I’ve been on a slow but steady decline for the past several years. I don’t move at all, barely leaving my room let alone the house; I’ve taken to eating shit I order out instead of cooking meals myself; I don’t get involved with any local orgs besides sending dues every month; I haven’t read a book in months; I regularly fail to perform bare minimum hygiene. The only reason I’m able to keep alive at all is because I haven’t moved out of my parents’ house, burdening them with helping me. It would be understandable if I was living hand to mouth and had barely any free time, but I am one of the small percent of burgers who isn’t a month away from destitution and I have more than enough free time. Not to mention I receive no shortage of help.
Since I can’t blame my material circumstances, I can only conclude that I am this way because I always refuse to take personal responsibility. I know that changing myself so that I can be, at bare minimum, not a drain on society is going to take a lot of work, work that I always put off due to cowardice. Idealist as it is, I feel like I have some innate metaphysical trait that makes me this way, and the entirety of my failure to pick myself up is due to a moral failing on my part and nothing more.
How do I force myself to unfuck myself so that I can actually be useful for revolution instead of yet another useless first world lotus eater?
Don’t get yourself down comrade, you’re doing a ton of great work on lemmy, and while this isn’t irl organizing, we do have the potential to change the public narrative in a positive way. If we even manage to convert even one liberal to communism, either through our technical labor or our communist agitation, then that is a victory we can be proud of.
I’ve also had to take a break from irl organizing, because I tend to take on way more work than I can handle, and know I’d be too overburdened and can’t handle the extra work right now.
I don’t personally believe mindset is ever a real problem, the only problem is that we haven’t yet formed habits to acheive what we want for ourselves. Habits are formed by repetition, not willpower.
I encourage you to write down 10 or so long term goals, put it on a piece of paper, and stick it on your wall. Then recheck that list periodically, to see how you’re doing on it. Make sure it’s things you actually want and like doing. If one of them is “learn to cook”, pick out some things you’ve had at restaurants that you enjoy, and youtube recipe them. Shoot for making one meal you like a week from scratch.
Or if one is “get in good shape”, then create a weekly workout regimen, there are tons of swole and fit comrades who can give pointers who’ve been doing this for years. My one was that I wanted first to be fit, then to have low body fat, then to have a strong upper body, then to get a six pack. Rather than shame or willpower my way through these goals, I slowly formed consistent habits, that I check off in my todo app.
If you want to read more, pick out some books you want to read, and start out with say 10 minutes a day, no internet, reading only. Once the habit forms, you can increase the time if you want to.
I recommend a todo app either like tasks.org, or loop habit tracker… something where you can set recurring habits, and feel satisfied when you check them off. Even for things like hygiene, they can really help you form habits.
You are not a coward comrade, you’re just correctly seeing things you’d like to do to improve yourself, and are failing bc the willpower and shame method doesn’t work.
Well put. I am a relatively healthy person yet I can barely get off my phone most of the time.