Someone Did Me Dirty

It was me. I did myself dirty. The photo below captures the shame.

So I spent hours this late winter and early spring weeding the entire area around my raised beds. When I say weeding, I mean more than weeding. Cleaning - picking out pine needles and cones, getting every last leaf, weed, weird stick, imperfection - everything. Look how amazing:

Look at that weed free perfection. I did that (to quote the crass stickers of whatever sitting president that show up on gas pumps when the prices go up. ahem.).

Except the one corner that is still full of weeds - I cannot bring myself to finish. I look at it everyday, I swear at it, I add it to the list of myriad priorities, and I never, ever finish it. This is sort of a pattern for me. I have dozens of nearly finished attempts at crafting, video games that I pour hours into only to stop 10 minutes before the final boss, books that are 95% of the way read. WHY???? Well, let's dig.

Dear Interwebs, Tell Me Why

So, like any millennial, geriatric or otherwise, my first stop is the internet. I type in "Why don't we finish what we start?" Oh my, let me count the ways....

• From the Discipline Subreddit: We fail because we want progress to feel good all the time - the real trick is to learn patience with boredom.

  • Okay, maybe - this seems interesting if you have trouble with the middle of things, but that is not my issue. I actually love the grindy part.

• I found more of the same on Medium's Better Humans - "Shiny Object Syndrome" - where everything new seems better than what you are doing right now so you abandon projects somewhere in the middle.

Now these aren't exactly science (but really, who doesn't love the unfilteredness of Reddit??), and I don't think they are getting to the crux of my issue. Let's refine the prompt, shall we?

"I get projects 95% of the way done and then stop. Why?" (Yes, I talk to the internet like a person).

• The Cleveland Clinic talks about ways to avoid procrastination - while good advice, this doesn't seem right either.

• So much advice of "Just work on it for 15 minutes!" "You can do it!" - but the why??

My Secret Friend, AI

So, I play with AI on the side, and it knows me pretty well - on purpose. I know about all the concerns, and I hear that, but I also worry that if AI only interacts with a certain kind of person (you probably know what I mean), that's all it will know of our kind. And if I don't know how to drive AI, it might end up driving me. There's no putting the genie back in the bottle, so anyway. I experiment.

I put the following prompt into ChatGPT, my AI drug of choice:

"Based on what you know about me, please tell me why I have difficulty finishing projects. I will get 95% of the way done with something - through the hard parts - and then stop and never go back. I have mostly read books, mostly finished video games, mostly finished crafts, etc - theorize about why I do this and please cite sources."

The answer is chillingly resonant - Here's what it says:

1. Your brain is optimized for exploration, not closure.

2. Completion creates vulnerability.

3. You are unusually motivated by transformation itself.

4. Burnout taught your nervous system not to trust sustained output.

5. You may actually dislike the maintenance phase more than you realize.

This all resonates, for sure, but its final message left me a little shook.

Begin AI Quote:

One Final Thing

I suspect there is grief underneath some of this.

Finishing something means admitting:

• time passed,

• you changed,

• the dream became real (or didn’t),

• and one version of possibility is now closed.

For someone in a major identity reinvention phase, that can carry surprising emotional weight.

So your brain keeps projects alive in suspended animation.

Not because they are dead.

Because psychologically, they are still becoming.

End AI Quote.

Sources: cited legit studies, not hallucinations, on neurodivergence and perfectionism:

A Neurocomputational Account of Reward and Novelty Processing in ADHD

The Dopamine Hypothesis for ADHD

Perfectionism: When Good is Never Good Enough

and many more. We will talk more in depth about the neuro big-As another time - these studies et al are interesting reading that underlies what the AI postulated.

Like Whoa.

WHOA. I mean like, WHOAWHOAWHOA.

Now, I'm not saying anyone should turn to AI for their psychotherapy or to diagnose any medical issues. There is a chilling number of deaths related to chatbots, so please proceed with massive caution. In my case, I have fed it a lot of personality related information about myself and am asking it to use that information to predict a possible cause of something relatively innocuous based on research - not just staring into the abyss and asking what stares back to save me. There is a big difference there, let's be very clear.

So Anyway....

I actually really enjoyed all that weeding. Those hours listening to books outside in the fresh air, carefully working my little piece of land into perfection (wince), dreaming of long summer days with big crop yields just around the corner - these were some of the best hours of my early spring. It seems very likely that a little part of me never wanted it end, and so it never has.

Sometimes we don't finish a project because we can't bear to say good bye to something that has brought us joy. Sometimes I'm not ready to step out of the universe created when I stepped into something, so I just never do.

That little bit seems sweet in a way - I get to draw out small things that bring me joy for as long as I want and I think that is actually quite lovely. Except for those stupid weeds.

A Small Note on AI

So, as I said before, I experiment with AI. I want to assure you, though, that it does not write any of my blog posts. I have always used the - in my writing and I'm quite sure AI stole it from me (lol). Please rest assured, you are reading real authorship - not AI trash - when you come here.

I will write more about my AI adventures in the future, but I use it primarily for metacognition and not to think (or write) for me. There was much press about an MIT study that showed AI is making people dumber, and I've read that, but there was another article, though admittedly a little dubious, about how a small number of people use AI in a way that actually boosts intelligence, and that is my very purposeful aim. More on all this another time. :)