Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Motivation

If you are like me, or if I am normal, we tend to surge ahead with our enthusiasm when a project first gets off the ground and sooner or later we begin to sag, peter out or even give up.  Things that keep motivation going are when you know this is your livelihood (so you go to work every day), or you will drown if you don’t keep swimming, or you will run like the dickens because the pitbull is after you.  I am visualizing all of these things as I sit myself down conscientiously every evening to write my blog, my story, my novel.  As I said last fall:
      “If I succeed I keep on writing, if I fail I keep on writing.  Whether I feel interested or bored, energized or tired, encouraged or discouraged, I keep on writing.”
      I don’t know if it is important to have a mantra but I do know it’s important to have discipline if you want to succeed at anything.  Not every day or every effort turns out to be a great piece of writing, but at least I am being consistent.
As one becomes older I think there is a tendency for us to want to share our experiences and help the younger generation from making the same mistakes we made, or of taking a short cut into experience.  But even as I try to impart my wisdom I realize that people of all ages still want to learn for themselves, they seldom want advice or even recommendations as to a good book or movie.  What they all seem to enjoy though is a good sense of humour, they will share a joke and appreciate a good laugh so as I write I hope that somewhere in between the preaching there is a laugh or two to be enjoyed.
Of course I especially like to laugh at myself so the joke this day is that coming home last night I had to stand up for at least 6 stops and all my graciousness was struggling with the resentment of seeing men and young people sitting down diligently avoiding the eyes of all the middle aged women standing up and clinging to the strap that was way too high for them. 
Really, whoever on earth thought creating cattle cars out of the city transit should be shot with lukewarm sh*t. (to quote a Danish saying).

No comments:

Post a Comment