Craft

I sit at my desk. The hours stretch long. There’s comfort in the solitude, in the rhythm of work. Projects, learning, reading. The routine wraps around me like a blanket. But it’s not soft – it’s rough. Grueling. My back aches and my wrists are sore. The gap between where I am and where I want to be yawns wide. A chasm – mocking.

Time ticks. Always ticking. We’re here for a blink. A beautiful, finite blink. The cheetah is always chasing the gazelle. Every second matters. What’s the point anyway?

Effort. I’m not afraid of it. I respect it. I’m drawn to people who work really hard, ones who let their effort show – raw, unpolished. If someone’s better than you, they probably try harder, much harder than you think. Talent is just the starting point. The real work? It’s in the hours. The labor. Figuring out how to try. Then trying. Again and again. But not blindly. You have to try right. A thousand wrong attempts won’t get you there.

I don’t care about the end result. The craft fascinates me. How did you get here? Why? The ugliness of trying. Years of wanting, hoping, working. Craft requires consistency – sustained, relentless. Like Beethoven, deaf, feeling piano vibrations through a wooden rod clenched in his teeth. Composing masterpieces he couldn’t hear. Rewriting, refining, until dawn. A thousand nights of silent struggle.

People want to be. They don’t want to do. They want to have written, they don’t want to write. They want to be fit, they don’t want to sweat. They fear rejection. They fear imperfection. But the best things come from loving the process, shouldering the uncertainty and the pain. It’s a prayer – offering what you have with no guarantees of reward. You do it for love.

Fantasy is easy. Effort punishes – seeming is simpler than being. But what life are we living if we lie to ourselves? There are those who have goals, but don’t do and so they live with shame. And those who do and hide. I want to set goals and accomplish them and convince others to walk this path. I don’t care more about appearances than my relationship with myself.

I don’t want to pretend I’m above ugliness – above effort. It’s the price of beauty in this world. And I’ll pay it gladly, every single day, without hesitation and without apology. This is the only way forward – through the mess and the pain and the doubt. The only way. Only then can I create something real, something true and something genuinely earned.