looptail-g-blog

[looptail-g-blog]

May 1st, 2018

Today was a lil bumpy but it was pretty good nonetheless. Had a weird dream last night where my friend and I saw a cow while driving past a civilized area. I pointed it out to my friend, then somehow ‘remembered’ that I had drawn them (very big posters of cows?? and some other animals I think) for some event that my language class was hosting?? They were putting them up around a grassy field somehow, for some reason. There was a whole long cabin building thing where they were organizing everything and it was just so surreal. I love my sleeping brain. 

I tried something new today too: honesty. I got yelled at by my mom (rightfully so) for procrastinating for far too long. This tends to happen a lot with me. I’ve been trying to change it but old habits die hard, and I haven’t managed to kill my bad ones yet. Usually when this happens I start feeling quite unhappy, but this time I decided to not. After all, unhappy feelings really do quite little other than incite more conflict. This time, I went downstairs, phone in hand. Down I went, to confront the mother. I sat down in front of her in one of the rolling chairs we have in the basement, phone screen on, and set a timer for five minutes. “Don’t say anything, other than ask me questions. Just let me think here okay?” I said to her, to which she agreed. I had no doubt that she would break this rule, however unintentionally. I then started to just explain why I thought I procrastinated (felt kind of down due to resulting issues of a Brain Overthink(TM)) and how I actually did want to do work today but yeet small things kick me down a lot nowadays. It was a cool discussion. Mom intervened and kept intervening with suggestions (well-intentioned, but mostly unhelpful, and I told her as much). I gave up trying to keep the rules about no comments around halfway through. I love my mom, but sometimes she can be so bull-headed. We surpassed the five minute mark by about another five minutes, and we eventually came to a consensus. At one point she had suggested we change a part of our lifestyles, because she recognized procrastination was a habit of mine (ours) and those were difficult to change using willpower alone. 

Honestly the part of that conversation that struck me most was that a) after some of the standard suggestions which I just told her was not really useful to me (willpower! tell yourself to change!) she came up with a new one, and b) that new solution involved the word “we.” Such a small, but powerful word. It can change a proposed solution from feeling like an attack to actually feeling like a possible solution. We’ll see how that goes. Hope it works!

Today’s lessons: 

Honestly, honesty. Honest communication, with no anger but rather filled with a true desire to understand, is the best medicine for anything.

If you don’t know, ask. If you need something, ask. If you want to build relationships, ask. Communication is the key, and questions are its cuts. With it you can unlock anything.

looptail g.

[looptail-g-blog]

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Hello ladies and lads! Here I am and here I will stay, posting non-regularly about my day. Cheers to a great time here! :)