I want to start a new chapter in my blogging practice with a piece of writing that has been forming in my head for a while now. I believe it can describe the state that many creatives (me included) go through, at different moments of their lives:
I will call it “The New Notebook Syndrome”.
To understand this analogy, imagine a cool, beautifully designed, brand new notebook.
Which you purchase in order to write down your great ideas. And oh boy, you have loads of them. But months later, it is still crispy clean and empty. Full of unused potential.
And you continue on keeping it clean.
Because no idea seems good enough to write it down.
All of those things that come to your mind seem shallow and immature the moment you take a pen and plan to write it down. And the time passes, and the promising ideas get forgotten, and you wait for the new ones to come, just to forget them all over again.
In my case this “syndrome” is caused by an “A” Student Complex. Brought by the system that raises you in the belief that nomistake should be made in the process.
As a child, I was very excited about studying. Funnily enough it wasarithmetic operations and writing short stories that was a big part of my spare hours entertainment as a 6 years old.
I couldn’t be more excited of going to school.
But as soon as it started, my teachers and the system have paid less attention to my eagerness and more attention to the fact that I was a very messy writer.
I could understand the grammar or see the way that maths worked, but I was surely going to make a mess while working on it. And so, according to the post-soviet system I happened to grow up and study in, my grades where never good, because of the mistakes I used to do while working.
I remember watching cartoons, and seeing that the kids in the U.S usedpencils instead of pens while studying and it was something that made me extremely jealous. The ability to erase the mistakes that came during the process, so that no mess overshadows the correct results. And that is the mistake of the system that raises people like me. Scared to start, believing that they will mess up along the way.
This human pattern is not only common among the creatives, it is universal. But instead of “The New Notebook Syndrome”, it is “New Year Resolution Syndrome ” or “I Will Start Next Monday Syndrome ” or simply “Not Today” that is a major problem that affects the population of the whole world.
We stop ourselves before we even begin, because of the ultimate fear of messing up, and if we mess up, than “what’s the point in doing it?”
The “If you do something, do it right” might have had all the best intentions, but it might have been wildly misinterpreted along the way.
And for me, today is the day that I will break my pattern, and do all thosethings that I was putting away for far too long.
– Posting this post, in order to continue practicing my writing and analytical skills.
– Finally starting to use a “Not So New, but Empty Notebook”.
– Using this casual Wednesday to start sports routine, (instead of pretending that another day of the week, such as Monday, is more appropriate to start anything at all.)
And I will start this challenge for myself and do this for the 21 days ( or 22, or 20, or whatever it takes) and if one of these days I mess up, and I don’t deliver on my promises, I will just continue were I left it the next day, and the day after and so on, until it just becomes an unquestionable routine.
The Trend Nomad 