Not Starting Over, Transforming - Starting in the Middle
I am not starting over, I am transforming.
The blank page for writers, the empty canvas for painters - a thing both loathed and freeing. Nothing has been done yet, no path committed to, no mistakes to work around, complete freedom, no boundaries, a new beginning. It is hard to find an idea here at times, but easier to start working on it (if you can get past making the first mark). It feels less common to hear about creativity in other spaces, beginning in other times. Instead there is this idea of moving linearly from blank canvas > idea > outcome with little acknowledgement of how the process can change in the middle.
I have been putting off starting this writing project because I keep looking for the perfect beginning, that do over button or a blank canvas, but there is no such thing for me. There is no erasing or denying what has come before, how what I know about myself and what I am currently curious about inform what comes next. So I am starting in the middle, that place so often overlooked or quickly sped away from in narratives around "getting organized" or "starting something." I am starting here because 1. It lets me actually get started, 2. The majority of the time spent on a project can be classified as "the middle" 3. I believe in transforming - not transformation, transforming. To dig into these a bit more in turn:
1. It Lets Me get Started
- The classic problem of starting new habits is the urge to wait until the perfect conditions materialize. Until work has calmed down, until Monday, until the next moon cycle, until the new year, until, until, until... Until what? This is the habit version of decision paralysis and the commitment issues of the blank page/canvas situation. If one doesn't start, one hasn't made a mistake yet. More than that though, beginning in the middle embraces the reality of now, it doesn't make me wait until I have things controlled and organized, it lets me show up as human. I get to show up as I am now instead of waiting for some future point where I have "fixed" things to some 100% controlled and consistent degree.
- If I start now, I can just go, which lets me actually move instead of being held in permanent stasis.
2. Most of the Time Spent is In "the Middle"
- One thing I noticed when I started making larger knitting projects is that I was always excited to start - and that this enthusiasm lasted for the first 25% of the project - and to finish a project - the last 25%. At these stages, progress is often more visible and feels like it is happening faster because I can double the knitting on my needles in a shockingly short period of time or am getting visibly close to being done. Going from 2 rows to 4 is a lot easier to see than going from 50 to 52, as are casting off or weaving in ends. It is all about proportions. This means that I spend at least half of my time in the middle - where visible progress feels hard or impossible to see. The same is true for organizing projects - I can take all of my clothes out of my closet, pull all of my papers together, make lists of what types of categories I want to sort things into, whatever it is, and I can close my closet, sort the last 2 pages. These stages often feel freeing and I get the endorphin rush of "making progress" and seeing things come together.
- When the visual progress slows down, a knitted row feels small, a paper filed doesn't diminish the pile of things to sort that started out feeling manageable and now feels mountainous, it is easy to lose the enthusiasm I had at the beginning. Instead of seeing the big picture, my field of vision is pulled into the tiny details: Did I do this stitch right? Does a commitment belong on my professional calendar or my social calendar? Do I really need this PDF from a class three years ago? What did past me mean when they created a folder called "to read?" What goes in there? This can feel tedious - so much effort and time for, what feels like, little to no progress. Others might say this is where the real "work" begins, but to get more specific, I would say that this is where commitment and devotion take center stage. Commitment and devotion not to specific outcomes (a set knitted project, a single vision of what my digital file system could look like, a perfect calendar system), but to a process.
3. Transforming, not Transformation
- One of the hardest things for me to realize as a kid was that there were somethings that were never "done." I was never "done" with homework because more was always coming tomorrow and seeing that reflected in the adults around me with their own work and tasks, was honestly crushing. I kept hoping I could just cross things off of my list and then enjoy the rest of the day and not worry about anything, but this never really came. This goes back to my first point about getting started - not waiting for the perfect time because nothing is ever set and stable forever (we will get into this more some other time, but it comes down to being stable "enough"). I had to learn to accept that for a lot of things, there is not set end point but rather a moving goal. This felt crushing, like I could never celebrate success because success or "arriving" always felt like it was just out of reach. And this is where I say the process is the point, like many others before me who talk about the journey, rather than the destination.
- I think it is more nuanced than that though - it is about trying to find enough of an end point to finish a stage of a project so I can celebrate that and evaluate where I want to be next. It is a "both and" situation, as in I hope to embrace both an end and that I am still in process. I don't have to wait to have everything figured; I can celebrate what I have already achieved and then plot what experiments to try next. I have not reached the end of my transformation because I am still alive, I am still having experiences that affect how I see and move through the world, I am constantly transforming. Instead of going from a static caterpillar > chyrsallis > butterfly, I can embody each stage at the same time. Something is always ending, other things just starting, and still others exist somewhere in between. I am used to acknowledging endings and beginnings, births and deaths, but not so much recognizing and appreciating the middle, the spaces between the "before" and "after" photos or testimonies. This is me embracing the middle. This is me embracing the chyrsallis - the goo phase.
So I am starting here, not with an overview of where I have been, not with a set vision of where I am going, but where I am now - which is figuring this stuff out. I am embracing the dissolving of my past self - not into nothing - but into the goo that will transform into what is next. I am not erasing what has come before but composting - sorting, tending and turning over - to breakdown things into their elements to recombine them into something new.
It is harder to sit and sort through things than it is to chuck them all out and claim to start from nothing. I don't want to ignore my previous experiences, they taught me so much, but now I need to sift through to see what lessons/insights are still relevant and which need to be let go of to make space for something new. This process is awkward and I kept putting it off to avoid that feeling, but I have decided to try to move forward by admitting the process is unclear and at times seems messy in order to actually give myself space to breakout of the stasis and move in a new direction.
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