Why do when I could don’t?

There’s something I do a lot, and it’s almost certainly tied in with some flavour of executive dysfunction, and that’s how regardless of how enthusiastic I am about starting on a leisure task, there’s such a barrier to just getting started. And I’m realising more and more that part of that aversion stems from the pursuit of perfection.

Obviously, this is not a guaranteed roadblock, otherwise I’d never get anything done. And as you can likely tell from previous weeks’ blogs, I’m not above posting some absolute crap, so clearly perfection isn’t always in play. But it’s the “big” ones that consistently get the treatment.

For years, I’ve been planning out a hypothetical story space – the setting, the characters, the designs, all the way down to stuff like which in-universe movie franchise is most likely to partner with which fictional snack brand, and how the collaboration advertising would look. So of course, not a word of it actually exists in any meaningful, tangible way.

I guess the upside is I’ve spent so long (not) working on it, that at least the vision and concept are solid enough to answer questions about, and typically they answers will stay consistent over the course of weeks or months.

Anyway, all this to say that I deal with the “concept” of ideas more than the actual idea. And I think that gets in my way more often than it should. Particularly when the leisure task I’m delaying on is some fancy new game I’ve been “dying to play” for a long time. And just… no, can’t do it. Ask again later.

Because I’ve already played that game. I’m playing it right now. I’ve seen screenshots or short video clips of other people playing it, and that’s enough for me to get a sense of what is or isn’t permissible within the rules of the game. I get a feel for the setting and style, and from there, I can more or less just… imagine playing it.

(not fully literally – aphantasia is a bitch(*))
(*) [and not even really – I’ve dealt with it just fine my whole life, and I’m comfortable enough with it. Sometimes to the point that I’m surprised phantasiacs are able to get anything done at all what with the constant hallucinating : p

But rather than, say, finally reinstall Minecraft and get to building out that really cool idea I’ve had for a lower atmosphere space station design, I remember that the processes involved (Mining and crafting… go figure) can be tedious and not “fast enough” for what I need. So I just pretend – if I *was* playing it… oh man, that space station would look so sweet.

It’s a mental trap I’d really like to break out of. Not only because imagining something lets me do all kinds of disallowed shenanigans to cheat. Not only because the meditative ritual of the doing of a monotonous task can often be a desirable state to be in. It’s just that… to state the obvious, nothing gets done. What I need is to not necessarily avoid the forward planning aspect of it all, but to be able to tie that to small, actionable steps towards achieving. “Yes, that space station will look sweet… and once you get all the stone mined out for it, you’ll be that much closer to it.”