Why Do You Write Like You’re Running Out of Time?

My blog posts have been lagging a bit these days. Originally I had established this blog to help me explore the act of writing and build a healthy and productive writing habit. Here are some things I have learned about writing:

1. It is damn near impossible to write with children in the house. Case in point – I woke up early today to spend sexytime with my blog, only to open the laptop’s sleek case, gently tickle the keys to type in the password, some light pokes with the mouse to get to the blog, and then, what’s that?!? A tiny voice crying for me to help get underwear and Garcia the bear. I am a magician and I can make focus time dissipate into the unknown! My forces are stronger than I initially thought.
2. Writing for hours is difficult, sequestering those hours is even harder. See item #1 about time disruption. However, ask yourself if you could sit and pump out a colorful tale in one hour without feeling like you transported to another world. The tricky part is getting your mothership back to the real world after that hour.
3. The urge to recap is impossible to satiate (mostly because of a lack of time). Whenever I worked on a project in the corporate corpse world, I would review my work from the previous day, massaging my cranium and jolting it to recall the masterpieces created the days before. With writing, doing a total recap is not an option, or else you would be rereading your future book seventy thousand times, thus never giving yourself time to start, continue, and finish said book. Can I get an assistant over here please? Someone perhaps more willing to follow instruction than a three year old gremlin.
4. My time with writing has been one of the best endeavors ever. A profound percentage of my quests and jobs in life have been to satisfy my craving for learning, this writing journey is no different. The challenge is the enchantment.

So for now, I will continue to write. I will remain a top-notch mother who teaches my children about the simple, complex, and sometimes deceiving machines of life, and I will power on my journey of learning. Eventually my brain will explode into a million tiny ideas that will sprinkle themselves over the universe, causing others to catch the Learning Bug (forget my other post about Death Wishes to You and Yours, the Innovative Explosion is how I really want to go out).

My name is Matt Foley, and I am a motivational speaker.

Motivation is a mysterious beast. It can be alluring, tantalizing, yet a nasty little shit. I write this as I am tender and sore from a workout that I praised and cursed within two minutes of each other (I believe f*#k you was what I said this time I was doing alternate V-situps today. Better yet, the guy on the video, my pal Phil, said to me (like I knew it all along), “And if you need to take it slow today, you can keep your legs on the ground for this move.” I hear this phrase while the whole time I had been putting my legs on the ground, unaware that they were supposed to do elevated. Even more embarrassing that I had been STRUGGLING that whole time with the “legs on the ground” version. Needless to say, after that move was over, I let out a nice giant F U to my microscopic phone screen, mostly because it was a pain in the ass, pun intended, but a morsel of my heart was saying F U for getting me motivated enough to even try a move like that. Motivation, you sneaky little succubus.

I pulled a butt muscle the other day, and I would have taken that feeling over the alternate-V-sit-legs-floating-in-mid-air dance any day, any time.

But wait, there’s more. Not even three more moves into my buddy Phil’s workout, and I am doing plank jacks and sailing along like the badass warrior woman that I claim to be, cheering along with my boy, P, on YouTube, ready for the next circuit, which ends up being something as awful as “the move before that must not be named.” See above paragraphs if you need a refresher. Ups and downs, all within twenty minutes. 1200 seconds, the amount of time I allow myself to sit on Facebook each day. The 20 minutes on FB feels like a flash in a pan compared to the 20 minutes of exercise. Similar to how lunch break is always cheated while some thirty minute meetings were a struggle to remain from slipping into Freddy Krueger’s world. Sheesh, doesn’t anyone know how to have fun around here?

Bad news, team. Fun is hard work.

This is hard livin’

It takes every morsel of my energy to push through an exercise routine, maybe even more than that. I first have to convince myself that it is worth doing, which it always is, and then I have to walk past a mirror at least twice for glimpses of my metamorphosis, the small muscle tone that exists acting as reassurance that the work is worth doing. Then I have to don my attire, which I make sure takes extra long, even drawing out the speedy task of tying my shoes. Honestly, it is kind of difficult to tie your shoes in slow motion, try it sometime, the brain cannot compute. Finally I make it to the part where I gather my water, my phone, and my headphones, and I trudge upstairs, tell that damn Computer to turn on the Theater light, and I get down to business. Twentyish minutes or less. Full of cursing, taking breaks, and cheering my pathetic self on. Sometimes I get cocky and do a spicy five-minute arm workout after that, and that one always is icing on the cake. Afterwards I bask in the glory of that extra energy, the spryness of my steps, and the ability to fit into clothes I spent money on years ago, only to be looked at, not donned, peered at in a museum-like fashion during the past four years of being in and out of work in the pregnancy department. Those poor clothes. Somehow I manage to convince myself they are worth retaining in my tight closet year after year; the day I finally wear them will be the day I resent them.

The Locomotion, mixed with lethargy

Exercise is a good choice. Deep down I know I will have to continue being healthy up until the day my body explodes into a confetti burst of ideas for the future of tomorrow, but most of me wants to know if there will ever be an opportunity to let go of the jumping jacks and do the fun stuff, like being a couch potato and reading all day. My heart wants to say yes, but my head knows that constant lethargy will get me nowhere but down in the dumps. I wonder if everyone struggles like this – my inferior mind says I am the only one, but my emotionally intelligent brain is mentoring me, stating that a majority of people also struggle through and despise grueling exercises.

I used to hide from exercise like a prisoner escaping in the middle of the night. No way does it see me…..I am slinky and sleuth-like, back against the wall, keeping busy with other tasks so it thinks that I have more important things to do. It cannot reel me in today, I have better plans, a more promising day. I will walk around today, that will be good enough. That was always my motto. And then I got sad because said clothes did not fit anymore. And my stomach felt dense and of the consistency of the La Brea tar pits. Bubbling yet still, gelatinous, clogged with whatever sodium-saturated snack I decided to plunge into at 10pm the night before. Any hangover medicine turns its nose up at my practices of vice-maintenance, hangovers don’t like working hard, so why would their medicines do any different? Nothing works.

Alas, now I have built a routine, and I crave it. Exercise has become a part of my flabby little being, no matter how hard I try to shove it out of my mainframe. Now to uphold and give it the respect it deserves….

Motivation.

Mysterious. Magnificent. Melting. Mind-blowing.

Tell me, how do you motivate yourself?