What ACTUALLY Holds Us Back?

Lately I’ve been feeling pretty mad at myself.  Before I started my summer vacation, I made a list of all of the goals and accomplishments that I was going to work towards on a daily basis.  I was going to use my time SO wisely—becoming a bestselling author and passable guitar player with an amazing body all in those two and a half months.

Yet, here I sit, soft and fluffy, nearly four weeks into my summer break, having yet to pen one scintillating chapter or strum one emotion-filled chord.

Instead, I have spent most of my summer lounging by the pool, frittering away evenings with Parks and Rec, and bemoaning the fact that I don’t have anything to do.

That’s right.  Even with all of the time in the world, I STILL have yet to make any progress towards anything that I previously claimed to want to accomplish.

This, of course, is puzzling.  Most people make the excuse that they don’t do x, y, or z because they simply don’t have enough hours in a day.  Yet clearly this excuse falls flat when held up to examination.  Everyone who is highly successful is able to achieve a high volume of things, while everyone who is average seems to struggle to accomplish even the simplest tasks.

Since time is clearly not the excuse that I can stand behind, I tried to dig deep and decipher why I don’t actually get. shit. done.

The biggest reason for me, I believe, is the fear of imperfection.  I am someone who prides herself on doing things RIGHT and WELL.  The goals that I have in mind are things that I am not automatically good at.  Playing guitar takes long hours of sounding like crap in order to actually even begin to sound decent.  Writing books isn’t something that will come out amazing right off the bat; grueling hours of revision also need to be put in, and quite frankly, knowing that my first draft isn’t going to be good enough is quite disheartening.

Even though I already write pieces for this blog and I have written more than my fair share of essays throughout my bachelors and masters programs, I quite honestly never really revise them.  I may move a paragraph around or change a word or two, but I’ve never really needed to do any heavy revisions.  Which means that decent writing at first keyboard type is what I’m used to.  Which means that the thought of having to actually sit down and redo whole scenes or even add or subtract characters or any other thing that an actual writer does seems incredibly daunting and even a bit annoying.

Another reason that I feel may be holding me back from potential greatness is my motives for accomplishing these things.  Most of my desire to reach high goals comes from me not wanting to be a boring person, honestly.  Two of my sisters can play guitar amazingly well, and I feel like I should be able to do the same.  Likewise, many people have told me that I am a good writer, so I feel like I should utilize those skills and produce something memorable and lasting.  Neither of those motivations are exactly pure.

However, despite the fact that my motivations might be a bit skewed, I still want to advance towards those goals.  The only problem is it is hard to get started.

Which, I feel, is the biggest reason that I haven’t reached my goals.  No matter what the goal, no matter what the motivation, every single journey has to start with a single step which is followed by more single steps. And yet, those first few steps are the most difficult steps in the world.

I was scrolling back through my blog posts before writing this one, and I was struck by the sheer amount of goal setting and obstacle tackling and pure determination that permeated much of my posts.  Sadly, I feel like I have been lacking those things lately, which is embarrassing considering the gusto with which I cranked out posts on those subjects in 2017.

But, rather than sitting in the corner staring at the wall of shame, I want to do my utmost to get back on track and continue on the path of making my life amazing.  I know that I have the potential in me, and I’ll be damned if I get to the end of my life and look back on a journey of ‘could haves’.

So, readers, I hope that in sharing my journey via these posts with all of the ups and downs, I can inspire you to keep up the good fight on a spectacular journey of your own.  We are all capable of magic, so let’s go out there and create our perfect vision!

Abracadabra me hearties, let’s roll.