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I am fed up of being the laziest man alive.
Lezta
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I completely lack any kind of motivation or ambition. I am a very, very lazy person. I don't really have any passions (except D&D, probably) and I only really have a casual interest in anything, at best. I don't want to be this way and it makes me depressed thinking about how success comes to the truly motivated and ambitious because I don't seem to have those qualities and being depressed just makes me even less motivated or ambitious.
Currently I'm working part-time in a small retail store, about 15 minutes walk from my parents house (where I live). I do two days a week there and they can't find me more hours. Two years ago I finished my Masters Degree in Theatre and before that I did a BA in Drama. I haven't had much luck finding a job since, but I've barely had the motivation to look. I'm fed up of living at home and my girlfriend is fed up of it too (she's in much the same boat, works in the same store and is stuck at her parents house, although she also spends her free time as an artist and has a studio where she spends the rest of her working week).
I don't feel excited or interested in any kind of career, although I'm nominally interested in being a writer. I sit at home all day reading forums and listening to music. I might break that cycle with a computer game. Twice a week a get to play D&D and that's about the only thing I truly, honestly, look forward to and get excited about (especially if I'm DMing). Otherwise I sit at home doing nothing.
This isn't a recent thing, I've been lazy my entire life. In secondary school I spent most of my time in detention because I didn't do any homework (practically ever) and I only handed coursework in under duress. I just didn't care. Honestly, I still don't. But I'm still miserable.
I can't keep on like this, I have to find motivation from somewhere. I want to be amibitious, I want to be motivated and I want to be successful. But I don't have any motivation or passion to fix the problem so I'm just going in circles. I've tried loads of things; I've tried maintaining a routine, I've tried writing down my goals in life (I barely thought of any beyond 'make some money'), I've tried self-help books. At best any of it lasts a week or two before I fall back into the routine of doing nothing much and I don't feel like trying.
I can't keep living like this and, honestly, I don't know how to change and I'm not really sure what to do about it. I took an argument about this with my girlfriend to finally get me to even write this post, I've been mulling it over for the past year.
TL;DR I'm very, very lazy and not motivated in slightest and would like to find some passion and ambition.
Currently I'm working part-time in a small retail store, about 15 minutes walk from my parents house (where I live). I do two days a week there and they can't find me more hours. Two years ago I finished my Masters Degree in Theatre and before that I did a BA in Drama. I haven't had much luck finding a job since, but I've barely had the motivation to look. I'm fed up of living at home and my girlfriend is fed up of it too (she's in much the same boat, works in the same store and is stuck at her parents house, although she also spends her free time as an artist and has a studio where she spends the rest of her working week).
I don't feel excited or interested in any kind of career, although I'm nominally interested in being a writer. I sit at home all day reading forums and listening to music. I might break that cycle with a computer game. Twice a week a get to play D&D and that's about the only thing I truly, honestly, look forward to and get excited about (especially if I'm DMing). Otherwise I sit at home doing nothing.
This isn't a recent thing, I've been lazy my entire life. In secondary school I spent most of my time in detention because I didn't do any homework (practically ever) and I only handed coursework in under duress. I just didn't care. Honestly, I still don't. But I'm still miserable.
I can't keep on like this, I have to find motivation from somewhere. I want to be amibitious, I want to be motivated and I want to be successful. But I don't have any motivation or passion to fix the problem so I'm just going in circles. I've tried loads of things; I've tried maintaining a routine, I've tried writing down my goals in life (I barely thought of any beyond 'make some money'), I've tried self-help books. At best any of it lasts a week or two before I fall back into the routine of doing nothing much and I don't feel like trying.
I can't keep living like this and, honestly, I don't know how to change and I'm not really sure what to do about it. I took an argument about this with my girlfriend to finally get me to even write this post, I've been mulling it over for the past year.
TL;DR I'm very, very lazy and not motivated in slightest and would like to find some passion and ambition.
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It can do wonders for the motivationally impaired. I know.
Plus it's a steady job with advancement potential and transferable job skills in the civilian world.
I'd say just start trying new things left and right. Get curious; find some thing that used to or at one point in your life interested you and give it a try. See what sticks and what doesn't. Maybe volunteer at a community center, goodwill or salvation army. Try something that intimidates you, or quite frankly scares the shit out of you.
You have nothing to lose here, so why not?
Are there any children's theaters near you that need volunteers? That would be an obvious place to start.
You will literally be signing away 2, 3, or 4 years of your life in exchange for a new and much better life. Prepare yourself, because it can be very tough on you, physically and psychologically, but you will come out of it with habits you never knew you could have.
My dad was in the military, my mom was in the military (that's where they met), my fiancee's dad was in the military, my grandfather was in the military, my sister is joining the military in exactly 11 days, and I have had no less than 3 close friends join the military. Out of all the people in the military that I have ever known (which is a huge number), only 2 of the stories have been negative.
Allow me to make a biased recommendation of the Navy.
