My Motivation During this Slump

Motivation

My motivation has been extremely low over this month and a half. I have just been holding on just barely getting by in all aspects of my life. I have been gaining weight, I have been falling behind in my projects such as travel agent work, school has been weak, I haven’t made time for my hobbies, I haven’t wanted to put in any work once I get home, and I have even started to fall behind at work. Everything I do feels like a large push up a hill. Which extends through ever category in my life.

A month or two ago I was enjoying the strongest streak of motivation in my life in almost every area. I was improving in my hobbies, my relationship was good, school was easy to juggle, and everything just seemed to go right. Fast forward to now and I don’t know what on Earth I am doing. I have fallen behind in everything as I just barely have my head above water before the next wave smashes into me. A large reason is my weekends being stolen from me. It is where I reset the house, catch up on projects, and relax before my work week begins again. Gratefully for me, because I have enjoyed my weekends, I just miss that routine just a bit. I have been on two cruises and an all-inclusive resort in the last three weekends, the last weekend I have is a wedding back in my hometown and if I accepted another wedding invitation, I would be in Ohio the next weekend too. Having five weekends worth of weddings and vacations. Luckily, the streak ends at four.

This leaves my weekdays to have to mow the grass, power wash the driveway, study for tests, work on blogs and tiktoks, and try my best to reset for the week. Which leaves me just a bit tired. I love vacations but three in a row have tired me out. I am a guy that craves routine.

Not to mention my motivation has dropped to career low levels. My attention span has also dropped as everything that is in front of me looks ten feet high. My to do list is ten miles long and I have just been collapsing under the pressure. School, work, extra job, marketing for extra job, proposals, finances, vacations, ring shopping, weddings, exercise. I am dreaming of the days back in 2016 when I had no responsibilities. I just had school, or part time college and part time school as I ate and slept under my parents’ roof. A job three days a week, and college two days a week was lovely. I didn’t take advantage of this opportunity at all. Now I have a full-time job and go to college part time under the roof I pay for unfortunately. I also had free college at that time, not anymore.

One of my largest eureka moments was when I was able to live out the book “Atomic Habits” I was able to habit stack and this led me to be the most productive in school, work, and all facets of my life.

I decided to finally take control yesterday. I fought through the laziness and FINALLY put the mindless scrolling down as I knocked a few items off my to-do list. It is still a long to-do list, but I am working through it. Finally making progress on stuff I felt stuck to do.

My creative funk is slowly chipping away as I finish blog after blog, trying to fight for two weeks of blog posts scheduled in advance before I go into making tiktoks.

I actually studied for a test; this test has been a dark rain cloud hovering above me everywhere I go but I finally have put some time in. My homework grades are fantastic, which deserves a mention as I used to just take 0’s in my classes for homework. Now they do an amazing job at pulling my grades up. After this test I will be able to take a deep breath and maybe even take a few days off studying as I shift to homework. All I can do is hope that I actually put in a bit more time before the last two days to study. No zeros and I will be okay. Maybe even be able to add a class to the mix next semester.

I was at my heaviest around this time last year. I was irritated, I was upset, and I was anxious about my health. I kept plumping up as I finally broke the 200 pound marker and exploded towards 220 during my first year in a sedentary job. I ran a marathon and shredded 25 pounds of fat off of me in six months, hitting a goal to get under 200. Unfortunately…. The holidays happened, vacations happened, taxes happened and I plumped up over 200 again. The last month has been bad in this area as I am nearing the 220 number again.

I am not hitting 220 again. Last night I started my second marathon training plan with a very slow 30-minute run. I had a goal at the beginning of the year to hit under a ten minute mile, this seems in Fantasyland right now.

My finances have been a mess. Almost for the whole year now. Ever since I got smacked in the mouth by $2000 of extra taxes that I had not budgeted for. Since then, I hit a few random expenses like car insurance, school tuition, extra house costs like increased rent payment and always some item to make a house into a home, and other random items that happen more than once a month now. I just keep swiping my card. This month already has $200 of unplanned expenses which will hit me hard at the end of the month. With the 3% from 401(k) and a $220 health insurance/HSA biweekly payment has eaten a lot of my work pay. Leaving me struggling. I will make a budget blog this next week as I go through the massacre of finances that was October. November has a birthday and a cruise, December brings the holidays, and this year is looking like a huge step backwards in financials. I was at $50,000 net worth last year, I wouldn’t be surprised if I am remaining the same, if not less. My investments have increased but my liquidity has taken a sharp hit. A diamond ring isn’t too cheap either.

My travel agent page has run out of pictures to show. They were planned out and I remember I had around 25 at the most before my phone was whining about storage size. This has dwindled slowly into the single digits as it rapidly approaches zero. The consistency is gone with creation. And it is even sadder that I am wanting to do new things but I am just frozen to just maintain the bottom line. I remember I was putting in 10 hours a week to this project when I first started, then five hours was acceptable, and now, five hours is a huge accomplishment. Not surprisingly I have remained stagnant with bringing in new clients as I don’t try to work outside the box and fall behind in everything. The blogs are finally starting to come back online as I push hard through the next few days to get weeks ahead.

Overall, the last two days are something to be proud of. I have worked hard in every personal aspect but failed still in another… I was not present in my relationship at home. I had every chance to improve and show up for her but I did not as my mind ran in circles with no production and no help. Today was a bigger step in the right direction and I will not stop. I want to get back to Spring production. I have been listening to motivational speeches, and gotten back to listening to movie soundtracks that I would do to increase my production. I am feeling good about the next steps in my life. I will get back on top.