Consistency

Photo by Geomancer448 under CC BY-SA 4.0 at Wikimedia.org

Hello, reader.

September is coming to an end and soon the spooky month, (October), begins. I must admit that from all the twelve months in the year, the tenth is one of my favorites.

The air is perfectly crisp and cool, the wind in the trees is loud and biting, and the leaves begin their fiery withering before gently tumbling to the ground. That, and it’s dark, and people tend to go out less late in the evening, leaving the parks and city streets bare, wet, and cold. Leaving it all to me.

Also, if you’ve noticed, Chapter three is out! It might take some time before chapter four is ready, seeing as I have simulation training starting next week, (Long days from eight to four), so I won’t have much time between thesis work and all the things I need to do (gym etc.). (That’s all on the Limbo Chronologies front).

What are you waiting for? Go enjoy the new chapter!

The rest of this post concerns a thought I’ve had about consistency, so if you want to continue reading, I can’t stop you.

But beware: ramblings.

Consistency (Heads)

I’ve heard, read, and scrolled on many-a-platform that consistency is key to success. And as I’ve mentioned before, I am a staunch believer in that when it comes to artistic endeavors, that is the case. Still, I find it agonizingly difficult to be consistent with, say, posting on this blog.

I’ve yet to identify the capital R “Resistance” unique to my newfound project.

 It’s a process. A difficult one at that. Especially when doubts creep into the gray matter locked within my skull. Doubts like: “no one is reading this,” or “you’re wasting your time,” or “what will they think,” or the classic, “this is CRINGE.”

All of these thoughts are signals, lateral marks in seafaring terms, red and green lights that show the edges of navigable waters, in a way. Keep within them, and you’re fine, but stray outside their boundaries, or go towards them, and you’ll find yourself on the rocks.

Photo by Esquilo under CC BY-SA 3.0 at Wikimedia.org

It's hard to not believe those voices, harder still to understand that moving within their bounds is the key. Especially when they get stronger the further you progress, and not believing in them becomes even more difficult. They are reliable guides, in a way, but their siren song is strong. Their promises are alluring. “Stop now, you’ve done enough. Rest. You’ve earned it.” Or: “no one will read this, anyway, so might as well quit. You’ll lose nothing.”

The thing is, when chasing your dreams, you don’t have a map. You must chart the waters yourself. I’m not discounting the experiences of others, or the act of taking them into account and learning from them, but they only serve as notices and suggestions, not actual directions. So, if you do rest, and trust that someone else’s experience will do the work for you, you’ll drift and find yourself somewhere you don’t want to be.

YOU are responsible for following the lights and discerning between right way and wrong way. But that is all the more infuriating when, until you find yourself at safe harbor, that being your goal, you’re navigating in the night. If you’re lucky, you’ll have the moon out illuminating the way.

That’s where consistency comes in. If you consistently let the markers guide you, and make steady way through the black, lightless seas, charting it out, learning the waters, one day you will find yourself where you want to be. Though I’ve not found myself there yet, I have faith that I will.

Consistency (Tails)

The flipside, which I’ll call consistently non-consistent, is, I think, the downfall of many.

Now, you say, “But isn’t the opposite of consistency inconsistency.”

To which I reply, “Yes, but!”

Inconsistency, defined in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, means to lack consistency, or to be incoherent or illogical in thought or action. So, to be inconsistent would mean you were conflicting in your actions and thoughts. You say one thing, do another; think one thing, do another; you do one thing, think another, etc. Or, in our case, dream one thing, act in a way that actively takes you further from that dream.

Examples could be saying you’re going to the gym, then not going, without any better reason than that you didn’t feel like it. Saying that you like waking up early but never getting out of bed before noon. That is inconsistent. I.e. there is conflict between two things.

Inconsistent might also be used to describe something that lacks coherence. A certain thing done differently each time.

Now, let’s get past all that. I might be speaking out of my ass; I might be completely wrong, and you may not see it that way. Fine.

But being consistently non-consistent, by my terms, and perhaps there is a word in English or another language that describes this phenomena, is the act of actively NOT doing something you WANT to do and being consistent in it. It becomes so only when it becomes consistent, and pathological. A bad habit, so to speak.

An act or habit of consistently doing something that overshadows the things you want to do. Maybe active avoidance is a better term. But what I’m trying to get at is that being non-consistent, compared to inconsistency, has the element of logic and coherence.

So, where being inconsistent means that you do something sometimes, to describe someone as being non-consistent, would be to describe someone who actively chooses not to do something, always, even though they have they alternative to that something or not.

It is, in a way, an act of self-mortification of the spirit. You acknowledge your dreams, and possibly even fantasize about the life you could live if you followed said dreams, but you never act on them. You’re consistently avoiding consistency. This, I’ve found, causes severe spiritual pain, and sometimes even physical pain…

It is like sitting alone on your ship, never leaving port, grieving over the fact that you’ll never make it to your destination, even though you’ve never tried to leave. You focus on the paint, scraping, chipping, repainting, and fussing over it forever and anon, with your only company being the doubtful whispers of the lights far off, that you’ve given full authority to.

So, if you’ve made it this far, I hope my ramblings have helped in some way. I hope my words make some sense. They tend not to most of the time. But hey, writing things out makes them clearer. Rewriting them far more clearer. Perhaps in the future I’ll read this and cringe a little, who knows. Perhaps I'll refine this idea further.

But for now: go! Act on your dreams. Be consistent, and you’ll be rewarded