focus, Pinky, focus!

[dragonlady7]

It is easy for me to formulate goals. It is hard for me to actually achieve goals. It is not that I don't want to do things, it's just that once I've started them, I want more to do other things.
So this is frustrating me. I seem not to be able to remember wanting things. I know I've always had trouble articulating desires, even to myself, but this is a bit ridiculous. I have a list of projects I want to be working on, but the list is as long as my arm, and every time I sit to revise it, I just generate a new one. I want too many things at once, and none of them badly enough to focus on.
So it's frustrating.
Adding in the fact that I have been doing a lot of writing lately, and my brain is so abstracted and distanced from reality that I don't know where to start with my life. I want to have things done, but don't want to do them, OR I want to do things, but don't particularly care if I have them done.

I've drifted along like this fairly happily all month, but cumulatively, it's not a very satisfying effect.

I don't really know what to do about it, I just know I sort of don't like it. But, of course, I naturally resist imposing a set schedule, or forcing myself to do something I don't really want to do, because why on earth should I make myself miserable?

Eh. I may revise my list one more time and try to only write things on it that I really mean. That might help.
... Where did I leave the list? That's the crucial question. And which version?
Argh.

All that said, I have been productive today-- did some cooking, some cleaning, made a pair of shorts (just need to put in the drawstring waist, since I have no elastic), and did a whole bunch of weeding in the garden.
I just need to figure out what to do next, and have it be something I can and will finish.

Comments

[gypsum.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of people find that whatever they are doing seems rather mundane and dull compared to stuff they're not doing but appears, superficially anyway, interesting. But then if they were to start doing what seemed interesting at first, it would became mundane and dull. In my experience the only thing you can do about it is try to remember what it was that interested you in the first place and keep at your current goal, project, PhD, whatever. It is probably more rewarding than hopping from one thing to another because you lose focus or get bored. I mean, if you get REALLY bored and realize whatever is definitely not for you, then it is good to change your goals, but if it is just the reality of settling into a routine, then it may be worth it to push through it.

For example, a lot of people find it incredibly interesting I play Irish (and some Scottish) music on the uilleann pipes. To me, it isn't necessarily boring since I love playing but it is routine and I know so many bloody Irish traditional musicians -- most being a lot better than me -- that it is pretty mundane. There are plenty of things such as hangliding that seem a lot more interesting than Irish music because I don't do them. But if I went hanggliding every weekend and hung out with loads of other hanggliding folk, I am sure it would get routine and mundane as well. That is just life.