motivation

Everyone has their bugbear. Something that continually frustrates them. Something that despite their best efforts can never be conquered. Their bête noire if you like, (look it up, I did). And the mythical creature that I can’t shake off no matter how hard I try, is motivation. Rather, it is my lack of motivation that is my enemy.

I am aware of the irony in writing a piece about my lack of motivation. Having no motivation has motivated me to write about having no motivation. My lack of motivation has become my motivation. And that is ironic. Not in the Alanis Morrisette in-most-cases-is-actually-bad-luck-rather-than-irony way, more in the holy-shit-that-answers-all-my-questions-about-irony-such-is-the-clarity-of-the-example way. It’s a cruel and twisted irony that I’m driven by something I lack.

My lack of motivation manifests itself in many ways. The most common is finding anything else to do besides what I feel I should be doing. For instance, instead of spending my ample free time doing something constructive like learning Japanese, I spend it doing decidedly unconstructive things, like looking up strange websites and playing scrabble. Lately, I have been captivated with Championship Manager, which whilst is incredibly satisfying and worthwhile, isn’t quite as beneficial to my life as other things I could be doing.

For instance, I thought of writing something about motivation about six weeks ago. I have had no less than four attempts at starting to type this piece. Each time, I have written the intro, established the irony and then in another twist of irony abandoned it. Perhaps that renders the initial irony redundant now. And now that the piece is being revisted, perhaps a whole new irony is brought to the table. What is irony anyway? I for one, have no idea, I found it in the thesaurus.

That’s the problem with thesauruses, or thesauri. Its all well and good finding a new word to express what you’re trying to say, but if you don’t know exactly what the original word means then you will end up with some synonym which sounds impressive but renders your entire sentence incorrect. Also, the synonyms the thesauri give you often have quite a different meaning or context to the original word. Thus the meaning of the sentence again would become wooly. There! Perfect example. I should stick to my rather incommensurate lexis.

Another manifestation is in unfinished work. I quite regularly start writing in a flash of inspiration, only to write two paragraphs, become bored and spend the rest of the evening attempting to bring Leicester, a lowly Championship team, the glory and riches of the Premiership. These two paragraphs are rarely uncovered again. They just melt away into a mix of words, sentences and broken dreams.

It’s so ridiculous being unmotivated to write! I get so much enjoyment and satisfaction out of writing that it is completely illogical that I should have so little impetus to do it. I mean, I don’t have any trouble motivating myself to do other things I enjoy, such as eating, having sex or playing scrabble, (yes I am a man of simple pleasures). If I spent half as much time writing as I do fluffing about on the internet I would be more than two-thirds into my eighth trilogy, plus would be nearly finished an ambitious project to transcribe the entire Macquarie Dictionary into Armidale slang.

Now we all know that things like baldness and heart-disease are hereditary, but I didn’t know a debilitating lack of motivation could be passed down from father to son. This is perhaps the only excuse I can fathom for my lack of motivation. My father is perhaps the most unmotivated person in the universe. Apologies Gaz if you read this (probably couldn’t be arsed) but I’m sure you’d be the first to admit you have a staggering lack of enterprise. When Gaz was a student, he finished a PHD in Mathematics and wrote a thesis about black holes that was recognized worldwide for the scope of mathematical analysis and whatnot. But, rather than follow a lucrative mathematical career and theoretically redesign the physics of space and time, (this is a slight exaggeration) he chose to move to Armidale and become a Maths lecturer for 20 years. No more research, no promotions, just a boring job teaching agriculture students who couldn’t stop thinking about rugby and Bundy Rum for the duration of a lecture. Admittedly, Gaz must have been motivated at some point as a fair whack of drive would be needed to finish a PHD. Unfortunately I think he used up his entire motivation quota too early. Hopefully I will go the other way round and leave my slobbish youth behind and live a life of blissful enthusiasm, where I work, study, write and only occasionally play scrabble.

I think some of lack of drive might be to do with my aversion to hard work. As much as I enjoy writing, it is inevitable there will be a time in each ‘project’ where I get stuck. Too often I give up at this point. In fact, in all types of work and study I reach the point of giving up rather quickly. For instance, at university I could write the most beautiful 1800 words analysing liberal media in Australia, only to give up and use the last 200 words messily summarizing my unfinished argument. In fact, I’m at this point now. Once the ideas stop flowing, the motivation starts going, (it must be true, it rhymes). In trying to overcome this I often ramble for a while, sometimes on-topic, sometimes off. Aren’t umbrellas in Japan fascinating?

Another point I have noticed during the composition of this one-day-Pulitzer-Prize-winning-essay-cum-speech, is how quickly I become disenchanted with my work. I mean, some sentences just flow onto the paper/screen/parchment, but the ones that don’t get agonizingly drawn out of my pen/fingers/quill. Writing the most basic sentence becomes impossible. So, in accordance woth my aforementioned point-of-giving-up, I settle for mediocre. This has a flow-on effect. I start to hate what I write, cant be arsed fixing it, my writing goes to shit, I give up.

The segues between paragraphs in this are non-existant.

Ha! This piece is an ongoing investigation into my lack of motivation. Its now been over two months since I first coined the idea in a fit of inspiration, but I’m still millennia’s from satisfactorily completing it. Its also been at least 3 weeks since I last sat down to work on it. So the examination continues. And the irony grows deeper and deeper until it becomes ‘post-irony,’ or ‘ironicism’ or a new form of twisted and nonsensical irony not seen since the groundbreaking ironic-because-of-the-clear-lack-of-irony-in-her-examples-Alanis Morrisette. Will this ever be completed?

Alright, I’m edging closer to completion. One more good session and it will be finished. And I shall be waiting eagerly at the doorstep for news of my Pulitzer.