It is time to begin a period of transformation. Overdue and obvious, like a polka-dot elephant that got stuck in traffic. Let’s talk about UNF.
UNF will be the shorthand I will use for unfucking, a word that is a favorite of mine, which represents rectifying mistakes, making targeted improvements, and ceasing or reducing the stupid shit that one knows one shouldn’t be doing. Sometimes our lives get all fucked up. Thankfully, they can also be unfucked.
But how?
It isn’t uncommon to feel lost in life, not sure what to do, at a loss for what the next step should be. But often, we know what’s wrong and even how to fix it, even though we don’t feel like we do. Somewhere, deep down, we know exactly what the score is and what we need to do to turn it around.
Think about a part of your life where you feel at least somewhat stuck or lost. It’s probably something that intimidates you or gives you some amount of anxiety. Or it may just be a nagging loose end flapping around in the breeze of your life. Whatever it is, if you sit with it and are honest with yourself about it, you can probably come up with at least one thing that you could do, maybe even right now, that would at least move you toward being able to resolve things.
We usually know what the problem is. We usually know what we need to do and why we should do it. But we don’t do it. Why? There’s a million reasons, from fear to a perceived lack of resources or learned helplessness, but it’s often a matter of not wanting to face the pain and difficulty of the honesty required to actually address what ails us.
I speak from a position of authority because I avoid this stuff all the time. Some people have already done a good job of taking advantage of the change of routine and potentially greater free time associated with living the COVID-19 era to work on self care and personal development. Back in March, that’s what I expected myself to do.
But here we are in September, and I feel like I haven’t done shit. I know I have only myself to blame, for both the problems weighing me down and my lack of meaningful action on them.
For today, I will spare you the gory details, but I’m here writing again for the first time in a long time because I’m sick of it.
Let the unfucking begin.
I need to do this, and I need to not do it alone. I need to not do it in private like I tend to do. External expectations and accountability are more effective for me than making promises to myself, which are more easily broken. Doing the hard work out in the open puts me in a more vulnerable position, but also increases likelihood of success.
The unfucking process will address a variety of things, but beginning with the foundations that affect everything else:
- Physical fitness and (some) weight loss
- Improving dietary habits, eating meat free at least five days a week and no alcohol except an evening or two a week
- Reestablish a daily meditation practice
- Improve sleep in terms of both quantity and quality
- Take meaningful action on addressing depression
- Resolving the disorganization and clutter of my home
Other things I need to fix include increasing my income level and needing to get out of teaching English once and for all, but my ability to do those things is directly related to my state of mind, which is why step one is focusing on self care so I have the inner resources I need to affect meaningful change elsewhere in my life.
So yeah, that’s where we are with this today. I will blog about things here, with UNF in the title of all related posts. I will share what I’m trying, what’s working, what’s not working, and I will do my best to be open and honest about it all, because I think we need more of that in the world.
To be continued.
