I had this weird super productive, full of epiphany kind of day today. Obviously, it was productive if the blog is posting on time, which it has been having it’s ups and downs lately (if you noticed), but today, as I was thinking about the idea of commitment, I got to really thinking about my life and my past.
I have major issues with commitment. And it’s not that I’m not capable of commitment. I am. It’s just that I have a hard time committing to things that I’m not 100% in love with. Jobs, people, ideas… they all fall into the category of things I’ve had a hard time committing too.
I would like to say that there is some underlying psychological reason that I have figured out, but I guess if I could figure out why people are so afraid of committing or lack the ability to, I’d be famous or at least have one viral blog out in the cyber world. Because I know all the “regular reasons.” People don’t commit because they feel vulnerable, they think they will lose their freedom in some way, they don’t have the time to do it, they tried it before and it didn’t work out, they feel trapped and my personal favorite and probably the one that hits closest to home if I had to pick a reason at all is that people have unrealistic expectations. They want everything to be perfect and they walk when it isn’t.
I actually relate to that last one a lot. I do want everything to be perfect. But not in the sense of “everything has to be absolutely perfect with nothing amiss ever.” I just want things to be perfect for me. For instance, I want to love what I do for money (which I do), I want to love who I am spending time with if I’m going to spend time with someone, and I want to be fully committed to an idea because it hits my heart just the right way. So I guess to say that I have fear of commitment may not be the right term. Maybe I just have fear of committing to mediocrity.
And it seems like the world is run on mediocrity. Everybody claims to be great and then they are terribly disappointing. But it hasn’t turned me into a cynic or anything. It’s just turned me into a cautious observer. But when I find something that does pull at my heartstrings and doesn’t scream bullshit, I’m more than willing to commit to it full force.
My friend Samantha used to say that as long as I wasn’t bored I was overly committed. But as soon as I had a few moments to twiddle my thumbs or question a motive, I could find a reason to let go. And I think letting go is a gift and a curse in its own right. Some people don’t know how to do that well and some of us know how to do it too well, but that is a topic for another day.
My point is, I’ve been thinking about this idea of commitment and how I’ve committed to being a writer. That’s one of the ways I identify myself. That’s what makes me happy. Which leads me to my issue: I’m still working for someone else. I’m still helping someone else make their dream happen while mine sits on the backburner.
I was committed to writing for a living, but I wasn’t committed to making myself known for writing for a living.
And it’s not that I want the notoriety or the fame. I don’t really care about that, but if I was writing for myself, I’d likely be making 5 times more than I make writing for someone else. So I’ve been questioning what do I need to do to get to a point where I am satisfied all the way around? And that’s how I got to commitment.
I was working on some articles about commitment today. And I write this inspirational stuff that is meant to help people kind of get their shit together, which is a little ironic considering I’m not so sure how together my shit is, but I got to reading the articles I was writing and I thought to myself, “shit… this is really good advice.” As is the way with humans, we rarely take our own advice, but since I was reading it from a reader’s perspective and not from the perspective of “I just wrote this” something kind of kicked in and I decided I need to commit to my own writing more. Not because I don’t love what I’m doing. I absolutely do.
Even if I had a million dollars in my account when I woke up tomorrow, I would still keep doing the gig I have (at least until the end of the year and then I would quit so I could go travel the world and write about all the fun and stupid things I was squandering my fortune on). But I need to commit to my writing more on a daily basis. Sometimes I’m so creatively bummed when I “clock out” that I don’t want to think about writing anything else. And sometimes I just don’t have shit to write besides this little blog, but today, while I was researching, I found a website that pays you to write blogs and your rate is dependent on how viral the blog goes and you get to write under your own name and you get to pick the topics. and I love the idea of that. See where I’m going with this? I love the idea so much I think I can commit to it. I don’t really plan on becoming a household name, nor do I care to, but I would like people who are also writers and bloggers to maybe know my name and love me (or hate me).
So I’ve committed to submitting one blog a week to some other forum for money. And 10 hours a week to my own writing (that is not blog writing) so I can get back in my own creative bubble.
Now I just need to work on this whole time management issue (also a topic for another day).
RouletteWeekend 