From the Desk of Vox Humbug – January 17, 2020

I know what is wrong.

I know why I am not a consistent blogger.

I know why all creative ventures I undertake are stillborn.

I lack focus, or specifically to have a specific focus on one thing for an extended period of time.

Here is the typical scenario: I come up with a great creative idea. I work on it for days in my head. I do research, write notes, and prepare to bring my idea to fruition. Then just as I am about to commit pen to paper, something happens. It could be an assignment at work, a matter that needs my attention at home, or another creative idea. It doesn’t matter what happens, but soon that great creative idea is banished to the purgatory of all the projects I start working on and abandon for something else.

It could be keeping up with my blog, keeping up with journaling, improving my writing to where I am confident to create poetry, essays, short stories or a novel.

It could be learning how to draw with pencil, pastels, and ink, or turn a blank canvas into a painting.

It could be vlogging on cooking, my record collection, sports, or creating a documentary on my home state.

I start to pursue them, but they all meet the same fate.

Purgatory.

Many times, I will pick them up after a long time and work on them a little, only to return from whence they came.

I have had many interests throughout my life. In the halcyon days before the internet, I spent hours in the library reading books and learning about anything that interests me.

It is because of this wide array of interests that I could not settle on a career until my early thirties, when I settled on engineering. It was a choice I will never regret, but I did take the long way around.

But as the Third Doctor said, “A straight line may be the shortest distance between two points, but it is by no means the most interesting.”

VOX