August 17, 2021

I'm trying to be better at feeling my feelings. Being aware of my mental state instead of trying to constantly shove everything down and out of the way. I've been keeping a mood tracker app. I've also been trying to fix or better handle negative emotions. Trying to plan ahead so that these negative experiences don't happen so often. 

I'm trying to eliminate negative emotions and negative experiences, and when I'm not able to do this, I feel like I'm failing. I've been spending a lot of effort on it this year, and I feel tired. I had significant swirling negative emotions this past weekend, and I feel discouraged. I've been trying so hard at this, hard enough that I don't feel I have more to give to this particular project. 

Analysis: too much booze! I'm sure this is a factor. While drinking is fun, I think I'm feeling a cumulative effect. Kind of a hot wet blanket on my brain. Also, I have one or two things that I've been procrastinating on for no reason. They're just not the most enjoyable tasks, but they're not hard. But they've been persisting on my to-do list for weeks now. I need to get them off. 

I also wonder if the Drew/Gun dynamic is in play a little bit. (See video.) My Drew is whining a lot. 

Side note: watching the above video also made me reflect on my teaching. I think I'm frequently giving kids more that 4-5 novel things at a time. I think it will be useful to look at my lesson plan for the day and make sure there's only 4-5 novel concepts (or chunks) in there. Have the rest of class be working with those new concepts, rather than piling on more and more. 

It also seems good to know as a learner. Say I'm feeling overwhelmed. Instead of thinking "I must be stupid," I can count how many new things are being thrown at me. Once I'm up to four or five, just focus on those. Come back to the rest of the new stuff later. 

But, to connect the earlier part of this post -- I'm wondering how often a negative emotion (discomfort, frustration, fatigue) can be associated with a positive outcome (e.g. learning, change). Maybe the emotions themselves shouldn't be the end of my metric/information for myself and how well I'm doing.