Judging by your complete lack of hobbies or living expenses you should have money saved up to rent your own place ... at least for a while. Move out, learn to take care of yourself and become independent. At the worst you'll walk away with skills that'll help you out for the rest of your life. At the best you'll find a new environment inspiring or it might just lower your mental barriers to try new things and meet new people.
Why did you get your Masters in Theatre, what was your dream? Map out the steps you were going to take to accomplish that, check off the ones you've already done and start planning to do the ones that are left.
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It shows that you can really put your mind to it if you want something bad enough, so what's stopping you from putting it to use? Did you go through some bad auditions and get burned out?
This will force you to get gainful employment and your own place to live.
This will force you to get gainful employment and your own place to live.
I second this recommendation if you choose the military route.
OP, the part about not being able to think of any goals at all makes me also wonder about possible depression. As others asked, what happened between getting an MA in Theater and now?
Again with the goals: just reading your post, I can think of plenty of goals I would have in that general situation. I'm not saying do these things, but more making a list to point out that modest starter projects that might be both fun and productive are right in front of you, and that therefore the problem might be something more than just ennui and lack of motivation.
- Write a D&D campaign world. Maps, kingdoms, new monsters, gods, heroes, history, folktales. Then adventures. The Forgotten Realms book is a great example. Take a look also at "The World" on Rich Burlew's site.
- Find a different job if they won't give you more hours at your current one. Go out, walk around town, see who is hiring. If nobody appears to be hiring, walk in and tell them you want to work there. See what they say. Put some time into making a resume and putting together an interview wardrobe, not necessarily because you need to in order to work retail, but as a project.
- Get a book of monologues or two-person scenes. Rehearse and then tape yourself performing them. Your girlfriend can read the second part in a two-person, she can just sit off camera and read the lines while you actually act your part. I know this is just a lame exercise that you have probably done before, but it sounds like you aren't using your acting skills at all right now.
But honestly, the whole post makes me think depression and it might be worth getting checked out. Does NHS have some kind of cheap screening you can get?
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To think of it another way: I'll use the example of dieting/exercise. "I want be skinny" is basically setting yourself up for failure as it is vague and will take a long time for a person. But breaking it up into cutting out an afternoon soda, and walking to work then building on that once it's routine is much more likely to succeed. You need to do that for your life.
Well, actually, you're better off than me since I never even made it through college.
But hey, let's outline my life a little bit:
Elementary/Middle school: Only ever did enough homework to get by
High school: Same thing. I also only did two years of HS at an actual HS, I did my last two years at a community college. This was via a government deal where they'd pay for you to take the CC courses and they'd count as college and high school credit. I just used it as an excuse to slack even more, barely scraped by.
After that I went to art school for two years before quitting. And spending a ton of money. Of course, I never worked very hard there, either. Also realized that I just really fucking hate school.
Now at this point all I had was a crummy retail job. So I was about where you are now, crummy job, done with school, living at my mom's, rolling in debt, &c. Also with the no ambition. So what happened? Two things.
First, I accepted who I was. I realized that I'm never going to want to work real hard. There definately isn't some dream job out there where I'll love coming in every day. I know I'm never going to be good at keeping tidy, I'll keep waiting until all my clothes are dirty before doing laundry, I know one weekend projects take me two months. Accepting that I will never, ever, feel like doing work makes it easier to do so. I used to spend a lot of energy waxing philosophic about how it wasn't fair that I didn't have the same work drive as others, now I just let it be. This isn't really an excuse to be lazy... it's more of a change of outlook. Instead of trying to figure out ways of not being lazy, I figure that I will be lazy and plan accordingly.
Now, the second one is harder. I found a community to be a part of. I'm not passonate about my work. I just don't care. I am passionate about the people I'm with. That's where I find my enjoyment in life. I was lucky enough to join the Enforcers, and they're a right fine group of people who share a lot of my interests. It sounds like you like people, too. It sounds like the best thing you've got going is your DnD group. Unfortunatly that's usually not enough people to really call a community. But you act right? I would think you would be able to meet a ton of people if you got involved in your local theatre scene. Even if you don't think you can get a part or whatever, you can bet your ass they'd be glad to have some extra hands to hammer sets together.
tl, dr: I'm also super lazy, shifted my viewpoint from wishing I wasn't lazy to figuring out how to work with my laziness.
(I don't know if this really made sense... I can clarify if needed)
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Reading through your post I saw a lot of similarities with how I used to be. Like you I just scraped by through my life doing the bare minimum possible. Luckily I was intelligent enough to get quite far on that bare minimum, which probably reinforced my behaviour if anything.
Things really started to change around for me when I discovered what I wanted to do with my life, it all kind of fell into place from there, and now I'd say I'm relatively successful. But it's easier said than done, it's not like you can just pluck your calling in life out of thin air.
