My Resolution! (AKA: Time Wasting)

With the new year happening only days ago, the thought of change is standing in front of everybody like a big neon sign. It’s a new year; things can change in this one! Almost everyone seems to think in this way when the dawning New Year finally comes and many people make their own little resolutions to better themselves. There is the ever popular “quit smoking” promise that thousands of people make. Lose weight and get in shape and work harder at school and get a promotion and eat healthier and hundreds of other things that people change that they don’t like that they do. This is the time for changing things we hate about ourselves. I, the humble writer, sitting here at my keyboard, also have something I want to change: I Waste Time. If there is one thing that I do that can sum up or just overshadow or encompasses every other thing about me that I don’t like is that I waste time. If I have only five minutes I am most likely going to just waste it doing something stupid that I in no way benefit from. I am actually an all-star time waster. I can sit in a blank room with white walls and only a desk with my work on it and I can still find a way to not do what I need to do. I’ve spent hours like this in a single night. Be it school (studying to be a teacher in English), Kung-Fu (only brown belt after four years), writing (I don’t write everyday like I feel I should) or anything else, I have never put my all into it. I have never done anything worthwhile that I fully immersed myself into. I’m not saying that I never put any effort into anything, ever, just that I don’t put enough effort into it. The key here is time and the wasting of. I’m a little tired right now so trying to keep this flowing. Here’s the point. I waste time. I often find myself forcing myself Not to do something. This sounds odd but I think it is the best way to describe it. I actively make myself not do things like school or Kung Fu or write or any number of things that I should be doing. Let’s keep with school. In school I will get an essay that I need to write and I will sit down with it and stare at the book. Stare at the material. Stare at the keyboard. I will be on my computer doing this, of course, because I cannot read my handwriting. I know that I have to hand this essay in the next day and it is a 2000 word essay that I haven’t yet done more for than reading the book that it is on. I will actively stop myself from working. Watch carefully; I am very sneaky at this. I will tell myself to just check my email. I check it. I then go onto seeing who is online. Then I check the news page (yes I’m referring to Facebook here, that evil program, enemy of any student) then I see something interesting that links me somewhere else, and something else. Soon I’m on a completely non-productive voyage across the nether and effectively lost for fifteen minutes or so. I can even tell myself that I have to get this done in only six hours now as I’ve been on a few voyages already and should really be typing more than a few hundred words or at least think of a clear direction for the paper to be heading in. You see, now here is the point, I think, I have some part of me that doesn’t want to do things. No, that’s not right. It doesn’t want to do things with too much effort. I don’t know why but I have my theories. Maybe I expect myself to be able to do things without trying too hard. That would indeed take a bit of an ego on my part to believe that too deeply. Maybe I just don’t like accomplishing things that require a bit of work? Or, to take it further, maybe I just want to be nothing more than mediocre? The more I think about it the more I think that the last one might be true, but it still sounds like a bit of a cover. Why would anyone Want to be average? Or maybe, maybe I don’t want to try really hard so that I will always be able to say, “I did ok, but I didn’t really try.” Which is not as good as saying, “I tried hard and I did awesome!” but a whole heck of a lot better that saying, “I tried really hard but I still failed.” That’s a scary option. Am I scared of failure? Is that why I don’t do it? That is a stupid way to think because, logically, that really isn’t the way it would happen. With only a half effort I have been able to get pretty good at a fair handful of things but not great at anything. Now, if I put in a full effort logically I should get a great result. This comes back to time wasting. Instead of wasting the time that I spend on bumming around and avoiding the work I need to do, preferring to rush it or just half-ass it, if I used that wasted time to actually do it, even a little bit, the results would be fantastic. Look what I did right now. In the last little bit I have busted out more than a thousand words. This is writing practice, it is what I should be doing instead of playing silly computer games, staring at the wall, napping, watching TV, checking my email, sleeping in,…

Conclusion? I say that I don’t want to waste any more time. I want to jog, do kung fu, work on my school, write more, learn anything worthwhile, experience people and places new to me; I want to go to the mountains, anything that could be more than a waste of time. No little games, no little naps, no little peeks at my email (I’m not so popular that I need to check it more than a once a day anyway). I’d say reading a book is good, writing something also good. A few push-ups while waiting for my micro-waved dish to be done. Anything. If I have half an hour, go for a short jog and a shower. (That rhymes. Maybe it’ll stick in my mind better that way?) I don’t know if I can stop wasting time though. Not on my own, anyway. I’ll need help. Does anyone have any ideas? What do you do that you don’t waste time? A few things are obvious, like having a partner to jog with, or a reliable study group. That’s what I need until I get in the habit myself. Things like that. I think that there’s a box to type in right below here. Just saying.

Oh, also, what does everyone else have for their New Year’s Resolutions?