Dispassionate Defeatism
“Jumping from failure to failure with undiminished enthusiasm is the big secret to success.” — Savas Dimopolous
I start doing a lot of things. I don’t finish a lot of things, but I do start a lot of things. I’ve founded businesses, taken hobbies and sports, and bought into hypes and fashions, all with the same unbridled enthusiasm. I’ve always felt passionately about pretty much everything I do, regardless of the opinions of loved ones around me. I find something, fully and deeply engulf myself in anything and everything related to it, then rapidly lose interest and forget about it. This cycle repeats itself every couple of months, or sometimes weeks.
Besides creating financial chaos, there aren’t many downsides to passionately hopping from hobby to instrument to sport. The largest, and only relevant downside to me is that my friends and loved ones have heard me get incredibly excited about a million things, only to never hear about those topics ever again. It’s hard to believe someone who says they love something when history teaches you they forget about their loves within weeks. Anything new I introduce comes across as a disingenuous distraction from everyday life.
While nobody in my close circle has vocalized a negative feeling towards what I’ll call “my flaky passions”, it’s become hard not to assume those feelings exist. This makes it both difficult to share about new interests, and even invest myself fully in them, meaning I might miss out on those rare few that do stick. Normally I wouldn’t let that stop me but lately I’ve started holding back my energetic outbursts of oversharing. My unbridled enthusiasm has become quite bridled*.
Accepting my tendency to dive from interest to interest became easier when I learned it’s often a symptom of ADD, which happens to be something I was diagnosed with almost 10 years ago. For those around me who have to suffer my onslaught of tidbits about the flavor of the week, this might assist in creating an understanding, but it doesn’t do much to reduce the irritation I assume they sometimes feel, and that assumption is where the issues really lie.
I believe that being passionate is a good thing, even when it’s inconsistent. However, for some reason I also believe that others don’t see it that way. That belief, and not the actual feedback I receive from my loved ones, is what has created a feeling of defeatism inside me. One would assume that the solution is to simply disregard my assumption of other people’s true beliefs and simply accept what they tell me, but that’s easier said than done.
I wrote this piece not to entertain but to allow myself to explain a weakness. It’s often easier to believe the words someone puts on paper than your own rational mind telling you something is true so when I reread this piece I can pretend someone else wrote it and believe the truth as it stands; passion is good, enthusiasm is great, just be yourself and believe the feedback you get from those who care about you. They wouldn’t lie.
*I realize that’s not the right word for it but how stupid is it that the opposite of unbridled isn’t just “bridled”?
