If you’re anything like me, picking up something new – be it a hobby, a project, a schedule, whatever – can be daunting. You have the best intentions going into it; you’re excited. It’s motivating. It may actually even be fun. But when it comes to actually making the space for said new thing, suddenly, it becomes just so damn exhausting.
It’s like, “Oh god, now I have to show up for this thing that I said I wanted to do.” And most of the time, no one is going to hold you accountable because, frankly, they have their own lists of what ifs they’re trying to manage, too. We’re busy. Stretched too thin. We’re fitting 36+ hours into 24 and beating ourselves up for not doing more, being more. We sit in our offices or stare at our households, a certain level of chaos usually stirring around, and wonder: “How the fuck did I get here?”
Life will keep happening whether we’re participating in it or not. Momentum is a promise – whether it’s the direction we want to be going or not.
So, when we get an idea and we don’t show up, we don’t start, we don’t continue, we don’t finish - the music never gets played. The projects never take off. The words never get written. The changes never happen. Life doesn’t get lived.
This is all a very grandiose way of sharing something with you: I bought a piano and I’m teaching myself to play. It’s hard. When I sat at my makeshift bench last night, waves and waves of overwhelm washed over me.
“What are you doing? Who do you think you are? Why do you even want to be doing this? Shouldn’t you be working on one of your 18 other projects you have going on? This is stupid. You’re never going to actually learn. What a WASTE of money. You’re just going to quit like everything else.”
OHHHKAY. I mean, no wonder people don’t like picking up something new! That resistance kicks in. Your mind betrays you. You feel dumb for even thinking you could. Exhaustion arrives before anything has even been started.
…or maybe that’s just me.
Either way, I don’t think I can physically take the weight of waking up another day remembering what I didn’t accomplish yesterday. Maybe some people would call that anxiety, or say I’m being too hard on myself. I don’t care. Maybe it sounds like my concept of self-worth is somehow wrapped up in the notion of “accomplishing,” and perhaps it is, but what rings truer for me, is that I am unwilling to continue to watch days pass through me and all around me where I am not showing up for the things I genuinely enjoy. To say the dishes are more important than investing into my own well-being is bullshit. I’ll stretch 36 to 37 gladly if it means I’m actually allowing myself to be happy.