OyChicago blog

It took a lot of convincing for me to write this. Of course that’s what happens when I try motivating myself to motivate myself. But in all honesty, for one reason or another, I’ve been finding myself much more motivated recently, mostly because I stopped looking for myself when I wasn’t motivated. Also, I get highly motivated to find myself when I’m around mirrors because, well, it’s way easier to find myself then, so there’s a lot going into this. Truth be told, I’ve been trying to better myself recently due in large part to a higher level of motivation. Not only a higher level of motivation, but also a stronger and longer sustained motivation than I can ever recall.

It’s actually been almost 20 minutes now. Oh, I’m not talking about the motivation thing. After that first paragraph, I took 20 minutes to get to this one. I was having trouble motivating myself to motivate myself to write an article about how good I’ve been getting with motivating myself to motivate myself. Moving on.

When I motivate myself, (you sick of that word yet?) I actually get a true sense of accomplishment. I wrote a blog previously about how I am a self-proclaimed productive procrastinator. I’m never one to waste any time when I can help it. Therefore, I’m trying to listen to more music, exercise more (see: at all), and generally increase my knowledge and experience of the world. This brings me back to my never-ending struggle with my favorite love/hate relationship.

Sleep. Sleep takes time away from me but I love taking the time to sleep. One of the toughest constant needs for motivation in my life is getting out of the bed in the morning. Not because I’m lazy, but more because I’m just so gosh darn comfy and snuggly first thing in the morning. Also, I’m lazy. But when I don’t get out of bed and more or less waste time, I often wish I hadn’t done that.

I don’t want to use the word regret because I regret every time I use the word regret, so I won’t use it here. Not being able to get out of bed is ironic for me considering, as I’ve said, I have quite the disdain for sleep, purely based on the fact that I find sleep to be a waste of time. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, I’ll sleep when I’m dead. The problem lies in the fact that when I’m sleepy, my motivation to do anything goes straight out the window, which is amazing because my bedroom has no windows.

It seems my motivation needs a lot of motivation to be motivated. Part of what I’ve actually done to better myself is joining a gym and getting a personal trainer. Just doing that took some motivation and it’s astounding how tough it was to motivate myself to hire someone to motivate me.

Part of my drive is my constant want to always be improving myself and make sure there’s room for me to grow—hence why my apartment has such tall ceilings. I want to always be able to motivate myself to be a better, more knowledgeable and well-rounded me. Notice I didn’t say more attractive me, as that’s impossible. I can’t be any more attractive than I already am. I mean, you’ve seen my bio pic. I look perfect. Needless to say, I take a lot of selfies. Even when I’m around people, I ask them to take selfies of me. Who better to take selfies than someone else?

But let’s end this whole shindig on a more philosophical note.

I have often heard that a great way to motivate myself is to live everyday like it’s my last. But my take on it is that I find it’s a lot more exciting to live everyday like it’s my first. That allows for new discoveries and adventures. Discoveries and adventures I can now expand upon at a later date. Treating it like it’s my last day could make me be spontaneous and care free, sure, but then I couldn’t invest myself. The idea of living everyday like it’s my first makes it so I look forward to new places and ideas that could potentially become new interests, hobbies and passions. It makes it so I become like a newborn baby and simply enjoy the wonder of the world around me. Also I put my mouth on a lot of stuff, just to see how it tastes. And besides, I really can’t live everyday like it’s my last. I’ve got a lot of things to do tomorrow. I’m booked. However, I will stand by the idea that whatever you can do today, do not put it off until tomorrow. You might not get a second chance. So when it comes down to it, I suppose the most appropriate phrase for me is this:

I live everyday like it’s Thursday…but I still put my mouth on everything.