I have this problem.
When I get really excited about something I want to do, like join a kickboxing class or get a cat or move to a cabin in Alaska, I’ll plan every inch of the experience and talk about my plans with everyone — everyone — and then when it comes down to actually doing the kickboxing or cat-getting or cabin-Alaska-moving, I’ll lose all interest and momentum, and won’t do it.
I don’t know why I do this.
For one thing, it’s a major waste of time. It’s also really annoying for everyone I know, including random people I stand in line next to at the Whole Foods, to listen to me prattle on about Alaskan land values and expect me to actually one day do something, and then for it not to happen.
Half the time, I think I know I’m not going to do the thing I keep telling everyone I’m going to do, and I wish I could somehow communicate to my friends, my family, my coworkers, and the people in line at the Whole Foods that I just need to talk about this stupid kite-building project or learning-how-to-use-a-gun thing for a little while, and then it’ll go away.
It’s like writing: if I talk about a project too much before it’s complete, then the urge to finish the project sort of disappears and suddenly, I’m completely uninterested in this novel and/or short story cycle that I’ve been describing in rapturous language to all and sundry.
This has to be really confusing for people. My complete, almost weirdly obsessive passion gives way to utter indifference for no apparent reason, and I seem to expect everyone to keep up.
I once spent hours and hours deciding what color to paint my kitchen. I put at least three of my loved ones through the torture of an explanation of the light quality in my kitchen (poor), the weird amount of blank wall space, and the desire to be contemporary but not too contemporary, and when I finally landed on an apple green, there was much rejoicing. Of course, I never did anything like actually paint the kitchen — choosing the color seemed to be all I needed to do in order to satisfy my need to — I don’t know, plan something. And then friends would come over expecting to see a green kitchen, and then when it’s not there, and when the paint swatch is still taped to the bare white wall a year and a half later, we’ll have the following conversation:
Friend: So what happened to the green kitchen?
Me: Oh. Yeah. I’ll get around to painting it soon.
Friend: But we had that conversation, like, a year ago.
Me: …
This has to be such a frustrating process, and I’m grateful to my friends for sticking it out with me.
Confession: I once spent the better part of a weekend meticulously planning a road trip that would hit every state in the contiguous United States. This required significant research and at least four different websites: Google maps so I could plan the route (and examine road conditions with Google earth), Wunderground so that I could approximate the weather conditions of Topeka, KS or Billings, MT or Augusta, ME at a particular time of year, Super8 so that I could book motels (I like staying in the same motel chain when I’m on a road trip, and I like that the chain is Super8, and please don’t ask why because I don’t know), and finally, Yelp so that I could find the best local restaurants in each of my planned stops. I also researched each state’s tourism attractions and checked out campsites for the evening that I’d want to spend outdoors instead of a Super8 motel. By the end of the weekend, I had a thoroughly planned itinerary, which remains unspoiled in a file somewhere on my computer. That weekend happened about eight months ago, and up until this point, I haven’t thought about it once.
So the reason why I’m posting this today is because I have a problem.
It’s Easter Sunday, and now that I’m an adult in the family, I want to contribute to the holiday meals. I offered to bring a dish to Easter Sunday, and it was decided that I would bring a delicious dessert. Now, I have three brown bananas that must be used or thrown away, so I decided that I would make a decadent, deep-flavored espresso chocolate chip banana bread. (Appropriate Easter food? Fuck you.)
I’ve spent a good deal of time this week telling people that I’m bringing espresso chocolate chip banana bread to the Easter Sunday meal, including people who won’t be there and could care less about espresso, chocolate chips, banana or bread, or my dessert-making prowess in general.
And then I spent a good deal of time last night planning the shopping trip to buy the essential ingredients for the banana bread. Of all stupid things to do at 10 pm on a Saturday night.
And now, it’s Sunday morning. The skies are overcast; the air is cool. It’s the perfect morning to spend inside baking. And of course, as usual, as is now expected, I have no desire to bake this dessert at all.
It’s not that I don’t want my family to have dessert on Easter. It’s that the urge to create espresso chocolate chip banana bread was spent in the urgent and obsessive planning of said bread.
In fact, my desire to bake is so low that I’m writing this blog post, on a blog that I’ve more or less forgotten about (but to which I am re-committing and have detailed plans to update and awesome-ify).
But there’s no getting out of this. I promised, and promises must be kept. I must venture out alone to gather supplies and make this dessert.
I must.
I must.
(I’ll let you know how it goes.)
Updated:
I managed to do this:
This took an hour.
It took over an hour and was slightly traumatic because at the supermarket I ran into these two girls my age that I sort of know, and I’m pretty sure they pretended not to recognize me. It was awful. We just sort of eyed each other in the baking supplies aisle and didn’t say a word.
Note: I so prefer running into men acquaintances than women acquaintances. Men acquaintances will never recognize you and pretend that they don’t, at least in my experience. They’ll either genuinely not recognize you, or else they will, and you can enjoy an awkwardly short conversation about how weird it is to buy baking powder, and how is so-and-so, and goodbye.
Anyway, the excursion to the supermarket has made me relive my middle school years and so I just ate a French quesadilla and a banana and drank my third cup of coffee this morning, and I really feel as if I’ve done something very important.
If unfinished.
Updated Again:
Done
