Making change

Ever get stuck in a pattern? I know that I do, far too often. I get attached to what I have been and to what I have done. And this attachment burdens me and holds me back.

This is readily obvious on the level of written work: it is tremendously difficult for me to rewrite and to sacrifice an old draft. And yet those old drafts aren't working for me, which is why I'm rewriting in the first place.

It occurs on many levels, though. All the habits that govern my life carry this weight of consistency.

The thing is, if I'm not getting the results I want--my writing isn't as good as I would like--it makes sense to give up the consistency.

And then there's a battle between desire for security and desire for improvement. The improvement is distant and uncertain: I can't know that a new way of acting will help; I don't know what kind of result I will get unless I try. The security is immediately present, but it's not satisfying.

We can always change our mindset: if we're not satisfied with our situation, we can train ourselves to be more accepting. But will this accomplish what we want? I suppose it depends on what we want. I think there has to be a balance between seeking to accept that which we dislike and seeking to change it. There's no strict rule of what to try to change and what to persist in.

I do want to be able to gain more satisfaction from my current situation; I also would like to create new situations. I want to create positive change in my life. And that means facing the uncertainty of new patterns of behavior.

As long as I can remember that I am working on a process, and not just tied to immediate results it makes the difficulties somewhat more palatable and acceptable.

At present one change I'm trying to make is to increase my written output, especially written output that is formed in a way to present to others. One nice thing about the blog is that it's explicitly intended to be read. Once I press the publish button, people across the world can read what I've written. This provides motivation to frame what I've written as a coherent whole, rather than as a set of notes.