I figured out how to trick my procrastination subroutine; I'm procrastinating by reading about how to stop procrastinating. As usual mostly my productive reading has been where it's provoked me to disagree. Various insights:
0) There exists no state where I will be satisfied with my level of productivity. Nor can I imagine ever looking up and saying "hey, look at all the things I've done, I'm totally awesome." This is insight zero because it is a fundamental and unchanging axiom of the Timproverse. It can only be worked with.
1) My goals tend to be chained. This is probably a problem. Example: right now I want to play poker so that I can make money so that I can buy a new ultrawide lens so that I can take more good photos so that I can have more content for the new blog I keep hoping to get going, so that it will be cool. Everything in there involves both confidence and work, which means that there are a ton of potential failure points building up to put a lot of pressure on a pretty trivial first step.
1a) I don't really have any bright ideas for what to do about that. I can't play poker for its own sake; I can't make money for its own sake; most other things require money. It's almost like I've tried too hard to motivate myself in this direction and I'm overthrowing, to use a baseball analogy. It's easy to say "motivate yourself to work by focusing on something you want to do with the money," but that seems to have become pathological.
2) There's not all that much that I actually enjoy that isn't productive, when it comes down to it. I enjoy having smart and funny conversations with people I like. I enjoy traveling, though I expect that to be at least semiproductive these days. I enjoy wandering about in the woods by myself, ditto. I enjoy consuming some forms of entertainment, mostly books, dining out, and concerts, though I consume a great deal more entertainment than I enjoy.
2a) I spend a remarkable amount of time killing time. Part of this is just disability-related and I'm at stuck with it at least for the time being. I can't convince myself that it all is; possibly this is my one point of blind optimism.
3) The one thing I enjoy above everything else is that immediately post-creation moment where I realize that I've made something really awesome.
3a) I have impossibly high standards for myself.
4) The #2 thing is being genuinely helpful to the people I care a great deal about.
4a) I have impossibly high standards for myself.
5) I've had very bad burnout experiences, and would strongly prefer to avoid them in the future. I may be overcompensating.
6) A while ago I lost a long-time friend who had an exceptional talent for preventing me from running headlong in the wrong direction. That's something I have a significant tendency to do, and I relied on her a great deal. Without that safety net, I'm finding myself extremely averse to taking bold action in any way. I've been unsuccessful in finding someone else to do that; a few people are good at it, but no one close to that good. Convincing her to return to that role seems fantastically unlikely, though I can't say I haven't thought of trying. I keep trying to think of a solution that doesn't require putting that responsibility on someone else.
7) I dislike special attention intensely. I'm not sure how to explain this. The things I'm reading seem to tie this sort of behavior into feeling unworthy, but it's not that for me. Worthy almost makes it worse. Oh, I know what it is - I don't despise attention, I despise
prestige. That insight may make this whole post worthwhile.
8) Just to end this on a positive note, one of the common threads of everything I read about fear of success is a fear that your friends won't like you if you're successful, that they will be jealous, and in some cases that everyone will abandon you. I have way more confidence in you guys than that.