Wow, I haven’t posted in about a week or so.

If you were wondering where I was and if I was OK, well, yes, I am OK and I was… everywhere and nowhere.

It seems last time I wrote here I sort of unleashed some monster that I had been keeping locked for a while, once I voiced the worries about running out of content and not being interesting and all that, it seems I gave the monster a voice and it decided to keep whispering in my ear that it was true, that I had ran out of content and that I should stop bothering people who don’t want to hear about me. Even if that wasn’t entirely true. I’ve started a few posts, but wasn’t feeling them.

The past few weeks have been interesting for me. I’m really excited about some things going on, and I’ve grown disenchanted with others. Again, this was something I wasn’t aware of, until recently. Lately I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and some of it has been very beneficial, whilst other bits of it have been quite toxic for me. More on this topic at some point.

However, as the phoenix is reborn from its ashes, so am I.

So, how am I going to get back on my feet?

Well, I think the key point for me is sticking to the schedule. That’s what I find the most difficult because, well, life happens. Everyone who knows me knows that I’m the project starter. I always have a million ideas and projects that I want to make. Pity my hands can’t move and create as fast as my mind, so by the time I’m starting on a project, my mind is already interested on the next one. It’s very difficult for me to focus on long term projects because, well, I don’t get bored, but I want to do so many more things… Once I embark on a new project, I make these promises to myself: I’m going to finish it, I’m going to work on it weekly, or daily, or every 3 days… And at some point, many projects get relegated to the back of a drawer, or lay around my living room. I can’t follow a plan or a schedule. I need to spice things up so as to battle monotony, because my natural personality has a strong tendency to doing nothing and falling into monotony, which I hate but I can’t seem to fight. So, I have many hobbies that I snack on from time to time, rotating in between all of them.

I see all these industrious people who work and bake and cook and sew and knit, and I wonder how they manage to do it all. The only answer I can think of is organisation. Well, I can also think they don’t sleep and mainly live on Redbull and coke, but I refuse to believe that’s the case. I can improve my organisation, but won’t live on Redbull and coke!

So to combat my lack of organisation skills, I decided to create a big planner to hang from the wall, so I could always see what I had in the pipeline. Unfortunately, I fell victim to my own curse and the board is still stored between my desk and the wall, unused. Failed before I even started!

At the moment, as I mentioned before, I am working on a jumper. This weekend I managed to catch up with the work, and I have the whole back finished now, and part of the front. If I keep knitting everyday and keep a good rhythm, I am confident I will be able to finish it, but while I’m knitting the jumper, I keep thinking about the scarf I have half done. When I take a break, I think about the knitting needle case I want to make, or the tote bag, or the cushion; and I say to myself: just one more row, only one and that row happens to be a purl one, and I hate them because I’m so slow, so I can’t finish the day on a purl row, I have to make a knit one. And, you know, maybe I could just do a bit more, c’mon? And so it goes, I keep bribing myself, and begging, and pushing and blackmailing to finish, because I’m a starter, not a finisher.

I’ve always started many things and finished few. I think that’s what scares me about the novel… I think that’s why I’m dragging it, only writing in November. I think I’m too scared of finishing it, because once I finish it, then what? What am I supposed to do with it? Publish it? Sure but let’s be honest, who wants to read it?

I think, in any project I start, there comes a moment when I hit a wall, much like the runners wall, when I suddenly think it’s not good enough so I decide to stop. Sure, in order to improve, I need to keep working on it, and practising, but my brain decides that the fear of failing is too great. After all, if I never finish it, I will never know whether it was good or not. It bothers me, because that’s the coward’s choice. Once again, I left the cage open and the monster got free and started whispering in my ear again.

That’s one of the traits I’m trying to change this year. Surely signing up for the half marathon in April will help. To keep myself into the running schedule, I’ve decided that I’ll put £1 in a jar for each kilometre I run. So far, so good.

Also, I’ve decided to finish the novel this November, no matter what, I won’t be writing on it after the 30th November 2013. Hopefully, I’ll finish it and then I can revise and proof read it, but I can’t be stuck on a yearly task forever, so this is it. I want to start a new project on next NaNoWriMo.

Anyway, all this is basically to try to explain myself, to give you the excuses I normally tell myself when I leave stuff half done, to show you a bit of my fear of failing and rejection… to explain why you haven’t seen me much lately.

They say the first step to recovery is to admit there’s an issue, well, there it is, out loud: I have an issue with finishing stuff. I think it’s related to closure and moving on (more on those topics soon), and a fear of failing (also more on this topic soon), but I really want to work on it and improve, so if you have any tips, I would be interested on hearing them.