Cowpaths is a metaphor where if cows walk a certain way to get to a certain place, and it’s the optimal path at the time, and then the trees that were in their way and which they had to walk around before get cut down they just keep walking the same old way, although it would be shorter to walk across where the tree used to be but isn’t anymore rather than “random” zig-zag lines (as it would look to an onlooker who doesn’t understand why the cows walk so strange ways).

Sometimes things are the way they are not because they ought to be, but because they’ve always been that way – or at least for way too long to change on their own.

For example: When and Why did I become a “hopeless romantic” – movies, novels, stories…
Weak/sick and smart/creative – identified with those movie characters. What would a better role model be? And is that necessarily too much like trying to be someone else?

A Ancient Rome style role model selection? – Bits and pieces from different people? — But then is it even possible? How do I know you can have one without the rest?

How about instead of reverse engineering just problem solving. Do what comes natural unless it doesn’t work? What cow paths are is when you don’t know how it doesn’t work…

But right now I can see many many many things in my life that don’t work. My room’s a mess, my homework remains neglected, as does part of my social world, and intentions (like going to the gym and eating right) are left unfulfilled.

I was supposed to meet a therapist, but she’s switching clinics, so I got an appointment with someone else instead, but it’s not for weeks. That change didn’t feel like a big deal at the time. I was more worried I’d not need the appointment and waste their time if it was so far ahead.

Instead things seem to be getting worse. Instead of having a reading break for or even from readings it wasn’t much of a break at all. I read things online, unrelated to my goals or obligations. I immersed myself in photoshop editiing art work that might or might not get used for one of my other hobbies further in the future… — but the thing is I’ve been procrastinating before the “holidays”, so I really depended on catching up there rather than falling further behind.

How can you fall behind further than where you started? Easy: don’t sleep and eat shitty and let dirty laundry pile up, and feel like shit about yourself.

Reading break has two options: take time off, or work. I took option 3, self sabotage. Waste the valuable resource that is time, and stay up until 10 am, sleep until 5 pm (early enough to make it to dance class that you were looking forward to) but then keep doing things online until you missed half the class and then head to campus.

I really enjoyed the second half of class, so I was annoyed having missed the first, but hopeful that this would remind me of what the real world feels like. But then I come home and keep doing things on the computer until I have a conversation with a friend that lasts until 5 am. I have to pee, but I don’t have the energy to get up, so I rationalize that it would be good not to, because I have class in the afternoon and I didn’t want to get up and look for my phone to set an alarm. Woke up near 11:30 am after a series of strange dreams near consciousness and seriously thought it was super late now, like evening again. I’m glad it’s not, but I feel like I’m a mess.

There’s some very attractive and some likable girls in my latin dance class, and one seems to like me, and I want to pursue this and see where it goes. But I have like no energy/resources left right now, and am a huge mess. In the past having plans of a girl coming over to visit was a great motivator for cleaning my room up and that often helps for getting my shit together – but since I fell behind on my readings and exams are coming up I’m not sure if I have the time for that. I ought to be working hard.

But because I’m a mess I don’t know if I can even do that right. Spiral of suckiness…

I love schedules and thinking ahead and planning and goals and checking off to-do lists, and all that… but I haven’t got a clue where to start, and I haven’t done any of that successfully as far as I know. I do love it in theory though. But I end up getting stuck in overthinking instead and paralyzed by being overwhealmed at all the info that my brain would like to process.

I’m used to living in a small town where I can go do everything I need to do in a day, cause it’s all equally close, and reachable by bike. In the city I feel like I’d really have to think ahead to know where to go to begin with.

I need to get my act together, but how, and where to start?