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R U Feelin A Little Lost? · Wanzology

• Feelin A Little Lost  Just a random melody to welcome you to another episode of WANZOLOGY!! I am your host, The Wanz, and I hope that you are enjoying your existence at the moment. You get to be here, some other people aren't so lucky. How’ya doin’? That's a question that you have to answer yourself I can't answer it for you. So are you okay? You in the middle, maybe you're on the high edge and things are going great, or you're on the low edge and things aren't going so well. Hopefully you're right in the middle so that you can see both sides of things. I am wondering, I'm in the middle of wondering, what do you do when you feel lost? You know that feeling of, I'm not sure which way to go, what to do next? It's confusing. Sometimes having too many choices can be as debilitating as feeling like you don't have any at all. When it comes to one's time, managing that time, I can imagine, can be a little daunting sometimes. Which way do I go? Which way do I go? Is what you ask yourself, because you could go over there and do that, or you could go over there and do that. You could stay right where you are and do this, or you could turn around and go back and do that over there since you weren't quite sure you did it correctly. You see what I mean? It doesn't matter what you choose. There's always something else to choose, and the question is, how do you know you've done enough in one area before you move to another area of your life to manage? How do you manage that time? I don't know about you, but I got a lot of things going on, there are original songs I'm working on, there are cover songs that I'm working on in my studio for an album release, there are cover songs that I'm learning how to play on guitar for my various open mic or my airport show, right? Play two hours at the airport. I'm slowly beginning to lose fascination with putting together backing tracks because it can be cumbersome that if you don't have the correct connection, you can't use backing tracks. Oh, okay. Well, I'm not gonna do backing tracks. I can do two hours of cover songs on guitar. Being that I'm not a great guitar player, it's a little more stressful. So do I practice my acoustic guitar, or do I practice my guitar lesson that I've had for weeks and still suck at? Do I practice electric guitar using the new equipment that I got a week and a half ago, or do I work on scales and chords and getting more dexterity with guitar in general? Now each one of those things I can divide even farther to try to figure out what is the thing I should be doing. And that's just with guitar. What about singing? What about learning new jazz songs to perform with other players? That's a possible moneymaking idea. You would think that that would have priority since it's a moneymaking idea. But no, it's not. And then there's the domestic side of things, am I ever gonna vacuum? Not today. How about putting away the dishes from yesterday's cycle of the dishwasher? Well, not yet. How about cleaning some of those shelves in the refrigerator? You've been meaning to clean for, I don't know, a couple months now? Laundry, there's always laundry and you see the boggle? Now let's get into some more self-care things, should I just cool my jets and smooth out everything and maybe meditate for five or 10 minutes just to keep the pot from boiling over? Maybe I should go for a walk. Physical activity is always good to settle someone into a place where they feel okay. All of these things can work, but which to choose? How do you prioritize what to do? When you don't prioritize? If you're anything like me, when you don't have priorities, if you don't have, oh, I'd like to do this, then this, then this, then it's like the hub of a, of a bicycle and all the spokes are shooting out from the center, but you don't know and can't decide what you want to do versus what you should do or need to do and that creates a condition of confusion. So you do nothing, which is bad, because if you don't do anything, nothing gets done. I know. Really simple logic. I get it. How do we solve things like this? I'm sure that you can relate. There are a lot of things going on in everybody's life and sometimes it's not so intuitive which task has priority over another? What is what you want to do versus what you need to do? How do you evaluate these things? It's different for everyone, so I'm not gonna try and pretend I know the answer to your question. What I'm speaking to is my question because I'm at that crossroads as I speak. I have lots of things that I could be doing, but I'm not exactly sure which one I need to do more than another. So there are techniques of evaluation that will affect prioritization. Should I put things into, oh, I don't know a financial perspective? What's gonna be income generating for me? If I devote half an hour to working on guitar scales, is that gonna help me earn any money playing guitar? What about learning the words to another song? Is that gonna lead to some kind of income sooner? I don't know. When. I don't know, when I'm not sure, that is when I feel the most lost. Feeling lost is not cool. It can be confusing. Sometimes it can be anxiety ridden and scary as hell, but what do you do to get out of it? How do you get yourself out of that space where you feel a little lost? Do you have a plan when you feel like that? Do you even understand when you feel like that? I mean, I do. I mean, I live alone. There's not a lot of real estate in here, compared to like the parking lot. You know what I mean? I can walk back and forth four or five times through the expanse of my residence and still have no more clue as to what I could be or want to be doing. So I sit and I wait, and while I wait, I just kind of move on to something else. I distract myself with watching the news or maybe listening to a record or looking through my phone to see what everybody else is doing. It's amazing to me that the universe, since it's always listening, will always show me the things that I could be doing, but I don't need to be doing, which narrows the scope, it's kind of like process of elimination. I'm not gonna be buying anything, I don't need any new shirts, I don't need any new hats, I'm not