I believe I have caught Shaun’s cold. This is very sad, but my throat’s been itchy and the allegra’s not stopping the itch, and I woke up this morning with a stuffy nose. I’ve drugged myself and intend to carry on as if I am well, but with plenty of sleep. I wouldn’t even mind being sick except, maaaaan, *right* before we go to Hawaii? Snivel.
I think I’ve gotten a thousand-ish words written this morning. Going to go do more in a few minutes here, but first I’m going to take a few minutes to expound on something Dad and I were discussing a couple of days ago: the readiness to do things. It’s not directed at anybody in particular, just kind of random rambling about my own thought processes. (Full text behind the click-through if you’re reading the feed.)
Over the last several months I’ve become much more sympathetic to the idea that people cannot be changed externally, and that if they wish to change in any fashion, they must be ready to do so.
I hate that. It sounds like such bullshit. What’s that mean, *ready* to change? I have absolutely no idea what it means. All I know is that in September 2002 I was ready to make a committment to a writing career, and that in October of 2004 I was ready to start losing weight. It’s not like I hadn’t said dozens of times over the previous decade that I wanted to be a writer; it’s not like I hadn’t said hundreds of times that I needed to lose weight. But for both of those things I hit up against some kind of internal okay!-meter that was critical and completely unexplainable. I don’t know *why* those two instances triggered a follow-through and a million previous instances didn’t.
So I’ve become more sympathetic to the idea that a person may not be ready to write, or produce art, or lose weight or do whatever it is that their passion is. My roommate, for example, is a sculptor, but it isn’t his focus right now and at some point I expect it’ll come into focus for him and that’s what he’ll work on.
One of the things that strikes me as critical about his attitude, though, is that he’s not beating himself up for not doing art. Right now he’s not chosing to expend his energy that way, and he’s okay with that. I know far, far more people who aren’t pursuing their passion and who routinely say they’re bad people, they’re lazy, they *should* be doing this, but they’re not. And I’m discovering that my patience for that attitude is losing ground in face of this concept of readiness.
I said in my Vision interview that one of the things I thought was important to keep in mind as someone pursuing a writing career (or anything else, for that matter) was the famous Yoda line, “There is no try, only do.” I really, truly think there’s a lot of truth to that. You can’t make it if you only go halfway. It has to be a full-scale committment; you have to do it. Whatever “it” is.
I think there are *good reasons* for people to not be doing things, but if those good reasons are there, then I don’t think people should be castigating themselves for not accomplishing that goal. It’s not a focus right then, and that’s how life works. Maybe you’ve got kids or elderly parents or a demanding job or you’d simply rather be practicing skateboarding. I think people should give themselves permission to not consider it a failure if they’re not pursuing some ideal during that time period. If you’re beating yourself up, it seems to me that you’re making excuses, and while I’ve come around to the idea of readiness, I’ve lost most of my patience with excuses.
I donno how you hit that ready stage. For me and writing, it was the RMFW conference in 2002. For me and weight loss, it was meeting Dad and him saying, “I’m giving up sugar!” and me saying, “Me too!” I mean, why the hell would that stick? But it did. Maybe it takes years of saying, “I want to be a writer,” or “I want to lose weight,” before it finally sets. Maybe it takes the encouragement of others around you. Maybe it takes the stars being in the right alignment; I don’t know. And that frustrates me, because I’d love to be able to point to the trigger and say, “That’s it! Do this and you’ll have all the drive you need!” But since it doesn’t work that way, it does seem to me that berating yourself for not having that focus is counterproductive to being happy, and being unhappy is no way to go about living your day to day life.
I could probably go on, but I’ve spent half an hour on this already, and I need to go write now. :) *zoom*!
As support for this, that is exactly how this weight-loss thing started for me (and last October, too). The underwire on one of my old bras (which I wear while doing laundry or that sort of thing) snapped on a Friday, and I snapped with it, said, “I’m tired of being a fatass” (even if the bra breaking had nothing to do with my weight, it was just old) and started watching what I ate on Monday.
And I still can’t quite pinpoint why it was then that it stuck, but it did; I was just really ready to finally start doing something about the whole thing, after wanting to lose weight for years upon years.