Overcoming Analysis Paralysis aka Paralyzed By Fear

I try to write about somebody or a relationship that I am grateful for.  Approaching 900 Gratitude blog posts with a handful of close friends and a score of others that I interact with intermittently, which would call for a lot of repetition.  Part of writing my Gratitude blog is to expand my mind to recognize the many people and things that I am grateful for without being trite.

I am listening to Neil Young on Youtube tonight while doing some paperwork, surfing the web and writing this.  He is definitely one of my most favorite rock-n-roll stars for his music and his continuously speaking out against in injustice.  “Ohio” is a song about the National Guard shooting 4 students at Kent State during Vietnam war protests.  One of the best anti-war songs ever.  I was always thought the UC Santa Barbara students burning down the Bank of America in Isle Vista made a prudent choice when Ronald Reagan was the Governor.  Ronbo could easily have shot students given the right opportunity.  A quick Google reveals The man who later became known as "The Great Communicator" vowed to send "the welfare bums back to work," and "to clean up the mess at Berkeley." The latter became a Reagan mantra.

[Topic tangent ON]  Almost 50 years later, Reagan’s vision has come true.  The policies he innovated as governor have lead to the wholesale destruction of the middle class by the .01% and American education headed for the crapper with skyrocketing tuition/expenses and student loan costs (or profits from the banking perspective).

My favorite Jerry Pournelle quote is “the poor are what the rich use to scare the middle class into working”.  Those with jobs clearly got the message after Reagan.  From 1950 to 1980, average hours worked in the US went from 1900 to 1700 hours per year.  Since 1980, it has essentially flat-lined at 1700.  Of course that does not count people left out of the workforce for over two years, Orwellian double-speak has changed them from “unemployed” to the long-term jobless like James Orr from an article written on my 55^th birthday.  [/tangent OFF!]

The topic I started to write about is how getting started on a project has been a problem for me in both my writing and my wanna-be metalsmithing.  Back in junior high shop class I could have made tons of things with a well equipped shop class, instead I never really made anything and kind of just watched what others were doing.  I have done too much watching and not enough participating much of my life.

Five years ago I was given a Barnes & Noble gift card for $25.  When I checked last week the $25 was still on it.  Boy, talk about not getting started…  Today I bought a beginning metalsmithing book with 30ish skill building projects in it starting with measuring and sawing on up to soldering, setting stones and so on.  For the sake of both simplicity and getting started, I will do all projects in the book start to finish.  Tonight I measured three 2” squares then sawed my way through two saw broken blades.  I now have 3 somewhat square pieces of copper within a quarter inch of being the same size.  It is good that I am starting at the beginning!

Likewise my Gratitude blog writing tonight took me from many fleeting thoughts about positive things in my life to writing a story about being able to take action starting from where I am at versus where I think I should be.  THAT is the miracle of recovery—accepting life on life’s terms and working from there.

I am grateful for learning how to start at the beginning and work my way forward from there.  That is a lot better than how it used to be when I was stuck at the beginning, thought I should be close to a great finish and could not reconcile nor rectify the difference.   I was paralyzed by fear.