Well, I haven't used this blog for over a year. I promised myself so faithfully to keep up with it, as well. But I think I am often much better at starting projects than continuing them or finishing them.
That being said, I've finished something - over the past year I've been working my arse off to finally complete my degree, and that has absorbed almost all of my energy and writing time. To my shock and delight, I graduated with a 95 in my dissertation, and a First overall. It's gone. It's done.
Finishing my degree has felt really weird, in all honesty. I am having to adjust my beliefs about myself and my life, in ways that feel uncomfortable, even though a lot of the adjustments are actually positive in nature. I suppose thinking of myself as somebody who doesn't finish things gives me a really wonderful excuse not to finish things. Thinking of myself as somebody who fails gives me a really good excuse not to succeed. Now I've done this, I can't think of myself that way, really - not logically.
It's funny how we create realities about ourselves, and live by them. An example - I've always told everyone, including myself, that I don't paint, that I'm dreadful at painting, that I have absolutely no ability in that area. I had a really humiliating experience in an Art lesson seventeen years ago, and basically haven't picked up a paintbrush (other than in a psych unit when it was a highly encouraged, semi-compulsory Group Activity) since then. And recently, I decided - why shouldn't I paint? Does it matter if I'm dreadful? And it turns out, I'm not 100% awful at it.
I will never see my work hanging in the Louvre, but there's no reason I can't hang it in the loo.
And - more to the point - I'm having fun. What a waste of time it was, telling myself I didn't paint, and I couldn't paint, and I didn't even want to. What other ways, I wonder, do I limit myself with this created realities?
Anyway, I realise I started this post saying I never continue things - and that's another of those created realities. I am going to continue with this. And with my writing, and with thinking positively, and making things, and hoping for the future.
Maybe not every day. Maybe not with everything I ever do. But when I can, as much as I can. That's a reality I want to create.
