Powering through the hard times

As I write this, I feel low. I feel tired. There's not one thing that's brought on this low feeling, just a multitude of things that has occurred. When you feel low, like really depressed, there's not much you want to do. In fact, all you want to do is shut of from the world and lay in bed, scroll through dumb stuff on your phone and not really be productive. But is that the best thing to do?

Absolutely not. It's not the first time I've felt like this. On the 14th January, 2023, a Saturday, I felt incredibly low, in large part because Everton had just lost a must win match against Southampton. That evening I felt awful. I couldn't pay attention to anything I was supposed to be doing. So I made a plan for the next day to be productive. I wrote down a list of things I needed to do that Sunday and when it came I got those things done. It basically included getting my new phone upgrade, cleaning my room, basic stuff like that, but with that plan I woke up optimistic on Sunday that I would get it all done, and so I plowed on through and got it done.

Today I feel similar. Obviously, there's nothing football related causing it, other factors are in play, but what's causing it doesn't matter much because often times they are things I can't control or don't have complete control over. So the best thing to do, rather than wallow in bed and feel sorry for myself, is to focus on what I can control.

To that end, today I have already been the shops and gotten what I need for today (just greek yoghurt for future breakfasts) and I'm getting this blog post written. After this is done, I have a lot of other stuff planned:

• I have another update I need to add to the blog
• I need to do my weekly bedroom clean
• I'm going to clean the bins in the flat (the summer has brought a lot of fruit flies)
• I'm going to go over and practise the dances for the musical I'm performing in
• I'm going to sort out my parts of the costume for it
• I'm going to write a big shopping list for the weekend

The idea here is that being productive will be much better for my mood than just doing nothing. A lot of the time we think the fix to our mental struggles is to just do what immediately feels good and call it self-care. See bed rotting for an insane example of this. But many times, the best thing to do is not stuff that makes us immediately comfortable, but to do the hard stuff that sure, may be tough to do in the moment, but we'll be glad for once it's over.

This is delayed gratification, an important concept for everyone to think about.