Operation Achieve Anything: Day Three-Hundred-Five, Dateline 11-1-2018

Fault finding is like window washing. All the dirt seems to be on the other side.
— Unknown

Good morning crickets. Welcome to day number three-hundred-five of Operation Achieve Anything. As part of my new health kick, I’ve been trying new supplements. Last month, I felt a lot of benefits for the multiple life changes which on top of the supplement intake included adding walking and diet to me daily routine. Since I started everything at once, I have no idea which piece to this new puzzle was to credit for me feeling so clearheaded. This month, I switched up my supplements to test out new products and see what else may help my body and mind. I don’t know if it’s the switch or the recent run of stressful life events, but I feel like I’m falling back to having a foggier brain.

This is why my recent posts have been so late since I’m barely able to focus. For now, I’m going to blame the week, considering how it was just a couple of days ago that I lost my job just a couple weeks after losing my little dog. Though in my mind I really want to take advantage of the extra time and dig in to focus on the job hunt and cleaning up this blog, there’s another part of my mind that just wants to take some of this extra time to actually take a break. This might be why I’m self-sabotaging myself to go slow by limiting my focus.

Today, I’m going to try to switch things up and get as much done as I can to prime my pump of productivity, since I’m going to need it to get through this year’s NaNoWriMo. To do this, I plan to sit at this computer until I finish all of my obligations for today, write at least one backup SNL review, write my first batch of NaNoWriMo pages, and then fill in any gaps in time by editing old pages from this blog to get back into the practice of pushing myself.

With that, I’m going to switch gears and dig into yesterday’s assignment that’s sort of related to what’s written above since the task at hand focuses on how I handle problems. According to the book, there are only three types; problem seekers, problem solvers, and problem see-ya-laters. Though that could be true, I don’t feel that I fully relate to just one, in fact, I feel equally balanced between all of the above.

I know that many people would agree to being a mix of all three, but I also bet that most of these people would also agree that one of the three is a dominant problem-solving approach that they would claim to be their default. I personally feel so that I’m an even balance of all three. I used to have this same problem with therapy where I never knew how to answer any questions about what makes me tick since I have such a divided personality. I wouldn’t say that I have a split personality where I feel like I’m literally different people, but I am an extremely different person depending on the situation.

Most people will also agree to feeling this way, acting differently at work than at play, but most people also seem to be consistent enough to have balance. Me at work versus me at play is like dealing with two completely different people, and then I’m a whole different person when I am all alone, and the differences aren’t so subtle. I’ll dig into these differences in another post but for now, the answer to yesterday’s assignment might help.

First off, I think that I am a problem seeker, which the book describes as a person who seeks out drama. Though I hate being drawn to a certain level of conflict, my chaotic upbringing has made instability sort of my comfort zone. This is part of the reason I just want to be alone since it seems to be my only escape from the stress, being that I’m drawn to it. I also seek out problems as inspiration for the issues that I want to resolve through my stories, which only adds to my need to have problems in my life.

I’m also a problem solver which was literally my job back in the day when I worked at Amazon where I found replacements for damages or missing books, back before they sold all this other nonsense. Again, I feel like my chaotic upbringing helped to develop this skill within me since I was the middle-child who usually settled things down by being the families comedic relief. Because of this, I became extremely observant in my efforts to move any eggshells to allow more freedom to walk around. Like with the problem seeking, problem-solving also comes into play in my stories since each tale I write is an effort to work something out.

Finally, I’m a problem see-ya-later in that when all else fails I’m perfectly fine with simply giving up so that I can move on and find another route. More often than not, my comic relief efforts only worked up to a certain point which was the point where I would then walk away and let everyone else have it all out. I’m also able to completely ignore annoyances that don’t really matter to me. Like my leg, for example, there’s a constant pain that’s left over from my last bout of sciatica, but I can still get around so I’ll just live with it rather than seek out professional help to actually solve the problem. I’m not proud of this part of me, but it’s definitely there.

So this is how and why I feel like I completely relate to all three of the options that I was given to choose from, and that’s all I’ve got on the subject. With that, it’s now time to introduce today’s assignment where I’m now supposed to stop passing the blame and start owning up to the things that are my own fault. As always, you’ll have to wait for tomorrow’s update to hear what I have to say about this subject. Until then, it’s now that time for me to say, good day and good luck to you and all of your projects.

Talk to you soon.

Sincerely,

The Wicker Breaker

P.S. Below are links to my novel, which I plan to promote as part of Operation Achieve Anything, as well as a link to where you can buy the book that is providing the structure to this project in case you would like to purchase it in order to play along.