Trying too hard to make things real
Also: "Idlewild" - Happily stranded
I’ve spent more than twelve thousand dollars on things that didn’t turn out the way I expected them to.
Over $12,000 USD. In less than 3 years. Wasted.1
Most of those things ended up being sinking holes of time + energy I’d had to abandon, resulting in net negatives beyond the dollar amounts I’d paid upfront. Many of them were straight-up unnecessary, stupid, or both.
Here are just a few:
$1500 into dropshipping (ended up closing the stores)
$8500 into a trailer I hoped to turn into a tiny house (then gave it away for a handful of earring after a year or two — my ears aren’t even pierced)
$1500 into paid ads (resulting in exactly 0 leads so far)
Internet trends would be my downfall someday, if I keep chasing mirages like this. But it’s fun, in some ways. And I kept going after them.
So, I end up rolling with the punches one after another, not realizing that I could (and had better) throw a few punches of my own to end the meaningless fight, or even that it takes time + wisdom to pause and let the bruises heal now and then.
Sometimes I wonder if having a larger income would help. Or being more thoughtful with my spending. Or doing more research on a new idea before taking action. Or asking people for advice.
You know, do things a smarter person would do to force my immature, naïve self to grow up and actually contribute to the living of a “good life.”
All good ideas, probably.
But I think it goes a little deeper than that for me.
I’m driven to do things with ideas.
I plan, source, and create almost compulsively — as if I’m always on the ideate-design-build-revise cycle with each new thing that’s just grabbed my attention.
Which is dangerous, because I simply cannot stop having new ideas, seeing new perspectives, or find something fascinating. Even if it’s something as weird as a warm ginger boba drink, a social media platform for creators without any accounts or likes or comments, or customized keyboards that sound like water boiling.
I. Simply. Do. Not. Stop. Dreaming.
If you’ve read my work before, you’re aware of how I rarely take thoughts and emotions at face-value, always tearing things apart to understand and see them in all their complexity. (That’s why my method of handling ideas, notes, and bits of inspiration needs some serious attention — it’s not as effective + powerful as it could be, which I realized after checking out this site.)
But something strange happens when a given idea has the potential to become tangible.
In other words: if taking action is possible, the level of thinking I’ve just described above gets short-circuited. It goes on a temporary holiday, severing all hopes of contact by planting an assumption so deeply into my mind I've not realized until this month.
And it’s this: The only way to truly understand [insert new cool thing] is to live it out.2
Which may be true. But not always advisable. At least not for everything one thinks of or comes across online.
Still, this thirst to not just know about something, but to fully understand it — to actually purchase and (try to) remodel a trailer instead of simply admiring the tiny house channels on YouTube or spend money + days on Shopify because some online guru makes a million dollars a month dropshipping — is now surfacing as one of the key reasons why I don’t seem able to wise up and stop making stupid decisions.
The argument can be made, of course, that this approach is the stuff of which epic stories and eventual success is made; that one can never succeed if one never begins or is afraid of failure; or even that, sure, losing money is not a good thing but the experiences, understanding, and self-knowledge gained from such mistakes in one’s early 20s are valuable in themselves. (And that you can always make more money later, but that you would never be this young again. Which is true enough.)
The trouble is that these mistakes, instead of making me more wary and careful, are hardening me to financial losses to the extent where I sometimes don’t even try to make the best decision in a given situation. Knowing I’ve gone through something worse, something bigger makes the current mistakes seem less significant. It’s like I don’t think, feel, or learn from them as much as I “should.” I just get up, dust myself off, look at what’s left in my wallet, decide whether to try again or do something else, and throw myself (and another couple thousand) into that thing.
I don’t make mistakes — my mistakes make me.
— “These Days”
But the mistakes do hurt. If not the people around me or my financial stability, my ego and heart take a beating each time something doesn’t go the way I’d wanted, expected, or in some cases needed them to. Often that’s when I try harder, plan more, buy more — that kind of thing.
And then something else happens.
The harder I try to get somewhere, the deeper I fall into a hole I’ve been digging for myself.
And to add insult to injury, around the same time something else in life works beautifully without any direct effort or investment on my part — a stranger reaches out to me and helps me with something for free, a few more students sign up for my workshops out of the blue, a friend lends me her spinning wheel for free.
Maybe I’m trying too hard to bring my ideas in to reality. Maybe I could just keep doing what I’m already doing, note down all random thoughts, run little (and not-so-expensive) experiments on ideas that fascinate me, and watch things happen without forcing them. Maybe all that excessive effort and investment is what’s turning my dreams into mirages.
And maybe I didn’t need to self-lacerate publicly at this level…but it’s too late anyways.
Well, I hope it’s at least been an entertaining read!
Dream on, my friend.
Odelia
P.S. Yes, the songs are somewhat out of context. But I like them. And I also like adding sounds into things.
Quote for the week
Something that impacted me in some way the past week, and think is worth sharing.
“Good design is usable.
Great design challenges.Good design solves problems.
Great design enriches the soul.Good design optimizes.
Great design discovers.Good design is for all.
Great design is for you.When you're done with Good… aim for Great.”
— Taken from “Good vs. Great”
This week’s word: “Idlewild”
Since the start of 2024, I’ve begun a project of writing 7 poems each week, using for my prompt an entry from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig. I share the best from said project in this section.
idlewild
adj. feeling grateful to be stranded in a place where you can’t do much of anything—sitting for hours at an airport gate, the sleeper car of a train, or the backseat of a van on a long road trip—which temporarily alleviates the burden of being able to do anything at any time and frees up your brain to do whatever it wants to do, even if it’s just to flicker your eyes across the passing landscape.
(From Idlewild, the original name of John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City.)
*** No phone, no pen or paper To fiddle with, clutter my thoughts, Or draw my eyes away from this present - The pause between this activity And the next. A prison of space Framed through the forced freedom of time Without expectations and to-do's, things That make up my days and my life, Yet take away so much from it. ***
Find me outdoors
Photos and/or thoughts during my off-grid project.
A visual update on a small project I’ve been working on. Turns out I didn’t have enough wool to make the shawl I wanted, so this turned out to be a hood + mini-shawl bit of winter outerwear you wouldn’t find anywhere else.
It’s warm, thick, and a little heavy — exactly how I wanted it.
Some close-ups of the spinning process, spun wool, and the stitching below:
(That’s a 3-string cigar box guitar I made a few years ago, in the bottom right-hand corner — the first thing that came to mind as I was looking for a mannequin. Included here just for fun.)
Give this a peep
Parkour films, anyone? Point A Parkour is a small film studio founded by Max Henry, author of The Parkour Roadmap — still the best practical book on parkour training I’ve come across.
Here’s one of their projects:
Only a matter of perspective, of course.
Due largely, I suspect, to my conscious attempts over the past two years to develop a “bias towards action” approach to opportunities, real or imaginary. Turns out I only have myself to blame for this whole problem, then — surprise, surprise. ;)