Thursday, October 05, 2006

Future Edens

The feeling I've been having, gnawing at the edges of everything, is that I need to have some kind of master planning session with myself. Some kind of forum, or conference where I drink copious amounts of hot tea and sketch out plans, ideas, targets and goals on lined paper, maybe do some pacing around with shirt sleeves rolled up, and, perhaps, make some Powerpoint slides. I think that being organized and structured about it all would make me feel virtuous - but I don't want to feel virtuous, I want to be productive and actually move towards what I want. Maybe that is what I'm learning right now - how to keep moving in the right direction; to not wait to have the whole course plotted out.

It's the perfectionist's plight: if you never really tried, you never really failed. I feel like I spent the first half of my twenties being a focused, logical, goal-oriented type; and the second half learning to temper that with the benefits of intuition, and a more ... visceral way of dealing with things. Sometimes when pushing won't get it done, letting go and floating will. And sometimes when it makes the absolute least "sense", you have to jump.

Putting these things together, I am going to stop cheating myself. I know what I want and I can progress towards it in baby steps, holding up a finger to test the wind periodically. And, I see it now - that, just as the opposite of love is not hate but apathy, that not trying is the worst kind of failure of all.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Whoa. This is powerful. Especially that last line. You are amazing.

I know I say generally the same thing after most of your posts, but I'm never short of fascinated by the things that come out of your brain!