Lack of Motivation

I consider myself to be a pretty highly motivated guy. I work hard, and love to be innovative and creative. I don’t like to waste time, and I do like to get stuff done. Lately, however, I have been feeling a complete lack of motivation.

Now, this isn’t all the time, just at night. Here’s the deal.  For years (like 10) I would work a full time job during the day, and then at night I would work another 15-30 hours a week doing design work. I regularly stayed up until 2 or 3 in the morning, and then woke up early with little kids, and then off to work. And it was great.

In the last year or so the design work has stopped. So too, has my need to work very much at night.

Now add onto that some other factors. Over the past few years I’ve weathered some pretty demanding and intense personal storms. The kind that suck the life out of you. The kind that leave you exhausted at night—in fact, all day. I’ve been told during these times that I need to be OK with letting myself rest at night. That I’m emotionally wasted, and it’s OK to not work all the time. So I’ve tried to learn how to rest. How to relax.

Fast forward to the present. Now, at night, after the kids are asleep, I can’t seem to get off the couch. It’s not like I go to bed early or anything to get “rest.” I just watch TV. I have stuff I want to be doing. I want to work on Mandy’s book. I want to write a new book of my own (I’ve got a list of books ideas!). I think I want to try and learn coding for iPhone apps.

But I can’t bring myself to do anything. I mean, it’s not like I don’t work. I do. I work for the church full time. And this work has me out until 10 or 11 at night, three times per week. So part of me feels justified, like I deserve to just relax and watch TV when I can.

But it’s really starting to bother me for some reason. Every day I just think about how I wish I would have worked on a project the night before, but then when night comes, I just lose all motivation to anything. I don’t check my email. I often put off blogging. I can barely get off the couch.

Strange huh?

What’s really weird is I’m good at this kind of thing. Make a small goal. Do it. Make a bigger one. Start small and take little steps. So I’m trying to get going here. I feel like maybe I’ve learned a behavior here. Over the past few years I have needed this down time to process all that has hit me, but maybe my body is trying to tell me it’s ready to try a little more now. I’m not sure. It’s a little confusing, and a lot frustrating.

So I decided to blog about it. Maybe you can pray for me. Maybe you have words of wisdom. Maybe you’ve been through this before?

Not sure, but I think at least it helps to get it out in writing. I’ll keep you posted :)

Why am I inept?

Arg. Normally I am a pretty smart guy.  Really I am. But sometimes in the area of technology, even with all my years of experience working with computers and all sorts of other digital devices, my abilities fail me. Take tonight for example.

All I want to do is sync my iphone with ical and google cal. Sounds easy right? There is a five step process that my friend Joe sent me.  Always Joe.  He always knows how to do things, that I never seem to be able to replicate. It is so irritating! 

Anyway, I have been working on this for basically 2 hours. What a waste of my life! I still don’t have it. I can’t figure it out, and Joe has gone to sleep (probably just to get away from my constant emails with questions in them). So, I need to call it a night. I have to throw in the proverbial towel.  I hate this feeling. I hate being defeated by something so small!

So yeah, maybe tomorrow I’ll have some answers.  Maybe even tonight someone will leave me a comment with the answer to solve my dilemma? Or maybe, as is per usual, I will wait until Joe fixes it for me.

And I guarantee he’ll do it in under 5 seconds.