Neurotic Way of Thinking: Giving Up Worrying Too Much
I was startled to see that my last update was in October of last year. Has it really been that long? I had a lot of things I wanted to write, and every time, I wrote them down in the Notes app on iCloud, so I wasn't actually distancing myself from the act of "writing." In fact, the habit of writing has come back to me recently, around the beginning of this month. Embarrassingly, when work gets slow and I have nothing to do, the bug in my head starts getting noisy, and I can't settle down unless I write something. In the past, while writing, I would start being bound by my own words (logic) and become unstable again, but so far, so good. Since my last post in October of last year, there's been a part of me in my head that says, "Hey, it's just killing time after all, calm down."
Among the people registered on my "Becoming a Reader" list, there's someone named Yashio. This person had an article about "Zelda, Jim, and Exploitation of Motivation" that went viral on Twitter, which is how I first learned about them. It seems they're a graduate of a technical college, and their personality somehow reminds me of a friend I've lost touch with, so I read their articles regularly.
yashio.hatenablog.com
This Yashio wrote an article that hit the nail on the head.
yashio.hatenablog.com
English titleg : Giving Up Something You Were Seriously Into, While Feeling Like You're "Not Quitting"
It was precisely as stated. For me, dancing and boxing are like that. Even now, I regularly watch dance videos, and whenever I hear a song that goes, "This is it!" my body naturally starts dancing. But the dance genres I want to do remain untouched no matter how long they've been on my mind, and I haven't been practicing at all, so I don't think I'm improving. I do shadow boxing at home, but I haven't been to the gym in over six months. However, like Yashio, I thought it would be a shame if they stopped being able to paint with oils like that and could no longer do it. I tend to withdraw into myself periodically. This is called self-effacement, I believe (though it's probably a bit different). I'm particularly allergic to online activities like social media and blogging. I wish I could keep going like a flowing river without stagnation. I don't want to say soulless, business-book-like things like "making it a habit at the level of brushing your teeth."
The point, I think, is "giving up." I worry about all sorts of things. Since I'm always overly self-conscious, I start judging that I shouldn't do this, or that I'm failing because I can't do what I should. Then I start to drift away and fade out. At that point, I should just accept that I'm going to worry and that I'm going to be reluctant, and do it anyway.
Well, even though I understand that, for some reason I try to push myself, and as a result, I end up drifting away, which is the difficult part. This might sound like an excuse, but including that, maybe it's better to resign myself to the fact that I'll drift away and look at it from a distance. After all, I might be able to do it that way.
When I met my father and talked to him after a long time, I realized that neurotic people tend to spin their wheels when they become conscious of something as a point. There are a certain number of such people in the world, including myself and my father. People who become bigheaded and stiff in their movements. They would do better if they could be natural and relaxed, but for some reason, they end up brooding and worrying, or becoming conscious of something and getting stiff. Indeed, "giving up" might be a good medicine.
