Choose Wisely

Dichotomies of personality are fascinating to me. Studying Jungian psychological theory and philosophy could eat up a great deal of my time and probably make my reviews of films like Dark City, Inception and even The Dark Knight more interesting. But I tend to be a lazy slacker, while wanting to do things that require intellectual effort. My own dichotomy is one I need to study and discern, because lately it’s kind of been pissing me off.
I’m a dreamer. I look up towards the stars, away from the mundanity and mediocrity of the world, and I see what could be. I envision things that haven’t been created yet. I feel urges within myself to create those things, to bring them to life. I’ve almost always got an idea on my mind, a snippet of fictional conversation or a scene of drama or flashes of action, even as I’m going about mundane tasks. I’d like to think that this little touch of insanity is what’s keeping me sane.
On the other hand, I’m a slacker. After expending energy in a day’s work, especially when it’s at a job I attend just to keep my bills paid, I want to relax, to enjoy not pushing myself, to treat or reward myself for surviving another day. I’ve already burned a lot of lean tissue over the course of the daylight hours, I tell myself. Stress just makes my already dwindling lifespan shorter, and spending more time making myself miserable is wasteful.
Nights like last night make me stop and correct myself, examine my thinking. Both writing and playing games became stressful. Granted, at one point I was trying to do both at the same time because a lot of time had already been lost in the afternoon and evening, which probably didn’t help matters. The point is this. The game ceased to be fun; it felt like a job. The writing was going nowhere; the blinking cursor of the document seemed to mock my creative impotence.
Every day is a series of choices. We choose to get up and go to work, or not. We choose to pursue what’s important to us, or put it off for another day. We choose to push ourselves to excel, or hold back for fear of the critics. We choose to reach for the stars, or just watch those who’ve already achieved orbit because our arms hurt.
I think lately I’ve been making the wrong ones, from how I spend my time to how I view my projects. Last night was bad. Today should be better, but only if I choose wisely.