In my case things started turning around in my final year of university. I realised that sitting around doing nothing and feeling perpetually bored wasn't a great way to be living, and that I needed to start finding stuff to do with my life. So I went and joined a boatload of societies, most of them didn't stick, but I just basically tried everything that was on offer. As a result I ended up getting really into student radio, and I followed that through to a career in the BBC, which is not easy to get into. Not bad for someone who was suffering with pretty severe depression and absolutely no motivation.
Once you find something you're really passionate about you'll be shocked how much motivation you're capable of summoning up, and the thing is, success begets success. It's so easy in a situation like the one you're in to just get into a downward spiral of bad habits, but once you take that first step towards achieving whatever it is you want in life, the others just seem to get easier and easier. You just have to find something that you really want for yourself.
But that's the hard part. I think to overcome it you're just going to have to start putting yourself out there. Join some local clubs and societies, see if there's anything that really draws you in, go do some voluntary work, look at work experience placements in loads of different fields. Just keep plugging at it until you find something that makes you think "holy shit, I really wanna do this", then find out how you'd go about getting into that field and go for it.
And go see your GP ASAP. If you're as depressed as you come across/you say you are, that is going to really hold you back and making getting your life on track way more difficult than it should be, and you'll probably want to give up. Get treated.
Best of luck with all this.
I hate the military so God damn much because of these reasons you give.
Y'know why? I tried to enlist, the recruiter(s) took one look at my application and said "HA! No."
Because I have hemophilia.
I can't join because I was born with a bleeding disorder. A MILD case at that.
America the Free? How free can it be when THE MILITARY discriminates against me based on a condition that is beyond my control, embedded in my very genes? Can't I just drive a tank if they're so worried about me bleeding to death? Anything capable of penetrating modern tank armor would kill me regardless of whether or not I have a bleeding disorder! Jerks.
I'm sick of my laziness and lack of motivation. I now realize I can't rely on anyone else to give me motivation, or to beat discipline into me (Up yours, racist-to-bleeders U.S. Military!) Sure, a cozy middle-class upbringing lacking in any real adversity may have contributed to this, but as a human being fully capable of learning and reasoning I have no excuse now that I know my problem. Tomorrow, I'm putting on my nice jacket and shoes, going into town, beating my social anxiety to a bloody pulp and applying for jobs until my application-filling hand cramps. I'll work my way from the bottom up, save money, go back to school, and become... something! I've always been a dab hand at drawing and writing, maybe a career in animation? I'll burn that bridge when I come to it. (I notice that D&D source books always have amazing artwork...) This laziness freight-train of bullshit stops NOW. Life is too short for me to be a useless drain on my family and society. "What about the recession? What if you can't find a job?" Fuck the recession! If I can't go back to school due to lack of paying work I'll get books on writing/animation/etc. from the library and study it my own damn self!
From now on, whenever I start to get that "meh" feeling, I'll give myself a mental kick in the balls and say "No. If I end up not doing what I want/need to be doing I'll be stuck here." The second I finish posting this I'm going to bed, setting my alarm for 5am, and over all plain stop being a bitch to my habits. It's going to be hard, and I may have to swallow my pride and flip burgers for a living fpr awhile, but I'll be DAMNED if I spend another day screwing around with minecraft or flipping through afternoon judge shows.
Who thought that of all sources for motivation, a comment in a forum thread would have been the thing to finally open my eyes? I hope the OP and other self-proclaimed lazy people get what I've said.
I'll see you all again when I've made something of myself!
Exercise. Do it now. Go for a jog. Ride a bike. Go canoeing. Climb trees.
Get off your arse and go outside.
Also check your diet.
Also if you do go to your GP and they decide to give you pills, ask if there's an alternative to citalpram. I was on that shit for 6 months and all it did was make me tired and numb all the time. Honestly it was a big factor in beating my own depression - any other way of dealing with it is better than those fucking sleepy pills.
Something that saved me was going to the gym, if you are overweight or otherwise feel shame looking into the mirror, check out the SE++ bigman thread. We all know cardio is boring, but lifting heavy things for half an hour is easy, physical strain aside. I literally powerlifted myself thin, felt like a champ. Granted, the honeymoon period is over, and reality has set back in, but at least now I can feel pretty darn good about myself, and it's helped in many ways.
This is my recommendation as well. It isn't the easiest first step (being lazy and listless makes starting a light exercise regimen tough). I find I fall into a listless and lazy spell during the winter and slack off on my eating habits/exercise habits. I get mildly depressed but at this point in my life I can see the signs clearly. Getting myself back on track physically really makes a difference mentally (at least in my case). Your mileage will vary. From a cost perspective, it might be the cheapest way.
I've been there too. Exercise did me immeasurably more good than therapy/SSRIs. But, yes, when you feel that drained, it stays only a good idea for a long time. I still have to recommend it.
This.
Go do something, anything that does not involve passive consumption (of food or information.)
Exercise. Physically and Mentally.
Get out of the comfort zone.
In fact, I'm going to go for a walk since I missed the gym hours and then some sets before I go to sleep.
I don't have much constructive to add, but you bring up excellent points that I must consider incorporating into my life.