Too many ideas

The art of ideating and starting, but not finishing, new projects.

Well, I’ve started something new. Again.

I don’t know why I’m like this.

I get an idea in my head, and think to myself “I better claim all the handles, email addresses, domains etc. etc.”.

I mock up branding for it. I create a pitch deck. I make my little mini brand guides.

I get like this weird rush of coming up with new ideas and starting them but never actually following through with them. Well, I guess that first part is what I get the rush from. The latter is more of just what tends to happen, eventually. I’ve never gotten a “rush” from not finishing something, obviously.

Actually, you’d think that “not finishing something” is my absolute favorite thing to do.

I LOVE to start new projects. But do I also like not finishing them?

Like this. I haven’t properly blogged, like sat down and written words that just come to my head in so long.

Probably since college?

But even then, it was required blogging for my major. At least we had weekly prompts. Haha. I always found a way to convince my professors to let me do Vlogs instead of blogs. That made it infinitely harder on me, of course. But I loved vlogging. Creating videos. Trying the whole “youtuber” thing. And I was pretty good at it for some time.

But then I stopped vlogging. Kind of out of nowhere, too.

Actually, the last video on that YouTube channel from back then was of me talking about all the vlogging I was going to do that final semester of college. But I didn’t follow through with any of those ideas.

My husband pointed this out to me when we were in Italy for our 5th wedding anniversary…I had gone on and on about my first independent podcast series I’d been doing for a solid 4 years.

With this podcast I’ve curated a modest following of an engaged community of friends across the world. But that trip felt like a definite shift in the content I was wanting to produce for the show, and an end to a chapter.

I had lamented to him about how I saw an end in sight for my podcast, and that once I finished this podcast, I could then focus that creative energy on something new and fun. He, of course, encouraged me to do whatever I wanted with my podcast and stopped to ask “have you ever just finished a project?”

The question was completely fair.

He had been there for most of my ideation of my ongoing projects in college. He was around for the tail-end of my vlogging era. He watched as I birthed a “creative collective” that has been like an on-again-off-again relationship, of sorts, since junior year of college. He saw how hard I worked on this niche podcast that spurred on our trip to Italy, and he encouraged me to potentially find the same passion and energy for some of these other projects.

All of these projects I’ve begun— some with fever, others with gusto, but rarely both— and then I just…stop.

It’s like I hadn’t found any other project that rivaled this podcast, which was a fan-based passion project that is still lingering on without a true ending in sight.

I realized that I don’t finish things. I don’t put a definite period on projects. I simply create them, play with them for a while, then they just kind of float into the ether.

His question led me to a series of other questions.

Why can’t I finish a project that I start? Why do I feel the need to hold on to them like a hanging chad?

Well, what if one day I get my ducks in a row, get medicated for my ADHD, and have a sudden jolt of inspiration for that one brand I dreamed up years ago! What if I win the lottery one day and suddenly have a ton of resources to throw at one of these projects?

Maybe I have too many ideas. Maybe I don’t like not finishing a project, maybe I just like ideating more than creating?

Ideas are easy. Concepts are simple. Anyone can dream.

But creating is work.

I’ve seen the fruits of my labor when it comes to my podcast. I know what it takes. I understand the time and dedication needed to make a true mark with what you create.

Maybe I just haven’t found the idea, yet. The one that will spark a fire inside that’s so impossible to ignore that I have to create, and see it through.

Maybe this feels different because I moved past the dreaded blank page and actually taken the 20 minutes to sit down and write what I am thinking and feeling in this first blog.

Maybe.

Until then, I’ve claimed the domains. I’ve mocked up some branding. I’ve got the email address.

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SIDE NOTE

A few years ago on a New Years trip to Austin, TX, my friend Kris and I found a cute little gift store with all sorts of fun trinkets and books.

While perusing, I found a spirit animal oracle deck for my best friend Emily back home, and also I bought a creative devotional by Julia Cameron for her book The Artist’s Way. It takes excerpts from her companion journal The Morning Pages, her creative exercises of taking some time in the morning and writing anything that comes to mind, and puts it into a 365 day devotional style prompt book.

I’m excited to walk through that devotional again in the new year and practice this writing thing again. Stretching some muscles that I’ve neglected to use for some time.