Blogmas Day 16 - What else is there to say?
"A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind." - Antoine St. Exupery
I have a Notion page called Graveyard where every half executed, abandoned idea, project, or piece of writing lives. Over the last 6 years, this page has seen me return to it time and time again to add more crude ideas and projects that now feel too expired to act on. It’s usually around this time of year where I begin to think about all the places I would be or opportunities I would have found had I just continued.
Continued past the bouts of writer's block. Continued despite feeling unprepared and under educated. Continued just because I wanted to see what was possible.
I’ll be the first to admit that a lot of my abandoned projects got left behind because I got caught up looking at other people doing the same thing at a more advanced stage and talked myself out of even trying to carve out space for myself. ‘What else could I possibly add?’ It's the question that is constantly circling my head like cartoon birds.
How dumb is that?! Can you imagine what life would be like if people who have the talent and resources to make something let that question stop them? We would probably be stuck with exactly one of everything and that would be so boring.
As I look back on some of these ideas that I’ve laid to rest, I can’t help but wonder about why I didn’t just delete the scraps instead of archiving them like museum artifacts. Part of me thinks it because I’m a little bit of a hoarder and I don’t really care to get rid of anything whether it’s physical or digital. The other part of me thinks it’s because somewhere in the heap of ideas, there’s something or a collection of things that can be salvaged and repurposed. Maybe among the dirt there are seeds that are finally ready to be planted and fertilized now that I’m a little older/smarter/patient.
If there’s a project or piece of art or writing that you can’t seem to stop thinking about or don’t want to get rid of, maybe give it another look. You might have finally become the person that can bring it into the world.
Bye for now!
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