How do you get motivated to front while building a selfhood?

[mackerelgray]

This is something I've been dealing with for a while, so I'm sending it out for peer advice - how do you get motivated to front while building a selfhood, like opinions and interests and things you enjoy for recreation or other reasons to use your body, rather than habitually being a backseat driver?

It's frustrating to be a person, to know you're a person, but just not have a lot of reasons to be yourself in front of other people. I've likened it to depression before, because it feels fairly similar in the "lacking interest in daily activities" field, except you don't really have pre-existing hobbies to feel uninterested in. I've been around in our daily life before, but it's usually for the typical daily grind or talking to friends about something. I do like a good podcast, but again, I usually don't feel up to fronting and sharing my thoughts on them, and the less that I front to have opinions on something, the fewer opinions I'll have, it's a whole vicious cycle of inactivity.

If anyone else has dealt with this, sorry to hear it! Here's hoping we can crowdsource some ideas for Wanting To Exist More!

--Gavin Reed-Machina (he/him)

Comments

[mackerelgray]

Hey Pax! Gonna answer these in sections:

what do you think the mental/emotional/etc barrier is that's keeping you from fronting?

First off, I did write this post yesterday to force myself to Do Something in front, and processing the weird anxiety about Having Opinions is pretty productive! https://mackerelgray.dreamwidth.org/11028.html

and then beyond that, I think it's a feedback loop of "I don't really have things to DO when I front" -> "fronting is literally not interesting" -> "Jude and Max have quite a few things they like doing" -> "they automatically front for entertainment" - and some part of it probably is just us generally being Very Stressed with medical school and all that, but also that's not keeping Jude and Max from having fun with things, so it's gotta be something else making it hard for me :P

Are there any clues as to what you might enjoy spending your time doing?

going down a whole hobby list and picking things that I remember/vibe with (and why we're not doing them, if we don't)

Probably Doable

• running with some sorta music (havent quite worked up the endurance for Running yet, but actually pretty good idea? we do have this in bookmarks https://c25k.com/ and could also put on a podcast)
• sketching (we DO draw on paper sometimes, Max just keeps fronting automatically for it :V I did draw my cats though!)
• reading (well. we do read. i just havent picked something specific im interested in)
• cooking? (frankly i dont think im that great at it, but hey, same skill level here lmao)
• video games (i would play more Hades if our hands didn't hate it, and more Disco Elysium if our computer graphics didn't hate it)
• coffee trivia (entirely possible to fill my brain with useless coffee facts again)

Probably Not?

• magic the gathering (max does not know the rules, and not knowing the rules is vaguely demoralizing)
• basketball (don't have equipment or people to play with, Max does not know the rules and therefore I also dont lmao)
• soccer (same as above :P)
• fight club (aka fucking around with wrestling) (same as above, lack endurance, sorry half of these are just Moving Around way more than you max lmao)
• ping pong (i kinda sucked at it) (dont have a ping pong table or people to play it with)
• skating (dont have equipment, havent learned it, and why is this expensive?)
• guitar (haven't learned it, and we dont have one!)

So out of all those, the top section are the most possible given limited time, energy, and money! Maybe listening to music if I can't play it? Really, I do have a bunch of interests I remember, but Max doesn't have the knowledge base for them and we'd really need to get out more for most of em :P

You are/were a detective, right?

Yep! unfortunately detective work isn't especially stimulating as a hobby because i remember it as work, and i did like the analytics of it but you know work, it feels tedious and was definitely kinda burning out by the time i checked out. and the same puzzling-things-out mental stimulation niche is being filled by medicine, which theoretically would be cool but you know, Work and academic guilt. you can't win!

and thanks a lot for the encouragement, it helps <3 i keep thinking about building up a fronting habit and then i don't commit, but i guess the best time is now! start out small and figure something out