I am amazing at making plans to do things.
I can plan so well, decide on a routine, prepare an output schedule. I mean if planning was an Olympic sport, I would most definitely place!
However, where I fall down is on the follow through. In case you haven’t noticed I haven’t posted in a while (that is if anyone out there is actually reading this). Nor have I uploaded a video to my YouTube channel since the end of October.
I have a list of topics to write about on my blog, film on my channel or even some photography projects to start. Have I done any of them? No.
Why? Well the thing is that I get so caught up in everything being perfect. I constantly have to reach this arbitrarily high standard that I’ve set myself. However, all that it serves to do is start me on this downward spiral of pessimism. It doesn’t matter that I have I ideas, I’ll never know how to create a narrative around them. Even if could, it wouldn’t be good. If it isn’t good, what is the point of doing it in the first place. So I’m just not going to bother.
You see my problem? I’m so good at planning that I plan for my own failure. I don’t even allow myself the opportunity to be good at something, on the off chance that I might be bad at it.
As a child I prided myself on being able to train myself to do certain things, regardless of whether I initially liked it or wanted to, but on the premise that it was good for me. Scared of the dark? I slowly forced myself to fight the internal panic and slowly walk around in the dark, imagining my feet were like cement. Need to learn to like a drink I hate? Mix it with other drinks and slowly increase the amount each time until I am just drinking a full glass of the thing I once hated. The list goes, on but I think you get the point.
Is that just stubbornness? Maybe, it’s a fine line but I like to think it was a mixture of determination and willpower. Do I have those qualities anymore? I don’t feel like I do. I think I’ve crossed that line and am firmly in camp stubborn, which is not that helpful when it comes to following through on things. Rather than stubbornly pursuing my goal, I stubbornly insist that I can never achieve it. Counterproductive, to say the least.
Whilst I may be taking about this is a logical, completely self aware manner, that doesn’t mean that I am currently capable of changing it. I am fully aware of my shortcomings and actually how I should change them. The thing that is stopping me is my internal critic or bully, who, for the most part is completely illogical. I have always had it, everyone has an internal critic, it’s healthy, but what isn’t healthy is that somewhere along the way I unintentionally gave it the lead role in my brain. Like any stereotypical power mad bully, it vehemently refuses to relinquish the control that it has come love.
You may have noticed that I said I am currently incapable of changing this pattern. That is to say that I am trying. I am aware that I need to change, and that is the first step. It’s painfully difficult and tiring to have to permanently argue with yourself and fight your internal bully, but I’m trying.
Really that’s all I can ask of myself. As much as I fight the notion, I still want to believe that the little girl that taught herself to not be afraid of the dark and its monsters, is still hiding somewhere, willing me to find her, so that we can fight my bully together.
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