Do I just suck at life?
Jul. 25th, 2012 01:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krytellaPeople ask me all the time: "I haven't seen you in a while. What have you been up to?"
I say, "nothing much." I say, "same as usual."
What have I been doing? I signed up for a dance class, read a book, finished a craft project, wrote some code, did my laundry, went to a party, read ten fanfics, saw a movie, hung a picture on the wall.
So why do I say I didn't do anything? After all, some people probably don't do any these things. But they don't feel like the kind of "accomplishment" I'm going to explain to a random person.
Why do I feel like I didn't do anything? Because I'm too full of ideas. Because I thought of 100 things that I wanted to do, and half the time I read blogs or played Civilization instead of doing those things.
I have a massive collection of art and craft supplies. My sister actually does crafts more than me, especially when she was in school, and I don't think there was a single time that she asked me if I had something she could use for X and I said no. Some of these supplies are for projects at the top of my mind. Some of them are for projects I'd like to do someday. Some of them are for types of things I don't care about right now.
I have a clarinet and a tenor saxophone that I hardly ever play.
People ask about my hobbies and I never share, but I have dozens. Theoretically. It's said it takes 10,000 hours to achieve mastery at something, and that that's 8 hours a day 5 days a week for 10 years. What am I going to master when I can't get myself to consistently do something for 30 <em>minutes</em> every day?
I used to value making things with my hands, because it balanced the other things I was spending so much time on that were indefinite. Dancing. School. Playing music. Processes. Now I have the option of making things that are things I can't hold in my hands but that clearly exist. Products. And I'm questioning why I have this massive collection of crap that exists to make other crap that I will then have to store somewhere. And then I look at it a different way and say I can make things I can wear and hang on the walls. I've done a pretty good job of ditching any pursuit that ends with a thing that sits on a shelf. I have boxes of things that sit on shelves that I can't get rid of. But still.
I'm not good at working at things. I've never consistently, self-motivatedly worked on anything. Ever.
Should I get rid of the physical stuff? Should I give up on the rest, too, pick just one or two things that I'll do and stop imagining the others? The number of things I am succeeding at doing is currently 0.
I say, "nothing much." I say, "same as usual."
What have I been doing? I signed up for a dance class, read a book, finished a craft project, wrote some code, did my laundry, went to a party, read ten fanfics, saw a movie, hung a picture on the wall.
So why do I say I didn't do anything? After all, some people probably don't do any these things. But they don't feel like the kind of "accomplishment" I'm going to explain to a random person.
Why do I feel like I didn't do anything? Because I'm too full of ideas. Because I thought of 100 things that I wanted to do, and half the time I read blogs or played Civilization instead of doing those things.
I have a massive collection of art and craft supplies. My sister actually does crafts more than me, especially when she was in school, and I don't think there was a single time that she asked me if I had something she could use for X and I said no. Some of these supplies are for projects at the top of my mind. Some of them are for projects I'd like to do someday. Some of them are for types of things I don't care about right now.
I have a clarinet and a tenor saxophone that I hardly ever play.
People ask about my hobbies and I never share, but I have dozens. Theoretically. It's said it takes 10,000 hours to achieve mastery at something, and that that's 8 hours a day 5 days a week for 10 years. What am I going to master when I can't get myself to consistently do something for 30 <em>minutes</em> every day?
I used to value making things with my hands, because it balanced the other things I was spending so much time on that were indefinite. Dancing. School. Playing music. Processes. Now I have the option of making things that are things I can't hold in my hands but that clearly exist. Products. And I'm questioning why I have this massive collection of crap that exists to make other crap that I will then have to store somewhere. And then I look at it a different way and say I can make things I can wear and hang on the walls. I've done a pretty good job of ditching any pursuit that ends with a thing that sits on a shelf. I have boxes of things that sit on shelves that I can't get rid of. But still.
I'm not good at working at things. I've never consistently, self-motivatedly worked on anything. Ever.
Should I get rid of the physical stuff? Should I give up on the rest, too, pick just one or two things that I'll do and stop imagining the others? The number of things I am succeeding at doing is currently 0.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-26 02:41 am (UTC)In some ways I think your question/s could make an amazing Ask-mefi question/thread; I have ideas starting to coalesce but I think crowd-sourcing would definitely be interesting here.
anyway, all this to say I'll be back; I'm thinking about this.
(I think about you <3)
no subject
Date: 2012-07-26 04:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-26 11:51 am (UTC)These maybe are the characteristics you might want to look for and avoid - perhaps you can rejigger planned project by finding a way to make them social, embedding them in other stuff, roping a friend in, making an online cheering team w/ set meeting times or creating your own group for making shit together, etc. Not all is lost! Far from it. It's good to learn who you are (now - things might change) and how you function so you can take rational steps to deal with it and work around it. Wisdom & coping skills development.
+ learning to be less hard judging yourself comes in handy too. <33