This daily blogging challenge is hard. Phew. I’ll have to take a long holiday in February. But I am committing to it anyway because for me January is when commitment muscle is built.
Not that I am good at it, mind you.
I committed to a couple of things end of last year. I finished the first draft of my script (it ‘only’ took a year) and I went to a street dance class. But then when it came to step 2 – and in commitment step 2 is a make or break moment – I stalled.
I reread my script and I thought it was rubbish, so yes, advice that you should not develop a script before you run a treatment (couple of pages summary) by a professional, is right.
I never went to the second dance class. Excuses included having too much work, venue being too far, not having professional dance attire, class being expensive and me being rubbish at street dance.
Do you see the theme emerging here?
Am I being plain lazy (erm, it’s very likely) and defeatist, a perfectionist, or am I really rubbish? Do I need to kick myself into action, work on lowering self expectations, accept failure and/ or get a perspective? Or should I indeed save humanity from my story and my moves?
I probably will never know if I don’t get out of my head. What I think I need to do is take that second step anyway and keep ploughing forward until what stops me is not my fears and anxieties and unrealistically high demands on myself, but something more objective – opinion of other people about my script or my dance teacher telling me that I should try something else 🙂
Even then if you stick with it despite everything, you still will advance further than if you give up. So if the script sucks, I will rewrite it heavily. Or write another one. Or stick with another form of writing. If I still do not dance well after a month, I will probably have improved my style anyway. And it’s not like I need to become a pro asap, right?
Whatever you are committing to this week, month or a year, do not give up even if you stalled on step 2. Go back. Own your fears. Don’t buy into excuses. Accept failure. Commit. And do it anyway. Turn that page. Until you are told otherwise, you are going on.