Screw Work Let’s Play have a new challenge that terrifies me. I first heard about it last week on Scanners Night, where I was excited about setting up my new Website Design firm and sat on the edge of my seat listening to Selina Barker talk about her location independant lifestyle. Now I’m slumped in bed feeling sorry for myself because the idea of doing something depresses me because I can’t bring myself to work on anything for more than what I’m calling “chapter one”.

When I was at school, I would work on a lot of short stories, but would frustrate my English teacher and my parents endlessly because I never wrote more than one chapter. Hundreds of word documents entitled “chapter one” would sit on my harddrive. My mum, to this day, refuses to read anything I write until it’s finished. Which is a real pain, because I can’t actually find it in myself to finish anything.
And it’s the same with everything I start doing: I can’t push past the beginning phase. Although every story I’ve ever written has never gotten past “chapter one”, most of my stories have been fleshed out, and I know what the beginning middle and end are when it comes to writing it. It just sort of stops once chapter one is written. It’s not like there’s a glass ceiling, it’s more like… the urge to write anything just stops. If I could write a list of all the things I’d want to do, that thing would be at the bottom of the list. I want to want to do it, but… I don’t. All the time management courses, advice and guidence in the world hasn’t helped, because hey, once “chapter one” is over, it’s basically finished for me.

An unfinished picture here, a first chapter of a story, the scraps of a business there. The only things I feel 100% comfortable with are open ended projects, like… the bunny on your head project I’m doing, where I take a photograph of my plushie rabbit Bunny on peoples heads to myself people to stop taking me, and creative projects, so seriously, because even though I’ve set myself a goal of 100, it’s not really going to stop at 100. And if you asked me to start a project, any project at all, but I could give it to someone else once the basic beginning of it is fleshed out, that’d be fine, I’d be great at that. But don’t ask me to finish anything, or I’ll have a nervous breakdown after I’m done with the basic outline. Let me oversee the creative work while it’s being completed, I’ll keep you on track… but don’t give it to me to do. It won’t get done.

And the sad thing now is, I don’t trust myself to start anything anymore because I’m disappointed before I even start. I know not to get my hopes up because, what’s the point in that? Even re-reading “What do you want to do if you want to do everything?” isn’t helping, because I can’t honestly see anything that I’m going to see through past “chapter one” (not of the book, of whatever it is the lovely Barbara Sher is trying to help get out of me.) I’m scared of trying the Screw Work Lets Play 30 day Challenge because I don’t think I’ll get past ‘day one’ of my idea.

Not that I can pick one to work on anyway.