Yes, I completely skipped this project for more than 3 weeks. I’d like to say there were a billion reasons, like I was too busy, I ran out of topics to write about, or my priorities changed. And while a combination of those factors definitely played a part, in truth my motivation simply dropped out. Amidst a torrent of bad-happenings, stress, and change in the past month, I simply lost the drive to create topics to blog about, or to really put any analysis or thought into ideas enough to scribble them out here. I let emotions hold up me sometimes, and when life got too crazy from every direction, my attention shifted far and away from this project.
This got me thinking, however, about a lot of things that we say we will do, or plan to accomplish, and that we subsequently drop or let fade into the past as time goes on. It’s easy to do this with any goal that doesn’t have an immediate or direct impact on your daily function; it simply just drifts farther away and you keep going with your life. There was a quote I read years ago saying “thinking about doing something makes you feel better about not actually doing it.” I can list several things that I kept planning to do throughout the last decade but still haven’t done, or took years to begin. Even with my current goals, I’ve found that doing even a tiny bit of work gives that immediate feeling of gratification and accomplishment, and it’s quite easy to slip back into inaction with that nice little feeling still there to warm the mind and soothe the anxiousness. Everyone can have great or ingenious ideas or can say they will do something, but it takes a hell of a lot more effort to actually get through and accomplish that.
Previously, it would take significant events or quarter-life panics to spur me into action and generate change or evaluate my goals. In LA, it took a very crazy break-up and subsequent realization of stagnancy at a less-than-fulfilling job to light the fire under my ass to do what I’d been saying I wanted (moving back to the Bay) and actually dust off my old “yeah, I’ll do this at some point” goals (taking the GMAT).
Living in San Francisco has exposed me to a greater proportion of types of people, however, that don’t fall into this category of say-but-seldom-do: those that have transformed ideas into companies, companies into acquisitions, and hearing these experiences and stories is nothing short of amazing. Living in SoMa/FiDi gave me a constant view of the growing ambitions of tech startups, tech behemoths, and the fast-paced business world that lives there and its surrounding areas. Being in that environment when I came home from work every day pushed me to work harder, clarify the future more readily, and not only plan, but also to act on my ambitions. Being out of that area seems to be a little less driving.
In the bigger picture, though, much of the motivation to conceptualize, create, and do great things needs to come from within and external factors cannot be the only influence to push dreams into reality. While my little project here is not on that type of scale, it’s something I created to help push me towards something bigger, and so while I can’t guarantee the original plan (daily? you crazy) or my revised plan (semi-daily? that worked well), I can’t forget to sit here at midnight once in a while and verbalize my thoughts just because I’m distracted, unmotivated or busy. Gotta drive.
