On Ideas of Things

There are several things of which I like the idea. Exercising, reading, skydiving. But the likelihood I’ll do any of them in real life is never as high as I would like it to be – especially skydiving, but we’ll get there one day. In fact, frustratingly, I like the idea of following through with ideas. The first reason that comes to mind of why I don’t tend to take ideas further than the surface of my conscious is how vague I apparently enjoy being. As soon as I give the idea any further examination, stretching it one step further into what doing it would actually look like, the glamour and appeal surrounding it fade quietly into the background. At that stage, I can either continue with this idea I now have far less faith in, or I can put it out of my mind and do nothing. No points for guessing which route I usually end up taking. This unconscious glamourizing and its decay is something that plagues me further into practicality, though. It manifests as my conjuring an idea of an experience so incredible, there’s no way reality could live up to it, or an idea so unappealing I regret each step I take in its direction; this latter example normally ends in me quitting it entirely.

I rarely delve into my own hindsight to put these expectations in the context of their realities, but doing so is a valuable chance to draw my thinking into question. Comparing the unreasonable idea I’d convinced myself would be a spitting image of a trip or experience, to what ended up happening, can be an almost painfully accurate distillation of my particular emotional mindset at the time. I almost never reach those aforementioned opposite conclusions based significantly on facts or actual details, but instead on what the prospect of me pursuing this idea makes me feel, a concept which is almost constantly changing. The responses, as I think I understand it, are pure excitement, lukewarm uneasiness and ‘stay the hell away’ vibes. It is very helpful for me to be writing this down, because it forces me to take myself through my instinctual thought process and not only look into it, but also poke any deserved holes. The only ‘hole’, I’d say, is how ambiguous that middle uneasiness tends to be, which as a result, makes it my most popular conclusion. And how do I deal with the uneasiness? Yes, dear reader, I quit. Easy option all the way.

I need to learn how to unpack that feeling of disquiet, and the others I mentioned, more clearly. Attaching those emotions to tangible reasons and details could produce answers that would help streamline the decision-making process I employ to pursue an idea. For too long I’ve trusted these gut feelings blindly and regularly, and the results they’ve garnered have been inconsistent at best. Not to trample on the whole system I seem to have put in place, but I am currently operating according to the evolutionary playbook, which isn’t exactly what I should be emulating in this situation. That is, to say, finding what meets the minimum requirements to ‘work’, rather than seeking to actively thrive. So, I like the idea of committing to change how I decide some things, now I just need to look further into the ‘how’.