All I Want To Do Is...

Finish this sentence: My name is _____ and all I want to do is _____

Can you answer that? I can’t. I don’t have that one definitive idea of something that will make me feel satisfied. What do you do when you want to do everything?

I’ve always been a huge dreamer. My head fills up with ideas all the time. Songs I could compose, hair accessories I could make, novels I could write, recipes I could invent, pictures I could draw, events I could plan, photographs I could take. I live in this place in my head where I could do anything I want. I feel like if I concentrated hard enough on one of these things, I could actually succeed at it. In high school I decided to be a screen writer, and I would sit at my desk for hours after school and on the weekends, banging out movie scripts, usually with 10 or more on the go at any given time. A bit later, I decided to be a song writer and within weeks I’d half-filled a journal with lyrics and sketches of guitar chords and progressions. So what happened with that yearning, that passion to pursue the thing I loved? As sad as it is, I think that when there are so many things that I want to pursue, I lose motivation to really pursue any of them. On my computer, I have countless beginnings to stories that I end up abandoning as soon as writer’s block hits. This morning I purchased a midi keyboard and the recording software I learnt to produce music with when I studied electronic music in 2007. This afternoon I’m meeting with my designer-friend Kirstin for a monthly business meeting, to discuss our business plans – for me that means an online shop that I closed and want to re-open some day in the future. I’ve started planning and writing a dinner-party themed cook book. All of these are incredibly happy endeavours, but my fingers are in too many pots! I know that there will be people who read this post and say “There are no rules – pursue everything that your heart desires!” But I can’t. I have loads of passion, but I can’t stretch it out that far! You can’t become amazing at something when you’re trying to become amazing at four other things at the same time – developing skills requires a solid commitment, not a commitment split five ways. So instead of making sacrifices and picking something to pursue whole-heartedly, I take the opposite end of the spectrum and spend most evenings planted on my butt in front of the TV; pursuing nothing, achieving nothing.

So how do I choose? How do I commit myself to fewer exciting pursuits, when I just want them all?