On Starting

Note: As usual, I've ended up talking about nothing specific. But I like letting my mind wander, especially when I'm recording thoughts. It calms the waters. And perhaps surprisingly, it doesn't take too long. This is a start.

My problem always has been starting something. Not finishing. You can't finish unless you start. And you will finish if you start. It's easy to get distracted, to spend careless amounts of time doing things that are not important, because those things are easy. Are the things that need to be done difficult? Usually not. They're certainly doable. But I make them difficult by not doing them, by letting myself waver.

Take journaling, for example. I've been wanting to start writing again for at leas two months now? I've gotten really close a couple of times. I've even thought of things that I really want to write about, and of really cool things to say. But I've consistently let them slip, often without even rationalizing it to myself. My brain is too random, too variable. It has a limited attention span. While something that bothers me is in my consciousness, it causes constant discomfort, a dull numbing pain that is not strong enough to motivate me into action, but that is not weak enough to ignore completely. And over time, by not addressing these things, I have become really good at letting them slip out of my mind - by thinking about something else, by wasting time in progressively less creative ways - because novel ways of wasting time soon become habits.

It's simple really - figure out what's important to you, work hard at it, succeed. Simple. What if you don't know what's important to you? That's okay too. Work hard anyway. Succeed at something. If you don't like it, try something else. But don't do nothing. Unfortunately, doing nothing is quite comfortable, especially if there's no strong motivation driving you. I recognize that I'm not a very motivated person, but perhaps by consciously recognizing that I limit myself - I allow myself to waver and justify it by telling myself that it doesn't matter to me anyway. If that were completely true, if it didn't matter to me at all, it shouldn't have bothered me. But it does. So perhaps it does matter, then?

I read an interesting article the other day, about how people usually mess up not because they're not god, not because they don't have potential or brilliant ideas, but because they want to do everything and accomplish everything at the same time. There is wisdom in realizing that anything worthwhile requires patience, persistence and hard work. There are no two ways about it.

I'm not bad at coming up with plans. I'm not bad at understanding things, and talking about amazing ideas, and thinking about how I can be amazing. I usually know what needs to be done. It's about time I started doing it.