I’ve been on a slow but steady decline for the past several years. I don’t move at all, barely leaving my room let alone the house; I’ve taken to eating shit I order out instead of cooking meals myself; I don’t get involved with any local orgs besides sending dues every month; I haven’t read a book in months; I regularly fail to perform bare minimum hygiene. The only reason I’m able to keep alive at all is because I haven’t moved out of my parents’ house, burdening them with helping me. It would be understandable if I was living hand to mouth and had barely any free time, but I am one of the small percent of burgers who isn’t a month away from destitution and I have more than enough free time. Not to mention I receive no shortage of help.
Since I can’t blame my material circumstances, I can only conclude that I am this way because I always refuse to take personal responsibility. I know that changing myself so that I can be, at bare minimum, not a drain on society is going to take a lot of work, work that I always put off due to cowardice. Idealist as it is, I feel like I have some innate metaphysical trait that makes me this way, and the entirety of my failure to pick myself up is due to a moral failing on my part and nothing more.
How do I force myself to unfuck myself so that I can actually be useful for revolution instead of yet another useless first world lotus eater?
Something I have done in the past to help pull myself out of it is what I like to call “Doing the one thing.” It’s to do one thing, just something, every day, that will make tomorrow you glad you did it.
It’s like, every day we go to sleep and when we wake up it’s like a mental and emotion reset and we are a new person from the one that went to sleep yesterday. So my goal becomes, to do one thing today, that will make tomorrow me wake up and be glad I did a thing. Doesn’t matter what it is. Just something “extra.” Something that’s more than just mindlessly existing.
Today I took a few cardboard boxes that have been sitting in the side of my office. I broke them down and put them in the recycling. That was my one thing. My one extra. So it’s not there anymore, weighing on my mind like a sore.
Eventually maybe you do more than one thing. Or the one thing becomes a part of the rogue and you just push a little more, but as long as you did the one thing, you can just take the win. It’s one hand up on the rope to pull yourself out.