externally induced procrastination

Even as I type this, I don’t feel like doing so. “Feelings, you don’t argue with them” is what doctor Gabor Maté said, but here I am, arguing with my feelings.

It’s no news that they can be over-ridden. They can be manipulated, even internally, to achieve a certain goal. The body can be tricked into taking action by evoking certain feelings, even ones that are completely unrelated to what I want to do.

Earlier on today I was lying down on my tatami like a fresh corpse waiting to be buried. On the outside very peaceful, but on the inside it was a tug of war between the lazy thoughts and the conqueror thoughts. I even denigrated myself for having stimulating and energising thoughts, as if I didn’t want them to stop me from falling into a slumber.

Then after a while, I realised I could go and sit against the radiator which was roaring with heat. Well, better than pretend sleeping I thought. The only reason I changed to the radiator was because of comfort. Yes, I finally got to move my body just to find a position that allows me to be more lethargic.

Believe me or not, what happened next was incredibly surprising to me. I had experienced it before, but it felt like cheating on myself, and a bit nefarious. I started scrolling through TikTok out of sheer brain-deadery, and suddenly one of them lives came up. With a pretty girl linking to her socials. Turns out this is the kinda girl that creates 18+ content. She had an X username on there.

Bear in mind that the dominating thoughts and emotions in my body were ones of maximising comfort and cozying up as much as possible. But then one devious force awakened within me. Lust. The kind that makes us seek out content like this girl’s. It triggered in my brain that I must stand up and research this X account. So I did. I got up and went to my standing desk, I opened my iPad, then the app, and then searched the username. As I clicked on her profile and seen through a little bit of the stuff, my conscious self whispered “what the fuck are you doing” (paraphrasis). Aaand I snapped out of it.

Then came an inner smirk. Deception. I thought to myself “I tricked myself into standing up by doing something degenerate”. It felt like I was tricking my lust. Like I was tricking the devil. Or rather, like I was tricking my own body to do my bidding. But in reality, it wasn’t like so. My goal wasn’t to get up at the moment. It was to consume degeneracy. Because I snapped out of the loop however, it ended up seeming like it was all according to plan. I don’t make plans that sophisticated yet. There’s a level of cunning associated with it. Turns out I could do with a shit as well, so I went for it.

Overall it seems like a good thing, because I finally got to start writing what you’re now reading. I’ve been procrastinating on this for weeks and weeks, but this self-deception got me to take action. Some say that you should do anything to achieve your goal. I’m not going to argue with that, as it’s one of the belief systems, and I personally do not abide by it. But it makes you wonder.

On the topic of writing, I’ve started writing this blog as a way to express myself, and to grow myself and the world in a productive manner. After all, we like consuming things for growth, but producing for growth is a new favourite of mine. To that end, whoever is still reading this, go and share this post with your friends and family. Make my day.