Compromise

 

Premise like woah…

This year I have been working on not only goal setting, but  actually accomplishing what it is I set out to do.  There are a few ways to achieve those goals, but what I’ve learned is that is a lot of ways to compromise them too.

What it is?

Before I start to hammer through what causes compromise in a goal it’s actually important to stop and realize that the purpose of a goal is to make your life better and hopefully expansive.  You’re reaching beyond who you already are and trying to achieve something new.  You’re pushing into the darkness of who you are and hoping to attain something valuable for your efforts. That said, with any goal, failure shouldn’t be unexpected but it also shouldn’t be ignored.  The dance between compassion and evaluation is an important one.  If it’s all understanding and no measurement then progress may be in doubt.  If on the other hand the dance is all judgement and no appreciation for the struggle then despair will ensue.  Being honest with yourself is the most important part of the process.  Never lie to yourself and say that you’re hitting your marks when you’re not, but know that not hitting your marks isn’t a reason to berate yourself for failure.

A goal could be something that is super critical to survival or quality of life.  However it could also be something that sustains your quality of life and keeps you active and healthy.  The latter is the range in which most of my goals exist these days.  Once upon a time goals like moving out of my house or to quit drinking were critical to me not losing my sanity or destroying my life either financially and potentially physically.  However, at this point in my life, I could be considered by some as a successful individual.

My survival needs are all met, most of my social needs are met, so why continue to push so hard?  First the reason that I am at this point of success in my career is because growing up my household had some problems and a lack of ability to resolve those problems.  As a consequence I pushed myself to hone my ability to take on those problems whether it be purely technical, in setting up new modems,  computers, etc or the problems were more emotionally driven resolving interpersonal conflicts between family members.  Being a problem solver is intrinsic to who I am.  I find myself in distress if I don’t have a problem to solve which in itself is a problem.  The best solution I have found is for me is to consciously take part in creating new problems for my mind to solve.  Otherwise I will unconsciously create problems to solve which is a much worse place to be.

Second  is to keep myself moving forward.  This might sound like over achiever bullshit but it’s actually really important.  The truth is that the world is moving forward.  People are constantly trying to get ahead.  New concepts are being developed.  New technologies are finding their place in history as I write this post.  Which means that if I feel like I have attained success and stand still the world will pass me by.  It’s not an act of evil, it’s not a pessimistic view, it’s just a fact.  The world will keep moving with or without me.  I believe that it is in my best interest to keep pushing myself forward in hopes that I won’t be left behind in the future, and if I am left behind that it won’t be completely intolerable.

Third is that goal setting helps me determine what my values are.  If I set a goal and don’t achieve it’s possible that I don’t value that thing very much.  It’d be easy for me to say the goal was unreasonable to begin with or I didn’t have the time to pursue it.  However the reality is that people can do remarkable things that you would never expect them to be able to do.  If I’ve failed at something chances are I didn’t value that thing enough to pursue it to the fullest.

What had happened?

Okay boom, so goals are important.  Now all I have to do is set those goals and wait for them to be undoubtedly be achieved, right?  Wah wah.  Wrong.   So what the fuck happens that things fall apart?  I can set out with the best intentions and then wham a year later I’m staring into my glass of New Year’s Eve champagne wondering what happened to my year.  Compromise got a hold of me, whether it’s big or little and it tore my little plans to shreds.  Here are a list of things that turn my potential “good job” into a total “fuck job”.

First up, work stress.  It is both the provider of means to life and the reason to want to end it.  It’s pretty easy for me to draw a direct line between tension at work and compromised goals.  Whether it be a looming timeline, an unbearable coworker, or just setting out to do too much in a day; work stress can be linked pretty easily to my bad diet, an excuse to miss a workout, and hang overs.

A not so uncommon struggle for me is to start out having a good day.  Have my intentions for a productive day derailed by an unplanned phone call or an issue that needs immediate resolution.  Maybe there is nothing that can be done to prevent the situation that hijacks my day.  Next thing I know, lunch is pushed back two hours and now it has to be Jimmy John’s because I didn’t prep anything healthy to eat.  By the end of the day I reflect on my poorly managed time and my already compromised diet and think to myself “since I already fucked my diet over at lunch, I might as well eat whatever I want for dinner too.”  Fast forward to the next day when I’ve had a bad nights sleep after pounding down a pint of ice cream crammed with so much sugar it could give a horse type two diabetes.  Next thing I know I’m using coffee like a prescription for narcolepsy.  I navigate my near comatose body through what I’m calling a day of work which will inevitably be unproductive.  I might as well go get more fast food for lunch again.  And voila, the cycle of compromise becomes self perpetuating.  If only scientist could find a way to turn my regretful choices into electricity we could get out of this energy crisis.

By the end of the week I have failed so much at my desired accomplishments I hardly want to look back and calculate the financial, caloric, and opportunity cost of my bad decisions.  Besides I’ve worked hard all week,  it would be absurd at this point to not treat myself well.  I’ll hit the vape pen real quick to take the edge off.  This will give myself some down time and start fresh again on Monday morning, right?

