Hey you.
First off: …
You know, for as much as I work, you’d think I’d have more to show for it, wouldn’t you? You would think 8-12 hour days, seven days a week would result in more than enough to manage at least small shop updates each week, right?
(and off we go)
Only, that’s not how we work naturally, is it? Despite being immersed eyeballs deep in a culture that sings the praises of planners, consistency, productivity hacks, shipping, results, delivering, and demonstrable accountability, ultimately, we move in cycles. Layered, variable, fluid cycles; ones that can feel mysterious and unpredictable in both rhythm and cadence, ones that can feel intensely frustrating to harness and navigate as we try to find our place in a world that adores its mass-marketable cookie-cutter solutions. If we could just find someone to tell us the secret key to unlock the way we work, we could finally succeed the way we’re supposed to – we’d finally earn that respect, we’d finally be worthy of rest and kindness!
I know, I know. I hear those voices too. Constantly.
I’ve spent years fighting against my own tides, resisting the ebb and flow that carries in, and then lays down, the sediment that forms each successive layer of skill, understanding, and growth. I know better, but even still, I wrestle with what the world tells me and what I know is best for me.
To make it more challenging, I have multiple cycles – and I’d bet that if you paid close attention, you’d find that you do too. Lately, I’ve been in the slow-skill-acquisition/frustrating mistakes/repetitive practice stage for most of my cycles. Sometimes, it feels intensely boring, in the sense that it’s not great for newsletters or social media, and that it’s also not very exciting or rewarding in final results or sharable progress. This stage gets longer and longer the better you get, I’ve found; it takes longer to level up, so to speak. At this point, you really better like what you’re doing because it’s a bit of a slog. Sure, if you stick with it, eventually, your skill gets settled in, and you get to stand on a solid foundation made from the shifting sediment deposited by those tides. You stand a little taller above the tides, and can see a little bit farther. You get that breakthrough that seems like magic to everyone else who didn’t see the daily deposition of skill and understanding.
I’m running into a problem with it this round, not because I mind how long it takes, but because I don’t have good words to explain to other people when they ask what I’m working on. It sounds awful, and doubly so when I try to explain that I know this is going to go on a while, and I’m okay with it. It sounds unhinged, a little bit, to say that I’m okay failing and being frustrated for months because I know that if I stick with it, I’ll hit that next breakthrough. And that next breakthrough will get me closer to the next one, which gets me closer to the next one, and closer still to the one after that, and gradually, another step closer to where I realized years ago I could be someday, if I started now.
They call seeing the place that you realize you could be if you start now having vision. Trying to explain what you see is all but impossible though – the only thing you can do is take the next step, and then the next, and try your damndest to not lose your mind at the difference between where you are now and what you inexplicably know you’re somehow capable of, if you just keep walking, if you just keep cycling through this process over and over. But good luck trying to explain any of this to anyone who has never been through it – it won’t work. They’ll sort of understand, but mostly they just tell you that you’re already doing such good work, why are you so hard on yourself? (Yeah. Freebie lesson in futility there.) All you can do is remember what you’re chasing down, remember why you took the first step, and be kind to yourself while you inch closer to that vision of yours.
I won’t pull punches here: having vision is a pain in the ass. Vision will drive you past the point of what other people consider rational behavior. Vision will drive you mad, if you let it. Vision, properly managed, will also motivate you to understand yourself so you can surf your own tides past the breakers that knock you back to shore. Vision will call you out past even that, far past your own horizon line, as surely as sirens called sailors to their deaths on the rocks. However, if you know how to swim in your own depths, following that vision will reveal, more often than not, that you’re not a sailor at all and that song is coming from your own mouth.
May you find the courage to answer the siren call of your own visions,
A. Markov
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