I have a few friends I would love to cut off. They’re kind
of assholes. They overstayed their welcome, sucked dry my self-esteem and get
in the way of doing important stuff. Like, updating this blog.
One of them has been around too long. Procrastination. This
charming lazy prick has a way of making everything fun, except what really
needs to be done. We’ve been friends since puberty, avoiding responsibility,
making sure that panic reaches its absolute maximum before lighting a fire under
my ass to meet deadlines. Sure, if suddenly cleaning becomes far more
entertaining than say, writing, or working, that should be a clear sign that
Procrastination should not be around any longer. But, like any good
procrastinator, I postponed ending my relationship with Procrastination. I
guess there were too many episodes of Breaking Bad to get through before doing
that. Procrastination and I have been together too long for me remember why we
hooked up in the first place. It’s more of a force of habit than a real
commitment. Even so, it doesn’t seem to want to get going and that interrupts
the fluidity of my life, chopping it up and inserting too many moments of:
1)
Googling “Jessica Biel’s workout routine”
2)
Singing Les Miserables full soundtrack until I
am certain I can audition for the part of Eponine
3)
Youtube. So much Youtube
4)
Writing down To-do lists I never complete
5)
Feeling bad for never completing the To-do lists
6)
Contemplating why I’ll never be as cool as
Freddie Mercury
7)
You get it.
The other good-for-nothing obnoxious motherfucker is Fear.
It’s not that he is around every now and then to serve as a motivation to do
better, to really challenge myself. It’s that he is the loudest, jittery,
repetitive dude I’ve ever met. He is also a master at the what ifs.
Are you sure you want
to do that? Once you choose, you can’t go back, you know? What if you fail?
What if you embarrass yourself? What if you really don’t know what you are
doing? What if you can’t take it back? What if you never become what you want
to become?
Over, and over and over again. And it doesn’t get old for
him. He loves it when I make the safe choices, the ones that won’t hurt me but
won’t be memorable either. Fear’s kind of a drag.
The cousin of Fear is Insecurity. It follows it around like
a puppy, a puppy that whimpers all the time and you’d seriously consider
kicking. Not only does it echo Fear’s incessant questions, but it makes me feel
like I walk around giants, giants that at any moment can flatten me with a
single move. Insecurity makes you live inside a box you find uncomfortable at
first but then you can’t imagine being able to stretch your arms and legs like
you used to. You just don’t have that flexibility anymore. Insecurity is more
than a downer. It makes me forget I used to be great and makes me believe I was
always small.
Nobody wants these three fuckers around. But once you let
them spend a few minutes, it’s hard to get them to leave. They feign friendship
by pretending to keep you safe and away from all bad choices. But they also
keep you away from any choice, any movement. Breaking up with them is hard and
whenever I manage to, we always end up getting back together, like a couple
that doesn’t want to accept its end because it doesn’t know anything else. It’s
sad.
The truth is this is just my lame way of shaking off the
dust. Fear yells every time I get the fire to write here again, saying these
things have an expiration date and my blog is way past the sour milk stage. It’s
cheese.
I don’t want to be cheese. I want it to be fresh and funny
again (if it ever was). That was Insecurity again. I don’t want to open up a
million tabs in my browser to avoid the one thing I want to do. Write. I don’t
want to be afraid of my past failures of not following through or becoming a
giant excuse maker (I’m too good at that now).
I want for my words to be louder than Fear, Procrastination
and Insecurity, and if they’re not, I want to shut them up by singing very
loudly “Don’t Stop me Now” or “Get Off of my Cloud”. Freddie and Mick won’t be
proud of my singing, but I’m sure it will do the trick.
Maybe this is just repetitive now and it has lost its
truthfulness, like a boyfriend that keeps promising to change or another cell
phone company promising you the best service out there.
The truth is I’m going to give this one more shot. Who can
it hurt, except my pride, dreams and basically the last smidgen of optimism
that I possess? Fuck it. Let’s just do this.
The three “friends” probably will never go away completely. But
I changed the locks and they won’t come in for a while.
My metaphors are a little rusty. It will get better.