During a rather prolonged and apathetic debate with my dearest mother about not hearing back from a potential employer, it was brought to my attention that I rarely finish anything I start. This got me thinking, a generally dangerous and often fraught exercise, that she has a point.
Genuinely, and I'm unsure if I'm proud to say this, out of the many, many books that I should have read in my second year in Uni, I finished one book in its entirety. One. How many did I start? The best part of fifteen, almost definitely more so. On reflection, the worst thing is that I enjoyed reading a few of those books. I really did. I genuinely cannot tell you, dear reader of my shitty blog, why it is that I did not finish them.
The amount of ideas that I have formulated, concocted in my mind of a sleepless evening again makes for frightening reminiscing; all the 'get rich' schemes, the life plans, the hopeless mental infatuations: all half-arsed. Thought-out, yes. Implemented? No.
The general pattern, as it stands, is as follows:
- Feel some sort of guilt for something (an awkward encounter, spending too much money, etc.)
- Attempt to rectify or remedy it by way of an 'ingenious' solution
- Go through this solution, nit-picking and foreseeing any and all hindrances
- Ending with a mental image of me being rather pleased with myself and/or voted Time's 'Man of the Year'
The problem with this scheme is that it is mental; it stays in my head. I'm not saying my ideas are perfect or even tangible, but they are ideas, ready to bloom into the world from the rather Sisyphean twig that is me. Yet, I keep them there, stuck in the old grey matter to rot and fall away with the bark into the realms of disinterest. By no means will any of these ideas work, but I'd have more respect for myself if I had gone out and tried to implement just one of these ideas. The motoring blog, that could be a start.
A rather ironic and poignant example is this very blog you're reading. I promised myself when I first started writing in it a year ago that I would post at least once a month, and for it to be on anything and everything that catches my mind's eye. Where have I been the last three months? In the same place as I was for the other nine, where I was writing in it. But I just did not bother writing for three months; it fizzled out.
That seems to the problem; I fizzle. I ride the wave of mental arrogance, lording over all I survey with my new, brilliant idea, and then I go to bed, have another idea, and yesterday's idea stands there, like an orphan, waiting to be picked up and played with again. Except I never go back to it, never give it the love and attention that would turn neurone activity into endorphins and happiness. Fickle, I believe is the word.
Even as recently as working on my latest batch of essays, I found the work mostly interesting; reading and studying Welsh poetry made me want to start my own, but 'I've had no inspiration' since finishing. After being glued to some of Roland Barthes' work (which makes for entertaining, 'Ha, that's quite true, actually' reading), I wanted to bury myself in a coffee shop somewhere and make notes of the patterns and behaviours of the city-dwellers and valleys wanderers. But what have I done instead? Nothing. Not a sausage. I'm not proud.
Well, reader, I daresay I am going to take a stand to this. It cannot be good for my mental wellbeing if I start a million things and never finish a single one. This summer, I shall finish the books that I started. I shall take apart the guitar that stopped working three summers ago and I shall fix it. I shall hand my CV into that place, talk to my old headmaster. I absolutely promise to finish, with you as my witness, what I star
(I know it's a cheap ending, but what did you expect.)
