On Pointlessness

One of the many advantages of no longer drinking – such as not ending up in jail or discovering that I need to apologize to someone for doing/saying something that I don’t remember doing/saying – is that I don’t have to wake up in the morning (or afternoon, as was more often the case) with a hangover.
At least, that’s been my experience for the past seven years, until today, when I woke up feeling hungover with a raging case of the Zacklies.
(For the uninitiated, “the Zacklies” is the term used to describe the experience of waking up and finding that your mouth tastes zackly like your ass.)
What’s up with that? Did someone sneak into my house and inject me with booze while I was asleep? It’s like when I lived in the dorm and my suitemates would smoke pot in the shared bathroom, causing the smoke to filter into my room and resulting in me waking up feeling vaguely buzzed with red eyes and a sore throat, so I was essentially paying for a crime I didn’t commit.
In any case, waking up with an unearned hangover didn’t exactly work wonders for my motivation.
One of the problems I’ve been running into in terms of motivation is that now when I have so much free time there are so many things I could be doing with the time.
Should I work on the Heroic Portraits redesign, and if so, what aspect should I work on? The site layout? The content for the site?
Or should I work on some pictures that I can turn into products on Zazzle?
What about writing a Threshold entry? Or maybe a short story, or a novel? Maybe an article for some online or old media publication? What about those screenplay ideas that have been kicking around in my head? Maybe write up some of those comic book scripts that I’ve come up with? What about one of the many Web comic ideas I have?
Or how about some art for art’s sake? Couldn’t I do some work on that picture of Scarlett Johansson, or Kelly Brook, or Jessica Alba, or any of the dozens of others I’ve been meaning to get to or to finish?
With all of these options available the key would seem to lie in prioritizing, but the only problem is that it’s impossible to prioritize when every available option seems equally pointless.
Heroic Portraits has been up for over a year and a half without generating any real interest from anyone. Is a redesign really going to make a difference? Do I even really want it to make a difference? When I can’t even make a Portrait that satisfies someone who’s getting it for free, what makes me think that I’d be able to do so for someone who’s actually paying for it?
I’ve been creating products on Zazzle for over four years and in that time have sold two, for a whopping total of $3.80. Working to create more of the same doesn’t really strike me as a worthwhile investment of time.
Don’t even get me started on the pointlessness of writing this blog, devoid as it is of celebrity bra sizes, Bikini Cavegirl downloads, or any information about Giada’s height (or pictures of her nipples).
As for all the rest of it, honestly, who cares? I haven’t gotten enough rejection slips over the years to realize that no one is interested in anything I have to say?
(And yes, I do realize that most of the handful of you who are actually reading this do, in fact, care, and I appreciate it and don’t mean to come off as ungrateful, but so far as I know, none of you is an editor or publisher or in any sort of position to provide me with financial motivation.)
Obviously my number one priority right now is finding a job, and that’s not exactly going swimmingly, which can’t help but be discouraging in a job market as “hot” as that of Northern Virginia.
*Sigh*
So yeah, motivation is at a low ebb. If I’m ultimately just going to be wasting my time anyway, why invest a bunch of effort into it when I can much more easily do nothing?
I know, I know; I have to keep plugging away regardless, for whatever reason, but my point is that there are some major obstacles to overcome in my efforts to get motivated.
Of course it doesn’t help that I’m naturally inclined towards procrastination. laziness, and time-wasting.
And where did that come from anyway? I mean, I exhibit so many other stereotypical Finnish traits, so how did I avoid the whole “hard-working” thing? And it’s not like I didn’t have plenty of positive role models in that regard in my life. My dad was like some unstoppable juggernaut when it came to work, and my mom always kept busy. So what the hell? Am I some sort of mutant?
Interestingly enough, despite all of this, I honestly haven’t been even slightly tempted to take a drink. In fact, I can’t think of a time in my adult life in which I’ve been so thoroughly disinclined to do so.
And yet, here I am, still shaking off the effects of what feels like a monster hangover.
I suppose I could just be plain old sick, but even that is almost as unheard of in my life as a hangover.
Anyway, I don’t want this to sound like some cry for help or anything like that. It’s just been a shitty day in a string of shitty days, and I’m sure my motivation will be back up to its usual abysmal levels tomorrow.
And in the meantime, I actually did, finally, prioritize and pick a pointless activity to engage in. Aren’t you glad?