Futureself

Lets start with an update.  While I have not posted anything lately, I have been writing daily.  Well almost daily, I'm a few days behind but should be able to catch up this week.  I have written two things that when they started were meant for this blog but one went to a place I wasn't ready to share and the other was about Walking Dead show and just didn't like how it turned out.  Sounded good in my head but by the time I got to writing it, those thoughts and ideas were gone.  To sum it up I get why people are hating on the show but I am loving it.

Very ironically, this post has been planned for awhile.  I would like to talk about our greatest enemy.  It is the same for everybody.  It is a person you trust and place your life in their hands even though they continually let you down.

This person is your "futureself".  I first heard the term futureself by Kevin Smith on a podcast probably a few years ago now.  It affected me so much that not many days has pasted since then that I haven't thought about it.  Futureself is the notion that you put stuff on futureself that present you can't do, doesn't want to do, isn't smart enough to do, etc, etc, etc.  We do it with simple stuff like

"I will do laundry tomorrow."

Where it has gotten me the most is things like:

"I'll do theater when I get to college"

"I'll start running and working out in the spring when it's not so cold outside" followed by "It's way too hot to go running today, maybe tomorrow will be cooler."

"This year is the year I write something"

We do this because we are scared to fail, because we don't think we have the time or knowledge, or money.  We think some magical spell it going to happen and instantly know how to do whatever is it you put off on futureself.

Futureself is built up to be this amazing person that travels the world, has the perfect job, is healthy and plays on the local softball team when he isn't feeding the homeless.  The fact is that futureself is YOU.  At one time you said the futureself was going to get this done and that time has arrived and pastself is disappointed. If there is a futureself there has to be a pastself and pastself was lazy and didn't want to learn anything.

Didn't mean this to be a downer.  It should help me defeat futureself.  I want present self to be doing those things.


On Friday, my best friend posted a picture of a car and said

"In 5 years, I will be buying one!! Watch!!"

I followed it with "what have you written today"  I said that because futureself is looking at him laughing.  He said he's going to print that picture with what I wrote as daily reminder.  That's what we have to do can't just wait for futureself to magically do it, we have to meet him there.

I'll end with another thing I said to Tony that I swear I must have stole from someone because it's too good for me to have come up with it.

"You have to work today to celebrate tomorrow."