Motivation
Day 43 of the #100DaysToOffload Series:
Around forty-five days ago when Kev suggested the #100DaysToOffload, I was hesitant to get involved. I had a blog, and I’d written in the past. I’d even written and not received the virtual “boos” from aroun the Internet like I expected, but there was one thing that I was not sure of.
I’ve struggled with motivation for years and years. Even when I was a kid, my parents found my level of motivation a challenge to say the least. It was my most confounding issue in college too. I knew I had work to do, and I knew if I didn’t do it my grades would suffer, but too much of the time that still wasn’t enough.
After I finished college, I settled into the work life. I’d start a job and when it was fresh and new, it was great. My dad even mentioned to me at one point that he had had concerns about my worth ethic when I was a kid, but not in the way I was showing it (on the phone at my desk at work at a 9:15PM).
When things settled into more of a routine, my motivation drifted off, and it was hard to get things done. The easy things were the worst of all to get motivated to do.
I finally moved into a roll where every day felt like a fire drill, and I was happy doing that job for almost five years. I would walk in the door in the morning with no idea where my day was going, or how long I was going to be there.
This was the time of my life when things changed dramatically for me at home. I got married, and after a few years we had our first child. My wife, who was originally from Phoenix, got a new and exciting job there. So we moved.
I ended up in a kind of crap job that was a position of convenience. The job market was garbage back then, and I took the first offer I got. I hated almost everything about that job. Really the only thing I didn’t hate about that job (other than the people I worked with) was that the office was right at the base of some really cool hiking trails that I could use during my lunch break and after work.
After a year, my contract with that company expired and the door didn’t hit me on the way out. I started a new job, and I still have it. It’s part IT, part support, with a dash of coding here and there thrown in.
Most days I don’t have issues with motivation. Some days I do. There are a lot of mundane tasks that I have to do, and I hate those more than the difficult ones. I’m getting by though.
The problem is now this. I get up in the morning, get the kids off to school, go to work, get home, feed the kids, help with the homework, get them off to bed. By this time, it’s somewhere between 9:00PM and 10:00PM. Some days even later.
When Kev proposed the #100DaysToOffload, I had serious doubts that I was going to be able to find the motivation to write on a day to day basis. That’s why I stopped doing my blog in the first place years ago. I just wasn’t motivated enough to write, and even if I wanted to write I had trouble thinking of things to write about.
Still, I accepted the challenge. I’m now forty-three days in, and fifty-seven more days to go. Some days I struggle to think of things to write. Today for example. This post is a virtual stream of consciousness and a rough explanation about why it is what it is.
Also, while I am writing daily, I’m having a lot of problems doing anything else. I’ve been wanting to setup a new Pi-Hole for months, and I just never seem to fit it in. I’ve wanted to setup a Home Assistant server too. Still not done. I’ve bought the hardware for a Picroft, and it’s sitting on my desk in the box. I’ve taken it out to look at it, and done nothing with it. I also bought a PineTime, and I’ve never even taken it out of the box.
I need to figure out what it is that is not working here. I’m truly at a loss.
This isn’t a new problem, but the ways I used to deal with it aren’t feasible anymore. I can’t just move or change jobs. I have responsibilities and I need to have some stability for my family. I need to find some new solutions, and I’m open for some new ideas.
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