Consistency Is Key

Honestly, it shouldn't be this difficult to keep one thing consistent in my life for more than a week. I've heard it said that 21 days of doing a task repeatedly helps to form a habit. Clearly, I can't even test that out... because it is next to impossible for me to even reach 3 days. Blogging will resume this week, and I'm going to try and keep it up for as long as I can. Not just so I can prove myself, but blogging and writing my thoughts out has always been a very refreshing way to explore and tease out the tangled contents of my brain.

I've often wondered why it has always been so difficult for me to keep something up or bring something to completion. I would start a craft project and obsess over it for a day or two and then the novelty of it would wear off and I'd find another project or hobby to try out and the same thing would happen over and over again. Before I know it, I have 10 different ongoing projects, none of which are near complete (might I also add, none of which really add any value to my life). In general, the way I have led my life has been grossly directionless. I've lived solely for the experience of uncovering something new and nothing beyond that. Be it my future career path, hobbies, or whatever else there is to try out there. Ask my friends and they'll tell you that every so often I would come up to them with jumping up and down, wanting to tell them about the new career path that I've considering of late. One day it's social work, another day it's international law. All the while, I'm still studying to become a nurse, but I'm looking for all of the possible ways that I can get away from nursing and try something else... something new.

I wonder if it's because I fear that if I don't try everything, I might miss out on something that has the potential to be my true niche, my deepest passion. It's like this example I often give hypothetically to my musician friends just to see their foreheads knot up and scrunch, signalling to me that I have succeeded in gifting them with the anxiety I so often experience... What if, there's a musical instrument that's out there that you have yet to test out or try, that you are actually really naturally good at playing but you wouldn't know until you actually tried? Like the cello. I've always loved the cello but I've never tried it out. What if one day I bring bow to string and try playing the cello and find... I am a genius at it? There's so many options out there!! What if, in being passive... I never reach my full potential?

What's really ironic about this, though, is my natural lived-out response to this dilemma. To try everything out. The thing is... I don't think you would even be able to discover that you were a prodigy after 2 or 3 days of trying something. It may take weeks till you have worked through the basics before you've discovered that. If I don't focus my energies on one thing long enough... I most certainly will NOT find what I'm looking for.

With anything in life... you have to be consistent. You have to be diligent. You have to commit. And even if you suck at it at first... you work hard and your work through it. Not all of us are born prodigies. Perhaps it's time to hold down my knee-jerk reaction to my anxieties and work through something for once. Perhaps that means looking at what I have in my hands already (let's say... like nursing) and set my eyes on it for more than a day.

That's my musing of the day. Let's hope it flourishes into something productive.