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?
You gotta have something to look forward to which is edifying and socially satisfying. You’re in a great position to get into a new sport from the sounds of it, actually. Have you tried rock climbing, jiu jitsu, kickboxing, or getting into swimming? Just something that requires using your body and building confidence, giving you something to get better at, which means you look forward to actually going out and doing it.
Actually thanks for posting this. My situation is different but I’m in a rut too. Let’s get better together!
Edit: oh yeah, I’ve got ADHD and definitely recommend getting professionally evaluated for that. Getting evaluated for mental health can help you reframe your difficulties with being effective, thus alleviating some of the guilt and shame, making it easier to stick with healthy habits when things don’t go how you intended, which is inevitable but ultimately not insurmountable.
Something I’m still learning is that, while having a diagnosis of ADHD (specifically, not talking generally here about disorders or anything) is helpful, it’s important to not get wrapped up in that diagnosis. ADHD is simply a different mode of processing the material world and sometimes you have to embrace those differences instead of trying to correct them. This can be challenging because you need to A) communicate to people this difference in a way that they can understand and B) advocate for doing things differently so that they align with that difference.
Sometimes it’s simple things like telling someone “Hey thanks for reminding me about that, but I’m about to walk out the door, so could you text that to me right now so I can remember it?”
Sometimes it is more structural things like “Hey once a week can we have a formal sit down to talk about X” where X is, house stuff, project stuff, whatever the thing is you need to track internally but can’t. I have house meetings with my spouse each week, and it has dampened the underlying frustrations we both were having.
