Just So Typically Me... Ooo Baby, Baby

I remember, a few years ago now, on a work team-building trip away, doing a workshop with a coach about time-management. They gave us sheets of paper with a large circle on, which we had to split up to create a pie chart of one full day. So we had to include things like sleep, breakfast, commute, working day, lunch, dinner and getting ready for bed. We had to include how much time these activities took up, and then subtract that from 24 to get how much time in each day we have left over for other activities.

Long story short, there wasn't a lot of spare time.

Especially if you take into account that for me, a simple 5-minute task can take me days to get done. Not because it's a particularly difficult task, no, not at all. But because I will procrastinate endlessly. Add around two hours of watching mind-numbing TikTok videos, or aimlessly scrolling through Instagram, or just simply staring into space, thinking about my to-do list and worrying about it, to my day, and my "spare" time gets eaten up.

Working 40 hours a week in itself is something that I believe to be outdated and unhealthy anyway, but that's another blog post for another time. Trying to juggle a full-time job, playing in two bands, seeing family and maintaining a relationship, whilst trying to fit anything else creative, or even just some relaxation time in, is barely manageable. Props to people who spend an hour of their day at the gym! Oh, how I long to be you.

This could be doable, maybe, if I wasn't battling my busy brain constantly. But at the moment, it feels like I need to book an Annual Leave day from work just to get my laundry and vacuuming done.

I was super excited when I discovered Vocal, and started blogging again. But after two weeks of motivating myself to blog, I burnt myself out, and now it just feels like a chore again. All these ideas for posts or stories, just locked up in one of the rooms in the back of my head, along with every other creative project I have started and never finished.

So here I am, waffling on about... well, nothing... just to make myself post something.

Since my last blog post, I've achieved SO much; wych elm played O2 Academy Brixton, supporting IDLES, I played my first gig with my second band, Borrowed Atlas, and wych elm confirmed a headline tour for May. So why can't I find inspiration in that? Why can't I write about that?

To tell you the truth, I have no idea why I can't focus for long enough to write about those magical experiences, but can waffle on making excuses for why I haven't been blogging.

Maybe I'm lying to myself, maybe I am actually a highly-motivated person who definitely can manage their time and get things done, because evidence suggests that I am capable - the only band practice (for two bands!) that I have ever missed was one where I broke down on the motorway on my way there. But no, this isn't the case. I am a people-pleaser, and if I need to do something for the sake of someone else, I can do it. For myself? Please. There's no way I can be bothered.

Honestly, who even cares, anyway. As long as I'm a somewhat functioning member of society who goes to work and pays their taxes, does it matter if my internal monologue is that of which you are reading now, on a continuous loop from the second I wake up in the morning to the moment I finally fall asleep.

Existing is exhausting.