dumbass self-defeating temporal schema
Jul. 31st, 2025 11:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
f0rrest“Time? Time is an illusion. The only time now is party time. Are we clear?”
—Some Talking Basketball from Aqua Teen Hunger Force
On the surface, I agree with this quote. Time is an illusion. However, it’s a damn strong illusion, and, unfortunately, it’s an illusion that can’t really be ignored, especially when you’re in your thirties, have two kids, a full-time job, and a bunch of hobbies all vying to consume as much of the illusion as possible.
My day goes something like this, wake up around nine in the morning, groggy as fuck because I stayed up too late, join Zoom calls and fuck around with spreadsheets until like five or six in the afternoon, hang out with my two-year-old son until bedtime at nine, lay on the floor next to his crib until like eleven because he’s hyper as hell and will otherwise just climb out of his crib and never go to sleep, then I have like two to three hours to do the hobby stuff that I enjoy doing, like reading, writing, or playing video games, and these two to three hours are very precious to me, I need them to retain whatever semblance of identity I have left as a homogenized, working adult, meaning, without this free time illusion, without my hobbies, I would feel like just another cog in the machine of which I know I am part but pretend otherwise, such is my illusion, and time is an illusion, but it is a very strong illusion, as is perhaps everything, maybe.
The problem is not so much that I only have two to three hours per day to indulge my hobbies, however. The problem is more so that, whenever I'm indulging one of these hobbies, I feel like I’m neglecting some other hobby I could be doing, and that makes me feel anxious for some sick reason. For example, if I choose to play a video game, then I’m constantly thinking stuff like, “I really should be writing right now,” and if I’m writing, I’m constantly thinking, “I kinda want to play Chrono Cross right now,” and if I’m playing Chrono Cross, then I’m constantly thinking about how I should be writing, and if I’m writing, then I’m constantly thinking about maybe playing some Cross, and so on and so forth, even right now, while writing this journal entry, I’m kinda stressed out about not playing Chrono Cross, which is harming my ability to be coherent here, as you can probably tell, and frankly it sucks, it sucks real bad.
And I think I do this because I get caught up in these mental webs of accountability that, on the surface, I know are absurd, but I still get caught up in them regardless, stuff like “I told myself I would beat Chrono Cross, so I need to be playing Chrono Cross or I’ll likely keep putting it off until eventually I just stop playing Chrono Cross altogether, at which point I’ll have broken a promise made to myself, and if I do that, that means I’m just one of those people who can’t keep a promise, and I don’t want to be one of those people who can’t keep a promise, so I’m just going to keep guilting myself into playing Chrono Cross, but I also want to be writing, so while playing Chrono Cross, I’m also feeling guilty about not writing the whole time.” It’s as if I’m a spider getting caught in my own web, and the web itself is made of silky personal obligations. I don’t know if any of this is making sense.
And it’s not like I can do both things in one night, that’s not how my brain works. I either play Chrono Cross for the whole night or I write for the whole night, and this is because, well, writing takes a lot of time and effort, and usually, when I write, the first hour of the writing process produces pure garbage, until I hit my stride, at which point an hour or so has already passed, so I really only get in about one good hour of writing per night, which is usually every other night, because I make these silly hobby schedules for myself, simple stuff like, “I’m going to alternate between Chrono Cross and writing each day,” which is designed to eliminate the mental tug-of-war going on between my conflicting hobbies, but it actually doesn’t do that at all, it just makes things worse, because sometimes I want to write on Chrono Cross nights, and other times I want to Cross on writing nights, so my hobby schedule ends up just making me more anxious because I’ll inevitably break the schedule and play Chrono Cross on a writing night, and then I’ll feel guilty about breaking the schedule, whereas, if I didn’t have a schedule to begin with, that aspect of guilt wouldn’t exist at all, if that makes any sense. It’s really some sort of dumbass self-defeating temporal schema I’ve come up with here, and I don’t know how to get out of it, I really don’t.
I think the worst part of all this is that, not only does this dumbass self-defeating temporal schema make me feel anxious and guilty as hell, it also makes everything I do feel like a total waste of time, because if I’m spending time on one thing then I’m sacrificing time on another thing, and this of course begs the question, “well, what is a waste of time, exactly?” And I think I know the answer to that question, and the answer is, whatever the hell you want it to be, like, a “waste of time” is basically anything you feel personally is a waste of time, meaning it’s totally subjective, meaning as long as you're achieving your goals then you're probably not wasting time, at least not on a personal level, but this doesn’t help me, because this just reinforces the fact that I am indeed wasting time, because if I feel like I’m wasting time, which I do, then I'm actually wasting time.
