Just skip to the end to see my conclusion.
I cannot define myself any longer by what I intend to be, but by what I have been. So much of what I have been publicly is a burst of energy then a decline and plateau. If I am what I do, then the story of my life is becoming a story of inception & abandonment, particularly when it comes to anything meant for the public eye. My propensity to hide, my apparent need for privacy cripples progress in a myriad of arenas in my life. (This obstacle is one I’ve come back to time and again over the years now, and still have yet to overcome.) I start things then stop. I record & document, but don’t complete & publish. I’ve been consistent in private—in journals, in building my time tracking app & Scythe matrix (a private project), in studying & consolidating—but not in public. Why.
Maybe it’s shame and my own self-judgement that keep me stifled. I’m not proud of parts of my life. I don’t want them on display. This need to either scrub those parts from my presentation of myself, or wait until my self meets the standards I’ve set for what I want to be deters quick creation.
Maybe my privacy isn’t an obstacle to overcome, but a strategy to persevere. Right now I believe my financial independence depends on my hiding myself. The truth of who I am and where I spend my time—on creative work—could threaten the stability of my current employment.
Maybe I am making consistent progress, but the mountain I’ve set myself to climb is so vast that what progress I’ve made seems insignificant compared to the goal. My ultimate goal—and the one I structure the subsidiary goals of my life around and judge myself on—is to become OllO: an ideal I’ve defined in private, but in essence stands for a world-class creator.
Maybe I’m not considering the progress I’ve made in silence, and thus unfairly judging what I am. If I am what I do then maybe at this juncture it’s fair to say I am a silent creator.
Maybe there is no problem. Maybe judgement itself is the issue. The nature of this purported ‘obstacle’ is established on an arbitrary assumption of what is good and bad. Without that implied framework of good and bad the ‘problem’ ceases to exist. That would be the non-violent answer.
I am what I do, not what I judge myself to be. I do create, I do build, even if in silence for now. I want to create more publicly. Whether I do it is what I am.