Procrastination

So, it occurred to me just now, this very simple realisation.

Procrastination is not only the mechanism to escape the task one’s unwilling to do. It’s also a mechanism to do something while one understands they are not able to deliver on their primary task, so they switch to something easier.

The last six years of my life are extremely challenging (because of the kids, and especially the autistic one), and there are very complex tasks that I’m not used to not being able to perform. Before starting a family, there were no tasks I could not do. I had my issues with focus — mostly due ADHD and being very young and inexperienced — but if I’d be persistent, there was nothing I couldn’t achieve.

These days, I’m living in a challenging position. I’m a foreigner, in a country that fights for its survival.

The statehood of which is very young, and the society is full of degenerates, because of Russian occupation for almost a century, or even centuries, depending on where to start the count. Oh, degenerates, that’s what Russia does best. Slaughter all the smart people, swap them for Russians, profit. Now you have a society of serfs.

My kid has her special needs, and the state gives almost no support. It was €20 a month for a newborn till the year three. Now, since she has her disability status, it’s an equivalent of €60 a month. Plus two sponsored 45 minutes sessions with a speech therapist. The price of one therapy session is € 12…15 and we have them two and sometimes three a day.

Money isn’t big issue for us, and rather the outside help would be highly appreciated. But there’s no one to help.

My mother lives in another country, and she’s not too eager to migrate to Ukraine, a country at war. There’s pretty solid chance to not survive till the morning, and one needs to make peace with that. (We did.)

My father would be an excellent grandad and he would be of a tremendous help. He would migrate with me no problem, he was born in Ukraine and despite his family migrated when he was young, he spoke Ukrainian at home. I’d love him to come, but he died a decade and a half ago of a heart attack. Or so I’ve been told. I was in Singapore at the moment, and learned of his death upon my arrival.

My wife’s mother is the most stupid person I ever met in my entire life, and honestly I’m horrified how stupid a human being can be. Weirdly, surviving for a human being without any intellect is easier if one has a vagina. I have a similarly not-smart male person who is very poor. For some reason, there’s no woman who wants to pay his checks for over three decades.

She helps, but the price is too high. And it’s unbearably high for me. Just dealing with her is more expensive than paying money to get something without interacting with her. To get the vibes, to her that’s our kids, or even my kids. Not her daughter’s. And there’s no concept of ‘her grandkids.’ I guess she’ll have grandkids when her other daughter would have her litter. She loves her second daughter, but she hates and despises her first daughter, my wife. She loves her back, and so that’s me who provides the hate and despise.

Honestly, I’ve never met a single living soul I feel this despise towards.

Her husband is the one who pays her for being his wife, and he mostly don’t care she bore kids, and now one of them has her kids now. Weirdly, he’s not idiot, and he’s smart. My wife had theories he’s autistic too. He doesn’t look as one to me, he’s perfectly normal, but he’s just the one who’s not too enthusiastic about having a family, so to say. In any case, he’s not the one to help. However, he can help with money, if needed. It’s weird, because I feel like that’s the most insignificant thing to me. I might be rich by this point, and I may be one later in life. It’s just something I don’t value at all. For me, money is rather a resource to use. Almost infinite resource, if you game the system.

Money can’t buy you love,
can’t buy you love,
Love, money can’t buy you love

I have no close friends. Probably I could have some, if I did not change my whereabouts throughout all my life. I’m having no other relatives either. So on my side there’s literally nobody to help when I need some. I managed to acquire some local nice good people to support me in something trivial though, when needed. Yet, I see no perspectives in those relationships.

So. It is me against the world. Unfortunately, my wife — while being a great and smart person — does not read me well, and that’s a thing that’s just another obstacle.

Most days — most hours! — I feel overwhelmed. Some days I barely function. Surviving till the night is my primary task of the day.

I’m greatly crushed by the realisation that pre-family time my productivity was 10x of what it is today. Maybe it’s 100x. I can compensate with only some wisdom and experience.

It feels like the difference with being young and jumpy (you can imagine the tiger from Winnie the Pooh) and being disabled. You still can do same things (if you’re lucky), but much slower and with some new challenges.

I afraid, this metaphor is slightly offensive, since I’m not a disabled person. At least physically. But there’s nothing else that comes to my head. Probably I cannot properly speak of that position, but since I’m not belittling that position and claiming it’s just more difficult, which I believe it is, I see no issues with it.

And so, that’s how it feels. Suddenly being so much slower at some everyday tasks. Previously, something trivial could go unnoticed. Now, it’s a separate task for the day. Sometimes challenging.

I’m not saying you cannot achieve great things. We all have Stephen Hawking, right?

Would we have him if there were no Jane?

Now I have three things:

In this situation, procrastination feels very different to the stupid lazy one I had when I was young. It’s just this realisation that there’s no point to start doing some very complicated task, as I know it for the fact that I won’t be able to finish it. And it would be just another unfinished project for a very long time. And either I’ll be obsessed with one at some point, and it would sip all my energy. Or, I would waste my energy on telling myself I have to abandon that idea. Or, I would finish it, but it would take so much time, that most of the projects would be simply irreverent by then.

I could do extra work at nights and evenings, but I’m already sleeping less than 6 hours daily, sometimes 7 or 8, and never longer. Plus, I waste at least two to three hours every night by trying to get our daughter asleep. Sometimes for. To get her to sleep for eight hours, we may need to waste four hours — half of that! — to get her to fucking sleep! She would laugh, do convulsive movements, laugh more, buzz, clang, make other loud noises. She would run all over the place, then she’d fall asleep.

Every fucking night. She’s six in a month. It’s almost 2,200 nights of absolute madness. It’s at least 4K wasted hours. It’s half of the year — 180 days! — of just trying to get her asleep, with inability to do anything.

It’s almost midnight. She’s not sleeping. We’re in our beds for almost three hours. There’s no lights, no sounds. We’re degrading in our iPhones, you cannot hug her to calm her down or shut her up. She’s not accepting hugs, unless it’s mandatory use of brute force. She’s super strong, stronger than me.

Hnat is sleeping for an hour or two now. I wonder when will this change. Will there ever be a time she’d start fucking sleep, or will Hnat just join us in not sleeping while she’s in this daily berserk mode.

Alongside this love for the child, there are moments I hate her so much! Fucking sleep already!

Fuck. It’s very difficult to bear that child.

These days, procrastination is rather something I can do while being very low on resources.

If you’d read these prioritising-things gurus, there are four things to do:

Or something like that. To be successful, you need to focus on high priority tasks and basically non-do low priority tasks (like taking a shower).

I don’t believe that nonsense and these high-priority mindset people look rather miserable losers to me.

But being stuck in low-priority is just another polar opposite! It’s also miserable and that’s where I am these days. There are very little days when I can be productive (compared to my usual days, not my truly productive days), and I ought to be very picky what to do. Since I’m exhausted globally, there’s no stretch of willpower that can use just one free day (or usually just four free uninterrupted hours) to complete the high-priority complex tasks. And without that, it takes a very long time to arrive at the destination.

If at all possible.

••• Realisations Family Society Kids Parenting

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