Post In Which I Break Some Of My Resolutions And Why Confusion Is Ok.

 photo 
Nietzsche said, "You must have confusion in your heart to give birth to stars."

I wrote a post last week about New Year's resolutions and I spelled out what I was going to do this year and how I would carry less in my gigantic purse. My purse is at this moment on the counter and still gigantic. I took out a toothbrush and some receipts. I pretended to take out some other things but I didn't really try all that hard. So fine, purse resolution fail.

The other resolution downfall for the year (yes I know we're only 4 days in) has to do with all of the confusion.  Not confusion like "which clients do I most want to pursue" or "will social media be big in 2010" but a bigger confusion about what kind of business I want to run and how I'm going to get there.
I have had days where I only want to do social media if it's for a large company
I have had days where I want to write more articles
I have had days that I spend trying to meet new people in my field
followed by days where I am totally over seeing "social media experts" online
followed by days where I am convinced that I only want to work with progressive small businesses

Confusion and I have become close friends.

 This drives me crazy because I can't make plans down to the minute for the next 5 years like I want to and proceeded to spend a good portion of December worrying about this whole thing because people always want to know what your next step is going to be and God forbid I say "I don't know".   This unsure-ness started to really get to me and the more I tried to eliminate it, the more I felt like I had taken a wrong turn and the harder I tried to get back to my regularly scheduled life where I had one idea and one way to get there.
The thing is, I don't have a crystal ball nor can I hurry things up so it's going to be pretty hard to plan around that. 
So then I started reading all these simplify your life blogs like:
Zen Habits
Mnmlst
Quest For Balance


These started to make me realize that maybe it's ok if I take things as they come.  Maybe, just maybe, this confusion is even helping.  Also, it made my resolutions seem pretty shallow because none of them addressed this large "state of mind" thing I had going on.  
How confusion can be a good thing:
Confusion allows you to try things you might not normally try because you have no set plan.  When I was approached to do a collaboration that seemed cool but not in my regular plan I said yes instead of no.
Confusion forces you to have a good day.  Worrying about my next move was not allowing me have good days so I decided to just go with it.  Now, I'm focusing on making the day as productive as I can, not the month or year. 
Confusion can make you more creative.  All of this craziness has made me start reading voraciously again (Just finished The Boat, it's great) and I started knitting (thanks Mira) and am freelance writing more.  I think it's because being unsure of my next step made me start doing things because I liked them instead of for the outcome.

I don't think this phase of "what's next" will continue forever but if you're in the same boat hang in there and try to look on the bright side of confusion.