Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes

Today is the one year anniversary of my blog. I spent some time reading a bunch of those early posts. I was a little surprised to see how much things have changed since then. A year ago, there were 9 of us blogging, and so I was always sure to have a few comments posted and find other things to read. My posts tended to be shorter too, not like my recent lengthy monsters. And I'd forgotten I had such good thoughts! Not to brag or anything, and not saying that all of my blogs are anything special, but there's some quality content scattered through the past year. Made me smile anyway.

I don't really understand where motivation comes from. There are things that I hate to do, and some things that I don't mind doing, and others that I can't wait to do. And then there's those things that I really do enjoy, but for some strange reason find myself taking great lengths to avoid. For years, my summer goal has been to write a novel. I like reading, I like making up stories, and I've always enjoyed writing. But for some reason, I've never in all those summers even started a novel. I think once I wrote down a couple plot ideas. Not even a first chapter. And I can't explain why. Not can I explain why I hardly ever draw, or why I always put my math homework off till the very end (yes, it's the shameful truth, I enjoy doing my math homework). But you would think that since those are things I enjoy doing, I would have more motivation to do them than, say, wash the dishes. And yet the dishes continue to get washed on a regular basis, and I have yet to pull out my sketch pad. Maybe it's simply a matter of discipline. I invariably finish all the things that must be done, but I very rarely finish all the things I'd like to get done. Faced with an expanse of unalloted and utterly duty free time, I have great difficulty forcing myself to do something constructive. And even with things that must be done, I've always been a bit of a procrastinator. Perhaps the key to improving my motivation is being stricter with myself. Which I've (obviously) never been good at.