The last three months have been quite trying. Family hurdles to try to overcome, personal challenges to try to not let get me down. And then, oh yeah, trying to manage a house full of little tyrants.

I look at the piles of stuff around the house and think I really must do something about them. I must go through that massive folder (multiple folders, actually) of Ethan’s schoolwork and weed out what we don’t need to keep. I really must go through that bin of toys to see what Henry and Miranda can do without. My office, or rather, that place in the house where things get shoved when we have company, is the aftermath of a cyclone. My bedroom is piles of laundry, waiting to be put away. The dining room is boxes of baby clothes and toys and accessories to sort.

When the children are all asleep at night, I think about the myriad tasks I have to do, and more often than not, I give up before I start. It’s too much to take on all at once — too much to consider as a whole. So I fritter my time away, because to start a project would mean failure to finish, for surely I wouldn’t be able to complete a task in one sitting.

That has always been one of my biggest weaknesses — the paralyzing fear of failure. So why bother starting a project if I’m only going to feel like a failure when I don’t finish it. If I don’t even start then I haven’t failed, right?

But then I look around my house, at the things that need to be organized, the projects I keep wanting to do, and I know I am failing myself by not trying. I am experiencing an internal battle of which possibility of failure could be worse? Failure to start or failure to finish?

Failure to start has been overwhelmingly paralyzing lately — more than usual.

I think I’d better start aiming for failure to finish.