You can’t always do what you want
I ran across a very interesting post about… well, about talents and one’s goal in life, basically. And it made me think.
My first reaction was “oh my gosh YES this is so me!” And then I realized it was about someone’s book that I remembered reading about before and that was a bit of a deflating moment for reasons I shall not go into due to being largely irrelevant. Let’s try that again.
My first reaction was “oh my gosh YES this is so me!” But reading on, I realized… no, it isn’t quite me.
Yes, I grew up with that same feeling, the urge to be Good at Something. To be a Writer, or an Artist, someone who creates and that is what they do and that is their Single Driving Passion and they accomplish Something Great. Yes, I have a huge variety of interests, always have, that divide up my time.
But my problem, the part that trips up me, personally, is not an arbitrary need to choose just one thing. And thus it, sadly, can’t be erased by simply giving myself an encouraging hug and a pep talk. Or even someone else doing it. Or even a whole slew of people doing it.
My problem is that I simply do not have enough time. I have a full-time job to support myself financially, which already takes up 50 hours a week or so. I have to sleep, so there’s another 50 or 60 hours a week. Which leaves me about 60 hours a week to Do Things, or about 8 hours a day.
I could divvy up those hours amongst all my projects, all the things I love and want to do. I could do it by days, maybe. My language on Monday. Learning a language Tuesday. My current novel Wednesday. Artwork Thursday. Piano practice/music composition Friday. Machining Saturday. Sewing Sunday.
Oops, ran out of days in a week! Okay let’s do it by day of the month; we’ve gotten 1 through 7. Eighth for gardening. Ninth for crocheting. Tenth for baking. Eleventh for coding my video game. Twelfth for practicing animation. Thirteenth for voice acting. Fourteenth, go for a hike. Fifteenth, wood carving. Sixteenth, horseback riding. Seventeenth, origami. Eighteenth, study history. Nineteenth, painting. Twentieth, work on my comic. Twenty-first, cooking.
I can easily fill up the last 7-10 days of the month by splitting some of the ideas into their respective projects. One novel, two novels, three novels. Painting, sketching. Writing a comic script, drawing the comic. Making a cosplay outfit, making every-day clothing. Study one, two, four languages.
I could do that. It would be insane. I would never accomplish anything, just spend my whole life working slowly, slowly, so frustratingly slowly through the whole slew, mountain of projects and ideas and things I want to do.
And this doesn’t even touch on the fact that I would like my job to be teaching history, and the time and effort required, or the fact that you need to tend a garden every day, or practice a language regularly, or things like having friends.
It isn’t that there isn’t just one thing I want to do. It is that there are just too many. I have to prioritize, or I will never do anything. I have to sacrifice some things in order to let others thrive.
(And none of this even starts to touch on my procrastination problems, which is a whole different jar of pickles.)
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