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?
The first step in enacting change is actually WANTING it enough to make a plan to do it. I say this as an ex-heroin addict, ex-smoker, and someone who is just this year in my middle age, starting to exercise, eat right, and have lost 20 out of a needed 60 since just this past August.
Change is hard. Especially when you become complacent. But imagine your best self. Stop making excuses and start thinking of ways to do the thing. I never had rehab. I never had any nicotine patches, or gum. I never had a personal trainer. I made a plan and held myself accountable.
You at least recognize you need to change. You’re adult enough to figure out what you need to do to become your ideal. Now you have to plan how to get there and eliminate any obstacles. For me, I had to stop having junkie friends. I needed other hobbies to obsess over until the immediate physical and psychological withdrawal symptoms went away. It sucked. A LOT. I taught myself IT and Cybersecurity skills so I would transition my career away from healthcare, since that was not a good environment for me. But here I am, almost 14 years clean, no drugs, no smokes, I don’t smoke weed anymore either, I don’t even drink anything besides water.
I read, practice my skills. I stay away from harmful addictions and focus that drive on things that will improve my life.
I look at my life 20 years ago. Homeless, addict, unhealthy, abused by my closest family. Now I’m fairly well off, own a home, no debt, stable, clean, a family of my own. I know it’s cheesy to say “you can do anything if you put your mind to it”. I had every odd against me for the first half of my life. I got tired of commiting a slow suicide and I did what I had to do to fix it.
I empathize a lot with what you and others have said. Understand that some people are better at organizing in real life (and we always need more of those). But you gotta recognize your strengths and your limits too. Some of us are just better at educating and organizing online. The stuff we share with each other here gets dispersed in our conversations offline. That is still activism. Especially in the imperial core. Every conversation you have about communism is a brave thing to do and comes with personal risks – whether that be your job, your friendships, your family, your livelihood. We’re not at the point where people are randomly being imprisoned for thought-crimes yet, but we may be headed in that direction. Simply educating people where you can is still a courageous thing to do.
I have adhd, depression, etc. and I have also taken a back seat from being present in spaces. I’ve gone through the phase of being disappointed in myself for not “doing more.” I forget sometimes that what I have is technically a disability and I need to treat myself with grace. What ultimately helped me was recognizing just how limited we are by our circumstances and by taking stock of all of the people in my circle that have been radicalized or have grown more skeptical of capitalism just by knowing me.
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
Link 3:
Link 4:
stop being so hard on yourself, for one. There’s nothing moral about being able to perform the things we’re expected by ourselves and/or others to do, especially in such a sad traumatic place as this.
Think of your favorite person ever: If they confided what you said here to you, hopefully you wouldn’t see them as a bad person. You’d see someone who really wants to do right and is struggling. One way that helped me process this is it’s a bit individualistic to think you’re worse than every other person. Give yourself the same consideration you’d give to any other person.
And speaking of individualism, we’re not living in the world that would make getting by in any way easy. Capitalism is soul crushing and you are not exempt just cuz you’re yourself and you expect yourself to be able to. We aren’t meant to have so much individual pressure on ourselves.
You should work on liking yourself, i think. Give yourself more of a chance.
and you’re not a drain on your parents. It sounds like they’re fine financially and you didn’t even ask to be born so you’re good there ,too.
Hi, I’m a student studying therapy. I just learned about this yesterday!
The emotion of discipline is “resolve”. If you are having a problem learning how to be disciplined, or cultivating discipline in your life, you should figure out how to have resolve. Learn what it feels like.
Resolve comes from when you really want to do something. You feel excited and motivated to do it. In order to develop a discipline, you should find something you feel resolved towards and take a “snapshot” of that feeling. Remember it.
Every day, every morning, think about that feeling, and pick something small to apply that to. Try to intentionally do that for about a month. Develop discipline for something small. Then, as you get better at that, you can level up to more difficult things to have discipline with.
I never thought of it like that until seeing your comment. “Discipline” always makes me cringe because it has connotations like the issue is me, that it’s an internal or personal failing, that I’m not trying hard enough, etc. Thinking of it as “resolve”, though, really does make it feel more like I’m surviving, I’m pushing through, I’m overcoming. Be it a mental block or all the external bullshit we have to endure. I think I’ll quit thinking of it as me lacking self-discipline, and try thinking of it as building greater resolve now. Thank you :)