In a perfect world, I would just do things spontaneously as I feel like doing them, but the problem is that there are often multiple things I would like to do, and I can't do multiple things at once, and I don't have enough time in the day to sufficiently do all the things I want to do, so I’m always doing this anxiety-ridden temporal calculus in my head to determine what the hell I should be doing, which always results in sacrificing one thing for another to the point where I’m starting to think that perhaps that’s all life is, sacrifices.
Then I start to think that, perhaps, the problem lies not in the lack of time or schedules or even the hobbies themselves, but the simple fact that I have hobbies to begin with, because if I didn't have any hobbies then maybe I wouldn't feel anxious at all, because there would be nothing to feel anxious about, at least when it comes to how I spend my free time, so maybe this is all self-inflicted, maybe it's all ego and materialism, maybe that's all everything is, but the prescription there isn't realistic, because I know that I'm not just going to drop all my hobbies any time soon, because I don’t want to, but maybe that's what I should work on, because maybe, to tie this back to Aqua Teen Hunger Force, maybe Carl’s right, maybe it don’t matter, maybe none of this matters.
—Some Talking Basketball from Aqua Teen Hunger Force
On the surface, I agree with this quote. Time is an illusion. However, it’s a damn strong illusion, and, unfortunately, it’s an illusion that can’t really be ignored, especially when you’re in your thirties, have two kids, a full-time job, and a bunch of hobbies all vying to consume as much of the illusion as possible.
My day goes something like this, wake up around nine in the morning, groggy as fuck because I stayed up too late, join Zoom calls and fuck around with spreadsheets until like five or six in the afternoon, hang out with my two-year-old son until bedtime at nine, lay on the floor next to his crib until like eleven because he’s hyper as hell and will otherwise just climb out of his crib and never go to sleep, then I have like two to three hours to do the hobby stuff that I enjoy doing, like reading, writing, or playing video games, and these two to three hours are very precious to me, I need them to retain whatever semblance of identity I have left as a homogenized, working adult, meaning, without this free time illusion, without my hobbies, I would feel like just another cog in the machine of which I know I am part but pretend otherwise, such is my illusion, and time is an illusion, but it is a very strong illusion, as is perhaps everything, maybe.
The problem is not so much that I only have two to three hours per day to indulge my hobbies, however. The problem is more so that, whenever I'm indulging one of these hobbies, I feel like I’m neglecting some other hobby I could be doing, and that makes me feel anxious for some sick reason. For example, if I choose to play a video game, then I’m constantly thinking stuff like, “I really should be writing right now,” and if I’m writing, I’m constantly thinking, “I kinda want to play Chrono Cross right now,” and if I’m playing Chrono Cross, then I’m constantly thinking about how I should be writing, and if I’m writing, then I’m constantly thinking about maybe playing some Cross, and so on and so forth, even right now, while writing this journal entry, I’m kinda stressed out about not playing Chrono Cross, which is harming my ability to be coherent here, as you can probably tell, and frankly it sucks, it sucks real bad.
And I think I do this because I get caught up in these mental webs of accountability that, on the surface, I know are absurd, but I still get caught up in them regardless, stuff like “I told myself I would beat Chrono Cross, so I need to be playing Chrono Cross or I’ll likely keep putting it off until eventually I just stop playing Chrono Cross altogether, at which point I’ll have broken a promise made to myself, and if I do that, that means I’m just one of those people who can’t keep a promise, and I don’t want to be one of those people who can’t keep a promise, so I’m just going to keep guilting myself into playing Chrono Cross, but I also want to be writing, so while playing Chrono Cross, I’m also feeling guilty about not writing the whole time.” It’s as if I’m a spider getting caught in my own web, and the web itself is made of silky personal obligations. I don’t know if any of this is making sense.
