Continuation as a Language
Consistency is inevitable.
Okay, hear me out.
Contemporary art is kind of like language, in how it’s constructed, and in how we make sense of it. In both, individual units don’t mean much on their own. A single artwork doesn’t really make sense in isolation; you need other works around it, not because they’re the same, but precisely because they’re not. The piece you’re trying to understand belongs to a larger web — maybe it’s part of a series, an artist’s body of work, or a movement — and that web gives it context.
Language works the same way. You only understand what a table is because you also know what isn’t a table - a computer, a blanket, a pen. Meaning comes from contrast. We understand things by placing them in relation to other things.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about consistency and the ability to continue -mostly because I’ve been failing at both in spectacular fashion. And I’ve started to realize: consistency isn’t all that different either. It’s a kind of language too. A way of creating meaning through repetition. A way of differentiating yourself — not just from others, but from all the versions of you that you currently aren’t.
Like: if you eat sour cream chips every day, then you’re the version of yourself that eats chips, not the broccoli person. Why? Because you’ve built enough evidence to say, yeah, you’re the chip-eating you. And the more that version shows up, the more rooted it becomes. Patterns build identity. And maybe, at the risk of oversimplifying, you start adopting other behaviors that orbit around that identity: other snack-related habits, late-night cravings, small decisions that subtly reinforce the same narrative. Of course, this isn’t a closed system and there are social and environmental factors and a thousand other variables. But for the sake of the argument, let’s keep it simple.
What this idea has helped me see is this: not being consistent feels so deeply frustrating not because I lack discipline or drive, but because I’m missing the evidence. There’s no proof. No trail. No way to say: This is who I was, and this is how I lived. Without consistency, life feels interchangeable — like anyone could have lived it. It’s all possibility and no pattern. All trailers and no movie. And that, honestly, makes identity feel flat. Surface-level. Like something constantly starting, but never really forming.
Anyway -back to the question I keep circling: What are you building through your patterns? What are you unconsciously casting in concrete just by doing it again and again?
Because it never stops at the chips. It starts there, sure, but then you skip dinner, stay up too late, wake up groggy, skip the walk, lose the thread of the version of you that actually makes you feel proud. Suddenly, your life starts to orbit around that one tiny repeated choice. The snack becomes a signal. A quiet, seemingly harmless anchor that pulls other habits into its gravitational field.
That’s the thing about consistency: it works, whether or not it’s in your favor. The patterns you repeat are forming a version of you in the background, whether you're paying attention or not. Which is kind of terrifying, honestly. Because you’re not just building a habit. You’re building a self.
So maybe the trick isn’t about being consistent, but about being deliberate with what you're consistent with. Every decision is an exchange. By not being consistent with one thing, you're automatically being consistent with something else. Consistency is inevitable. So, what are you choosing to reinforce? Which version of you is quietly getting practiced into permanence?
Because if you’re not paying attention, you might wake up fluent in a language you never meant to speak.
