anything

Were you ever told as a child, “you can do anything you put your mind to”?

In the thirty years I’ve been on this earth, I’ve never stopped believing that.

As a kid it helped me dream, as an adult it gives me nightmares.  I am consumed by the idea that I have this enormous potential and have nothing to show for it.  If there really are no limits to one’s accomplishments, where does one start?  How do you go about finding your one thing in the enormity of all things?

Lucky for me, age takes some of those options away.  I’m not going to be a professional sports superstar.  I’m not going to compete at the Olympics.  I’m not going to be a fighter pilot or an astronaut.  I’m too old, and in some cases, not even all that interested.  I know now that whatever it is that I’m meant to do, it’s probably not going to involve athletic ability or a whole lot of physical exertion.  My means are certainly more cerebral.  If only that made this any easier.

I’ve always been careful to keep myself balanced.  I try to always mix a little art with my science; to keep both sides of my brain (an antiquated notion, I know) in decent working order.  The phrase “jack of all trades, master of none” is not unfamiliar to me.  In fact, although that’s meant to be a somewhat derisive term, it’s a badge of honor for me.  I always felt being adept at one thing above all others was limiting yourself.  Now that I’m a bit older, I envy those who are exceptional at one task and were lucky enough to discover it.  My greatest failing is that whenever I feel as if I’ve found my place, I see a better one just across the way.

Have you ever heard the term analysis paralysis?  It’s the idea that if you spend enough time thinking about what to do you end up doing nothing at all.  That is my life.  Every week I have a new idea and the next week I have some reason why it can’t be done and another grand idea that I’m certain this time I can do.  All of that dreaming as a child has come back to burn me.  Now all of my ambitions are beyond my means, or at the very least beyond those means coupled with the restraints of everyday life.  I feel stagnant, motionless.  I feel like my career should have started at least half-a-dozen years ago but I’m no further along than I was at twenty-two.

It’s not that I lack the ability, it’s that I convince myself I lack the time to execute my ideas.  It’s the good old blame game.  I blame life for getting in the way.  I blame my job for limiting the types of material I can work on.  I blame my friends for having their own shit to do and having little interest in mine.  I blame money for its ever-present requirement.  It seems I blame anyone and anything other than what is truly to blame: my own laziness.

So ya, it’s not like I don’t know what’s going on.  I guess I just haven’t figured out how to fix it.  How do you become less lazy when it’s so much easier just to be complacent?  When do you get to the point where anything is better than nothing?