And it’s not like I can do both things in one night, that’s not how my brain works. I either play Chrono Cross for the whole night or I write for the whole night, and this is because, well, writing takes a lot of time and effort, and usually, when I write, the first hour of the writing process produces pure garbage, until I hit my stride, at which point an hour or so has already passed, so I really only get in about one good hour of writing per night, which is usually every other night, because I make these silly hobby schedules for myself, simple stuff like, “I’m going to alternate between Chrono Cross and writing each day,” which is designed to eliminate the mental tug-of-war going on between my conflicting hobbies, but it actually doesn’t do that at all, it just makes things worse, because sometimes I want to write on Chrono Cross nights, and other times I want to Cross on writing nights, so my hobby schedule ends up just making me more anxious because I’ll inevitably break the schedule and play Chrono Cross on a writing night, and then I’ll feel guilty about breaking the schedule, whereas, if I didn’t have a schedule to begin with, that aspect of guilt wouldn’t exist at all, if that makes any sense. It’s really some sort of dumbass self-defeating temporal schema I’ve come up with here, and I don’t know how to get out of it, I really don’t.
I think the worst part of all this is that, not only does this dumbass self-defeating temporal schema make me feel anxious and guilty as hell, it also makes everything I do feel like a total waste of time, because if I’m spending time on one thing then I’m sacrificing time on another thing, and this of course begs the question, “well, what is a waste of time, exactly?” And I think I know the answer to that question, and the answer is, whatever the hell you want it to be, like, a “waste of time” is basically anything you feel personally is a waste of time, meaning it’s totally subjective, meaning as long as you're achieving your goals then you're probably not wasting time, at least not on a personal level, but this doesn’t help me, because this just reinforces the fact that I am indeed wasting time, because if I feel like I’m wasting time, which I do, then I'm actually wasting time.
In a perfect world, I would just do things spontaneously as I feel like doing them, but the problem is that there are often multiple things I would like to do, and I can't do multiple things at once, and I don't have enough time in the day to sufficiently do all the things I want to do, so I’m always doing this anxiety-ridden temporal calculus in my head to determine what the hell I should be doing, which always results in sacrificing one thing for another to the point where I’m starting to think that perhaps that’s all life is, sacrifices.
Then I start to think that, perhaps, the problem lies not in the lack of time or schedules or even the hobbies themselves, but the simple fact that I have hobbies to begin with, because if I didn't have any hobbies then maybe I wouldn't feel anxious at all, because there would be nothing to feel anxious about, at least when it comes to how I spend my free time, so maybe this is all self-inflicted, maybe it's all ego and materialism, maybe that's all everything is, but the prescription there isn't realistic, because I know that I'm not just going to drop all my hobbies any time soon, because I don’t want to, but maybe that's what I should work on, because maybe, to tie this back to Aqua Teen Hunger Force, maybe Carl’s right, maybe it don’t matter, maybe none of this matters.
no subject
Date: 2025-08-01 10:40 pm (UTC)So that would be the idealized image of someone who can pursue all of her hobbies at once, ueee--
Uhm... it's maybe a bit telling how I'm going from a goddess of mercy to a goddess of indulging in hobbies?
no subject
Date: 2025-08-02 01:19 am (UTC)Asuras are often depicted with many arms, too.
"They are said to live more pleasurable lives than humans, but are also in thrall to qualities such as wrath, pride, envy, and insincerity."
no subject
Date: 2025-08-14 01:59 am (UTC)Do you think it's possible the anxiousness and guilt came first, and then attached themselves to your unsettledness over the hobbies?
I know you said this wasn't the problem, but nevertheless I think it stinks you only have two hours in a day to do something you enjoy. IT'S OKAY TO THINK THAT STINKS! that's not selfish, any more than thinking our healthcare situation in this country stinks, etc.
no subject
Date: 2025-08-14 02:45 am (UTC)"Do you think it's possible the anxiousness and guilt came first, and then attached themselves to your unsettledness over the hobbies?"
I think that, growing up, my father, who by all means is a good guy and was certainly a loving father, always considered hobbies to be frivolous unless they could realistically lead to making money. I was always low-key shamed when spending time on anything that was not in service to this philosophy. I think this may have something to do with it. It is a very conservative outlook, which I find myself constantly wrestling with in my head, because I see the value and truth in it in some ways. One side of my brain believes that spending time on things that do not eventually lead to you or your family's long-term well-being, meaning money-makers that are not obvious pipe dreams, is essentially a waste of time, not only a disservice to yourself in the long term but also to your entire family, who depend on you. But the other side of my brain says "fuck that" and wants to write and be creative and occasionally zone out playing video games. You can see how these two opposites coexisting in my headspace might lead to some guilt. "Cognitive dissonance" is the buzz psych phrase people like to use.