Columnist fails at consistency
Hi, my name is Kaitlyn, and I never finish anything. This isn’t a blog in which I complain; I’m merely stating the facts that I’ve been ignoring for so many years. Take this article, for example. My darling editor, Hailey Konnath, has been harping on me for weeks to finish and once again I have fallen short. This is the last work night before the paper goes to press and I’m just starting. I disappoint myself sometimes… but it’s not only writing in which I procrastinate.
I adore reading, but never read much past half way in any given book before picking up another that looks intriguing, never to return to my original novel. I start to clean my war zone of a room every weekend, vowing to finally finish this time, and I stall twenty minutes in.
I couldn’t even watch all six Star Wars movies in one sitting, and I LOVE Star Wars. I named my car the Millennium Falcon for Obi-Wan’s sake!
I don’t have the patience to write a short story, I get distracted by naps, I lack the push to finish essays that were due last semester. Scholarship papers go unwritten, cars go unwashed, laundry goes unfolded.
It’s not that I’m lazy or disinterested; I just get this sudden burst of enthusiasm, which dwindles as rapidly as it appears. I was going to make a high school scrapbook. I was going to learn how to make beef stroganoff. I was going to knit a pair of socks. The road to Hell may have been paved with good intentions, but so was the road to my senior year. Not that my senior year at Marian has resembled Hell in any other way than the mutual pathway composed of good intentions, but I digress.
Earlier this year, I made a list. A stupid, stupid, spiteful list full of ten things that I vowed to complete by May 23rd of 2010. That was a mistake. It’s now February, and the paper staff has three more issues before our time is up. Of those ten tasks, I have completed one, and a half, if you count the cupcakes, which I promise to finish for the sake of my classmates.
I attempted to attend the midnight showing of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” which failed miserably. That tends to happen quite a bit. Plans fall through and I’m left with nothing to write about. But at the same time, I wouldn’t trade the epic experiences I had in place of seeing the movie. I guess that’s just what life is like. You start out with a plan, with a schedule, with structure, only to throw your hands up and resign yourself to the chaos of the universe.
So, I may never finish anything I start, but I have a grand time not doing what I thought I would. Life is unpredictable, and I’m powerless to stop the pull of the cosmic. I apologize to all those I have hurt with my half-baked-ness, especially you, my darling editor Hailey Konnath, but unfortunately this is the way I am, the way I’ve always been, and how I always will be.
