BigGreenSee123's journal

[BigGreenSee123]

[6] I'm supposed to be doing work...but I can't seem to get started. I spent the whole afternoon procrastinating. It is odd, I know that it's a big project I'm working but that if I just keep at it I will finish. I have no doubts in my abilities. And I even know that once I get started I'm likely to even enjoy the process, at least a little bit. Yet, I can't seem to get started. It's like everything in me is screaming NO - all this aversion in response to one little project. There's not much I'd prefer to do instead, really, except lie in bed and watch TV. That's all I ever want to do. I really hate it. I feel like I am losing my life just always fighting the desire to do nothing. How do you accept something like that? I don't want my life to be a series of days where I am lying in bed watching TV or fighting myself, wishing I was in bed watching TV. But, apparently, that's sort of what it's become; it's not like I have the desire to do much else. Is it still considered self-hatred if you're hating the products of your body/mind system (i.e., a lack of motivation for anything)?

I guess this may just be some more signs of depression. I hate depression.

Or, maybe it's not necessarily depression. Maybe I just set my standards so high that when I find I am like the rest of the humans around me and just don't want to write a 10 page paper that I am appalled at my lack of perfection. How dare I be unmotivated? Maybe I can't deal with the simple truth that I am not intrinsically driven to change the world, though I may wish to be. Gah, here I go again with the incessant self-analyzing.

I think I'm hooked on my TV, though. Someone posted recently about an inner fantasy life. It's had me thinking. I still remember growing up going through stories in my head. I made up characters in my mind, put myself into a made up world. I still remember some of the scenarios I went through over and over. I still remember some of the characters. Every once and a while, when I can't sleep, I even venture back to them in my mind, like running my fingers over a childhood security blanket for comfort.

I don't really entertain these stories in my head anymore, though. My T once tried to chat about them, use them to understand what was going on in my mind as a youth. The conversation didn't get too far, though. But, this was back when I didn't do much talking in therapy. If I think about the story lines, though, I can seem some symbols of my young life.

Regardless, after thinking about these things a bit more I realized they faded as I grew up, moved into my own room in my parents' house and, more importantly, got my own TV. I realized that this habit of mine may not have gone away, not really. Just, rather than concocting my own stories, I relied on TV shows to keep me entertained and distracted.

In my fantasy life I had the same type of main character - broken by life, something of an outcast, separate, yet heroic somehow (usually by way of intelligence). Now, the TV shows I am most drawn to, I realize, are led by the same kind of protagonist. Hidden pain. Damaged. Different. But also magnetic. Subtly larger than life. Smart. It's the same type of people I imagined, the same dynamics.

I think it would be good for me to step away. I've tried before. I feel like people who I've talked to about it don't get it, what my problem is with my own TV habit. Maybe they're right - maybe it's just more harsh judgments of myself and the fact that I, too, have times where I am just looking to be lazy. But I get the feeling that there's more to it. There's a numbing quality to watching TV. I wonder if it's keeping me from myself, for better or worse.

It's hard, though, the notion of giving it up. It brings me back to the same old paradox I've been trying to make sense of for a few years now. I keep worrying that I'm turning into a robot - I feel like I don't feel anything. I don't care about anything or anyone. That I'm just sort of empty and numb. But then I feel anything and I just want it to go away; I want to go back to hiding away under the covers. I don't think it's healthy for me to keep numbing myself out, but I don't know if I have the...whatever it is you need...to learn how to face myself and deal with my emotions.