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matt_doylePart of it, of course, is how stressed and strapped for cash I am at the moment - it's less that I'm missing posts due to how hard I'm working, and more that I'm missing posts due to constant fretting or desperate dreaming of get-rich-quick schemes or the like. I tend to handle stress very well right up to the point where it eats my brain, and unfortunately I'm in nom-nom-nom territory right now.
The rest of it, is, well, an almost pathological laziness. I made a post about this a couple years back on the old journal, but I think, both as an explanation and to give me something to post today, I'm going to re-post that essay here.
When I was a kid, my dad would yell at me for not cleaning my room. If I cleaned my room, he'd yell at me for not cleaning it right- maybe I made the bed wrong, maybe my stacks and piles of papers weren't neat enough, maybe I hadn't vacuumed, or forgot the closet, or... there was always something. When I cleaned the room so perfectly that there was nothing to complain about- often spending an eight-hour day straightening out every last detail- then he'd yell at me for not cleaning the living room, not doing the dishes, not sweeping the kitchen floor, not making sure my siblings cleaned their rooms.
On the very few occasions upon which the entire house was clean when he came home from work, and I'd contributed all my waking hours to help make it so...
He said nothing. In all my life I never heard a word of praise for the nigh-unobtainable standard of cleanliness that was set in our apartment, never had my efforts acknowledged, was never told I'd done enough, or done well, or given any sign that my work had been noticed. Every now and then if I got good grades, won a contest, won an award, I'd hear something, but that was the exception and not the rule. It extended far beyond just cleaning... and I was a bright kid. I figured out the system early on.
I remember thinking, some time around middle school, that no matter what I did or did not do, I always got yelled at, and always got yelled at about the same amount. So, when it came to any sort of task, I had two options: I could be lazy, or I could be incompetent. I was- I am- very familiar with being called both. The penalty and inconveniences of either were more or less indistinguishable. So the choice wasn't very hard.
It's much, much easier to be lazy.
The rest of it, is, well, an almost pathological laziness. I made a post about this a couple years back on the old journal, but I think, both as an explanation and to give me something to post today, I'm going to re-post that essay here.
When I was a kid, my dad would yell at me for not cleaning my room. If I cleaned my room, he'd yell at me for not cleaning it right- maybe I made the bed wrong, maybe my stacks and piles of papers weren't neat enough, maybe I hadn't vacuumed, or forgot the closet, or... there was always something. When I cleaned the room so perfectly that there was nothing to complain about- often spending an eight-hour day straightening out every last detail- then he'd yell at me for not cleaning the living room, not doing the dishes, not sweeping the kitchen floor, not making sure my siblings cleaned their rooms.
On the very few occasions upon which the entire house was clean when he came home from work, and I'd contributed all my waking hours to help make it so...
He said nothing. In all my life I never heard a word of praise for the nigh-unobtainable standard of cleanliness that was set in our apartment, never had my efforts acknowledged, was never told I'd done enough, or done well, or given any sign that my work had been noticed. Every now and then if I got good grades, won a contest, won an award, I'd hear something, but that was the exception and not the rule. It extended far beyond just cleaning... and I was a bright kid. I figured out the system early on.
I remember thinking, some time around middle school, that no matter what I did or did not do, I always got yelled at, and always got yelled at about the same amount. So, when it came to any sort of task, I had two options: I could be lazy, or I could be incompetent. I was- I am- very familiar with being called both. The penalty and inconveniences of either were more or less indistinguishable. So the choice wasn't very hard.
It's much, much easier to be lazy.
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Date: 2009-07-31 03:18 pm (UTC)That said, don't beat yourself up over not-daily posting! You are posting quite a lot, reliably, and that is no easy task. I don't think anyone reading your LJ will begrudge you the extra RL time that not posting gives you. This should be a hobby, not another source of stress. ♥
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Date: 2009-08-04 04:09 pm (UTC)