I just had the most interesting thoughts.

I started out wondering if I could talk Duv into helping me with a weight loss/exercise plan.  I figured that he would ask as to why I could not do it myself, to which I was thinking that I don't have the motivation to do it by myself, even though I have the desire to see the thing done.  I was then left wondering if I was losing motivation as I was getting control (via meds) over the mania and inability to keep focus on one thing at a time.  Then the thought came to me that it's probably more of a matter of not knowing what to do -- not knowing how to apply the effort towards the motivation -- now that my mental circumstances have changed.  I think that 12 years ago, when I dropped my bipolar meds, and some BP meds, to not have them working against my losing weight, my being so focused on accomplishing that was more a matter of being hyper focused on it.  Then, when, at the same time, I was also try to both work on a writing project and learn a new programming language, I think that it was too much to hyper focus on, which is why I wound up choosing one of those two over the other.  I wonder if that equates to the difficulties in being 'in love' with numerous people at the same time (i.e. lust/infatuation): it's just too much to be overly focused on in one sitting.

So now, as I see it, the new difficulties lie in trying to learn to motivate myself under this new thinking pattern.  Since I have not spent years building up internal motivations (such as a man or woman working out numerous times a week to keep a certain weight), as opposed to external motivations (a woman wanting to lose 20lbs for a class reunion, or a man being told his bad health depended on the change).  Even a decade ago, it wound up happening with some sort of outside push.  With the weight loss, it was not a motivation to weigh less for the sake of being skinny.  [In those occasions, I usually got a script for Calan/Verapamil for my BP, replacing whatever else I was taking, however it didn't keep my pressure down low enough, or it had a side effect I didn't like; I forget which.  In other words, an easy way that didn't need any internal work.]  In this particular case, it was because I was having a difficult time accomplishing moves in my dance class.  I even know the exact situation that triggered me wanting to do it.  At that point, it pretty much became a hyper focus thing.  Once I started down that path, I had my ex waking me up for the first few weeks, until I built up the new habit and could do it myself.  With the programming language, it was with the (somewhat) immediate goal of utilizing it for my own uses, as opposed to taking classes as part of a long-term goal of a degree and possible new job.  At one time, I did do the latter, in the 80's, when I got my associates at a community college, and a now-defunct school that I attended before that.  [I do have to say that at those times, my jobs did not compete with the schooling, so it fairly easy -- except when it came to classes that I had no interest in or were ... not exactly difficult but were not easily picked up by me.  By 1990, when I was attending DeVry and had gotten to classes that were difficult/uninteresting, along with one despised speech class, newly married and putting in more hours at work to keep up, the first got dropped for the third.]  I have external motivations, such as wanting to learn new programming languages so that I can broaden the scope of assignments I get at work.  However, now I don't have the hyper focus driving me.  And since I don't have the internal motivations built up, I'm pretty much at a loss as to how to handle these situations.