How do you balance time spent organizing with time spent on personal things?
How do you balance time spent organizing with time spent on personal things?
There are a lot of things in life that I love, but those things will always inevitably come into conflict with organizing somehow. So far, the only ways I’ve been able to resolve this have basically come down to bullying myself for caring about anything except socialism, or ignoring the problem. Both seem toxic. How do you deal with it?
Scheduling, scheduling, scheduling. Before you can organize your community, you need to organize your own life (harhar). Planning everything out ahead of time and committing to it is essential.
You will burn yourself out very quickly if you try to do everything on the fly.
And yes, organizing will sometimes need to take a backseat. That’s alright, just don’t lose sight of the ultimate goal.
Lastly, focus on short term goals for your organizing efforts. Make extremely small baby steps for what you want to accomplish and see. If your goals are to lofty you will burn yourself out no matter what you accomplish.
Extremely good advice, thank you. I would go as far as to say it has no business being on an internet forum.
Don't make yourself feel like you're a "bad communist" if you're not spending every available hour of your life organizing. You could eventually come to resent your work or comrades and burn yourself out, none of which is healthy for you or your org. A rested, focused, energized, and optimistic you is going to be a lot more productive in organization, and you're going to be mentally in a better place.
I've been down the route of using all my time for organizing, and it's just not sustainable. Yes we're dedicated communists and this is a sacrifice, but we're not all Che. Each of us is not going to be a super-human organizer, which is why we build together as comrades and not individuals.
I don't lmao #breakdown
I talk with my gf a lot. I need to keep in mind that I have other important things as well. I do social media blackouts. I'm going on a holiday and my gf banned me from taking a political book with me, and gave me a fiction book instead.
Overall, the best advice is to just schedule some off time. Don't be on social media/Reddit/Lemmy and do something you actually like without it being political.
I admire people in our party who can be active 24/7 but I personally would go insane.
If you burn yourself out on organizing, you won't be any more use to whatever movement you're working towards. So in a way, working in a way that is sustainable to continue indefinitely is the best you can do.