Getting Back On Horses

So I’ve been gone for a while. Work-and-hustle-related matters have made me come back home to the laptop pretty late in the night, and I have opted for sleep over composing pieces of writing for a string of nights now. Alasan semua itu, I know.

If you’ve noticed, my writing consistency has been on a downward slide. I am slowly but surely writing less and less, from the “write every damn day” thing I intended to do early on in the year to two posts every three days, to one post every other day, to now even less than that. That’s been on my mind for the whole time it’s been happening, and I feel terrible about it, figuratively kicking my figurative head over it, but I haven’t really taken any steps to rectify it by writing more or to even level out that gradient and possibly stick to a consistent writing habit. 

Thing about it is, I’m way too lenient on myself. I give myself way too many “chan”, as we say. I’d convince myself that I’ve actually exceeded my own expectations of myself with all that I’ve done and that I deserve the rest. I’d tell myself that hey, Within these four months pun hang dah tuleh more posts than you have done in the past three years combined. I’d say to myself hang letih gila kot weh, tidoq la, esok nak kena mangkit awai lagi pi skolah plak. And I’d fall from the writing horse.

What I’ve noticed about falling from any (figurative, not literal) horse is that you need to get back up on it immediately after you fall. If after you fall you decide to stay on the ground for just a little bit (because you deserve it or whatever), then that horse will run away from you. Then it’ll take SO much time for you to chase back that horse in order to get back up on it again. 

A recent example from my own experience is the “recording of rap songs” horse. I fell off that one when I had a super busy and tiring week, so I didn’t record anything that week. And here we are, more than two months later, still seeing me off that horse. It has run away, because I decided to rest on the ground for a while.

The same is true about reading as well. I convinced myself that I didn’t have the time (or more truthfully, didn’t want to make the time) to go through a few pages in a day to get some reading done, and now I’ve been stuck on the same book for about a month now.

As you might be able to tell, this “falling off the horse and resting on the ground” thing is a pretty common occurrence for me, and I hate myself for it. It doesn’t lead to anything good, I’m not being as productive as I want to be and as I know I am capable of being, all because I decide to rest on the ground for a bit, then spend months trying to chase that horse back and re-climb it. It slows me down, my journey towards where I want to be. Dah la jauh gila daripada target, dok buat rest pulak. Bila ja nak sampai, kan? 

The solution to this situation is pretty straight forward: when falling off the horse, get back on it immediately. Immediately? Immediately. (High-five to those who got that Spongebob reference)

But it’s so much easier said than done. At least for me it is. I am a weak human being, who is attached to sleep way too much to be able to go very far in life. I need to remember to always get back on my horses real quick. Do it Anwar. Do it. Do it. (High-five to those who got the 2004 Starsky & Hutch reference)