A VERY PECULIAR PROBLEM

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Too many ideas is a disease.  At the moment I'm also working around a sore throat, but that will be gone in short order.  The too-many-ideas sickness is chronic.

I like to invent things and make things and change things - I like to be working on something all the time, so I usually am.  The old house that we are making a home is a colossus of a work-in-progress, likely to remain so for as long as we live in it.  I suffer from minor diseases all the time, including the unfinished-project disease and the much-too-ambitious-scheme disease, both of which my house can attest to.  Living inside of and beside the symptoms of those diseases is both discouraging and bolstering, but these are minor afflictions, all things considered.

Having too many ideas is a horse of a different color.

I was writing to a pen pal recently and trying to describe the mental tug-of-war that has become so familiar.  It can be strangely crippling.  She sent me a picture of a diminutive flowering tree that she'd noticed near her new home in Japan.  I wrote back to tell her that the little tree excited several desires in me.  I wanted to imagine a story about a tiny person who lived near the tree, something like the Borrowers, or a small animal living nearby, as in a book that I loved when I was younger.  At the same time I was thinking how fun it would be to build a little house that would look as though it belonged next to the tree.  It would be a perfect little cottage in miniature, the kind that would make everyone who walked by stop and wonder for a brief moment if they were witnessing proof that fairies existed.

I have the same problem with my camera - is each interesting, beautiful thing an invitation to take a picture, or should it be saved as fodder for an essay?  What do you do when there is more than one appealing idea to be had?  When I am struck by a series of inspirations, the desire to do everything falls victim to indecision.  And then I do nothing.

The hardest part of being an adult is not responsibility (which is hard) but being self-motivated (which is nearly the same thing, but not quite).  I am intimidated daily by the knowledge that I'm grown up.  I can do whatever I want.

There are days when I revel in my freedom, but more often it becomes the same paradox that arises from having too many ideas - freedom feels like a trap.  There are too many possibilities!  They're everywhere, and I can't escape!

If I had the perfect solution, I'd be sitting pretty.  So far I'm just at diagnosis.  I have a sickness of ideas.  I spend a lot of time collecting ideas, when the truth is I've got boxes and closets full of them waiting to be used up.  Good heavens, the last thing I need is more.

But onward!  I'm making resolutions even though the year isn't new anymore.  I'm resolving to use up some of these ideas that are loitering about the premises.  I'm resolving to do some spring cleaning in the ideas department, and get rid of some, and use up some others.

My pen pal rightly guessed that I'd appreciate the small-tree picture.  It made me want to write something.  And now, you see, I've done that.