I've been getting back into 3D pretty seriously lately, and thus, my writing has been rather scattershot as of late. As such, here's another wander through my notebook, little bits of things that I's started scribbling down.
As I've struggled with figuring out what I want to do with my post-college life and repeatedly gotten frustrated by my situation. My monitor is surrounded by Post-It Notes with motivational quotes, such as the Litany Against Fear, and somewhere in there, one of my favorite sentences in all of fiction, from Terry Pratchett's short story "Troll Bridge": "'Yeah,' Cohen wheezed a stream of smoke at the sunset." I've often joked to myself that, if nothing else, by the time I finally get out of this detestable situation, I'll at least have the makings of a great motivational book. One night, I decided to scribble down one of the revelations that would go into this hypothetical book.
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It's a bit of a paradox that "hard work" often sounds like one of the easiest things in the world. It's a key component of so many platitudes. "All you have to do is work hard..." "It's simple, really; just work hard every day, and..." You see what happened there? Juxtaposing hard work and simplicity sends the wrong message, at least to me.
Now, I can understand playing up the rewards of hard work and downplaying the pain and suffering that goes into whatever you want to accomplish. Makes perfect sense to me.
What gets me, what it pisses me off to no end that I took almost 25 years of my life to figure out, what, I think, a lot of people take just as long or longer to figure out, is that hard work isn't just something you decide to do one day. It's a decision you make a million times a day. You don't just go into work mode, or, if you do, I'm insanely jealous of you, because in my experience, it's a constant battle. You have to just sit at your desk, or lie on that little rolling bed under your car on its jackstands or stand at your easel or whatever it is you do, and convince yourself over and over again that what you're working on is more important than whatever the lazy part of your brain would rather be doing. Hard work and determination are constant, bitter struggles against a chunk of your psyche that wants nothing more than simple pleasure —a more comfortable chair, a quick stretch, another cup of coffee, a short Minecraft break— and it's clever enough and amoral enough that it will do anything to get that pleasure. The toughest part, though, is that you've only got a few strategies available in this fight. Sure, you can barter, or bargain, but I find that making any deal with yourself is just a gateway for the lazy lobe to wring further concessions out of you. In my experience —a term I hesitate to use considering how little of it I have— you have to be firm. Don't surrender; give no ground. Grit your teeth and work until you can't anymore.
There's a flip side to this, though, a silver lining. Surrender is just as much a decision as hard work. You can, at any moment, make the right choice instead. Even if you gave in and took a longer coffee break than you should have or, against your better judgement, decided to check Facebook again, you never have to let the slip-up define you. You're only a hard worker if you're working hard at any given moment, but you're also only a failure if you're failing at any given moment. You can always turn it around!
