I am obsessed with death. It’s not as morbid as it sounds. The death I obsess over means just about anything that comes to a complete end before I have a chance to use it in my life. I am very reluctant to start any career or any project or any long-term plans that my mind tells me I will be unable to completely use before I die or before my resources run out.

For example, I have a great interest in astronomy. I love looking at the stars, reading about the skies, researching and finding just about everything I can about the cosmos. But, my mind discourages me from pursuing a career in astronomy. Why? Because my mind believes that I will not be able to find the funds to go to school, find the time to go to school (and support a family), find a school to go to, find another school to go to (for masters and/or doctorate) and then get into a career. According to my mind there’s just too much working against me. By the time I could have accomplished all of that to reach my goal of getting a career in astronomy I’ll be too old for it to be much use. It’ll be time for me to retire, or, I’ll die. All this according to my mind.

Financial death is discouraging. If I feel that making a certain investment (or pulling out from an investment) will bankrupt me and and kill my resources, my mind discourages it. This would be much more sound advice as quitting my job or investing every penny I have in stocks would be a bad idea.

I work on several projects at one time and as I pick and choose which ones I wish to do I always choose the ones that seem like they’ll be most successful the quickest. I have a new music composition program that has a steep learning curve. Taking that program and turning it into a project would be one with many steps and would take a couple of months. My mind looks at this and says it just simply too long, there’s no reason to do that project. Well, I’ve had the program for well over two months and I still haven’t learned to use it very well.

This “obsession” is something I had just noticed recently. I haven’t researched any to see if this is a normal phenomenon or if it is just a way my mind works and is unique. I suspect everybody has some way to determining what worth long-term ideas have according to usefulness and existence, but most people probably aren’t aware of the process. Now that I am aware and have learned just how unreasonable this part of my mind is, I can use other parts of my mind to overcome this discouragement and do those things that I really do want to do. Death is so uncertain and unpredictable that using it as a guide for almost anything is useless. There is no value in death and there is no value in associating it with other valued things.