MAIA: I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s another just classic me move. Wants to do something or try to create something and then not doing it for a while and procrastinating it. And then here we are trying to pull something together real quick. It just seems like this endless cycle with this sort of thing. I need to write something and I just don’t start– for class or whatever. Doesn’t have to be anything super fancy. But I’ll even have maybe an idea or something. And then I just don’t do it. And I just keep not doing it. And I’m like, oh my God. We have to turn something in. And yeah. there isn’t anything.

I really wonder what would happen if I really applied myself to my creative pursuits. Because I feel like I seem to get by with just putting in minimal effort and leaving stuff to the last minute. But imagine if I were to really work on something for a long time in a meaningful way. What would that thing be that I would create? And then also at the same time though, there’s this fear, maybe there isn’t anything? Maybe this is it. Just that kind of scares me. I don’t know.

Because I want to do something and have it be excellent, but I just I can A, never get to that standard, or B, just not do it. Because I don’t know. I’ve been trying to do something, do things every day. I mean trying is a really loose term for what I’ve been doing. But for a while I was getting up in the morning, washing my face, brushing my teeth, drinking a glass of water– actually that was the first thing. Just drinking a glass of water right out of bed. And then going, eating a little bit of breakfast, or just a normal breakfast. I don’t know why I said a little bit, and going on a walk.

And I try to do– I do the same walk every time. It was planned once I found the walk or the route that really appealed to me. So I saw this video a few months ago, or maybe last year. I don’t know. I don’t know what time is at this point. Where it was talking to the memory champions of the world, specifically this woman who is really good at memorizing a lot of numbers. And she said part of the way that she did it is sort of she would recreate a walk in her mind that she’s very familiar with and she knows all the things that will be there in her surroundings as she walks.

And so the things she wants to remember, she basically places them along that walk. And so when she in her mind is walking through this particular landscape, she’s able to be like, oh, this is here. And that’s there. And then she remembers things in that order. I thought that would be really interesting to do. I don’t know, I thought it’d be something. So yeah. I do that.

It’s just, like, cycle. And I feel like that kind of represents what this quarantine has been like. My mom once told me about these– I don’t exactly remember where, but these Mesoamerican people who instead of time being linear, it’s a circle. And so every time you get back to the same day in the year, I think, it’s not that it’s the future. It’s just it’s the same day. Just different stuff is happening. That’s very poorly explained.

But I feel that way but it’s like every day is kind of the same. The setup’s the same, the things you have to do are the same, it’s just over, and over, and over, and over, and over. Just get up, or don’t get up, or stay in bed, or do something. I don’t know, which really is just the same day. And it’s a bit maddening after a while, I’d say.

So all that’s to say I’d like to create something. I suppose this is something, but it’s not something that I imagine things to be in my head when I imagine things that I want to create, that I want to be, that I want to do. And I guess it’s just time to practice self compassion, be like, I’m doing what I feel is correct, or not correct but I’m doing what is right for me at this moment at any given moment. And sometimes it’s a negative and sometimes it’s a positive.

But I guess you just have to kind of whenever things go South, kind of get back on the horse. It’s very frustrating because I feel like it’s advice that I give but I don’t follow. And it would be nice to follow my own advice every once in a while.