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please permit me my little epiphany
A few days back, I was just kickin' back takin' a breather, and a thought kinda jumped into my head unexpected:
Y'know, I can do a lotta different things.
False modesty prevents me from listing them all, but it's true: there's more than just one or two things that I know how to do. I'm a kinda jack of many trades [or curmudge of many trades, if you prefer]. It's pretty rare for me to give myself credit for most of them, though. So often I go around thinking/feeling like I'm not good for much.
It's not true: I'm good for a number of things.
The next day, another unexpected thought waylaid me:
Pretty much everything I ever really wanted to learn how to do, I learned.
But it went on from there:
Pretty much everything in life I ever really wanted -- be it a skill I wanted to learn, a task I wanted to accomplish, a goal I wanted to reach, a thing I wanted to get -- I got it.
By this point, my thoughts began striking me as pretty effin' strange, because I spend most of my time [here and IRL] whining about how I feel like a failure, moping about what I haven't done and what I haven't got. But I stayed with it and listened, and things got a bit clearer. For instance:
All my life I've heard people say that "you can get or do anything if you want it bad enough", and I was always kinda like "yeah yeah..." But to see this principle actually at work in my own life, consciously or not, is a whole nother thing.
I look around me today and realize that this life is the life I chose -- the life I built. Sometimes I got what I wanted. Sometimes I didn't really care and figured I'd take whatever -- and I got whatever, and here it is now. One way or another, I determined my circumstances as they are today.
How would your life be different if you knew from square one that, if you want this, you're gonna have to work on it for two years?
I feel like I've been let in on a big secret -- even if it was no secret to everyone else, it was to me, all this time. For me, the key to life is Devising a Two-Year Plan. If I'm not willing to put in the two years, then I don't really want it [whatever the "it" may be].
I dunno how long it'll be before I forget I posted all this and start back to my petty whingeing again, but I hope that doesn't happen. Maybe I need to print this out and stick it on my fridge or sumthin'... but still: huh. Y'know?
Y'know, I can do a lotta different things.
False modesty prevents me from listing them all, but it's true: there's more than just one or two things that I know how to do. I'm a kinda jack of many trades [or curmudge of many trades, if you prefer]. It's pretty rare for me to give myself credit for most of them, though. So often I go around thinking/feeling like I'm not good for much.
It's not true: I'm good for a number of things.
The next day, another unexpected thought waylaid me:
Pretty much everything I ever really wanted to learn how to do, I learned.
But it went on from there:
Pretty much everything in life I ever really wanted -- be it a skill I wanted to learn, a task I wanted to accomplish, a goal I wanted to reach, a thing I wanted to get -- I got it.
By this point, my thoughts began striking me as pretty effin' strange, because I spend most of my time [here and IRL] whining about how I feel like a failure, moping about what I haven't done and what I haven't got. But I stayed with it and listened, and things got a bit clearer. For instance:
- I didn't get everything exactly how I woulda dreamed ideally, but I got it good enough. I always wanted to play guitar: I dreamed of being able to play like Jimi Hendrix or Lenny Breau. I don't play anything even close to that -- but I play good enough to be able to write a punk-rock level song and record it. And honestly, I'm happy with that. I still can't draw comics like I always dreamed of, but I can draw them good enough to get published in a few places. Yadda yadda.
- I got what I wanted when I worked at it. I also always wanted to play sax: I can't. But I never really worked at learning to: it was always just one of those things that "it'd be nice to be able to do". I can pick out a few notes on the piano, but I can't really play the piano. But again, I never really worked at it.
- Pretty much everything I got was something I had to work at for at least a couple of years. [One exception leaps to mind: I learned how to drive a car in less time, because it's one of the only times in my life that I hired a professional teacher and took real lessons, instead of just teaching myself.] If I was somebody else, maybe it'd take me less time than a couple years to get what I want. But maybe if I was some other somebody else, it'd take longer. But I can see that this is my pattern, this is me... But it appears to me now, that anytime I failed to get something I wanted, it's a case where I worked for a few weeks or a few months, got discouraged, and gave up. But anything that I ever stuck with for a couple of years, I got.
All my life I've heard people say that "you can get or do anything if you want it bad enough", and I was always kinda like "yeah yeah..." But to see this principle actually at work in my own life, consciously or not, is a whole nother thing.
I look around me today and realize that this life is the life I chose -- the life I built. Sometimes I got what I wanted. Sometimes I didn't really care and figured I'd take whatever -- and I got whatever, and here it is now. One way or another, I determined my circumstances as they are today.
How would your life be different if you knew from square one that, if you want this, you're gonna have to work on it for two years?
I feel like I've been let in on a big secret -- even if it was no secret to everyone else, it was to me, all this time. For me, the key to life is Devising a Two-Year Plan. If I'm not willing to put in the two years, then I don't really want it [whatever the "it" may be].
I dunno how long it'll be before I forget I posted all this and start back to my petty whingeing again, but I hope that doesn't happen. Maybe I need to print this out and stick it on my fridge or sumthin'... but still: huh. Y'know?
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