Nothing’s Done

Some days I wake up unbelievably annoyed at myself. I lie in my cold bed and go back through the previous day, hour by hour, auditing what I actually got done. It’s a small act of self-punishment, and I do it more often than I should.

Usually the verdict is the same: no progress. Again. And it isn’t the wasted day that gets me, it’s that I put in the time and still came out with nothing. I work nine hours and commute a little over two, and the first thing I do when I get home is sit down with my personal projects. I have dozens. Some need the creative, artsy side of me, some need the analytical one, and every single one eventually hits the same wall: a dream of perfection.

Dream… it’s more of a nightmare, honestly. It attaches itself to every ambition I have, and the good ideas go first. Then it’s the same story every time: another folder of half-built things, left to rot among the thousand other ideas I had on a random Tuesday.

The publication you’re reading this on was an idea I had months, years ago. That it took me this long to put it up says more about me than the thousand essays that will (hopefully) end up here.

It’s a terrible thing, really. After a long day at work I sit at my desk at home and just stare at the screen. Idea #1, idea #2, idea #3, never in a positive light. The first thing I see is always the problems, then the next one, then the one after that, until I’m standing in front of a wall that looks insurmountable and whatever motivation I walked in with is gone.

But I don’t want to make this inaugural essay about how terrible I am at following through. The fact that you’re reading this at all means I committed to one of the thousand ideas.

Now, it’s not perfect by any means. The typography is still a pain, the organization is a nightmare, but it’s a beginning.

Unfortunately, that only brings me to my next problem: Beginnings.

I love the start of things. A new story, a new project, a new idea. I become so entranced by a new idea that I find myself getting lost within it. Within the thousand different possibilities that reveal themselves as I dive deeper and deeper.

But there is magic within those moments. A pure electricity that stuns me into thinking of nothing else. I could go as far as to say that I live for those moments. When that lightning of curiosity strikes it’s the best feeling there is. I feel an immense energy to work on those ideas, even after long, tiring days. Which is why, when those same ideas collapse in the face of my perfectionism, I feel the blows so strongly.

The collapse is the worst. It’s never a lack of energy, never a lack of creativity or will. The collapse takes a few forms, but the most common is what I’d call a willing collapse: I let my bandwidth drop on purpose and write it off as working too hard. By “willing” I mean exactly that. It’s the same cowardice I tell other people to fight. Often I’ll tell friends at odd crossroads that they must push through, because what lies on the other side is peace. Now, I can never know what actually lies on the other side for them, but what I do know, and preach but not follow, is that often in life you regret not doing something far more than you regret actually doing it.

Eventually it gets to the point where I can no longer keep up with the requirements and dreams and the trial and error, all of which ends up with me chalking the failure of a project up to the fact that maybe I cannot juggle everything at once.

While spreading myself thin is certainly a direct factor in why my projects fail, I often see it as a lazy excuse. Because the problem is never in the project. It is in the fact that when a certain project gets to the tedious, slippery middle, instead of pushing through I choose to give up and start another project. Then suddenly I have two projects I can’t finish. Then three, then four. It’s almost compulsive.

The most painful part of this entire process is that when I abandon these projects, one by one, there’s a piece of my heart left in all of them. Then suddenly, six months pass and I am unrecognizable even to myself. Who was the person who had this ambitious dream? What happened to them? Suddenly, half a year has passed and all I have to show is a list of incomplete projects and broken dreams. That is a graveyard I wouldn’t want to spend a night in.

Yet I persevere. So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. You wouldn’t believe how often I’ve said that to myself. It’s how every new project starts. A will to push on. To move forward. To explore the next idea, all while knowing that the next idea will end up like the last one. It’s tragic, really. I find myself so caught within this never-ending cycle of beginnings and ends with no apparent respite. Then I lie in my bed late at night and wonder if that is what life is, beginnings and ends.

But amidst all of this, I often wonder if I’m simply a coward. A traitor to my own dreams and ambitions. Maybe I simply enjoy the exploratory beginning more than the hard work when the novelty fades, or maybe I’m just being dramatic as usual.

The funny part is that this piece was supposed to go up a week ago. It was finished. I sat on it anyway, rereading it, tweaking it, finding reasons it wasn’t ready, until today, when I got sick of myself and said fuck it. So it goes out as it is. I think that’s the most honest thing this essay could do.

I don’t know if I’ll ever break out of this cycle. Funnily enough, I think I take equal pleasure in beginnings and endings. So if one day these pieces stop, know that I’ve moved on to the next dream, whatever that might be. A dream of perfection.

~ S.S.D