Volume 3, Issue 22: On Accountability
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Hi friends! First of all, thank you to everyone who has donated to my mother’s GoFundMe that I mentioned last week. I cannot express how much that means to me.
Halloween is in a few days and it is my absolute favorite holiday. I was talking to a couple coworkers today and Halloween is also a favorite of most of my team at my day job. We came to the conclusion that Halloween is the one holiday without a lot of baggage or expectations. No required extended family time, no expected gifts, can be celebrated widely by non-religious people without the feelings of exclusion around other holidays, doesn’t have the amount of white supremacist roots that Thanksgiving and Fourth of July have. Just creepy and silly and candy. Spectator Books had this artwork on their sandwich board when I passed by the other day and it gave me multiple levels of joy:
When I started seeing my therapist in 2021(?), she asked me if there was anything about past experiences with therapy that I did not like and I said, “Please don’t make me journal.”
Well, flash-forward to 4 ½ weeks ago and I was complaining about my lack of task initiation around some personal, creative projects I want to do. I say “task initiation” because the motivation is there, I want to do these things, I just repeatedly fail at starting, whether it’s via procrastination or flat-out avoidance. For more on task initiation vs. motivation, I recommend checking out How to Keep House While Drowning: A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organizing by KC Davis as well as the first episode of her podcast, Struggle Care.
Tl;dr I want to do things and I continue to avoid doing things.
My therapist proceeded to give me journaling homework (ughhhhhhhhhhhh) but not the freeform journaling that I find unappealing most of the time but instead she gave me five specific questions to answer. She said I could do this daily or weekly and I am determined to win at therapy (that’s realistic, right?) so every weekday I’ve been answering these questions:
What excited me today?
What drained me today?
What is something I learned today?
What did I do today to push the needle forward toward my goals?
What are five things I’m grateful for?
This has been a game-changer and it’s mostly around two specific items. First is question number 4, “What did I do today to push the needle forward toward my goals?” I could definitely put nothing but I am nothing if not an overachiever and so it ends up that I do a little something or even a lot of something each day. This only works because of the second part: I told my therapist to ask me about my journal every week. Every. Week. If it’s homework for homework’s sake that I’m not turning in, then I’m not going to do that shit. But if I “owe” it to someone? Then you should know that I busted out a new journal, inked up one of my fountain pens, and got to business. I've been texting collaborators, having Zoom meetings, sending emails, buying new domains. I'm a monster!
The annoying part of all of this is that I know this about me. I know that I thrive with accountability. I have written this newsletter every week since the end of January 2020 and I don’t think I’ve missed a single week because I know that people are expecting it, reading it, and paying for it.
I recently went on a walk with my friend and I love walking yet I am absolute shit at getting out for a walk. But if someone was driving out to my neighborhood and expecting me to walk with them and we made plans then yes, I will be up in the morning and walk. Do I do things for my own benefit? Eh. Will I jump through flaming hoops to do something just so someone else isn’t let down by my choices and I am accountable to them? Absolutely.
What does this mean? Maybe I’ll stop avoiding the things that have proven to be effective e.g., accountability. There is, of course, a lot of baggage around the idea of “not needing other people” and “shoulding” myself, like, “I should be able to do things on my own” but this is 2022 and I am too tired to continue ignoring what works.
That’s it for this week! You can shop any books I’ve mentioned in this newsletter at my affiliate shop, The Infophile’s Bookshop, and support independent bookstores. If you want to send me some snail mail, you can find me at P.O. Box 21481, Oakland, CA 94620-1481. If you are a paid subscriber and would like for me to send you some happy mail, feel free to give me your address.
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That’s it for this week! You can shop many books I’ve mentioned in this newsletter at my affiliate shop, The Infophile’s Bookshop, and support independent bookstores. In fact, any Bookshop, Amazon, or Etsy links in this newsletter are affiliate links so if you shop through those, it helps support my work. Or you can leave me a tip on Ko-fi, Paypal, or Venmo.
If you want to send me some snail mail, you can find me at P.O. Box 21481, Oakland, CA 94620-1481.
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