On wanting and quitting...

A few months ago, I was due to have a life coaching session with Marthe Hagen, from www.thefreedomexperiment.com. I ended up cancelling the session for reasons I will not go into here (suffice to say that my trust and control issues got the better of me and that I really shouldn't pay for things in advance anymore as it gives me horrible anxiety). But I still get noticed in my inbox when she uploads a new post, and today I read The Art of Longing is the Art of Asking: What do I really want?

My favourite part from this post is this:

 I want to challenge the underlying belief that impulsive wants are not real wants and that short-lived dreams are not real dreams. And at the same time, the belief is very often that not finishing something is bad, bad, bad! Because we need to accomplish, accomplish, accomplish!

Again, this is not so true, is it?

In my experience, if we can free ourselves from these hard beliefs about ourselves and the world, we – the impulsive and multi-passionate – can live more rewarding lives. Remember, living passionately isn’t about achieving and finishing, it’s about the process of feeling and being passionate. And if you can live in your passion by jumping from interest to interest, dream to dream, goal to goal – without judging yourself for it – well, then you can live a very passionate life indeed.

I am a self confessed quitter. And not of smoking, drinking of binge watching Netflix. No, I quit pieces of art and craft work once the novelty wears off or it turns out my creative talent do not live up to my imagination. I also have a magic 3 class threshold, where I may sign up and pay in advance for a 10 week course of something (yoga, for example) and after 3 classes, my interest plummets and I don't want to go anymore. I know this about myself, yet I still have not foregone signing up for this type of class format occasionally. Often it is the only format available if I want to do anything at all.

And I shame and guilt myself into oblivion for what I consider this personality flaw. In the above passage, Marthe challenges the belief that there is something wrong with me because my motivations and passions do not stick.

I still love the idea of a finished project. But maybe I should re-evaluate what finished actually means. There is nothing wrong with a bit of discipline and follow through, if others are counting on me especially, but life is too short to torture ourselves with doing things we do not want to do anymore. As they often say when people pass away: celebrate their life, rather than mourn their death. I am going to try and celebrate that I had any inspiration and motivation at all instead of mourning when it goes away. Maybe in embracing my restlessness and lack of focus, I will find rest and focus.

Marthe reminded me to be pleased with who I am. And I am grateful for that. Quitter and proud!

Thank you for reading!

Forgettability

Despite priding myself on pretty serious nerd cred, I am not a big Doctor Who watcher. I have seen and loved a few episodes (Vincent and the Doctor is my favourite) but Sci-Fi, with it's space travel and aliens is rarely my thing. As such, I am not overly familiar with the concept of the Silence.
But Wikipedia is never wrong and confirmed what I thought I knew: that people immediately forget about a Silent once they turn their gaze away from them.

And I am starting to think I share that particular power with the Silence, apart from that their suggestions stick in people's minds, whereas mine do not. 

It would seem that I am forgettable. If I do not initiate contact with someone, there will be no contact. Even if I take the initiative, there may be not contact.

In the last while, I have experienced:

- Contacting charities asking for volunteers to offer them help, only to hear nothing back.

- Being promised to be sent a message and having to send out a reminder.

And this is only in the last week. For a very long time now, I have felt that I am at the bottom of people's list of things to remember and think about, if I am on the list at all. And I hate it. I hate that everything always has to come from me. It makes me feel desperate and like I am forcing myself on people. My concern is not that people dislike me, when I contact them, they are frequently up for hanging out. But I would love to be contacted every once in a while (I do not have a need or want to be hugely popular and in constant demand) and remembered. Especially when I have already taken the first step.

I often wonder if this is a common issue for a lot of people, a result of a self-centred society that relies on Facebook and Twitter to be reminded that other people exist too (I am not a big Facebook and Twitter user, maybe this is where I am going wrong) or that I am just a bland, boring person...or even that I give off the impression that I don't want to be contacted and that I prefer to initiate things myself. 

Perhaps I am considered so reliable and organised that people count on getting reminders from me. But that kind of complacency really pisses me off. The control freak in me really wants to know. 

I would love to hear from people if this happens to them too, maybe we all have something in common.

Thank you for reading (and remembering)!