I promised a continuation of “My Quest for the Perfect Writing Space and Other Things I do to Avoid Writing” but I have a slight problem.  I struggle with finishing things.

I know a lot of people have this problem.  For most, I think it’s a result of laziness or insecurity.  But it’s not that with me.  I know that bullshit positivity, pseudo-psychological, “you can do anything you put your mind to” delusion isn’t going to help.  It’s not my self-doubt , self-hatred, or self-anything-negative that’s preventing me from completing what I’ve started.  Don’t get me wrong.  I have plenty of that going on at any given time.  But that anxiety, believe it or not, actually drives me forward.   Or so I tell myself.

With me, not finishing is pathological.

It’s not just with writing.  I could be reading the greatest story and it still happens.  I get to the last page, see that final paragraph, and some switch in my brain just shuts off.  I’ll read and reread the last paragraph and it’s like I don’t know the meaning of the words.  I hear them loud and clear in my head.  There’s just no recognition.  The same thing happens with novels but on a bigger scale.  Sometimes, depending on the page count, I might have to reread the last two or three pages.  The same thing happens with a really enjoyable film.

My theory is this: Just like the essays, screenplays, and stories I write, I internalize what I read or what I watch, build these personal connections, and because they’re now a part of me, I don’t want them to end.  And a way of delaying the inevitable, at least in my brain’s brain, is to simply never get there.  This theory holds up when I test it against film.  Take Exhibit A: I’m watching a particularly engaging movie at home.  I know the runtime.  We hit the third act.  My eyes drift toward the timer on the DVD player, and I start panicking.  There’s only 11 minutes left.  How can everything possibly be resolved in that short time?  Exhibit B is the exact same movie but at the theaters.  There’s no counter ticking away just below the screen; thus, no panic.

Don’t feel sorry for me though.  Even though I struggle, I always, eventually, at some point, finish what I started.

All that said, I think my problem with writing the second part of “My Quest for the Perfect Writing Space…” is that I got bored.  This would mean in this particular case, it is laziness preventing me from finishing something.  I wonder if that makes this entire piece irrelevant.  I don’t know, but I had no problem finishing it.