Too Far & The Journey Back

I wish I had a good way of explaining certain things.
Some things are easy to say - and the words just come out, and it works (or, at least, I think it works).
Other things are not so easy, the words won't come, and even when they sort of form together in my head, I know I'm missing pieces. The missing pieces are things that I know, but aren't necessarily things that are known by you, or much anyone, already.

You see, I have a very addictive personality. 
And I could just leave it at that, and go about my day, and you could go about yours.
However, that doesn't quite sum it up perfectly. It's tidy and succinct, but it's not 100% the proper explanation.

I am easily sucked into things and can, without a moment of stopping to think, I easily and willingly send all of my energy and aspirations into something. 
For example, when I learned to knit last September, I put all of my time into it. And then fell behind in the making of Christmas presents. Because I had made the list of things to make while still in the "yay knitting!" phase and didn't take into account the losing of interest.
When I decided in January and February that I was going to declutter the apartment a bit, I put all my energy into it and while I got a lot done, it was a lot of little things that didn't need to be done, but it was "progress" and that's all that mattered at the time.
In February, when I decided that I was going to be gung-ho and "serious" about blogging, I did so many things to make it easier on myself and set things up to do and to write and to read. And then promptly felt overwhelmed and instead of taking a step back to reassess, I fell off the bandwagon completely and into a funk.
In a more geeky example, two years ago, I got really into Magic: the Gathering, and spent more than a few Friday nights at the local card store, losing but still playing. It was enjoyable, but I spent far too much money not only on Friday night gaming, but booster packs and release weekends and such, organizing cards and building decks and reading about it and watching tournaments of it.
Just recently, I was obsessing over what fountain pen to buy next. I couldn't decide between an orange Kaweco sport or a Lamy Safari in Copper Orange or Coral, so I didn't buy any, but I kept looking around, hoping to find either a better deal or different colors. Many evenings were spent prowling JetPens and Goulet Pens and Amazon.
And now, the way things are, I'm spending hours at my computer, doing computer things, and I have put a ton of energy into that.

Right now, my days are filled with C++ and JavaScript and I'm happy with it, but I know it's too much.
The beauty of knowing, right?
I could easily spend all day learning that stuff. And I have before, the past times I've tried to learn this sort of thing. Only to last about two weeks, lose momentum, skip a day or two, and not pick it up for a month.
the obsession had passed, the motivation gone, and the energy necessary continue wiped out.

And that's exactly how each and everyone of those above "obsessions" went. 
Whatever-it-was was super, super interesting! For, maybe, two weeks. Only to skip a day, or have a bad day, or a bad few days, not to come back to it.
To decide that it wasn't really that interesting, or I wasn't really into it in the first place, that I psyched myself into it, and it wasn't really what I wanted.

However.
I still have a ton of Magic: the Gathering cards. Just in case I want to play again (even though, at this point, nothing that I have is playable, but that's a discussion for another time and place).
I still have those fountain pens on my wishlists around the Internet, and even checked in on them last night, just out of curiosity.
I still have my giant plans of blogging in a journal that hasn't been put away in the closet yet, just in case I get the energy to put towards it again - though I did empty out my Filofax of all the bits I had set up in there, just to clear it away a little.
I've got lists of areas to declutter still, and at least twice a week I tell myself I need to get to it, but don't - the mojo has passed and I'm just not interested.

I know that if I were to pick these things up again, the fervor could easily return and I'd be sucked into the vortex once more - middle of last year, I reorganized all of my M:tG cards, in order of what was playable at the time and what was not, in alphabetical order; the planning things are still close at hand; the fountain pens are still on my wishlists. It would be a quick jump from "I'll do this" to "I'm only doing this."
And it's something I'm trying to avoid with the current computering.

Because, while I know I need to work on it every single day to make any progress and get, well, knowledgeable in it, spending all my time in that manner won't make me a happy person. It will make me a burnt-out person. But I desperately want to learn all the things and spend a lot of time on it.

It's a balancing act. And one that I am not successful with.

There are countless other examples.
Our LEGO collection? Took less than a year and a half to amass so much, if I'm remembering correctly.
My movie collection? It grew slowly...ish. But for the most part, at least once a month I was buying multiple DVDs.
My Pokemon cards? Oh boy, that's been off and on for years - and part of the reason why I hesitate to get rid of collections, because I do tend to go back to them at some point, and most are things that are expensive to start again with.
Video games? Multiple purchases in a short amount of time, followed by not playing anything for months.
And planners? Oh boy. I have too many planners and notebooks. But I wanted them, desperately wanted them, and could not stop thinking about them and how I could use them and how organized I would be and what magical things I could fill them with.
These are just the examples with things I still have, not including the ones I spent money on only to abandon and get rid of.

These things end up filling in every small bit of time that I have, whether I like it or not. 
Heck, even a hankering for nachos from Taco Bell. Just this weekend, I wanted them Friday, and we did not have Taco Bell for dinner. It's Sunday evening, and I'm still wishing for nachos, and have done so multiple times over the weekend.

I am, however, at a point where I realize these things about myself and have seen enough of the cycles to know how it works.
Which is why I'm trying to take the C++ and JavaScript slowly. Which is why, to be completely honest, I had the idea of trying to learning programming again in February, and made myself wait until March to start...if I was going to be interested in it and not doing it for two whole weeks, it might be something I would actually stick with. And while the HTML/CSS/JavaScript was more so a "let's learn this!" and an immediate start, it fits in well to the theme and has been kept up with. For now, at least - and I'm hopeful that will continue.
I'm still on my German lessons, too. I've managed over 50 days straight at this point. I'm so very proud of that - I dunno if I've done 50 days of really anything in the past few years. However, I do know that when I started the German learning, late last year, I found as many free resources online as I could, bookmarked a ton of them, tried to read through a few, did a few lessons and took fabulous notes, to just leave it alone for all of January.

My mind finds something that it just cannot live without (or so it feels) and sucks the life out of it (and me) and then spits it out when it cannot fathom ingesting one more morsel. 
The trying to stop it from doing that is downright ridiculous. The obsessions are real, and they are fierce and hard to control. I am trying, but it's an uphill battle, and takes a lot of energy on it's own, let alone trying to actually get anything else done.

So for the time being, it's slow goings and being mindful of everything - time, physical and mental resources, and balancing it all.
Changes and improvements do not happen overnight, and changes involving your natural self are even harder.
It would be easier to just say "this is how I am, and this is what it's like to be me," and go about my business, but it will just leave more things half done and half tried, more things to languish without attention, and more things added to my household because I couldn't get it out of my head. That's no longer acceptable to me. It has to change, or else the vortex will just continue and I'll spend more years doing, well, nothing. Half things, sure, but multiple half things don't actually add up a completed anything (though it'd be nice it if did).

~Havok

A quote for your Monday: "Everything in the world is either a potato or not a potato." - KazyX

P.S. Even with tracking on online orders. I check in the morning, in the afternoon, and the evening. Even if it's just barely dispatched. Even if it's coming from the other side of the country. Who knows what could happen to it, I need to know where it is, and when it's going to be here. It pops in my head "gotta refresh the tracking page" every few hours, and it's just, well, I have to. It's important. At that point in time, one of the few things I care about is making sure, as best I can, that whatever it is will end up here in one piece and on time - even though watching a tracking status won't help, and I've no control over the matter.

P.P.S. If you managed to read this whole post, you definitely deserve a treat. It's a long one, and I apologize for that, but it's precisely why I started out the post in the manner that I did. But seriously, go get a treat. I am, after having written all this, and you should, for having read it all.