Projects

I have SO MANY projects swirling around in my head, and I want to do them all RIGHT NOW.

Of course, that's not possible within understood limits of human ability, so I have to choose.  I hate choosing.  What if I choose poorly and my body ages a billion times too fast and then disintegrates until all that's left of me is a pile of dust that blows away in the wind?  That would be a really bad day.

Seriously, though, I end up with a Mr. Burns-style problem.  Except instead of a billion different types of disease all fighting for a foothold but being blocked because they get 'stuck in the door,' so to speak, it's a dozen different exciting interests.  There are too many of them.  I get equally excited about all of them, and I want to use all of them.  I would love to be a sustainability engineer as much as I would a human geneticist.  Or an architect.  Or an archaeologist (or really, an archaeological technician; the actual archaeologists have pretty boring careers for a person who likes, nay, needs, to study a multitude of things).  I would be equally thrilled to be a costume designer for historical films or a nutritionist.  Pathways fall into one of two categories: 1) Ohmigosh, that would be SO COOL! and 2) Never in a million, trillion years.  Yes or no.  1 or 0.  Sometimes they will make a switch from one to the other, but there's never any in-between.  It's really annoying.

A big part of the problem is that I don't know that I have what it takes to be any of the above.  I never liked math, but I was good at it (not great, but above average).  I love science, but Physics tends to twist my brain and anything smaller than atomic particles blurs into an amorphous blob called "tiny."  I love artistic endeavors, and yet I have a really hard time thinking outside the box in visual media.  And now, because I've spent so much time without money, pursuing things that don't really make money, the financial realities of the pathway or project figure in with a lot more weight.  I know my limits and my needs, but my knowledge of my skills and capabilities is lacking.  My self-belief and confidence, too.  I believe I could push through most barriers to achieve my goals, and yet I don't actually *know,* and that seems a really wide gap.

I envy people who know what they want to do, even with half of the fibres in their being.  It drives me nuts when I see people who know what they love, who have passion enough and perseverance enough to follow through, and yet choose differently.  It's their right, of course, and I don't hold it against them. Their needs are not mine, nor are their priorities.  But they KNOW, and they still choose a different path.  I KNOW that I need to be a writer.  I had the passion.  I had the dedication.  I finished two (essentially three, given the length of the first) manuscripts and 3/4 of a third.  I shopped them all around year after year through rejection after rejection.  We made the decision, as a married couple, to be starving artists early in our marriage so that I could pursue my dream.  But after a while, it became clear I wasn't *quite* good enough yet.  Something was missing from my writing, so I took some time off.  Now, I'm pretty sure I know what was wrong and have already fixed it.  The problem now is that those years of near-poverty and debt accrual have caught up with us.  We borrowed a lot from our future selves, and now we ARE the future selves.  That sucks, but it was our choice.

My passion drove me onward without quite making anything happen.  And even if I had succeeded, it's not a living wage.  It's a thrice-pay system of lump sums across several years that don't go very far.  So now I have to choose something with which to make money, and I need to be passionate about it.  But because it's a second choice, I can't ever seem to actually choose.

Do I choose the project that will move me closer to getting this ONE job?  Do I choose the project that will take a whole lot longer but open the doors for more jobs?  Do I work on my writing?  My doula certification, even though I have no intention of taking births any time soon?  Do I write or read?  Learn or create?  I can't prioritize.

Hence, the swirl of unfinished, unstarted projects.

Also, if you're not sure what a procrastinating writer looks like, I give you this post. ;)