Enter the Title

I feel like much of my life is an ongoing struggle between myself and the person I was a few days ago. I call him "past-Sam", and he is my nemesis!

Past-Sam represents everything I'm not. While I have big dreams and ambitions, he's lazy and unmotivated. Where I believe in cleanliness, he's a slob. While I care, he doesn't.

And I'm not trying to say that I know how someone else should live his life. I'm more than willing to let past-Sam go his own way. But there's a problem. See, past-Sam never has to deal with the consequences of his mistakes. He does whatever he wants with full knowledge that it's me, not him, who will suffer.

Past-Sam is a jerk.

Let me give you an example. Lets say I come up with some brilliant plan or ambitious goal. I think about all the possibilities, and get excited about all the benefits and rewards. But then days, sometimes even weeks later, I'll return to my carefully-laid design to see how things are progressing. And how much work has been done? Nothing. Nothing at all. Past-Sam hasn't come up with the font for the title of the outline for my idea.

See, apparently past-Sam needs a certain amount of "chill-time" to make it through an average day, and this makes it difficult for him to accomplish much.

And it's not bad enough that past-Sam doesn't do any work, oh no. He even gets in the way of my productivity. How am I supposed to get anything done when I'm constantly tired and run-down? Past-Sam knows what time I get up, so why does he stay awake until two every night? I have to suffer every morning just because he wanted to watch a rerun of "Scrubs." (Usually an episode that he's seen at least thirty times) I think the sleepiness is even worse because I don't get enough nutrition. And why don't I get enough nutrition? Past-Sam. Do you know how hard it is to lose weight when past-Sam keeps buying packages of Oreos? I have all these calories to work off, and I don't even get any Oreos out of it. Jerk eats ALL of them.

Between sleep deprivation and poor diet, I usually feel so bad that I need a certain amount of "chill-time" to even make it through the day.

But all is not lost. Over time I've developed ways to combat past-Sam. The key to it, I've found, is forcing him into situations where he has no choice but to change. I don't know the number of times I resolved to exercise more, only to have past-Sam not follow through. But when I signed him up for a class, things started to happen. Suddenly it wasn't a vague notion of what he was supposed to be doing, it was a schedule and a commitment. Past-Sam might not like to work, but give him a deadline and he'll produce.

And that is how I came up with the name for this blog.