Craft

I sit at my desk. The hours stretch long. Solitude wraps around me like a comforting blanket, though it doesn’t bother me. Projects, learning, reading, writing, pacing around the room. My back aches and my wrists are sore. The distance between where I am and where I want to be yawns wide like a chasm - mocking.

Time ticks. Always ticking. We’re here for a blink. A beautiful, finite blink. I think of W.H Auden’s As I walked out one evening and feel the weight of the relentless march of time – anxious that I don’t have enough of it.

Effort. I’m not afraid of it. I respect it. My favorite people are the ones who work really hard, the ones who show up – raw, unpolished. If someone’s better than you, chances are they probably try harder, much harder than you think. Talent is just the starting point. The real work is in the hours, the labor, figuring out how to try, then trying. Again and again. But no blindly, you have to try right. A thousand wrong attempts won’t get you there.

I’m not interested in the end result, but I’m fascinated by the craft. How did you get here? Why? The ugliness of trying. The years of wanting, hoping, striving, bawling. Craft requires consistency. Like Beethoven, deaf, feeling piano vibrations through a wooden rod clenched in his teeth. Composing masterpieces he couldn’t hear. Rewriting, honing until dawn. A thousand nights of indefatigable grit.

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 have 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.

Fantasizing about the ideal future is easy. Effort punishes - seeming is simpler than being. But what’s the point of living a life if we aren’t honest with ourselves. My relationship with self will always be more important than appearances.

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