I Don't Want it Bad Enough

(Edit: friend and fellow blogger Simon wrote a post responding to this one, suggesting that what I lack is not desire, but determination.)

There are a lot of incompleted and failed projects in my life. For all the impressive things I have done, countless others have fallen by the wayside. I come up with all these plans and thoughts and stuff, but ultimately nothing comes out of it. Why? I think it's simply because I don't want it bad enough.

I've always been told that if I came up with smart goals, planned stuff out, and worked at things a little bit every day, I could accomplish anything. It sounds nice, it sounds true, but I'm beginning to think it isn't. There's another element involved, one that you can't pencil in: desire.

I'm very good at planning, scheduling, coming up with to-do lists and short term goals. I do it a lot in my free time. But the weird part is, most of the things I plan to do, never get done. There are so many things I want to do:

• I want to finish my coding projects on my website.
• I want to become a published novelist.
• I want a short story to be published in a magazine of some kind.
• I want to become a successful freelancer.
• I want to learn about church history and the Roman Empire, post-Julius Caesar.
• I want to build awesome things in Minecraft.
• Etc...

To accomplish these things I've gone through my usual routine of planning and goal-setting. But this has mostly failed. All because while they interested me and seemed cool, once I got into the details of making them happen, I discovered I didn't want it that much. Indeed I could say that about so many things. I like it, I want it, but not bad enough.

Perhaps this is the cause of so much frustration. I set up a plan to do something and give up after a few days or weeks. I take all the steps to be successful. Yet in the end, my heart just isn't in it. 

I don't give much attention to my emotions. Maybe this is one of those times I should. If I don't really want to do something, then I won't if I don't need to. I'm proud of my ability to be productive. When nothing is terribly interesting to me, I can't be productive. Hence the frustration.

I'm not sure there's anything I can do about this. I can't stir interest in something that doesn't interest me. I can't make myself love anything. At least, not in any way I know. It's just one of those things I need to learn to work with. Be nicer to myself when I'm not putting every minute of my time to good use. Realize that sitting on the computer is OK, because it's not like I can bring myself to do anything meaningful anyway.