Remember When I Never Finished Anything I Started?
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Back in the old days I would take on a commitment of some sort whether it be with school, work or social and then I would no doubt fall short of what I commited to do because I would talk myself out of it.
Maybe it was going to interfere with me being messed up. Maybe it was because I got messed up the night before and couldn’t drag my lazy ass out of bed. There were many reasons that all had the same conclusion… I never finished anything I started.
This is why still now, a year and a half into my recovery, I am pleasantly surprised when I actually finish something I started. Let me tell you about my latest start to finish.
Around the time that I wrote the post on finding your life’s purpose I was presented with an opportunity to volunteer my time painting faces at a local farm’s 100 year anniversary celebration. Since I had just blogged about being open to different roles in life I decided to try my hand at a new role in life: children’s face painter.
I have always been great at drawing and really interested in art and I soon realized that I was really excited about being able to try this out.
Then it happened. That little voice in my head that tries to tell me that I’m not going to be as good at this as I think I am and that I’m going to end up embarrassing myself starting piping up. I hear this voice less and less these days but wouldn’t you know it… here she was.
I know you’re saying, “Erin, your just volunteering to paint kids faces. What’s the big deal?” The big deal was that when I agreed to do this it just felt so right that I began to wonder if maybe this is an experience I could expand on and actually try doing this as a job. The big deal was that I was going to have to be out there dealing with the public and doing something that I had never done before in my life.
I put a lot of time into practicing and learning everything I could about the best practices of face painting before hand so that I would feel confident. The more I practiced the more I began to realize just how much I loved body art.
That voice in my head thrived on all the hard work I put into this. She was telling me that it was ridiculous of me to think that I could make anything out of face painting. I was wasting my time once again on something that I would never follow through with… because I never follow through with anything.
This time I decided to tell this little voice to eff off. I decided to act as if I had all the confidence in the world about my artistic skills and that I would be able to handle this commitment with calmness and grace and see it out till the end.
Saturday and Sunday came and went without a hitch. Between the two days I volunteered about 7 hours of my time to face painting. There was a steady stream of kids the entire time I was there. I had no breaks in between kids… didn’t even pee.
I loved it and I felt really great about myself for actually doing something that I said I would and seeing it through till the end. I have decided to move forward with trying to turn my interest in body art into a career. I’ll keep you posted on how it’s coming and give you the URL for my site once there is some content on there.
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June 30th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Glad that you did not give in to that negative voice in your head and went through with it and even had so much fun in all of it, Congratulations for that, Erin. I hope whatever plans you have in your mind with this turns out great. Best of luck!
I guess this habit of not finishing what you started is common in most addicts; this is very much there in me as well. I also don’t follow through with anything I have started and I can’t stand this shortcoming in myself anylonger, gonna try what you did in all I do now, keep focus and do things well prepared so that I am confident, thanks for sharing this and thanks for linking to my blog as well, have a great week!!