Drafts are the newest form of collection we have.
A walk-in closet with racks of potential ideas.
That we begin, pause at inception and abandon for something that feels more extra-ordinary.
That extra-ordinary quickly becomes ordinary when our brain again needs dopamine.
Unattended drafts don’t get trashed because our drive asks us to pay for storing the impregnated,
But because it asks us to pay for our lack of parenting to our scatterbrained child parts.
These are not just drafts unattended.
These are simple yet profound god-whispers undelivered into the 3D.
Novelty is a dopamine trigger.
Dopamine doesn’t fire when we get what we want.
It fires when our brain predicts we might get something significant.
Dopamine is about pursuit, not reward.
Good levels of dopamine help us engage with projects, pursuits and partners as a long term plan, up to completion.
The ‘giving everything enough time’ phenomenon comes from this.
Poor levels of dopamine make us start a potential project and chase more glamorous ideas alongside it until the first project gets dropped.
Being with one partner or going on enough dates with one potential person, starts to feel like we are not doing enough and swiping away feels like progress in the pursuit of finding the one.
Diets too boring to follow for more than a week,
Reels saved in a box and never integrated with,
A blog you started writing in your notes that never took its first breath on the world wide web.
All of it because we feel like the next thing is more exciting, effective or glamorous.
Integrating with what is feels too vanilla to a drama-prone nervous system.
Having conscious awareness of this part of ourselves - which is already abbreviating to S.O.S is the key to actually launching that project, putting that reel recipe to test, actually following the meal plan beyond the first week, being present with the date even if you might not meet them again.
The medicine is to creating bigger capacity through sitting in the limbo of delayed gratification.
This can begin with the following three actionables:
Turning off phone notifications from coming on the screen. You only ‘eat’ when you decide to go to the ‘feed’.
Engaging with one mundane/difficult task for 20 mins in one go, building intimacy with it.
Phone on DND from before dinner time until after breakfast the next morning, trusting that you will miss out on nothing.
Sustained presence is not dopamine blocks overcome.
It is a natural happening when the blocks let go of us
When we are very busy using up, savoring and connecting with what already is.