I’m about to do something stupid…
I’m 22 in t-minus 3 days.
What have I been doing for 22 years?
What have I got to show for it?
Am I old? I feel old. My lower back hurts.
I wonder if I’m allowed to have a quarter-life crisis yet?
16-year old me thought I would’ve been a professional footballer by now.
18-year old me thought I would’ve graduated university, and been working my way to a corner office somewhere overseas.
20-year old me thought I would’ve…
I think I figured out at this point that I’ve got very little idea of what the next 2 months hold, let alone the next two years.
As an achievement-based person, I look back on the last 12 months and reflect on what sort of tangible xp points I might have racked up.
Races? Investments? Career? Adventures? Any wins on the board?
I’m sure there were a few, but for the last few weeks I’ve been feeling like I could do a little bit more.
Push a little bit harder.
After all, 21 only comes once.
So, I thought to revisit a challenge I set for myself a year or so ago.
4x4x48.
4 miles(6.4km), every 4 hours, for 48 hours.
No matter which way you slice it, there’s a few middle of the night sessions you have to contend with.
It. Sucked.
I failed miserably. I believe it was on the second morning and a full marathon in that my alarm went off at 4am, and feeling the pain of the 12am run a few hours earlier, I hit the snooze.
I think I told everyone, including myself, that my alarm didn’t go off. Lol.
But no one was there to watch, and I thought my self-motivation and sheer determination to push through the pain was enough, until it wasn’t.
In that cold 4am, no one was watching, and so I quit.
I’ve never been a big one to announce to social media my plans for the future. My fear of over-promising and under-delivering is a little over the top for me to risk public embarrassment when I don’t quite hit the mark.
It’s also what seems to stop a lot of us from pursuing something creative: writing the book, performing the music, entering the competition, doing the work.
After I started writing recently, I found putting yourself out there is a lot harder than I remember it being.
I can’t remember which book this was, so I’ll credit Seth Godin, but I found it interesting that he mentioned that non-creatives tend to have less respect for creative people.
I know this was true for me. I’d worked in sales for the past few years, and after slugging long hours chasing $ as a desk jockey, the last thing you want to believe is that someone could enjoy their job, make cool sh*t, earn more than you, and work on their own schedule.
The truth is, it seems you can only really respect the nature of creative work if you participate in some from of creative endeavours yourself. Before you put yourself out there, and experience the unlimited liability that comes with shipping the work in public, you can’t possibly understand the challenges that you might face.
You can’t hide behind the curtains.
Now, I don’t see the 4x4x48 as a creative endeavour as such, but my rational stands that if I back myself into a corner of taking a snippet of each pre-run as I go and uploading it to the interweb, I’ll be less inclined to quit half way through.
And for a similar principle with slightly different execution, this series of blogs is another example of this.
I’ve given myself 60 minutes each, sometimes less, to write something worth reading for 7 days straight. Public facing. No excuses.
The point isn’t whether it’s brilliant writing, if 400 people read it or only 4, but the fact is I can rest easy knowing I have shipped the work. I’ve satisfied the muse, and for what it’s worth, I’m one step closer to creating a habit of consistently shipping.
If I can hack it, this is the transition of amateur to professional. A professional who constantly ships the work and is reliable to his audience.
I guess we’ll soon see.
Oh, and, if you can find an audience for me that’ll be real nice, thanks.
So, back yourself into a corner this weekend. Make that promise that you won’t be able to keep unless you put in the hard yards, and if you look to faulter, just remember there’s someone else out there this weekend that’s pushing it with you.
Embrace the suck!
50 minutes 04/08/22