I'm doing a lot better. I keep meaning to post about it, but get occupied.
I mentioned before that I started to clean up my apartment, which was a big deal. That's mostly done now, in the sense that there's little things to do but it is livable. I had another big breakthrough in that I took that energy and attitude and applied it to my work. I've been carrying a lot of anger towards my advisors, who kind of fucked me over (I realized over the past Spring that they were negligent), but I had a few thoughts, frame it in terms of how I choose to think nowadays.
What virtue is served by giving up, versus working through a challenge? Does this build discipline or undermine it?
Isn't working sort of like cleaning? Can't you at least start it as a sort of "cleaning up" of this disorderly, abandoned project?
Forgiveness has multiple meanings, one of which is the restoration of the status quo ante with the person that has offended you, like speaking to someone normally instead of treating them coldly. With these people who are over you, you don't give them a cold shoulder, but wouldn't the status quo ante be working with them in good faith?
Do you sincerely believe God wants you to work on this, or on something else?
And when I finally go sit down to work on this, I feel very overwhelmed, and then I just work through it anyways and it starts to come really fast. I spent the past five days cranking out something that I had felt utterly lost on before. The thing with these dudes is that they basically give their advisees plug-and-play projects, some bullshit that they can just kind of half pay attention to and sign off on and not give a fuck. But I came to realize that it was much more difficult to work with that as, because it wasn't my own creation (which is supposed to be the point of this), I didn't really understand it fully or know how to extend it on my own, while they wouldn't give the actual fucking support to understand it. It simultaneously felt both micromanaged and completely lost.
Honestly, a huge chunk of the breakthrough came from just learning to use ChatGPT to answer questions. I fucking hate working in Stata. You have to learn all this code, read over some other motherfucker's code that's written up in whatever moon runes they use for a variable naming system executing statistical tests that have never been explained to you, and there's no goddamn documentation for any of it but these useless little sheets you find online that . ChatGPT is fucking worthless for most any question that involves actual thought, but it can explain in conversational language, piece by piece, what a line of code is doing or suggest for you what built-in function you would use to do a task.
So now I'm in a position where I actually feel comfortable working and am being very productive.
Besides that, I have a million good ideas a day on how to structure myself. Really, what it came down to was learning to be more self-aware. Like, imagine situational awareness, but applied to your own actions. I've started a getting up and going to bed routine. With getting up, I keep a new physical alarm clock, a very loud classic one with the bells and clock face, in my closet. I get up, the first thing I have to do is walk across the room and open my closet, and then that puts me in a position to get dressed right away. I forgot to set it on two nights, but I have not once "snoozed" after getting up. Next, make the bed. Brush teeth. Feed cat. Last two are things I've always done, but there's a specific sequence to do it in. At bedtime, I realized that it's the opposite that you want. It doesn't make a single difference if it is done literally right before bed as long as it's done reasonably before bed. So at the earliest reasonable convenience, I start preparing things that, if I did them at the last minute, would not be done or would get me to bed late.
Washing dishes like its my religion. It's tempting to leave them to do while cooking the next day - cooking has lots of down time - but that's a bad idea because there will never be so much down time as to actually get it all done, and it will take more effort to clean when it's set for a day. I have specific glassware for specific beverages now, as that makes it easier, at least for me, to ensure they're cleaned.
I've done tons of small repairs, some of them things I let sit for years. I sowed a bunch of buttons (I had to buy the needle and thread and learn how to do it) onto some pajamas. Sewing a pocket back onto a bathrobe. Disassembling and reassembling a bad doorknob so that it's secure now.
Behaving more moderately in general. Making myself cook.
I sort of approach it all as discipline-building. I was, up until a few years ago, on a very successful path. Now I'm kind of building up fundamentals I had neglected all along through my life, but that had totally collapsed under me lately.