What happens in your fall?

Okay, so I talked a big game recently about my media goals and productivity but this post is about the inverse.

Part of it is to be expected. You can’t ride a wave of productivity forever. Despite what a lot of people tell me, I’m not a robot. And neither are you. (Well, maybe, there’s no captchas on this site to be certain…) I was moving hosting providers and all of my portfolio, doing work, daily stuff, media goals, keeping friendships as afloat as they can be in this socially distanced world and all the other daily things that happen. So sometimes my brain just says “no more attention span this month” and I have to zone out for a bit because nothing will get absorbed in that timeframe.

It happens every now and then but I really only noticed it hardcore happening in January, when I mentioned it last to my best friend, and it happened again in March, so I’m going to start keeping tabs on how often it happens and see if it might be part of my seasonal highs and lows. A few other personal things were going on that also could be factors here, but they weren’t happening in January so I do think it might be an every-three-months thing.

And what happens when a low point comes? What do we usually do? I know that as a teen, I used to say that I procrastinated with productivity. Didn’t want to do an essay? Well, now the whole room is clean. Didn’t want to clean the room? Now I organized my CD collection! Brushed my teeth for two minutes but also wiped down the bathroom because I got distracted halfway through!

That still happens now, honestly, but because I tend to stay more on top of routines and rituals, procrastination and lows these days look more like logging back into Tumblr for fun fandom things, jumping on Pinterest (okay maybe I will end up reorganizing pins while I’m there) to stare at less fandom-based pretty pictures, an hour on Tiktok or Instagram Explore, hours of listening to Spotify while I check my Clickup or Airtable setups for gaps in data, or reorganizing my ACNH island (I honestly Do Not Care after I got my 5 stars, but every few months I do some upkeep and re-do some areas if my villagers don’t seem to be enjoying them–that’s my playing style).

So yeah, this month has been mostly a bust because I haven’t had the attention span so far to even elicit reactions as I watch stuff, but I have somehow gotten through some lower energy books and video games, and limited myself to a few hours of media instead of trying to fit as many episodes as possible in a day around all my other daily activities.

A good rule of thumb is keeping your energy levels parallel to what you can achieve. I’m still hitting my goals this month, even if I’m reading comics and not the most dense mass market paperback. It’s still part of the backlog to get through! So what if I grab a bunch of 2 hour visual novels instead of fighting my way through 3 RPGs? They’re all on my backlog and they all count the same, for the most part.