Diary of a Slow Burn: Entry 02

Consistency and Procrastination and Feeling Too Overwhelmed To Do Anything At All

☆ Originally published JUL 28, 2025 via Substack. ☆

So, yeah. I think the title says it all. Wouldn’t it be cool if I were to do these consistently? I mean, how will I ever be a famous diarist if I don’t share my entries and writing? (Posthumously, I suppose). Welcome to the second entry of The Diary of a Slow Burn. Let’s talk consistency and procrastination and feeling overwhelmed to the point of not being able to do anything all.

I, in fact, have not even been writing in my physical journal more than a few lines every once and a while. And you know what? That kills me. KILLS ME. I have so many big, important things I’ve wanted to write about. Things I NEED to write about to work through and feel okay. But those monumental happenings have yet to receive their journal entries. Is it because I know it will take up pages of writing and my hand is wary at the prospect? Is it because my brain is tired from working and screens and hasn’t had the capacity to think so hard about things? Am I just taking the easy way out and avoiding the hard work? Because, yes, journaling can be hard work. Especially when you journal obsessively and all right in a row in a frenzy because you have to get to the absolute tiniest grain of understanding all in one journal session and cannot leave a single thought behind or else you feel incomplete.

And don’t get me wrong, I don’t always journal so obsessively trying to analyze every last thought and emotion. But when I have big things on mind (although let’s face it, everything on my mind seems monumental and earth-shattering and of grave importance), obsessively writing is all I can do. Until I get it all out and I feel better. Usually. But I hardly ever feel the at-ease-with-my-nervous-system and clear-mind-without-brain-fog state of being that allows a peaceful, leisurely journal session. Which is what I wish I could have.

I tend to feel like I can’t journal, or don’t have the energy/capacity to journal the way I want to due to the exhaustion and brain fog that consumes so much of my life. Which results in me feeling as if the way I’m thinking is less than the intellectual, competent, perhaps sophisticated, eloquent, and clear way of thinking and writing I like to present with (even to myself). And god, I could go on and on down this rabbit hole trying to find the exact right feeling of words to articulate the exact, most perfect explanation of what I’m taking about. Which is the point here - it would take a lot longer and so much writing of the same thing over and over again but in slightly different words. I don’t have to completely explain my own feelings to a page or to people reading on Substack in order to feel them, though. So, to stop this journaling ramble before it turns fully obsessive, let’s end this section here.

Now, procrastination.

I think a big part of it is just that I have so much I want to do, but everything I do is complex (proof above); I can’t do anything without it being time-consuming, involved, intricate. I have to fully be in the ‘right mindset’ and have the ‘right feeling’ and have lots of time to do a thing so that I can pull everything out of my brain and fully encapsulate what I’m envisioning. The real issue though is that I’m not often in that right mindset and don’t have that right feeling, and I don’t have enough time and even if I do there’s too much in my brain and too little capability to get it out in the way I want it.

I’ve always had this problem, that even when I want to do something, I get so overwhelmed by the thought of actually starting and getting into doing it that I give myself an anxiety attack. And then I do nothing, and stay still, and check nothing off my list, and act practically catatonic. Like I can’t move. And then I feel even more stressed out, more anxious, more upset with myself because I still have to do whatever it is I need to do, and then have EVEN LESS time to do it. And every day I don’t do it, it’s another day I’m a disappointment to myself and not a go-getter and not relaxed or at ease or accomplished or relieved.

I know that most people experience bouts of procrastination - it’s completely normal, especially when putting off something you wish you didn’t have to do. But procrastination of the mentally ill is a whole different level of the thing. Procrastination as an anxiety response? As a nervous system response? As a symptom of OCD? Another. Level. Because you want to do the thing you have to do, but you physically cannot get yourself to do it. And then you feel worse. And you feel you’re drowning. But you’re procrastinating the act of even blowing up the life preserver, too. And it’s endless and tiring and you feel like maybe nothing is worth it at all and you should just give since you can’t get anywhere if you never start.

It’s a tough way to be when your brain has trouble going from one thing to the next and every endeavor is of multiple hours and days worth of effort. Not even to mention the plight of being an artist or creative who makes little to no money yet on what they create. And consistency is near impossible when you’re fighting tooth and nail against your brain and body to do even just one thing, let alone an entire series of a thing. cough cough.

So, are you like me and you procrastinate and feel so overwhelmed that you can’t get anything done and then you do nothing and feel bad and so much worse off about it? My sincere apologies. Let’s make a club. But, we’ll probably procrastinate starting and then continuing that too.

Anyways, entry number two accomplished.

Until the next time, xoxoxoxo (except not because I’m gray-demi and typically repulsed by x’s and o’s),

Jenna

💗📝🌛🌀🐈‍⬛🌟🌞✨