Why am I so bad at this?

I said I’d dampen down my personal projects so I could focus on my work. An I have been I’ve been trying to get back into the swing of things and I’ve been scraping back towards something good. But it feel like nothing is ever good enough.

I have to get a lot of writing done for Constellation done for this Friday. A lot of nonsense that I don’t see the point of. I need to write 4500 words and try to make it look at least a little professional.

I had a full weekend to get started. Granted I was sleeping a lot due to having worked extra hard over the past week. But I could have gotten something done.

But I  had a little bit of extra work left over. Didn’t take long. But then a friend asked me to do a little thing for a project he was working on. I had to think about what to do, and then do a bit of writing. No big deal right? Then I saw a writing challenge that sounded fun. Do a little everyday on a simple theme.  Surely this wouldn’t take too long? Well it took longer than I thought it would. And in the end I didn’t get started on the Constellation writing at all. Now I have to get these 4500 words done in the week day,

It may sound like I’m complaining about lost time. And that is a problem. But it seems like I have a very limited pool of energy. When I’m done writing creatively I feel the need to rest for a bit. Let my mind wonder over nothing and get ready to open up some space  for the next project to enter. After a while I get bored and I get ready to start doing something new.

As well as having a very limited pool of creative/working energy I also seem to have a limited pool of play energy. Stuff for real gaming or filmwatching. I have a bit more play energy than work energy. But I don’t seem able to switch from one to the other quickly. again I need to have a period of downtime where I can relax and reorient myself before I can get to work.

When I find something I really care about something I seem to tap into a third pool of energy, or maybe it’s the other two pools coming together? I don’t know. When really get into a personal project it becomes a burning passion within me. I don’t just work on it. I think about it with all my mind. Sometimes it can be a creative project, like when I made my train installation it became my life. But sadly it’s rarely a creative project. When I get into this kind of state it’s often for projects that relate to my hobbies. Over the summer I got obsessed with trying to perfect my game while playing Doom. Playing it on high skills I normally never touch. Beating levels that even seasoned players have trouble with. I can barely remember what I did over summer. Just the intensity and how much I enjoyed it. It was probably a big reason why I didn’t get as much work done over the summer as I could have. I wish I could find a way to tap into this pool when I need to. But I can’t it requires me engaging both my effort, and more importantly, my mind. The part of me that cares about the work even when I’m not doing it. I don’t know how to tap into it at will. And I’m scared to. I don’t know who’ll become if I do.

But for now I’m just sad that my creative pool is so small that even a tiny amount of personal work on the weekend is more than I can handle. We am I so bad at this?