this is your brain on the future

I really envy people who can focus on and live in the now to some extent. I’m pretty good at avoiding dwelling on the past in a negative way usually, unless it’s late at night and I can’t sleep. But, my drug of choice is the future.

When I want to motivate myself to go to the gym, I try to think about how I will feel afterwards, because I can pretty much predict that by how I felt last time I went to the gym^[1]. Just thinking about the feeling last time isn’t much motivation though, only how I will feel afterwards. Same thing with planning lessons for work. I have to think about how it felt all those times I went in early and could just relax with coffee, gradually print off my worksheets, and relax with my RSS feed. But, I’m not doing it for future me really. I’m doing it because it makes me feel good now to know I will have an easier time in the future.

This breaks down when it’s something I’ve never done before. When I moved to Korea, I had no prior experience living abroad and I’m lucky that it turned out as good as it did. The cost of living was so much more manageable, housing was cheaper and better, the city was walkable with public transport, and health care was fast and cheap. I could literally get an appointment without reserving it first. The other teachers were also much more helpful and more in line with what I needed, showing me around the city, going out to dinner together, like a set friend group right when I landed.

When I was ready to take the next step in my career and decided to come to New Zealand, my brain kept equating these things. It told me, “You did it before and it went great! It will be great again!” And then I went into my research hole specifically searching for any evidence to convince me to NOT leave and quickly discarding it. It’s like I moved from a living city, to a dying suburb. New Zealand has public transport, but it’s not extensive and places aren’t really walkable even in the downtown area. Health care takes a long time to get seen and it’s significantly more expensive. All my coworkers are much older and we really don’t have similar interests.

Mistakes were made, as I can see in my journals since I moved here. And now I’m stuck with two contrasting experiences while I try to decide if I should leave, go back, or stay. My brain is telling me “it will only be as good as before or as bad as now,” and another part of my brain saying “it could also be a third way that’s totally different.”

All this to say, it distracts me from how I feel now. It makes me not reflect on what it is I don’t like and what I need to do to get rid of certain stressors that are under my control today. To be fair, some of my biggest stressors are out of my control and I don’t want to think about them anymore, just escape them. But, there is stuff like exercising and doing my work ahead of time that does help and I need to remember to do in the mean time. Maybe recognizing this pattern is the first step, even if I don’t know what comes next.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​