I'm not a collector a person who can’t be bothered to throw out empty packs of gum or appointment cards for a haircut that was four months ago, yes, but not by nature a treasurer of valuable or sentimental things.
Ideas are the exception. When I read Gina Barreca’s piece for the Chronicle of Higher Education, I recognized myself. I am indeed an idea hoarder.
I am convinced that the time of these ideas will come. Circumstances will align, the perfect collaborators will appear and I will finally have an unsullied block of time – and the accompanying energy – to devote to a given brainwave. May begin to develop counseling programs that combine international travel and encourage people to take more risks.. I might finally, finally submit that book proposal about battling your quarter-life crisis and winning. Someday. Maybe?
These unexecuted plans and projects are a security blanket. They make us feel creative and inspired and purposeful. Ideas represent potential. They represent opportunities and alternate futures and hypothetical riches and a better state of being. Giving up these ideas means giving up all of the hope we attach to them. It feels like giving up on yourself as a doer and not just a dreamer.
But the longer I hold onto these scraps of half-baked plans, the worse I feel. When I see someone else celebrating a book deal when I’ve yet to start contacting agents, or thinking joint ventures that started out hot and heavy only to fizzle When both sides are at the end of their day-to-day work, I feel like a failure. Sure, I’ve accomplished other things in the interim, but those pale in comparison to what-might-have beens that didn’t happen.
I have to let go and so do you. I’ve been stocking ideas because I’m afraid I won’t ever have another good one and because I’ve been too stubborn to admit that I’m simply not cut out for some of the things my brain dreams up. I turn off new inspiration (which will come; they always do) and I’m also associating creativity with disappointment and failure (I could have done x, but I didn’t). By leaving the old ideas and plans, you also start to separate yourself from the weighty guilt that comes from being confronted with unrealized ambitions in the form of others’ successes. You can stop trying to turn yourself into action at any time. Admit that an idea is good and requires a lot of power, you don’t feel called to pursue it strongly enough that you’re willing to invest the resources required to bring it to fruition. There’s no shame in making new priorities.
But that book proposal? Oh, that will get done.
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