just the hard part

If you are an artist, a creator, a thinker, the only thing that is left for you is the hard part.

I remember sitting at Southwest airlines years ago with a bunch of baggage handlers watching television in between flights and a Hollywood happenings show was on. It was discussing the physique of some actor and one of us bag monkey's said "well, if it was my full time job I could look like that too!". There was instant degradation of this individual as bag humpers are inclined, but I realized she was right in her vocalization of thought. That is a universal thought.

If I could write all day I would be James Joyce. If I could dance all day I would be Martha Graham. If I could think all day I would be Seth Godin. But the truth is you can do all of those things and in all actuality, you can only do those things.

Your not going to get a book contract because those are dying. Your not going to get things handed to you for winning anymore, all of the power of winning is already yours. You can reach millions by word, speech, or film. You can live in vast comfort for mediocre pay. You can have, on average, enough time to produce a top 20 novel eight times a year!

The problem is there is only the hard stuff left. Just the writing, just the choreography, just quieting the lizard brain to think beyond. Good luck, because that is actually harder to do than 20 years ago, 100 years ago. For all of our winning we have created spectacular noise.

a little easier

Image courtesy of ucumari

It's easier to do nothing. Just a tiny bit. Not cleaning, working out, reading, organizing, playing with your kids. It is a tiny bit easier to do nothing and the mass production society since the end of WWII has worked diligently on moving that point just a bit closer to nothing. Like the fat people on Wall-e who haven't moved in generations, we, like water, will always choose the path of least resistance.

Thus, the greatest habits any of us have are habits of difficulty. Habits of doing something over nothing. The habit of putting on your sweats and shoes and getting out the front door. The habit of sitting down in front of a google doc spreadsheet with all of your bills on it. Because then you too can become one of those people.

We all want to know what the big trick is, not so we can actually do something, so we can get a tiny high off of thinking about doing something and then continue the Doritos induced comas we call living.