Nathaniel Hoover | Guy Whose Website You're Viewing
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Series Opinions
    • Mega Man >
      • Mega Man Classic >
        • Mega Man 1-6
        • Mega Man 7-11
        • Mega Man Game Boy Games
        • Mega Man Spinoffs
        • Mega Man Remakes
        • Mega Man Sports & Arcade Games
      • Mega Man Sequel Series >
        • Mega Man X1-5
        • Mega Man X6-8 + Command Mission
        • Mega Man X Portable Games
        • Mega Man Zero Series
        • Mega Man ZX Series
        • Mega Man Legends Series
      • Mega Man Spinoff Series >
        • Mega Man Battle Network 1-3 + Network Transmission
        • Mega Man Battle Network 4-6 + Battle Chip Challenge
        • Mega Man Star Force Series
    • Star Trek >
      • Star Trek TV Series >
        • The Original Series (TOS)
        • The Animated Series (TAS)
        • The Next Generation (TNG)
        • Deep Space Nine (DS9)
        • Voyager (VOY)
        • Enterprise (ENT)
      • TOS Films >
        • Star Trek: The Motion Picture
        • Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
        • Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
        • Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
        • Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
        • Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
      • TNG Films >
        • Star Trek: Generations
        • Star Trek: First Contact
        • Star Trek: Insurrection
        • Star Trek: Nemesis
      • Ones That Don't Count >
        • Star Trek (2009)
        • Star Trek Into Darkness
        • Star Trek Beyond
        • Discovery
        • Picard
  • Games
    • Mega Man Fangame Tracker
    • OH JOES! (A Proto Man Adventure)
  • Presentations
  • Writing Samples

Racing Against Irrelevancy

3/3/2018

1 Comment

 
I have forgotten how to slow down and relax.

All throughout school, my pattern was to keep adding side projects and extracurricular activities to my weekly schedule—I'd start by joining a choir, then a theater group, then a church group... By the end of three or four years, I'd be so overburdened with activities that I'd burn out and vow to wipe the slate clean after graduation. Then I'd move on to the next phase of my life, be it a new school or the "real world"...and slowly start the process all over again.

For the foreseeable future, there is no "next phase" of my life. No more school, no grand plans of life-altering significance on the horizon. No natural stopping point where I can gracefully walk away from my commitments. "As soon as I finish what I'm working on now," I keep telling myself, "then I'll take some time to myself." But I never seem to finish. Projects that should only take a weekend end up taking weeks, if not months. Whenever one commitment starts wrapping up, another tantalizing one presents itself. I thrive on being productive and feeling like I'm making a contribution to society, so I want to do all these things. Yet one after another, every commitment in recent years has gone on so long that it's more like work than fun. I've learned to devote all my free time to powering through projects so I can finish before they stop being enjoyable.

Which, in turn, makes them not enjoyable. And they still take forever.

The other factor is that I need to finish my projects more quickly if they're going to remain relevant. I've got a blog post about the latest Star Wars movie that's been in the works since the week the film opened. I completely missed the boat on my annual New Year's Resolutions post. My stalled playthrough of Mega Man 8 surely would have gotten a boost in popularity if I could have released it in sync with the second Mega Man Legacy Collection. I'm frantically trying to get my Mega Man fangame released before the next big level design contest opens—because as I found with my Super Mario World ROM hack that should've been released a decade ago, even the most creative ideas will get scooped up by somebody else if you take too long to show them to the world.

But I'm also racing against myself. Five months after playing Chrono Cross for the first time, I still haven't finished the angry article I started drafting for GameCola about it...and at this point, I'm not sure I want to bother finishing it. Writing about the game was cathartic at one point, but now I've moved on with my life. Do I really want to reopen that wound? I think the only reason I'm still considering going back to it is to preserve this sentence, which took way too long to craft:
Chrono Cross GOES OVERBOARD vith obnoxiously obnoxious speech-quirks-and ffrustratingly thick-um acthents zat make-eth everything-om, like, verrry haard tö ken, mate—don'tCHA agwee, tee hee?
And with that, the sentence has been preserved. Now eliminating "The Ten Reasons: Chrono Cross."

Well, that's one less thing on my to-do list.

I'm taking this weekend to recover from self-inflicted stress. I'm not thinking about what I should do. I'm not pushing myself to finish anything I may start or resume. I'm going where the winds of relaxation take me. That I've spent today folding laundry, transcribing a dessert recipe into my recipe book, and reviewing fan-submitted captions on my YouTube videos might make it seem like I still have no idea how to relax...but these are things I want to do. It's making me happy to tidy up the all the physical and mental clutter I've been neglecting in my life. Now, if you'll excuse me, I want to go redeem this coupon code I found inside a cereal box.
1 Comment
ThatEntityGuy
4/17/2018 02:43:37 am

This speaks to me so much. I've dealt with and am dealing with this exact same thing. You just need to your foot down and really figure out what you want to do the most, and what you would be okay dropping to give yourself some more time. You need to value your well-being over doing more projects, and not feel like you're being lazy or neglecting other things because you choose to relax.

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    RSS Feed

    See what my wife's up to!
    Things I Put In My Husband's Lunch

    Archives

    April 2022
    November 2021
    May 2021
    March 2021
    January 2021
    August 2020
    July 2020
    September 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    September 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    December 2017
    October 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013

    Categories

    All
    Anime
    Art
    Books
    Collecting And Collectables
    Conventions And Events
    Exfanding Your Horizons
    Fantasy
    Food
    Gamecola
    Holidays
    Internet
    MaGMML
    Marriage
    Mega Man
    Movies
    Music
    News
    OH JOES!
    Opinion
    Philosophy
    Politics
    Religion
    Retrospective
    Sci Fi
    Social Media
    Star Trek
    Star Wars
    Stories
    Television
    Video Games
    Videos
    Writing

    Creative Commons License
    This work by Nathaniel Hoover is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.