Tags
adulthood, anxiety, bad idea, depression, drinking, ridiculous, self-control, smoking, wonky logic
A while back, I decided that my long-held belief that I had bugger-all willpower was utter bollocks. It was a reasonable decision to make; I’ve given up smoking, and drinking, and clawed my way back from a complete mental breakdown, and all of those take a hell of a lot of willpower.
And I thought this meant that by definition, I had a lot more self-control than previously believed, even though people sometimes love to tell me that I’m impulsive and a bit ridiculous. This is largely true, but I’ve got to a place now where I come up with ridiculous ideas, get incredibly close to doing them, and then the self-control kicks in and I stop and go “oof, that was close. Good thing I listened to self-control voice, there”.
But there’s just one problem with this. Self-control voice is BORING and ANNOYING and a WHINY WHINY BITCH.
Yes, sure, she sometimes has a point. Were it not for self-control voice I would’ve applied for at least 17 different MAs by now, without giving all that much thought to how I would go about funding them (I think I was expecting self-control voice to come up with a plan for that as well). And I probably would’ve signed up for German lessons. And bought quite a lot of shoes. And I might’ve painted my living room blue, even though it’s not actually my living room and my landlord would probably have had something to say about it.
I see how none of these things were particularly brilliant plans – or at least, not brilliant plans at the precise moment I came up with them. But still, I hate self-control voice for stopping me from doing them, and for ruining all my fun.
And yes, I know that self-control is part of being an adult, and that eventually you have to stop being the kid that goes to the party and eats until they are quite literally sick. And if you’re going to do proper, sensible things like hold down a job, and pay your rent, and get approved for a mortgage, and not drive your other half to kill you because you just WILL NOT DO ANYTHING SENSIBLE, then you need to listen to inner reason sometimes.
It’s just that these days, sometimes seems to be translating to “quite a lot of the time”, and that’s just a bit shit. And not all that brilliant for the anxiety. Because apparently, if you spend your entire life sitting there thinking of reasons why you shouldn’t do things, then you start to see the negative consequences of every little thing. And whilst I can cope with being a bit dull and a bit sensible, I don’t think I can cope with being one of those people who won’t ever take any kind of risk.
So it’s all decided. I’m going to refuse to employ any more self-control than I currently do, before I become the least interesting person on earth.