UBBT: Break the Cycle

I am definitely not motivated. I’m giving up. I feel myself doing what I usually do when I’m presented with a challenge too great for me to simply coast through. I can feel it: a shadow on the edge of my senses, like a warm hole in the ground, quiet and secure. This thought comes to mind: if I don’t try and I do better than more than half, then that’s actually really good, in a way. My bed is right behind me; flannel sheets, perfectly comfortable pillow, warm duvet. All the thoughts running through my head say to lie down, figure out my stuff in the morning. School, kung fu, the UBBT, upcoming banquet, I have so much reading to do, I should be doing my situps, kempo, it’s all dragging me down. I could just go down with it. lie down in my bed. Eight hours of sleep before I have to get up in the morning—the perfect amount of sleep they say—I can do my workout then; there’ll be time for reading tomorrow at lunch; I can rework my resume next week; I’ll really start to focus after I have a good sleep…………

I just read Master Brinker’s blog. I am the “negative cycle of acceptance” that he’s talking about, not specifically, but it’s a description that I can see fitting me very well. I am nonchalant about failure, about not trying and the excuses for it are everywhere. But I’m starting to realize that there’s no chance of any of this going away. I can’t drop school without sacrificing my future profession and dream of becoming a school councillor, not to mention the respect of my parents. I can’t ignore my current jobs without cutting out everything that they pay for: food, car, roof over my head, school. I can’t drop the UBBT without losing the respect of this group of people that I have spent the last five or so years training with, without cutting off the one thing I haven’t stopped half finished, the one thing that I can’t coast through, without losing the chance to change myself, to stop this cycle of acceptance, to become who I want to be, to become the kind of person I would trust teaching and counselling children through some of the trickiest times of their lives. It’s becoming more and more clear to me that I can’t let any of this drag me down. I have to shoulder it and pick it up. I know I can, I just have to do it.

I’m smart enough to know I can’t do it alone, which is why I joined this thing in the first place. Just by reading a few blogs I am already feeling good about this. I’m not in this to get in shape. I’m in this to change myself on a level far below the surface. Time to stop my b(censored for sensitive readers)ing. I’m here to break this cycle.

Time to do some reading and sit-ups.