Every now and then

Every now and then I just cannot keep up with myself. I just cannot.

Whiskey, please. And make it double. It's one of these days. I just cannot figure out where I want to go with my life.

Last weekend I made an experiment. For just half a day, I noted every idea that popped in my head that I deemed worthwhile. In just half a day, I filled the whole page of my journal, and that included bunch ideas in small print that I squeezed between lines. And these were all good concepts, things that would definitely improve my life, the life of people around me, this corner of the world in general.

Yesterday I just crashed. My head stopped working. I could not figure out what to do next. I spent the whole day just frozen, unable to put down everything my brain was holding so that I could pick up one path and act upon it.

So today I wrote it all down. All the goals that I want to achieve, all the steps that are to take me there, all the little things that are bugging me right now that are yearning for their spot on my todo list and for the completion mark.

I'm looking at the pages over pages, and I don't know what to do with all this. Radical optimism will get me nowhere, I know that if I try to do everything I've written, I will never achieve any of the big goals. It's just too much stuff. Reality cannot possibly keep up with the amount of twisting I want to inflict on it.

So that means I need to decide to cross something off the list. But each thing I won't do will leave a hole in the world, a hole that was supposed to be filled with something good. I need to consciously decide for something good not to come into existence, ever.

How can I possibly make such a decision? How can I ever make peace with it?

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"Plans that either come to naught, or half a page of scribbled lines."

Damn this line always hurt me the most.

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tatterdemalion

Don't just do something, sit there!

File everything that's not immediately necessary or urgent on a "someday, maybe" list. Do the things that are necessary or urgent, as you have time and opportunity for them. Check your "someday, maybe" list periodically (no more than weekly) to see if you have time and opportunity to elevate one idea to a live project with doable next actions.

If any of those ideas are projects that would be nice to have done, but could be done by someone other than you, maybe just write up the idea and publish it out in the world. Someone might take it up before you get to it, but if they don't, that's fine, too.

Remember that you are mortal, and that even if you complete these projects, that will probably be forgotten in a generation or so. In the scope of the universe, it doesn't matter at all if you do them or not. So choose to do some only for yourself — or not.

petpave

Do nothing, calm.