now, I might use it to fill my Roth IRA. I still have thousands of dollars left to pour in there. A little over $5,000 to be exact. Some of that money has been poured into other investments. Like the single stock homerun brokerage due to an expensive time coming up, and into my Health Savings Account. The budget has to come back. And this time, I really have to crack back due to my higher expenses, and my income that has been depleted due to voluntary contributions.

A budget, a month of tiktoks and blog posts that I just planned out, training for a MARATHON, school. Do better.  Too many things to keep up with.