 I live in Colorado.  Weed is readily available for consumption.  Acquiring it and getting high is as much a reality as going to the grocery store and getting chicken for dinner.  Essentially there is nothing stopping you from doing this.  Which means that you could be high a lot of the time.  The culture here is pretty laid back and not many people would bat an eye at it if you were already stoned in the morning.  I’m hesitant to admit this because, one it seems so obvious that I feel like a “no duh” is already on it’s way, but getting high is a big compromise on my goals.

It might come to mind that you can accomplish a lot of goals while high.  That might be true for some people, but it’s not true for me.  It’s actually very hard for me to focus in a way where I can form thoughts with continuity.  Also the net effect of getting high results in detachment and laziness.  By that I mean that consequences seem less important. When consequences seem less important then I don’t take any action.  Arguably this is actually a reflection on me and not the substance.  Fair enough, other people might be perfectly productive while stoned.  This is a personal account.

Here is what I know about me.  I am in my default state a neurotic person.  When left unchecked I will continue to produce neurotic energy to the point of toxicity in my everyday life which hinders decision making, ability to sleep, and constant concern of potential regret.  Essentially I try to track all possible variables in life, manipulate them for a predictable positive outcome, then inevitably end up depressed because the best possible outcome wasn’t achieved.  Okay, that’s a guy who needs to smoke a joint and let go.  The problem becomes that when I turn to hit the vape pen and let my worries float off the idea of coming back to my old neurotic self is unappealing and even painful.  So instead of accepting that I have to become that person, I just continue down the hole of staying high for whole weekends and most evenings after work.  The consequence is that I become a person with few aspirations and therefore very little accomplishment.  The pendulum swings from “completely anal retentive asshole” to “carefree stoner” with not much balance of the in between.  What’s more is that not only do I stop caring about the variables that effect my life at the moment, after a weekend of being high non stop it takes about a day in order to reorient myself to what it is I want to accomplish.   By that time I’m already behind the eight ball of not having gone grocery shopping and by Monday’s lunch I’m back at Jimmy Johns.  Fuck!

As I alluded to above.  Poor planning is another way that I sabotage what I set out to do.  This is especially true if the goal requires multiple people.  It’s significantly difficult to get people to collaborate on any project that doesn’t directly involve a pay check and even then scheduling is a bear of a task.  More often than not I fly by the seat of my pants when I set out to accomplish things.  I’d say that 50% of the time, if the goal is something that can be accomplished in one sitting, it works out successfully.  On the other hand, I absolutely suck at discipline.  Anything that requires time management is usually a fail.  Also any long running goal that carries over past a month just loses my interest most of the time.  I think that is why my goal setting project has become so important to me.  I want to change where my life is heading and I can’t steer my life in any useful direction if I can’t have the discipline to keep a consisting heading.

Lastly, having shitty reward systems gets in the way of my goals.  Success in one area of my life gets in my way in another area of my life.  Feeling accomplished at work means I can take off from writing.  Working out means I can afford to eat some tasty french fries.  I had a great improv set, so I’ll celebrate with a cigarette.  Succeeding in one area of my life means shooting myself in the foot in another area of my life.

Oh dag!  Conclude a mother fucker!

When these compromises occur I have found that I end up in one of three outcomes.  First, best case scenario, I lose my orientation for my goals but slowly find my way back.  In this case I realize that I have lost my way to completing one of my tasks.  Sometimes it takes a couple of days for me to get back to what it is I wanted to accomplish.  Other times the item can get pushed out of my head for weeks before I think to myself “Why didn’t I ever get that done.”  I’m a really solid procrastinator so once something breaks my direction getting back on track can be a really nasty game to play.

Second, and slightly worse, is that I change my baseline of success and failure.  I accept shitty work as done.  Or make excuses for why things are late to myself for my life.  Sure things are still technically done or en route, but everything else slides with it.

Last, I just give up.  I write things off as “just not being meant to be”.  This might not be true but given that I can’t succeed through my self sabotage then obviously it can’t be done.  I say that it’s not possible.

So here is my totally lame conclusion of all this.  It’s totally okay if I give up a goal if I am willing to admit to myself that I don’t want to accomplish it.  This differs from making it out to be impossible.  It’s accepting the work required to complete the task and not having the desire to do that work.  That’s fine, what not fine is making excuses for why it can’t possibly be achieved.

For the goals that I do end up keeping however it seems like the most important part of getting things accomplished is how well defined the objective is.  For me a lot of times now that means having the shit I want to accomplish written down.  This wasn’t always the case.  When I was younger and bristling with all the energy of a man in the testosterone bubble I would work on things for days straight until they were perfect.  The goal never left my mind.  The action and the focus at hand was always there and I didn’t get distracted by life.  That’s the type of shit you can do when you’re trying to build your dreams over a summer vacation or going a whole week without paying attention to school.

However now that I’m trying schedule my dreams in between working hours and social obligations.  Now that I stress myself out with deadlines.  I distract myself with smoking pot.   Not only are there distractions but my dreams are much larger and time consuming than building bike ramps and websites.   Now I need to have what I’m setting out to do written down and put a plan in place (I told it was lame).   So I can focus on not slipping up and when I do fuck up I can reorient myself as quickly as possible.   Because I’m sick of losing time and I don’t want to waste any of it looking at the hour glass and wondering where it went.