I recently found myself in that endless cycle of feeling guilty about stuff I haven’t done — I haven’t prepared the garden, I haven’t published the SmoothieJune Book —and now it’s June!! — I haven’t kept up with other writing.
Then I compounded my own guilt by feeling guilty about “shoulding on myself” I should be outside, I should be writing, I should work around the issues I have and just get it done. My internal critic was chiming off around the clock.
So I told that voice in my head to shove off.
I regularly get comments — in person, not so much online — from people who are amazed at how much I do get done. In part, I think it is because I relentlessly document things on this blog, Flickr, Facebook, and now Instagram. In part, because very few people see just how many balls are in the air at any given time — how many projects are on front or back burners, which ones have been relegated to the UFO (unfinished object) pile, and which shiny new ones have caught my full attention — so when I finish something, I see it as 1/173 things but for most people it’s just “Wow, that’s a great thing you did!”
If you ask me though, what is the biggest thing holding me back? It’s finishing things. I am great at starting things. Ideas? FULL of them. Inspiration? Got it! That first sprint of “YEAH, LET’S DO THIS!”? All over it. Finishing? I suck.
In 2011, I had a goal at the start of the year — I called it “11 for 11” and I picked 11 projects from my UFO pile and back burner and told myself I would get those accomplished inside the 12 months. Here’s a look at what was on that list, with my notes on what was finished:
- Home Staging in a Hurry — finished the ebook but didn’t do the extras we’d planned.
- Zibbet shop — completed the main task (to list at least 100 items) but didn’t update my main stock database until last year.
- Monetize FrugalVictoria.com & Victoria.InnerHarbour.com — hmm. Sold FrugalVictoria.com — that is sort of monetizing it.
- GhettoBento.com — completely abandoned this concept and let the domain lapse.
- Urban Haiku book — did nothing. I still want to do it, and the revisiting of my Coffee Haiku book was sort of a “proof of concept”. This is high on my guilt list because most of the pieces are done, I just have to make some decisions about the format.
- CafePress/ThoseDeWolfes — I don’t know whether this was done in 2011 or 2012, but I did re-theme and reorganize our CafePress store.
- ebook for Unofficial Victoria — again, not hard to do, just a matter of curating existing content, adding a few extras, and formatting the final product. I didn’t make any progress in 2011 and now the site is re-branded as Views of Victoria. 😉
- LOC Rap (song/video) — I am stunned this unfinished project is three years old. GAH. Need to make this happen. SOON.
- Digitize my LPs — toward the end of the year, I did spend one afternoon getting a few of my albums transferred to MP3 format but it was such an enormous hassle, I didn’t continue.
- “Undead” fiction in progress — this YA novel still languishes as an unfinished draft. It’s probably at the 1/3 to 1/2 way mark but I kept finding other shiny things.
- 12 Days of LEGO Animation Project — something Kiddo and I had plotted. Never got near doing.
I’ve tried analyzing this many times. One post that I should just print out was written about 18 months ago, Squirrels, Elephants, Mosquitoes, and Chupacabras — at the very least I need to put those three Ps (is it something I am passionate about? will it bring me pleasure (or profit) to see it completed? is it possible?) somewhere prominent so that I stop being sidetracked by shiny ideas. I also need a running list of blog ideas, ongoing projects, and the shiny parking lot, so that I can track all of these things. To be honest, I had completely forgotten about the 12 Days of LEGO project until I looked back at this list. And then I found two other project lists. SIGH.
So aaaaanyway, the guilt, I don’t need it. I don’t need to add anxiety to my world. I have a job and at the moment am not in a rush to leave it. I also have relationships to tend (family & friends), responsibilities with the Union (all volunteer, and while some of it does get done on work time, a lot of it does not), and of course household stuff.
Household stuff includes the garden. I lost two weeks due to back pain/injury and I intended to work on digging up the beds last night. Instead I just glared at them and wished I could just splurge and hire someone to do the heavy work of digging out the weeds and turning the soil. At this point, I will be content to get two of the four beds planted. I think I can manage that with the addition of some tomato seedlings. Beans, squash, and carrots can go in over the weekend. The squash starts in the greenhouse are just starting to bud — I really need to get them in the ground ASAP.
BUT, in all of this, I reject the guilt! I am instead thankful:
- I have the luxury of choosing what to do in my spare time.
- My back pain has mostly passed, and I am able to return to regular physical activity.
- We have a yard in which to grow food but do not need to rely on that as a primary food source.
- I have more ideas than I know what do do with. Creativity is not a curse but a blessing.
- I have already accomplished plenty of things; my dent in the universe is visible.
And of course that I have the support of my family and friends regardless of how much or how little I accomplish.
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image credits: top, “ennui” self portrait by me; bottom, “chalk thankful heart” CC-BY-NC-ND Judy Merrill-Smith