Lost in Translation

Written and drawn over the course of two hours today. Consciously minimal cleaning-up.

I’ve decided to adopt a new model for goal-setting, because resolutions and concrete goals just aren’t doing it for me. I still haven’t figured out – a month and a half in – how I want this year to pan out, but I do have some things I’d like to change and things I’d like to do.

I’m taking a three-prong approach to this, because it seems like the most logical way to go about it. All of the below start with “I want to…”, but they’re divided into sections according to their function.

Intentions

These are aspects of myself that I’ve decided I want to change, or actions that I want to take. They’re not endpoints; they’re processes and beginnings. (You might recall my issues with process, and focusing on these is a way to work on that.) They’re roughly analogous to Havi’s “My commitment” section in her Very Personal Ads. My current intentions are that I want to

• improve my posture;
• exercise more frequently;
• eat better (by which I mean both higher-quality food and food that’s better for me);
• do at least one thing each day that makes me actively happy;
• spend at least one hour each day learning a new skill;
• spend less time in front of the computer; and
• write more often.

Desires

On my paper list, this went under the heading “What I Want”, but I figured for the formal writeup it’d be better to have a consistent naming scheme. These are the desired results of the intentions. They’re deliberately vague, to represent that this is, in fact, a process; I’ll never be done improving. I can’t just get to 180 pounds, say, and decide that okay, I’m done that agenda item; by keeping my desires nebulous, I’m reminding myself to keep moving forward.

As a result of my intentions, I want to

• feel healthier, lighter, and more active;
• improve my skill in things I actually enjoy doing;
• be generally happier with myself and my life; and
• help my family be happier with me and with their lives.

Milestones

These are concrete, but they’re not goals; a goal implies an endpoint. Rather, they’re signals that I’m moving ahead in my intentions and achieving my desires.

In the pursuit of my intentions and desires, I want to

• release a Flash game;
• finish 10,000 words on a single writing project;
• have someone commission art from me; and
• hold a brief conversation in a modern non-English language.

Your thoughts

Like Havi, I’m practicing asking for what I want.

What I’d like to receive in the comments:

• Your intentions, desires, and milestones.
• Thoughts on how I could start on my intentions.
• General support.

What I don’t want:

• To quote Havi, practical concerns (“you realize you need X because…”).
• Negative thoughts.
• Shoulds.
• Judgment.
• Non-productive “advice”.

Thanks for reading!

i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires

but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself

- Don Marquis, The Lesson of the Moth

I sit on the horns of a dilemma.

On the one hand, I want to write a blog that provides actual value and has readers who are there for the content.

On the other hand, I want a place to talk about the issues I’m dealing with.

Lost In Translation is, sadly, kind of a middle ground, and suffering for it. On the one hand, I feel somewhat safe talking about my issues here, because frankly, I don’t have a lot of readers and so I’m relatively insulated from shoe-throwing. On the other hand, I feel like I should be providing value with my blog, and so I tone down the discussion of issues (and often don’t discuss them at all). On the gripping hand, I never post any content that’s not All About Me because I feel like anyone who came here, saw that, and then went back into the archives and saw just me and my subscription would be disappointed and frustrated.

And yet I don’t really want to start Yet Another Blog, because it’s already hard enough keeping up with two.

Back to the horns for now.

I’ve been staring at this blank pagetext-entry box all day – seriously, I opened the tab at 8:45 AM and haven’t closed it since – and I can’t start writing because I’m scared that I’ll write the wrong thing or say it in the wrong way.

The irony of this will become apparent in a moment.

I’ve been struggling with a lack of motivation for years. In the best-case scenarios, I get projects started but I can’t get them finished, except for the most trivial tasks like washing dishes. Most of the time, my ideas don’t even make it off the drawing board, and it’s not for lack of quality of the ideas – it’s that I just can’t get going on them. For a long time, I thought it was related to fear of failure – but I don’t so much fear failure as expect it. A while back, one friend suggested that it was fear of success, that I was sabotaging myself because I was scared of what would happen if I followed through. But I don’t think that’s it either – I yearn for success. I actively want to be successful.

I think what’s actually happening is that I’m afraid of the process.

I’m afraid that I’ll screw it up – not that the end result will be bad, but that my method for getting to the end result will be bad. I’ll do something wrong and the whole thing will have been for naught and everyone will laugh at me, or I’ll leave a step out, or I’ll go with an outmoded model of how things are to be done and not realize it. It’s not about trying and failing – it’s about trying wrong.

Which is why this post has been so hard to write. What if I’m doing it wrong? What if there’s a Right Way to write posts like this and I don’t know about it? What if…

Hey, nobody said fears have to be rational.

Anyway. At this point I feel like one of those stereotypical City Slickers who shows up for a safari with three suitcases full of everything they could ever possibly need, plus additional stuff strapped on just in case. What I need is to convince myself that moving forward is more important than knowing the map perfectly. That’s not to say that I’m going to strike out completely unprepared – but I need to figure out that I don’t need to be prepared for every eventuality either. Most of the time, there aren’t actually any tigers anyway.