gonna go hiking in the woods like that person did, I didn't get to see that show that this other person did. What am I gonna do? What do I want to do? Well, I want to figure this out. I want to have a way of evaluating my time in a manner that gets me on a path to complete a task. It was suggested that I find out what is the biggest thing, what is the biggest, most complicated thing that I could choose? Do I need to break that into smaller pieces, or do I start from the other end and find the smallest thing I could do? I picked the smaller one. Know why? Usually the small things you want or need to do aren't very complicated, nor are they very time-consuming. If you start small, it's like building a wall with a brick. You have to start with one brick and then another, and then another, all of a sudden it's like a hundred bricks have been laid out and you've got a wall that's a certain length and a certain height. You start, small little things usually always lead to big things. I have a tattoo on my arm for a reminder: “Life is a constant negotiation from the big, to the little that makes the big.”. Meaning, little decisions that I make help me prepare for the big decisions that I'll need to make or I might need to make. I gotta start with the little ones. Usually it's like, what flavor coffee do I want? Ooh, I have that luxury. Do I actually want coffee? Maybe I'll just have juice or water if I have that luxury. What about if I'm hungry? Do I want to eat? What do I want to eat? I. How long is it going to take to prepare whatever it is that I want to eat? I have to make choices all the time. Do I wanna hold off on eating and maybe get one of these little small tasks done? Uh, that might break the momentum, stopping for breakfast after I've completed a thing or two? The possibilities can be daunting because they are many. The choice is which one to choose. When in doubt, when confused, when unsure, I always pick the smallest thing. What's the smallest thing I can do? Is it pick up a pair of socks and put 'em in the laundry bin? Is it look and see if I have enough laundry soap, and then if I don't put it on the list for me to get next time I go shopping. Okay, let's switch to dishes. How long is it actually gonna take me to put away the dishes that are currently in the dishwasher? Can I do it less than a commercial break? Can I do it in less than two minutes? Can I do it in less than five minutes? I can decide one way or another, but once it's done well, what about all the dishes in the sink? Do I wanna just rinse 'em off and wait until there's enough to do a full load? Or do I want to rinse 'em off and put 'em all in there and keep adding till I have a full load? Dishes have been rinsed off, pre-washed, whatever, and they sit and they dry? Are they gonna get as clean? I dunno. I don't know. I don't have to go all the way to the end, I just have to figure out where to start. That's me. Once I get started, it's pretty easy to move on to whatever the next indicated thing might be. The confusion, the lost feeling for me is figuring out how and where to start. Is it like that with you? Are you confused sometimes? Are you procrastinating because there are four or five different things you could be doing and you're not really tremendously sure which one to start with? I understand that feeling. I get it often. Starting with the smallest thing is just one way of tackling this beast. You can always find the biggest, most complicated thing and chip off just a little piece of it. Like I was saying earlier, I can practice guitar, I can practice learning songs, and that is a piece to a larger thing, a performance. One song does not make a set of music, but if I've learned five songs, I'm five songs in. Let's learn five more and let's learn 10 more after that, and then maybe learn three more after that. When I get to 15 songs, is that enough for an hour? If not, do I need to add one more or two? Maybe it's over an hour, do I need to take one out? Don't know that's down the road. What's important is what's the next thing that I need to do? What's the next song that I need to learn in order to make the set complete or at least work that direction? Today might not be the day that I need the set to be complete. It might not be the day that I need to unload the dishwasher. Have you ever had these conversations with yourself? And if not, why not? I mean, you are your own best friend, right? You know yourself better than anyone else, right? If you're feeling a little lost. You can either retrace your steps to figure out how you got to where you are, or you can stay where you are, decide on a direction and go that way or, not. But I guarantee you, if you're waiting for things to get done and you just stay where you're at, you guessed it, things will not get done. And if you don't do them, who will? The worst part of adulting is that there's no substitute to call in to do stuff for you, you have to do it. It's your life, and sometimes life is difficult versus challenging, versus okay, versus easy, versus pretty good, versus great. But to get from one part of that spectrum to the other, regardless of the direction, you're gonna have to do something. Think before you jump, evaluate before you move. And if you do one thing, make sure that you compliment yourself, that you got one thing done. I'll leave you with this, it doesn't matter how busy my day is, it doesn't matter what happens from the time that I get out of bed, to the time I get back into bed, I always make my bed. Even if it's right before I'm going to bed, because I can then say I did something constructive, something I needed to do. I accomplished something today and it always leads me to the next thing. I don't care whether it's feeding your hamster or walking your cat, start somewhere. Everything comes from something, especially when you do one thing, as The Fixx song says, “One thing leads to another.” I hope you don't stay in the lost land too long. I really, really am grateful that you have stuck through to the end of this edition of WANZOLOGY!! Oh man, go forth and do the best that you can and if you can't do your best, take a deep breath and try something else. 'Cause you made it this far and I know you're gonna make it farther. Ciao for now!! I will see you….later!!